From This Day Forward

by Modean Moon

  Ginnie sank onto a wooden bench and waited until Neil settled beside her.

  “You’ve worked hard to build your reputation, Neil. Can you really give it up? Give up the excitement and the adulation, and the... the money?”

  He leaned against the slatted back of the bench, hands thrust in his pockets and legs stretched out. “I don’t know. I’ve tried to be as honest about it as I can.”

  He laughed. “Kirk thinks I’m crazy. Maybe I am, a little. But if we stay in Little Rock, there’s going to be something constantly intruding on our private lives—friends or business, or just the pace of living there.

  “A circuit judgship isn’t the end of the world, Ginnie. And neither is Pleasant Gap, Arkansas. Maybe I won’t be trying the cases, but I’ll be hearing them, I’ll be ruling on them. I’ll be involved with them.

  “And here, maybe, we can have the kind of home that you need, and that I need, and that Todd needs. And eventually, not much longer now,” he promised, “the children you want, our children.

  “The change won’t be easy, but I’m willing to try.”

  He turned to her, taking her face in his hands. “I have to try it, Ginnie.”

  “Oh, Neil.” She leaned against him, sliding her arms around him. “Of course we have to try. And it will be wonderful,” she promised. “It will be wonderful.”

  Chapter 6

  And it was wonderful, for a while. The house they found a few miles out of town, a low, rambling one-story bungalow, seemed perfect in spite of its disrepair, perfect with its ramshackle picket fence and overgrown climbing roses, perfect with the fifty acres that stretched behind it—just enough room for a few cows, a large garden and plenty of space for horseback riding or just walking in their own private pine forest.

  Neil settled into his new routine—the courthouse every day, either in Pleasant Gap or one of the adjoining counties that comprised his district, and home every evening—and Ginnie into hers. The newspaper seemed a distant part of her life, missed, but not desperately, and although Pleasant Gap supported a weekly paper, the only contact she had with it was to take out a subscription for mail delivery. Her job now was her home, and for the first time since she’d married Neil, she felt that she truly had a home to care for.

  She quickly became a fairly good carpenter—first by watching those they hired for necessary repairs and then by tackling some of the jobs herself — and a wallpaper hanger, and a painter.

  The school bus stopped at the driveway each morning at seven-thirty to pick up Todd and deposited him back shortly before four. Neil assigned him responsibilities and, although he carried them out reluctantly, he did eventually carry them out.

  Evenings were spent together, and as the days grew longer, more of them were spent outside. Fifty acres, besides being heavenly space, presented an almost unending supply of outdoor jobs, especially because of the state to which the acreage had been allowed to deteriorate. But in the newness of country living, even repairing fence or corrals or dilapidated barn siding became a challenge, not a job, and it was something they were doing together—building with each other, for each other. And when Ginnie and Neil fell into bed at night, sometimes they were so exhausted they could do no more than hold each other. But even with that, they managed to reach a physical closeness that surpassed anything she had ever thought possible.

  Ginnie thrived on it. Her complexion glowed, and her eyes sparkled with excitement for each new surprise of each new day. Neil let his hair grow a little longer, still conservative because of his position as a judge, but he made no effort to get to the stylist in Little Rock. And his skin bronzed in the sun, making him even more devastatingly handsome in Ginnie’s eyes.

  They were still the outsiders in the community, looked upon tolerantly because he was the judge, but with amusement because they were so obviously city folk. And now when they went into town on Saturday morning for coffee at the drugstore, they didn’t wander absently down the sidewalks or sit in isolation at their booth. There were calls of, “Hi, Judge, how are you? Hello, Mrs. Kendrick, how’s that boy of yours getting along? Sure do like what you’re doing with that place out there. It’s been needing it for a long time.”

  With the coming of spring, Neil borrowed a garden tiller and dug up an old vegetable plot. Together, they seeded it and weeded it, and when harvesttime came, Ginnie was ready. With the help of her elderly neighbor down the road, a newly purchased pressure cooker and a supply of jars, she learned to preserve her own homegrown produce.

