On first introduction, the men stood stiff as boards when Emma went to hug them. They wore cowboy hats and didn’t take them off in the house. And they chewed tobacco, which was an enormous amazement to her. Almost all the men and women in her family, even Great Aunt Ida, slumped over in a wheelchair, smoked cigarettes, having started long before any medical advice to the contrary. (But not on the street—the women in her family did not smoke on the street. Restaurants or cars were okay, but not on the street.) And here were these two, who looked just so nice in their crisp white shirts and dark ties and gleaming cowboy boots, which Emma found quite handsome, and who you would never tell had this disgusting black stuff in their cheeks, until they spat it into a little Coke bottle revoltingly half filled with putrid tobacco spit, or, worse yet, to the side in the lawn. Fifteen minutes after this sight, Emma got John Cole alone, gave him a big hug and told him he had better not ever for one instant consider chewing tobacco.
Whenever Emma recalled that time, she could only remember Pop and Charlie J. standing side by side, looking curiously at everyone and everything around them. She could not recall one instance of John Cole being with those two of his blood. It was as if he just passed by them and waved. And for her part, she could not recall any more conversation with them than a few awkward sentences of asking about their trip, directing the men where they were to stand for the wedding ceremony, and then thanking them for coming and bringing the presents. Right in the middle of the reception, the two men left. They wanted to get on down to Rockingham in order to be there for the NASCAR races the next day.
“They left already?” Emma’s mother had said, astounded. “They didn’t even give me time to get them into my mind.”
Weeks later, when looking over the wedding pictures, her mother said, “So that’s John Cole’s father…and that’s the brother. Well, it’s a good thing you picked the correct day for your weddin’, or those men would not have come. They don’t have races at Rockingham every weekend, you know.”
Her mother never had occasion to meet Nedda Berry, and as far as Emma knew, her mother had never felt compelled to drop the woman a line of any sort, because despite all the writing that she did, her mother did not drop anyone a line.
17
Matters of Opinion
He was following her around, so she asked him to get the suitcase from the top shelf of the closet. He got it and put it on the bed, saying at the same time, “You are gettin’ carried away.”
Of course she had known he would say this, these exact words. She had a reply ready. “You may be right.”
This surprised him so much that it was several minutes before he could speak. He looked at her, and she could practically read a ticker-tape running across his forehead that said, This is the result of marriage counseling, and I am not happy about it.
He said, “How do you even know she will be there? What if you fly all the way up there, and she isn’t in her office?” Then a stricken look. “You are not gonna track her down at her house?”
“Well, I don’t think so.” She hadn’t thought of that. “And if she isn’t in her office, then I’ll have a nice trip. But she’ll be there. Remember that time when Johnny was fifteen and sneaked out in your truck? We only thought we knew where he was, and we drove all the way to Lawton on the faith that we would find him, because we just had to. And we did. It’s like that.”
He looked at her like she had lost her mind. She felt herself wonder about it, too. In fact, she was momentarily so shaken that she turned from the thought and went to the telephone.
John Cole followed, huffing and puffing in a threatening manner, and talking a great deal about all the money being spent on the pool and the wedding. He always brought up the subject of money when he was against her doing something. Even before he spoke about the expense of airline tickets, she knew he was going to do it, and again she was ready.
“Air miles,” she said. “We get them with our credit card. We haven’t used any this year. I have enough for two free tickets.”
“Two?”
“Uh-huh. I’m askin’ Belinda.”
He said, “I’ll go with you. If you have to go, I’ll go with you.”
“Oh, honey. Thank you.” This she had not expected, and she was momentarily thrown, although she realized that she probably should have expected it. “But I think you are really needed here to see about the pool, and to tell Johnny that I’ve gone shopping, if he asks. We can’t both go.”
There was no way she could have him go along, telling her all the time that she was getting carried away and that she should not do what she was doing.
He looked quite relieved, and the next minute he left, saying he had to check on the pool and get to the office for a few hours. She thought that, for once, she was glad he was so occupied with business.
Belinda was at the bookstore in Lawton when Emma called. She was perusing the self-help shelf. It was loaded with books with titles like Make Your Love Life Sizzle, and How to Get Your Man to Communicate and So You Are A Crock-Pot and He Is A Microwave.
There simply was not anything for the woman who was a microwave and the man who was a talk-radio, which was what Lyle seemed to have become. It turned out that the new deputy, Giff Phelps, was the one responsible. Lyle was riding around with Giff on patrol, and Giff listened to talk radio and was putting all manner of ideas into Lyle’s head about consciousness raising. The previous evening, Belinda had fallen asleep to Lyle talking about the problems of global warming.
Hearing the ringing of her cell phone, Belinda whipped it out with relief at an excuse to quit looking at books that she didn’t want to read anyway.
Seeing Emma’s number on the screen, she answered, “What is it, sugar?”
“Would you be able to fly up to Baltimore with me tonight and come back tomorrow evenin’? I need to see someone, and we’d have time to shop.”
