by Tina Welling
Even then, I recognized that the boys’ concern was with their parents’ relationship, not their personal trouble with me. Saddler was in college; Cam would soon follow. They joined Jess in his ambush on me because they were afraid for him, for what would happen when they were both gone from home. The boys were so busy with their own lives, they didn’t notice their parents’ lives, and that was exactly the way they wanted it: parents happy in the background; themselves happy in the foreground. Jess’ trouble threatened that peace.
Yet for the sake of giving the marriage counseling my best shot, I cleaned my projects off the dining room table that next morning, put them away. The mistake I made was not getting them out again.
I rose from my chair and stirred the coals. Jess’ continuing lack of support for my interest in creative work had showed its shadowed face once again during our last phone call. This time I wouldn’t back down, wouldn’t pack up my craft projects and try to renew my interest in the store. Finding work that gave me joy and knowing I could make my way toward it had lifted me these weeks in Florida. I had wanted to share this with Jess, but he hadn’t wanted to hear it.
I brought the chicken breasts out to lay on the grill and returned to the kitchen to make a salad. I believed in art therapy; I was experiencing its success in my own life as I filled my lap with beautiful yarns and my worktable with card-making supplies, images, markers and paints. My marriage was going to be stronger because of it. This was work I loved; I could imagine succeeding at leading others toward the same happiness and satisfactions I was discovering. But Jess dismissed my interests and ridiculed my past creative attempts. What I tried to help him understand was that it didn’t take an artist to enjoy creative energy or to awaken it in others. Just as it didn’t take a mechanic to enjoy driving or to teach driving to others.
But what I had to understand myself was that my creative energy was my responsibility, and I must protect it.
Turning a chicken breast on the grill, I recalled my dream the night after my phone call with Jess. I dreamed that I carried a small pile of wood that held fire. I took this fire around with me, trying to keep it burning. I was looking for a place that was safe to set it. A place where the flame would continue to flare.
This love I held for creating wasn’t about producing craft projects; it was about connecting to my inner life, about self-knowing and self-realization. It was about paying attention and coming awake to my own experience of living.
I spread a basil-and-pine nut pesto along the length of each chicken breast, let it heat through, then removed one breast to my plate for dinner and took the other in the kitchen to cool for another meal tomorrow. I brought out the salad I’d prepared along with sliced melon and freshly rinsed grapes.
As I sat out in the dark porch to eat with only a candle and the dim glow of the coals offering light, I realized that part of my need to distance myself from Jess was to protect something fiercely essential to my well-being. His disdain could be a powerful force to me, because I had always looked up to his opinions. I had buckled under his disapproval a dangerous number of times.
Oddly, I accused Jess of sheltering in innocence, of hiding in a state of not knowing, but my marital amnesia had served me in a similar way: I protected myself by forgetting the hard parts, the pieces of our love that sat jaggedly apart from the smooth, throbbing heart center. I must learn to stand by my own opinions and experiences. And I must kindle the flame of my dream and keep it safe.
I poured a half glass of wine and toasted that thought, just to mark it in my mind.
Twenty-six
Jess
My favorite memory happened at the Teagues’ house one Easter when Annie and I were college students and going steady. The Skipper dragged out the family’s old home movies of Annie and her sister, Daisy. In the movie I remembered best, the Teagues were hosting a small reunion for the Skipper’s side of the family at a breakfast cookout on Hutchinson Island. Huge Australian pines shaded the picnic tables and sea grape wrapped the sand dunes. Annie was ten years old with a serious overbite and ears bigger than palmettos sticking through her thin hair, but she was so full of life she dimmed the sun.
I envied her clear sense of place in life. She looked so awake inside her skin that the people around her—her parents and aunts and uncles, the other little cousins—seemed to move like lizards in the cold. She showed off in front of the camera, dancing to some tune in her head, crowding the camera lens, grinning up close to her future husband. I remembered I had laughed and gotten teary in the gray movie light of the Teagues’ fancy living room.
