by Peggy Webb
“Maybe we can find the right kind of lamp to go with them. You know, one of those plastic legs with the black fishnet stockings?”
“Wouldn’t Howard die if he saw my lamp shades?”
“Who’s to say he won’t?”
“After what I’ve put him through, I’ll be lucky to get a Christmas card from him, let alone a visit.”
“You never know. Sometimes men will surprise the heck out of you.”
He did surprise me—once. It was on our first anniversary.
For months I’d talked about moving my old Wurlitzer spinet piano from Ocean Springs, but he always had some excuse: it would cost more to move it than the piano was worth, he was too busy, we didn’t have room for it. He was right about that. We were living in a one-bedroom, one-bath house with a living room barely big enough for our sofa.
Finally I quit talking and resigned myself to making do with my inadequate, tinny-sounding keyboard in the corner of the bedroom.
Then one Friday afternoon I came home from a long, exhausting band practice (I was getting my band ready for competition) to find the sofa and the coffee table missing. Panicked, I called Howard.
“You’ve got to come home. Somebody’s stolen our living room furniture.”
“You mean the room’s empty?”
“I just said that, Howard. What’s wrong with you? We’ve been robbed. Should I call the police?”
“Don’t panic. Don’t call anybody. I’ll see you in a little bit.”
Slamming down the receiver on my unconcerned husband, I was fully prepared to disobey and call the law, but about that time a big moving van pulled into our driveway…delivering a baby grand piano.
Howard arrived shortly afterward and kissed me right in front of the movers.
“Happy anniversary, Elizabeth.”
“Howard, I adore it! But where will we sit?”
“What does it matter as long as we have music?”
That was his one and only surprise, but it’s still one of the most romantic gestures I’ve ever heard of.
I wonder if he and I will ever have romance again? Considering our recent history, it’s highly unlikely. I’ll probably end up having my baby grand shipped down from Tupelo to my cottage by the sea. It’s the only thing I regret leaving behind.
Besides Kate and Bonnie. And Jane, of course.
Now Jane says to me, “If you’re not too tired from packing, let’s get that purple paint and start painting.”
“You got it, girlfriend.”
I’m so filled with energy, I could jog to California and still have enough left over to march in the Rose Bowl Parade. It’s excitement-fueled adrenaline, I guess. For the first time since that self-help seminar in Huntsville I see the wisdom of Glenda Wiggs’s advice.
“Pri-ori-tize!” I yell, going for the paint rollers.
“Or-gan-ize!” Jane singsongs as she prances around the bedroom draping drop cloths over Aunt Bonnie Kathleen’s functional furniture.
I’m going to change the furnishings, too. But first I’m going to bring this cottage to life with color—the purple of royalty, the yellow of the sun, the deep green of ferns hidden in cool forests, and the soft pink of romance. Who knows? If I decide to find one, I could meet a real hero down here.
“What color are these walls, anyway?” Jane asks as she applies the first swath of purple.
“Aunt Bonnie Kathleen used to call them olive, but I always called them turd brindle.”
I stand back to admire the new, hopeful patch of purple across the top of the cloth-draped dresser. You can dream in a room this color. You can float out of yourself and land among the stars.
And then I remember lying on my twin bed in the small room down the hall, feeling the walls close in and wondering why my daddy never came for me. During those developmental years, the only thing that saved me from my dark thoughts was the sound of the surf.
I kept the window open year ’round so I could hear it. Even when Aunt Bonnie Kathleen caught me and warned I’d get pneumonia letting the winter winds in, I still cracked the window just enough to hear that connection with something bigger, vaster, more mysterious, more wonderful—and more dangerous—than the confines of my ugly walls and Aunt Bonnie Kathleen’s rules.
Laying down my paint roller, I race around the room flinging open windows. One of them is stuck and Jane comes over to help me force it open.
“Listen to that,” I say.
“I love the sound of waves.”
“It’s not just the sound of waves, it’s the sound of hope.”
Four hours later the room is purple and both of us are rummaging through Aunt Bonnie Kathleen’s medicine cabinet for Ben-Gay.
“I know she has some,” I say. “Every sane person over the age of fifty keeps at least one tube.”
“Do you think one will be enough?”
“Heck, no, but I think there’s some cheap Jack Daniel’s in the kitchen.”
“Now you’re talking.”
“That and a good cello sonata by Brahms will cure anything.”
Along with the sound of the sea, the great thing about this cottage is that it has always been filled with music.
Hours later, lathered with Ben-Gay and mellow with Jack Daniel’s, Jane and I fall asleep in the middle of a multicolored hooked rug in the future sunshine-yellow den while Brahms and the waves sing lullabies.
Jane leaves on Thursday.
“I hate to go before we’ve finished painting,” she says.
We’re holding on to each other in the sparkling yellow living room with her packed bags at our feet.
“It’s not as if you won’t be coming back. Besides…” I lean back to smile at her. “I have to have something to do after you’ve gone.”
“Oh God, Beth…”
“Don’t you dare cry. Listen, the next time you come down I’m going to throw a big party and invite the Prices and all my new friends.”
