Chin Up, Honey

by Curtiss Ann Matlock

  He could handle the most difficult customer at the stores. He didn’t know why he couldn’t do the same with this woman.

  “It’s great that you could stay for a-while,” he said. “Gracie’s real happy.”

  She looked at him. “Yes. I’m glad for the opportunity, too.”

  He didn’t know what it was about the woman, but when he was around her, he felt like a balloon pricked by a needle, and all of his self-confidence whooshed out.

  After what seemed an eternity, Gracie finally came back. He wasted no time saying that he had to leave. He bade Gracie’s mother a polite goodbye, and she gave him a nod and a look that clearly said she thought him an idiot.

  Gracie walked down to his car with him, her hand in his. He kept glancing at her and wondering about the differences between them. The doubt about him and Gracie that seemed always to shadow him grew into a big dark cloud. This time even the sexy parting kiss she gave him did not seem to help.

  As he got into his car, something made him glance upward. He saw Gracie’s mother looking down from the apartment window. Driving away, he felt like darts were shooting through the air at his head.

  Before he fully realized his decision, he had turned his car for Valentine and home. He drove at top speed over the blacktop, with the hot air blowing around the car and the air conditioner going full blast on him. When he passed the Welcome to Valentine sign, he relaxed a little. On his way through town, several people called hello and waved. He felt himself filling up.

  He drove on to his parents’ house, where his mother came out to greet him with her usual enthusiasm, and he filled up a little more. The idle thought occurred that maybe after each encounter with his future mother-in-law, he would need to return to his mother to get put to rights. He saw the idea in pictures in his mind like a long glimpse of a disconcerting future.

  “Do you want supper?” his mother asked with eagerness. “I have made tamale pie.”

  But he could not eat, and declined. That would not do, of course, and she went away to get him at least a snack, while he stayed out back, looking at the progress of the pool and talking with the foreman of the construction crew. He felt a strange reluctance to go into the house. He was already beginning to feel he did not belong. He was having the dismal feeling of not belonging anywhere, as if he had left behind one part of his life but had not yet fully entered another.

  The crew knocked off for the day, and his mother came with a cold can of Coke and three of her homemade chocolate-chip cookies, the type that had greeted him on his return from school each day as a boy. They sat together, too, as they had then, on the back steps. His mother had always liked to sit on the back steps in the early evening. The concrete was warm through their jeans. She laughed about it, as she laughed about so much. He saw her shiny hair blow in the breeze and her bright smile that was only for him. He was suddenly very grateful for her, so much so that he had to look away, not wanting her to see his face.

  He asked where his father was, and she told him that he was working late with the accountant on the new store opening. Johnny felt a little guilty that he had not been paying much attention to those matters and being more of a help to his father. He had been preoccupied with Gracie and getting married.

  His mother pointed out at the yard and began talking about how the pool area was going to look for the family bridal-shower barbeque. She painted him such a thorough picture that instead of seeing the mounds of dirt and construction debris, he saw a manicured lawn, sweep of tile veranda and sparkling water. He saw the tables and the strings of Chinese lanterns his mother said she had just purchased, and the big new barbeque grill his dad had ordered.

  “It’s goin’ to be lovely,” she told him, excited as all get-out. His mother could get excited about such stuff.

  He agreed, but he felt a little nervous, too. “Who all is comin’ to the barbeque?” he asked.

  His mother recited the invitation list from memory. He began to see the pool area milling with family and friends that he had known since birth. He tilted his can of Coke and drank deeply.

  After a few minutes of silence, the both of them staring at the yard, his mother asked, “So what’s up with you?” as deep down he had hoped she would.

  Without looking at her, he told her that he had been seeing Gracie when he could. “With her mom there, we don’t get much time together.” Hearing jealousy in his voice, he added, “It’s nice for Gracie, though, that her mom could be here for a while. She’s really happy about it, and it won’t be for too long.”

  “Of course it’s nice her mother could come out and spend some time. But it’s natural for you to be a little lonesome for her, too.”

  “Yeah,” he said, feeling a little better at getting out some of the nagging feelings, and because his mom was on his side.

  He felt enough better, in fact, that he turned to her and was able to speak about the worries that had been piling up. “Her mother may have come out and quit bein’ against the marriage, but she sure isn’t for it, either, and she lets it be known, too.”

  After a moment, he added, “I guess it is true—Gracie and I are really different, Mom. Even some of the guys have noticed it. I mean, look at where Gracie comes from and look at where I come from. Gracie’s been all over to places like New York and Paris. She just knows all sorts of stuff that I don’t. She can speak French and knows about wines…and knows right where all these little foreign countries are.”

  “I imagine you know things she doesn’t know. You know all about cars and the convenience-store business and how to guide yourself by the stars.”

  He was more irritated than comforted by his mother trying, as she always did, to put a good face on things. “Gracie and I are like night and day. She’s from all the way back east, and I’m from out here. Those are two different worlds. You know, sometimes I can’t even understand what she’s said. Maybe Gracie’s mom is right and this whole thing is a mistake.”

  “I came from the East Coast, too, and your dad was from out here,” she said.

