Desert Gift

by Sally John

  Chapter 12

  Palm Springs

  Jill eyed the pleasant young woman seated in the rattan chair next to hers in the hotel lobby, and she suddenly felt very, very old.

  Lindsay was a journalist, interviewing her for a local newspaper’s religious section. She had long, straight dark hair and wore red-framed glasses and a happy expression. “You grew up in California, right?”

  “Yes, in Sweetwater Springs.” When had her own happy expression turned sour? Last Thursday? Or had it been a slow, ongoing squishing of her features?

  “My favorite hiking trails are there.”

  Mm-hmm, she thought. Right smack in the middle-of-nowhere desert. Which described how she felt at the moment—nothing like Lindsay must feel. She had her whole life ahead of her. The girl most likely had regrets already, but nothing like what the next twenty years would bring. It wouldn’t help to warn her.

  Lindsay said, “Did you visit Palm Springs much as a kid?”

  Jill tried to answer coherently. Gretchen had tugged her through the last three days, but they’d taken a toll, and this Sunday didn’t feel very restful, let alone worshipful. Her mind drifted. She was eighty miles from home. She should call her parents. The plan had been to visit them in a few weeks. With Jack. After their vacation. After the last item on the itinerary was checked off.

  Obviously none of that was going to happen.

  Her dad, Skip, would be hurt, but he would console; he would offer insight; he would be there for her and Jack in whatever way benefited them. Her mother, Daisy, was another story.

  She just wasn’t up to Daisy.

  And besides, she and Jack were at the start of a dialogue. There was nothing to report.

  Jill’s phone rang in her pocket and she rudely pulled it out. Jack’s name appeared. “Lindsay, I am so sorry but I have to take this. Family issues. Be right back.” She threw her a smile and walked across the lobby. “Jack.”

  “Hi.” His voice was hesitant.

  As it should be. She had left him several voice mails that he ignored.

  “How did this morning’s interview go?” he said.

  “It’s still going.” She strode through the hotel’s entranceway, made a beeline across the stone drive, and silently thanked Gretchen for dragging her to Palm Springs the previous night.

  “I don’t want to interrupt.”

  “We come first, Jack. No matter what I’ve made it look like in the past, we come first. Did you get my messages?”

  “All six of them. Look, Jill, I’m sorry for not getting back to you. I’m sorry that I can’t just talk this through with you. I’m not ready.”

  Jill sat on a stone bench beneath a lone palm tree, part of a mini oasis with bushes, flowers, and trickling fountain. Gretchen had lived up to her promise of a resort with all the amenities, including pools and spa and restful quiet. She had even thrown in a massage. It was an out-and-out bribe to keep Jill on the tour for as long as possible, but it was also a friend’s concern for her well-being.

  And it helped. Her lungs did not burn. Her tone was even. “Jack, this long-distance business isn’t healthy. We need to be face-to-face. We can talk face-to-face.”

  “I don’t want to talk. How many times do I have to say that until you get it?” His irritable tone snapped open a red flag in her mind.

  Jack never ever displayed irritability. He might be angry at circumstances sometimes, but never grumpy or moody or crabby. A quick apology always accompanied the rare bark at her.

  This out-of-character temper was a symptom of midlife crisis.

  Like the fatigue? Like the lack of interest in her? Like his weight gain?

  Had the signs been there all along, masking themselves as rhythms of every day, as ups and downs of life’s seasons?

  She shook her head. It was asking what came first, the chicken or the egg? Did the way she ignored him create the crisis or enhance its effects? Either way, it just was.

  “Jack—”

  “Hold on.” His voice sounded as if he tilted the phone away from his mouth. “Sophie, I’ll be right there.”

  Jill said, “You’re at the office?”

  “Yeah—”

  “Jack!” Her tone lost its evenness. “Good grief! You need a break!”

  “The office is not my problem.”

  “Meaning I am.”

  “Jill, I don’t want to say any more.”

  “Say more! I need to hear what you’re thinking.”

  “Okay. Bottom line, our marriage is my problem. It’s not how I want to live my life.”

