By now he no longer thought of a murder. But he wasn’t certain he wanted to go inside the bedroom. He wasn’t certain he could face Emma and be overwhelmed with emotion. He wanted to run away.
He thought about driving out to the highway and calling her. He had actually done that on many occasions in their married years, and if he found Emma too emotional, he would find an excuse not to come home.
But he knew this time that he needed to face her. He did not want to run away anymore.
With a deep breath, he opened the door and stepped inside. The room flickered with candlelight, and the air was heavy with a sweet scent. Emma was in bed, wearing something skimpy. In the candlelight, she seemed to shine, too. There was this sort of halo behind her as she smiled and raised a glass of wine. “Welcome home.”
Emma watched John Cole stand there and stare at her. She got amused at the stunned look on his face.
And then he turned around and left.
“John Cole?” Rising up on her knees, she looked down the hall and saw him turn into the family room, practically at a run.
A moment later, she heard the back door open and close.
Thunderstruck, she sat there. Realizing she still had the wine glass lifted, she lowered it.
She slumped back against the pillows. He had left. What had she done wrong?
Knocking back the wine, she looked around the room at the candles and the scarves she had sprayed with perfume, then tossed over the lamps. The comedienne that day had given her the idea, and it did work to give a nice light and lovely fragrance.
Maybe it had been a bit too much to spring on John Cole after all her years of being inhibited.
She began to cry quietly and sank into misery of the sort that did not care if she fell asleep and the candles burned down and caught the house on fire. In fact, she wished they would.
Suddenly she heard something—John Cole’s footsteps. He appeared through the door and came straight to the bed. He had a quite happy smile on his face and something wrapped in a greasy rag in his hands.
“Know what this is?” he said, jutting the item toward her and unwrapping the cloth to reveal some sort of engine part.
“A carburetor?” she guessed, wiping away her tears.
“Yes…it’s the one from that first Dodge we bought together,” he said, offering her the snapshot that had been taped to his Coke can. “I saved it all these years.”
Uncertain as to the significance, but knowing there was some, she looked from him to the greasy car part and then back at him again. The expression on his face went clear through her. He was trying so hard.
“Oh, John Cole.”
She threw herself at him. The carburetor went somewhere, and John Cole’s arms came around her. He kissed her and laid her back on the bed.
The phone rang, and neither of them paid any attention.
Sometime later, they located the carburetor at the foot of the bed. It was also at this time that they discovered that the scarf on one of the bedside lamps had begun to smolder. All of that seemed of little consequence, however.
“I love you,” she said into his ear.
27
I’m Your Mother
Gracie was awakened by Johnny’s phone call. She lay in bed talking to him for a long time. It was lovely. She so missed seeing him alone.
“The three of us could go out to lunch,” she suggested, thinking of something that would not be too confining, despite involving her mother.
But Johnny gave the excuse of having promised to take a shift at the Berry convenience store in order that a manager could have the day off.
More and more Johnny was refusing to be around her mother. He had totally stopped coming to the apartment. Gracie could not blame him. She knew her mother had an attitude toward him. Gracie kept hoping that this would change in time, but for the present, the matter was a strain that could only be alleviated by her mother going back home.
“She is leaving on Tuesday morning,” Gracie told him. “For certain this time.”
After hanging up, she got leisurely out of bed and puttered around the room for some minutes, savoring the time alone. She could hear her mother moving around in the living room and kitchen, could smell the aroma of coffee. She was tired of smelling coffee and felt a little sick with it. She had to curb the urge to fly into the guest room, pack her mother’s things and shoo her out the door along with the coffeepot her mother had bought.
The thought made her a little nervous about marrying Johnny. What if she wanted to do the same thing to him after a couple of weeks?
She was just having marriage jitters, she thought. Kim and Nicole had both talked to her about that. It would have been nice to speak to her mother about it, but she knew that her mother would tell her not to marry Johnny. Any time she had attempted to speak to her mother about any difficulty had generally ended up a disaster.
When she emerged from her bedroom she had a smile on her face and gave her mother, who was on the sofa with the Sunday paper, a kiss on the cheek. She continued into the kitchen to make a pot of tea, which was her preference. Returning with tea and toast, she curled up in the armchair.
“Did I hear the phone ring early this morning?” her mother asked.
“It wasn’t so early. Eight-thirty.”
“Uhmm…Johnny?”
“Yes.”
“Were you talking to him all this time?”
“A good deal of it.”
“I can’t imagine what you find to talk about for so long. I can’t imagine that he talks that much.”
Gracie waited for more in the way of explanation. When none came, she asked why her mother imagined that Johnny did not converse much.
“Oh…most men don’t…and he certainly doesn’t seem the type.”
Gracie was annoyed, which was probably what prompted her to say, “One thing we talked about was the album his grandmother is making for us. Please don’t forget to send the childhood pictures of me when you go home on Tuesday.”
“You can call and remind me,” her mother said without looking up from the newspaper folded in front of her face. Her black-rimmed reading glasses were far down her nose.
