Authors: Kibler Julie
Inside, I surveyed the magazine racks and wished I’d asked for more details. To be on the safe side, I chose one puzzle book with large print—“Easy on the eyes”—and one regular. I figured I had things covered either way, and I’d only have to make one trip inside the store. Who’d ever heard of people actually buying those crossword puzzle magazines unless they were sitting around in the hospital? Though come to think of it, I remembered my granny working them when I was a little girl. I guessed it was an old-people kind of thing to do.
I carried them low, against my hip, as if I were toting a giant-size box of feminine products to the lone male checker in a grocery store. But the cashier didn’t even look at the magazines as she slid them across the scanner. Or, for that matter, at
me.
I waved away her monotone offer to bag them. It seemed wasteful, in spite of my shame.
Back in the car, Miss Isabelle eyed my purchases at arm’s length. “That’ll do. Now we’ll have something to talk about on the road.”
I imagined the topics crossword puzzles might inspire: Four across: “a pink bird.”
Flamingo.
We were going to be on Interstate 30 a long, long time.
We were quiet on the road the first hour or so, though, me trying to navigate midmorning Dallas traffic without cussing too much, each of us a little awkward in this different environment, each of us still mired in thinking of other things, other places.
My mind was on the night before, right about when things had calmed down. My new dress, tags removed, hung in a clear bag on the door of my closet. Bebe had settled into bed with her book. Stevie Junior was keeping company with a video game, as usual, except when his fingers were busy texting his girlfriend a hundred miles per hour.
And my mind was on Teague—on why I’d felt so nervous about calling him. Maybe, just maybe, it was that little voice chanting in my mind, Teague, Teague, out of your league!
But my phone had gone off, the ringtone I’d assigned him a few weeks after our first real date.
Let’s get it on
…
Oh, yeah. Corny.
“How’s my special lady?”
I know, I know. With anyone else, I’d cringe and head for the hills. What a line. But with Teague? I could hardly explain how it made me feel.
Okay. I’ll try.
Special. It made me feel special.
“Doing good, doing good. Yourself? Kids all settled in for the night?” I said. I tried to be all chill whenever he called me, tried to let him know he couldn’t melt me with a few words, slurp up whatever he wanted from the puddle, then leave the leftovers for someone else. I’d kept men at arm’s length for years now after so many mess-ups—theirs
and
mine. But where other guys took my attitude as a brush-off and my reluctance to get physical as some kind of kinky game, eventually calling me a prude and running the other way, Teague kept hanging in there. And I’d let him see past my cool a few times. The littlest peek at the woman who longed for a real man in her life. Somehow, I felt like he was willing to wait for that woman to make up her mind.
When I hung up ten minutes later, I pinched my arms and slapped my cheeks. Was I awake or sleepwalking? “I understand,” Teague had said. “You’re doing the right thing, helping your Isabelle out this way. I’ll miss you, but I’ll see you when you get back.” And: “Give your mom my number. I’m used to dealing with kid stuff.” True! He was a single dad of three! “If she needs help with Stevie or Bebe or anything at all while you’re gone, I’m a phone call away.”
I wanted to believe he
would
be there if they needed something. I almost could. Almost.
I hadn’t known what to expect when I told him I was leaving town out of the blue. I knew exactly how Steve, my ex, would react, even before I dialed his number. I had to let him know, in the event the kids needed something—in which case I wished them good luck. Steve whined. He berated me. Asked how I could up and leave my kids for days. Funny how he never seemed to take a good, hard look in the mirror, right?
And other guys in the past? When I left with the kids for a little visit somewhere, it was always “Oh, baby, I can’t survive without you. Don’t leave me.” But as soon as I passed the city limits, I swear someone fired the starting gun:
Gentlemen
(in the loosest sense of the word),
start your engines!
Then they’d run to the nearest whatever to pick up a substitute girlfriend. When I got back, spied the lipstick on their collars, and smelled the knockoff perfume in their cars, they’d be all “I’m sorry, girl, but what am I supposed to do when you go and leave me? You know it’s really you I want, but I just didn’t know for sure.”
Right.
But Teague had surprised me. Again.
