To Believe

by Carolyn Brown

  “Not one bit. Even when I was forty I knew everything,” Dotty laughed. “But we could save these two a lot of misery if they’d listen.”

  Betsy dragged her forward with a veined hand tipped with bright red fingernails. “That’s the secret, if they’d listen. Now come on and don’t drop that sack. You break the wine and you have to drive back to town for another bottle.”

  Water droplets still hung from his black hair but he was clean shaven and smelled even better than the aroma of fresh baked bread when he arrived in the kitchen to help Roseanna. Without a word he picked up eight plates and carried them to the dining room. While Roseanna topped off a salad of fresh endive and grape tomatoes with her famous homemade dressing, he set the table and lit the candles scattered down the center, turned the dial on the dimmer switch on the wall, and got ready for the ladies to parade down the stairs. By the time he and Roseanna had the golden fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn casserole, snapped green beans and hot rolls on the table, they’d gathered around, taking the same places that they’d claimed forty years before.

  Birdie winked at Trey. “You were all wrong. He’s even prettier cleaned up than he was all sexy and dirty.”

  Roseanna blushed.

  “Pass that chicken and talk about something else,” Dotty said.

  “Well, he is,” Birdie grinned but it didn’t stretch her mouth far enough to erase the wrinkles.

  Trey changed the subject. “Tell me again where you are from.”

  Dotty forked a piece of golden brown chicken and laid it on her plate. “You’re a slick one. You’d bear watching. Rosy, you be careful. This one might try to snooker you.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Rosy nodded.

  “Okay that’s enough. I’ll be in charge of damage control,” Tinsy said. “I’m from Fayetteville, Arkansas. My husband, Jim, was a professor at the university until he died about twenty years ago. Taught journalism. I thought about coming home to Oklahoma when he died but found out my roots were too deep. My children and grandchildren were all around me and I couldn’t leave them.”

  Trey looked at Roseanna who was nodding. Her roots ran deep right there in Murray County, even deeper on the Cahill ranch property. He’d tried to transplant her once and it hadn’t worked. She was the perfect corporate wife, never made a mistake, but her heart was never in it. Like a hothouse rose, she’d withered and their marriage had died.

  “Well, I’m from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. I remember when I married that Yankee back during the war, that would be the Second World War, I couldn’t wait to get out of Oklahoma. Told my mother if I ever got out of this hell hole I’d never come back and yet, here I am every year wishing I had the nerve to come home. But I stood still too long in that part of the world and roots grew from my feet. I can’t leave but I can come home once a year and enjoy a week with the ladies. It’s what keeps me sane,” Betsy said.

  Was that what he’d done wrong? Trey wondered. He should have brought her home more often. Every weekend that first year until he got her firmly transplanted. He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

  Wanda raised her hand. “Memphis, Tennessee. That’s where I’m from. Home of the blues and Graceland. Forty years ago when we were all thirty-eight and had been out of school twenty years, we came back here for the class reunion. Figured out we didn’t give a dang about all that folderol but that we did enjoy the devil out of a long visit with each other. So we decided to rent rooms out here in the lodge and have a week together every year. My husband hired a private detective after the first two years to make sure I wasn’t having an affair with some feller. After that he just accepted the whole thing as a crazy notion and hoped it would go away. He died ten years ago but if he was still alive I’d still come. It’s my yearly rehab.”

  “Rehab?” Trey asked.

  “Sure. Think about it. Rehab is where you go to get your mind or your body straightened out. We come here and get all refreshed for another year. It’s what keeps us going. We’re like those old women on that movie about the Ya-Yas. We don’t wear funny hats or do a mumbojumbo chant but we’ve been together since we were little girls in pigtails back in depression days.” Wanda brushed a strand of salt and pepper colored hair back into the bun at the nape of her neck.