“It’s important to Miss Lillian, doing this project. She would like the names of my grandparents, too. She’s doing a family tree, you know. She’s going to a lot of trouble.” She couldn’t seem to hold back from pressing the point.
Her mother looked over the rim of her glasses. “I’ll get the pictures. I just might need a reminder, that’s all. You call her Miss Lillian?”
“Everyone does…didn’t you hear them when we were at the Berrys’? Even Wadley called her Miss Lillian.”
“Oh, yes, that’s right.”
Gracie watched her mother straighten out sections of the newspaper and refold them. She could feel the energy being sucked right out of her by her mother.
Hopping up, she said, “I’m going to wash some delicates, if you have anything,” and departed.
Five minutes later her mother joined her at the washing machine. She had brought a handful of panties and bras. Gracie put the machine on the delicate cycle. Realizing her mother was lingering, she looked around. “Do you have something else?”
“Yes…oh, not clothes. I have something I need to discuss with you. Let’s go sit at the table.”
Her mother took a chair, and Gracie, a little curious, followed. She noticed that her mother was clutching her hands. She wondered if her mother was about to launch into another criticism of Johnny, or if maybe she was going to say she was going to marry Wadley, which likely would not produce hand-wringing, so it had to be something else. Perhaps about Gracie’s grandparents. Maybe her grandfather or grandmother was ill, and her mother thought it might upset her. Perhaps they required her mother’s attention, in which case her mother might be leaving sooner.
Her mother cleared her throat, then said, “I think I need to tell you that your father was part black. Is, I suppose. I don’t know if he is still alive…but—”
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br /> “What?” Gracie broke in.
Her mother’s eyes met hers. “I said your father is part black. He is black-Creole, which is French, too, of course, as much as he is black. Actually there’s some sort of way they follow it, but I’ve forgotten. I do know that his—”
“Oh, Mom…I don’t believe you.”
Her mother put a hand to her hair. “I’m not making it up. I know that I—”
Gracie jumped to her feet. “I cannot believe you would go to such lengths to break me and Johnny up that you would come to me with some wild story….”
“I am not making it up, Gracie. I guess I should have told you a long time ago, and I’m sorry.”
“You guess?” No one, absolutely no one, had as much gall as her mother.
“Okay. I should have told you. I meant to, but time went by, and it just all sort of faded.” She might as well have added: you know how it is. “It didn’t seem important. Your father never had a part in our lives. But now, when you’re going to marry Johnny…well, it could be important to his family. That’s why I am telling you now.”
“What else can you throw in here that you might have left out, just to make sure Johnny and I break up?” Gracie yelled.
“That is not what I am doing, Gracie,” her mother said with patent patience. “I’m simply trying to rectify a…”
At that Gracie raced from the room. Gathering clothes, she went to the bathroom to dress.
Her mother was sitting on the bed when she came out. “I knew how you would take this. That you would think I’m trying to break you and Johnny up. That’s why it has been so hard for me to tell you. Try looking at it from my point of view. It’s not easy being a mother, Gracie. You’ll find out someday. I have done the best by you that I could. Maybe I wouldn’t even have told you—I mean, it really doesn’t matter—but your Miss Lillian is making such a point of all this stuff.”
“Why don’t you try blaming everything on the postman, too?” Gracie commented as she went into her closet, got a duffel bag from the shelf and began packing, while her mother followed her around saying that she was reacting badly, and that Gracie’s father had been from a small town in Louisiana, the name of which she had forgotten, which she’d visited with him for some months in the heat of July, which no one should do, but they could look it up.
When Gracie zipped her bag, her mother said, “Perhaps I should have told you more about your father, but you could have asked, too, Gracie. You never have asked.”
Gracie almost slapped her.
“Mom…just go home,” she said, and headed out the door.
Her mother ran out after her and called down over the stair railing, “I’m your mother. You have to put up with me in your life.”
“Yes, but not in my apartment,” Gracie called back, and continued racing down the stairs and out to her car.
She drove around for half an hour, in which she passed by the large Berry convenience store where Johnny was on duty, but ended up continuing on and heading to Valentine with the faint idea of talking to Emma. After a couple of miles, she made a U-turn on the highway.
Finally she went to the M. Connor store, where Nicole was working. As it was yet only noon, Nicole was alone on duty. She had to listen to Gracie’s story in increments between popping out to wait on customers. Growing up and living in a household of so many women, she was able to do this and pick up with Gracie exactly where she left off and not get one bit confused.
Gracie said, “I just can’t believe she would do this. She says I never asked, but how could I ask, when every time I brought up anything about my father, she would get this weird look on her face? I just learned not to ever mention him. I mean, I lived so long without him…and obviously she’s the one who is so bothered by the whole thing. It’s all just so complicated.
“And I don’t even know if she’s telling the truth, and if she is, I just can’t believe she would come out with it now. It is so hard to believe that she would go to this length to ruin my relationship with Johnny.”
“Do you think it will?” Nicole asked.
“Oh, no, of course not. It’s just that my mother believes it will.”
