The Man She Married

by Cathy Lamb

  I was going to find my former wild and crazy self, apparently, in the dark, on a bike, naked, riding through the streets of Portland with thousands of other naked bike riders. Chick rode my bike, Justine had hers, and they rented me a three-wheeler with a pretty flowered basket. I laughed when I saw it but was relieved, too, as my balance had taken a hit with Ronnie’s hit, so to speak.

  We all wore long blond wigs and masks, the Mardi Gras-type mask with glitter and sequins and feathers. We also had helmets on. Taped to our helmets were two foot-long purple and pink feathers and purple and pink ribbons, which flowed along behind us.

  We attached pink glittery butterfly wings to our backs and, like a few other people, we wore bikini bottoms, as wide and high as we could find. We sprayed them with silver glitter. On our nipples we glued fake flowers. The flowers actually covered part of mine and Justine’s boobs. Chick, not so much. She’s a chesty gal. We stripped at the park right before they started, shoved our sweats in my flowered basket, and took off into the darkness.

  We had had a little too much to drink from our Maverick Girls Moonshine flasks before we started, so we sang through the streets of Portland as our wings flapped, the sequins on our Mardi Gras masks catching a bit of moonlight. The streets were crowded with naked bike riders laughing and talking, some in masks, most not. Some were free and naked and proud of it, and some were slightly less naked.

  One man painted himself blue, a woman rode her bike with a bubble machine behind her, and a couple shared a tandem bike and wore clown hair and green glasses. There were tutus and top hats, cowboy boots and capes.

  No one, though, had the artistic butterfly wing creations that we did, which we were extremely proud of.

  We laughed so hard, we had to stop several times. Chick, with her weak bladder, had to get off her bike and run behind a tree and squat. There wasn’t much covering there in the city, but she was desperate. We stopped at the Porta-Potties for her, too. It’s hard to fit butterfly wings in those things, so you know.

  We waved to people on the sidewalk, princess style. I saw Zack exactly where he said he would be, Braxton and Jed with him.

  I waved at him, but Zack could hardly wave back. He was laughing so hard he was almost bent over double, just like Braxton and Jed. I got off my bike, ran over to him, my wings flapping, feathers streaming, boobs bouncing, and planted a kiss on his lips. He couldn’t kiss back very well because of the laughter. He smacked me on the butt, and I got back on my three-wheel bike, his laughter following me down the road.

  Chapter 19

  Zack had told me the truth about the occupations of his parents. His father was a homebuilder, his mother a nurse. But their names were not Randall and Cora Shelton, they had never lived in South Carolina, as he’d said, and they did not die in a car accident.

  “My parents’ names were Tony and Sandy Walton,” he said, his voice heavy with sadness. “They were killed by a woman named Bitsy Chandler when I was a junior in high school, seventeen years old. She lived in her home, by herself, out in the woods, and rarely left. The neighbors tried to help her, my mother tried to help her. Sometimes she was receptive, sometimes she wouldn’t answer her door. She was a hoarder and had about twenty cats.

  “She had a breakdown one winter, screaming outside of her house about people trying to put her in jail, pulling off her arms and legs, and trying to stick her in a possum trap. The neighbors called my mom. My dad and mom went up to help—they cared about Bitsy. Everyone did. It was freezing cold, late at night, and Bitsy raised a gun, told them she wasn’t going to let them put her in a possum trap, and shot both of them.”

  “Oh, Zack. Oh no.”

  “They both died immediately. Bitsy ran back in her house, and the neighbors ran toward my parents, but it was too late. No one even knew she had a gun. When the police broke in, they found her in a corner, hysterical, crying, saying she hadn’t meant to shoot the nice possums.” He took a deep breath. “Anyhow, it was a huge story in Arkansas. It brought up a whole slew of issues about the mentally ill, guns, and our mental health system.

  “It was probably overly paranoid, but I thought that if anyone knew even my parents’ first names, the situation of their deaths, they could look it up. They would see that they had a son, Devon, who could not be located. The suspicion could start right there and my whole new life would unravel. Right from the start, I made up new names for my parents. It was yet another lie. I’m sorry, Natalie.”