  “And I’m from Marion, Virginia,” Lola said. “Back when we first started this idea, we sure didn’t have the money to fly out here. So Betsy drove the distance in her car. I remember that old, sixty-something Cadillac. That’s back when they made seats wider than a park bench. We all fit in it just fine. She’d drive down to Marion and pick me up and I’d drive to Nashville where we’d get Birdie. She’d take the wheel from there to Memphis and Betsy would take over all the way to Fayetteville where it was Tinsy’s turn. She’d take us to Oklahoma City and Dotty would bring us down here. We never even stopped for motels. Thirty five hours, it took in those days. Leave on Friday morning and check in here on Saturday night, all kinked up from sleeping like rag dolls in that Caddy, and giggly as a bunch of teenagers. Memories. When you get our age, it’s the memories that feed the soul. During all the business of living, be sure to do a few stupid things and make memories.”

  On the fingers of one hand held under the table, Trey tried to count the stupid things he’d done in his life. One was all those roses he’d sent Roseanna after he’d insulted her. The next was eloping. After that was talking Granny Etta into letting him live at the lodge for the summer. Three things; three memories and all of them had Roseanna at the core. Memories. He’d been so busy with making a living, he’d forgotten to live so he’d have memories. He wouldn’t let it happen again.

  “Nashville,” Birdie said between bites of hot rolls, slathered thickly with butter. “Lord, I’m glad I’m seventy eight. When you’re young physical appearance is so important, but when you get my age, it’s all right to carry around twenty extra pounds if your old ticker is still good and mine is. I’m going to drop dead one of these days of meanness, not some kind of exotic disease no one can pronounce. These rolls are delicious and I don’t give a dang if I have to buy bigger britches. Life is too short and hell ain’t half full for me to ever diet.”

  “I’m glad you’re enjoying them,” Roseanna said.

  Birdie had been her favorite through the years. She was outspoken and always enjoyed her food. A tall woman with an angular face full of wrinkles, she didn’t look like she had two extra pounds much less twenty. If she and Trey ever did make another start would she be like Birdie? Would Trey love her when she was seventy-eight and had more lines in her face than a map of New York City? Would he love her with a sassy tongue?

  “That’s what is going to kill Jodie. Meanness,” Trey mumbled.

  “Probably but she’ll go down with a smile on her face. Love that kid. Always have,” Dotty said. “I got three girls out of my marriage and they were grown by the time Jodie was born. If I could have reversed the clock, I would have brought all of them down here and left them for a summer in hopes some of her brass and sass would have rubbed off on them. No man is ever going to take advantage of that girl. Her momma ain’t never going to have to worry about her. Oh, I’m the one from Oklahoma City. Didn’t go so far that I couldn’t get back home when I needed to.”

  Now that was an idea, Trey sipped sweet tea. Don’t go so far that he couldn’t bring her back to Cahill Ranch and Lodge when he needed to. The whole evening’s conversation had given him something to ponder over.

  Birdie began to hum lightly under her breath. The others glared at her.

  “Sorry. Momma said a person couldn’t sing at the dinner table. Lord, she was one for having good manners. Said you never knew when you’d be eating at a table with the President or maybe even the Queen of England and you wouldn’t want to have bad manners. Well, here I am looking eighty right in the face and I ain’t never sat up to eat fried chicken with the President or rib eyes with the Queen, so if I feel like humming then by golly I’ll hum. That was an old Conway Twitty song that came to mi
nd. Wasn’t he something, now? That man could make a nun swoon,” Birdie said.

  “What were you humming?” Trey asked.

  “We liked Conway. Me and Everett went to every concert we could make in Nashville. Him and Loretta Lynn were quite a thing. I remember one time when Fan Fare was still out at the fair grounds and Everett and I danced to this song right down there on the track in front of the grand stand. Conway blew me a kiss. This song was my favorite. He sings about him not forgetting her and the way it could have been. He says he hates to think there is someone she loved instead of him. Then he says for her to lay her troubles on his shoulder and put her worries in his pocket and rest her love on him. Things weren’t always perfect with me and Everett. We fought like wild cats and we loved passionately but I always knew he had big shoulders and deep pockets and I could always rest my love on him.”

