“Jimmy’s a jerk? Of course he is not a jerk!”
“Joy, he is the mayor! And the music leader at Church!” She said it like he was God himself.
“Trust me,” I said. “He is not who you think he is.”
“Are you saying there’s really something wrong with Jimmy?” Nanette asked. “Lots of women are pining after him, you know.”
They would never believe me if I told them.
My mind swirled back to a Jimmy standing in cut-offs by the creek, water drops dripping from his long, dark wavy hair and trailing down his naked chest. He was waving me toward him, trying to get me to jump off the bluff opposite the bank. When I was afraid, he waded out into the water and caught me, and we’d kissed and he’d promised we’d be together as long as he lived.
He lied.
“No, but there’s something wrong with me,” I said. “Thinking about a married man.”
Nanette laughed. “Sounds human to me. And he’s not a married man.”
“It was a sin to have the hots for him when he was married,” Carey said.
Nanette shot her a dirty look. “Thanks for that, Sis.”
“But it’s not a sin now, since he’s not married,” Carey finished.
“What about Doc?” Nanette chimed in. Carey’s eyebrows poked straight up like exclamation marks, I swear. I popped another chocolate.
“He’s got to be ten years younger than Joy. Why, that would be a scandal!”
I huffed. “Did Ruthie tell you about him, too?”
Nanette smiled. “She’s a hopeless romantic, Joy. She reads all these romance novels that she hides under her bed at home. I bet she hides them here, too, and thinks I don’t know. She even talks about taking her honeymoon to the beach someday, just like you used to dream of.”
“Life isn’t a romance novel.” I knew that for sure.
“Of course not,” Nanette said. “But there’s nothing wrong with being happy. Ruthie wants you to be happy. We all do.”
“But people will talk.”
“So?”
“So,” I said, happy to shift their attention from Jimmy. “Doc’s a hunk.”
“Isn’t he a hunk, Carey?” Nanette gently shoved Carey’s shoulder.
“Okay, so he’s a hunk, but that’s speaking as a married woman.”
“Me, too,” Nanette said. “My Chad’s pretty good-looking himself, but now, Doc.” She waggled her eyebrows, making me wonder if it were really possible to go out with Doc and not scandalize the community. I looked at Carey. Could she really handle my being the center of the town gossip—again? I highly doubted it.
Hmmm.
This would give people lots to talk about. It could be a scandal, and we haven’t had a good scandal in a while.
Ruthie’s Diary
Dear Diary
Aunt Joy and I have been driving the cherry red Chevy all over the countryside, we’ve watched every old movie on the TV, read all the books we could find in the house, including a ton of teen romance novels from Aunt Joy’s high school days that she finally admitted she had. Now that our romance habit is out in the open, we have even more to talk about. We go to the library every few days and check out arm loads of romance novels.
It has been forever since I’ve been up here to write in my diary, but when Aunt Joy, Aunt Carey, and Mom got into that discussion about the mayor, it made me realize that Aunt Joy might be ready for me to give her what she lost. Aunt Joy seems fine to me.
But before I give it to her, I have to confess here in my diary: I looked inside.
Ruthie
Chapter Sixteen
‡
Once when it was hotter out than Tabasco, Ruthie and I nearly got caught running around in our bathing suits, which we’d put on just to cool off. I guess it’s better than being caught in your birthday suit, but not much. So, when both the mayor and the doc drove up at the same time and I was sitting with Ruthie on the upstairs balcony in my black and red hibiscus print bathing suit and drinking iced tea, I almost broke my toe trying to get back in the house, before they could see me and my floppy places up close.
“That was close!” I hopped around the room while I pulled on my favorite old pair of jeans. “I wonder what they’re doing here. At the same time!”
As I dressed, Ruthie peeked through the curtain.
“Don’t know,” Ruthie said. “But they look kind of surprised to see each other.”
I couldn’t imagine what either one was doing there on a Thursday afternoon, and at the same time.
“They’re shaking hands,” Ruthie said.