Later that night I sneaked out of the guest house, darted through the shadows cast by the lighted pool and slipped into the main house. Scents of Easter ham and sweet potato, laced with lemony coconut cake, still floated in the stairwell as I climbed to the second floor. My heart paddled double time like oars in a canoe race, flicking drops of sweat on my forehead when I walked past the bedroom where the Skipper and his wife slept. He rarely slept a full five hours, and that was often accomplished in shifts during the night. But the shock on Annie’s face when I appeared in her bedroom was worth the gamble of being thrown out of the house for life. To her that night, I was the bravest male on earth. I would call it stupidity now, but I was happy to confuse it with courage then. I pushed the scene by crawling into bed with her.
I wanted that light, that beam of pure energy in my life. That night I wanted deep inside it. Annie and I made love. And I asked her to marry me.
I slipped out of Annie’s bedroom with the same luck I had entered it, without encountering her father. The Skipper was big man on this campus. At any given moment all three female faces—Annie, Daisy and their mother, Carrie—were likely tipped his way. He demanded attention the way a squawking parrot did, flashing its brilliant feathers in the sun. He was fast-talking, fast-moving, rich and generous. The joke around the house was that he was the Big Typhoon, a play on Big Tycoon. He never minded the joke that he was a big wind instead of a big magnate, and even named his boat The Big Typhoon.
That night, after I left Annie’s bed, I sat up on the veranda until dawn, then showered, walked to the closest busy road and hitched a ride into town. The Teagues lived in Palm Beach at the time, and like an idiot I had thought I could buy an engagement ring for the money in my pocket. After frustrating myself looking in the shop windows on Worth Street, I came to my senses and realized two hundred and eighty dollars wouldn’t buy a bottle of wine in this town or a decent ring in any town. I had an image to uphold with Annie’s family as the poor but artistic suitor. Even the Skipper liked the idea that my entire wardrobe fit into the small duffel bag I’d brought for my stay. I owned two pairs of khakis and two oxford cloth shirts, which I wore over and over, washed and pressed by my own hands. “Live simply. That’s what I admire,” he’d said, his emerald pinky ring flashing like the swimming pool in the sunshine.
So I dropped the idea of a small diamond and sat on a bench beneath a royal palm on Worth Street, elbows on knees, head down, staring at the sidewalk. A pearl? How much would that cost? I lifted my gaze and noticed a flyer tacked to the trunk of the palm. It advertised a flea market south on the highway, and I felt a prickle of hope. Hitched out, browsed the outdoor stalls just then setting up for the day beneath faded awnings. I found one selling jewelry. The fellow was hauling out fake-leather cases from his parked car and stacking them on a long table.
“What you looking for, bub?”
“I need a ring. Kind of fancy.” My voice sounded forlorn to me, a bit hopeless.
“What size?”
The short of it was, this guy rooted around in the trunk of his car and came up with a ring that fit my beloved’s image of me as quirky but tasteful. This was Annie’s first blue topaz, had two tiny chips that looked like diamonds on each side of it, and the band was stamped fourteen-carat gold. The guy settled for two hundred and fifty dollars; I stuck the ring on my little finger and hitched back out to the Teagues’ in time for
brunch by the pool.
When I walked into the backyard that morning and approached the umbrella table with Annie’s family sitting around it, I saw once again that show-offy ten-year-old grin of AnnieLaurie. For one long moment she and I stared at each other—me dopey with love and luck, Annie celebrating our audacious lovemaking and engagement the night before. The family—even the Skipper, even their dogs, a pair of chocolate Labs—fell silent and still as I stood beside the table, eyes locked on my future wife.
Annie sparkled. She flaunted our secret. Her eyes tangoed with mine and her smile—teeth aligned into precision, thanks to years of braces—dared me to flirt openly with her. I remembered halting there, stunned with the beauty of her. Her ears had been pinned during her preteens—with a few tiny stitches and excruciating pain, she’d told me. The thin hair of her girlhood had thickened into a spill of honey. And her vitality glowed through the pores of her skin. My eyes teared up and Annie’s grin widened into a laugh of pure glee. I swear, we got married that instant. Something in us joined and exchanged vows.
