Harder to dispatch were the memories. Each time one of the tree limbs had fallen, Emma would wince and remember things about the tree—how John Cole had tied a rope swing from it for Johnny, and then how she had used the swing herself at lonely times when Johnny and John Cole were both away. When the noise of the jackhammer had started on the basketball court, Emma had gone into the house and all the way into the bathroom to gaze at herself in the mirror, wondering where the years had gone.
Looking at her image in the glass so closely, she was forced to see not only a few more lines around her eyes, but also that she had the tremendous tendency to complicate matters. She could not understand her own actions. Why in the world had she entertained for one moment the idea of building a pool at this particularly stressful time in their lives? Was trying to recover her marriage and get another one started off on the right foot not enough of an effort? How could she not remember previous projects?
There had been the remodeling of the kitchen, when she decided that, since they were doing that, they might as well do the bathroom, too. There were days of not being able to cook and having to shower in five minutes, so that John Cole could keep the water turned off while he worked.
And the time they decided to tile the front entry and ended up ripping up every bit of carpet and laying tile all through the house, clear to the bedrooms.
And even the redwood swing-set for Johnny—by the time it was finished, they had added on a double-deck fort, and the project had taken a week and a half of hard work in the hot sun.
It always started out like such a wonderful idea, and she ended up hating it all, and once John Cole started, he would turn all his attention to the project and none to her and their marriage. Why had she not thought of any of this?
She made the mistake of voicing these questions to her mother, who said, “You never remember any of it. I’ve watched you. It is like you have no memory or idea of it. It’s because you have never seen reality and always let your imagination run away with you.”
“Thank you, Mother,” Emma said. “But I can dig my own grave. In fact, they are starting the hole out back right now.”
To deal with her sense that the matter had gotten out of control, each morning Emma took out refreshments and walked around like a Red Cross worker, serving plastic cups of cold tea and cookies to the crew. John Cole told her that the men brought their own drinks and took a good lunch break in town, but Emma did not feel she could have people spending all day in her yard and not serve something. At least it was something that she knew how to do to help with the progress.
Also, among the workers was one young man, surely not out of his teens, who was so skinny that Emma couldn’t stand it. After the first time he wolfed down three cookies, she ended up bringing out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and fruit, as well.
She was poring over pictures of patio furniture and trying to ignore the sound of a digging machine in the yard when the back door opened and John Cole came through, every stride announcing big trouble.
“Well, your pool just went up in cost by another six thousand dollars.”
Her pool?
She watched him jerk open the refrigerator. “The sewer line is not where it was supposed to be.”
She wondered how a sewer line could migrate.
He brought out a Coke and slammed the door closed. “If you want your pool, we’re gonna have to move the line. Dig it up and re-lay it. To make the completion date, that’s gonna mean overtime.”
He gazed at her, as if demanding some sort of answer.
Her mind cast around for salvation. “I thought they checked for the sewer line and said it was clear.” Immediately, from his expression, she knew that had not been a helpful thing to say.
“Yes, they checked and found a sewer line. It is there, just like it shows on the old plans of the house. Unfortunately, that is an old line, and there is a new one, put in before we bought the house, and that’s the one in use. It runs parallel to the old for only two feet, then it angles off and runs right across the yard.” His tone was like the jackhammer the men had used to break up the basketball court.
Emma took this all in as fast as possible, and what came out of her was, “Do you want to call it all off?”
His eyes widened.
“We can do that and just go with a patio,” she said. “Then we wouldn’t have all this extra strain. I am perfectly agreeable to simply having a patio, right there where our pool would have been.” She took special note that his eyes blinked when she said our.
“We can’t do that! We’ve started on this now. We’ve taken out the tree and started diggin’. We’re committed.”
We ought to be committed, she thought, seeing him looking at her like she had lost her mind.
Her reply was, “Yes, we can change our minds.” She put forth a calmness she had not known she could possess. “It is Goode Pool and Patio. We can just tell them to build us a patio with our down payment.” Suddenly the urge to run away from home left her.
John Cole gazed at her for a moment in which she didn’t blink.
Then his gaze slid sideways. He raked a hand through his hair. Something in the way he did it caused a softness to spring into her heart and sort of melt all over her.
“They’re already diggin’,” he said. “We’re this far, we might as well finish,” and he looked at her hopefully.
“I just want you to know that if you want to stop now, it’s okay with me. The most important thing is for us to get along and be together for Johnny’s wedding.”
After a long moment, he said, “I don’t want to stop. Not now.”
“Okay.” She tried not too appear too satisfied.
He left at a slower pace than he had entered, and she sat there gazing at the muddy footprints he had left behind.
As she got on her knees to wipe up the mud, all the while feeling the muddiness inside of herself, too, she thought that she was never going to see arguing in a favorable light, not ever, and she’d had about enough, too, of trying to understand herself and her marriage. No wonder people got divorced. It certainly was a lot easier and less messy to just give up.
