“Doc’s out back, workin’ on a cow,” the young girl at the desk told him. She was new to him; she had dyed black hair, spiked. “You can go on back through here.”
Tate, tapping the newspaper against his thigh, went through the main lab room and opened another door, stepping into the large rear room with two stalls. Parker was coming out of one.
“Hey, Editor,” Parker said, peeling off a soiled glove that covered his arm to his shoulder.
“Hey, Doc.” Eyeing the plastic glove, Tate said, “I admire your courage, putting your hand deep into parts unknown.”
Parker grinned. “Always interesting. Found a Wal-Mart bag this time.”
“Empty?” Tate asked.
“Not exactly.”
Just then another figure stepped out from the stall, carefully closing the gate behind her. It was a woman. Slim, blond hair, good-looking. She had on a medical smock. Parker often had interns in training, and he seemed to manage to get the pretty females.
Parker introduced them. “Amy, this is the illustrious editor of The Valentine Voice, Tate Holloway. We all just call him Editor,” he said to the girl. “Editor, this is Amy Lawrence, my new partner.”
Partner?
Amy was a no-nonsense sort and stuck out her hand for a firm shake. “I’m Amy Lindsey now.”
Tate took that with surprise, looking from the woman to Lindsey, who blushed and rubbed his nose.
“He isn’t used to it yet,” the young woman said, flashing a grin. “I guess I’ll have to make him practice saying it: Mrs. Amy Lindsey.”
Lindsey put his now clean arm around her. “Yes, that’s right. Editor, please meet my wife…Mrs. Amy Lindsey.”
The two were about the same height and coloring. And they were clearly two people in love.
Tate recovered his senses. “Well, congratulations!” he said and stuck out his hand to shake Lindsey’s. “This is…quite a surprise. You go away to a veterinarians’ convention and return with a wife.” The man had upstaged him.
“Yeah, well…” said Lindsey, whose eyes returned warmly to the woman at his side.
“It came as a surprise to us, too,” she said with a laugh.
Tate said, “So, you have captured our proverbial bachelor. You must be awfully special.” He looked her over. She was younger than Parker, possibly as much as fifteen years younger, he would guess. The difference was probably a good match.
And she was a talker, was Amy Lawrence Lindsey. An up-front, straight talker, who quite quickly imparted the information that she and Lindsey had met over two years ago and renewed acquaintances at the convention. “I make up my mind pretty quickly, and Parker figured he wasn’t getting any younger.”
She draped herself there against her husband. They were in love. It was fantastic.
Probably won’t last, Tate thought, and then purposely swept that bit of uncharitable negativity out of his mind.
He was so stunned by this turn of events that he almost forgot his own news, and in fact when Lindsey asked why he had come by, he felt a little defeated. Then he held out the newspaper and showed his announcement to the man who had been Marilee’s former lover and almost husband.
“Well, that’s fine,” Lindsey said slowly after long seconds of looking at the photograph. His eyes came up to meet Tate’s. “I’m really glad for both of you, Tate. You’re good for Marilee.” He meant it.
“Thank you. I think I am, and I know she is good for me. And I was hopin’ you would be willin’ to stand up with me as my best man.” He was aware asking was a tall order, but he didn’t have a close friend, and he meant it as an honor to Lindsey, too.
“I’d be glad to, Tate. Thank you.” The man spoke sincerely.
“You bet.” Well, he’d said what he had come to say. He shook Lindsey’s hand and wished the two newlyweds a good future, then walked back out into the late winter sunshine, fighting off a very foolish annoyance at Lindsey for having upstaged his news. As he got back in his car, he figured his general attitude of Parker Lindsey being a childish sort was the pot calling the kettle black.
Then his gaze fell to the newspaper lying on the seat beside him, to his and Marilee’s picture. Happiness took over, for Lindsey who he no longer had to feel guilty about leaving odd man out, and for himself, because he was getting the woman of his dreams, and for the whole dang world.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror and saw he was smiling broadly. He was a pretty handsome fella.