Jimmy hadn’t shown up to the house in a few days, although at church I’d noticed his eyes kept sliding to the empty spot where I usually sat. He had no idea that after being the center of attention at Momma’s funeral, I’d started sitting in the empty church balcony, right behind the curtain where nobody could see me. I liked hiding there not only during church, but also when the choir was practicing, or when Jimmy thought he was alone and sat at the piano singing all my favorite hymns.
“Doc’s walking up on the porch now.” Ruthie’s bottom was sticking into the room and her head all the way through the curtains.
“Get back. They’re going to see you, honey.”
“The mayor’s just standing by his car. He’s watching the Doc.”
I doubted Jimmy was jealous of Doc, but if he’d still loved me, he should’ve been. Any woman in town, even the young ones like Fernie, would have been glad to be visited by Doc, whether they were sick or not. I can’t deny that my heart went all a flutter on the day he came out to the house and told me he was no longer my doctor.
“He wants to be your boyfriend. They both do.”
This caused a myriad of feelings in me, from giggles to denial, before I chided her about delving into my non-existent love life.
Naturally, Ruthie takes after all of the Talleys, and we’ve never been the kind of people to let sleeping dogs lie, as some British guy named Chaucer once said it was best to do. That’s because our father, Leroy Talley, was born and he eventually switched that old saying to, “Never let a sleeping dog lie. If he bites ya’, it’s because you weren’t ready.”
I had a feeling I was probably about to get bitten, when Ruthie snapped the curtains together and giggled a laugh that took me back to another time, same place. I still remembered peering out my window and sneaking a wave at a much younger Jimmy. He was standing, looking just like he had in my hospital vision, his wavy dark locks pulled back in a ponytail, his sinewy arms relaxed, and hands in his pockets staring up at me. Afterward, I’d snapped the curtains together, slipped down the kitchen stairs, and out into the kitchen garden where he’d been waiting for me behind the leaning brown-eyed-susans, their heads spying as we talked, and then up in the apple tree, where we kissed until Momma found me missing, and hollered until I came inside.
It’s too bad you weren’t waiting in the garden when I needed you to be there, Jimmy.
“I think the mayor saw me! He just looked up and waved at the window.” Ruthie giggled and rolled onto my bed. I loved that girl with her head full of princess fantasies and Prince-Charming dreams.
She didn’t know about the dark side of love. She didn’t know what it was that I’d lost, for good I guessed, in the chimney, and why it mattered. And while she had questioned me at length, she didn’t know how Jimmy was connected to that loss. Of course, Ruthie couldn’t understand how Jimmy being widowed and burdened with secrets made his interest in me nothing more than friendship, and a very fragile friendship, at that—even if being near him still made my head spin like a top, especially when he kissed it.
That left Doc, you’d think, but while I don’t mind admitting that Doc’s eyes did set my skin on fire, something always doused it before it could really get burning. I don’t know what it was about him, but just when I’d start to see him as more than just Doc, images of Jimmy swimming in the creek, drying my tears in the attic, and kissing me in the woods messed up t
he whole romantic scene. It’s all a crying shame, to be honest.
“An impossible situation,” I said aloud.
“Not impossible! You just have to decide who you like, Aunt Joy.”
I couldn’t help but smile at that pretty girl, in spite of my inner worries, and give her narrow shoulders a hug.
“We should be talking about who you like, honey.”
“Nobody.” But her cheeks reddened.
Shielding my eyes from the sun with my hand, I surveyed the driveway. Jimmy was still standing by his truck, staring up at the balcony, which oddly, my momma said used to be called a widow’s walk. Maybe, I thought, we should rename it an old-maid’s walk. Jimmy, a real widower, I reminded myself, raised his hand, and I responded in kind. It was instinctive, a replay of the past. He did the little double fist on his chest, just like when we were young, and climbed back into his truck. My heart flip-flopped, just like back then.
What do you want, Jimmy? Why do you come and never say what you’re thinking?
