At the Corner of Love and Heartache

by Curtiss Ann Matlock

  She raced on tiptoe over to Willie Lee, who she saw wore his red cape. “Willie Lee—” she knelt down and spoke in a hushed voice “—come on outside a minute.”

  “I am watch-ing my ants.”

  “I know, but you can come back and watch ’em. Come outside a minute. Ricky Dale has somethin’ he wants to show you.” She tugged at his cape.

  “O-kaayy. Come on, Mun-ro.”

  They had reached the kitchen doorway when Mr. James’s voice came from behind them. “Where are you kids goin’?”

  Corrine turned to see him wiping his face with a washcloth, which struck her as curious, although her mind went on quickly to thinking up what to say. “Just out in the backyard. One of our friends is here.”

  “Well, don’t be goin’ off. I don’t think Marilee would want you going anywhere when she isn’t here.”

  “We aren’t.” Corrine had Willie Lee by the hand and pulled him on through the kitchen and out the back door.

  Ricky Dale, sitting on the bottom step, hopped up. “Hey, Willie Lee.”

  “Hel-lo.”

  Corrine saw with a little worry that Ricky Dale had closed the big matchbox again; she hoped the little bird wasn’t smothered or squished.

  This worry was relieved when Ricky Dale opened the matchbox, and the little creature fluffed itself up. It was amazing how much smaller the already small thing could become.

  “A bird.” Willie Lee said with delight, blinking rapidly behind his glasses.

  The bird fluttered and fell over.

  Ricky Dale said, “I think it has a broken wing. Can you fix it, Willie Lee?”

  Willie Lee tilted his head, and his eyes went from Ricky Dale to Corrine. Then he looked back at the bird.

  “Maayy-be.”

  Corrine noticed how small her cousin’s hands were when they gently took the little bird. He showed it to Munro. “Lo-ok, Mun-ro, a lit-tle bird. Oh, it is ok-ay lit-tle bird-y. Do not be a-fraid. Mun-ro won’t hurt you. He likes birds.”

  Corrine had a sudden worry about disease. She had heard that birds could spread disease, by lice or something. She hoped Willie Lee didn’t catch something. It would be all her fault, if he did.

  Willie Lee, holding the small creature in one hand, stroked its head with one of his fingers. Corrine watched his hand and finger, but then she noticed it seemed like the sun was shining on him. She looked upward. The sky was clear, but she couldn’t see any particular shafts of sunlight.

  She looked again at Willie Lee, and her skin prickled as she saw that his pale hair seemed so bright, and that his glasses had glare on them.

  Just then Ricky Dale’s stupid puppy let out a woof and lunged up on Ricky Dale, knocking him off-kilter. Munro, who obviously didn’t want any excess woofing around Willie Lee, turned on the bigger dog and growled his displeasure.

  “Be quiet, Beau. Sit!” Ricky Dale ordered, but the dog had already lain down.

  Corrine, who had been distracted by Ricky Dale and his dog, found Willie Lee was opening his hand and giggling.

  “It tick-les,” he said. “Mun-ro, it tickles.”

  The bird was fluffing in Willie Lee’s lightly cupped hands.

  “Can it fly?” Ricky Dale asked breathlessly.

  “I think so. Maayy-be.”

  Willie Lee opened his hands and lifted them. The bird fluttered, and then the wing that had before been bent, came out to match the other, once, twice, and then the little bird flew up in the air. Corrine, her heart in her throat, watched it fly, little wings batting the air as it made a short trip to the clothesline pole, where it perched, tilting its little head back and forth at them.

  Munro gave a yip at the bird.

  “It flew,” Ricky Dale said.

  Corrine breathed deeply and gazed at the bird. Then a movement, something, caused her to glance at the back door, and she thought she caught sight of what could have been Mr. James’s white shirt.

  They had formed the basic plan for the wedding ceremony and were at a lull when Marilee felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle. It was the sensation she had whenever she sensed, usually correctly, that her children were up to something or needed her aid. She told herself to not react foolishly, as her gaze went to the telephone on the pastor’s walnut desk. The telephone, however, picked that fateful moment to ring.