Belinda was capable of taking this in without saying what? After no more than two seconds, she replied, “Well…I think I could do that. Are you payin’?”
Emma said that she was. She had bonus mileage from her credit card. She wanted to leave mid-afternoon to drive to the Dallas airport, and added, “Just tell everyone that we are goin’ to Dallas. That’s not really a lie.”
“You got it,” Belinda said, and added, “I’ll drive.” She was so thoroughly her mother’s daughter that she could not stand to be a passenger. She never even let Lyle drive her.
At three o’clock that afternoon, Belinda turned her champagne-pink Lexus down the Berrys’ long, graveled driveway and stopped to the side of two battered construction-company pickup trucks. The backyard was mostly a big hole and piles of dirt, with men working in and around all of it.
Aware of the men looking at her, Belinda tiptoed her way in high-heels over the gravel and along boards laid toward the back door. Two of the closest men gave her appreciative smiles. She smiled back, making no pretense at innocence. Belinda radiated the charisma of a woman who took pride and pleasure in her hefty curves.
Emma came bursting out the back door. “I’m ready.”
Wearing practical jeans and walking sandals, she strode directly for Belinda’s car. John Cole came behind her, toting her suitcase. He did not look happy.
The trunk lid was already up. John Cole f lopped the suitcase inside. He started to grab Emma’s tote bag, but she held on to it, saying, “I need this,” and got herself into the passenger seat.
Belinda, who had managed to pick her way back to the driver’s side, slipped into the seat. John Cole leaned in through Emma’s window and asked if she had the airline printout, her credit card, the confirmation of the hotel and dollars to tip the baggage handlers.
“Yes, I do…yes…yes,” said Emma, dutifully showing each thing. “I’ve traveled before, John Cole.”
Then he opened his wallet and gave her more money, despite Emma saying that she did not need it and would be fine. Belinda resisted putting out her hand to him; he seemed too agitated
to get the joke.
He kissed Emma through the window, then ran his eyes back and forth between them and said, “You both be careful,” as if they were going to war.
When Belinda turned the car and started away down the drive, she caught sight of him in the rearview mirror, standing there gazing after them. When she pulled out on the highway, Emma let out a long breath, sat back in the seat, and gave an explanation of the situation and her intention to go to Sylvia Kinney’s office in the morning and convince her of the wrong-headedness of her opinion, or at least tell her a thing or two. These goals appeared somewhat at odds, but Belinda thought it wise not to point that out.
Besides, Emma was wound up and talking in a way that Belinda had never seen before. Belinda was fascinated.
Emma told of finding the address and phone numbers of the M. Connor store headquarters, and how easy that had been, and that she had even called and gotten as far as being put through to Sylvia Kinney’s secretary.
“As soon as I heard the secretary, though, I realized that talking on the phone or sending a letter is just not going to work. I need to talk to her in person. So I gave your name, and of course the secretary put me on hold and then came back and said Sylvia Kinney was in a meeting, so I said I would call back. John Cole thinks I have lost my mind, but I am going on faith. I just have to see her in person.”
All during the drive to the airport, Emma pretty well carried on a debate with herself about her actions, while Belinda offered nothing one way or the other, just saying a lot of, “Uhhuhs,” and a few “I see your points.”
Living with her mother, Belinda had learned how to be noncommittal. Giving an opinion in these matters so often ended up badly. Mostly people did not want an opinion, anyway. People wanted agreement. And as far as Belinda could see, there was no reason why Emma should not go up there and tell Sylvia Kinney a thing or two. Johnny Berry was a really good guy. Belinda herself was a little annoyed at anyone who would not find him so.
Besides, Belinda was excited about making the trip and the prospect of six or seven hours of shopping in a big eastern city. And since she did not have to pay for her f light or hotel, she had plenty of room on her credit cards.
She had wondered if going through the airport security might undo Emma to the point of abandoning the trip. Instead, though, the posse of official-looking people who kept demanding to see identification and who ran them back and forth through the scanner caused Emma to be distracted from her doubts by having to pay attention to all the instructions.
Belinda got pulled aside. There was just something about her that she always got pulled aside and personally searched. The security woman said it was her underwire push-up bra. Belinda said that if that was the case, why weren’t they pulling aside half the line of women?
“I think it is discrimination against all women over twenty-five and under eighty,” Belinda said, and not happily.
At the security woman’s frown, she shut up. Clearly she was not in Valentine anymore.
Then, as they waited at the boarding gate, Emma began to again get more and more worried and to repeat, “I have never in my life done such a thing. Oh, Lord, Mama would have a fit with me plannin’ on makin’ a scene. I am not goin’ to make a scene. I’m just going to speak to her. I sure hope she is there. I don’t know what I will say to John Cole if she isn’t there.”
Finally Belinda said, “You know, you can always change your mind right up to the time you enter Sylvia Kinney’s office. And in the meantime, we are on a nice trip away from everything, and goin’ to stay at a nice hotel and get to eat out.”
