Catching Moondrops

by Jennifer Erin Valent

  “Oh, please! Everybody in these here parts knows what’s goin’ on between you two. It’s clear as day you’re in love with him.”

  Gemma’s cheeks turned pink as Momma’s roses. “Be quiet, I said. I don’t need the whole world knowin’ my business.” But no matter her stern words, a grin played at the corners of her mouth. “He is a fine man, though, ain’t he?”

  “And fine-lookin’, too, you ask me.”

  I waited for her to scold me for such talk, like usual, but she just took a glance in Tal’s direction and said, “Mmm-hmmm. He sure is.”

  I stepped back and put my hands on my hips. “Gemma Teague! If that ain’t the first time I ever heard you talk saucy.”

  She tilted her chin up and gave me the look of a woman who knows what she knows but ain’t interested in the rest of the world knowing. “I’m just sayin’, he’s a fine man who’s fine-lookin’, and that’s all I’m gonna say about it.”

  “Uh-huh. I hear you. And I’m just sayin’ I got me a sure bet to lay down that there ain’t a soul in Calloway who don’t know what’s what with you two.”

  Gemma still had her eyes on Tal, who was talking to Daddy outside the shed. “Ain’t your momma taught you better than to lay bets?” She sashayed past me and paused at the door. “I’ll be upstairs freshenin’ up.” Then she dashed inside with a hop in her step.

  With a smile gracing my face, I glanced at Tal again, studying him while he stood there in conversation with my daddy. Sure enough, I figured he’d fit in right nice with us even if the people of Calloway did fuss and fight over another colored person joining the Lassiter family. Adding Tal to our family, though, meant losing part of Gemma, and as much as I teased her, I wasn’t ready for that yet. I wasn’t sure I ever would be.

  But there were plenty of things in life that weren’t up to me. I’d found that out many times, and I knew tonight was no exception the minute we sat down to supper.

  Luke had stayed home to work this evening, and from the second I took my seat, I’d felt like the odd man out. From the faces at the table, I could see there was something stewing that only I wasn’t part of, and it stung at my pride like an angry bee. Daddy kept looking Tal over with that intuitive eye of his, and Momma kept jerking a little, so I knew she was giving him little kicks under the table to make him stop. Gemma sat all uptight and quiet, and Tal was having so much trouble swallowing his food that he ate his peas in singles.

  I pushed my mashed potatoes around my plate, making peaks and valleys out of them, and wondered what had suddenly gotten under everyone’s skin. Finally I leaned back in my chair and announced, “Miss Cleta got a new carpet for her livin’ room.”

  It wasn’t exactly groundbreaking news, but it was something to fill the unbearable silence. I looked at Momma. “She says you’re welcome to her old one if you want it. Miss Cleta thinks it’s awful threadbare, but it looks just fine to me. Might help take the chill out of the den in winter.”

  Momma smiled but didn’t reply. I tapped my foot quietly beneath the table for about thirty seconds before deciding I couldn’t take any more. I let my fork slip out of my hand and clatter to the table beside my plate.

  “All right, now this is too much. What on earth is goin’ on around here?”

  “Jessilyn,” Momma breathed, “what’s gotten into you?”

  “Only whatever’s not bein’ said at this table. I’d like to know what’s got everybody so out of sorts.”

  Daddy’s right eyebrow shot up, but he didn’t take his eyes off Tal, and Tal shrank under his watchful glare.

  I gave Gemma a nudge under the table, and she looked at me nervously. “You want to tell me what’s goin’ on, Gemma?”

  She gave me one of those long stares with wide eyes that said I should keep quiet, but I wasn’t interested. I just returned her stare and said, “Well? Say somethin’.”

  Tal cleared his throat and forced himself to look at me. “She can’t.”

  I looked at Tal expectantly. “Why not?”

  “’Cause she don’t know what’s goin’ on.”

  “Well, do you?”

  “Yes’m.”

  “Oh, don’t ‘yes’m’ me, Tal Pritchett. I ain’t your momma. I just want to know what’s got this family all atwitter.”

  “Jessilyn, it ain’t for us to say.” Momma saw Daddy’s mouth open and gave him another swift kick. “Tal will say what he needs to say when he’s good and ready.”

