by Diane Munier
She's not a diplomat in a foreign country. She's not an astronaut. She's not a soldier. She's not in the Peace Corps.
She's not a news correspondent. She's not making a movie. She's not in Africa leading a life-saving medical team.
She's not there. And she's not coming home.
He was aware, my son. It's a solid and enduring world. But people are broken. Every one of us. And they are not above breaking you. Even mothers.
There's no lack of hope in admitting it's so. Trouble comes when you try to pretend. Well, I pray more now. And I feel more too. And I know things about him—about Junior.
In another year, he'll start to turn. I've seen it coming when he works at Billy's, this strength and a sense of purpose, his ease with men, this world he's grown up in—Marcus, Artie.
Marcus will be there to help in the transition, arms open wide, security, commitment, guidance, direction. He'll show his son how to go into the world. He'll hold him until he's steady, he'll walk him on the path.
But for me…soon the empty mother-wound will set like mud dried in the sun, it will turn to brick and mortar and what Juney knows about women will filter through that curious place—Elaine, Angela—me.
The tender child is growing. He'll leave me slowly, one step at a time. I'll give him some slack, one inch, one inch, but for now, for two minutes, or two million minutes, as long as he'll allow—we're here—my hand in his hair, my smile, that knowing in myself that yes, Junior Stover, you are loveable, and you can love, and you have heart and strength and sacrifice in yourself. That's what he needs to know.
I hold my baby, and I feel this…call. I feel some of the secrets that eluded me before. There's a time to hold a child close, under one's wing. And Juney is still in that time.
So he can't be set off—with his dog--not yet. In a year. Two for sure. But not yet.
I try to say this to Marcus.
"My God," he says, "must everything be so…so damn hard Babe?"
I wait a few minutes before I can say, "Yes."
It's what I know. This is a big job, and getting it right…takes everything.
And now about the father. My husband. Marcus Stover.
I won't budge until he does. We're not fighting yet. We're disagreeing. Strongly.
I suspect he thinks that I'm in the post-pregnancy crazies. I think he's had a talk with Elaine or something. So he drops the subject of where we're sleeping. He uses his one week of family leave to move us across the street, to set up some of our stuff since Artie was long ago cleaned out of the place.
So our current house grows empty and hollow while the other one is filled and readied and I recuperate and take care of Rebecca and pack what I can in the midst of the dismantle.
And all that time he is kind and I am kind, and he waits for me to change my mind. But I never change my mind, will never change my mind.
Marcus's father was dead when he was seven. But something in him stepped up. It wasn't bad, but he got shoved in the long line of duty too fast, and he hardened. He was confused for a while, and he made some mistakes. He's a good son to his mom, angry at the man standing naked in his father's shoes. For Marcus, it's always been Artie.
Marcus is a good father and husband, and he's got the judgmentalness that comes with it. Add to that he's Sheriff. It's his job to be decisive and to stick to it. But you know what I am…only child.
So we are straddling this road between what is and what could be.
It takes him two more weeks to give in. We take the crow's nest, using Artie and Ranita's old furniture cause Marcus refuses to put our furniture up there. It's in place downstairs waiting for me to come to my senses. Rebecca's bassinet is put in our room, and my old room has been redone for Juney because that's always been where he's going.
That first night when we hunker down, all of us upstairs and lights out, Marcus is kissing me. We talk about when he came up here and got an eyeful, and the pillow fight that night, and how he came outside and posed for me, and all that, and it's so sweet to think of how awkward we were at getting together.
"You know," he tells me while rubbing my flattening stomach, "there's only two people in this world I let break my cajones on a regular basis—you and Artie. And for some sick reason, I guess I can't get enough."
"You speak pure poetry," I tell him, stealing his line.
We're quiet for a while, just being. "I'm so happy," I finally say.
"You should be," he says giving me a last smacker.
"Yeah," I answer, wearing my nightgown, my underwear with my big pad and my nursing bra. I actually feel sorry for him.
