“I’ll help you shop for a nose ring,” Jim said. “Come on, girls, let’s hit the sack.”
Later when I was almost asleep, I felt Emily slip into bed beside me.
“Momma?”
“Hmmm?”
“I don’t wanna go back to Washington. I wanna transfer to Carolina.”
“In love?”
“Yeah. Cooked. No. Deep-fried.”
“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” I said. “Good night, baby.”
“No. I really mean it. I love him, Momma. And he loves me.”
“I know, sweetheart. I can see it. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
“No, you don’t understand. He actually
told
me he loved me, Momma.”
“That’s wonderful, sweetheart.”
“I’m not going back.”
“Yes, you are. Now go to sleep.”
“You can’t make me.”
“Yes, I can.”
I could feel her pounding the mattress with her fist. “Fine. That’s just fine. I hate my life.”
“When I was your age, I hated my life too.”
She was quiet for a few minutes and then I heard her sniffle and I knew she was crying. Then, in a cracking voice, she spoke again.
“It’s just that I don’t have any control over anything. You know what I mean? I don’t want to leave David, Momma. I’ll die without him.”
I rolled over and rubbed her back. “Nobody’s gonna die, baby. Let’s talk about this tomorrow, okay? Late at night is when we all make dumb decisions. Let’s try to get some sleep.”
My poor child. Even though she probably didn’t believe it, I knew exactly how she felt. It had only taken me several decades to get control of my life. I tossed around a little, reliving my encounter with Trixie, dancing with Jack, showing off for Jim, picturing Daddy and Lucy and the entire evening in general. Carla was coming to work for me. What would I tell Lucy? And then I thought about Emily again and all the nights we’d had these tiny talks revealing her heart, before we would fall off to sleep. I would miss those moments. A lot. In fact, I knew I would ache for them.
I got up to get a glass of water and tiptoed by Jim on the sofa. He was already gone to the world, jaw dropped, making noise like a freight train. I smiled down at him, trying to understand why Jim did so many extraordinarily bighearted things for me and Emily. And then I knew why. He wanted us to have good memories of our new home and he wanted to be a part of them. It made sense. I knew then that no matter what life brought our way, we would always keep Jim at the heart of everything.
Thirty-five
Nightmares No More
TUESDAY, September third, started out like any other, except that I was exhausted before the day even began. And, I wasn’t very happy that the two people I loved so much were traveling on airplanes the same day. See, I had this theory that my Hail Marys held the planes in the air. I’d need to double up in number and sincerity and hoped I could manage it. And, just as bad, they were leaving and I wouldn’t see Jim or Emily for a long time.
I took Emily in my car and we followed Jim in his rental car to the airport at six-thirty.
“You don’t have to come, Anna, I can take Emily,” Jim had said earlier.
“I know that, but I want to go anyway.”
“She thinks I’m going back to school,” Emily had said, “but I’m not.” Jim and I assured her that she was indeed going back to school and it was time for her to finish packing. She had been packing reluctantly all week and argued with me about staying and leaving until she had fallen asleep last night.
Jim was flying Continental to Newark on the eight o’clock flight and Emily was flying US Airways to Washington, changing in Charlotte, at eight-thirty.
They checked their luggage, bought magazines, and then we decided to have breakfast. I was in no mood to eat but I ordered a poached egg on a toasted English muffin, Jim ordered an omelet with home fries and biscuits, and Emily couldn’t decide.
“I guess I’ll have pancakes,” she said. “If the plane rocks and rolls, my stomach will do better with pancakes in there.”
“Good call,” the waitress said and left to get coffee for us.
We talked with Emily about school and in the end we decided that if she and David were still dying for each other by Christmas, we’d consider a transfer for the following semester.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Emily said, fooling with the various ring tones on her new cell phone Jim had given her as an early birthday present, “David and I are gonna be together for a million years. Do you have this number, Mom?”
“What do
you
think?” I said.
Jim and I smiled at her remark about David. I was thinking that it would be wonderful to find someone you could spend your life with when you were her age, and then I realized I had married Jim at eighteen.