  Marilee jumped and looked expectantly at the pastor, who said nonchalantly, “Naomi will get it,” and shifted in his chair, leaning forward with his forearms on his thighs.

  Marilee, who had sufficient experience with synchronicity, had to restrain herself from snatching up the phone when it rang a second time.

  Pastor Smith continued, “Well, then, now that we’ve got the actual wedding itself ironed out, I want to talk to you both about marriage in general.” He held up his hands. “Now, I know that you two are adults well experienced with life and the problems that can come up. You both probably know far more than I do about living, but I don’t see that as an excuse to give you two a cut-rate job.” He grinned in a hopeful manner.

  Marilee thought of how he was younger than herself by four years; he did seem happily married, however, with normally happy children. Five of them. How did he stay sane? Maybe he wasn’t.

  A knock at the door, and Naomi poked her head inside. “You need to take this call, dear.”

  Marilee watched the small, compact man go out, rather than take the phone right there at his desk, and, like a fast train south, her mind went from approving his forward thinking about the possible need for privacy to anticipating that the call concerned her children, that possibly something dire had happened.

  Her thoughts were jerked from this vein by Tate, rising from beside her on the love seat and stepping over to the large potted fern at the window, where he poured the contents of his china cup. This action, which she had only seen on comedies, astounded her.

  “Naomi makes the worst coffee I have ever tasted,” he said in a hushed voice, returning beside her on the couch and setting his cup back in its saucer. “I don’t like to disappoint her, though. She always seems so eager to please.”

  “I know. If she gives a choice, I usually ask for a cold drink.” She gazed at her own half-finished cup and was considering getting up and tossing it in the fern, too, although there was the question of possibly killing the plant. She had waited too long, though, because Pastor Smith appeared back through the door.

  At his smile, Marilee, remembering her concern for the children minutes before, felt reassured.

  “Sorry for that interruption.” Easing his khaki trousers, he resumed his seat in the chair across the coffee table from them. He gestured at their cups. “Would you two like more coffee?”

  “Oh, no, one cup is just fine for me,” Tate said instantly. “Keeps me awake.”

  The pastor regarded them. “Well, now, where was I?”

  “Something about marriage,” Marilee prompted. She had begun to feel the need to move things along in order to get done and get back to the children.

  “Oh, yes. I thought I’d go over some of the points I like to make to couples getting married. Probably this is old hat to you both, like I said, but I like to do my job.” He rubbed his hands together, as if warming himself up to the task. “Let me begin with the trickiest subject.” A brief pause. “Sex.”

  Tate said, “Well, sir, that’s always an attention-getter.”

  Marilee hoped she wasn’t about to learn something about Pastor Smith that she would find either annoying or distasteful.

  “Yes, it is…my point exactly,” said the pastor, clearly satisfied that his point was appreciated. “Sex,” he said, and rather loudly, his gaze moving from her to Tate, “has proven a good barometer for the state of a marital union. Falling in love is thrilling, but staying in love can be tiresome, and it requires attention. This is what commitment is about—paying attention.

  The pastor was a man who talked with his hands, and now he swept the air with one. “Pay attention, and commitment naturally foll
ows. If two people are interested in their sex life, paying attention to it, then likely the marriage is a happy one, based on honesty and openness with each other in all areas. If not, then the trouble is not in the bedroom, it just appears there, and it generally appears there earlier than people recognize, starting with inattention.”

  He took a breath and pointed with his finger. “Think about this, when either of you let yourselves get too distracted to pay open attention to each other, or quit being honest about your feelings. Don’t deny your feelings, pay attention to them and speak of them.”

  Marilee experienced this curious crawling sensation up her spine at the word feelings.

  “If you will pay attention and be totally honest in this one area of your life, likely you will be honest in all other things. It is sort of like me speaking of it first. Now that we’ve spoken of sex, I’ve got your attention, and we can go on much more easily to other things, can’t we?”