It doesn't seem to matter to him at all. I'll never get over the way he takes me as I am and makes me feel like I'm some big deal.
Here we are not married a year, and Marcus already knows he can't touch my breasts when it's getting about time to nurse. I've got so much milk I could be a Guernsey cow.
I hope I'm not a cow. Well, sometimes Marcus listens and sometimes he doesn't. He loves these things as much as his daughter.
Newlyweds with a baby. I have to laugh at us. But he is crazy for his baby girl. She looks like me, he says, but I don't know. I can see Juney in there, and Juney looks like him. Now she's asleep in her basket, and I know before it's morning she'll end up in bed with us. I'm such a slug.
"You sick of me yet?" I ask, all teary.
"Not yet," he says. Then he kisses me again.
"I'm not trying to be difficult," I say. "I have…convictions."
"Yeah," he sighs. "I know."
"You do? You have me figured out?"
He laughs a little. "Ah…no."
"You like your baby?"
He laughs some more. "I'm the richest man in the world."
I lift on my elbow. "Marcus. You mean what Artie said—millionaire's family?"
"What? No."
"So you know it don't you? We are rich."
"Yeah," he says. "I know it."
"I'm sorry about…the room…."
He pulls me down against him. "Shhh."
"It's just…I love…." I can't finish. I'm crying all over him again.
He spends time holding me, his hand smoothing over my back. "Bedilia. I know. Don't apologize for loving us."
"I love you so much," I tell him. "I know I have a hundred things all the time."
He kisses me. "Three more weeks," he says, his breath against the side of my neck making me shiver in the good way.
"You make me crazy," I say.
"Yeah. Yeah we do that," he says, kissing down my neck and right over Gladys. He nuzzles my stomach. "You're such a woman," he says.
Next to him I’m about as sexy as Edith Bunker.
So he has his hands stacked and tucked, and his elbows opened wide, and I love that skin under his arms. I just love him.
He puts my hand over his heart, and it's beating, hard and fast.
"Always beat, always beat," I say. I'm praying.
I am never casual about him, never have been. I even tried. I even ran. I tried to deny. But truth…set me free.
I lay half on him, half off like he likes. I know my milk will leak on him, and it does.
"Don't go," he says.
"I'll never go," I say. "I never will."
And he holds me, so tightly, until his arms ease off as sleep comes to him. And I hear Rebecca stirring, and my milk hurts it comes in so hard.
I get up then, grab a diaper to hold over my breast, gather Rebecca and hold her to the other. I climb in bed beside Marcus. Oh, there is nothing like this, that little face peering at me in the dark as she nurses so eagerly, and her eyes roll up, and I stifle my laugh. I'm struck again by her softness and tenderness. I'm struck again at how blessed I am. My heart.
Marcus keeps a lot in. He will always protect.
I see how he chops that wood. I know why he runs, sometimes before and after work. I take note of every scrape on his knuckles, every mark on his arms. Once there was blood on the cruiser where he'd slammed
a body there.
Sometimes when he gets off he doesn't come directly in the house, but he goes straight back to the shed and chops, and chops and the ground is littered with a pile of bones, and we let him go until it's out of his system. Then he goes upstairs and takes a long shower, and we don't say anything.
Mostly it's what he said, paperwork and court and prisoners shuttled one place to another and endless patrol and speeders and wife-beaters and feuds and orders of protection, lots of those. Mostly it's conversations and keeping your eyes open and teenagers drinking and smoking weed and thieves and shoplifters and moving along some strange drifters. Mostly it's slow and punchy like a jagged sidewalk he covers in his cruiser, in his boots, one day to another, some of it kicked up so watch your step, and cups of coffee, ankles crossed on his desk, heartburn after lunch at Billy's, and orange jumpsuits milling in the jail and visitors coming in, cars impounded and Joe Blow dead in his recliner. It's watching the school, stopping traffic for the funeral procession to go on by, overseeing the deputies, cold, wet, dark, dawn, sunset, full moon.