“If the man’s brain is only slightly larger than a parakeet’s, Emily, he won’t let you go,” Jim said. “Come on, I gotta get to my gate.”
We walked with him to the security check at Terminal B and we all hugged and kissed. In a best-case scenario, we all hated good-byes. It had been a long hot summer, one of significant gains, personal losses, and many twists of our roads. The days and weeks we had spent with each other would sustain us until we could be together again at Thanksgiving. For my money, Thanksgiving couldn’t arrive fast enough.
“Love you, Daddy.”
“Me too, baby, I love you too.”
I could see Jim’s eyes tearing up. Since Gary had passed away he had been much more sentimental, but who wouldn’t be? Or maybe he felt emotional for another reason. I didn’t know.
I reached in my bag and pulled out a tissue for him. “Here. Now, call me when you get to France so I’ll know where to find you, okay?”
“God, I’m such an old sap!” Jim said and blew his nose. “You know, I was all set to go and then I looked at both of you and thought, Wow, you are both
so
beautiful and I am so lucky, just
so
lucky that you love me.”
I lost it. I burst out into tears and threw my arms around him. “No, sir, we’re the lucky ones. Who wouldn’t love you?”
“Good grief!” Emily said. “Get a grip, you two! We’re in public!”
Then Jim and I regained some self-control and laughed.
“Okay,” he said, “okay.” He took a deep breath. “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
We watched him walk down the concourse until we couldn’t see him anymore.
“He’s so great,” Emily said.
“He sure is.”
We walked back to Terminal A together, my arm around her shoulder, and I squeezed her every couple of minutes.
“It was a good summer, wasn’t it, baby?”
“The best. And Mom? I really like our little house.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, ’cause it’s ours, you know?” And then in the next breath she switched gears. “D’ya think Doc is gonna marry Lucy?”
“Who knows?”
“If he does, does that make David my cousin?”
We giggled. “Who cares?” I said.
“Yeah. Hey! Can we paint my room over Thanksgiving?”
“What color?”
“You said it didn’t matter what color.”
“You’re right. I did. You’d better go now.” I kissed her on her forehead and looked at her in the eyes. “I love you so much.”
“Love you too, Mom. I’ll call you when I get there.”
I handed her tote bag to her and gave her the final hug.
As I drove back to the Isle of Palms, I was feeling kind of blue. I’d miss them so much. I already did. But, I had plenty to keep myself busy until November.
I swung by my house to dress for work and, true to his threat, Daddy had a team of men from Charles Blanchard Construction Company in my yard measuring for a deck with a cook area, just as we had discussed. Old Ebenezer had changed his heart and the evidence was everywhere. I was getting a deck.
Daddy’s car was gone and I spotted Lucy in her yard, picking up the morning paper.
“Hey! I gotta talk to you about something!”
“Some party, huh?”
“Yeah! Listen, remember Carla?”
Surprisingly, when I told Lucy about her, she didn’t mind at all.
Lucy said, “Great! Because to tell you the truth, I’d rather concentrate on buying merchandise than answering the phone. We’re always running out of stuff! Besides, I was thinking that we ought to have our own label of shampoo and all that? Remember the day Jim had all those little bottles that smelled like fruit? I mean, I can help Carla, you know, show her the ropes? And then maybe I could take some time to go back to aerobics. Frankly, honey, I’m getting a little flabby.”
Lucy was going to show Carla the ropes? I hoped she would humor Lucy.
“We’ll figure it out,” I said, breathing a huge sigh of relief.
Walking back to my house, I saw Trixie’s car and remembered how she had behaved. I couldn’t believe how hardened my heart had become toward her. My feelings surprised me because I hadn’t felt so negative about another woman since my grandmother had dropped dead and gone to hell. At least, I assumed she was in hell.
I arrived at the salon about twenty minutes before nine and opened up. Carla would be there any minute. If she’d work with us, I could relax about a lot of things. She’d have our salon whipped into shape in no time at all. Most importantly, I knew she’d bring a slew of new clients with her. Maybe she could help me find two more stylists. An optimistic vision passed through my head—full chairs, a ringing cash register, a struggle to keep enough merchandise in stock . . .
