by Diane Munier
“Just today. I will take Janey and go. I have covered your dinner. Eat when you are ready. I will be back soon as I’ve had a visit.”
“Have I done something? You don’t need to go tell my mother…I’m man enough to hear it, I think. I’m trying.”
“It’s not you, Tom,” I said.
He stared at me for a moment and I knew this staring could go on a long while and it did. “Then I will get the carriage ready,” he said finally, and I could feel his hesitation. I had pulled the rug, that’s how it was for him. I could not let that keep me.
I readied Janey and he helped me into the carriage, tucking a quilt over us.
“Anyone on that road you don’t know…,” he said spinning the barrel on his revolver to check that it was loaded.
“No, Tom. No guns. I will be fine. If there’s trouble I will run them over and go back and do it again and again.” I stared at him, perplexed with myself, my unkindness when he was doing what he saw to be his job. And it was, and I loved him, and I needed to get away from him before I said the wrong thing again.
I saw the uncertainty in his dear eyes. “I love you,” I said, then I wiggled the quirt and his horse was so well trained she took off, and he stepped back and stared after, but I only looked once, then I did not look back. I would not.
Rosie was in the kitchen scrubbing the table with soda.
“Where’s Ma?” I said.
“Oh,” Rosie said, for she had not heard me enter so intent was she on her work. She was no shirker, this woman whose beauty was unparalleled in my opinion. She was also resolutely cheerful. Tom should have married her. She was so much more suited to him than a crone like me.
“She’s…,” Ma came in from the lean-to then, her apron full of potatoes, “here’s Ma,” Rosie said.
I laid Janey’s blanket on the floor. It was never so clean since Rosie moved in. I sat there with her, and handed her the spools she loved to play with. I heard Ma rolling the potatoes into the sink.
She came to me then and patted my head. “Tom in the barn?”
“No Ma. Just me,” I said.
She pulled out a chair and sat.
“Here,” Rosie said, picking up Janey, “I have some cards to show this one.”
I got up then as Rosie took her into my old room. The one Tom…had slept on the floor in. The one I lay in and burned in…for him. I started to cry.
Ma got up, poured two cups of coffee, dumped in the sugar and cream. She put these on the table. Then she washed the potatoes and put them in a bowl and got the little sharp knife she didn’t let anyone use but herself.
She set this all in place, then she sat across the table from me and took a sip of her coffee and commenced to peeling the potatoes.
I had wiped my face and sipped my coffee. It was the best. “I was wondering…Elizabeth…I need to tell you…I broke that last jar of pickles…when I threw them…at Tom’s head. And…I had promised to never throw things again…after….”
She nodded. “Johnny told me. Terrible waste. Only he said you broke the pickles. He did not say you threw them at Tom.”
“Well…he didn’t know. He was at school.”
“I see. That explains it then.” She was already on the second potato. Her peels were paper thin. She saved these for several reasons. Scraps for the hogs. Scraps for the chickens. Or to make soup. Or to throw on the garden. Ma used it up.
“I should say…I thought he would catch the pickles…but I had also thrown the lovely wedding vase…and so he was...well to see him so undone by me….when I have seen him face a man…that one shot through our door…I had seen how he can be…and read all the stories…and I know he is a man of such valor…then to reduce him like that…to wound him….”
She cleared her throat. Ma could only take so much nonsense. “Johnny said. But he did not say you threw the vase. That vase come up through New Orleans.”
“I am so sor….”
“And ‘fore that across the ocean from Ireland.”
I had my hand over my mouth. “I must be hanged,” I said simply.
She laughed then, “Always hated it. Hoped you could make friends with it. It belonged to Tom Senior’s mother, and they brought it to bring a part of her from the old country. Well, she raised such a lot. Tom Senior was the prize, so she got one of worth in the batch. But still…I wanted to throw it a few times putting up with her sons. That first year it was my mission to get them off of this farm and onto their own. You’ve heard the stories.”
