Vinita Hampton Wright

by Dwelling Places (v5)

  “Have you been wanting to do this? You should have told me.”

  She lets out a careful breath. “I hadn’t really thought about it until lately.”

  He reaches for her hand and squeezes it. “Let’s do it then. Whatever you want.” To his surprise, she pulls away. She covers her eyes with her hands. He stares at her while several moments go by.

  “Mack, I’ve really screwed up.”

  A knot pulls tight in his stomach. She stays hidden behind her hands.

  “What?”

  “I really have. And it’s all my fault, and I don’t want to tell you anything.”

  No. No, please. He works hard to swallow and then decides to get right to it. “Are you about to ask me for a divorce?”

  “No. But you may want one anyway.”

  “God, Jo, what’s happened? Just tell me.”

  “I’ve been with someone.”

  There it is. Jodie’s face is in her hands again. He notices, in an odd second of coherence, how red and chafed they are.

  He can’t utter a word. After a long moment, he brings a fist down on the table. Jodie flinches, but speaks again.

  “It’s not been going on for long, and I’ve already ended it.”

  He sits there while silence pulses around them. Finally, he manages, “I guess it was too little too late.”

  She remains quiet, and the words spill out of him.

  “All I’m trying to do here, to get myself straightened out, is to be here for you and the kids the way I should be. But I guess I just didn’t get well fast enough, did I?” The last sentence rips out of him. If he didn’t feel so out of breath he would raise his voice. But this is like a dream in which he tries to run but can’t, tries to take a swing but his arm will hardly move, tries to cry out but there is no sound.

  “I just said that it wasn’t your fault.”

  “But if I’d been any kind of husband, I don’t imagine we’d be having this conversation, would we?” He gets up from the table and stares out the window above the sink. She seems small, just feet away from him, huddled over her dinner plate. For the first time in their years together, her size and softness make him want to hurt her. It isn’t softness after all, but cunning and looseness. She’s taken that softness elsewhere. Another man has loved the comfort of her body. Mack hears oceans roaring in his head.

  “Who?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “Huh? Who is it?” He doesn’t wait for a reply but steps closer. “What I want to know is why you waited until now. You had the perfect opportunity back when I wanted to die anyway. But then it was all this ‘Oh, Mack, I love you, and me and the kids still need you and there’s so much to hope for!’” The force of his words makes her lean away. “Why wait until I’ve let all those doctors take me apart and put me back together again?”

  He draws back and watches her. She won’t look at him. “Do you have any clue in your head how hard I’ve worked over the past few months? You could have just divorced me a while back.”

  “And have you kill yourself and then everybody would blame me anyway.” Her voice is surprisingly strong. Any fear or sorrow of moments before slips aside now, and her features come alive. “I didn’t have the luxury of making a choice back when you were suicidal. I had to concentrate on helping everybody survive.”

  He is exhausted suddenly, and slumps into the chair nearest her. “Jo…” His mind gets cluttered, the way it so often does when he needs to make a decision or think hard about something. Jodie isn’t looking at him, but she isn’t moving away either. “Jo…”

  “Like I said, I’ve already ended this mess. It was a stupid thing to do. I just wanted something—” She is working hard to form sentences. “I just needed something for me, Mack. I needed a break. Needed to feel different, or something.”

  “You needed a break from me.”

  “It’s more than you. I’m just so tired. No matter how much I sleep, I’m so tired I can hardly walk or talk.”

  Even as anger pounds his gut, he is compelled to search for something to repair this disaster. “That’s how I felt when things were so bad. Maybe you’re depressed too. Maybe you should talk to George yourself.”

  She’s crying, her face once again hidden behind her red hands.

  “We’re all having a rough time.” He wants to stroke the hair back from her face, but now that feels like something he needs permission to do. He senses an awful new reality descending over them. His relationship to Jodie has changed, more than he’s suspected or is ready for. The kitchen is now a strange room, and he wonders if he should take himself away from this house. Only this time it will have to be farther than the stone house. This time it will be a gigantic move. The whole world will shift.