There was that one time when he took me in his arms on the front porch, but when I turned away, he went. That’s not what I’d wanted him to do. I’d wanted him to apologize, to explain, to let me know he was on my side, and that he hadn’t forgotten.
“Where’s he going?” Ruthie complained as he revved his engine and drove away.
We both stared after his truck even after it disappeared into the hills, Janis Joplin’s voice singing “Take another little piece of my heart, now baby,” rolling through my mind, until a knock on the downstairs door traveled up to my bedroom, drawing me out of my reverie long enough for Ruthie to tug on my arm. She rushed me down to where the other potential suitor she’d picked out for her dear old Auntie, stood on the front porch.
“Ruthie, slow down. He’s not going anywhere.”
“Sorry, Aunt Joy,” she whispered. “He might. The mayor just did.”
*
He must have been younger than Jimmy by a good ten years, which made him younger than me, but why would I complain?
“How are you?” Doc asked.
“Feeling better. I don’t sleep well, though. It’s like I slept too long in that coma. And I have weird dreams.”
He looked at me with a funny grin on his face. “Well, I didn’t mean in a medical way, but—”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” I laughed at myself, feeling embarrassed.
“Hey, no problem. What dreams?”
“You would think they’re strange.”
“Try me.”
“Sometimes I have a nightmare I haven’t had since I was a kid, in which I fall into the Spring of Good Luck out behind our house, can’t breathe, and drown. I also dream a lot of something I lost decades ago and will never find. Plus, and here’s the kicker, I wake up at night and think I see Dad, who is dead.” I laughed. “He says, ‘Breathe’ like he did in the hospital.”
He pressed his lip together then clicked his tongue. “Sounds normal.”
I laughed. “You see? Carey is right. I’m nuts, Doc. Do you agree?” I smiled the best flirting smile I knew how, and I didn’t really know how to flirt, but was rewarded with kind eyes and a soft smile.
He reached for my hand and I let him hold it, enjoying the tingles that danced up my wrist, to my elbow, and around the back of my neck. How many times had Jimmy sat on this porch since I woke up from my coma and never held my hand, let alone carried on a conversation the way Doc was now? “No. I think you’ve been through a lot. And, I think you just need to find a new purpose for your life.”
“A purpose?”
“Yep. Something besides taking care of your family.” I must have looked offended because he hurried to explain. “It’s just that you spend a lot of time taking care of your family. Maybe you would enjoy doing something different, or taking care of people in a different way.”
So we launched into a conversation of possibilities and I promised him I’d make a list and decide on something soon.
“Thanks, Doc.”
“What for?”
“For talking with me.”
He squeezed my hand, and he might as well have been squeezing my whole body.
“I like talking to you, Joy.”
The only time Jimmy and I had shared more than a couple of words since my coma was on the day of the tornado. That didn’t go well at all, which to be fair, might’ve been the reason he only ever sat with me and didn’t talk, but I didn’t think that was a good excuse. What did he expect? That after all those years of ignoring his rejection of me, we’d shake hands and be best friends?
“Joy?” I stepped out of my thoughts and back to the porch swing where I sat.
“Sorry, Doc.”
“You were saying that at night, you worry about something you lost a long time ago. This is something real, right? Not just a dream?”
“Right,” I said, but a tiny part of me wasn’t so sure anymore. “It used to be real. Now I really sound like a loon.”
“Is it something I can help you find?” His eyes were kind, just as I remembered them being in the hospital when he shined that little light into mine.
“It’s gone.”
“Hmm. So you don’t want to find it.”
I shook my head. “Not anymore.”
“Excuse me, Aunt Joy?”
Doc and I both swiveled to see Ruthie standing in the doorway. I wondered how long she had been listening.
“I made a cake.”
“What kind?” We both asked in unison.
“Lemon-blueberry,” she said. “I wanted to try something different.”
“In that case,” Doc said, “We must eat cake.”
He held his hand out, and I took it, thinking of how when I was a girl, cake had fixed so many things.
Chapter Seventeen
‡
I think reclining around in a coma makes one take a closer look at life. I did so and found mine to be very dull. All my years of not moving on from something that happened years ago is what had turned me into the town spinster.
