Dust

by Eva Marie Everson

  She held on to me with a passion I’d never known from her—at least not that I could remember. She’d been a good mother. A worrisome mother. A mother who made sure we minded our p’s and q’s, Julie and me. And she’d always been there for Daddy, now that I thought about it, whenever he strolled into the house. And once he stepped through the door …

  “Make him the king of his castle,” she whispered. “That’s what my mother told me, and I’ve never regretted it.” She broke the embrace, her eyes now washed in tears, finding mine. “No more flying by the seat of your pants, Allison. This is your purpose in life now. He is your purpose.”

  I’d never heard anything remotely like this from Mama’s mouth. Had no idea how deeply she felt about the relationship between a man and his wife. Between a mother and her children and the way they all hung in the balance, one with the other. Even in my naiveté, the notion that her instruction somehow related to her own mother and the loss of her father came to me by instinct. Mother to daughter. Daughter to mother. “Mama …”

  She swallowed hard, pushing a repression down that I had no understanding of. Not yet. “As far as tonight goes …”

  I waved a hand between us; the conversation had gone as deep as I dared it to go. “Julie has already talked to me.”

  Mama’s chin rose. “Good. That’s one less thing I have to worry about then.” She turned for the door. “Are you ready?”

  I blinked at her. “I don’t know, Mama. Am I?”

  Her lips formed a wobbly smile. “I’d say you may as well be.”

  “Then I am,” I said. But I wasn’t. Oh, no … I wasn’t.

  We left the church around five o’clock that afternoon, the car graffitied and wrapped in toilet paper, the customary tin cans clamoring behind us until Westley pulled over just beyond the outskirts of town and snapped them off. I stayed inside, my knees pressed together and my hands clutching the handle of a suede handbag. Within a minute Westley slid back into the car, his smile broad. His manner easy. He looked at me as he put the car in drive and said, “Happy?”

  Finding it difficult to speak, I nodded.

  “Nervous?”

  I shook my head, slowly at first, then with more certainty.

  “Then why does the cat have your tongue?”

  I turned my face to the windshield, ever mindful of my sister’s admonishment not to bring up my concerns. “I dunno,” I all but whispered. But I smiled to lessen the tension.

  Westley reached over and took my hand in his, the warmth of it spreading through me, providing more heat than from what came through the air vents. The sky had darkened, changing to shades of deep purple struck through by magenta clouds. The sun winked as it dipped below the treetops, many of them bare, some still holding on to their autumn colors. A few refusing to release their summer green. “Look at me,” he said.

  I brought my eyes to his.

  “I love you. I want you to know that.”

  “I do,” I said. “And I love you. So much.” So much it hurt. The very life of me had ached for him. And now, he was mine and I, his.

  Westley’s hand gripped mine, then released and he rolled the car back onto the highway, heading toward Savannah … and a beachfront house owned by an old classmate of his from their days at UGA. Or, his classmate’s parents, really. Not that it mattered. We were going somewhere quiet. Someplace completely ours for a week. A secluded little stretch of paradise, we’d been told. We couldn’t lay out or swim, of course, what with it being December. But there was a fireplace and plenty of wood and Westley had promised evenings snuggled under a blanket. A roaring fire crackling in the fireplace. The whitecaps of the ocean rolling toward us from under a black sky dotted with stars that twinkled “nearly as much as your eyes,” he’d said. “Right now … while I’m telling you about it.”

  “Will we drink hot cocoa?”

  “With tiny marshmallows.”

  “I like the thick ones.”

  He had kissed the tip of my nose. “Whatever you want.”

  “I don’t want Swiss Miss. I want real hot cocoa.”

  Westley smiled, a new knowing showing in his face. “Do you know how to make it?”

  My shoulders sank. “No.” I brought my chin up in defiance. “But Mama can teach me. We still have a couple of weeks …”

  And so she had. Now all I had to do was buy the ingredients. First thing Monday morning. After a long walk on the beach with my new husband. Holding hands. Talking. Laughing. Allowing the ocean breeze to pull gooseflesh from under our skin until we could bear it no longer. Until we were forced to run back to the beach house where we’d dash into the bathroom and maybe even take a shower. Together. We could do that. We were married now.