  “So he does have somethin’ to say, then.” I turned to Tal and tipped my chin up. “Well, if you got somethin’ to say that’s makin’ this table so uncomfortable, I reckon you best up and say it.”

  The second those words came out of my mouth, I regretted them. The nervous way Tal’s hands shook when he plopped his napkin onto his plate, the way his jelly legs barely held him up while he stood—it all fell into place in my head like pieces of a puzzle, and suddenly I didn’t want to hear it anymore. But it was too late.

  His words spilled out so clumsily, they sounded like gibberish to my ringing ears. I heard him like he was twenty miles away, and when I saw Gemma’s tearful, smiling nod, I closed my eyes against the sight of it. Daddy grudgingly rose from his chair to clap him on the back, Momma grabbed them both in a bear hug, but I . . . I just sat there, numb from head to toe, faced with the fact that all my teasing about Tal had more to it than I’d taken the time to recognize. This was the first time I’d stopped to accept the fact that soon I would have to say good-bye to my best friend.

  I forced myself to stand and say all the niceties that people say to couples who were promised to wed. But behind my phony smile sat a heart weighed down by emptiness.

  “I thought I’d burst with waitin’,” I heard Momma say when my ears started to pick up sound again. “He asked Harley for permission this mornin’, and I’ve been a nervous wreck since, scared I’d drop somethin’ and spoil it all.” She gave them a soft push toward the door. “You two go on out for a walk or somethin’ and have a little time to yourselves. You don’t need us gawkin’ at you at a time like this.”

  Tal took Gemma’s arm and walked them out of the kitchen, and Daddy followed them to the door. Then he plopped down in his green chair and lit his pipe.

  I left Momma humming at the sink and ambled off to sit on the arm of Daddy’s chair.

  He sighed loud and long and put an arm around my waist. “Now, what do you think about all of this, Jessie girl?”

  I leaned my head back against the chair and stared at the ceiling, where a group of gnats sat in a circle. “Reckon I saw it comin’.”

  “But it don’t seem real till it comes, that right?”

  “Yes’r.”

  “Well, I didn’t see any reason to say no to the boy. He’s a fine man with a fine occupation.”

  “Didn’t make you feel any better about givin’ Gemma to him, did it?”

  He took his pipe out and sighed again. “Jessilyn, ain’t no time I feel good about losin’ either one of my girls.” He took a puff and leaned his head back like me. “Guess I’m just selfish, is all.”

  I let my head tip over so I could look at him. “Guess I get it from you, then, ’cause I don’t want her to go neither.”

  He reached to cup his hand around my chin. “We got one thing to remember, you and me. No matter who marries who or who goes where, we’re always family till the day we leave this earth. You hear? Ain’t no weddin’ bells gonna change that.”

  I nodded slowly and swallowed the lump that was stuck in my throat. “Yes’r.”

  Daddy stuck his pipe in his mouth, and we sat there without a word, Momma’s humming filling the background. I looked around at the old den furniture—the ragged gold sofa with the afghan lying across the back, the pictures of stone-faced family members that hung on the wall, Momma’s rocker with her knitting basket beside it. Nothing had changed from the day I’d been able to form memories. And as much as I spouted about wanting change, there was a part of me that loved the sheer sameness of this ro
om.

  But I knew life was not like den furniture. It changed. And most often it changed when you least expected it and in ways you didn’t much want it to. There wasn’t much I could do about that, though. One thing I could do at this moment, pregnant with change as it was, was treasure what I had while I had it. I settled back in my daddy’s grasp, on the arm of my daddy’s old green chair, with my daddy’s pipe smoke tickling my nose, and I closed my eyes.

  Some things never change.

  Chapter 12

  First thing the next morning, I made my way through the fields, colored pink by the light of dawn, on my way to Luke’s house. I hadn’t slept a wink the night before, tied up as I was by thoughts of Gemma’s leaving. It had been discussed the night before that Gemma and Tal wanted a wedding with little fanfare, and it was to happen in just a couple weeks. I wondered what all the hurry was, but I knew there wasn’t any good reason for them not to. If any two people had been cut out of matching cloth by God, it was those two. They were the same in thinking and believing, and I’d known from the second they’d met, there wasn’t much question they’d make each other happy till the day they died.