  “Well, yeah…but you both more or less talked the same and lived the same.”

  “Oh, no…no, we didn’t. And right before we got married—and I mean only two days before the wedding—I went to your grandmother and just cried that I couldn’t get married.”

  “You did?” He peered at her. He had never heard this story.

  “Oh, yes.” She told him that she did not have any examples of a good marriage in her family. She could not name anyone in her family who had not either been widowed or divorced, usually divorced.

  “With a family history like that, all I could think of was that I was crazy to get married. When I came face-to-face with marryin’ your father, I panicked. I saw that he was a pure stranger, and one from halfway across the country. Sometimes he said things a little different, used different words—and he ate different food than I did. He ate a lot of beans and cornbread, pork ribs, and everything smothered in gravy. My family didn’t eat like that. We ate roast beef and glazed chicken, gelatine salads and white rolls. It was just like steppin’ off a cliff into mid-air. I was so scared that I told your mamaw that I didn’t think I could go through with it.”

  He watched her, fascinated. And suddenly he caught a glimpse of his mother as a young woman, remembering that she had still been in her teens when she had married his father. That glimpse of her as a girl, rather than as his mother, caused him to have to look away.

  “Oh, honey, chin up. Everyone has doubts when they are gettin’ married. Its a big, scary step.” Giving a little laugh like she always did, she put an arm around his shoulders and hugged him.

  Then, more seriously, “Don’t go thinkin’ that if you just find the perfect person, you will know it and not be afraid or not have doubts. For one thing, there is no such thing as the perfect person. No married couple is completely compatible. You have to learn to be compatible. There’ll be things about Gracie that make you want to run away. Your dad and I have almost d
ivorced, more than once.”

  He couldn’t imagine his parents divorced, and he wished she would not have said that. The idea was not helpful.

  “Honey, what you have to do is what we all do, and that is the best we can at the time. You love Gracie. She loves you. You’ve talked all this out together. You can’t let people from the outside determine this for you. You have to listen to what you hear from inside yourself. Ask yourself what you really, really want. What you feel is right for you. Follow that, because that’s God leading you.”

  Johnny thought his mother’s words all sounded wise, but he had hoped for more. When he drove off, he took with him a dozen of his mother’s sumptuous chocolate chip cookies, but what he had really wanted was for his mother to tell him if he should or shouldn’t marry Gracie.

  He realized he was long past his mother telling him what to do, even though he was annoyed at her for not doing it.

  Then, while driving a long stretch of straight road, it came to him: Marry Gracie. It was like hearing a voice in his head, which seemed to indicate the level of his emotional stress. He sort of asked himself if he had heard right. The answer came again: Yep, marry Gracie.

  He supposed hearing a voice could not be stranger than the idea of marriage.

  The more he drove along, the more certain he became that, dadgummit, he was going to marry Gracie.

  A few miles farther, and the full memory of something he had heard a guy do with his fiancée came to him, and he imagined carrying it out with Gracie. It would impress her, and maybe even knock her mother’s socks off.

  Since he was getting married, he decided that he could go whole-hog with being foolish.

  After Johnny left, Emma remained on the back steps thinking of all the things that she wished she had said to him. A whole heart and world of things. She also considered, briefly, the wild idea of getting on the telephone to Sylvia and telling her a few things.

  She restrained herself.

  Then she recalled the morning all those years ago, when she had gotten her own cold feet and almost called off her own wedding.

  She had awakened with first light, tiptoed out of her room and across the hall to peek at John Cole asleep in the guest room. He had come three days early to attend the various wedding functions. She gazed at him for a long time, realizing that she had never before seen him sleep. She was a little amazed, even mildly irritated, that he could sleep so soundly with her staring at him hard enough to bore a hole into his head.

  Turning from the doorway, she went downstairs and found her father sprawled stomach-down on the couch like a dead man. He had not appeared for the wedding rehearsal the night before. Her mother had been furious over that, and for a crazy moment Emma had wondered if maybe her father was actually dead, that her mother had killed him in his sleep. She bent over to see if he was breathing. He was, and he smelled of beer.

  In the kitchen, she found coffee left in the percolator that her mother had likely made an hour earlier. Her mother swung wildly between sleeping until noon, or waking in the early hours of the morning and going out to the small room at the back of the old house that had once been a grand plantation home but was now rapidly deteriorating, where she read or wrote things for hours. Her mother had for years been writing a passionate historical novel in which, so she said, she killed the people she would like to kill in real life.

  Emma poured out the coffee and made fresh. Her mother made awful coffee. She also did not bother to keep a clean kitchen. It really was as if, had not Emma been in the house, neither her mother nor father would have been there, either. Emma knew that when she married and went off with John Cole, her parents would probably leave, as well.

  Emma began automatically to tidy up the kitchen as the aroma of coffee filled the air. She anticipated one or both of her parents smelling it and coming quite quickly. They did not come quite so quickly, though, so Emma got to have a good half a cup before her father showed up. He thanked her for the coffee, apologized for not being at the rehearsal and gave some story about his car breaking down. He had it fixed now, though.