  “I guess we’ve got to figure out what to do now.” How many times in nineteen years has one of them said this? When both vehicles were broken at once or one of the kids needed surgery or a hailstorm shredded their profits for the year. They had taken turns saying this. Now this sentence is but an ugly punch line. All the other problems solved still add up to this. Mack believes, though, that this problem will not be solved. This is the one that will take them down.

  “If you want a divorce, I won’t fight it. You’re right. It’s time for you to do things for you now.” His voice breaks, but he recovers. “We’ll need to agree about what to tell the kids.”

  “I’m not asking for a divorce.”

  “When did you start seeing this guy?”

  “A couple months ago.”

  “So, the way things have been lately with us—that’s not good enough.”

  “I don’t know, Mack, I don’t know. I can’t think right now.”

  “So am I the last to know? Has the whole town been laughing at me?”

  “Only one other person knows, and it’s somebody who’s not going to talk.”

  “Please tell me he’s not one of our friends.”

  She pauses a long time, and he thinks of Ed, who has been close to both of them for years. It wouldn’t be like him to betray a friend or cheat on his wife, but who can predict stuff like this? A few minutes ago, Mack wouldn’t have suspected Jodie either.

  “If I tell you who it is, you have to promise not to go over there. You’ve got to let me deal with this, not cause a scene.”

  He leans back against the cabinet, gripping the metal lip of the countertop. “Okay.”

  “Terry Jenkins—at the school.”

  He is slightly relieved that it’s someone outside his own circle. But the image of the social studies teacher brings on immediate nausea. A younger guy. Somebody without bags under his eyes, who can still make it happen twice in one night.

  “Don’t talk to him,” she says.

  “You’ve told him it’s over?”

  “Yes.”

  “You won’t see him again.”

  “I’ll have to see him—we both work at the school.”

  “Maybe you should work somewhere else now.”

  She moans, head in her hands.

  “You feel something for him?” He hates himself for opening this door.

  “How am I supposed to answer that? You think I’d just screw around with someone I had no feelings for?”

  In Mack’s mind, the complications are multiplying. Even if she has ended this, can it stay that way? Maybe they should all move away. But does he really want her to stay, after this? Is he being too kind? His wife has cheated on him. And lied, and left him without letting him know.

  “You do what you have to do.” He walks out the door and into the yard, giving room to his anger. He wants to hurt her, knock her off the chair, jerk her up by her hair, make her sorry, make her beg forgiveness, make her hate Terry Jenkins.

  But he gets in the truck and drives away. He doesn’t act like a kid and spin his tires. He is still a man, a grown man. He is big enough to let her go. He only wishes that he hadn’t come to care so much about his life again. He wishes he hadn’t already made plans for what he migh
t do this year and next.

  He has to work harder to drive, because the roads have begun to get slick. But even while he maneuvers the next few miles, a new sensation registers. He can’t bring his thoughts to rest on what has just happened in the kitchen; it’s a pain he can’t come at straight on. But at the center of him is motion, a stirring of something like hope. He knows that he will have to drive for a while and maybe get out to walk and endure all the hurt that’s in him. He will need to take time and pay attention.

  And then he will follow his son more closely and talk to him more readily. He will even talk to George, with Jodie or without her. He will go to church some more and listen to his daughter sing.

  Jodie is part of the picture but not all of it. Still, he will do everything he can to keep that part.

  Jodie

  She hears a car in the drive, and even though she’s sure it wouldn’t be Mack returning so soon, she hopes that it’s him. But when she goes to the door, Bekka is standing there. Her older brother waits in the drive, his car idling loudly. Bekka’s eyes are wide.

  “Mrs. Barnes?”

  “Hi, Bekka. I thought you were bringing Kenzie home.”

  “She left my house an hour ago, walking. I thought she was going to her grandma’s.”

  Jodie doesn’t know what to say, or why Bekka is on her step looking scared.

  “Mrs. Barnes, this will probably make Kenzie really, really mad, but I need to tell you something.”

