Summer of Joy

by Ann H. Gabhart

  Thank goodness I can still talk to Wes about it. I don’t talk about it to Dad because of the weirdness with Mr. Creep still chasing after Leigh as if he didn’t know she was engaged. He sent her more roses that ended up at the nursing home again on Valentine’s Day and wrote her a poem. I saw it. It stunk. Didn’t make the first bit of sense. Then just last Friday before spring break he even tried to get me to carry a note to her. Can you believe that? You should have seen the look on his face when I told him they still sold stamps at the Post Office. I’ll have to pay for that one when we go back next Monday.

  The man is weird. Definitely weird. Me and Wes are pretty much in agreement on that. Still, I have to go to English class. Mr. Madison told me I did. Yeah, I actually asked. I mean, you’ve got to know how bad things are if I went to the principal’s office. Students don’t voluntarily go to the principal’s office.

  But when I got my last theme back and Mr. Teacher Creep had marked a big red F on it, I’d had enough. I went right up and asked him about it, and he sort of laughed and said I should have picked a better subject. That nobody could write a proper paper about dogs. I reminded him he’d said we could write about anything we wanted, and he said that didn’t mean he had to approve of whatever we decided to write about. But Joe Masterson wrote about horses and he got a B. I saw his paper. Had red marks all over it where he’d misspelled this or that word. Probably misspelled horse. Then Mr. Creep had written “Good Effort” on top of it. My paper didn’t have a red mark on it. Not one. Except, of course, the big F. That was because there weren’t any mistakes. Not one. And what I’d written was interesting too. I might get Dad to run it in the Banner if we have some space to fill. Dogs have universal appeal. Except I suppose with Mr. Creep. Maybe they don’t have dogs on Neptune.

  Anyway I didn’t give myself time to think. I marched right down to Mr. Madison’s office and sat down in a chair and refused to move until Miss Gilbert let me in to see him. I was so mad. I mean I plan to go to college someday and how’s it going to look if I get an F in freshman English? Bad, that’s how. And I’ll need scholarships. A person has to get A’s to get scholarships.

  Anyway once Miss Gilbert saw I meant business and let me go talk to Mr. Madison, I showed him the paper and told him how I’d tried to talk to Mr. Creep about the grade he’d given me, but that he’d just laughed at me. Well, I didn’t say Mr. Creep, but I wanted to. I told Mr. Madison how I was trying to be a perfect student in that class. On time, quiet, homework turned in, every answer on the tests right. I told him how Mr. Creep kept making me stand in front of the class and do humiliating things like hop on one foot while repeating whatever stupid poem he told me to and how once he’d hit me on the back of the head with a book.

  But I didn’t tell him everything. I didn’t tell him how Mr. Creep keeps lurking around Leigh’s apartment and calling her. I didn’t tell him how Mr. Creep makes fun of the stories in the Banner. I didn’t tell him how I have to go to my locker and stick my head inside it nearly every day after English class so nobody will see me crying. I didn’t tell him how I prayed every day to be invisible when I went in there. I’ve even been desperate enough to pray for Mr. Creep a few times. And no, I don’t pray that he’d fall in a hole and break both his legs. I just wish that sometimes.

  Well, you know how it is with teachers. They form a solid wall in front of you no matter what they actually think. So Mr. Madison said I couldn’t switch out of that class because Mr. Creep is the only freshman English teacher. He kept my paper and suggested I send my dad in to talk to him about my problems. My problems? What about somebody talking to Mr. Creep? He’s the one with problems.

  So now I have to talk to Dad about talking to Mr. Madison. And I’ll have to tell him some of what’s been going on and he’ll get that look on his face like he’d rather not include Mr. Creep in his prayers either. I’ve been putting it off, but I’ll have to do it before Monday. Maybe Sunday night after church. Dad will be too tired to go rushing out of the house to throttle Mr. Creep then. Or maybe I can get by with talking to Wes and letting him go talk to Mr. Madison. That ought to be interesting. Wes could share his Jupiterian theory that no one from Neptune should ever be a teacher. Or for that matter, even allowed on earth. I like the way Jupiterians think.