“I think I need a new purpose.”
“A purpose?” Carey asked.
“What does that even mean?” Nanette asked.
“What I’m saying is, I want to do something to help someone else. When I was in my coma, I thought a lot about my life, and . . .”
“Oh brother,” Carey whined. She looked at Nanette, and spoke as if I couldn’t hear. “She’s going to talk about her secret life inside her coma now. Do we have to hear about that again?” Nanette rolled her eyes in their sockets, but I couldn’t tell if it was for Carey’s benefit or mine.
I ignored them both and held up a letter I’d received in the mail just that morning. It was almost as if it was meant to be my new purpose.
“This letter came for Momma today.”
“A little bit late for letters to Momma,” Carey said.
“I’m sure her name was just part of a list of volunteers. It’s from The Tulip House for Girls,” I said. “They are looking for people to form fund raising committees in the region. They’re in danger of closing.”
“That would be a shame if they closed,” Nanette said. “They’ve helped a lot of troubled girls over the years. Momma loved helping them. That’s really what she did with all that money she made from the apple tree branches.”
I paused. “Really? I didn’t know that.”
Something about the idea of Momma using her Magic Tree to help troubled girls made me smile. Surely, I could be as creative as Momma. Maybe we could sell the chocolates and teas, too. Or maybe have a big supper and charge people.
“It’s too much work for you right now, Joy.”
“Oh shove off, Carey. I’m tired of you talking about my delicate state. It’s been more than a month now since I woke up.”
“Who’ll be on your committee, besides us?” Nanette asked.
Carey frowned, but she didn’t argue about Nanette automatically assuming she would be on it, too.
I hated to do it,
but I smiled and said, “Let’s start with Peter, Mary Sue, and Thelma.”
“I advise against this,” Carey said. “You need to take it easy.”
I called Tulip House as soon as the girls left.
I clutched the yellow phone receiver in my fist and stuttered out the words, “Can I do something to help the girls living at The Tulip House for Girls?”
Nobody would ever call me a stutterer, I don’t think, but sometimes, when my confidence is low, like in that moment, I wish I had some Chapstick. All the moisture goes out of my lips and I trip over my words or can’t even remember them. Thankfully, the lady on the phone at Tulip House didn’t even notice, or pretended not to, and when she said they really needed my help, I covered the mouth piece and danced and whooped around the kitchen.
Out of the clear blue Oklahoma sky, my world got bigger. I’d never realized how little it was before. Tiny as one of those little Christmas towns in a snow globe is what it’d always been, but I never even knew it, until I picked that phone up and volunteered to help people I didn’t even know.
Now, I’m not saying that it was a bad calling to take care of people I loved, but after being trapped in my body for a week, I wanted to do even bigger things, like some of the women I read about in the paper. I was inspired by women like Margaret Thatcher and also Nancy Reagan, who looks just like a housewife when you see her on TV. A well-dressed housewife, but a housewife just the same, only that lady has a brass neck. Even after her husband was almost assassinated, Nancy was expanding her world, teaching kids to say no to drugs, and replacing the White House china, for heaven’s sake.
My china is made up of twenty different patterns, but like Nancy’s husband, heaven obviously thought it was best for me to stay alive when I could’ve easily died, and I’m not going to waste my time. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think my future is as important as the President’s and Nancy’s, of course, but I did survive hanging from the roof. That counts for something.
*
The Tulip House for Girls is sort of a halfway home for young girls, who are either pregnant or have experienced some kind of trauma. Another reason I chose it was that I understood what it was like to have been a young woman, still a girl really, and go through something terrible. I will never forget how difficult it was just to put one foot in front of the other when my world fell apart at such a tender age, and going through it alone was worse. If I’d been brave enough to call their anonymous hotline back then, maybe I never would’ve been up on that roof and Carey might not have been telling everyone who would listen, “Be patient with my sister. We think she might be just slightly mentally ill. It’s temporary.”
Waking Up Joy Page 11
