Miss Julia Weathers the Storm

by Ann B. Ross

  She reached into her bucket and held up an unusually perfect sand dollar, then reached back in to show me two more that were slightly chipped around the edges.

  “Oh, Latisha,” I said with the proper enthusiasm, “they are all beautiful. But be very careful with them—sand dollars break easily.”

  “Yes’m, Lloyd told me. I’m gonna take real good care of ’em, don’t worry about that. I bet Great-Granny never thought there’d be money jus’ layin’ around waitin’ to be picked up. Boy, is she gonna be surprised.”

  “I’m sure she will. But, Latisha, you know you can’t spend sand dollars, don’t you?”

  “That don’t matter. I got ’em an’ I’m gonna keep ’em. Money’s money to me. My teacher read us a book one time about pirates burying treasure on the beach, an’ I’m bettin’ this is part of it.”

  “That’s wonderful, Latisha. Take good care of the one that’s not chipped, because you certainly have a treasure.” And a good imagination, as well.

  The others had climbed the steps to the porch by this time and the little ones flocked around to see Latisha’s great find. They weren’t especially impressed with her wet, sandy bucketful of shells, so they looked and then walked away. Lloyd was grinning at Latisha’s excitement, but he didn’t—and wouldn’t—ridicule her idea of treasure.

  Chapter 15

  Peace and quiet descended on the beach house that afternoon when Hazel Marie and Binkie took the little girls—including Latisha—to the movies, while the men, including Lloyd, went to a boat show. That left the house to LuAnne and me—the first time since being there that we’d had time alone.

  We sat on the front porch in rocking chairs with glasses of lemonade on a table between us. A steady ocean breeze kept the heat from running us inside, while a few gusts now and then rattled the dry fronds on the palm trees.

  “Julia,” LuAnne said, “coming here was the best thing I could’ve done. I’m so glad you talked me into it.”

  I couldn’t recall having had to exert much persuasion, but I nodded and said, “I hope it’s been good for you. Getting away from a problem always puts things in a different light, don’t you think?”

  “It certainly has for me,” she agreed. “And,” she went on with a certain amount of satisfaction, “it has for Leonard, too. He’s begging me to come home.”

  “You’ve talked to him?”

  “Every day. He calls me, Julia, although I admit I called him first. I had to tell him there were some things in the freezer he could heat up. And of course how to heat them. I declare, I think the man would starve if he had to feed himself.”

  “Maybe you should let him,” I murmured.

  “Well, doesn’t everybody deserve a second chance?”

  “I suppose, but does that mean he’s confessed everything and asked for a second chance?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” LuAnne said, gritting her teeth. “And, Julia, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t remind me. If I expect to ever get over this and put my marriage back together, it sure won’t help for you to keep bringing up what he did.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” I said, stung by her jab at me. “I’m just concerned for you, LuAnne. If you try to overlook what he’s done and pretend that everything’s fine, it’ll do nothing but eat away at you. Because there’s no way you can just forget it happened.”

  She looked down at her hands, turned her wedding ring on her finger, then said, “I know that. But he keeps saying he’s done nothing wrong and has no reason to confess or to ask for forgiveness. So it’s up to me to decide if I can live with that. And I don’t know if I can or if I can’t.”

  She lifted her head and squinted out toward the ocean. “I know it’s better to get it all out on the table,” she went on. “But if he simply refuses, what can I do? He thinks our marriage is just fine.”

  “Just fine! When he’s seeking solace from another woman? What about her, LuAnne? Do you want a third party in your marriage? I don’t see you or any other woman being happy with that. I sure wouldn’t be.”

  “Well, that’s what you don’t understand,” LuAnne said with a tiny bit of smugness. “You never had a chance to confront Wesley Lloyd with what he did, so now you want me to do what you weren’t able to do. You’re reliving your problem through me.”

  I just hate it when somebody presumes to psychoanalyze me, but I did my best to brush it off. Sighing, I gave up and agreed with her.