Emma gazed at her a moment, then sat back. “It is good to be away.” Then, “I am so tired of all that dirt with that pool.”
Belinda got them cold drinks in paper cups and a sack lunch from the Subway. Then she sat and looked at all the men passing and thought things like how few men in the world had good physiques but they all wanted women to have them, and that she was glad to be away from the drugstore, and that she hoped to buy some really nice sheets in Baltimore. She wanted the 1000 thread-count ones of Egyptian cotton. She thought Egyptian cotton sounded exotic.
When she checked her telephone, she found Lyle had called three times already. She called him back and discovered that what he wanted was for her to pick up a copy of U.S. News and World Report, because those were delivered a day late to Valentine. She was so astonished to find out that Lyle was reading the news magazine that all she could say was, “Okay.”
Afterward she sat there mentally telling God a thing or two, mainly: I did not marry Lyle for him to be smart.
Then they were on the plane and buckled into first-class seats. Belinda, pleased as could be, asked the stewardess for a glass of wine.
Emma asked for a glass of wine, too, and said again, “My word, I can hardly believe I am doin’ this,” but this time she chuckled.
Belinda repeated, “You can always change your mind right up until you get to her office. Here’s to a lovely trip.”
Gracie was working late again, so Johnny came to the store when he got off work at the Lawton Quick Stop. They had not seen each other since the past Sunday night, when he had left her at her apartment and driven out to work the night shift at the Valentine Quick Stop. They were both working really hard to save money to pay the expenses of the wedding and create a nest egg for setting up housekeeping. Johnny had said that his mom would have been happy to pay for a bunch more of the wedding, but Gracie would not let him say anything to his mother.
“Hey, babe,” he said now when he approached her, his blue eyes all sweet and hot for her in a way that never ceased to amaze her.
Johnny always looked so out of place in the women’s store. He would stand on the far right of the checkout counter, because on the left was the women’s intimate lingerie. He would not even look in the direction of the women’s intimates. His shyness in this was so cute. He was just cute, period, and lots of the other women who were in the store would try to flirt with him, so Gracie always took him into the rear office and storage area, which was what she did now, leading him by the hand.
Alone in the shadowy area, she immediately went into his arms and kissed him good. There had never been a boy who had ever made Gracie feel this way.
“Come on and quit early,” he said, looking at her in that way as if to eat her up.
“You know I cannot do that,” she said, all prim and proper. “I am a manager, Mr. Berry, just like you are. Sit there for a few minutes, but then you have to go.”
He straddled the chair and talked about them possibly going water-skiing with a group of friends that coming weekend, and about some things going on at the Quick Stops.
Gracie listened and unpacked a new shipment of skirts and jackets, hanging them on the M. Connor black hangers lined on a rack. Her own mind was flitting around the final choice of a wedding dress, and how she looked forward to studying the pictures of wedding gowns again that night in the peace and quiet of her own apartment. She had never taken a roommate. She liked living alone. This was because she was an only child. Johnny was the same way, so they had not moved in together, and she worried a little bit about this in light of their getting married. They had joked that they might have to have separate houses, but deep down she wondered if this had been her mother’s difficulty with marriage. She was thinking sadly that she did not want to end up like her mother, divorced and facing a lifetime alone, until she caught Johnny talking about his mother. It was like she came awake, wondering if she had heard him correctly.
“You told your mother about my mother not wanting us to get married?”
He gazed at her and blinked uncertainly. “Well, yeah…”
“I can’t believe you told her! I told you not to tell her yet.” A noise reminded her of the thin wall separating the storage room from the dressing rooms, and she dropped her voice. “How could you do that?”
She stared at him, the enormity of what had happened growing within her. Not only had he t
old his mother about her mother, but now he sat there casting her a dumbfounded expression about it all.
He said, “Look, she asked me. She’s asked a couple of times if I knew if your mother had said anything about gettin’ the card she sent with the engagement announcement. She hasn’t heard a word from your mother in all these weeks. What else was I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know—but you didn’t have to tell her right out. You could have just said that my mother had told me that she liked it.” Gracie had, in fact, been considering forging a reply from her mother to Emma. That such an idea was not only devious but a little crazy had made her hesitate a little too long, obviously, and now it was too late. “You could have told her to call me and let me handle it.”
“She’s my mother, and I was talkin’ to her. And she was goin’ to find out sooner or later that your mother doesn’t like me or my family. I think she would notice when your mother didn’t show up at the wedding.”
She did not like his sarcastic tone.
Straightening to her full five-foot-three height, she said, “My mother has plenty of time to work this out in her mind and decide to come. That’s her pattern. She wants her way, but when she can’t have it, she’ll come around rather than be left out. And it isn’t that she doesn’t like you and your family. She just doesn’t want me living out here so far away. How would your mother like it if you were marrying me and moving off to Baltimore? She wouldn’t like it, either.”
Chin Up, Honey Page 15