I relaxed then. If I told her nothing else, she had already helped me.
“I am failing at my marriage,” I said by way of summation.
She nodded. “Most of us are.”
“Ma!” I said.
She laughed again. “I’ve never seen Tom so happy. Do you know what it’s lifted from us? If you are failing…no one knows. Least of all our son.”
“We are arguing all of the time.”
“All is a big word Lass.”
“Well…often.”
“Why wouldn’t you? You’re becoming one in the flesh, one in the heart, but you still have two brains. Did you think it would be easy?”
“No…I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I am willing…I am…so in love with him…Elizabeth…I don’t mean to shame myself…but your son…I am besotted. Hopelessly. So everything becomes drastic. I love him…and I don’t trust any man. And I told him I will not obey. But I am besotted nonetheless.”
“Of course you are. But marriage is where the soldiering happens. Oh they want to go on about the battles, and they are terrible things. But they get over. You die or you live, but they end. Marriage is your life. It’s the army you never get out of. One day you think you have got there. The walls of Jericho have fallen down. You submitted. You held your tongue. You did him a kindness he didn’t deserve. You forgave him. You overlooked something. The next day you are a shrew. You have resisted the most innocent attempt of his to be kind. You’ve said words only a murderer should hear and just because he has left the jelly knife on the table again and you’ve just put your sleeve in his sticky mess.
“One night you are the woman of his dreams. You make him feel like the most desired lover as if he is the hero in the Song of Solomon. The next night, or maybe for the next month you scratch at him like a foaming coon if he so much as grazes your leg with his toe.
“One day you make him pickles because they are his favorite…one day you throw the pickles because he never picks up his socks. And so it goes and goes and goes and when you think of life without him…you want to shoot him yourself for even thinking of leaving you, even if he can’t help it, even if he dies.”
I took a long sip of coffee. “You are so correct on this,” I said.
“Did the bricks come in?” she said, the potatoes nearly done.
Now wait a minute. That wasn’t all. “Elizabeth, did you hear what I said? I told Tom I wouldn’t obey. But I made the vow. I wasn’t considering. Now he’s trying to use it on me. He says I have to do it.”
“What does he want you to obey that you’re refusing?”
“Nothing in particular. Truth be told he gives into me if I prevail. On pretty much…well everything. But in principle, he says I must obey.”
She laughed again. How did she find this funny? I had made a vow to God and Tom I could not keep.
“Seems I don’t need to tell you about the golden five minutes,” she said.
“Well, now you do,” I said.
“After relations. Soon as he settles, listen for the sigh. Once that comes, that stillness, you have five minutes before he’s snoring. Five golden minutes to change the world.”
I took another sip. I did not know Elizabeth Tanner. “Yes Ma’am.”
“When you get home…you tell him you will obey. That’s why it’s in those vows. It’s not a hardship at all. You say you will obey and in doing so, you put the burden on him. It will scare him into listening. If he thinks he makes the final decision, he will pick
your brain clean to find what he fears he overlooks.
“Just be sure in the golden five minutes to make your appeal. And once he comes around, then you obey.”
“Hmm. I admit you’ve captured me. But is that evil? Or brilliant? What do you think, Elizabeth?”
“I think it works.”
I sat there staring at her.
“Lass,” she said, “you never said. Did those bricks come?”
Tom Tanner
Chapter Nineteen
Did she think I wouldn’t follow? Did she think she could disobey me yet again, refuse the gun and I’d just go in and eat that delicious dinner she set for me to eat alone while I stared at that wall with the pickle juice stain?
She did not know me.
While she was off snitching my sins to my mother, I was trailing her. For I would not play fast and loose with her and Janey. I was well behind. But I tracked her to make sure she got to the house. Then I did go home and eat my lonely meal.
Well, I was no longer enough for her. She was pining for Ma now. If I tried to get her back I was only going to push her off more. She would see the desperate and she would run.