But then, if one did not go through a mess, one would never get a pool, and probably the same for a good marriage, too.
Some thirty minutes later, the back door again opened. Emma looked toward it with hesitancy to see John Cole with face alight somewhere between sheepishness and elation.
“I just want to let you know that we don’t have to move the pipes after all. We’re turnin’ the pool. Just thought I’d check—does that work for you?”
She told him that he was very clever to come up with a solution, because she had no doubt that the solution had come more from him than the pool builder, who was too busy worrying about three other jobs that he was doing and had pretty much laid this one in John Cole’s hands.
“Whatever you think is necessary and best works for me,” she replied, quite proud of herself, too.
“All right then, it’s a go.” With a happy expression, he shut the door.
As the days and work progressed, Emma repeatedly reminded herself that the important thing was that they were getting a pool that not only was going to serve wonderfully for the bridal-shower barbeque but would be a family gathering place for years to come.
Judging the importance of an issue was a saving grace that Emma had picked up in their marriage counseling sessions, of which they had now had three.
She had been a little surprised to see that, most of the time, the things that seemed upsetting really were not all that important in the long run. Yet she was a little disappointed that the marriage counseling seemed to be producing little in the way of positive results. It seemed like she and John Cole were getting worse, not better. It seemed that they got into an argument about every other day, although none so bad as the one that had happened after the first session.
Neither one of them mentioned that argument, not even to Catherine. Of course, it would have
had to be Emma to bring it up, because John Cole still never brought anything up. He did, however, continue to go willingly to the sessions, and he would talk about a subject when Emma brought it up.
Contrary to how things seemed to Emma, however, Catherine said that the arguing showed their marriage had improved. She said that couples who bottled things up, as Emma and John Cole had been doing for years and years, were actually more in jeopardy than couples who argued constantly.
According to Catherine, Emma and John Cole had sat on a lot of words and emotions over many years, and now those words and emotions needed to come out. She used the illustration of a boil that has to be lanced so that the pus can drain away in order for healing to begin.
Emma did not appreciate her marriage and life being compared to a boil, and she was having trouble with the idea of arguing as actually being healing. She was doing her best, though, to keep an open mind about everything Catherine told them. The woman had special training, after all, and they were paying her.
To help them become more comfortable with the process of learning to face conflict, Catherine suggested that, between sessions, Emma and John Cole write down when they were having an “angry moment” as she called them, and then bring these concerns to be discussed in-session.
The previous week, Emma had brought a whole notebook page to the third session. That was when Catherine had brought up the idea of asking how important something was.
John Cole, of course, did not write anything down, or if he did, he did not show it. He appeared to be the calm one—a picture that was not all that accurate, Emma could have told Catherine.
Since the third session, Emma had continued to write down her concerns, which really did help to calm her. However, at future sessions, she did not intend to pull out her list unless John Cole brought out one of his own first.
The digital clock on her worktable read 1:35 a.m. when she finally laid aside her colored pencil and stretched her aching back. It would do.
She was pleased with her efforts, but her neck was stiff, her back hurt, and she thought she just might throw herself in front of a fast-moving truck if she had to think of one more card design.
When Belinda had begun selling her cards, Emma had been so excited. People liked them! She felt like a real artist! But now that she had to produce on a timetable, a contrary part of her was rebelling. It had been a hard struggle to finish even four new designs. Her mind simply balked, as stubborn as a recalcitrant child. Her muse wanted to think for hours about the situation with her marriage and the pool and the barbeque and wedding details, not to mention fantasies of being grandmother to the most wonderful grandchildren ever. With all of that to think about, she had great difficulty drumming up enthusiasm for the production of greeting cards.
After turning out the light over her worktable, she went through the house lit by a bright moon. In the kitchen, she turned out the light over the sink and then paused at the back door to stare out at the yard.
Rather than heaps of dirt and wood frames for concrete, she saw the finished pool with water shimmering in the moonlight, and she and John Cole floating in chairs, a fragrant warm breeze gently stirring the leaves of the trees. Candles appeared all around the edge of the pool, and music came out of the darkness. It was George Strait singing a love song. John Cole had a bottle of champagne in a floating bucket. He poured a glass and gave it to Emma, then poured his own and led them in a toast.
Her mother was right: she did have quite an imagination. And it was a blessing. It was imagination and hope that kept people from throwing themselves in front of speeding trucks and propelled them to get up and try another day, even in the face of all they experienced.
In the family room, the television was tuned to the Speed Channel and John Cole was asleep in his big recliner. This scene was something of a jolt, coming right after her extensive imaginings.
She gazed down at John Cole for a long time. So often in his sleep he frowned deeply, and he was doing that now, as if he were working out some problem with the pool or with Berry Corp. Or maybe with me, she thought. Often he did look at her as if he could not fathom her.