  Looking down the rear hallway and likely seeing her mother coming, he said, “I’ll be at the weddin’ and give my girl away,” kissed her forehead, and hurried from the room as if on the run, which he was, because a second later, Emma’s mother appeared through the back door.

  She called after him, “You can run but you cannot hide.” She poured herself a cup of coffee and said “good morning” to Emma in an absent manner, having stuck her nose into a book.

  Emma went to gaze into the dining room at the table set up in the corner that was holding an array of wedding gifts from her mother’s side of the family. There were things from people she had never met: great-aunts and uncles, and third and fourth cousins. It was a rule, and likely written somewhere, too, that in their family, when anyone married, a gift was sent whether you knew the person or not.

  Then Emma turned around and told her mother, “I don’t think I can go through with it.”

  Her mother, without looking up from her book, said, “Hmmm?”

  “I don’t want to get married. I can’t.”

  Her mother must have heard something in her tone, because she looked up then and set the book aside. Emma burst into tears and began saying hysterically that she wasn’t ready to get married.

  Her mother took her to the kitchen table and sat her down. “You don’t want to get married?”

  “I’m not ready…I just can’t.” She repeated this a number of times.

  “You don’t have to get married, then,” her mother said.

  “But we have everything ready…the dresses, the church…” she said.

  “We’ll cancel it,” her mother said.

  “But we have all those presents.” Emma waved toward the dining room and cried harder.

  “We’ll send them back.”

  “But John Cole is here, and his dad and brother are comin’.”

  To which her mother said, “We’ll send them back, too.”

  With that, Emma quit crying as she imagined telling John Cole and his family to go away, followed by the image of returning the gifts to her grandmother and aunts and cousins. The entire prospect of all that would be involved scared her into straightening up. There was no way she could face such embarrassment. There might have been a lot of divorces in her family, but there never had been a wedding that had been called off at this late date, after everyone had gone to so much trouble.

  What she also vaguely realized was that she didn’t want to run away. She wanted her mother to tell her that it was all going to be all right. But that was not going to happen. For one thing, her mother likely did not believe it was going to be all right, and also, her mother was incapable of giving her guidance. Emma had to do what she had done ever since she could recall, which was determine things for herself and tell herself that she could do it.

  She did, and when John Cole got up a half an hour later and came down to breakfast, she sat at the table with him and ate the burnt bacon and crispy-edged fried eggs that her mother cooked for them. She was greatly impressed that he never once complained about her mother’s poor cooking.

  When John Cole came in that evening, Emma told him of her conversation with Johnny. She then asked him, “Did you get scared before our wedding?”

  “Yeah, a little.”

  She looked at him, trying to judge the comment. Then something struck her. “My mother adored you.”

  “That’s true.”

  A few more minutes, and she asked, “Why did you marry me? What made you go through with it?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.” She had expected that and decided that likely was the best he could do.

  After a minute she said, “I’m glad we got married. I’ve never been sorry. I’ve been angry, but deep down, I’ve never been sorry.”

  They looked at each other for a long moment and sort of smiled, then looked away, both falling silent for minutes, thinking about the ins and o
uts of all of it. And for a moment she remembered gazing at his head in the bed that morning so long ago.

  Later, she heard John Cole on the phone with Johnny. She caught mention of roses for both Gracie and Sylvia. She thought that her husband could be very wise at times and wondered why he rarely used that wisdom in his own marriage. This was likely the question of women throughout the ages.

  24

  Woman to Woman

  The bridal shower was a gathering of Gracie’s friends—young, modern and fashionable.

  All but two of the guests were women employed by the M. Connor store, and they quite naturally viewed Gracie’s mother, a person from corporate headquarters, as their boss. The other two girls were from the misses department in JCPenney, so with all of them in fashion sales, Sylvia Kinney was an object of study and admiration. Their attention went to her like straight pins to a magnet.

  Gracie, having anticipated that this was likely to happen, patiently waited it out. While her mother more or less held court on the couch, Gracie sat in a high-backed chair across the room and took note of the lovely home of her friend Kim, who was hosting the party. The house was brand new, as was everything in it. Gracie looked around and absorbed decorating ideas with the happy anticipation of having her own home in the near future.

  Then, two old friends with whom Gracie had worked in Dallas arrived. Gracie was amazed and delighted. They squealed at the sight of her, and she squealed in the same manner upon seeing them, and the three shared a group hug. After this, everyone seemed to get back to the point of the party, which was the celebration of Gracie’s upcoming marriage. All the attention swung back to her, and she was urged to start opening the gifts.

  Among the normal things—blender, toaster, table and bed linens—she also received two sexy peignoirs, fragrant candles and, quite surprisingly, a book, Intimate Matters: Woman to Woman, which Nicole saved for last and passed to her with a wide grin. As Gracie slowly peeled back the silver wrapping paper, she noticed the other women sort of leaning forward. There was, of all things, a feather taped to the cover of the book. Gracie about died. No matter that her mother laughed, she was still her mother. Gracie was highly surprised that such a gift had come from Nicole, and that in fact Nicole’s mother had also signed the accompanying card, which contained a quote: “My beloved is mine and I am his.” Song of Solomon 2:16.