I don’t know why I was being punished when all I wanted to do was be a loving husband. Well, I had no time to pine about it. I supposed this was one of those times, an invitation to start to endure the marital bliss that had sustained me through all of my self-doubt. This is how sweet unions went south.
I went on the porch and looked up. No, I’d not be talking to him today…mayhap never again if she turned bitter on me.
I went to the barn then, and like a good husband, I carried on. When she came home, she’d find me in the barn with Johnny. We were cleaning stalls. He could do it alone, but I was helping him tonight so I would not be watching so intently for his ma. If she didn’t show soon, with the sun growing low, I would take off for her, pride be damned. I wasn’t letting her out there alone, and her not armed.
Well the sun got lower still, and me and Johnny brought the clothes in off the line, and put the still damp ones over chairs. She still wasn’t home. So I told him we were going to walk a bit, and get his coat on, and that’s what we did, and we met her down the road about half a mile. Well, she was surprised to see us, and seemed glad and all. He got on the horse and I told her I’d walk along, I wanted to check the fence, and she said, but it will soon be dark and I told her I wasn’t afraid of such for I was armed at all times.
So it was dark I come in the yard, and I led the carriage to the barn and saw to the horse, then checked things over once more and went to the house. Well she was all happy now she’d been away, and I could see she needed such, needed other women. It just seemed I didn’t need anyone but her and the children, but then I had Gaylin now and then, and she was glowing and laughing, and that’s what I did for her before she got wore out with me. Well jealousy didn’t bless, I knew it. I guess lately I’d been pretty busy and mayhap I’d not been much fun. Like Ma. So why go to Ma? You’d think she had enough of us. Then who else was there…Rosie? She surely wouldn’t want that one.
Would she?
My stomach did lurch at such a thought. Surely Addie wouldn’t talk about our marital affairs with such a one? Bad enough to think she betrayed me to Ma. But Rosie, hard to tell what that one would say about anything.
Well married people shouldn’t go blabbing, now that’s what I thought. Bet they had a high old time laughing. At me. Lord, God, it made me so mad to think of it I had to get a hold of myself.
“Johnny, you put those jacks away now and get into your bed.”
“Yes Pa,” he said. He went to Addie then and she stopped fussing around with all the bounty Ma sent like always. She looked at his hands and his nails and checked behind his ears. “Alright little man,” she said. “Get into bed and your Pa will hear your prayers.”
Well, I did like his prayers. Even my bad mood couldn’t put the damper on hearing those. So I went over and pulled the chair close to his bed and sat. He was lying abed, and the covers were under his arms, and he sighed. “I forgot to study my spelling,” he whispered.
I forgot this was Tuesday, the day we did the words. If I said this I was likely gonna get my head bit off, for it would be my fault for not going over it. “Get it,” I said, and she said, where you going, to him and he said, my spelling, and she said oh. Just oh. Guess it didn’t matter if he grew up a dummy couldn’t spell. There was no getting to her about us it seemed.
So he climbed back in and handed me the book, and he settled and I asked the words, and he knew them solid but for one, so we went over that. Then I said, “Go on and pray now.”
And he closed his eyes real tight. That always made me smile. Made sense to him to scrunch his whole face like God was gonna show and it would be too bright. So he prayed on, and it was a long one tonight. Then at the end he said, “Thanks for Pa. Keep him safe. Thanks for the way he is with us all, and someday when I am twelve and he lets me shoot the Enfield I pray you will let my hand be steady upon it and he will be so happy he will give it to me when he dies. But I hope that is not for a long time. Amen.”
He looked quick at me. “Amen,” I said.
And so I went outside to wash, which I did until hard freeze, which we were close. So I washed up good and I changed out there, and I went slowly into the house in my long johns and I barred the door.
She was behind our curtain moving around. Janey was in her cradle. She was brushing out her hair, and I said, “Let me,” for I loved to do it.
