The Women of Jacob’s Mountain Boxed Set

by Hining, Deborah;

  “And what about you?” he queried, abruptly turning to her. “Why hasn’t a beautiful, articulate, educated, healthy, outdoorsy woman like you already been snapped up?”

  “I guess I’ve been unlucky, too,” began Geneva slowly, unwilling to admit that Howard had thrown her over. A tiny latch slipped into place in her mind as she thought about his abuse of her. She narrowed her eyes and firmly decided that his name would never darken her lips again.

  “Ever been close?”

  The lie slipped like silk from her mouth, “Heaven’s no! I’ve spent my adult life being disgruntled with men. I guess I’m just too picky.”

  “Well, aren’t we a couple of choosy elitists,” smiled John. “Now, I believe we’d better leave if we are to get a good place to sit. We can order our dessert to go, and I’ll have this thermos filled with coffee so we can picnic on the lawn before the performance.”

  They drove out to the botanical gardens perched on a gentle slope at the edge of town. John held Geneva’s hand as they strolled to the grassy lawn banked by rhododendrons and mountain laurel. There they spread a quilt on the grass among other picnicking audience members, many of whom glanced their way as they settled themselves.

  “We must look like a couple of escapees from the emergency room,” remarked John, indicating his cast and Geneva’s sling. Geneva did not mind being watched. She knew they were the best looking couple there, handicapped as they were. But she felt a general uneasiness descend upon her each time she looked at John, so handsome, so earnest and attentive. She felt herself sinking down into the quilt upon which she sat, feeling submerged in its dizzying pattern. The game that she had hoped to play was getting out of hand; the country twin was becoming too comfortable, too delighted by everything she saw and heard and felt tonight. As if summoning an incubus, Geneva called to her city twin, willing her to come and save herself. She wracked her brain for a reason to stay aloof, to shield herself, to remember why she needed to go back to Washington.

  City Twin came, but she was weak and addled. She babbled something in Geneva’s ear about art and society, but the wind blew the words away so that Geneva felt only a soft breath, meaningless. She brushed it aside and turned her bright eyes toward John.

  A puff of mist appeared in the laurel behind him. Fairies materialized out of the rhododendron blossoms. Surprised, Geneva looked around. Fairies were rising out of the mist all around them, sitting in trees, lounging on the grass, knitting clover chains, chasing one another amid fireflies just beyond the fringe of foliage around the audience. Music began. On-stage, players dressed in Edwardian finery had appeared, dancing in stately procession.

  Geneva was immediately impressed. She had not expected the production to be particularly imaginative or technically sophisticated; she wasn’t interested enough to even pick up a program. She had merely hoped the players would not butcher the language. But already her eye was delighted, and her ear followed the moment Theseus uttered his first lines:

  Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour

  Draws on apace. Four happy days bring in

  Another moon; but O, methinks, how slow

  This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires,

  Like to a step-dame, or a dowager,

  Long withering out a young man’s revenue.

  From there, the play ebbed and flowed like a symphony, binding Geneva in its spell, impressing even the city twin, who slipped quietly by her side as she watched, evaluating, criticizing, admiring.

  The production had begun conventionally enough, with the mortals played as genteel ladies and gentlemen, stiffened by layers of clothing, custom, and manners, but when the fairy scenes began, Geneva knew there was a masterful, bold director behind this production. Playing on a darkened stage, the fairies wore headdresses of dimmed neon, and their costumes were painted with glowing paint; Puck wore tiny wings made of fiery sparklers at his shoulders. The magic slowly engulfed and liberated the mortals (and Geneva) until, at last, the final scene erupted with fairy dust and fireworks. It was the most exciting production that Geneva had ever seen.