  Yes, that was how it would be. And then we’d return to his parents’ home on Saturday—Christmas Eve—enjoy an afternoon and evening with them. Hopefully, whatever tension existed since the night before our wedding would have floated away on the cloud of joy. Then, on Sunday—Christmas Day—we’d head over to Mama and Daddy’s where we’d return to the church where we’d just married. We’d eat Christmas dinner with Grand and my aunts and Julie and Dean. Then, on Monday morning, we’d load up the gifts that had come in since Westley’s last visit. And, finally … we’d head home.

  And everything would be fine. It would.

  It would.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A week later, I stretched between the linens and under the blanket and down-filled comforter in the bedroom Westley had left behind at his parents’ home the day we married. I blinked in protest at the morning’s light intruding from around and between old venetian blinds. A glance at the ticking alarm clock propped on top of a copy of Cosmo I’d purchased in Savannah left me wondering if I read the time correctly.

  I pushed myself up from the warmth of the bed, the cover dropping to hips entrapped by a twisted nightgown. I straightened it. Blushed under the memory of Westley’s hands beneath it the night before. Of my strained protests. “We’re at your parents’,” I hissed between uncooperative giggles. “We can’t do this here.”

  His breath warmed my ear as he whispered back. “I know where we are. And I know who you are and whatcha wanna bet my parents already figure this is what’s happening tonight in this very room?” Westley’s kisses smothered whatever protest was left in me, just as they had during our glorious days at the beach.

  The door opened and my husband strolled in, already dressed in flare-legged jeans and a ribbed turtleneck shirt, his cheeks wind kissed. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  He closed the door, then crawled onto the bed with me. “Nothing, why?”

  My hand cupped his cheek, the cold of it iced my fingertips. “Why is your face so red?”

  Westley chuckled as he pushed me back, my head plopping onto the feather pillow that had gone flat during the night. He lay over me. Wrapped his arms around me. “Warm me up,” he said. “Dad and I were out back taking care of something for Mom.”

  I placed my palms flat against his cheeks as if it would help, inwardly sighing at the sight of the filigree, white gold wedding ring wrapped around my finger. “I can’t believe it’s really after ten,” I said. “Why’d you let me sleep so long?”

  He rubbed his nose over mine several times before answering. “Mom insisted you needed the sleep and to leave you alone.”

  His mom. Whatever tension I’d felt before the wedding seemed to have dissipated, leaving me to chalk it up to something personal. Private. Not yet my problem. Or perhaps, I had reasoned, she was as distraught over our moving as my parents had been. Or, at the very least, my mother.

  I grinned. “Then why are you in here?”

  He nuzzled my neck, kissed the hollow of my throat. “I couldn’t bear another minute away from you.” A playful growl came from the depth of him and he pretended to gnaw at me until I forced myself out from under him.

  “Go away, you,” I said. “I need to get up and get ready.” I dropped my feet to the floor, shifted my gown
again, then stood. “And I don’t care what your mother said. She must think I’m absolutely spoiled rotten.”

  Westley propped up on his elbow and crossed his ankles as a smile spread catlike across his face. “Not absolutely.”

  I shook my head at him. “Wes . . .”

  “Ali.”

  I held my breath for a moment, then released it. “I’m going to shower now.”

  “You do that. And brush your teeth,” he added, a full grin breaking through. “You have morning breath.”

  I threw my hand over my mouth. “You’re horrible,” I mumbled, feigning horror as I giggled around my fingers.

  Westley bounded from the bed to stand beside it. “Not as horrible as your breath …” He threw the bed linens back, then jerked them toward the head of the bed—his attempt at making the bed—before glancing my way. “I’m kidding you. Stop looking like a little girl whose best friend left her for the new girl at school.”

  My brow rose. “Really? I mean, I know my breath is … but it’s not horrible, is it?”

  He straightened before leaning against the wall and crossing his arms. “The only thing horrible right now is that we aren’t already in our own home, because if we were …” He started toward me.

