Lovey
Grounded
You can have a big house and two cars and closets full of clothes, but, if you don’t have Jesus, none of it means a thing. So, from the time I was a little girl, hands down, the most important thing in my life has been my faith. I believe in God like most people believe in gravity. I can’t see Him, but I know He keeps me grounded. When you’re as old as I am, you learn that every day isn’t perfect and that life can be sunshine and roses one minute and gray skies and thorns the next. And you better never leave home without your umbrella because one minute the birds are chirping and the next it’s thunderheads and downpours—or vice versa, thank the Lord.
But you couldn’t have told Annabelle that the day I went to meet her new in-laws any more than you could have told me that one day we’d be talking to people on the telephone in our cars. And if you can’t imagine it, it doesn’t exist.
“Oh, Emily,” I said. “I am so thrilled to hear that y’all are Episcopalian. It just does my heart good.”
Emily turned to Annabelle. “You’ll have to start going to ECW meetings with me, Annie.”
That brunch table certainly proved that religion knows no bounds. That was the thing about Emily. She was so uniquely who she was, and, just when you thought you had her figured out, another surprise was just around the corner. In a flowing maxi dress with a thick, handmade woven leather belt around her waist procured from some obscure village and crafted by a woman who would otherwise have had no income, Emily looked more like one of those nondenominational hippies. I, in a sunny yellow, perfectly tailored suit with a pillbox hat and pumps, looked every bit an Episcopalian. But the eleven a.m. cocktail bound us both as members of a church that knows alcohol’s proper place in Southern society.
“In fact,” Emily said, breaking me out of my thoughts, “let’s all go to church together in the morning!” She turned to me. “You will absolutely adore this church. It is nearly as old as the town itself, built in the late seventeen hundreds. It’s full of amazing architecture and incredible stained-glass windows.”
Jean said, “I have a speaking engagement tomorrow afternoon, so we might not be able to make it.”
“Mom,” Annabelle said, “couldn’t you try to reschedule? This is the first time we’ve ever been together as a family, and I think it would be nice to go to church.” I gave Jean a stern look across the table. Annabelle needed us all to come together as a unit to affirm that what she and Ben had done was acceptable. And we should, even if we didn’t really think it was. Because families have to stick together.
The next morning, I had promised myself that I wouldn’t be one of those pathetic old women who comes to church and sniffles into her handkerchief the entire time, the kind of woman who makes you wonder whether she’s suffered great loss or is atoning for great sin. But my sniffles into the same linen and lace pocket square that I had carried down the aisle at my wedding were for the former. In all our years of marriage, I had never sat on the pew of a church without my husband.
Even after the stroke, the caregivers had him up, dressed, and in the handicap van at 9:40 sharp so we wouldn’t be late for the start of the ten a.m. service. And now, here I was, spending the night away for the first time in years and going to church without him for the first time in our marriage. I tried to act like the tears were an allergic reaction to the stunning flowers by the altar, but my family, they knew better. Annabelle, with Ben’s arm wrapped around her shoulder, his fingers stroking the bare skin of the top of her arm, took my hand and leaned over to whisper, “He wouldn’t want you to sit at home and rot for the rest of your life, Lovey.”
I knew it was true, but, all the same, it felt wrong. I closed my eyes to take a deep breath, and, in that instant, I was transmitted back to my hometown church, a white clapboard chapel as beautiful in its austerity as this one was in its opulence. And there, in my hat and itchy dress, squeezed in between my parents in a packed pew, I saw fourteen-year-old Dan sneak out the side door right before his daddy took the pulpit for the sermon. I waited a respectable beat before leaning over and whispering to my mother, “I have to use the restroom.”
Before she could object, I was making a beeline for the door. In retrospect, it couldn’t have been a secret, like we thought, that Dan and I skipped out on the sermon to steal a few moments alone. We would walk down the downtown sidewalk, hand in hand, toward the ice cream shop that, on summer days, had a line around the corner. Haney wasn’t open on Sundays, but he lived above the shop. If you snuck around back, you’d find him, bad leg propped on a milk crate, listening to a preacher on the radio, drinking out of a coffee mug that we didn’t realize until years later was always full of whiskey.
Some of the kids in town were afraid of Haney, his gruff demeanor and slow-to-smile temperament. But those secret Sunday rendezvous created a bond between us. Haney had lost his wife in the car accident that cost him the nerves in the lower part of his left leg. Dan and I always thought he saw a glimpse of his former life in us, sneaking away to hold hands for a few breathless moments in young love.
“Y’all just go on in and help yourself,” he’d say, without even looking at us. “Leave your nickel on the counter.”
He wouldn’t smile or even look our way most days. And it was a relief not to see him dragging that leg behind the counter, leaning on one brace while he scooped the ice cream, the weight on his good leg. But I knew those Sunday mornings meant as much to him as they did to us because, every time I’d go in the shop on other days, Haney would give me the tiniest smile, and, when he did, his eyes twinkled with our secret.
The tiny ice cream parlor had only four red stools, and, most days, getting a seat was out of the question. But on Sundays, Dan and I had them all to ourselves. I would sit down, legs dangling, ankles crossed, and giggle as Dan said, “What will it be for the little lady today?” even though he knew it was always chocolate.