  “You may be right,” I conceded. “But let me tell you this—if Leonard is smart, he’ll never sleep well again. Because, LuAnne, if you let it fester inside, you’re going to have fits of anger that’ll come over you all of a sudden and no telling what you’ll want to do. They used to come over me when I least expected them, and, I’ll tell you, it’s a good thing that Wesley Lloyd was already six feet under.”

  She didn’t say anything for a few minutes, then her shoulders began to shake as she tried to muffle the laughter. Finally she laughed out loud. “Oh, Julia, you don’t know how often I’ve wanted to skin Leonard alive. But I didn’t know you felt that way about Wesley Lloyd. I mean, you’re always in control. You never get mad, and you take things as they come without flying off the handle.”

  “Ha! You wouldn’t believe some of the daydreams I’ve had about Wesley Lloyd—not recently, I admit, because I’ve put him to rest for good. But, honey, I’ve lashed him with a whip, pulled out all his hair, and turned him naked out of the house—all in my imagination.”

  She sputtered and said, “I’ve done every one of those things to Leonard, too, including braining him with an iron skillet. If Leonard knew what I’ve been thinking, he wouldn’t want me within a hundred miles of home!”

  We were both laughing by that time. But when LuAnne excused herself to go to the bathroom, I found myself wondering why we’d been laughing. There was nothing funny about her situation and certainly nothing funny about Leonard’s denial of guilt.

  I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out what the need of solace would entail, nor what was involved in the actual application of it, either. It was plain to me, though, that when a husband goes ouside his marriage to have his needs met—be they for solace or whatever else—then that marriage is in trouble.

  Yet LuAnne seemed to have decided that she might be able to live with sharing Leonard, the thought of which made me wonder just what either woman saw in him. I wouldn’t have had him on a silver platter, but, I reminded myself, to each his own.

  “Julia,” LuAnne abruptly said as she came back onto the porch, “who am I kidding? There’s no way in the world that I can just let it go on like this. And why would Leonard think that I could? It just doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t make sense.”

  “That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking.”

  “Well, I wish you’d say so. It doesn’t help if you just agree with everything I say. I need some options, some possibilities, not just platitudes and automatic agreements with whatever I bring up.”

  I declare, LuAnne was the most contrary woman I knew. She’d just slapped me down for saying what I thought, but the minute I agreed with her, she wasn’t happy with that either. To tell the truth, I knew better than to get between a husband and a wife—whatever I said could come back to haunt me and ruin a friendship, as well.

  “I’m just here to be a sounding board, LuAnne,” I said, drawing back. “I’ll tell you what I think when you want to hear it, but mainly I’ll try to keep my opinions to myself.”

  “Well, don’t do that! I may not agree with your opinions, but I do want to hear them. You might come up with something I never thought of because you’ve been through it.”

  “Not exactly,” I pointed out. “I never had to decide whether to leave Wesley Lloyd or to put up with what he was doing. As you just reminded me, he was already gone, so I didn’t have a decision to make. Listen,” I said, putting my hand on her arm, “I hope you
’re praying about this. You’re making a decision that will affect the rest of your life.”

  “Oh, Julia,” she said, wiping away an overflowing tear, “I hate to admit this, but you know what it comes down to?”

  “What?”

  “Money. It comes down to money. If our retirement fund would support two households, or if I could support myself, I would leave him flat. I am so angry with him I can hardly stand it, and when he tells me that she—whoever she is—has nothing to do with me, I could strangle him. But . . . Well, wait.” She jumped up, wiping her eyes, and ran into the living room, coming back with a box of Kleenex. “Sorry. I can’t stop crying. Every time I think of the mess I’m in, I just start boo-hooing all over again.