  But that didn’t mean I was happy about it, and the dark circles under my eyes made my feelings good and clear to anyone. Luke was already hard at work, but the second he saw me, he let his chisel drop with a clatter and came to meet me.

  He didn’t greet me, only took my face in his hands and stared into my eyes. “Somethin’s wrong.”

  I shrugged. “Depends on who you’re talkin’ to.”

  “I’m talkin’ to you.”

  I slid from his grasp and wandered over to the bureau he was working on, tugging the door open to look inside. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Jessie, you’re avoidin’ the subject.”

  I ran my hand down the smooth edge of the door, then closed it gently and turned toward him with a sigh. “Gemma’s gettin’ married.”

  He stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned against the tree where my swing sat motionless in the still, wet heat. “I figured that’d happen soon enough.”

  “Well, so did I, but . . .”

  “That don’t make it easier to swallow.”

  The sudden lump in my throat took away my ability to talk, and I replied with a shake of my head.

  He walked over to me and slid a hand under my chin. “She’ll still be here for you, Jessie. You know that.”

  I couldn’t look at him. I nodded my head halfway and then buried my face in his shoulder. His arms slid around me, and I rested there as I had so many other times in my life. And just like so many other times in my life, he whispered in my ear that everything would be okay.

  He let me rest against him for a few minutes and then gave my hair a playful tug. “Reckon you’ll be a maid of honor, huh? All dolled up in some nutty dress with ruffles all over it.”

  I dried my tearstained cheek against his shirt and tipped my head up in defiance. “I’ll do no such thing. She even tries, I’ll pin her ears back.”

  “Oh, there’ll be some pinnin’, all right. They’ll be pinnin’ flowers on you, pinnin’ baby’s breath in your hair—”

  “Stop it.”

  “Before you know it, you’ll look like Dolly Gooch.”

  I shoved my knuckles into his ribs. “Don’t you start with me, Luke Talley.”

  “I’m only sayin’.”

  “I ain’t wearin’ no fluff and nonsense. Besides, Gemma wants a quiet weddin’ at our house. I’ll end up helpin’ Momma make me somethin’ simple I can wear to church after the weddin’.”

  He leaned down, picked a violet, and stood up to tuck it behind my ear. “Don’t matter if you’ve got ruffles or flowers, Jessilyn. You’ll be beautiful all the same.”

  He leaned in for a kiss that was nothing more than a flutter against my lips, but it was enough. Just as I’d hoped, my weary walk across the fields had made everything seem better.

  Luke threw his tools into his toolbox and tucked an arm through mine. “I’ll walk you home.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I want to.”

  “So you can be with me, or so you can have some of Momma’s hotcakes?”

  Luke cocked his head sideways. “Well . . . maybe a little bit of both.”

  I gave him a shove with my hip but couldn’t help smiling. Then again, even the very mention of his name did that to me.

  Luke and I were a sight at the breakfast table that morning, making eyes at each other like two fools. Tal had come by to eat before he and Gemma started out their day, and all four of us making like lovestruck idiots was driving my poor daddy to distraction. But the way I figured it, Luke and I had a full six years of feelings all cooped up inside, and so long as all we were doing was making eyes at each other, it was to be understood.

  The crunching of gravel signaled a visitor pulling into the driveway, dragging our attention away from each other.

  Daddy got up and looked out the window. “It’s Nate Colby.”

  “Nate?” I got up to see for myself. “What’s he doin’ here this time of day?”

  Daddy pushed the curtain aside and called out, “Hey, Nate! What can we do for you?”

  “Miss Cleta’s sick. Don’t know what to do for her since she’s so stubborn and all, but she don’t seem right to me. Figured one of y’all could talk some sense into her.”

  “Sick?” I leaned in closer to Daddy. “She’s not bad, is she, Nate?”

  “I don’t know. She says she won’t see no doc but the colored one, but I done told her that just wouldn’t do.”

  I think we all cringed at that comment. Everyone but Tal, that is. He just slid his chair back and sauntered up to the window behind us all. “I’d be happy to see her, so long as you can take me back.”