So she smiled so beautiful, and she sat on the bed in her white nightdress, and I sat behind and brushed her hair with long, slow strokes. And pretty soon her shiny head started to move with the brush like I noticed it did after a minute, like she was giving in.
Then I moved her hair aside and kissed her sweet neck. And she giggled for my lips were still cold. But her skin was fire. God she was the death of me.
“Tom,” she said reaching up for my hand. I held hers. “Thank you for understanding today. Your ma…her and Rosie…did you know they dance?”
I could not believe it. This is just what I feared. Pretty soon…the trapeze.
“They do,” she said amused, looking at me…my peaches with cream over.
“I don’t ever want to see it,” I said, all sour.
She laughed. “I don’t know that you won’t. Rosie has been so very good for Ma. It’s like this joy in her…I had the best time.”
I sat for a minute, my eyes on her too much, I knew. She turned to me, took the brush and laid it on the little table. She put her hands on my face. “I missed you,” she lied.
I nodded. For I had missed her enough for us both. It was just a ride to Ma’s, but it hurt me to be too far from her. I knew it was wrong, and I told myself it would ease, but it did not ease, not since that door had been blown to bits.
“You still bleedin’?”
She laughed. “No.”
“Good then,” I said and pulled her to me with more force than I meant.
She didn’t seem to mind, for she was on me, and I laid back and brought her along so we did not lift from each other. We had refrained from joining too much, but the need to feel her that way was fierce in me. She was willing, like always, and knowing that, it made me crazy. All day. All the time. I lived in a state of lust, and it’s that strength I put into everything I did just to take it off her for a spell.
So we kissed, and we tried to be quiet for Johnny might still be awake, though he tended to sleep fast and deeply lest he dreamed strong.
So she moaned on me, and I must have her flesh, and my hand went foraging among that infernal gown, and I found her beneath so soft and womanly and I did go for my sweet place, and I had her on her back and her open like a gift unwrapped for just me, and my hips against hers, and I got out, “This alright?” as I waited to storm the gates, and she lifted and I went in, heave-ho. I was fixing to say how I wasn’t gonna last, but I’d been working on it, and I did last enough to pound the bed,
and her digging in her heels and no back up in her, none, ever, and that’s what I loved, that and everything…just all of her.
I waited until I knew she was rising, then I went along, for the pump was primed and it rained down.
So I lowered and turned us slow so we could stay joined a while. “Well,” I said, kissing her to show my adoration.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
I gave her another kiss then said, “Thank you.”
“You are such a man,” she said.
Well, I was. I was hers and all.
“There is not another woman lucky as me. Blessed, I should say.”
“The same,” I said, “lucky and blessed.”
“I’m…sorry I fought you on the vows. The obey. I…meant every word I said that day. I was not resisting on anything at that moment…that’s what I wanted to say.”
I was a mite suspicious now, but this was so what I wanted to hear, I could not resist. I would not. “I meant mine as well.” I tried not to yawn, but the peace was spreading its languid wings over.
“I will obey. I always will. But I must give opinion. Yet…the final decision is always yours, long as you follow Jesus.”
I woke up just a little then. “Are you and Jesus the same?”
She pulled back a bit so I tightened my hold. I wanted to drift off together.
“No, darling,” I said. “I’m just…joking.”
She settled again. “I know it. I just…obeying is hard for me. You can imagine.”
“I would never want you to go against what your heart is saying. Even if it’s your head. I want to know your thoughts. I just…the obeying comes in on matters of protection only. On that I am the boss. When I say go, you go. That’s only in times of danger. I say still, you still. It’s just because I love you and it’s my job to keep you safe. That’s all I ask, darling. Do not fight me when I am fighting for you.” I kissed her then. I did not know what it was exactly, I did not know how to say it, but it came to me of a sudden. This was it.
She kissed me fierce again. I did not have it in me for another go for I had worked the mule’s role this day, and I had given her all I had for now. Just for now.