  “Anyway,” she went on, mopping her tear-streaked face, “the thought of looking for a job just does me in. Who would hire me at my age? I’m not trained for anything and I can’t do anything. Well, maybe I could be a lunchroom lady and wear a hairnet, but, Julia, I couldn’t stand that. But the worst thing is thinking of being a divorced woman and knowing that everybody would know why I was divorced. I never pictured myself as a divorced woman—there’s such an unfortunate aura about not being able to hold on to your husband. People always wonder what you’d done to ruin your marriage.”

  “Oh, LuAnne, I don’t think that’s true in this day and age. We know a lot of people who’ve been divorced, and we don’t think anything about it.”

  “Maybe you don’t, but I do.”

  “Well, think of this. I expect if we knew the real situations of a lot of people, there’d be a lot more who aren’t divorced but who wish they were.”

  “I expect you’re right,” she said, surprising me with her agreement. “But I can tell you why they aren’t—they can’t afford it. It’s too much trouble and it’s too expensive. Like, for instance, I’d have to find a place to live because you know he won’t move out. And did you know that when you rent an apartment you have to pay both the first and last month’s rent at the same time? And then you have to pay a moving company, which means deciding what furniture I want and what Leonard will need, and it all gets to be too much.”

  “Well, if you really want my opinion, that’s easy. If it were me, I’d leave him the recliner, the television set, and the remote. And take everything else. Oh, and,” I said just as a reminder, “you could leave him that shaving kit, too.”

  “Hah! Do you know what he said when I asked about what I found in that thing? He said I shouldn’t have been snooping around. Can you believe that? Snooping is what you do when you clean house—you don’t clean up, you clean out. And throw away what you don’t need, which is what I did with those nasty underpants.”

  Now, see, that’s where LuAnne and I differed. I would’ve never thrown out such an obvious item of guilty evidence. I would’ve figured it would play a prominent role in any legal case I wanted to bring. But LuAnne didn’t think that way. She went on the premise that if something wasn’t around, it didn’t exist and she wouldn’t have to deal with it.

  I wanted to tell her that that same attitude would work on Leonard, too. If she didn’t have to put up with him every day, he’d soon fade away. Out of sight, out of mind, you know.

  Chapter 16

  Entering our bedroom to freshen up before going out for dinner, I found Sam sitting on the foot of our bed, gazing at the television set on the dresser.

  “Watching the news?” I asked, thinking how out of touch with world events we’d been during our few days at the beach. And all for the good, if you want my opinion.

  He smiled. “Just checking on Marty. It’s still whirling around in the Caribbean, trying to make up its mind which way to go.”

  I sat beside him and watched as the meteorologist demonstrated on a map the storm’s potential tracks, indicating to me that he didn’t know any more about it than we did.

  “It’s pretty close to Cuba, isn’t it?” I asked, trying to orient our position on the map. “Which means it’s far from us.”

  “Right. And it’s slow, which is a good thing for us. Except the longer it stays where it is, the stronger it gets.”

  “Oh, my goodness,” I said, my attention heightened as the program switched to pictures of Floridians boarding up windows and emptying grocery shelves. “Sam, should we be doing anything?”

  “No, honey. Even if it heads this way, we’d have several days to pack up and leave.”

  “I hope so,” I said, laughing, “because the way everything’s strewn all over the house, it’ll take several days to pack up. Well,” I went on as the weatherman relinquished camera time to the sports announcer, “I need to call Etta Mae and reassure her. I’d hate for her to come in tomorrow evening, then have to turn around and go home the next day.”

  —

  “Etta Mae?” I said when she answered her phone. “Are you packed? Got gas in your car? We’re expecting you tomorrow, you know.”

  “Oh, Miss Julia,” she said, almost giddy with anticipation, “I am so ready. I can’t wait to get there.” Then, with a noticeable difference in tone, she said, “You still want me to come, don’t you? I mean, your plans haven’t changed, have they? Because if they have, it’s all right.”

  “Our plans have absolutely not changed. We’re all looking forward to having you. About what time do you think you’ll be here?”

  “Well, the funeral’s at one, and I’ll leave as soon as it’s over, about two, I expect. So, I don’t know, I should be there around six or seven, I guess. Maybe closer to seven, because I’ll stop and get something to eat on the way.”