  “How can that be? What do you want? What’s changed?”

  “What hasn’t?” He breathed heavily. “I refuse to get into it right now. Sophie needs me. I have to go. Give me some space, Jill. That’s all I ask. Okay? Just a little space for the time being. All right. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye.” Jill spat the word and smacked her phone shut. How dare he do this to her, to them! How dare he say everything had changed between them and then refuse to get into—

  “Sophie needs me”? Sophie needed him?

  Obviously he meant workwise. Sophie had a question. She wondered about a file. She—

  She was always right there beside Jack, day in and day out, efficient, thoughtful, single. Year after year after year taking care of his needs.

  What needs exactly?

  If they were having an affair, then Jack’s behavior pretty much expressed every last symptom of a midlife crisis.

  Familiar fears sprang to mind. She had always been wary of Sophie. The woman had never married, never even dated as far as Jill knew. She made no attempt to mask her adoration of Jack. Oh, Jack couldn’t see it, but Jill could. It was quite obvious in the way Sophie looked at him and talked to him.

  Jill had always trusted Jack. His middle name might as well have been “Old Faithful.” That didn’t make Sophie’s attention to him any less a threat. It didn’t make Jack’s free offers of information—where and when he and Sophie went out to eat, what gifts he gave her at Christmas and birthday times—easy to accept.

  They had a history, innocent or not, and Jack’s speaking to Sophie just now set off new alarms.

  It was time for Jill to go home. As in now.

  * * *

  Los Angeles

  The unflappable Gretchen was decidedly flappy. She hadn’t stopped gesturing since Jill made an airline reservation the previous day.

  They stood near the security line at LAX. Or rather Jill stood. Gretchen paced in tight circles, most of her hair falling out of a French twist, her lime green silk blouse wrinkled and untucked.

  “Gretch, I’m fine.”

  “Yeah, right. You’re going against everyone’s wishes, including Jack’s, and you think you’re fine. You’ve lost touch with reality.”

  “I’m going through security. Give me a hug.”

  “No. Way. Get over it already. Neither of us are leaving until the last possible minute. I may even get permission to go to the gate with you. I’ll explain how you’re a menace to others. That you need constant supervision.” The glare did not quite hit the mark, though she put up a good bluff. “You may yet come to your senses.”

  “I did. I am going home to save my marriage.”

  “Have you seriously weighed all the issues here? This is not only about you and Jack. I’m talking radio, publisher, audience. Have you given one thought to how much time, energy, and money so many people have invested in you?”

  Jill stared at her. “I can’t believe you said that. Of course I have. Do you honestly think I’ve stayed here for this worst week of my life in order to feed my ego?”

  “We should talk about it.”

  “Gretchen, I’m done talking.”

  “Then we’ll drink coffee. I’ll go get some. Sit there.” Gretchen pointed at two empty seats nearby. “Do not move.” Her eyes filled and she hurried away, soon out of sight in the crowd.

  Jill dropped her carry-on bags to the floor and sat. In truth
she was as unnerved as Gretchen. She had spent the equivalent of two mortgage payments on airline charges. She was letting everyone down, from publisher to audience to her sister, and she could not imagine returning in a week to placate them. She was responsible for Jack’s condition. She ignored his insistence that he was not ready to talk and purchased a very expensive ticket.

  She should tell him she was coming.

  “Hi.” Jack answered his phone.

  She inhaled, surprised that he had actually answered. “Jack.” She exhaled and took another deep breath.

  “What?”

  “I’m coming home. Today.”

  A silent moment passed. “Hm.” He hummed in his doctor tone, alert, waiting for more information, not wanting to comment until he had the whole picture.

  “I’ll be in late tonight. The rest of the itinerary—none of it matters. Not really.” She bit her lip, trying to slow down. “The PR stuff and . . . and . . . and everything . . .”

  “Of course it matters. It’s what you’re all about. It’s your life’s work.”