  Jodie is not used to seeing Bekka intense in any serious way. The girl is pulling something out of her school bag.

  “This is Kenzie’s journal. She left it by accident.” She looks distressed. “You know, earlier, she gave me some of her things, some books and stuff she didn’t want anymore. And I guess she accidentally packed this with them.”

  “Oh, well, thanks for bringing it. I know she’ll get worried when she finds it missing.”

  “I read some of it.” Bekka looks close to tears. Jodie guides her to a kitchen chair and sits in the one next to her. The girl keeps talking. “I can’t believe I never figured it out.”

  “Figured what out, honey?”

  “She’s running away.”

  Jodie pulls back and laughs automatically. “Oh, no—Kenzie’s fine. Who told you that?”

  Bekka opens the journal to a page and points to a handwritten paragraph. “She and Mitchell Jaylee are leaving for this retreat place near Kansas City. Did she come home yet?”

  Jodie reads the paragraph at Bekka’s finger. She can barely make sense of it. Mitchell’s name appears several times. “Bekka, what does she have to do with this guy?” Her mind flips through any reference she has of their neighbor to the north. Hardly anyone ever sees him.

  “I didn’t know she had anything to do with him. But we haven’t been hanging out much. I thought she was spending more time here, now that Mr. Barnes is back home.”

  “No. We hardly see her until suppertime.”

  “I didn’t read much more—it’s private, you know? But she wrote this yesterday. Do you know where she is now?”

  Jodie is on her way upstairs, Bekka right behind her. They enter Kenzie’s room, and both of them gasp. The bed is made, and the shelves and dresser top, the desk, and every other surface is spotless, with only a few items remaining on them. Jodie throws open the closet door to find just a few clothes hanging there. Against the wall are several garbage bags with big labels on them; some are for the community closet, others are for Bekka and whoever wants them. The dresser is empty, and the bookshelves are nearly bare.

  “Dear Jesus.” Jodie runs to the hall phone and calls Rita, hoping Bekka is right and that Kenzie is there. No one answers.

  “I can call Janelle and anybody else I can think of. Maybe she’s giving them some stuff, like she did me.” Bekka pulls out her cell phone and begins punching in a number.

  “Good. And call the Baptist pastor, all right? I’m going over to the Jaylee place.”

  Bekka looks frightened. “You think you should do that? By yourself, I mean? You want Regan to go with you?”

  “Just call everybody and then go home, all right?” She leaves Bekka in the upstairs hallway and runs out to the car. There’s enough ice on the road to force her to drive slowly to Mitchell Jaylee’s. The drive is empty, the doors locked and curtains drawn. No one is in the barn or the yard. She stands in the drive and feels weaker than she’s ever felt. Her little girl is with some older guy in a car, heading far from here.

  In the truck, heading to town, the panic turns into rancorous self-indictment. She yells at her reflection in the rearview. “If you hadn’t been running around the county acting like a whore…. How could you miss something this big? What good are you to anybody?”

  She drives into town, to Rita’s house; the garage is open and the car gone. Of course, now that she’s mobile, God only knows where she is. Jodie goes inside, using her key to the back door, and calls the sheriff’s office. They reach Jerry on his radio, and he instructs Jodie to go back home, and he’ll meet her there.

  She nearly plows into Mack at the intersection two miles from the farm. He appears to be on his way home. She jumps out of the car and shouts at him. He puts the truck into park and rolls down the window.

  “Have you seen Kenzie?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Have you seen her?”

  “No—what’s the matter?”

  It takes a moment for her to explain and for him to comprehend. When he does, he shifts the truck back into gear. “Go home,” he barks. “Go home and wait for Jerry. I’m going to Jaylee’s.”

  “I was there already. It’s all locked up.”

  “Just go home.”