“Knowing you, the house won’t be able to hold us all.”
“Good. We’ll spill onto the beach and even into the surf. I’ll have the party at night. We can all go barefoot and wear stars in our hair.”
We give each other one last, tight squeeze, and then she climbs into her car and we wave until she’s out of sight. I wrap my arms around myself, and decide to call Ken and Irma this evening to let them know I’m here. I’ll invite them to dinner next week, knowing they’ll come even though the drive is eighty miles. After all, what’s eighty miles between friends? We’ll sit on my front porch and listen to the music of the waves together.
The surf ruffles along the shore, and impulsively I kick off my shoes, whistle for Rufus, and the two of us romp along its cool, white edges. Then, suddenly, there is redemption: I hear music. Not just the music of the sea, but blues coming from deep in my soul. First the melody, haunting and insistent. Next the lyrics, the gut-deep call and response that builds to the wailing lament of loss that can no longer be contained.
Forgetting my shoes, I race inside and sit at my old spinet while music spills from my fingertips. With my right foot on the sustain pedal and my left tapping the rhythm, I start to croon.
“I got the low-down, lovesick blues… Oh, yes, lord…I got the low-down lovesick blues….”
I rock from side to side, hitting the blues licks, feeling the ache and pain of every bluesman born in the Mississippi Delta, pouring out melancholy like molasses on hot corn bread, swallowed up by loss and yet still believing in salvation.
CHAPTER 19
“Am I the only normal person in this family?”
—Kate
I simply cannot believe this: Rick is still mad at me over the stomped-on cupcakes, Dad’s walking around like the living dead, Jenny’s strutting around out west, and Mom’s still in Ocean Springs entertaining her friends and writing blues songs “like crazy.” Her words. Not mine.
And what am I doing? Slaving over a hot stove fixing food for our annual Fourth of July picnic. For Daddy’s sake—and
Bonnie’s—I’m trying to act as if everything is normal. But what’s normal about half your family doing stuff that nobody else wants to acknowledge, let alone talk about?
The only thing Dad has said about Mom since she left is, “Why didn’t she hire somebody to fix up Aunt Bonnie Kathleen’s house?”
Poor Daddy. I understand how he feels. I wish I had a mother at home where she’s always been and my daughter had a grandmother who would pop over and bake chocolate cookies and occasionally babysit. But I understand Mom’s point of view, too. In fact, I’m beginning to feel exactly the way she did when she wrote that letter. Lost.
Rick’s hardly ever home anymore. You could run a herd of elephants and three Mack trucks through all the time I have on my hands these days. I know he’s working and that he wants to provide well for his family. Daddy taught me to appreciate a man like that.
But lately I’ve been thinking that I ought to do something more with my life. I’m beginning to feel like a half-finished woman, one of those drawings where the left side (wife, mother, daughter) is filled out in beautiful colors, but the right side is featureless and plain, no color whatsoever.
“Is that your mother’s double-chocolate layer cake?”
I jump like somebody shot. Rick’s home, and I didn’t even hear him come in. Furthermore, it’s only three o’clock and I’m not wearing a smidge of mascara and there’s a chocolate stain on my pink shirt.
“You startled me, Rick.”
“It smells good in here. Who’s coming to the picnic besides family?”
“Nobody.”
“Then what’s the use fixing enough for an army? Why don’t I just run to Finney’s and pick up a pint of their potato salad?”
“We always have homemade.”
That doesn’t sit well with him, but I’m beyond caring. Of all days, why couldn’t he stay at work and leave me in peace? I’m trying really hard here to make sure Daddy and Bonnie enjoy an ordinary family celebration.
But since he’s here, I might as well take advantage of the situation and get a few things off my chest.
“I’ve been thinking lately that I need something else to do, Rick.”
“Such as?”
Why do I feel like a witness on the stand instead of a wife?
“I thought I’d design a few children’s clothes.”
“I’m sure Bonnie would like that.”
“Not just for Bonnie. For other people.”
He stares at me as if I’m a specimen from outer space. Then in his careful lawyer’s tone he says, “You’re talking about selling them?”
“Yes. Maybe from the house at first, so I could be here with Bonnie, but later on I might get a little shop.”
“I did not go to law school so my wife could be a shopgirl.”
I can feel two big spots of heat rise on my cheeks, so I turn my back on him before I say or do something I’ll regret. I’m not Daddy’s girl for nothing. I know how to keep the peace when there are differing opinions in a marriage.
And lately there have been more than I care to think about. Or is it simply that they seem larger and more important because of Mom’s stand? Is her bold restlessness rubbing off on me? If it is, maybe that’s a very good thing.
Holding the stirring spoon as if it’s a weapon, I face my husband.
“Listen, Rick, I don’t want to do anything that will interfere with family life, but someday Bonnie’s going to be grown and gone, and I’d like to have just a little something to keep me busy and give me a sense of accomplishment outside the home.”
“Am I not enough?”
I slam the spoon into the bowl. “This is not about you. Can’t you for once concede that somebody in this family has needs outside your own?”
He picks up the newspaper in this calm-before-the-storm way.
