by Peggy Webb
“That I’m totally unsuitable. Right?” Part of her wanted him to say yes, but most of her wanted a denial. Her lips were slightly parted as she waited for his answer.
His fingers moved in slow circles on her hand as he sat quietly in his chair savoring her. The candlelight reflecting on her hair gave her an ethereal quality. He smiled, thinking of the many facets of her personality. She was angel and flesh-and-blood mischief maker, tranquility and high-voltage energy. She was flamboyant woman with flashy jewelry and gamine with dirt on her cheek. She was endlessly fascinating, and even if he lived to be a hundred, he knew that she would still be surprising him. He thought of the word he and his brothers had used to tease one another about girls when they were growing up—smitten. There was no doubt about it: Paul Donovan was smitten.
“No,” he told her in a voice she thought was marvelous. “I’m sorry you didn’t think of this sooner.”
“You’re not serious! I know you don’t spend your Saturday nights this way, racing through the streets like a bat out of hell and wading in ponds and riding in miniature cars.”
“The go carts and the hair-raising ride from Pontotoc notwithstanding, I’m having a wonderful evening. The company makes it so.”
“I didn’t plan for this to happen,” she admitted. “You were supposed to hate this evening.”
“You made a common mistake, Martie, thinking that I’m a stick-in-the-mud simply because of my profession.”
“I did not think that.”
Still holding her hand, he smiled. “Not even a little?”
She made a face at him. “Maybe just a teensy bit. Did you learn mind reading at seminary, too?”
“I learned about people long before that. Living with my brothers and sisters, not to mention a host of aunts, uncles, and cousins made homegrown psychology a necessary survival skill. Appearances are sometimes deceiving, and people rarely fit into the neat cubbyholes we assign them.”
Martie withdrew her hand from his. “This evening is an exception. A fluke. It doesn’t change a thing.” She turned her head toward the window so that he wouldn’t see her face. He was too discerning, she thought. He would see the uncertainty in her eyes. If the evening had failed miserably as an incentive for forgetting, it had succeeded royally as a vehicle for advancing their romance.
Through the window she saw the edge of an orange moon, brilliant as only an October moon could be, and she wondered if the improbability of their relationship was the cause of her fatal attraction. Was she like a child who wanted most what it could not have? She glanced at Paul from under her lashes. No. His inaccessibility was not the attraction. It went deeper than that. He was quiet strength and controlled energy, easy companionship and heart-thundering sensuality. And she wanted to climb across the table and ravish his made-for-kissing lips.
“I agree.” Paul’s voice pulled her out of her reverie. “It doesn’t change a thing. I’m a minister and you’re a Jazzercise teacher, and we still live across the fence from each other.” Something changed in his eyes, as if a wonderful secret were lurking in their depths. “And something has already been set in motion between us. Something neither of us can stop.”
She thrust her chin out stubbornly. “I intend to try.”
“Did you two enjoy the ice cream?” Neither of them had heard the waitress approach.
“Yes, thank you,” Paul told her.
She stuck a pencil into her red topknot and gathered the empty bowls onto a tray. “I told Mary Muldooney back there in the kitchen that I never saw a couple have more fun over two little dishes of ice cream. Been married long?”
Martie opened her mouth to speak, but the waitress didn’t require an answer. She had long ago learned the art of carrying on one-way conversations.
“Mary Muldooney says you are probably honeymooners, but I told her you looked more like one of them fairy-tale couples where everything is just so combustible. You know what I mean?”
They didn’t have the foggiest idea, but that didn’t stop Ethel Ann. She rarely had a captive audience, which translated meant one too polite to get up and leave; and when she did, she took full advantage. Shifting the tray to her hip, she leaned down to wipe the table.
“Now you take the Westgates,” she continued. “Fight like cats and dogs. Even in public. Now I ask you, is that any way to live?” She didn’t wait for their answer, of course. “It’s as plain as Yankee Doodle that you two palpitate for one another. And besides that have the highest admonition for each other. You know what I mean?”
They still didn’t. Ethel Ann reached into her pocket for the check and waved it in the air as she continued her monologue.
“This world would be a better place if more married folks remembered that. Palpitation and admonition. And it all starts and ends in the bedroom.” She winked at Paul. “Right, honey?”
Paul was equal to the occasion. “I couldn’t agree with you more. You didn’t tell us your name.”
“Ethel Ann, honey.” She trained her bright copper-penny eyes on Martie. “Starts and ends in the bedroom,” she repeated drolly, and then she headed toward the kitchen to gossip with Mary Muldooney.
Paul and Martie hurried from the restaurant.
“Do you think we’re combustible?” Martie asked, shooting Paul a pixie smile.
“Not to mention palpitating,” he said, with a straight face. They laughed all the way to the parking lot.
Suddenly Martie grabbed his arm. “Paul, I almost forgot.”
“What?” he asked, covering her hand with his.
“We can’t leave the Hilton without riding the glass elevator.”
“I should think not,” he solemnly agreed.
So they made their way to the electronic glass cage that whisked them toward the stars. Paul pulled her into the circle of his arms, and she leaned there as naturally as if it were an old habit.