  “What would you do?” I taunted, although my arm stretched out in protest, my hand forming a solid “stop.”

  “You know what I’d do.” He waved his hand toward the bathroom, teasing. “Go. Take a shower. Brush your teeth and your hair and dab a little bit of makeup on and, for heaven’s sake, try to make it to the kitchen by lunch.”

  I shook my head slowly, mesmerized by him. His easy manner. His way with me. Sometimes I felt like his wife. Other times like his child. How could that be …

  “I hate you,” I said, the words even. Skilled, as if I’d practiced them.

  “I love you, too. Now … go.”

  My mother had never insisted I help her when it came to cooking meals. Instead, she insisted my role started after the meal with the cleanup. Something I had down to a science. So after a hearty lunch of homemade vegetable soup and grilled homemade pimento cheese sandwiches, I took over kitchen duties by washing and drying the dishes and wiping down the countertops while Westley and his father continued working in the back, and Mrs. Houser—who insisted I call her “Mom”—laid down for “a quick nap.”

  I took my time, occasionally glancing out the window to the graying and brown grass of a winter’s lawn. A lonely, wire clothesline stretched under naked pecan branches and between two unpainted T-shaped posts. Toward the back of the property Dr. Houser’s—Dad’s—shop stood with the double doors open, as though unaware that a chill remained in the air. I smiled, knowing that just past them, my husband and his father worked on a project together. What, they hadn’t said. Or wouldn’t say. But instinct told me that it had to do with me … and Christmas.

  After placing the final dish in the cabinet, I wiped my hands on the red dishtowel before hanging it over the oven’s handle, then stood in the middle of the kitchen with my hands on my hips, wondering what to do next. The house was eerily quiet, and a sense of nostalgia ran over me, tickling me. I stepped past the opened swinging door between the kitchen and the den where a fat Christmas tree in the corner had replaced an overstuffed chair for the holidays. I looked at it for a moment, noting the perfectly wrapped gifts for the rest of Westley’s family who were expected before dinner—Heather, Paul, and DiAnn, namely. The large multicolored bulbs sent rays of Christmas lights to gleam off handed-down ornaments and the deep green of the live and richly scented branches.

  No fake trees for this family.

  I dropped onto the sofa and stared at the lifeless screen of the console television, remembering the day two months earlier when I’d been in this same spot, watching Match Game. I closed my eyes, thinking back to Westley walking in from the outside. Him taking off his shirt—something I’d grown accustomed to in the past week—and kissing me until I’d nearly lost my mind. Something else I’d grown accustomed to. Still, my cheeks flamed at the memory of his father walking in and I opened my eyes again, picturing Westley smiling at me. Teasing me. Joshing with his father and then walking down the hallway, his shirt clutched loosely in his hand … an envelope jutting from his pocket.

  I stood. Funny I should remember that right at that moment. Funny and yet, somehow, telling. But I shook it off, figuring that the silence of the house and the memory had collided to confuse a young bride.

  I started back toward the kitchen, thinking I’d head back into Westley’s bedroom—our bedroom—then stopped and, instead, went to the front of the house where I’d snooped two months before. Back to the living room, the serene opulence of it drawing me like a moth to the flame.

  As always, the room’s lighting was subdued. The hushed hues of dusty rose and olive green greeting me. Welcoming me. I walked over the thick rugs to the piano, again taken by the old photographs, most particularly the one of a young woman with sleepy eyes and a wispy head of hair piled atop her head.

  “My grandmother,” a voice from behind me said. I turned to see my mother-in-law standing in the wide arch of the doorway. “Her name was Hillie. Hillie Lenore Jones Martin.”

  I had picked up the silver-framed photo, holding it gently between my fingers, but I returned it to the piano with a clunk. “I’m sorry, Mrs.—Mom. I wasn’t trying to be nosy.”

  “Don’t be silly.” She walked over, picked up the photograph, and then handed it back to me. “Our house is now your house, no? She was a real beauty, wasn’t she.”

