Hope Springs

by Lynne Hinton

  There was a time when she wanted only to travel, to go to new places, different places. When she was young and rebelling, she considered leaving the country, changing her citizenship, living somewhere other than America. She liked the idea of speaking a different language, existing in a place where the rules were different from what they were in the southern United States. She relished the thought of living where she was not defined by her appearance, having her home in a location where skin color did not matter, where race was not the central issue. And in her considerations, she had even narrowed down her choices to France and Haiti and, of course, Africa.

  The headstrong activist got married, however, and had children; and she stayed in Hope Springs, eventually even becoming comfortable in her home. She gave away her maps and travel guides and settled for what she had, where she was. But long before James’s departure, long before they had grown old, Jessie and her husband had dreamed a dream together, agreeing with a plan to move, not out of the country, but out west.

  They had spent countless late nights and early mornings, in the ease of a long hour, dreaming about the day they could leave everybody and everything and pack up the car and drive across the United States. They would stop, they had decided, town by town, and meet the people, linger about to experience life in other places. And they would go and go, up and down hidden highways, until they ran into water, the paved road finished, the end of the path. This would be far enough, they had thought. This would be the new place to begin. And they would buy a small plot of land and start over, discovering something new about California and the west and the Pacific Ocean and themselves every day.

  When James left her, she was devastated that he would run out on her and the children. She questioned why hadn’t he loved her enough to stay. And she was angry, so very angry, that he would give up on the marriage without even giving her a chance to change his mind. For a very long time she was unable to think of anything except how broken he had left her. And yet, the odd thing was that, in spite of the anger and the disappointment, in spite of the sorrow, Jessie managed to have a little peace. James left; but he honored their dreams, their plans, and had not gone west without her. He moved out of state and far away, but he had not gone in the direction that had been created by the two of them together and shared in the most sacred moments of marriage.

  When he told her a few months ago of his sister’s correspondence and the idea he had for both Jessie and himself to leave the south and go west, it pierced the older woman deep beneath desire, way below regret, and stirred up thoughts and dreams she had long understood to be smothered and dead. It pleased her to think about their dream and how, even though the path they had taken had become crooked and led them into places she never would have expected, they were still heading in the same direction that they had imagined when they were young and spirited and in love.

  “Are you very disappointed?” she asked, already reading and understanding the crease between his eyebrows, the way he was chewing on the inside of his lip as if he were making another plan.

  James shook his head. “I’ll just call Cleata and we’ll figure out what to do about the property. I’m not sure we can afford to buy it without the money we’ll make from the sale of this house.” He sighed.

  “But it’s sure a good deal for California prices,” he added under his breath.

  Jessie could tell that he was thinking out loud, thinking and grieving.

  He drew in his bottom lip and scraped it under his teeth. He peered out the window and watched the setting of the sun. He knew that his ideas about moving were impulsive and without real purpose. He knew that Jessie went along with him because she had always been the adventuresome type and had always wanted to leave home, but that they hadn’t really thought it completely through. He knew that he and Cleata never had been that close anyway, and that he hadn’t really considered what it would mean to move right beside her.

  Wasn’t one of her boys messed up with drugs? he wondered. And was his sister asking them to come because she was thinking that he and Jessie might become involved in some way, help her out, straighten him out, fix things? James hadn’t thought about this before. Maybe they should wait a little and think this moving thing through before they just took up and left.

  Maybe they should stay another year anyway and make sure Wallace and his young family were more settled before they sold the house out from under them and made them move into some tiny apartment in town. Maybe it was right, best, to reexamine this idea and decide if it really was the best thing for them. They had time, after all. Nothing was pushing them to leave now. Why not wait and think about it a little more?

  But James knew himself well enough to know that it wasn’t his style to think too much. He knew that stewing over some decision was like cooking meat too long. Hold something over a fire for more than a few minutes and it’s going to burn away its taste. Plan on something too many nights and you’re sure to strategize the life out of it. And he knew, sitting there at the table with the woman who had known him all his life, that scheming too much had been the reason he had left Hope Springs in the first place. The long, drawn-out plan to leave. The dream they squeezed to death.

  In the beginning, it was delightful and sweet, easy on the tongue and smooth along the palate. They lingered in the bed every Saturday morning until well after the children had given up beating on the door and begging for breakfast. The young couple waited quietly, laughing to themselves, as the oldest child, in frustration, finally led the others away from their door and into the kitchen, where they figured out how to manage their own cereal and milk. And James and Jessie would lie in each other’s arms, making love and making plans for what they were going to do when everybody got grown.

  James would slide his fingers along the curve of his wife’s back as he told her about how they would drive down the highway, windows down, Motown sounds loud and pulsing, and how they would stop at gas stations and truck stops and feed each other apple slices and lemon candy all the way across the country.