  I hated all the lies between us. I did. But what to do? Divorce him? Leave the love of my life? I understood why he lied. He had to. Would I have done the same thing? Yes.

  “What were your parents like?”

  His eyes misted up. “I could not have had better parents.”

  * * *

  We returned to Zack’s hometown of Tallie Springs in Arkansas. His parents had paid off the house, and it was still his. There was a property bill, but it was dismissed when Zack donated the house and land to the city. The small town had grown a lot in the last twenty years, and they needed space for a park. The park would be named after his parents, Tony and Sandy Walton.

  Zack was welcomed with open arms. People recognized him at the diner in town, and it was as if a celebrity had returned. They had all read his story in the news and been fascinated. Everyone had loved his parents, especially his mother, who was “a caring and helpful nurse, dedicated to the people of Tallie Springs,” the seventy-five-year-old fire chief said, who had been a friend of Zack’s parents. “She was better than any doctor there ever was. She cured almost everyone.”

  It turns out they all suspected that it was Zack who had killed the “Hotchkiss boy. That troublemaker, that criminal, that drunk,” because Zack disappeared after the murder. “We figured you were on the run, son,” a man named Cass Leopold said. “And we wished you God’s speed and the best of luck. That woman had her face beaten in, all those bones broken, and we knew you weren’t guilty at all. We knew you’d protected her. Sure have missed you. Any chance you could move back to Tallie Springs?”

  None of them, not one person, called the police and told them that they thought the recently disappeared nineteen-year-old kid named Devon Walton had killed Willie Hotchkiss.

  We went to a hastily set-up potluck dinner at a neighbor’s, and I think the whole town came, the tables groaning under the homemade food. Many of Zack’s friends from school showed up, some arriving throughout the day from hours away, all eager to see Zack again. It was abundantly clear to me how much they loved him and had missed him when he’d left.

  “He was my best friend,” I kept hearing. “Helped me make the football team . . . helped me with chemistry . . . rescued me when I was getting beat up one day . . . came to my dad’s funeral and sat right next to me . . . helped my mom and me with our fence after my dad walked out . . . made sure no one made fun of my sister. She has Down’s syndrome. . . .”

  The next day we walked through his family’s white farmhouse, on a small hill. Zack still had the key to his house. Zack said it was exactly as he’d left it. The TVs were gone, but nothing else had been stolen. Someone had boarded up the windows to help prevent break-ins.

  It was a wrenching, emotional day. We sat on the front porch of that farmhouse for a long time. We walked through the small orchard under a canopy of leaves. We stood over a long-gone garden his father had planted, bordered with a white picket fence. We were quiet in the yellow kitchen where he’d rinsed the vegetables he and his dad had grown and where he’d canned peaches with his mother.

  We lay on his bed in his bedroom and looked at all the photographs in frames and in the scrapbooks. We studied all of his mom’s paintings, who was a gifted artist. So many were of Zack and his father, their home, their land, their animals, the garden. She’d even done a self-portrait. “She’s one of the most gorgeous women I’ve ever seen,” I said.

  “She was,” Zack answered, running a finger down her cheek. “Inside and out. Like you.”

  We sat in the c
hairs in front of his fireplace where he’d played chess with his dad. We had lunch at the dining room table where his father had taught him how houses were built, solidly, so they would stand for a hundred years, and where he’d shown him blueprints and designs.

  We had breakfast at the kitchen table where his mother had talked to him about politics and books and social issues. And how, as a nurse, she took care of the most fragile people. “With love and kindness,” she’d told him. “You are obligated to help others.”

  We went to his parents’ graves and stayed for a long time. I walked away and let Zack be. It was hard to see those strong, broad shoulders hunched, the devastation still there. He would never stop missing his parents—who could stop missing parents like Tony and Sandy Walton? No one. They clearly loved him with everything they had.

  It took several days, but we boxed up what he wanted to take and arranged for shipping, including all of his mother’s paintings, a part of the white picket fence, some of his parents’ clothes so we could have a quilt made of them later, his mother’s china, his father’s blueprints to frame, his mother’s cookbooks and classics, his father’s garden tools and drafting board, and all the scrapbooks.