  By the end of the evening, she was tingling, remembering her own short-lived theatrical career and wishing for the first time in a long while that she had not abandoned it. Part of her was alert, actively thirsting for the excitement that theatre offered; the other part drifted along dazedly, feeling as magical and as transfixed as if she lived in the Athenian wood under the influence of Oberon’s wondrous potions. The fireworks shooting over her head, challenging the bright, clear stars, seemed to have no purpose but to signify the intensity of Geneva’s passion for life, for her need for love, and, perhaps because she needed something or someone to absorb that passion, for the man who sat beside her. So engrossed was she in her own feelings that she could not think any farther than this immediate moment and of how she wanted it to continue. If John had asked her to fly to the moon with him, she unquestioningly would have started flapping her arms.

  Then there was the long, winding drive home under the midnight stars scattered like quicksilver across the velvet night and the almost-cold air raising her hair into a thousand tiny, invigorating whips. Geneva felt suspended in time, a blaze of motion, a comet. But when they finally pulled up to Rachel’s and Wayne’s darkened house in the early hours, Geneva shook herself, bestirred by the reality of the imminent good-bye facing her. She prayed that he would ask her out tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after. She turned to him, smiling languidly.

  “I believe I have been enchanted this evening. There seems to be magic all around me.”

  “If I could have, I would have slipped you some of Oberon’s potion.”

  “You’re better off not having any,” she laughed. “I feel drunk already.”

  “It’s the air—I’ve found it intoxicating from the moment I came up to this mountain. Would you like to walk?” John opened the door and helped her out into the velvety night waiting to embrace them. The sky and the earth were larger than ever they could be under the conquering sun. They made Geneva feel dwarfed and frail, as small and insubstantial as the grasses writhing in the soundless wind.

  In the silence, John lightly laid his hand on her shoulder and together they walked in their awkward, mismatched gait toward the fence. The horses were bedded in their stalls, but the pasture pulled them, as if they expected to see ghostly forms cantering through the wildflowers.

  The moon was gone, long ago stolen behind a shadowy mountain. Geneva stopped at the fence, shivering in the wind, her body begging John to hold her. He looked at her and gently pushed away the hair that had blown across her face.

  “Would you mind if I kissed you?”

  Geneva was grateful he had finally thought of it. She felt like she had been holding herself back all night, and now she fled to his arms, propelled by wind and feeling. When she kissed him, she felt herself sinking, or floating, into a soft blackness bordered and spangled with vivid colors. As she sank into this bliss, she suddenly felt a tingling current shoot through her body. It hummed and sparked her senses like nothing she had ever felt before, and every nerve in her body and in her heart told her that this must at last be the love she had always yearned for. She felt it to the very bedrock of her soul.

  She began to tremble uncontrollably. She forgot who she was, where she was. She felt bewildered for a moment, trying to register the sensation she was feeling, when suddenly John pulled his lips away from hers and stepped back with an exclamation, jerking Geneva with him. It wasn’t until the current stopped that Geneva realized she had been standing in the tall grass resting against the electric fence.

  John was laughing. “What a kiss!” he exclaimed. “For a second there, I thought that was you doing that to me!”

  Geneva laughed, too, but not as heartily. She was still hoping it was love.

  Still laughing, John led Geneva to the house, and despite her reluctance to end the night, she followed docilely. Her lips were burning for another kiss like the last one.

/>   On the porch, John turned to her and pulled her to himself once again. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he murmured, his face nestled in her hair.

  “Oh yes. Yes. When?” Her heart fluttered at his assertion that they would see each other again so soon.

  “About six? Is that when the party starts?”

  “Party?”

  “For Rachel and Wayne. I’ve been invited, you know.”

  “Oh, yes! That party.” She felt too good to be embarrassed by her mistake. “I thought you were referring to all this kissing.”

  He chuckled. “Even without the external electricity, your kisses remind me of Puck’s sparklers, but on a grander scale.” He looked at her a moment more before she wriggled her arm out of the sling and threw it and its twin around his neck and gave him a series of soft little kisses punctuated by her rapid breath. After a few moments of this, John gently disengaged her arms and cleared his throat. “I’d better be going.”

  Geneva worked very hard to hide her feeling of being rebuffed. She laughed lightly, “Sorry. Summer nights sometimes do this to me. I’m sure I’ll be terribly embarrassed in the morning.”