  They repaired the picket fence and painted it white, as it should be. The rosebushes leafed out, the house sparkled, and life, for the most part, continued to be wonderful. Just as she had promised. And what wasn’t wonderful, would be. Ginnie promised that, too.

  Todd still professed to hate the school, small even though it serviced not only Pleasant Gap but a large surrounding rural area. That would change, Ginnie knew, once he made friends, once he felt really accepted. With such happiness and stability around him, how could he fail to be happy?

  But he did.

  As another winter approached, as evenings grew longer, Todd paced the house or shut himself in his room, refusing to participate in school activities, refusing to try out for athletics, refusing to do anything after class, except to go to the weekend football games.

  He wanted a car. That would solve all his problems, he insisted. He was stuck out in the sticks, with no way to do anything unless Ginnie or Neil drove him into town like a baby.

  “You’re only fifteen, Todd,” Neil told him after Ginnie refused to discuss the subject with the boy any longer. “You can’t even get a driver’s license.”

  “But you’re the judge, Dad. Who’s going to hassle me over no license?”

  “The answer is no,” Neil said firmly. “I don’t want to hear any more about it.”

  And no more was said about it, but when Ginnie walked up from the barn late one afternoon, she discovered both her car and Todd gone. Neil found Todd at a local drive-in restaurant. He left Ginnie’s car there temporarily, but he brought his son home.

  “I’m not excusing his behavior,” Neil told her as he drove her to town to pick up her car, “but maybe you shouldn’t have left the keys where they would tempt him.”

  “In my purse?” Ginnie asked. “In the bedroom?”

  And Neil was already so angry, she didn’t tell him about the twenty-dollar bill that was also missing. She could be mistaken. She’d thought she’d missed money before, and this time, like the others, she convinced herself that she had probably spent more at the grocery store, or miscounted her change, or forgotten a purchase she had made.

  To a degree, she could understand Todd’s dissatisfaction with his inactivity. Now that the house was finished, there was little enough to occupy her time in maintaining it, and now that winter was approaching, there was little that she could do outside.

  Their social contacts, primarily local attorneys and their wives, provided some outlet for her, but most of the women were deeply involved, either with jobs or with small children. And while Ginnie longed for a child of her own, she knew that Todd was still too insecure in his place in their home to accept another child, yet.

  Ginnie became a well-known fixture at the library. She went at least twice a week, borrowing and returning books. But one afternoon, unable to tolerate her inactivity any longer, she dragged her portable typewriter from the back of the closet, remembering with something close to covetousness the sleek little laptop computer she’d left behind when she left her job.

  Three weeks later, the efforts of that afternoon appeared in the Sunday edition of the Arkansas Gazette . The day after that, the local librarian handed her the feature article, neatly clipped from the newspaper. “Is this you?”

  Ginnie nodded, a little embarrassed by this unexpected attention.

  “My goodness, I didn’t know we had a celebrity in town.”

  When Ginnie returned to the library Wednesday, she found the clipping tac
ked to the bulletin board along with a carefully lettered caption, Local Judge’s Wife Celebrity In Her Own Right.

  “We were thinking of offering a short course in creative writing in conjunction with the junior college,” the librarian told her. “I wonder, could we count on you for some help?”

  How could Ginnie refuse? There was little enough to do in the way of special activities in Pleasant Gap. She and Neil had discussed that problem. If someone was willing to try to provide an activity, shouldn’t she offer what help she could? She agreed, committing herself for six Wednesday evenings, to start the following month.

  That Friday, the publisher of the local newspaper called her at home. He offered her a job, which she refused, but she did agree to supply him with occasional features.

  And when the PTA heard of Ginnie’s efforts with the writing class at the library, she received a call from the organization’s president, asking if she would help with the school’s program for gifted students. Of course she would, she agreed immediately. And would she chair a committee on the gifted program? Ginnie didn’t know if she would be able to handle that, too. But she did.