There was something
different
about a man who called after a first date to see how you were doing and to make sure you’d had a good time. Now, not too desperate. It’s not like he called five minutes after I turned the dead bolt, all pitiful because I hadn’t invited him in, already shooting me signals I’d made Yet Another Bad Choice. No, Teague had waited a respectable twenty-four hours, and then he hadn’t even acted like we had to set up another date immediately, though he’d said he wanted to see me again. And now, more than a month and several dates later, whenever I thought of him, a single word still came to mind: G
entleman.
The real kind.
Well, okay, two more words—Wayne Brady. Because Teague reminded me of the
Let’s Make a Deal
game-show host with his goofy smile and sense of humor and hot-in-a-geeky-hot-kind-of-way looks.
Other men had held doors for me on first dates. They’d even offered to pay, though I always insisted on splitting the check—me and my independence, we are joined at the hip, the shoulder, and the elbow. But this went beyond the basics. We were well past first-date status, which I’m pretty sure surprised both of us, and the new had worn off some. Yet he still held doors, still picked up the check unless I managed to snatch it first and hold on tight. Still treated me, in every respect, like a lady.
With Teague, I suspected, the gentle went all the way to the bone.
But I wasn’t sure I trusted myself. Could I recognize a real man? A trustworthy one? Like they say, Fool me once, shame on you.… Fool me ten times and I am plumb stupid.
* * *
O
N THE BRIDGE
over Lake Ray Hubbard, we were still crawling through heavy traffic, but Miss Isabelle finally piped up. “You met Stevie Senior in your hometown, right?”
He was just plain Steve, but I never bothered to correct her. And I tried to remember what I might have told her. Steve was forever calling me at work, interrupting my appointments, and if I didn’t drop everything, next thing I knew, he’d show up in person. How well that went depended on his mood and choice of beverage the night before, so I tried to keep him on the phone and out of the shop. I figured a customer came in for a nice, relaxing getaway along with a hairstyle, even if only for an hour. I made every attempt to keep my personal history and problems low on the radar, but it didn’t always work. And, because things with Miss Isabelle were different—she’d listened to me gripe about my kids’ dad for years—she had at least a piecemeal picture of him. It seemed she would have picked up all the details in the process, but maybe not. After all, I’d been surprised to realize how little I knew about her childhood, right? But I didn’t really want to start over at the beginning.
“Yep. High school sweethearts,” I said, hoping my simple answer would refresh her memory.
“And you married right out of high school.” She paused expectantly, as though she wanted the whole enchilada all over again. I scraped a fingernail back and forth across a tiny rough spot on the otherwise-cushy armrest.
“What’s three down, Miss Isabelle?”
She fumbled to bring her readers back to her nose and peered at the puzzle she’d started. With a triumphant smile, she read the clue. “It’s a seven-letter adjective for ‘much adored; favorite.’”
“Uncle.”
“
Uncle
? That’s only five letters.”
“By ‘Uncle,’ I mean I give up.”
“You can’t give up. You didn’t even try.”
“Trying to drive is what I’m trying to do.”
“
Beloved.
”
“Beloved?”
“Yes. That’s the answer. Used in a sentence—Stevie Senior was your high school beloved.”
So much for the crossword puzzle book steering us away from uncomfortable topics.
“Maybe Steve was be-loved at one time. Now he’s downright be-noying.”
“That’s so sad.”
“Tell me about it.” I sighed, and I felt my resolve to keep it simple weaken. “I always thought he’d be the steady one. A good husband and father. He was our school district’s star athlete, racking up touchdowns in the fall and three-pointers all winter. And championships. Everyone figured he’d go off to college on a scholarship and make something big of himself. And I figured after he graduated, we’d get married and ride off into the sunset. House, babies, picket fence. Everything.” My voice trailed off, and I listened to the echo of my disappointment.
“Things don’t always work out the way we expect, do they?”
“Shoot, Miss Isabelle. You know how it turned out. I got the babies. I have the house. But I figured wrong on the picket fence. And Steve.”
A little later, I said, “What about you, Miss Isabelle? Did you have a high school sweetheart? Your husband—was he yours?” I knew folks back in her day usually did marry young and stick with it for decades. I wondered if the men were different back then, or if the women were just more patient with them when they acted like idiots.
Her answer just then was a sigh, and it seemed filled with pain. Rib-cracking, chest-expanding, larger-than-life pain. I felt I’d said the wrong thing, but I couldn’t take it back.
She flipped to a new page in the crossword puzzle book and proceeded to fill in answers as though her life depended on it. Presently, she said, “My high school sweetheart … that’s a story.”