“I’m going onto the patio while you cool off. I don’t intend to get into a fight with you before we go to your father’s house.”
“I’m not fighting, just trying to talk to you.” He keeps on walking. “Dammit, Rick.”
“See. That’s just what I mean.”
He eases the door shut behind him. Dripping chocolate across the kitchen floor and not caring, I walk over, open the door and slam it. Hard.
I don’t care if I wake Bonnie up. I don’t care if I wake up the whole world.
CHAPTER 20
“What do I want—enhanced attitude or enhanced breasts?”
—Beth
Rufus is sleeping beside the stove, I’m cooking double-chocolate layer cake for my Fourth of July picnic and the radio is playing a rollicking version of “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive.” It could be my theme song. I’m trying my best here, and that’s really all anybody can do.
Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen knew how to write music that resonated with the listener. I guess that’s why I am constantly drawn back to blues and to music penned by such greats as Mercer and Arlen, and Kern, and those inimitable Gershwin brothers.
Humming along, I pop my cake into the oven just as the phone rings. It’s Kate.
“Mom, do you have time to talk?”
“Always.”
She tells me about her quarrel with Rick over her design plans, and my heart hurts for her.
“Is that why you never did anything with your music degree? Because Dad didn’t want you to?”
“No, Kate. Your dad never tried to squash any of my career plans.” A plus for Howard. I haven’t thought about that in a long time. “That was all my own doing.”
“Why?”
“It’s a long story.”
I sigh and she sighs, and suddenly I realize I’m repeating an old pattern, holding my past inside, showing a happy face to the world even when I was miserable.
“If you have time, I’ll tell you,” I say.
“Yes, please do.”
I tell her about Aunt Bonnie Kathleen’s Father Knows Best vision of marriage, and how my own fatherless state made me believe that a man on the premises was all I needed for happiness and contentment.
“But that’s not true, Kate, and I don’t want you to ever settle for less than what you want simply because somebody else says you should. I don’t care if it’s a husband, a parent, a teacher…I don’t care who tells you to settle. Don’t!”
“It’s going to be an uphill battle with Rick.”
“You know where to find reinforcements. I’m proud of you, Kate.”
“Thanks, Mom. What are you doing for the Fourth?”
“The Prices are coming over, and I’ve invited their grandson, Adam, too. He actually lives here in Ocean Springs and usually fixes hot dogs for them.”
We wish each other a happy Fourth, and no sooner do I hang up the phone than it rings again. It’s Jenny saying that she and Dean and Aunt Angel are going to celebrate the Fourth.
“You and Dean seem to be having a good time out there. Are you two becoming more than friends?”
“Mom!”
“He’s a nice boy. Both the Clark boys are. I was just thinking that something might develop since you’re both in the same house.”
“He’s gay. Didn’t you and Daddy know?”
How could we? People of my generation who aren’t in professions that put us in contact with today’s young people simply aren’t attuned to those things.
“Mom? Are you still there? You’re not fixing to get all phobic on me, are you?”
“Of course not. Keep on having a great time. And don’t tell your father.”
How awful is that? To advise my own child to keep secrets from Howard. He deals with the human condition in all its manifestations every day. Why shouldn’t he be as compassionate and broad-minded as I like to think I am?
This kind of thinking just goes to show how far apart we’ve drifted. In the early days of our marriage I trusted everything to Howard, knowing that whatever I said or did, I’d have an understanding audience.
Wouldn’t it be great if somebody would invent a time machine and we could all tr
avel back to those periods in our life when everything was perfect? Or so we believed.
“I don’t tell Daddy anything. When he calls he asks, ‘How are you?’ and I say, ‘Fine, how are you?’ and he says, ‘Okay.’”
“Jenny, in spite of what you might think, your father loves you. I want you to remember that and try harder.”
“Well, then why doesn’t he?”
“Sometimes old people have a hard time bending, but young people are more resilient. Promise me you’ll try.”
She says she will, and when I finally get back to my meal preparations I think about Howard.
What is he doing right now? Is he wishing he’d done things differently with Jenny? Is he missing her? Missing me? Wishing I’d come home?
This is a holiday made for sitting on a quilt under a live oak tree holding hands and watching the rainbow-shimmer of fireworks over the water.
Of course, I’m alone by choice, but still the ache is there. I can remember the Independence Days of my childhood, watching the distant play of fireworks across the water and wondering where my daddy was and why he left. The feeling of abandonment was so strong, I developed a dogged determination to never be abandoned again.
Now, of course, I won’t be because there’s nobody left to abandon me. I’ve made sure of that.
This flash of insight catches me high under the breastbone, and I stop in the middle of the kitchen floor. I feel like one of those cartoon characters the animator propelled off the cliff and then left hanging in midair.
The phone rings again. It’s Jane.
“Are you doing okay, kiddo?” she says. “With the holiday coming up and all?”
“Great.”
Why unload an unsettling insight on my friend? She’s doing enough for me already without having to play psychiatrist, too. Of course, if I really need a psychiatrist I don’t have far to look. I’m married to one.
Or I was yesterday. Who knows? Maybe he’s seen an attorney and divorce papers are in the mail even as I speak.