  I nodded. “How long ago was this taken?”

  “Nineteen twelve. An interesting time in women’s history, did you know that?”

  I shook my head. “I never did that great in history class, I’m afraid.”

  Mom’s chin rose an inch. “Then you should learn, Allison. Our history is what shapes us. Even the history of those women who came before us—or, I should say, especially those who came before us.”

  I looked at the photo again. Studied it. My goodness, but the woman was a beauty. “Maybe it’s the black-and-white photo—I don’t know—but there seems to be such a softness about her. A gentleness.”

  “Hardly. She was a tough one.” Mom laughed before motioning to the sofa behind us. “Come here and sit down and I’ll tell you all about Hillie Martin.”

  I placed the photo back on the silk scarf that protected the piano from its sharp edges, then joined my mother-in-law on the antique sofa with its carvings of swans’ necks within the wood frame. Mom had turned pensive, it seemed, and I could tell she loved her grandmother Hillie very much. “Is she still alive?” I asked.

  Mom patted my knee. “Oh, no, no, no. Hillie died back in … 1970.”

  “You called your grandmother Hillie?” I grinned. “I call my mother’s mother Grand.”

  Mom returned the smile. “Hillie was always just …” She shook her head slowly, her smile fading to the place where memories become sweet and tender. “Hillie.”

  I turned toward this woman I wanted so desperately to feel a closeness to. One who, other than right before the wedding, seemed to want the same from me. “Tell me more about her.”

  She sighed. “It’s interesting, I think … that you should be drawn to her photo.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because Hillie … well, Allison, when Hillie married my grandfather back in 1912, she had no idea, really, what she was getting herself into.”

  Nineteen twelve. The year of the photo. Confusion clouded my thinking and the room seemed to grow dimmer. “Do you think I have no idea—”

  Mom waved a hand in the air as though she was erasing a blackboard. “No, no.” Then she chuckled. “Well, no more than any of us know what we’re getting into when we’re first married.” Her brow shot toward the curls sweeping over her hairline. “I know I sure didn’t.”

  I glanced across the room toward the photograph. “And Hillie?”

  “Hillie … well, let’
s start at the beginning. My grandmother was born in 1889. Hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

  “Wow. That’s … nearly a hundred years ago.”

  “When she was sixteen,” Mom continued without acknowledging my math skills, “she went off to school and got her teaching certificate. Now, you have to understand that a lot of women in Hillie’s social standing back in those days didn’t do things like that. But Hillie was determined, I suppose, to make her own way—her own mark—in the world.”

  “Her social standing?”

  “Her father—my great-grandfather—was a businessman in Savannah. Not wealthy, but certainly not hurting. When I was a little girl, we used to visit their house and …” She smiled again. “I used to pretend I was a princess and the house was my castle.” Her hand fell lightly to her breast before she continued. “Well, one day Hillie up and decides she’s going to be a teacher and there was no stopping her. After a while, Hillie took a teaching position and then, one by one, her younger sisters started having beaus and getting married. And, the way she told it to me was this: she got to thinking she’d never get married because of her lazy eye.”

  “Her—?”

  “Look closely at the photo. You’ll see it. One eye is what they call lazy. So, about that time Hillie’s best friend—I never got her name, I don’t think—tells her that she read in the want ads about a widower farmer with five young children living on the outskirts of Baxter who needed a wife for himself and a mother for his children. And Hillie—who knows what possessed her—wrote to the man and the next thing you know he comes by train to Savannah to marry her.” Mom pointed toward the piano, then stood, walked over, and turned on the antique lamp to shine a light on the subject of her story. “This lamp was hers, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t …” How could I?

  “It was an oil lamp, but Benjamin wired it for me after Hillie died.”

  I clasped my hands in my lap. “He’s very handy.”

  “He is,” she said, picking up Hillie’s photo, caressing it. “Hillie and my grandfather—his name was Isaac—married in the middle of my great-grandfather’s protests and my great-grandmother’s anguish. They’d not so much as kissed before they went straight to the justice of the peace and got married, then boarded the train and headed for Baxter.”