Now the question sat in her mind, though, and it was not helped by Nicole telling her, “Well, my dad and granddaddy and uncles sure went ballistic when my sister Sydney started goin’ with a white guy. Honey, my Uncle Arthur arrested Justin a whole bunch of times and tried to run him out of the county.”
Gracie took that in and thought about the Berrys.
“It should be real easy to look up about your daddy,” Nicole said. “I can call Sydney and get her to do it. She knows how to do these things now that she works for the police force. That’s the good thing that came from it. Uncle Arthur kept harassing Justin and hauling him down to the police station, and it ended up that both Sydney and Justin got jobs there after they got married.” The bell went off, indicating a customer, and Nicole hurried away to the front counter.
Gracie’s phone rang in her purse; it was Johnny. She turned her phone off.
After that, Nicole suggested that Gracie leave her to run the store and go over to her family’s house, where there would be so many people on a Sunday afternoon that one more would not be noticed. This proved the case, and Gracie was able to sit back and listen to all the talk and not think about any of her own perplexities. Nicole’s mother, Evelyn, was very kind and didn’t ask a thing. Gracie met Uncle Arthur who was the policeman and thought that he resembled Johnny’s Uncle Charlie J.
“Gracie…are you all right? I’ve called you three times this afternoon.”
“I know. I had my phone off. My mother and I got into an argument today, and I just had to get away.” Right then she stood alone on the Davies’ terrace, surrounded by the scent of honeysuckle and watching the sun go down.
“I guessed that. She called me lookin’ for you. I was about to call the police, but I called the store and Nicole said you were at her house and okay. You want me to come get you? You could come stay at my place.”
He sounded hopeful, and she hated to disappoint him, but she had to tell him no. She could not see him, although she didn’t tell him that.
She said, “I’m getting ready to go to bed, and I have all my stuff here at Nicole’s. I really just need some time alone. That’s all.”
He said he understood.
“Please call my mom for me. Tell her I am okay, but I just want her to go home. I’m not going back to my apartment until she is gone.”
“You want me to call her?”
“Yes, you.” It displayed her state of mind that she pulled the phone from her ear and looked at it with an angry glare.
“Okay,” Johnny said, not wanting to risk her getting more testy with him.
After hanging up from Gracie, Johnny put away his phone and walked around a few minutes, getting a soft drink and chips and as much courage as he could for speaking to Sylvia Kinney.
The woman answered after the first ring, and so abruptly that Johnny felt jarred.
“Hello, Mrs. Kinney.” He felt five years old. “I talked to Gracie. She’s okay. She’s stayin’ over at Nicole’s.”
He immediately regretted having given that information. He didn’t know if Gracie wanted her mother to know where she was. If her mother went racing over to Nicole’s, Gracie could end up really mad at him.
Sylvia Kinney’s response was, “I guess expecting any more from you is asking too much,” and she hung up.
He wondered what she had meant, like he always wondered what she meant. Then he realized that he was safe on the score of her driving over to Nicole’s, as she would not know the address. However, he had neglected to give her the further message that Gracie had said for her to go home. He was not about to call her again.
Five minutes later and without a lot of thought, Johnny was in his car and heading to his parents’ house. Lights shone from the windows, and both of his parents’ cars were in the driveway, but his mother did not come running
out to meet him. He imagined her when he popped in, all surprised and happy to see him, and maybe even with some sort of dessert to feed him.
Just as he put his hand on the backdoor knob, he looked through the glass and saw his parents inside. Seeing them together gave him pause. They were bent over the kitchen table, their heads almost touching. They were looking at pictures. His mother lifted her head and laughed. He could hear the sound through the window glass. He caught snatches of, “And remember when he…you thought…”
His father grinned that slow grin. “I did not…I thought…”
And then his father did the most surprising thing. He reached over and took his mother by the back of the neck and drew her to him, and kissed her in a manner that caused Johnny to instantly turn from the sight.
Once it had been the three of them, but now it was just those two.
He went back to his car and drove away in a sneaking manner, feeling a little homeless. Without Gracie or his mother, he really wasn’t certain what to do with himself.
Emma was sitting on the side of the bed, rubbing lotion into her hands, when the phone rang. For an instant she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to get lotion all over the receiver, but then she saw it was Johnny calling. She got all excited and snatched up the phone.
“Hello, sweetheart.”
“Hi, Mom. Hope I didn’t call you too late.”
“Oh, no…we were just gettin’ ready for bed. It’s good to hear your voice. What’s going on?” She looked over to see John Cole come to the bathroom doorway, gaze at her a moment, then disappear back into the bathroom.
“Oh, I just thought I’d call,” Johnny said. “Gracie’s over at Nicole’s. Her and her mother got into an argument. She’s left her apartment until her mother goes home.”
“That happens a lot with mothers and daughters, honey. They’ll make up. When is her mother goin’ home?”
“I think on Tuesday. I sure hope so. Gracie isn’t really even talkin’ to me, either. I don’t know what’s goin’ on. I’m sort of afraid Gracie may be gettin’ the marriage jitters, and her mother won’t help that.”
Chin Up, Honey Page 27