“You see that constellation?” She pointed to the Big Dipper. “After Mom died I imagined that she was up there, riding in the dipper, and that if I concentrated hard enough, she would know what I was thinking. Even after I learned better, I still felt that the stars somehow brought me closer to her.”
Paul tightened his arms around her in silent understanding. And even after the elevator had returned them to firm ground, their thoughts were still up among the stars.
Martie yawned hugely as they stood beside her red car. “Too much activity for one day,” she apologized.
“I’ll drive home.” Both of them thought how right home sounded. How natural. As if they were an old married couple on the way to a session of Ethel Ann’s palpitation.
o0o
Once home, Paul deposited Martie on her back porch steps, then gathered her into his arms and kissed her until they were both breathless.
“Goodnight, Martie.” Then, without another word, he walked away.
She watched until he was a faint shadow in the night. “Goodbye, Paul.”
o0o
Church chimes echoed in the morning air as Martie sprinted down the sidewalk in her neon bright jogging suit, Baby hard at her heels.
“Morning, Miss Beulah,” she called, setting her rainbow-hued bangle bracelets ajingle as she waved.
Miss Beulah looked up from the water dish she was filling for her Persian, Falina Theona. In her brown velour housecoat she looked like a fat partridge as her head swiveled on its squat neck to watch the progress of Pontotoc’s Jezebel.
“Brazen creature,” she sniffed. “And on a Sunday morning, too.”
Martie whizzed down the sidewalk, turned a corner, realized she would pass the parsonage, and turned in the other direction. She didn’t need any more reminders this morning. Today she was definitely, positively, without a doubt forgetting the minister. She pushed herself, jogging five miles instead of her usual four. Ordinarily she would have selected a church, for she loved Sunday morning services. But not today. Not yet. Being in church, even if it were not his, would have reminded her of Paul.
She was wheezing when she completed her morning workout and plopped down on her backporch steps.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she wondered aloud. “I guess I didn’t sleep too well last night.” She rubbed Aristocat’s shiny coat.
He endured the attention briefly before walking away to sit in his favorite spot by the birdbath. Baby, who thrived on affection, bounded around the corner of the house, bringing yet another gift to his mistress.
Martie absently scratched her puppy’s head as she contemplated the fence that separated her from the parsonage.
“If I didn’t already love this house and this town, I would move,” she confided to her pet. “It wouldn’t be the first time.” Her hand moved to stroke the healthy pelt on Baby’s back. “But even if I went to the moon, I would still remember the way he smiles with his eyes . . . and the sound of his voice . . . and the way he looks in the moonlight.”
The loose skin sagged around Baby’s face, giving her a mournful look as she lifted her head to study her mistress. Suddenly she gave a sharp bark.
Martie looked from her pet to the soggy offering at her feet. Gingerly she lifted the mangled garment.
“Good grief!” she cried. “The minister’s shorts!”
CHAPTER FIVE
Paul, in clerical collar and black robe, sat behind the pulpit and scanned the church pews for Martie. As the organ swelled to a mighty crescendo, his heart plummeted. There was no silver-blond head among the congregation. The joining of the congregation and the organ in a majestic “Amen” brought his thoughts back to the service.
He lifted his eyes and whispered, “I’m only human, Lord.”
o0o
Martie spent most of the day moving the preacher’s shorts around. First she tossed them into the garbage can. Then, feeling cowardly, she fished them out and left them in a soggy heap beside the back door. Something would definitely have to be done about them; she just couldn’t figure out what that something was.
She selected her favorite book of Walt Whitman poetry and carried it to the sunroom. But right in the middle of “Sometimes with One I Love” she put the book down, marched through the house, and picked up Paul’s shorts. They were still damp from Baby’s mistreatment. She looked inside the waistband at the label: Medium, 32-34.
Just what she’d thought. The shorts dangled from her hand as she considered the possibilities of Medium, 32-34, all of them attractive.
Then, feeling guilty, as if she had barged unannounced into his bedroom and seen him naked, she put the shorts into her washing machine and started the cycle. As she dumped in the detergent she decided to return the clean shorts via the tree.
While the shorts washed she had an afternoon snack and revised her plan. She would put them in a box and send them to him by mail. An act of cowardice, but necessary for self-preservation.
She changed the shorts to the dryer, then returned to the sunroom, where she picked up her book and tried to immerse herself in Walt Whitman. The shorts kept intruding. Even her favorite, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” couldn’t completely occupy her mind. By the time she got to the line, “A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die,” she knew what those echoes were. They were Paul’s shorts, screaming evidence of the man she was trying to forget.
She replaced the book on the shelf and transferred the shorts from the dryer to a shelf in the closet. But even with the door shut, they still warbled at her. She snatched them out again and decided to patch the holes Baby had made. Sewing was not her forte, but she had never seen anything that she couldn’t try at least once. She had a moment of indecision over whether to use the red or the green thread, those two being the only colors available; but once she had selected the red, she tackled the project with enthusiasm.
The shorts were well worn and getting a little threadbare on the seat. They felt soft and pliable in her hands. From time to time she glanced up from her sewing and smiled. It was a dreamy smile, incorporating visions of Medium, 32-34, and palpitations that began and ended in the bedroom.