One of those vows must have been to trade emotions with each other, because then Annie teared up and I laughed. And we have continued that throughout our lives, switching emotional sides even during arguments.
Our laughter and teariness spread to the others, at least to Mrs. Teague and Daisy, and though nothing had been said outright yet, we all seemed to agree on something that had especially to do with Annie and me.
I cleared my throat. “Mr. Teague, I’d like to marry her,” I said, staring at Annie and not looking at the Skipper at all.
“Who? Carrie? She’s my wife; she’s already married.”
“Skip, don’t ruin things,” Carrie warned.
“Daisy, here? I been hoping to get rid of Daisy before she costs me a bunch of money—four years of college and all the books and clothes that go with it. You can have her.”
I realized he was going to force me to lay it all out, slowly and clearly. If I had known him to be a bigger man, I could have thought this was for Annie’s sake. So she could have a long moment in the sun with a formal request for her hand. But it was the Skipper who liked to stretch his moments in the sun.
“AnnieLaurie. I’d like permission to marry AnnieLaurie.”
“Now you ask? I’ve already paid for two years of college. Where were you at high school graduation?”
“Daddy,” Annie said, shyness setting in with the significance of the occasion.
“God, Daddy,” Daisy chimed in. “Just say yes like you’re supposed to do.”
“Do not take the Lord’s name in vain, Daisy, until you’re twenty-one years or older,” the Skipper said, disclosing one of his stranger parenting ideas. Then he gave in.
“Okay, yes, Jessup McFall. If my daughter agrees, and her smiling over here with teardrops sparkling on her cheeks suggests she does, then you may have the hand of my elder daughter, AnnieLaurie Teague.” He paused and allowed us all to feel mushy a bit, then added, “But couldn’t you chip in for some of the cosmetic work we had to do on her to catch one of you fellows?”
I considered telling the Skipper it was his daughter’s Dumboeared, Thumper-toothed beauty I fell so hard for, that some of her purity had leaked into self-consciousness, thanks to him and his procurement of pinned ears and braced teeth, but there was never any use in competing with the Skipper. He insisted on winning, whether it was croquet on their rubbery Florida grass or holding the floor during his daughter’s marriage proposal.
Finally we got the job done, the ring on Annie’s finger, the brunch eaten.
I had rarely spotted that pure happy energy in Annie’s face during the decades we were married, had our children, started our business, until a couple years ago when she was deep into her own thoughts and her creative crafts on the dining room table. And then it just made me mad.
Twenty-seven
Annie
“Goodmorning, Daniel.” “Good morning, Annie Teague.” He squinted in the sunlight. “Your dad back in Stuart?”
“Left a few days ago.” Asking after my father accomplished a sense of immediate familiarity. Here was the only person I had met in Hibiscus who had also met my dad. But I didn’t want to make things that comfortable for him, so I said, “And your friend?” I tipped my head toward the park, where the same man with binoculars who had watched us before now leaned against a parking lot post and watched us again.
Daniel laughed. “I knew I’d like you.”
I smiled at him. I liked him, too.
“Come aboard. I’ve made coffee.” He nodded toward Bijou. “Bring your girlfriend.” He held out a hand to help me onto the boat. I hesitated, then took his hand. “Come below and help me carry the mugs and coffee up.” I had stooped down to pet his dog, who had already flopped belly up to make my job easier. “Or stay here and I’ll bring it up.”
“I’ll stay here.” Sending signals of distance in return to his signals of invitation.