He handed me my cone and sat down on the stool beside me. I could tell he was anxious about something, but I could only assume that it was nerves over the never-ending lectures he got from his momma for missing church. But it was worth it—especially that day.
“I can’t believe school is starting back in a week,” I ventured.
“I know. Last year of junior high for me.”
“Yeah.” I nodded demurely. “Then it’s off to the big leagues. You’ll probably forget all about me.”
He looked at me seriously. “I’ll never forget you, Lynn.” He paused and said, “You’ve got a little ice cream on your lip.”
I grabbed my napkin out of my lap, but before I could wipe away the offending drops, his lips were on mine. It goes without saying that I’ve had a special place for chocolate ice cream ever since.
That memory had cheered me right out of my black-veil-wearing depression. And, at that exact moment, a tall, slim man who looked to be in his early thirties walked down the aisle in the most glorious vestments. He had that adorable hair with enough soft curl to make him look boyish but not enough length to make him look unkempt. I’ll admit that the vestments did make him look even more regal, but, combined with his warm eyes and gentle pat on my shoulder as he walked by, I thought that if I’d been fifty years younger, this man could have been just the right kind of charming.
I was entranced by his sermon, a moving dialogue that spoke to both the spirituality and the levelheaded nature of the typical Christian: what God is telling us and a step-by-step plan for figuring it out.
Over lemonade on the lawn, in a perfectly pressed collar, the man who I had discovered was the new associate pastor walked over to where Annabelle and I were chatting, and, though I knew she was married, I couldn’t help but think how I had dreamed of one of my daughters or granddaughters marrying the pinnacle of the perfect Southern man, a vestige of my late father-in-law: an Episcopal priest. I didn’t want to, but there just wasn’t a thing I could do to keep from thinking how
this was the kind of man my Annabelle should have married.
“Hi, Annabelle,” he said, reaching over and taking her hand in both of his.
Then he looked to me. “Mrs. White. We’re so pleased to have you with us today.” He smiled like a little angel, this wholehearted grin that made him even more endearing. “We’d love to have you visit with us anytime.”
He put his hand on Annabelle’s arm and said, most confidentially, “I’m not sure if you’d be interested, but I’m looking for someone to help Junie out.” He nodded his head toward a little lady that must have been my age. “It would be something to get you out of the house just until you found the right job.”
My heart was racing. If he’d asked me, I can tell you right now what I would’ve said. But, Annabelle, she didn’t say yes right away.
“Well,” Annabelle said, a hair flirtatiously, “I better walk through those four steps, make sure the Holy Spirit is telling me that’s the right thing to do, and then I’ll let you know next week.”
He laughed. “Glad my sermon had an effect on you.”
Annabelle swore that I was insane, that my long-standing Episcopal minister dream had made me crazy. But, standing between those two kids on the lawn with the lemonade, I’d say that sermon wasn’t the only thing that had an effect on her.
Annabelle
Perfect Seeds
The first year of marriage is the hardest. Lovey always told us that adjusting to living with another person, no matter how much you love them, can be tricky. But I think when you get married in three days, the first year of marriage is like that glorious first year of dating. Your nerves prick when his hand brushes your leg, you count the seconds until you are together again. You frivolously worry if you’ve texted him too much that day and play games with yourself: I’m not going to say anything back to him until he texts me twice in a row. Or, I’m not going to look at all of his Facebook pictures again until I’ve finished this load of laundry.
When you’ve only known each other as long, that first year is magic. So, it’s the second year, or, if you’re us, about eighteen months in, when the dew finally wears off and the grass loses some of its luster. But I don’t think either of us could have acknowledged that that’s when we started to hit a bit of a rocky patch. It is only in retrospect that I can even see the shift, the minor turn in the earth that gives you vertigo. We weren’t fighting or anything. It was just that, all of a sudden, a relationship that we both knew was going to be endlessly thrilling became mundane.
Maybe it was that Ben was back working at a job that, to put it mildly, didn’t get his creative juices flowing like they once were. When he wasn’t singing, I wasn’t his muse, and, quite frankly, I had a bit less time for musing anyway. My new boss, Father Rob, affectionately nicknamed Priest Charming by his parishioners, had taken what was supposed to be a part-time job and made it full-time demanding.
I was more than a little intimidated walking into the church office that first day. I loved the look of the Saint Catherine House, its aging brick and white picket fence, the idyllic little flower garden. The impossibly tall ceilings inside, huge, light-filled windows and comfortable furnishings made it feel more like home than work. But I didn’t have a firm grasp on my actual responsibilities, and my doctrine was a little rusty, since I hadn’t been a regular church participant since high school. But I was excited to be getting out of the house and doing something, anything that felt like it had purpose. Plus, it was a great way to take my mind off of not being pregnant.
“Oh my Lord, I’m so happy you’re here,” Junie said as soon as I walked through the door my first morning, my arms overflowing with homemade muffins of every kind. That they were homemade by Emily could be our secret. Junie rushed to hug me, squishing the muffins into my chest, and, as I laughed, Priest Charming appeared from around the corner, raised his eyebrows at me in surprise and laughed too.