  We dropped the rest at Goodwill. He signed the papers to donate the land and we left after another potluck, which most of the town attended again. We arranged to have Zack’s truck, the one he saved his own money to buy and left when he ran off to Alaska, delivered to us in Oregon. It was a classic, it had huge sentimental value, and we couldn’t leave it behind.

  “We’ll come for the dedication ceremony for the park,” I said, grief for his parents, whose lives were cut way too short, grief for Zack who had lost such amazing people, clogging my throat. I could hardly talk.

  “Yes, we will.”

  We would come back and honor his loving, dedicated parents, who literally gave their lives to help someone else.

  “They would be proud of you, Zack.”

  He smiled at me. “I hope so.”

  “I know so.” I gave him a long kiss because Tony and Sandy Walton’s son is so kissable.

  Epilogue

  The Ronnie incident did it for Zack and me in terms of life in the city. My dad was delighted when I told him we were moving back to Lake Joseph. Zack would build homes out there—the place was booming, and more people were building vacation homes on the lake. I would make my jewelry and sell it in Chick’s hardware store, a few stores in Portland I’d contacted, and online. My online store was busy already. I had set up a website, a Facebook page, and Instagram for more marketing.

  “Come and build a house on our family land, Hummingbird, please,” my dad said. “Keep an old man company. There’s twenty acres. Plenty of room for you and Zack and any little Natalies and little Zacks who come along. I’m up for half a dozen! Or more!”

  So, we did, with part of the $430,000 that we were able to get back from Ronnie, who had spent $70,000 on fancy hotels, hookers, gambling, and traveling expenses back and forth to Las Vegas while he was torturing poor Zack.

  There is space between our homes, but we can see each other in the not-too-far-away distance. We both have panoramic views of the mountains and the town below. The lights twinkle at night, the sunrise is a pink and yellow and purple gift each day, the fields roll around us, the apple orchard neat rows of green and red.

  Zack and I used the designs we made together for our dream home that we always planned on building “one day.” One day was now here.

  We have a great room downstairs, with a sunny breakfast nook, a kitchen with an island made from the bar of an old saloon, an office for Zack with a table my dad made for him out of an old wooden wagon, and a workshop for me with floor-to-ceiling windows off the great room. We separated the great room and my workshop with barn doors. Inside the workshop we have a table against the wall for fly-tying for Zack and me.

  My dad will be working with me in my jewelry business. Two artists moved to town, and he will also do work for them, and he will do some work for Zack. In every home Zack has decided he needs an outdoor fountain, and my dad will be creating those. Chick asked my dad if he could make some outdoor garden art for her hardware store, and he said he’d “give it a whirl.”

  Upstairs we have three large bedrooms. Our master bath has a tub built for two and a shower with two showerheads.

  Zack and I are going to plant a garden to honor his father, Tony. Zack hasn’t grown a garden since he was seventeen. “I couldn’t do it,” he said. “It hurt way too much.” We’re planting tomatoes, carrots, onions, corn, chives, peppers, and pumpkins. We’re going to plant a ton of white daisies. We’ve hung the cleaned white picket fence in our great room, and we’ve framed two sets of blueprints for homes that Tony built.

  We’re also taking a painting class together to honor Sandy. I’m painting the yellow house I grew up in, and Zack is painting the white farmhouse he grew up in. We do not have high hopes for our artwork, we are simply hoping the homes don’t look haunted or possessed. We have Sandy’s paintings up throughout our home.

  We hired a woman to make three quilts out of his parents cotton shirts and jeans, his father’s ties, and a few of his mother’s dresses and skirts. I have hung her aprons in our kitchen. His mother’s china is in a hutch that Zack built, and her cookbooks are on open shelving in the kitchen. Sandy’s classics are in our bookshelves, and Tony’s drafting board is in Zack’s office. I have enlarged and framed several photographs of Sandy and Tony and Zack and put them above the drafting board.

  Zack built a special shelf to hold all of my grandma Dixie’s perfume bottles. I see them and think of her playing poker in heaven and working on her dream car, a red 1967 Chevy.