  “What are you writing about that’s got you smiling?” Leigh asked as she opened the car door and slid under the wheel.

  “Oh, nothing much,” Jocie said and shut her notebook. “Just silly stuff.”

  “That’s the best kind of stuff to write in a journal.” Leigh stuck the key in the ignition and turned it. “You ready to go find that dress?”

  “Sure.”

  “We’re going to do it today. We have to do it today. How’s that for pressure?”

  “You don’t have to have a fancy dress to get married. Sometimes people tie the knot in whatever they happen to have on. Don’t even dress up a bit.”

  “I know. I see them at the courthouse when they get Uncle Howie to marry them since he’s the judge and all. He comes and grabs me to be one of the witnesses if they don’t bring someone with them. But I’ve been waiting a long time for this, and I want everything to be perfect. I mean, I already have the perfect groom. It’s not too much to want the perfect dress too, is it?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ll say a wedding-dress prayer for you if you want me to. Dad says it’s okay to pray about everything.” Jocie looked down at her journal and thought maybe she should be praying more about what to do about Mr. Creep instead of just griping all the time.

  “It couldn’t hurt. I’ve been praying about lots of things about the wedding. About being married. Like please let my new stepdaughters like me.” Leigh looked over at Jocie as she pulled out of the parking lot.

  “You don’t have to pray that one. We already like you, and nothing will be all that different even after you’re officially our stepmom. That is, unless you want us to start calling you mom or something.”

  “You can call me whatever you want. But for sure, I’d be proud to be your mom.” Leigh reached over to touch Jocie’s hand.

  “Gee, that’s so nice you’re liable to make me cry or something, Leigh. Thanks. I guess that’s more than DeeDee ever was. She wasn’t too happy when I came along.”

  “Her loss.” Leigh’s voice changed a little, got carefully casual. “Does she know your father is getting remarried?” She kept her eyes on the road.

  “I don’t know. Tabitha writes her sometimes, sends her pictures of Stephen Lee, but I don’t know what she tells her about what’s going on here. She might have told her, but DeeDee never writes back. So who knows? She might have moved and not even be getting Tabitha’s letters.” Jocie studied Leigh’s profile a moment before she asked, “You aren’t worried about her, are you?”

  “No, no, of course not. I was just curious, I guess. The first wife and all, you know.” Leigh glanced over at Jocie. Leigh’s face was a little red, but that could have been because of the sun shining through the car windows.

  “I used to be curious about her too. But then I found out she never wanted me, and so I don’t worry that much about her anymore. The Lord gave me Dad and Wes and I’m happy.”

  “Me too. I’m happy, I mean,” Leigh said. “I have to be the luckiest girl in the world or will be just as soon as we find that perfect dress today.”

  They went to three different shops. Leigh tried on dozens of dresses. Some of them were really pretty. All very white. Some had long flowing trains. A lot of them had puffy sleeves that did make Leigh look a little top heavy. Others had high tight necks that Leigh yanked on so she could breathe. The fluffy chiffon skirts over the satin underskirts just weren’t Leigh’s style. A few times Leigh stood in front of the mirror and considered a bit longer on this or that dress, but she always ended up shaking her head. None of them were perfect.

  They started for home, leaving behind them a trail of chiffon and satin and lace for the frustrated salesladies to put back in their plast
ic dress bags. Jocie’s feet hurt and she felt almost snow-blind from so much white. Her ears were ringing from all the clerks chirping about how beautiful this or that looked. One of the clerks had even looked at Jocie and said she was a beautiful child. As if that would make Leigh decide one of that clerk’s dresses was the perfect one.

  “I’m sorry, Jocie,” Leigh said with a sigh as they pulled out into traffic after leaving the last store. “Maybe I should have gone on and taken that last one. It was nice enough.”

  “But not perfect.”

  “No, but maybe I shouldn’t expect perfection.” Leigh sighed again.

  Just then a car pulled out in front of them and Leigh slammed on her brakes. Jocie held her breath and braced for the crash as the tires squealed. Leigh’s car stopped with bare inches to spare. Before he drove off, the man in the other car shook his fist at Leigh as though she’d been the one to pull out in front of him.