  “Call me when you’re about an hour out and we’ll wait supper for you. But, listen, Etta Mae,” I went on, “I hope you won’t mind sharing a room with LuAnne Conover. There’re two full beds in her room and a private bath.”

  “Oh, I’ll sleep anywhere, it doesn’t matter to me. I wouldn’t want to inconvenience Mrs. Conover.”

  “You won’t, though she may inconvenience you. Just don’t ask about her husband. She’d probably tell you about him all night long and you’d learn more than you ever wanted to know.”

  After a few more back and forth comments, including my telling her to be careful driving, we ended the call. I hung up and sat for a minute thinking of what a pleasure it was to do something for someone so openly appreciative.

  —

  Friday morning dawned gray and overcast, but hot as an oven. As the children gathered buckets and sunhats for their morning walk to the beach, Hazel Marie went around slathering suntan lotion on faces, shoulders, and arms. She had to chase down Lily Mae, who hid behind the sofa because she didn’t like the feel of the lotion.

  “Come on, now,” Hazel Marie coaxed. “You don’t want to get sunburned. We’re taking some cookies with us, so you don’t want to miss out on that, do you?”

  Finally getting all the children thoroughly screened from the sun, she said, “Everybody else ought to use this, too. You can get the worst sunburns on a cloudy day.” Hazel Marie knew what she was talking about, because getting a tan every summer had always been number one on her list of things to do.

  Since it had never even placed on my list, I lingered at the house while the rest trooped across the dunes, towels dragging in the sand behind them. In a little while, LuAnne came downstairs, wearing what Binkie had whispered to me was a vintage bathing suit. Actually it was simply old because I could remember when a one-piece suit with a little skirt was the latest seaside fashion.

  LuAnne announced that she was going to the beach because Marty was on the move and we might not have many more days to sunbathe. “And, Julia,” she declared, “I’m not only going home with a tan, I’m going to lose weight. I’ve let myself get a little pudgy, especially around the waist, so I’m going to get back in shape.”

  Oh, my, I thought, now she’s decided to woo Leonard back. Poor Leonard—being fought over by two women would
certainly disrupt his television time.

  With the house left to me alone, Sam having gone back to the boat show to take a second look at a fishing boat that had caught his eye, I poured another cup of coffee and sat on a sofa to watch a weather report.

  From the graphics on the television screen, it seemed that Marty had ravaged Puerto Rico, then skirted Cuba and the Florida Keys during the night and was now churning along toward the northeast. With luck, it would continue on that course, sideswipe Bermuda, and head on out to sea. We would need that luck because it was now a category three storm, and people along the north Florida coast were continuing to be warned.

  Suddenly I snapped off the television and sat up, listening more closely to what I thought I’d heard. I ran to the front porch just as Lloyd pounded up the stairs.

  “Miss Julia! Come quick, you’ve got to see this!”

  I think my heart stopped as images of one unspeakable horror after another flashed through my mind. “What? What is it?”

  “Money, Miss Julia! Come on, hurry, you’ll miss it.” He grabbed my hand, tugging me toward the beach.

  My first thought was that more sand dollars had washed ashore, but Lloyd knew better than that. Nonetheless, I trudged as fast as I could over the dunes behind him. Reaching the beach, I stood looking up and down the strand where people were racing along the water’s edge, some stopping to bend down, others yelling as they waved something in the air. I saw not one soul lounging in the sun—they were all splashing along the water line, leaning over, searching, and grabbing at whatever was washing to shore. Binkie and Hazel Marie were at the water’s edge holding the hands of the little ones but gazing off down the beach where the most activity was.

  “Come on, Miss Julia,” Lloyd urged. “Let’s get closer. Have you ever seen anything like it?”

  “Where’s Latisha?” I asked as I hurried after him.

  “She’s with Coleman. They’re right down here. Come on!”