Taking up the remote, she clicked off the television, and as she set the remote down, her gaze returned to John Cole. She thought: This is the man to whom I have been married since I was a teenager. This is the man I have lain with and had a child with and pledged to God to share my life with.
Hesitantly, wondering whatever she would say to him should he waken, she squeezed herself into the chair beside him. She had to move his arm, but he did no more than take a deep breath. She wiggled a bit and got her head onto his shoulder. His heart beat loudly in her ear. The position was not at all comfortable, but she continued to lie there, to listen to his heartbeat and his breathing next to her.
She would not have done it, of course, had he been awake, for a lot of reasons that she did not want to think about at that moment. She kept telling herself she was going to get back up, but she did not, and fell asleep.
John Cole awoke around four in the morning and found Emma wedged against him. He didn’t know what to make of it. He scratched his head with his free hand and moved enough to ease his back and the arm upon which Emma lay.
She settled more deeply against him.
He smoothed her hair, then smoothed it again and gently laid his chin upon it, embracing her carefully with his other arm. Then he fell back to sleep.
He slept off and on for another few hours and was awake but pretending to sleep when Emma awakened and got out of the chair. He seriously doubted that he would be able to get up too easily.
On the morning of their fifth marriage counseling session, as she gathered John Cole’s shirts for the laundry, a New Hope Counseling Center business card fluttered out of one of the pockets. No surprise. Each time after their session, the receptionist gave them a new card with the date and time of their next appointment. John Cole always stuck it in his pocket, because Emma noted the appointment on her pocket planner.
But her eyes fell on the card as she went to throw it in the wastebasket. The date penciled in was for the past Friday.
That was odd. She took a second look at the card.
She could not have made a mistake about their appointment being for today, which was Tuesday. She and John Cole had confirmed it with each other before he had left early that morning. They were meeting at the counseling office at two in the afternoon. John Cole was catching up on business while the pool building crew was occupied at another site. He would be visiting each of the Berry stores and a couple of suppliers, while Emma shopped for party items for the barbeque.
The time on this card was even wrong. It was for eleven in the morning.
And why was there a circle around Ted Owens’ name? Catherine’s name should…
A great light came on behind her eyes.
This was John Cole’s personal appointment.
And he had not said a word to her.
She gazed at the card for long seconds. Then she grabbed up John Cole’s shirts and headed for the laundry room. She put the shirts of the man who did not tell her important things in his life into the washer and switched the water to scalding hot.
Dropping the lid of the washer so that it banged, she went to the kitchen and drank stale coffee that she warmed-over in the microwave, the door of which she closed so hard it bounced open—twice. While she stood drinking the steaming coffee, she tapped the business card on the counter, thinking thoughts along the lines of: here she was again. How did she always end up in this confusing place? What had she done over thirty-two years to end up like this? How could she be so deficient that she could not talk to her husband and he to her? What other things had he not told her? Maybe she had just better ask him.
The telephone rang. By then, she had a lot to say to John Cole. She raced to answer, glancing at the caller ID and—seeing what she thought was John Cole’s cell phone, ah-ha!—said, “I’m glad I caught you…” Then came her mother’s voice.<
br />
Emma had a moment of disorientation. She had been so upset—and myopic—that she hadn’t read the entire number, and the first digits of her mother’s number were the same as John Cole’s.
Her mother was saying, “…organization called League of the South, and they show Oklahoma on their map, big as lightnin’. And according to the Congressional…”
“Mama, I can’t talk now, the toilet’s runnin’ over,” she out-and-out lied, and her tone was rude.
“Well…okay, honey,” her mother said. “Call me later, please? I want a box of pictures from your…”
Emma hung up and considered calling John Cole, then decided she would not speak of this on the phone. She would bring it out in their session with Catherine.
There was no trying on outfits. She went right for the smart summer-silk pantsuit. From the rear of the closet, she brought forth the little open-toed black patents Belinda had sold her. Two-and-a-half-inch heels. She had questioned being able to walk in them, but had not one difficulty. Checking her image in the mirror before leaving the house, she was satisfied to see that she looked like she knew a thing or two in many areas.
She drove over to Duncan and did the shopping that she wanted to do before the session. She had no trouble deciding between plastic or real glasses and dinnerware, or cheap or elaborate poolside furniture. She chose the real, the elaborate and the costly. She got it all done in a shockingly short time and arrived fifteen minutes early at the counseling offices, with plenty of time to visit the restroom, get the mascara smudges wiped from beneath her eyes and replenish her lipstick. Then she sat with crossed legs, one open-toed foot bouncing, and watched the door for John Cole, while she went over in her mind just how to greet him and what she wanted to say to him.
As it turned out, John Cole was late. She stopped thinking about what she wanted to say to him and worried that he might not come at all. Catherine had just greeted her when John Cole came rushing in the door.
Chin Up, Honey Page 13