  “I hope not. This has been too perfect to regret.” He lingered a moment, obviously unwilling to leave. Despite the fact that she had told herself that she would behave more decorously, she fell into his arms again, kissing him with all the passion that sang inside her.

  He was delicious. She felt his heart pounding, his hand convulsively entwined in her hair. He kissed her eyes, her mouth, her neck, and she felt him trembling as he caressed her face and throat. Gasping, they gazed at one another. Geneva felt her knees buckle.

  “I’d better get out of here,” he said, “before I start begging you to marry me tonight.”

  “And then regret it in the morning?” she teased.

  He looked at her squarely, the same look of longing that she had seen that first day came into his eyes and bore deep into her. “I doubt it. Good night.”

  Geneva had difficulty closing her eyes that night, and when she did find sleep, it was laced with delicious, exciting dreams in which she was running effortlessly across the high ridges gilded with deep, golden grass. I will never be the same again, she sang in her dream. But toward morning, she woke, startled, feeling something she could not articulate calling to her. The sun found her sitting bolt upright in bed, whispering Howard’s name.

  When at last she rose after the fitful morning, Geneva felt torn and sorrowful, aching for something beyond her grasp, something she could not name, which was not even fully formed in her mind. She only knew that she was seized by restlessness and a need for something more.

  Rachel, Wayne, and Gaynell tried to tease her about her night out, but she refused to be drawn into a discussion of it. Instead, she took Fairhope out for a long ride up across Jim Gordon Mountain and through the valley beyond. As she rode, she tried to sort out her feelings about Howard and about John Smith—about herself. She compared her two lives. She hated to give any of it up, the splendor all around her in the soft, summer mountain days, the glitter and the hard, smooth feeling she got when she stood back and looked at what she had created when she worked at her craft. She felt a wild impulse to ride Fairhope straight over the mountains, into DC, but she remembered forlornly there was nothing left for her there: no lover, no apartment, and no job. She began to regret her burned bridges.

  Then she remembered how the ice glittered on the trees in January and the clean, delighted brook where the wild iris grew. She turned Fairhope’s head and broke into a canter toward home. Howard would never love her. He was too busy loving himself. She would give this John Smith a chance, and if he could convince her that life here with him would be worth it she would stay.

  She returned by four o’clock, in time to see everyone dressed to go to afternoon church services. Gaynell asked her to accompany them but winked at Geneva so that she would volunteer to stay home.

  “You go on,” said Geneva, catching her cue. I’ve been wanting to cook some chili, and to do it properly, I need at least three hours. Come back hungry.”

  “We will,” sang out Gaynell as she herded the family out the door. “Back at six thirty.”

  Geneva was glad to be alone with her thoughts. She fed the livestock, knowing that Wayne might be having too good a time to take care of that chore later in the evening. As she scooped grain from the bins, she fought an impulse to saddle up again and ride over to John’s house, to fling herself in his arms and ask him to save her from herself. No, better let him come to her. And he would, too, she smiled to herself. He would come to her soon enough, as surely as the whippoorwill finds his mate. She hummed as she ran the vacuum and laid out plates and silverware and went through the music for the party. She wanted everything to be perfect, but frankly felt that it could be nothing but. The smile never left her face as she bathed and picked out a loose skirt and soft blouse. The magic would continue; she could hear it laughing on the mountaintops.

  Four

  Geneva decided not to wear her sling that evening. Her elbow really did not hurt, and besides, she had no desire to hear the story about her trip through the blackberries. That one usually led to several others concerning her adolescent awkwardness. Yes, she was done with that sling. No need to expose herself to anyone’s misplaced amusement.

  The revelers began arriving early, and the moment they passed the threshold, Geneva felt herself becoming wrapped in the comfortable cocoon of family: aunts, uncles, cousins at various stages of removal. Without becoming aware of it, she slipped into her old, familiar West Virginian idiom. Within five minutes, she had slapped her thigh twice and had dug her elbow into her cousin Jackson’s ribs over a remembered family anecdote.