  She would tease him like she wanted to sleep, pull the cover up to her chin and turn hard to the other side. And he knew that she was smiling because she was only waiting to see how long he could go before he slipped his hand under her arm and across her stomach and began to cup and caress her breasts. He would whisper from behind her as he slowly undressed her that the trip would be as good as the new life. He would talk of exploring and discovering new parts of the country as he stroked and gently kissed her all along and up and down her body.

  James would talk about the rolling hills as he slid his fingers down across her hips and the heat of desert sands as he reached around and slowly felt inside her. It became such a pattern, such a lovely habit of their Saturday mornings, that Jessie began to equate lovemaking with a delicious journey and adventure that would end in a place different from the one in which they began.

  He loved how they did that, week after week, a sort of ritual of desire and imagination. He enjoyed the dream and the layout of their departure from the life they knew as much as he enjoyed the sex; and Jessie grew to become as excited about his idea, their plans, as she did about his touch. And before too long, the intimacy and the play wound themselves together so tightly, became so entangled, that they couldn’t do one without the other. Then the long, dull time of waiting began to fix them in the house and in the place where they were. And pretty soon they both became dissatisfied if he was unable to keep the plan new and stimulating.

  The delight decayed and the sweetness thickened and hardened like syrup that’s set out too long as life turned on itself and made them grow roots in Hope Springs. And they spent energy and money and time and too much thought trying to keep their children and their bosses and their parents and their longings pacified. Jessie grew uninterested and aloof when James was no longer able to add a new possibility or come up with something original about the trip or the move, and the dream finally began to wither and dry like flowers choked by weeds.
It wasn’t long before James lost the drive to think about life twenty years down the road, eventually dismissing the desire to touch and surprise his wife. And for reasons she couldn’t explain, Jessie never tried to reignite the passion.

  The dream grew stale and unfulfilling so that James felt as if there was nothing he could do except go away and maybe come back when the dream was dead.

  The thought now of waiting a year or more, baiting the resurrected dream, trying to keep it alive with more ideas or more thorough planning, made James start to feel the same restlessness and discontent that had finally pushed him out the door and up north so many years ago.

  Jessie looked at her husband. He was grayer, older; but she could see the beginnings of the faraway stare that had glazed his eyes twenty years earlier. She studied the lines that mapped his brow, the flap of skin at his neck, the stretched corners of his lips, and she tried to make herself think it wasn’t the same gaze, the same resignation, the same disquiet that had ultimately pulled her husband away before.

  She turned away and got up for more coffee. “Another cup?” she asked as she stood up from the table.

  “Sure, if you got enough,” he replied.

  She nodded, took his cup, and went into the kitchen. She poured the coffee while she leaned against the counter. The thought of his leaving again crept up on her like poison in a garden. She steadied herself, her hands trembling, and tried to focus on the things she knew, the things that were rooted and certain, the things that could not be overtaken by storm winds or loose ground cover.

  She had survived his coming and going before. She had a life in that town without him. She had family to care for and to care for her, and she had friends who would stand near her and guard the soft and seeping places inside her. She was not young and fragile anymore. She was not vulnerable to this kind of surprise. She was strong and mature and accustomed to disappointment. She was not going to go down again.

  She put the coffeepot back in its place and reached in the refrigerator for the milk. She gave them both just a little, put the milk back, closed the door, and walked into the dining room as if nothing had changed, as if her mind had not just breathed in the breath of trouble.

  “You all right?” he asked, noticing the flush high in her cheeks, the shaky way she handed him his cup.

  “Fine,” she answered, trying not to sound concerned.

  “You all having something tonight?” He noticed that she had not changed out of her work clothes.

  “A dinner,” she replied, “for Margaret.”

  James nodded. The coffee had grown a bit cold. But he did not mention it or complain.

  “There’s leftovers on the bottom shelf in the fridge.” Her voice was level, even.

  “I think I’ll go down to the cafeteria,” he said, “think maybe I’d like a salmon patty.” He turned to the clock and checked the time. “If I leave now, I’ll get ahead of the old folks.” Then he winked at his wife like everything was fine, like nothing was different, nothing had shifted. He drank down the last of his coffee and got up from the table.

  “I’m going to jump in the shower.” He headed behind Jessie and out of the room, calling to her from the hallway. “I’ll see you later this evening, I guess.” And he kept walking without waiting for her reply.

  Jessie sat at the table and tried to fill her mind with hopeful things, solid things. She told herself that he was fine with waiting to move another time. She thought how he had come home, clear-eyed and at peace this time, how he had claimed that he missed her more than anything and that he was now better and happy to be with her after all those lonely years. She reminded herself that he was old now, had seen the world, and that they would live together for the rest of their lives, there in Hope Springs or out west in Oakland.

  She thought of Margaret and remembered that the tumor had been discovered on a routine mammogram, an annual test that they had taken together, that she hadn’t felt it first or been negligent with her examinations. Jessie knew that the statistics were in her favor and that her friend had all chances of a full recovery and a complete remission.