  Leigh’s knuckles were white where she was gripping the steering wheel and her eyes were wide. “Oh my gosh!” Her voice sounded shaky. Horns started blowing behind them, but Leigh just sat there.

  “Are you okay?” Jocie asked.

  “I think I need to park a minute to give myself time to quit shaking. You see a place?”

  “How about over there in front of that dress shop? What’s it say? Vintage dresses. Wonder what that means.”

  “A fancy way to say ‘used,’ I’d guess.” Leigh pulled her car out of traffic into the parking spot. She took a couple of deep breaths. “I hate driving in Lexington. Everybody over here drives like a maniac.”

  “Look, Leigh.” Jocie pointed toward the dress shop. “That dress in the window, it’s pretty fancy. Maybe they have some vintage wedding dresses in there.”

  “They’ll probably look vintage.”

  “Come on. Can’t hurt to look. And vintage sounds interesting to me.” Jocie pulled up on the door handle to get out.

  “You’re not the bride,” Leigh said, but she turned off the key and scooted across the seat to get out of the car after Jocie.

  The store was sort of dark and had a closed-up closet smell. The clerk barely looked up from the thick textbook she was studying and waved them toward the back when Leigh asked about wedding dresses.

  There hanging on the wall was an antique ivory wedding dress with a lace-covered bodice that dipped down in a point at the waistline with the satin skirt flowing gracefully away from it. The lace sleeves had the same point to lie against the back of Leigh’s hands. Real-looking pearl buttons ran partway up the sleeves and all the way up the back and took forever for Jocie to button. But once Leigh had the dress on, it looked as if it had been made for her. The right size. The right length. The right everything.

  Leigh whirled the skirt back and forth in the tiny space in front of the one mirror. The whispery sound was like music. Nobody said the dress was beautiful. No clerk told Leigh what a beautiful bride she would be in it. But it was beautiful. Leigh was beautiful. But even better, it was perfect.

  Sometimes it was almost scary the way the Lord answered prayers.

  32

  David had no idea getting married was going to be so crazy. When he’d done it the first time, it had been simple enough. He and Adrienne had driven a couple of hours to Tennessee, stood up in front of a judge, and come home Mr. and Mrs. Brooke. It might not have been a wise thing to do, but it hadn’t been hard. Or complicated.

  Of course, the day after they’d come home from Tennessee, he’d caught a plane to go back to the submarine and finish out the war. He’d missed out on the wedding showers and all the newlywed advice.

  No such luck this time. He’d always thought showers were just for ladies, but the women at church insisted he had to be at the one they were having on Saturday afternoon. David looked at his calendar on his desk. Wednesday, May 19. Not quite two weeks until he and Leigh were tying the knot. A happy feeling soaked through him and settled in his bones. He was willing to go through a little craziness to make that happen.

  His calendar for the next few days certainly looked crazy enough. He had things scribbled in everywhere. A visit to Willie Jefferson who’d just found out he had lung cancer. An interview with Andrew Webster who was opening up a new feed and farm supply store on Center Street. A reminder in red to pick up his new suit and get a haircut before the wedding. A doctor’s appointment for Stephen Lee to be sure his ear infection had cleared up. Prayer with Jimmy Byrd who was home on leave before being shipped out to Vietnam.

  David frowned when he read that entry. Nobody knew what was going to happen over there, but ever since the North Vietnamese had summarily rejected President Johnson’s peace offer, none of the news had been good. Air strikes had been going on for a while, but now the president had sent in an Army combat troop to join the Special Forces already there. Jimmy’s mom and dad were worried sick about Jimmy. David wrote himself another reminder to say extra prayers for Jimmy and all the other young men who were graduating high school or college and facing the likelihood of being drafted into the service.

  Graduation. David had that on his to-do list already. The Banner needed pictures of the graduates. And of the Little League ballplayers. Pictures sold the Banner better than anything he could write. At least this week’s issue was already on the stands and in the mailmen’s packs.