  Through the next hour, Jodie feels as if she is watching bizarre scenes from some fictitious life. The whole sequence of events is surreal. When Jerry arrives, she shows him the journal page and tells him what she knows, but she barely understands any of their conversation. It’s as if she is merely an observer, watching things fall apart. When Mack returns from the Jaylee place, his face is stone-white, and he shakes his head before she can ask him anything. Jerry comes over to both of them.

  “State Patrol’s looking for them. Mitchell’s van will be easy to pick out. Can’t be traveling too fast either, in this weather.”

  “His place is all cleaned up, stuff packed away.” Mack’s voice is hoarse.

  “She’s been dating him?” Jerry is still doing his best to get information from both of them, taking notes.

  “Oh, no,” Jodie says. “At least, we had no idea. This is all a complete shock.”

  “He ever call over here, or give her rides home, anything like that?”

  “No. She gets rides with her friends from school, or her brother—” She turns to Mack. “Did you see Young Taylor? He went over to Eric’s.”

  “No. Did you call over there?”

  “No, I didn’t think.”

  He picks up the phone and walks into the living room with it, stretching the cord around the doorway. She can tell by his responses that the kids aren’t at Eric’s house. Mack heads for the door. “I’ll look some more.”

  Jerry grabs his arm. “Mack. Just stay here, all right? You can hardly see straight. I’ve got Stan and Donny both out there, plus the guys in Oskaloosa and the State Patrol. He won’t get far without somebody seeing him. And—” He measures his words. “It appears from what Kenzie wrote that they’ve both been cooking this up. It’s not a kidnapping or an assault. Mitchell doesn’t have anything like that in his history, you know that.”

  “I know he’s half nuts.”

  “Diagnosed bipolar a few years ago.”

  Mack and Jodie stare at him. Jerry shifts weight to the other hip, looking more authoritative than usual. “They used to call it manic-depressive.” Jodie thinks that he probably knows every secret in Beulah and beyond. She wonders if he has noticed her comings and goings with Terry. The sheriff keeps talking.

  “He goes off his meds from
time to time—but he’s never bothered a soul around here. I’ve known him since he was a kid, and I’m tellin’ you, he’s not the violent type. So just get all those ideas out of your heads. It won’t help a thing for you two to work yourselves into hysteria.”

  Mack pulls away from Jerry and goes to the family room. He sits on the couch and stares out the window, hands clasped in his lap. He doesn’t speak to Jodie or look at her. Was it just a little while ago that she made that horrible confession? Why, today of all days, did she do that? Why tell him at all? What good has it done? She looks at her husband, in his own universe, sitting on their couch, and suddenly she’s sick to her stomach. They need to find Kenzie together. They need to handle all of this together. But because of what she’s done, the whole process is crippled now. She hurries to the bathroom and vomits. When that is over, she cleans up and walks back into the hall. Mack is standing there.

  “Did you know anything about this?”

  “What?”

  “Her hanging around Jaylee?”

  “No! Bekka didn’t even know about it.”

  “Because if I find out that you knew and didn’t tell me—”

  “Mack, I didn’t know anything. Nobody knew anything.” She stares at him, and the rage in his eyes continues to flame. “You think I wouldn’t tell you something like that—about our own daughter?”

  “I don’t trust you to tell me anything anymore. Anything could be going on in this house! I committed the sin of getting sick—and I come home and I may as well still be in the hospital. You cut me off—” He fairly hisses this, moving closer to her so Jerry won’t hear. “You cut me off, no discussion, no warning. So, no, I don’t think you’d tell me something like this. I don’t trust you, Jodie. I don’t trust you!” He leaves her in the hallway.

  She goes back into the bathroom, this time to cry. It has finally happened. She has finally killed her family. She has done the one thing that will cause everything to fall apart.

  Mike Williamson, the youth pastor, calls, alarm in his voice. He will keep calling kids from his house, hoping to raise some information. Somebody must have seen Kenzie sometime today. Then the house is quiet, sleet and wind hitting the windows. It’s dark outside. They wait, not talking much, in the family room and kitchen. The phone rings at five-thirty. It’s Jenna Braeburn, one of the older girls in Kenzie’s youth group.