Coming back into town, stopping at the light at Main and Church Streets, he saw Mayor Upchurch, a bucket of fried chicken under his arm, crossing the street from the Quick Shop to City Hall.
“Hey, Walter!” Tate hollered, and waved the paper out the window while turning to slip up to the curb in front of City Hall.
Just then a horn blared and brakes squealed. It was a brown UPS truck taking the same space while Tate had been looking at the mayor. He squeezed on past and pulled to the curb haphazardly in front of the truck.
“Hey, Editor!” It was Buddy Wyatt, his young neighbor from the far end of Porter Street, popping out of the UPS truck with a large box.
“Sorry I about ran into you,” Tate said, “but I’m engaged!” Tate thrust the newspaper at him, and the young man peered at the front page, then slid his gaze to Tate. The boy probably thought Tate beyond such a thing as newlywed bliss; Buddy wasn’t but about twenty-five, lived at home with his mother and had as a main ambition to sport the biceps of Atlas.
“Hey, that’s cool, Editor. But you’d better be more careful watching where you’re goin’. Don’t think your fi-an-cée would be too happy should you get run over.” He gave the box he carried a bit of a toss, flexing his biceps, which showed beneath the short sleeves he sported, even in the winter, and then went through the door that Mayor Upchurch held open.
Tate showed the mayor the announcement as the two of them entered the building. Walter Upchurch handed him the warm bucket of chicken and took the paper, reading the announcement aloud; he slapped Tate on the back, and together they showed all the clerks, and the mayor’s wife, who stopped by, caught her husband with the greasy fried chicken and scolded him severely for setting himself up for a heart attack and leaving her a lonely widow.
Tate thanked God for giving him a partner like his Marilee and not a harpy like Kaye Upchurch.
From City Hall, he went down to the Main Street Café, where he showed everyone in there his great news and bought a round of coffee. After that he continued up and down Main Street, with its shops sporting fluttering flags of various sentiments and its sidewalks newly planted with redbud trees, for which Tate had led the fund drive. He stopped in the shops and met people on the sidewalk, and spread the news that he and Marilee were formally engaged and had set the date for their nuptials. He wanted to make certain everyone knew, and he wasn’t trusting to the newspaper or gossip to get the job done.
At the Sweetie Cakes bakery, he ordered a double chocolate cake for that evening, a surprise and celebration of the official announcement. “Marilee loves her chocolate,” Bonita Embree said knowingly.
“I know how to keep my girl happy,” Tate said.
Bonita, laughing gaily, said, “Better than sex.”
Tate ducked out on that and headed down to Grace Florist, where he ordered a mixed spring bouquet.
“It’s still winter. May snow, the weatherman says,” said Fred Grace.
“All the more reason for a spring-looking bouquet. Deliver it this afternoon, will ya’?”
He wrote on the card to go with the flowers: Thank you for agreeing to be my wife…with love from the happiest man in the world. Lay it on thick.
Why did he feel vaguely guilty? He hadn’t known she was coming at the crack of dawn to make him coffee. She had hurried away, like she didn’t want him to bother her. And he hadn’t thought she seemed as if she wanted him to ask about her unusual actions. Marilee could get real touchy about some stuff.
Probably it was her way o
f celebrating this special day, and he wanted to show her that he felt the same.
Outside of the florist he ran into Norm Stidham, owner of the Texaco, married for thirty-five years and father of eight. “Well, you’ve been a bachelor for quite a while, Editor,” Stidham said in his direct manner. “Do you know full well what you are gettin’ into?”
To which Tate replied, “Yes, sir, I do. I’m more than ready to take me a wife and her children.”
It was with this swelling thought that he entered Blaines’ Drugstore and showed the announcement to Vella Blaine, Marilee’s aunt and the most influential person in her life.