  Mam-ma Turner, frail and transparent-looking, but straight of back and radiant as ever, arrived bearing several pans of gingerbread and fresh apple pies. Geneva hugged her lightly, holding herself back for fear she would crush her fragile body.

  “Law, honey, what kind of hug is that yer agivin’ me?” exclaimed Mam-ma. “And that little old peck on the cheek? You come here and give me a right proper hug and kiss!” As she put her pans down and wrapped her arms around Geneva, her frailty gave way to something strong and maternal. Geneva fleetingly hoped she would live forever.

  The crowd grew quickly, laden with food, drinks, crepe-paper streamers, and baby gifts; all busied themselves preparing for the party and making plans to hide and jump out to surprise Wayne and Rachel. Geneva was in the kitchen when John arrived. When he came and told her how much he had enjoyed the evening before, she found that she was torn between uncharacteristic shyness and disappointment that he did not sweep her up into his arms like he had last night. They merely smiled awkwardly at one another, not quite knowing what to say with so many of Geneva’s relatives within earshot. She peered at him through her lashes until her least favorite cousin Lilly, who was at least as idiotic as she was beautiful, came in to ask John to help with the decorating.

  The next sight Geneva caught of them, Lilly was standing on a ladder in her stiletto heels and miniskirt, the backs of her perfect knees three inches from John’s eyeballs. Geneva was profoundly irritated by the way Lilly kept shaking her head and flinging back the river of her shimmering pale hair and running her fingers through it so that it would lift and catch the light. She personally felt it was tacky to wear hair that long, all the way down to her fanny. It was obvious that she wore it that length deliberately to show it off and to pull the eye down to her tight little ass. Geneva had beautiful hair and a cute little ass, too, but she didn’t advertise it to the world, did she? What a little hussy Lilly could be!

  Geneva glared at her first-cousin-once-removed for a moment, contemplating her little, darting eyes and the way she always painted them up to make them look bigger. Ferret Face, Geneva thought, recalling her favorite nickname for Lilly, then she turned with her nose slightly elevated and walked back into the kitchen. She was above competing for John’s attention and would wait f
or him to seek her out, once he had enough of looking up Lilly’s skirt.

  “Here they come!” someone called out, and the unwieldy crowd rushed into the back yard or huddled together behind furniture. Geneva dashed out the front door, crying loudly, “Hello! Welcome home!” then she ushered the group into the living room, which erupted with live bodies and shouts. Rachel and Wayne burst into laughter, and the party began.

  Geneva discreetly sought out John with her eyes, but every time she saw him, he was surrounded by women, and she was determined to show that she was having fun without him. Once she caught him heading in her direction, but someone intercepted him, and then she was suddenly cornered by Lilly’s sister, Sally Beth, equally blond and shapely, but if possible, even dumber than Lilly. She wearied Geneva with her habit of talking in exclamations, as if it might help enliven her excruciatingly boring and one-sided conversations.

  “Geneva! Yew are here! Somebody told me yew came home! That’s great! We’ll have to get together soon!

  “Yes,” replied Geneva, her smile already feeling weary. “I understand you are to be congratulated.”

  “Oh, yes! I passed my cosmetology exam!” she said with a little exhalation of the breath as if she had climbed to the top of a very high mountain. “Finally! Yew know that was really hard! Yew just wouldn’t believe! Yew know, they ask questions about chemistry!

  “Really? How—”

  “Oh, yes! I mean, I was really shocked the first time I took it. I jist looked at it and thought I would die! I barely got through the first page! But I decided that maybe I should really study for the second time? Yew know, maybe take it really seriously? And I did! I really did! Yew wouldn’t believe how hard I studied! And then when I took it again, it was so much harder! I mean, I don’t think they got those questions from the textbook I studied!

  “But this time, I was really prepared. I mean, I read two books this time, and then I got hold of an old test and studied that, too? I was so proud of myself, I was so good! And then, this last test wasn’t nearly so scary—yew know, it’s amazing how yew get more confident when you go through something a few times!”