  It took six sips of tea for Roseanna to swallow the lump in her throat.

  “You are about to make Rosy cry with all that sentimental crap,” Betsy said in a flat, northern voice. “Grab your tea, ladies, and bring it up to my room. That’s where we’re going to gossip tonight. I still can’t get over seeing old Jimmy Bob Blue today in the antique shop. He used to have the cutest little butt and he ain’t nothing but a bag of loose bones.”

  They disappeared up the stairs, each carrying a glass half full of tea.

  “That’s the way their lives are. Half full instead of half empty,” Roseanna said as she began to clean the table.

  Trey brought the three tiered tray from the kitchen and helped load dishes into the plastic bin on the top shelf and leftovers on the next one.

  “They’ve all got a good attitude about their lives. I was sitting there listening to them and realized my grandparents are about their age. Not much younger anyway, and I can’t see my grandmother driving nonstop for thirty-six hours to spend a week with her old friends. I sure can’t see her sleeping in a big old boat of a car and taking her turn driving the leg of the journey. I bet they ate bologna sandwiches in those days, too,” he said.

  “Probably. Anything to get here for that week of rehab,” Rosy smiled. Her green eyes sparkled like diamonds on a blue velvet sheet. “Must be something in the water. Be careful. If you drink it, you won’t be satisfied until you come back for more.”

  “Come sit with me on the porch,” he said when they’d finished the cleanup.

  “Okay, but no touching, remember?”

  “No touching,” he agreed.

  She chose the middle of the porch swing and he slumped down into a rocking chair.

  She looked up into the sky. “It’s a perfect night for a fairy ring.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Just something that appears once every so many years. I’ve only seen one. It’s just the way the clouds and the moon and one old lonesome star set in the sky, but it’s eerie and it gives you a weird feeling.”

  “Oh,” he said and dismissed the idea. Fairy ring, indeed. It sounded like something weird alright.

  “So did anything they say around the table tonight make sense to you?” He asked.

  “Oh, yes, gravity is going to get all our hind ends someday and I’m going to be tall and lanky with wrinkles around my mouth and I’m going to eat hot rolls and hope I die of meanness. It all made sense to me.”

  “You’d be beautiful with wrinkles but I can’t see you ever having enough mean in your body to kill you,” he said.

  “Picture this: The mountains. We’re walking out of them and you are tired and you want to stop. How much mean was in me?”

  “Reconsidered. It’s possible,” he said.

  “Don’t make me into something I’m not. I’m a plain old ranching woman. I’ll get old and I’ll have wrinkles and I’m really not far behind Jodie in meanness. And let me tell you, what I lack in mean, I make up for in bull headedness. She don’t get ahead of me very often.”

  Giggles floated down from the upstairs window. Trey and Roseanna could tell who was talking by the soft southern lilt in her voice. Lola had told another story and had them all laughing.

  “Can you picture them as young women?”

  “For more than twenty years I can. I was about five when I first remember meeting them. They were in their fifties and spicy as salsa. They include Granny Etta in their gossip sessions when she’s here. She brings them up to date on all their old buddies. She’s about three years younger than they are but by the time you reach that age, three years ain’t so much.”

  He almost flinched when she said “ain’t” but kept it under control. She was right. She wasn’t going to change. Neither was he. But compromise didn’t mean either of them had to change altogether. It just meant they had to learn to accept and love the other one unconditionally.

  “I still don’t like jeans,” he said bluntly.

  “Where did that come from?”

  That statement had come out of left field and had no bearing on the old ladies upstairs drinking wine from their tea glasses.

  “I don’t really know. I was thinking about …”

  “Your mind did a circle and you don’t like jeans. What’s that got to do with tonight?”

  “I don’t like mowing either, but I’ll do it.”

  “I like a man in tight fittin’ jeans. I like cowboy boots, but I don’t like either of them as well on you as I do your pleated slacks and loafers. You aren’t a western man, Trey Fields. You’re a city man. I wouldn’t change that about you, but I’m glad you’re willing to mow. I hate that job. I’m comfortable in jeans and a flannel shirt and boots. I’ll wear a party dress when I have to, but I don’t like them.”