  Poor Nate looked near about ready to melt into his shoes when he saw Tal’s face at that window. His shoulders drooped and his chin pointed to the ground. “Reckon so” was all he said. He didn’t put up a fight about social viewpoints or any such thing, just turned back to his truck and hopped inside.

  Momma was already packing some soup she’d cooked up from the chicken bones the night before, doing what she did whenever she got nervous—fixing food. She threw in some herbal tea she’d put together herself. “You make sure she gets some food in her. Don’t let her be a stubborn mule about it, you hear?”

  I took the basket she’d packed. “Yes’m. I’ll be sure.”

  Daddy told us to call from Nate’s if we needed something. Luke piled into the back of Nate’s truck with Tal, Gemma, and me for the bumpy ride down the road.

  Nate’s two-year-old daughter, Grace, was sitting in the truck bed with their dog, and I plucked her up and pulled her onto my lap. “Hey, baby. You’re out early.” I kissed her mussed-up hair. It smelled like honeysuckle.

  She reached a finger up to touch my eyelashes. “Miss Cleta’s sick.”

  “So I hear. I’m sure she’ll be fine. We’ll see to her.”

  But as we bumped along the road, I thought how easy it was to say such things to children. Much easier than believing it as an adult. That short ride down the road seemed a lifetime to me just then. By the time we got there, I’d run through a whole slew of ideas of how we might find her, and not one of them was in the least bit pleasant. I scurried out of the truck the second we pulled up and handed Grace to Nate.

  “She’ll be inside.” I pointed the way for Tal, like he’d have a hard time figuring out where she lived or something.

  But Gemma took hold of his arm before he could budge. “You wait here till I talk to her first.”

  “Gemma!” I looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “Miss Cleta needs lookin’ after.”

  “Not till I talk to her first.” She lowered her voice. “This here ain’t no small thing, Jessilyn. Miss Cleta bein’ seen by a colored doctor? That’ll get around this town like wildfire, and she won’t never live it down.”

  “Miss Cleta asked for him.”

/>   “I want to make sure before she goes through with this. I don’t think she realizes what she’s doin’.”

  Tal stood by and listened, but I could see he was none too happy to do it. Then he put a hand on Gemma’s to get her attention. “I see what you’re sayin’, Gemma, but that don’t mean I can sit by and not help someone who’s sufferin’.”

  “You’re like to see her suffer more if you do help.”

  Luke spoke up then. “I say we quit bickerin’ and let Miss Cleta have her say. She’s got a strong mind of her own, no doubt, and she wouldn’t take kindly to us tryin’ to run her life for her.”

  “You already know how I feel about it,” Nate grunted. “No offense, Doc.” He tipped his hat at us and shifted Grace’s weight from one arm to the other. “Got to get the little one home for breakfast. I’ll stop in later to see how Miss Cleta is.”

  “Thanks for comin’ to get us, Nate.” I watched them leave and then took Luke’s arm. “Luke’s right. Let’s get on inside and let her figure this out before she up and dies of old age.”

  We found Miss Cleta resting uncomfortably in a rocker in her front room, softly humming a tune.

  I knelt beside her. “Miss Cleta, I hear you’re sick.”

  “Stuff and nonsense! I’m just havin’ a touch of the rheumatism.”

  “You’re lookin’ mighty pale for the rheumatism.” Up close, I could see that her face was gaunt and pained. Her right hand was clutching at her chest, and I put my hand over it. “You got chest pains, Miss Cleta?”

  “Girl, you come up with some funny ideas.”

  “Ain’t funny the way you’re holdin’ your chest. Now, stop bein’ so stubborn and tell me what hurts.”

  She scrunched her nose up at me. “You’re gettin’ bolder with age, Miss Jessilyn.”

  “I ain’t been nothin’ but bold all my life, and you know it. Ain’t nothin’ different except I’m worried for you. It ain’t kind for you to be stubborn when people are tryin’ to care for you, so you best up and tell me what’s wrong.” Her hand had begun to shake beneath mine, and I was afraid she was getting worse right there in front of me. “Looks to me you need to see a doctor, and I don’t want no arguin’ about it, you hear?”