It's a lot of things. But it's not us. We're something else. We're everything good and everything real.
And Marcus can circle us until he's got the mud off his boots and he's ready to come to our fire. When he enters, he's all love. A long hug for me. A kiss, touching in, Juney talking at his elbow, the baby quickly in his arms, Scrapper's toenails clicking on the floor.
Resurrection.
We plant our flag and Marcus and David move Dad's things from the metal building out back into Marcus's house across the street. Teresa is there to help.
Like a migrating bird long away, my Dad comes home. The house opens its dark eyes, and there's light. I'm glad for all of us, but mostly for Marcus. He has his mentor again, and his friend.
And time sifts through our fingers like gold dust.
Chapter 76
I saw Artie in action as sheriff quite a few times growing up. He had this way of talking people out of their bad behavior. In twelve years he fired his gun three times in the line of duty. He'd never shot anyone.
I felt good when Artie was around. I felt safe. It was the same with Marcus. I'd seen him in action a time or two as well.
I remember I was around fifteen sitting next to Marcus at the Fourth of July fireworks show at the park and Juney was on his lap, his head buried because he didn't like the loud popping of the display. Angela was nowhere around. It's like Marcus was always alone with Juney.
So we were off from the crowd because Juney was having a hard time. I'd come with friends, but I'd seen the two of them sitting there, and I went over. And once I did, I'd rather be with them anyway.
There were two guys sitting on the hill a little below us, and one pulled out a joint. Marcus sat Juney beside me. "Bedilia, can you watch Juney a minute?" he said, his eyes fixed on those guys.
"Sure," I said, but he was already moving downhill a few feet to where those two sat. He got in front of them and said matter-of-fact, "You're not going to light that."
The guys, the one as big as Marcus, a joint hanging from his lip, match flickering in his hand, the other cupped over against the wind, looked at Marcus for a moment and Marcus looked back just like that. The other one said, "Put it out."
Marcus grabbed it then, disintegrated it as he rubbed his hands. "The rest," he said then, and big boy dug in his pocket and slapped the baggie into Marcus's hand. Marcus emptied it, and the wind carried it off. He tossed the empty on that guy's lap.
Then he came back to where I was sitting, and he put his arm around Juney and that one climbed back into his father's lap. Marcus looked at me, and I smiled a little and then he went on watching the fireworks like nothing had happened.
And I thought…dang.
Another time he was driving Juney and me to get some chicken. This was right after his divorce. I guess I was around seventeen. Some fool came speeding by, and Marcus sped up and followed him a ways, and he called it in and kept close, and we saw some rodeo driving like you can see around Lowland sometimes. Sure enough, we rounded a bend in the road right outside of town on the forty, and that pick-up was nose first into a tree, and it was pointed up, front wheels had to be off the ground. That truck was trying to fly.
Some deer had been in the road, and the road bent right, and this hot-shot went left. Marcus told Juney and me to stay in the car. "All right Bedilia?" he said, looking deep at me like I always wanted him to.
I just nodded. He didn't say my name much, and it had been as powerful as the sight of that truck like that. If he could count on anyone in this world I wanted him to know, it was me.
He went ahead on foot and looked in that truck. We could tell he was talking to someone. He was on his phone the whole time. Juney and I craned our necks to watch him. The driver was downhill, thrown from the car. He landed in a creek face down, I learned later. He didn't live.
Marcus set up a safety perimeter, got out the hazard signs he had behind the seat of his truck.
"Dad is that lady hurt bad? Where's the man?" Juney asked.
"Bedilia," Marcus said, his eyes flashing to me, "tell Juney it's all going to be all right."
"It is," I said automatically.
"The ambulance comes they'll fix that lady right up. Don't you worry," he told Juney taking the time to touch his nose.
"Right Bedilia?"
"Right," I said putting my arm around Juney.