  For Neil, activities crept in as insidiously, becoming involved in the local bar association, and all the local civic clubs. With his position in the community, he found it almost impossible to join one and not the others. Would he teach a class in business law at the junior college? Only two evenings a week?

  He was a popular judge, although a newcomer to the area, and although in Little Rock he might have been able to have an unlisted telephone number, he couldn’t do so in Pleasant Gap. The people demanded access to their elected officials. Now the nights he was home were often interrupted by the telephone.

  And then it was spring again, and time for a garden, time to care for their fifty acres of paradise, and at night when they fell into bed they were often exhausted, too exhausted even to hold each other.

  And Todd was sixteen and had his car.

  And Ginnie could no longer excuse missing money as a figment of her imagination.

  And she could no longer ignore that during the time Todd spent away from the house with his friends, he was probably drinking something stronger than cola.

  She didn’t have enough experience, then, to recognize red-rimmed eyes and strange speech patterns and the lethargy Todd sometimes evidenced, as being anything but unusual behavior, but she did recognize them for that.

  But now, times for discussions of those things with Neil were becoming rarer and more harried. Ginnie was no closer to Todd than she had been the first time she met him four years ago, but there had been a wariness about him then that would not let him expose himself to her. Now he didn’t seem to care.

  She tried talking to Neil, hesitant conversations in which she suggested that the three of them probably ought to seek the advice of a counselor, but Neil adamantly refused.

  “We’re a family, Ginnie. We’ll keep our problems within our family.”

  Only when Ginnie found the case of beer hidden in the barn loft did those family problems become serious enough for him to do more than have a talk with Todd.

  Neil suspended Todd’s driving privileges for a month, increased his household and farm chores and told him to open each can of beer and pour it down the drain.

  “But it’s not all mine,” Todd insisted. “Rick bought it.”

  Neil glowered at him. “Rick Skelton is only sixteen, too, Todd. How did he get it?”

  When Todd claimed ignorance, Neil picked up the kitchen phone and dialed the Skelton residence.

  “Hello, Jim,” he said to Rick’s father. “This is Neil Kendrick. We have a problem out here I thought you ought to be aware of. We found a case of beer in the loft, and Todd tells me that at least part of it belongs to Rick. You don’t mind if we go ahead and dispose of it, do you?” After a moment of silence, he continued. “No. I don’t have the answer to that yet, but I think you and I probably ought to see what we can find out.”

  Todd raged at his father for betraying him with a friend, but it was Ginnie for whom he held his anger, Ginnie who had really betrayed him, Ginnie who bore the brunt of his anger in his cold silences, his ignoring her requests and eventually her demands. Ginnie, the outsider. And he renewed his efforts to make her feel that way.

  When she arrived home from the grocery store one afternoon and found a familiar nosed-down, paint-battered car in the driveway, and Tommy and Joe and Barry in the living room, she experienced a strong sense of déjà vu, knowing full well what caused it, and an even stronger premonition.

  They met her at the front door, on their way out as she came in.

  “I’m going running around. You weren’t home. Dad said I could.” Todd spoke belligerently, almost as though he dared her to tell him that he couldn’t leave.

  Angry? Yes, Ginnie was angry. Hurt. And frightened. Her life was beginning to replay those last miserable months in Little Rock, and she didn’t know what to do about it.

  Neil’s announcement that night after dinner didn’t help any, either. He followed her into the kitchen, nursing a cup of coffee.

  “Ginnie?”

  She looked up from the pan she was scrubbing.

  “This term of office expires next January. I have to make a decision about whether we’re going to stay in Pleasant Gap or not.”

  She put down the pan and turned to face him. “We aren’t going back to Little Rock, are we?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But if we decide to stay, I’m going to have to be reelected to keep this job. I’m going to have to campaign. What kinds of problems is that going to cause?”