  “No! I’m telling you it does not matter. It’s all going on hold. I’m coming home to work on us, Jack. Us. We’re what matters. Our marriage. I’ve been telling others for years how to stay in relationship. Why would I not explore that with you for ourselves?”

  “You’re putting your work on hold.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll get back to it.”

  “Eventually. There’s always something to glean from our real life that I can use to help others. Aging couples are going to stumble into midlife issues.”

  “We’re a lesson plan in the making.”

  She swallowed. His retort stunned her. What happened to the Jack who saw God in everything from little toes to plantar warts to coq au vin and told her about it so she could tell others because he was not an up-front sort of guy?

  He sighed and in that familiar sound of frustration she imagined him pulling on his earlobe. “Jill, what did I say yesterday?”

  “That you don’t want to talk. I can’t believe you really mean it. You might think you do, but—”

  “I meant it.”

  “Fine.” She found her voice. He was not getting off easy this time. He was not shoving her into a taxi. “I hear you, Jack. Now hear me. What I need is to be there. I need to find a counselor for us. I’ve got a list of the best ones I recommend to couples, but for us . . . I don’t know. Maybe we can start with Lew.” They’d known Pastor Lew Mowers for twenty years. “Have you told him yet?”

  “Jill.” In that one syllable his tone went from an empathetic doctor to one with the coldest of bedside manners. “I moved out of the house.”

  The sound of a rushing wind filled her head, as if a jet whooshed right through the terminal. “What?”

  “I have an apartment.”

  An apartment?

  “And I spoke with a lawyer.”

  A lawyer?

  “What about a counselor?” she whispered. “We need to see a counselor.”

  “I disagree. That would only prolong the inevitable.” He dropped the bombshells in a calm voice as if rattling off steps in a surgical procedure. “I didn’t want to say this on the phone, but in your typical driven manner, you’ve forced things to a head. The bottom line is we don’t have a future because I don’t love you. I’m sorry, Jill, I really am, but that’s the way it is. I want the best for you, and our marriage is not it, not for either of us.”

  She could not follow what he was saying. The noise in her head drowned him out.

  He sighed again. “I’ll send a car to the airport for you and put a house key in the mailbox. Which flight are you on?”

  “Jack! You can’t end a marriage on the telephone.”

  “I didn’t. You did.”

  Jill shut the phone and made a beeline for the restroom.

  Chapter 13

  San Diego

  “Rock ’em, sock ’em, Jillie!” Viv giggled and flipped a page in her sister’s book. “Marty, you have got to hear this.”

  “Trust me, I’m hearing.” Across the kitchen table, her husband lowered the newspaper enough to peer over it. “I can’t tell if you like it or not, though.”

  “Oh, I love it. Jill is totally crazy and it comes through loud and clear.”

  “And that’s a good thing?”

  “Yes! It’s a wonderful thing. This book will appeal to a lot of women who think like she does.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Come on, just let me read one part to you.” She pushed aside breakfast dishes to make space for her elbows. “You want to have some idea what it’s about before she gets here.”

  “Why?”

  “So you two have something to talk about.”

  “Why?”

  Viv caught the tease in his eye and gave him her best glare.

  “Seriously, Viv. You said Jack’s not coming.”

  “Right.”

  “Then she’ll hang with you at the office and you’ll do girlie things. I don’t foresee us interacting all that much. I need to put in some serious overtime, probably the week she’s here.”

  Viv shook her head in resignation. In the early years she would get mad at him for disliking Jill; then she would be mad at Jill for disliking Marty. She finally decided it was their problem, not hers.

  “Martin Kovich, you are such a chicken.”

  “When it comes to your sister, you bet I am.” He raised the paper and she was looking at a Lakers guy, both feet off the ground, hands above the basket.

  “We’re not supposed to end the conversation at this point.”

  “You know I’ll talk to Jill. I’ll even spring for dinner at the Prado.”

  “With or without you?”

  He chuckled.

  “Anyway, that’s not what I meant. It says here in her book that we should end a conversation with a recap to make sure we both come away having heard the same thing.”

  The basketball player folded. “You want me to listen.”