  She thought that if he did leave, Lana and Wallace and little Hope filled up her life and would leave her no room for feeling sorry for herself or becoming lost to silence or pity. James Junior was nearby. Janice close. Robert just a phone call away. And she knew that Annie would be here if she asked.

  “I will be fine,” she thought to herself at first and then said it out loud, for confirmation and assurance. “I am stronger and better than I was before. I got history and I got support. I will be fine.” She repeated this again as she heard the water turn on in the bathroom and knew that James was stepping into the shower.

  She stood up from the table and saw Louise as she drove up the driveway. Jessie left her cup on the table and went over to the sofa to pick up her purse. She stopped at the mirror that was just by the door.

  “You will not break my heart again, James Jenkins. You will not crowd my thoughts with bruised wishes and angry ideas that I should have done something different, could have done something different. This is my house, my mind, my heart. And you will not scatter your seeds of despair here. I will not let that happen. I cannot let that happen.”

  And Jessie left the mirror and the image of her strong self and walked out into the night even as the seedlings of disillusion were quietly growing in her heart.

  VOLUME 1, NUMBER 8

  Hope Springs Community Garden Club Newsletter

  BEA’S BOTANICAL BITS

  The Gardener and Her Tools

  What kind of tools does a woman need?

  I’m speaking, of course, about tools in the garden. You should have in your shed the following utensils:

  For digging: a shovel and trowel.

  For cutting: clippers, and perhaps a handsaw.

  For cleaning: a leaf rake and a garden rake.

  For irrigation: hoses and sprinklers, nozzles and such.

  For hauling: a tarp and a wheelbarrow.

  You will also want to invest in some good gardening gloves. Cotton ones for everyday use and a leather pair for the heavy work.

  Don’t be skinflinty about your tool purchases. It’s better to spend a little extra money for a good rake than to buy a cheap one and ruin your back trying to hold it together.

  And remember: A man may pretend he’s the final word on garden tools, but it’s the woman who knows the value of a sturdy hoe.

  8

  “Margaret, where would you rather lay down, on the sofa or in your bed?”

  She wasn’t sure who asked or even how she answered. She couldn’t decide if she was at home or still in the hospital. And she didn’t wake up and remember anything or feel clear and curious about herself until the light from the windows had disappeared and the brightness had faded.

  Margaret saw streams of color when she first woke up at the hospital. Lines, wavy lines, of red and blue, yellow and green, that stretched down in narrow ribbons of velvet, dancing and twirling in the air above her head. She heard the sound of her doctor’s voice, the nurses telling her to cough and sit up, the calls of Beatrice and Jessie, and the noises coming from herself as she apparently responded appropriately.

  She floated in and out of rooms and the conversations in them, opened her eyes and smiled, took sips from the juice brought in after the initial postsurgery nausea, got in the car and out. But she always softened and fell back into the thin, cascading tendrils of color.

  She started to turn on her side to get up and suddenly noticed a sharp pain that first pierced her chest and then rolled like electric currents out into her shoulder and down along her right arm. She lay back flat and waited.

  There were women’s voices coming from the other end of the house. Margaret tried to recall if it was the same night of the dinner they had shared, a night when all her friends had cooked for her and brought the meal to eat together, the night before the surgery, or if indeed the pain and the fog she felt were signs that she h
ad already undergone the operation.

  She tried to see where she was and began to claim for herself those things that were familiar. The worn quilt that rested on top of her, which was a present on her wedding day, porcelain figurines on her dresser that were gifts from her brother’s wife for her birthday, pictures of faces she knew, Luther, her parents, a brown cedar jewelry box, handed down from her grandmother, and a tall china doll that she had bought at an antique sale.

  She counted up the items, named them and where they came from, and convinced herself that she was finally and really in her bed, in her room, in her house. She was not at a hospital or drifting in some in-between world that was lit in colors; she was in the most peaceful place she knew. She was home.

  “Hello,” she called out, not sure how loudly she was speaking. “Hello,” she said again, hoping she might be heard.

  There was a rustle of bodies, a shuffle of feet and chairs, until finally four women were standing by her bed. They came to her like she had bid them to hear some all-important rendering of wisdom, some drawn-out last will and testament.

  “Lord, you’re finally awake.” It was Louise. Margaret could tell by the gruff and attentive tone, the squareness of her body, the uneasy way she stood in a room.

  “Thank you, dear Jesus.” Jessie. That was Jessie.

  “You want to get up?” Beatrice was already putting her hand behind Margaret’s head to help slide her into a sitting position.

  Margaret shook her head and just lay there a minute. Beatrice pulled away her hand and stood back with the others.

  Only one of the women didn’t speak, the youngest one. And without having to think any more about it, Margaret understood that the entire Cookbook Committee had gathered in her house, waiting for her to wake up, waiting to take care of her.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  All the women checked their watches, the clock on the dresser, and like a choir answered, “Nine-thirty.”