She pricked her finger twice and got the thread so tangled once that she had to pull it all out and start over. When the project was finally finished she held it up for inspection. Nothing could get through the holes, that was for sure. She actually blushed at the image that thought aroused. But pulling the torn places together had altered the dimensions of the shorts so that one side was decidedly smaller than the other. Martie tilted her head and studied her handiwork. She thought the red thread and the new proportions gave the shorts a rakish quality. Leaving them in her wicker rocker, she went outside for a breather.
The sun was beginning to drop low in the western sky, and there was a nip in the air. Indian summer would soon be over. She wrapped her arms around herself for warmth and strolled past her birdbath toward the large floribunda rosebush that was still blooming profusely. As she began to gather a bouquet, a spiral of fragrant tobacco smoke wafted over the fence. She straightened up and looked in that direction. Paul must be on the other side of the fence smoking his pipe. She would recognize that smell anywhere.
With a thousand warbling echoes still stirring within her in spite of her efforts to silence them, she moved toward the fence, and the forgotten roses drifted to the ground in her wake. A good sized peephole presented itself, and Martie bent down and put her face to the opening.
Paul was standing with his hands in his pockets, puffing on his pipe and looking at the sunset. He was the picture of contentment and tranquility.
An intense longing that had been shimmering inside her all day welled up and burst forth. “Paul!” she called.
He turned toward the fence and removed his pipe. “I seem to be hearing angel voices.”
“It’s just me.”
In the waning light he could see one eye and the tip of her nose through the hole in the fence. “I’m relieved,” he said, and smiled. “Disembodied voices don’t usually come with freckled noses.” He walked so close to the fence that the wide expanse of his shirtfront filled Martie’s view.
“My nose is not freckled,” she protested, laughing. Paul always made her forget her original intentions.
“I see one. Right there.” He touched her nose with the tip of his finger.
“Oh, that. It’s kind of pale, isn’t it?” she asked hopefully.
“Yes.”
“Good. I’ve always disliked those freckles, so I pretend they don’t exist.”
There was a silence on the other side of the fence, and then Paul spoke. “Just as you’ve been pretending all day that I don’t exist?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “And it would have worked except for the shorts.”
He bent down and put his eye to the crack. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”
Startled, she pulled back. “Baby stole a pair of your shorts from the clothesline.”
“Which ones?”
“The blue ones. And Paul . . . they’re getting kind of threadbare. Why don’t you buy some new ones?”
“I’m just getting those broken in. They’re comfortable that way.”
Martie reflected that this conversation wasn’t nearly as difficult as she had expected. As a matter of fact, she was having fun. Temporarily, of course.
“I’m going to mail them back to you. I have to warn you, though; Baby did some damage. But I fixed it with red thread.”
She was so serious that he held back his laughter. “I’ll come over there and get them.”
“No!” she cried.
“Why not?” He was getting a crick in his neck, so he straightened up. The minute his eye vacated the hole, hers was back.
“Because I’m still forgetting you. You can’t come over here, and I’m not even going to talk to you anymore.”
“Does that mean just in person, or does that include treetop and fence-hole conversations as well?”
“All of them, I think.”
“But how will you tell me about Baby’s raids on my clo
thesline?” he asked.
“You can patch the holes in the fence so she can’t come over.”
“I like it this way. I think I’ll let the holes stay.”
“Then I’ll patch the holes. Goodbye, Paul. And that’s my final word.”
He chuckled, then called across the fence, “I’m going to pray that you forget to buy the nails, angel.”
“I’m not an angel!” she yelled. “And that’s really my final word.”
Paul stood smiling beside the fence for a long time after he had heard her screen door slam. He could wait. He knew as surely as the sun rose in the east that Martie was part of his future. The grand design had already been drawn, and neither of them could change it. He might hurry it along, however. He tamped out his pipe, stuck it in his sweater pocket, and headed for the parsonage whistling.
o0o
Monday morning Martie went outside to pick up her forgotten roses.
“Good morning, Martie.” Paul’s rich voice startled her, coming as it did out of nowhere.
She ran to the fence and put her face to the crack. Finding herself nose to nose with the minister, she pulled back. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Greeting you.”
“I’m not talking to you, remember?”
“That’s all right. I’m still talking to you. Besides, we didn’t finish that conversation about my shorts.”
“Reverend Donovan!” Miss Beulah Grady had entered his yard unnoticed. Her eyes were glazed with shock at the minister’s strange behavior and outrageous remark. “What on earth are you doing?”
Paul straightened up. “Hello, Miss Beulah. I’m having a neighborly chat with Martie.”
“Morning, Miss Beulah,” Martie called through the fence, grinning impishly. Most of Miss Beulah was not visible through the peephole, but the part that was, was heaving with indignation.
Miss Beulah squinted her eyes and tried to see what that brazen woman was wearing, but the hole in the fence was too small and the minister was blocking most of the view. All she saw was a flash of scarlet. She’d give her eyeteeth to know what had been going on when she appeared. Shifting her covered basket from one arm to the other, she spoke with saccharine sweetness.