It wasn't yet dark. Marcus went back to the truck and stayed with the passenger.
"What if it blows up?" Juney kept worrying.
"Stop being a baby," I said. "He's not a fool." But I was just as worried. If that truck blew, I knew I'd be out of this vehicle so fast I'd run straight into that fire calling for Marcus.
I kept my hand on the handle that opened my door the whole time. When help came, and the passenger was cut out of the truck and loaded in the ambulance, Marcus handed it all over and jogged to the truck.
Juney was firing questions soon as Marcus opened the door. He pulled Juney to him and kissed the top of his head, looking at me over Juney's little buzz cut. "You alright?" he said.
"Of course," I said easing my hand off the door.
We followed the ambulance to the hospital, and we waited again while Marcus ran in there and satisfied himself she was in good hands.
When he came back, Juney was full of more questions and Marcus said she was going to be all right.
I could tell he was relieved. He never said anything, but I was looking at him, and he looked at me a couple of times. "You remember what we were supposed to get?" he asked a grin that lit his face. He was so handsome I could barely breathe.
"Twelve pieces, two potatoes, extra biscuits," I said.
"Good girl," he said, and he gave me a quick smile.
I just watched his hands on the wheel after that. I knew then I was in love with him.
And it never went away.
Chapter 77
Angela's real drug troubles came out of post-partum depression. That's what led to her dependence on the drugs and her addiction escalated to the point where she got hooked on street heroin. She ran after that rocket ship and away from Marcus and Juney.
So that left Marcus a little skittish about me, even though he knew I wasn't going on the same path, but he worried I'd suffer the depression like she did. He admitted this to me recently. At the time I went through it, I had no idea the depth of his worry.
I had two bad days in my second week of recovery after having Rebecca, days where everything just went south and I saw the smoky fringes of a land called, 'Despair.'
Marcus took it badly. We were straddling two houses then. He stayed with me, constantly taking my emotional temperature, just holding me, like whatever edge I was on, he could keep me from going over.
Elaine came. She took Juney which was a relief. I didn't want him to see me like this.
It was one bad weekend. I wanted to stay in my room. I just wanted to nurse my child and my woe
s in private.
So we got through that time and the dark cloud lifted. Not only my mind, but my body started to return to some semblance of what it had been before. By that I mean I could finally zip my old jeans.
And Rebecca, soft little jewel of mine…the first day we brought Rebecca home Juney surprised me and scooped her right up while I was in the bathroom. I came out, and he was rocking her in the chair in my room.
I caught the, "Oh no," before I said it. He hadn't dropped her, and her spine was not snapped, and she didn't have a concussion. He hadn't turned her upside down and flipped her liver or something. He held her very nicely, cradling her head even.
"She's so little," he looked up at me and said.
I just nodded. I made myself breathe and relax. They were beautiful together, and he was so big by contrast, and I realized with a fresh stab how much I'd missed with him, and how much I loved the two of them, so much I ached. I went for the camera and snapped the first home-shot of brother and sister. Welcome to our reality show.
Juney continues to be properly fascinated with Rebecca, even as he now realizes she is the great Oz behind the family curtain…running everything.
And I have my own cycles, most days reveling in the two of them and the daily challenges and changes, and it's all good.
But there are days.
At my worst I'm sure I'll ruin Rebecca and am well on the way to ruining Juney.
Guilt. I have lots. Marcus tells me it's a part of parenting…perpetual guilt. He reminds me of when I told him he pitied Juney. Now I'm doing it.
"Look," Marcus says, "he's happy. He's fine. You're a saint in his eyes."
But I'm not. I'm no longer Juney's good friend, or overgrown peer, or big sister. I'm officially General Mom, career soldier.
He has to resent that somewhere.
But he's so busy with school and his dedication to his after school work at Billy's. He has youth group and band practice, so I hold out hope that he barely notices my witch-spells. Yet I fear if Angela shows and offers him a one-way ticket out of here he'll flee.