  “Please. I can’t figure out if we’re having Rockin’ Roast or Easy Eggs.”

  “Huh?”

  “Do you think we’re disagreeing or conversing about everyday stuff?” She glanced down at the book. “Then again, maybe we’re working through a difficult time? Given the fact that we view Jill as synonymous with difficult, we’ll go with that one. Which means we’re into Crunchy Casserole.”

  Marty snapped the paper shut and laid it aside. “Give me the short version.” He needed to leave for work soon. They made a point of having breakfast together most days because it was the only time they could count on. She often worked late into the evenings. He often coached boys’ rec ball, whatever the season, after work.

  Viv smiled. He was listening. “You have a good heart.”

  He grunted and folded his arms.

  She picked up the book. “Okay, short version. She Said, He Heard is all about how married couples don’t always really hear what they say to each other because they miss the message that is behind the words.”

  “I could have told you that.”

  “But how do you fix it?”

  “Talk louder. Make frequent use of exclamation points.”

  “Mr. Finesse.”

  He smiled. “So the book tells you how to fix it.”

  “Yeah. It’s based on recipes for communicating. She put them in an acronym for recipes. Cute, huh?” Viv read from a front page. “The R is for Rockin’ Roast, how to disagree. E is Easy Eggs, how to interact in everyday life. C, Crunchy Casserole, covers difficult times. I, Indigo Ice Cream, for the blues. P, Pristine Pie, is for beautiful moments. E, Ecstatic Eggplant, for happy times. And S, for Sizzlin’ Spinach—physical intimacy.”

  “Cute.”

  “There are actual recipes at the back.” She turned pages. “I bet they’re Jack’s.”

  “So what’s in the spinach chapter?”

  She looked at him.

  He shrugged. “I’m
a guy. It’s my love language.”

  Viv skimmed a page. “It looks like romance stuff. Candlelight, dinner out. Hm. Evidently Jack likes music in the bedroom.”

  “Hold it. That’s too much information. What’s in the blue ice cream?”

  “Let’s see. Besides blueberries—” Viv found the section—“she talks about when she and Jack had to move his parents into an assisted-care place, how it was such a sad time, how she and Jack made a scrapbook together about his mom and dad. It was how they did ‘blue’ together.”

  “That’s what I wanna do. Cut and paste and draw.”

  “What if we used stickers?”

  “Nope.”

  “Marty, she’s not saying everyone should do the same thing. It’s an example. She gives broad guidelines for how to really hear each other.”

  “We both know she’s been using examples from home for a long time in her classes. Jack Galloway, GP, is cut from a different cloth than me.”

  Viv winced at Marty’s nickname for Jack. GP did not refer to general practitioner. Guinea pig struck closer to the truth than to a joke.

  He pushed back his chair and stood. “Babe, if you told a bunch of women what you and I said to each other in private when my dad died, I would’ve moved out.” He gazed at her for a long moment, conviction in the line of his thin lips, warm love for her in his brown eyes.

  “You’re saying you don’t want to read the book?”

  He walked around the table, kissed her cheek, and whispered, “You heard correctly.”

  Curious. Marty and Jill were so much alike but would never admit it. Refereeing the two bullheads without Jack’s help was not a happy prospect.

  Maybe she had serious overtime to put in at work that week too.

  * * *

  Later that day Viv stood inside her very own, brand-new slice of heaven on wheels: the minibus. She wiggled and jiggled her version of a happy dance down its aisle. She sang off-key, making up words to the tune of “My Girl.”

  “Talkin’ ’bout my bus. I’ve got a Turtle Top Odyssey. And it’s brand-new and I am so happy. My bus, talkin’ ’bout my bus. My bus. Ooo-ooo.” She snapped her fingers. “I’ve got a turbo diesel engine, six-speed transmission, and a sixty-gallon tank. And when all fourteen guests sit in the double-high recliners, they’ll like the wide, wide seats. And a whole . . .” She twirled. “Lot . . .” Another twirl. “More. Talkin’ ’bout my bus.”