“Junie, do we need to watch that video on sexual harassment again?”
That was the moment I realized that this job was nothing like I thought it was going to be. I had assumed Rob would be as stuffy and uptight as his clerical collar.
I had also expected to get right down to business, to engross myself in spreadsheets and contact lists and bulletin proofs. But, instead, Rob said, “Okay. Let’s get in the car.”
“Where are we going?” I asked, imagining myself at some poor parishioner’s bedside, solemnly holding the prayer book as Father Rob read him his last rites. So I was more than a little surprised when he said, “Strawberry picking, of course.”
I thought maybe that was some sort of first-day-on-the-job welcome or something, but, when Junie said, “Better you than me,” I realized that seemingly unrelated field trips must be a part of the job description. As Rob opened the door of his Audi convertible for me, he said, “Don’t you love the first strawberries of the year? I think strawberries instantly make it feel like summer.”
I nodded. “I always say that. And not those grocery store, middle-of-winter strawberries either. Real, ripe, minute-old strawberries.” I put my seat belt on as he pushed the top down, and, though I was wondering how an associate pastor could buy an Audi convertible, I kept the thought to myself. Instead, I asked, “Is there a reason we’re going strawberry picking?”
“I’m sure there’s a reason,” Rob said. “I’m just not sure what it is yet.” He grinned at me.
“I’m confused.”
“Well, every night before I go to bed, I ask the Holy Spirit to put something on my heart that I should do that day. So every morning I wake up with a distinct urge to complete some task—sometimes mundane, sometimes off the wall.”
“So how do you know that it’s a message from heaven? I mean, how do you know it isn’t just the aftermath of a dream or a random thought?”
He shrugged. “Haven’t you ever just known, Ann?”
I looked at him sideways when he called me Ann. It seemed sort of intimate for someone I barely knew. But, then again, Rob didn’t seem like the kind to feel uncomfortable. And, of course, I “just knew” all the time. I instantly thought about Ben. “So do you ever get done with a task and think, ‘Well that was pointless’?”
“Oh, sure, all the time.” Rob pulled into a parking space outside of Patterson Farm. “But I never, ever think that about that first-thought-of-the-day task.”
Rob and I each got a Patterson Farm cardboard basket with its open top and wooden handle that fit right over your arm for picking. It made me think of Lovey and how she would take me strawberry picking when I was little. I would keep those empty picking containers, wrap my dolls in blankets and slide them into the baskets, pretending they were my own precious babies. It was the first time I had thought about my empty uterus since breakfast.
About halfway down the first row, I said, “Doesn’t it feel sad just leaving some of these behind, or picking them, realizing they’re bad, and then throwing them back.”
Rob nodded and was quiet for the first time that morning.
Since I tend to ramble in uncomfortable silences—at least when they’re uncomfortable on my end—I continued. “I mean, they all start from the same perfect seeds, but then when they grow, some never even get to reach their full potential of being spread over pound cake with homemade whipped cream.”
My boss laughed. “Thanks, new Girl Friday.”
“For what?”
“You just wrote my sermon.”
And that’s when I realized that, though I might have stopped inspiring my husband, that didn’t mean I wasn’t still a muse.
Lovey
The Nicest Boy
May 1949
My momma always said that you didn’t stop dating until there was a ring on your finger. So, I didn’t want to, but, to appease her, I went on the occasional date when I was at WC. Well, more to the point, I went on hundreds of dates with Dan and a few with other boy
s. I’ll admit that it got harder and harder to see the other girls come home with rings on their fingers, leave school early to get married. There were even a few that left school and got married because they were pregnant—but we didn’t talk about that out loud. Just behind our hands in hushed tones after she was gone.
Dan and I dreamed of our wedding day. When he went home for Christmas break, he negotiated with his parents that he would work for one year after college, get his feet on the ground, and we would get married. It was longer than either of us wanted to wait, but it was better than the five years that his father’s parents had demanded of him.
Dan was coming to pick me up that night, and I couldn’t wait to see him, to go dance, to feel his strong arms around me, our lips on each other’s. With only a couple of weeks until graduation, we could see the light at the end of the tunnel. And I had found a teaching job in New Bern, where he would be working as a banker, and a group of girlfriends to live with. At least we would be in the same town now and could see each other all the time.
Dan handed me the telegram before I realized that there were tears in his eyes. Before I could even finish reading it, I was sobbing. “If they had just let us get married. Why didn’t they let us get married?”
“How could this happen again?” Dan asked. “Don’t they think I’ve served my time?” He punched the hood of the car, and I didn’t blame him. I wanted to too.
Dan hugged me close to him. “Will you wait for me, Lynn? Please, please promise that you’ll wait for me. We are getting engaged the minute I get home, my parents be damned. They can have their house and their money and their rules.” He kissed my head and lowered his voice, looking down on me. “All I want is you.”
We cried a lot that night, but Dan told me not to be scared. “I won’t be fighting this time, Lynn, so you don’t have to worry.”
Lies and Other Acts of Love Page 11