This was a guy who knew what he wanted and how to get it. Refreshing after Jess, who seemed to live in a prolonged stall, engine sputtering since the kids left home. Yet I was a woman who knew what I wanted and was fast learning how to get it. Perhaps Jess had flirted with the idea of an affair with whoever answered the store phone that day I called, but I’d had time to move beyond my early fears. What I knew about Jess—and didn’t particularly admire—was that Jess flirted with lots of things—ideas, intentions, goals—and followed through on very few. This young girl that answered the phone, surprised that Jess had a “wi-ife,” was a project of which, I knew, he would not follow through. Mostly because he loved me too much, and I knew that, too. Sorry, little girl.
I found a deck chair and swiveled around to find that Binocular Man trained his glasses on me, the new person on the boat, but now as I watched, he dropped his binoculars to hang around his neck and sat down on top of a picnic table, feet on the bench, leaning back against his hands. What a boring job . . . except when it got interesting.
Daniel came up with a coffeepot in one hand, two white crockery mugs in the other and a small carton of half and half pressed between his arm and his chest.
“Do you take sugar?” I shook my head no and helped him unload.
He said, “That’s good. I don’t have any.”
He pulled out a striped awning overhead and we settled in the shade beneath it, poured our coffee, both of us adding cream, sat back and watched the water. Watching the water never got old. I could do it for hours, and did, sitting on the beach just staring at the water, the sky, where the two met. Even when nothing happened, the water was flat, the sky was gray, that “nothing” was a continually changing aliveness of light and color and rocking rhythm.
“I want to hear your story, Annie Teague.”
“Are we going to trade stories, Daniel?” I let my eyes trail over to Binocular Man again.
Daniel laughed. “You know, I think I could do that with you.”
“Then I’ll tell you the most important thing about me right now.” A lump rose in my throat for a reason I could not at once label, and I cast my gaze far across the sea. Was I about to burn a bridge to something new, wonderful and exciting? What if this was the loving, attentive intelligence I longed to partner with in my life? The man who would look deeply into me and not be afraid of anything he saw there. I took a big breath, let myself regain balance; then I looked at Daniel.
“I’m married to a man I love and I’m down here in Florida for a while, but then I’m going home.”
“Is he a bastard?”
“No. Actually not. I just need time to realign myself . . . whatever I mean by that.” I took a sip of coffee. Daniel watched. “You know. Been a mother, wife, helpmate in all the typical ways. Now it’s time I learn who I am aside from those definitions.”
“Been a daughter.”
“That, too.”
“Skip said your mother died a few years back. Sounded tough. And your father . . . he hasn’t come out of that too wel
l, is my guess.”
I felt my body come alert. “Why do you say that?”
“Something in his look; I’ve seen it before. I don’t mean to alarm you. But his skin color or eyes—I don’t know. Have him checked out.” He looked at me with regret. “I’m sorry. I had no business saying that.” He shook his head. “Damn, I don’t know what I’m talking about. Ignore me.”
Instantly the skin on my neck had heated at hearing Daniel’s words, and my heart beat loud with fear. I felt an urge to jump up and phone Daisy. Cry. Then I realized that somewhere I kind of knew this. That Daniel was tolling a warning that I had heard before and not heeded, as if a far-off bell were ringing and not for the first time. And I said so to Daniel, thinking out loud to him about the mental muck I had been nearly smothered by since settling in Hibiscus. I had depended on Dad being a solid presence, quirky, annoying, but there for me, representing the familiar, my original self before Jess and the boys.
Daniel let me sit quietly a moment, while we both held our coffee mugs and gazed out toward the water. The two dogs had found their places beside us: Bijou delicately curled at my feet and Jeter, bones knocking on the wood deck while he’d found his position, sprawled like a five-point star in the sun. Daniel was easy to be with, and in the comfortable silence between us, I began thinking how I had spent much of my adult life reacting to others. Reacting to children, to Jess, to employees and customers. Reacting to family upsets, housekeeping crises, small business emergencies. That my first response to Daniel’s words about Dad had triggered sensations I felt comfortable with—jump to, take care. I had lived my adult life as an EMT, on call for others’ emergencies.