It all started and ended with a funeral dress.
3
Isabelle, 1939
N
ELL RELEASED A
lock of sizzling hair from the iron and smoothed it into a wave that dangled in front of my ear. “You might be the prettiest girl at the party,” she said, distracting me from scrutinizing my plain black dress. I tilted my head to study her handiwork, then shook it, carefully, so as not to disturb the style she’d struggled more than an hour to perfect. Stubborn and wiry, my dark hair curled on its own in inappropriate patterns. For now, the crimped waves hung around my face like a neat fringe of prisms on a lamp shade, but soon it would resemble fuzzy rickrack instead. I’d have to tuck a ribbon in my pocket to tie it back later.
I snorted. “Nell Prewitt, I’ll never be the prettiest girl at any party, but you’re a dear for trying.” My face had been called intelligent, and my features striking, but never pretty, even as a toddler in short dresses and patent-leather shoes. As I neared my seventeenth birthday, I’d accepted that the boys at the parties my mother forced me to attend would always look beyond me to the softer girls, the ones framed in pastels and ruffles. But I’d have loathed having the word
pastel
associated with me ever, whether applied to my appearance or my personality. I was even halfway pleased with being called serious—what I heard from the other girls more than any other adjective. “Oh, Isabelle, why so serious?” they asked, biting their lips and pinching their cheeks as they studied their reflections, checking the dabs of powder and rouge their mothers allowed them, or peered over their shoulders to ensure the seams of their stockings traveled straight and narrow down their calves.
“Anyway,” I said to Nell, “I should start doing my own hair. Women nowadays are independent. They do things for themselves.”
Nell flinched as though I’d slapped her. Too late, I realized my statement had been careless and hurtful. She’d helped me dress and primp for parties and special occasions for years—not just as a household employee but also as my friend. We’d never attend a party together, of course, so the preparations became our private rite of passage. But as close as we were—more like dearest confidantes than a privileged girl and her mother’s housemaid—she wouldn’t feel free to voice her hurt that I would so easily cast her aside.
“Oh, Nell, I’m sorry. It’s not you.” I sighed and clutched her sleeve, but still, Nell didn’t speak. She shifted away ever so slightly and returned to her task. It felt as though a tiny fault line had opened, creating a space between us never there before.
And as close as we were, and in spite of the fact that I’d shared nearly every detail of my life with Nell, I couldn’t tell her my plans for the evening. Of course, I’d make my appearance at Earline’s party. But then I’d tell my hostess Mother needed me at home. And then I’d escape.
I’d had as much as I could tolerate of the tame game nights the parents threw to keep the kids in our sheltered little clique out of trouble, away from the temptation of the glamorous nightclubs only minutes away in Newport—even creeping up on the outskirts of our little town. When I was younger, I’d watched my aunt prepare to go out in the evenings, her body draped in daring knee-length dresses that flowed loosely around her hips and shoulders like the gowns of a Greek goddess, trimmed with brilliant jet beads or sequined embroidery that glimmered like peacock feathers. Her escorts called for her in dark, close-fitting suits that showed off their broad shoulders. My mother stood by, lips thinned and brows knitted together. She complained her sister’s wildness would bring us all down. After all, we had a reputation to uphold as the family of Shalerville’s only physician. But Aunt Bertie had her own income, and she reminded my mother she wasn’t dependent on the family. Mother had no choice but to let her come and go as she pleased.
Sometimes, when she returned late at night, I stole into her room and begged her for stories about the places she’d been, and Aunt Bertie, her clothing perfumed with cigarette smoke and her breath with something sweet and sharp and vaguely dangerous, would tell me—the abbreviated version, I suspected now. She whispered about the other women’s dresses, their escorts, the music, the dancing, the games, the rich food and drink. These glimpses were enough to illuminate the differences between her adventures and the stuffy events my parents attended. They returned home in their somber attire less enthusiastic about life than when they left—which seemed to defeat the purpose of going out. Eventually, Aunt Bertie left, my mother no longer willing to put up with her disregard for our house rules. Only weeks later, her inebriated escort turned the wrong way and drove his car off the bluff, plunging both of them to instant death. I stood by in shock as Mother claimed it was Auntie’s comeuppance for living that way—even as grief sent her to bed for days. We kids were kept away from the funeral. I wept alone in my room while she and Father attended the service, and we never spoke of her sister again.