  Marilee, who realized that she had been anticipating some real revelations that hadn’t materialized on the sex subject, found herself preoccupied with ideas of a sensual nature. She wondered what other subjects could successfully follow that of sex and still be heard. She caught more about honesty of feelings, and experienced that crawling sensation again, and the admonition to make actions match words, and about how marriage could on occasion be a grind…something in there about wheat kernels being ground to useable soft flour.

  He ended by saying, “Read Psalm four. It’s a good one. Now, let’s have a word of prayer.”

  He put Marilee’s and Tate’s right hands together between his own and said, “God, bless these two hearts in union, and carry them through the next hectic weeks of bringing together a wedding. Amen.”

  What everyone appreciated about Pastor Smith’s prayers was that he got to the point.

  Fourteen

  A picture is worth a thousand words….

  They had visited with Pastor Smith for barely an hour, but when she stepped out the front door of the parsonage, it almost seemed like another day to Marilee. The sky had become hazy, and a breeze had come up. She pulled the collar of her coat closed. Tate put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. He looked like he was about to speak, but he did not.

  She wished he would speak whatever was on his mind. That she couldn’t seem to speak her own thoughts did not keep her from blaming him for not speaking his.

  Oh, Lord, keep me from shrewishness.

  They crossed the street in front of the church, and suddenly Marilee said, “Let’s go inside.”

  The double doors of the sanctuary were unlocked. Marilee thought Pastor Smith unlocked them each morning and locked up each night. He had started the practice of opening the sanctuary every day shortly after he had gone away to a pastoral retreat and returned with a beard and to introduce guitar music into the services. The beard was short-lived, but the guitar music and open welcome to the sanctuary had remained.

  Once a hobo had been found living in the sanctuary; he had been there for three days in the middle of the week. He had been extremely neat. Upon discovery, he said that he had come in for a retreat and felt much refreshed. The congregation had rallied to provide the man with assistance and a place to live, but the man, Hot-foot John, he called himself, said he was not a vagrant but a hobo and wanted to be on his way. The congregation outfitted him with brand-new clothes, a top-of-the-line backpack, food and fifty dollars in cash. After he had left, there had been discussion of keeping the sanctuary locked, but Pastor Smith had stood firm.

  Marilee told Tate all this standing there in the vestibule, gazing into the sanctuary that was bathed in ethereal sepia tones from the hazy afternoon light coming through the tall, gold glass at the top of the pictorial windows. When she had finished her tale, she realized she had not said as much to him in weeks. Maybe she had never told him such a lengthy narrative, and she could not imagine why she had done so now. He gazed at her, as if questioning this, too.

  Turning from him, she went into the sanctuary. He followed. Their feet made no sound on the thick carpeting. She slipped into the back pew, their regular place on Sunday. Tate slipped in beside her.

  Her gaze was drawn to the front and the dark wood of the altar. Everything was peaceful, empty of voices and movement.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  They sat in silence for some minutes in which Tate began to bounce his knee.

  “Tate,” she began, then stopped.

  He took her hand in his and squeezed it.

  Finally Marilee said, “I’m scared.” She paused to search for a complete and understandable explanation of her feelings, in order to share them as the pastor, and even Aunt Vella, had advised.

  Before she could come up with this explanation, however, Tate broke in, saying, “Well, me, too. I think only a numbskull would not be scared. I’ve been a bachelor for most of my life, and here I am, marryin’ a woman who is ten years younger than myself.”

  Marilee, who had experienced a slice of annoyance at being interrupted, was surprised. “I don’t even think about our age difference.”

  She realized she had held the expectation that Tate would soothe her fears, and here he was putting more out there. She was irritated with him for doing this, and irritated at herself for being irritated at him. She also thought his concern a little petty.

  “Ten years is not a great age difference,” she said. “Lots of people are ten years apart. Once people get to a certain age, a few years don’t mean anything.”