  We’re pregnant and we are delighted. We want four kids. They can double up in the bedrooms, as neither one of us wants a large home. As Zack said, “If a fifth baby pops out, we’ll keep her, too.”

  “Oh, gee whiz, Zack. Ya think?”

  My mother became all mushy when I told her about the baby, but she tried to fake it. She tilted her coiffed blond head up, then away, her lips trembled, her chin shook, then she turned to me and insisted, “I will not be called Grandma. The child will call me Jocelyn.”

  “Grandma Jocelyn.” I bit my lip so I wouldn’t laugh.

  “Only Jocelyn. Do I look old enough to be a grandma? No. I don’t.”

  I gently prodded, and she finally told me the story of her childhood. There was some bitterness there and an avalanche of hurt because she had buried it, kept it a secret for all these years.

  She had no idea where her parents were or if they were still alive. “And I don’t care. I wouldn’t talk to them if they came to me, anyhow. They were abusive, they were neglectful, they were hurtful, and they put me out on a street corner for hours at a time to sing to earn money for their alcohol.” She rubbed her temples. “I told Dell.”

  “I’m glad. How did he react?”

  “That old farmer. He gave me a hug and told me he would always take care of me.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I showed him the angel porn outfit I received in the mail that day.”

  I started singing a song from my childhood. I smiled at her.

  She said, “If I’m going to sing, I will sing a real song.”

  She sang. Loud and throaty and completely on key. “I’m still an outstanding singer,” she said, “even after all these years.”

  It was true. She was.

  Her clothing boutique business was going well, surprisingly, after an incredibly bad start. She got rid of all of Evelyn’s clothes, which people liked. Evelyn sold what those women needed there. So my mother started over, with another loan from dear Dell, and bought “fashionable farm woman clothing,” and showed women how to dress. She was rather rude, but she did know how to fit all body types, and the store made an impressive comeback.

  “I tell everyone there, there is no one I can’t improve upon. No matter how frumpy you are, I can fix you up.”

&
nbsp; Lovely.

  “And by the way, Natalie.” She coughed. She blinked her eyes rapidly. She glanced down, then away, then back to me. Her chin trembled. “Why have you never made me a necklace?”

  My jaw dropped. “I didn’t think you would want one. You wear real jewels. I use rocks. Beads. Glass. Leather for chains. Charms.”

  Her voice wavered. “I do want one. I have always wanted one. Ever since you were a little girl and you started making them.”

  “Mom . . .”

  She stuck her trembling chin up. “I have excellent taste, Natalie, and your necklaces are stylish and fashionable.”

  I was so touched. “I’ll make you the most beautiful necklace I can possibly make.”

  “Thank you.” She hugged me close, and for once, for this one time, there was no zinging, critical comment following the hug. Miracles do happen.

  My dad’s reaction to the baby news was loud, booming, effusive. “I can’t believe it! I’m going to be a poppa! A poppa!” He burst into tears, poor man. “I can’t wait to tell my hunting group.” Then he started to cluck over me. Asked me if I was eating enough, I shouldn’t work too hard, I should get off my feet. “Hummingbird, you are making a tiny hummingbird, you must take it easy.”

  Zack has his hand on my stomach all the time and talks to the baby. He’s working with the baby on his alphabet so he’ll be “competent at crosswords.”

  We laugh, we chat, we already know it’s a boy. We’re going to call him Scott, after my dad. His middle name will be Tony, after Zack’s father. My dad doesn’t know yet. It’ll tear him to pieces.

  Detective Zadora is coming to town to go to dinner with my dad.

  Zack and I went to Portland to a party at Soldier’s house. Frog Lady and Architect were there, too. They all had made progress. We laughed and chatted, true friends that we are, and I know we will see one another many times in the future.

  Before I became pregnant, Chick, Justine, and I were arrested by Justine’s father, Chief Knight. One night we drank whiskey out of the Maverick Girls Moonshine flasks. That was not illegal. We got a smidgen drunk and sang songs loudly. That was not illegal, either. We climbed up the water tower. There are signs that say you may not do that. That was illegal.