  And praise the Lord, circulation was increasing again. It helped to be the only paper in town. People could get mad, people could get morally outraged, people could decide David was doing everything wrong, but if they wanted to read about what was happening in Hollyhill, they had to buy the Banner. And most people did.

  The Banner might not always be totally accurate, but it was more often than not and certainly more often than the rumor mill. Take the rumors that had gone around after Christmas about Zella. For a while there, the poor woman had practically slid down under her desk every time the bell had rung over the office door.

  David didn’t know if Zella would ever get over people imagining her anything but morally upright and then having the incredible gall to pair her up with Wes. To her that went beyond ridiculous to insane. In fact the stories still kept popping up as irrepressibly as dandelions springing back up out of the grass after a lawn was mowed.

  Wes hadn’t been worried about it at all. Hadn’t even been all that upset at Zella for poking unasked into his business. “I don’t know how she did it, but you got to give Zell credit. She’s a regular Miss Marple,” he’d said with a shake of his head. “But fact is, I’m thinking some of this just might be the good Lord’s doing. He must have known now was a good time for me to stop running from what happened. Rosa wouldn’t have ever wanted me to leave Robbie on his own the way I did.”

  “From the looks of Robert Wesley, your son must have done all right for himself,” David said.

  “Yeah, Robbie Jr. is okay. A little full of himself, but then so was I at his age. Thought I was smarter than the average joe. Something to do with being twenty, I think,” Wes said. “He’s bringing his dad down next visit.”

  “His dad? Maybe you should think of him not as Robert Wesley’s dad but as your son.”

  “Maybe I should,” Wes agreed, but he looked worried as he massaged his injured leg.

  In spite of Wes’s misgivings, the visit had gone well. Wes and his son had circled each other like wary dogs not sure of the other dog’s welcome, but once they decided neither of them were anxious to bite or growl, they sat down and started talking. They had no way of ever getting back the years they’d lost, but they had gotten a good start for the years ahead of them. The son’s wife and daughter hadn’t come. Something about shopping for a prom dress.

  David had found out, what with Leigh’s anxiety over finding the perfect wedding dress, that shopping could be serious business. Thank the Lord Leigh had finally found a dress she liked. Jocie hadn’t told him what the dress looked like. Seemed that was taboo in wedding rules and regulations. But she’d seemed to be as relieved as he was that Leigh had f
ound what Jocie called the perfect dress. Said that when or if she ever got married, she was wearing blue jeans. That she was having a Jupiterian wedding.

  When she’d made the pronouncement in the pressroom, Wes had looked at her and said, “I can’t recall ever telling you about Jupiterian weddings.”

  “And I don’t want you to,” Jocie said. “When and, as I said, if I ever get married, I’ll figure out what a Jupiterian wedding is then. It might just be whatever I decide to make up.”

  “Sounds Jupiterian enough for me.” Wes laughed.

  “Let’s not be talking about any more weddings for a while,” David said.

  Jocie looked from Wes to him and smiled. “It’s not me you need to be telling that. It’s Tabitha. I think she’d like to have a double wedding this summer.”

  “I’m not sure she and Robert Wesley are quite ready for that. I know I’m not,” David said.

  And he wasn’t. His own wedding was enough to worry about right now. Of course he’d seen Tabitha falling for Robert Wesley, and he’d been happy to see Robert Wesley returning her interest. The girl needed to feel attractive again after Stephen Lee had been born. But surely it was way too early to even be thinking about anything serious between the two of them. They’d only seen each other a few times.

  He had filed the idea away in his head along with all the other things he needed to worry about. Like whether Jocie could make it through another week of school with that teacher making her life miserable. At least the man had quit giving her bad grades. Carl Madison somehow made sure of that after David had gone to school to talk to the principal. But Jocie still had to go to English class. She was still at Edwin Hammond’s mercy, and it appeared the man didn’t have much of that.

  Or much sense either the way he was still chasing after Leigh. Leigh had told him she was engaged and uninterested, but he kept calling her, kept sending her flowers, kept mailing her poems, kept hanging around. Kept David seeing how much older he was than Leigh. But she said she loved him—David—and as amazingly hard to believe as that was, he did believe her. He wasn’t worrying about that.