Vella was handling the soda counter by herself, it being a quiet time of day at the drugstore. She met him with her normal warm smile and reached to take the newspaper out of his hand. “Marilee called me this morning, but I was on my way to the Home Depot and haven’t had time to call her back. Perry!” she shouted. “Come out and see Tate and Marilee’s engagement in the paper. Tate’s brought it hot off the press.”
Tate watched the older woman’s face as she peered through her bifocals, reading the announcement. For the first time he noted a bit of resemblance between the older woman and Marilee. It was there in the concentrated expression.
He felt a little disconcerted with the realization. Although he admired Vella’s intelligence, grace and liveliness—in fact, he often encouraged Marilee to loosen up and be more lively—in that moment the thought sliced through him that if Marilee adopted some of the attitudes that Vella had of late, he would not care for it at all. Vella could get out of hand. She could be a demanding woman.
He had this thought as Perry came out from the pharmacy, smoothing his hair down as if he were about to face a judging. “What is it, Vella? I couldn’t hear you.” His gaze came to Tate. “’Lo, Tate, how are ya?”
With a raised voice, Tate said, “I’m an officially engaged man.”
“It’s Marilee’s and Tate’s engagement announcement in the paper,” Vella told her husband. Perry had been getting progressively harder of hearing and was resisting a hearing aid. His resisting annoyed his wife, but Tate could understand the man’s point of view. Some things were hard for a man to accept.
“I read it. I read the paper online this mornin’.” Perry was definitely a video man; he loved his television and had recently gotten hooked up to the Internet through cable.
Vella said with aggravation, “Tate brought the paper especially to show us. You need to read the announcement printed on real paper.” Vella was not a fan of television or computers.
Perry nodded and took the newspaper his wife shoved at him and began to read, while Vella asked Tate if he wanted cold tea or hot coffee. Tate chose the coffee.
When Vella set it in front of him, she said, “Marriage to Marilee isn’t goin’ to be one long picnic. You’d better be ready goin’ in.”
He blinked. “Yes, ma’am. I don’t believe any marriage is any picnic.”
“You got that right. Just remember that Marilee is your gift from God and you are her gift from God. Know that deep down, and then, when disagreements come, you can stand them.”
She cast Perry a glance of rare adoration, and this surprised Tate, who averted his gaze to his coffee and pondered what he and Marilee would be like at their age.
He would wear a hearing aid, he decided.
When Tate got up to leave, Perry slapped a hand on his shoulder and walked him to the door, leaning close to his ear to say, “If you decide you want any of that Vi-agra, I can give you a discount, since you’ll be family. You let me know.”
Tate managed to reply, “Okay…bye now,” and got himself out on the sidewalk, where he stood for a few seconds in a daze, then spied Sheriff Oakes stepping of the police station next door and turning in Tate’s direction.
“Hi there, Neville. Have you seen the paper yet?”
Tate waved the paper at the big man, who was a good head taller and twice as big around, and who took the newspaper and read the headline, saying, “Well, well,” even as he moved the toothpick he invariably kept in his mouth from one side to the other.
Tate, watching the toothpick, reassured himself that the big man had not, in the year that Tate had known him, come near choking.
The sliver of wood disappeared into the sheriff’s mouth, where the sheriff broke it in two before he leaned to the side and spat it out. “Well,” the sheriff said again, “I congratulate you, but I really think you should give this another thought. You don’t know when you are well-off. Here you are at middle-age…”
Tate sort of jumped at that. Middle-age? It was true, but he didn’t like the sound of it.
“…with a fancy car and a house on your own. You are set, man. She’ll make you get rid of that car, and take my advice and don’t be fallin’ for that ‘honesty in everything, so we can be closer’ stuff. My wife still won’t let me forget about what I told her about when I was seventeen. And just a minute ago she called to tell me she is haulin’ my butt off on one of those Caribbean cruises. Says we have to relate. She gets that on Oprah.”
The sheriff pulled out a fresh toothpick and jabbed it in the air toward Tate. “We got three kids. Wouldn’t you say that’s relating?”
Tate said he thought it was.