  “I don’t want you to look around one day and realize that you’re married to an old man.”

  “I will be.”

  His eyebrows shot up.

  “You will be old, Tate. Someday. And so will I. We can only hope this proves the case, anyway.”

  Tate’s expression turned reflective. “I believe you’re right there.”

  Marilee’s mind moved on to the fact that she was actually eleven years younger than Tate. Odd how he took it as ten. Maybe, being honest, she was somewhat glad to be a number of years younger, although speaking of this did not seem uplifting, so she let it go.

  “I don’t face being old very well,” he said.

  “I don’t think any of us do, but I don’t see the need to get all worked up over how things will be twenty years from now. Today is enough to handle.”

  Marilee spoke more sharply than she had intended, and her conscience pricked. She should apologize, but she did not, and sat there staring at the altar far in the front. Be honest with your feelings, the pastor had said. She would be—if she wasn’t so confused about them.

  “I want to marry you, Tate, and I’m scared to death, too.” She turned to face him, and having said that much, continued to push the words from her mouth. “And I need contact with you, Tate. But whenever I’ve initiated contact with you, you always have to run off somewhere.”

  He blinked twice, as if he had no clue about this. She wondered how in the world he could not have a clue.

  “We hardly have a minute to ourselves, Marilee,” he said.

  His frown bothered her. “We had quite a few minutes the other night in the swing, and you just up and ran off. The term is ‘running.’ That is what you did.”

  “We couldn’t do anything in the swing. I thought it best not to let things get out of hand. There’s no sense in gettin’ tied in a knot.”

  “There’s a lot people can do in a swing, underneath a blanket,” Marilee said, surprising herself. Her cheeks burned. But she thought of what Pastor Smith had said about honesty. She wanted to be honest about what she thought. This thing needed attention.

  “You simply didn’t want to be…well, intimate with me. You wouldn’t even get wrapped in the blanket with me. And before that, there was Wednesday morning in your car. You could have come in. We had the house to ourselves.”

  “I had things waiting for me at the paper…and you had work, too. You said that. You said you wanted to
work.”

  “Don’t you want to make love with me? Maybe we already have the intimacy problem the pastor was talking about. It is already showing up in the bedroom.”

  “We don’t have a bedroom.”

  “We could have gone to your house…before your mother came. We could go off to a motel—to the Goodnight.”

  “Would you do that? Do you want it like that? Sneaking around?”

  “Well, maybe not…I don’t know.” She could not nail down the difference between sneaking time alone in her house or sneaking it at the Goodnight but somehow there was a difference. She did not like the basic idea of sneaking.

  “I don’t care if we decide not to do anything about it, but I would like you to suggest sex, at least. To show me that you want me. If you wanted me, I think you would make certain that you showed me. I think every moment you got me alone, you would be kissing my socks off.”

  There. It was out. And she felt quite silly. But she did feel honest, and the honesty seemed to ride a wave of courage.

  “You know what I’ve always liked about you, Tate? That you are a man who takes initiative. I don’t want you to command me, but there are some things that I feel are important for you to do, and one of those things is for you to take the initiative in this situation.” Fair or not, that was what she thought.

  He gazed at her. She couldn’t read his expression. The next instant, however, he took her face in his hands, saying in a husky voice, “So you want some kissin’ that will knock your socks off?”

  She saw the raw intent in his eyes just before he kissed her.

  It was a thoroughly alluring kiss that turned redhot in an instant. They broke for air and then went back for more, all greedy and devouring.

  “Marilee…” His voice was hoarse and breathless when he lifted his head. There was pain and yearning so profound in his blue eyes that she could hardly bear it.

  “Oh, Tate.” She touched the side of his face. His dear face.

  “Marilee…Marilee, I…”

  Her flinging her arms around his neck and kissing him yet again stopped his voice but not the words that echoed in her mind. It was more than his words, it was the love and raw desire pouring out of his eyes and through his lips and eager tongue that kissed a hot, tantalizing trail down her neck.