  “You look good all dolled up like you were that first time in that little black dress, but honey, I like you in your jeans and flannel shirts just fine too.”

  “So have you got wide shoulders and deep pockets for me to put my troubles in? Could I rest my love on you?”

  “You ready to believe in that happily ever after stuff?”

  “Not yet, just wondering. The song says to rest my love on you awhile. How long is awhile? Four years was all it lasted before.”

  He kept a steady rocking rhythm but didn’t answer. He couldn’t give what he didn’t have.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Familiar landmarks slipped by the window in the dark from Ardmore, through Kingston and up the old highway toward Sulphur. The movie was supposed to be a romantic comedy but the situations the two lead actors found themselves in were more than a little bit too close to home. In the end they admitted they weren’t right for each other even though the look in their eyes said they craved another chance. Roseanna answered a couple of questions Trey asked, then she plugged an old Loretta Lynn into the CD player. In the past, Trey would have snarled his nose, shivered to his toenails and declared he would not stand another minute of it. But tonight, while she pretended to sleep against the door, he tapped out the rhythm on the steering wheel.

  Trey could adapt to calf fries, lawn mowers, paint brushes and Conway, but she wasn’t going to jump into another relationship with him, and that was a fact. Not even after a simple date at the movies and conversation over double hot fudge sundaes at Braums. She was attracted to him, always had been. That wasn’t a point of argument. From the time he slid those sunglasses down on his nose and she could see smolder in his eyes, she’d had the urge to drag him off to the bedroom. But four years had taught her that a lasting relationship needed more than that.

  “You’re not asleep,” Trey said.

  “No, I’m not,” she opened her eyes widely and sat up straight. “Oh, my gosh, Trey, there it is! Stop. Pull this car over so I can see it. Hot dang, I didn’t think I’d ever see another one, and there it is. I told you the weather was right for one but I wasn’t expecting it tonight.”

  “What?” he looked around.

  She grabbed for the door handle. “Stop this car! I’ve got to get out and look at it and stand under it to feel the magic.”

  He braked and
laid six feet of rubber on the pavement before they came to a screeching halt.

  She jumped out of the car, leaned on the front fender and looked straight up at the sky.

  He swung the door open and went around the car to stand beside her. “What is so important?”

  She pointed upward. “A fairy ring. Right in the middle of the summer. There’s never a fairy ring in the summer. It’s magic.”

  His gaze followed her finger to the sky. The moon sat in the middle of a perfect circle—the clouds separating like a band of fairies holding hands and dancing in slow motion. Cold chill bumps raced up and down his backbone, and the hair on his neck prickled. So this was the fairy ring she’d talked about when she wanted to buy a ranch and get out of the city. Now he understood why. It looked like the heavens had parted and he could see the dim future by the light of the moon and one brightly shining star. It was an omen.

  He slipped his arm around her waist and drew her close to his side. “It’s awesome. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

  “The fairies only dance around the moon and the lone star on special occasions,” she said. “And when they do, it means something wonderful.”

  “I believe it.”

  She shivered in spite of the hot summer night. “I’m ready to go now. It won’t last all night but it’ll be there when we get home.”

  They drove slowly, crooking their necks up so they could keep a watch on it, and when they reached the lodge, it was still there.

  So was Jodie.

  She stood on the porch, her hands on her hips, completely ignoring Trey. “Go get out of your good jeans and put on some overalls. I’ve got a cow down and I need some help pulling a calf. Daddy and Momma have gone to Whitesboro to visit Aunt Liz, and I need you. Hurry up, Rosy. Sometimes I think you’re slower’n molasses in December.”

  Roseanna looked up one more time at the fairy ring. Her heart had soared for a few minutes but there was nothing like Jodie and a cow in labor to bring her back to earth and set her feet firmly in reality.