“Well, I gotta get on down to the bank and see about a loan for this romantic Caribbean getaway. Maybe go see about a vasectomy, too, because I don’t want to end up with another tax deduction from this trip, either. Take my advice and don’t encourage Marilee for any more children.”
He headed on down the sidewalk, leaving Tate standing there, blinking and drawing in a good breath, struggling to hoist his enthusiasm back up from the ditch that had momentarily swallowed it. This was hard work, as now his thoughts were running with questions. Surely Marilee wouldn’t want any more children.
What if she did, and he couldn’t provide them? He didn’t know about that, not having any of his own. And he was middle-aged. Uncle Perry’s voice offering the stimulating virility drug echoed in memory.
Was he up to all that was going to be required of him?
Five
A Chocolate Day…
Charlotte called and told her, “Leo, Jr.’s on his way over with five copies of the paper. That way you’ll have some clippings for your mother. I know she’ll want to show them around.”
“Oh, yes. Thanks so much, Charlotte. I had forgotten.” Marilee raked back her hair and thought how Charlotte was good at remembering these details. Charlotte took loving care of her invalid mother; she bought Mrs. Nation an ice-cream cone almost every day and fed it to her.
“I’ll laminate two clippings,” Charlotte said crisply. “That way you’ll have one, and one for your mother. Permanent copies.”
Laminate? The announcement could end up outlasting the marriage.
Replacing the receiver, she scolded herself for such negative thoughts. One could not go into a marriage with such an attitude.
Oh, maybe it was normal to have fears. Life certainly was not a secure proposition.
Of late, painful memories of the past seemed to be weighing on Marilee’s shoulders. Neither herself, her sister Anita, nor their mother had thus far succeeded in what could be called a good and lasting relationship with a man. Her grandmother, her mother’s mother, had had three husbands, one had embezzled and run off, one had just run off, and another had stayed while having a continual affair with a neighbor woman.
Maybe it was some disorder of the female side of the family, like something lacking in the blood, causing them not to choose well, or to drive men to drink, to dire actions, or to simply run away.
With thoughts of her own mother, Marilee opened the center drawer on her desk and took out a chocolate Hershey’s Kiss. It was the last one in the little dish. She unwrapped it and popped it on her tongue. Then she sighed.
She had always felt herself to be one more disappointment in a lifetime of disappointments to her mother. Right off the bat, Marilee had been a girl in
stead of the boy that Norma had been set on as a first child. Her mother had counted on a son to take care of her, since she had already discovered her weak husband was not going to do that to her satisfaction. Second, Marilee had not come to be the great beauty that won the “Little Miss” contest in grade school nor the homecoming queen title in high school. A shy and studious girl, she had refused to even enter those contests, no matter how her mother had coerced, pleaded, threatened.
Then Marilee had run off to college, leaving her mother alone to cope with a failing husband and high-spirited younger daughter. Marilee had married Stuart, who was, to his credit, a semifamous and successful man, and who had proceeded to take Marilee off even further to see the world, while her mother was back home dealing with a husband who had the disgrace to choke to death while drunk and leave his wife, a victim of leftover Victorian mores, desperately seeking another man to support her.
When Marilee had returned home, she had divorced Stuart—her mother had not divorced her father, no matter what—so therefore she gave her mother a divorced daughter with an embarrassing grandchild who was disabled. Furthermore, Marilee had had an affair, which the entire town knew of, with Parker Lindsey, a very eligible bachelor and up-standing veterinarian, but had not gotten him to the altar.
That Marilee had turned down the altar because she had grown to see many errors in her ways, primarily that she and Parker were not at all a suitable match, was not how her mother saw it. In her mother’s eyes, her daughter had failed to snatch up a good thing and become a well-to-do woman of society, such as it was in Valentine.
Now, at last, Marilee was doing something right in her mother’s eyes. “Well, I’m so glad you are showing some sense, Marilee. I won’t have to worry about your future,” her mother had said upon receiving the news of the engagement.
At the Corner of Love and Heartache Page 4