  Another election. She’d known it was inevitable, but when they first came to Pleasant Gap, it had seemed so far away she’d managed not to think about it. Now it seemed that she must. And yet, even another campaign was preferable to returning to the city. There, she’d lose Neil forever. She knew that with a certainty. Here, it would only be for a short while.

  “I understand.”

  “You always understand, Ginnie. I need more of an answer than that.”

  “We can’t go back, Neil. Todd—”

  “Todd hates it here,” he interrupted.

  “I know. But it’s better for him in Pleasant Gap than it would be in Little Rock.”

  “Is it, Ginnie?” Neil set down the cup and hesitated before he spoke. “I hadn’t meant to have this discussion tonight, but maybe it’s for the best. I wanted to give Todd what I didn’t have. I wanted to give him a home, and a childhood, and a family. I wanted him away from the influences that had infiltrated the city’s schools. But I’m not sure it’s working.

  “Can’t you accept that he’s just a boy? A boy who has been through more than most adults could tolerate. You’re the grown-up, Ginnie. Can’t you find some way to get through to him? Or have you given up?”

  She had wanted to talk to him about Todd, but this was not at all the conversation she had envisioned. The unfairness of it sharpened her words. “Can’t I find some way to get through to him?”

  All of the hurt of the afternoon came flooding back. “Do you suppose that I haven’t tried? And what do I get in response, Neil? At best, a sullen lack of cooperation. I’ve asked that we seek help, because I don’t know what to do anymore.”

  “Maybe if you accepted the fact that he is only sixteen, that he has interests that are different from yours, that he has friends that you won’t necessarily approve of—”

  “Who—Tommy Wilcox?” she interrupted. “Is that what this is all about? That must have been some phone call this afternoon. You’re right! I don’t like Tommy Wilcox. I think he’s a mean little sneak. He’s much too old for Todd to be running around with, and God knows what he’s involved with. He was trouble before we left Little Rock, and he’s worse trouble now.”

  “How, Ginnie?” Neil’s tone cross-examined her. “Is it because of something you know about Tommy Wilcox? Or do you just not like him? Be honest about it, not emotional. Let the facts, not
your imagination, control this discussion.”

  “Imagination. You think it’s my imagination? All right, let’s don’t talk about Tommy. Let’s talk about Todd. Here are the facts. He is sullen, resentful, personally sloppy. He neglects his responsibilities. He has been drinking — we found the beer in the loft. Money has disappeared on a regular basis from my purse. He has little respect for other people’s property. He has no respect for other people’s feelings.”

  These things had been bottled up inside her for so long that she was beyond controlling the way they came out.

  “I think he has a serious problem, Neil—more than just adolescence, more than just a hurt, lonely childhood, more than just adjusting to a new town. I think he has a real problem, and I think he needs help. And I know that I need help to cope with him.”

  She saw in his stance and in his eyes the expression that had quelled many a witness. “Do you even try to cope with him anymore?”

  “Oh, what’s the use!” Ginnie cried. “He’s your son, and you should be protective of him. But you should also look at him with some of the same skepticism you show me. I’m your wife, Neil. Don’t you think it’s time you started placing some value on what I tell you?”

  “Maybe I would, Ginnie, if you could ever present me with a calm, dispassionate view, but it’s difficult to place much credence on accusations made in the heat of anger.”

  “You aren’t blind, Neil. Don’t act like you are. Surely you can see what’s been going on.”

  “What I can see,” he said, “is that this house has become a war zone, just like the one we left in Little Rock, and I don’t like it.”

  And though he couldn’t bring himself to say the words, not yet, please not ever, Neil didn’t like facing the fact that this last year and a half might have been a mistake, that they had torn up their lives and lived a fool’s dream for nothing. He didn’t like acknowledging that Ginnie could possibly be right about Todd. He wouldn’t, couldn’t acknowledge that Todd needed professional help.