No, I’m sorry, Mrs. Snodgrass, Anna is booked up six weeks in advance . . . Yes, we can fit you in for a manicure with Sonya. Yes, she’s new
. . . . Ah, Carla. Hurry!
I made myself a cup of coffee and realized I was out of Equal. I went next door to borrow a packet and saw about five people standing around the television, watching.
“What happened?” My first thought was—you guessed it—that some nut was going to commemorate September eleventh for us with a reality demo a week early.
“Nothing. Just news that ain’t news,” a man said.
“Good,” I said, “I like it when the news is boring.”
“There’s a hurricane down around the Virgin Islands that’s a helluva lot more interesting,” the woman behind the counter said. “Want a muffin? The blueberry ones are still warm.”
“I shouldn’t, but shoot, why not?” I picked one up and, on feeling the warmth through the plastic wrap, I couldn’t wait to get it in my mouth. I gave her a dollar and threw the change in the tip cup by the register. “Thanks.”
I left, thinking about the shifts in expectations and how change was subtle. It used to be that you bought something and a salesperson would count your change back to you. Now, you were expected—no, not quite expected, but, it would be
nice
for you to leave your change in the cup for the staff to divvy up at the end of the day. In exchange, you could take a penny from their dish if you needed one. As someone who had counted pennies for years, my first brush with a tip cup was weird. Though the more I thought about it, it seemed okay to me. I mean, the world was cold enough and human touch was being removed from our daily lives at every turn. Etickets. Email. Voice mail. Internet shopping on eBay for anything from your next car to a lock of Matt Lauer’s hair from his last haircut. What a world! Well, at least you didn’t stick your head in a machine like Jane Jetson and come out with the haircut you had punched into a keypad. I still lived in the world of people and was glad of it.
I unlocked the salon, went back inside, and just stood there for a moment, looking at the place I had started and Jim had trimmed out to a fare-thee-well. The coffee machine, the neon sign, the bamboo—the touches of him that were everywhere—the benches, the robes, the turbans—the bits of his imaginings that led your eye to fantasy, glamour, and humor. Jim wasn’t over the top—he had
invented
over the top. He
was
better than a rare bird. He
was
the Bird of Paradise. The Head Banana. No wonder I’d never fallen in love with anyone else. What man could be more or even as much as Jim? He was compassionate, intelligent, and funny. He was gorgeous, elegant, and sophisticated. The litany of his qualities was as long as my leg. Since I was seventeen years old, Jim had held the door to his heart open for me and for Emily. Still, I knew that at some point, I had to open the door of my heart for someone else.
I felt like laughing out loud, wondering then if I would ever stop trying to tempt him. My flirtation with him was ridiculous and I knew it. Maybe we were Francis of Assisi and Saint Clare or Abelard and Heloise or just a modern-day corruption of tradition. Well, I thought, whatever we were not, we were loyal and bound to each other forever. It didn’t get much better or more screwy than us.
The phone rang. It was Jack Taylor.
Knock, knock.
“Hey, how are you doing? Okay?” he said.
“Well, first thing this morning I put Jim and Emily on separate planes. . . .”
“Flying used to be exciting,” he said, “now I hate it.”
“Yeah, those guys really took all the fun out of it, didn’t they?” I looked in the mirror and saw that I had circles under my eyes. It might be a good idea if I put on some makeup, I thought.
“They sure did. Um, about dinner?”
“Oh! Right!”
“Well, tonight’s a problem. My mother is eighty-four—she lives out in Monck’s Corner—anyway, she’s not feeling so great and wants me to come out to see her. I told her I would, provided I could rearrange our plans.”
Was he
serious
that he wouldn’t go to his mother if he couldn’t change our plans? Was there something
wrong
with him, or what?
Stop it,
my inner guidance counselor said.
He’s being polite.
After Arthur, I didn’t expect consideration and that was yet another reason why I shouldn’t have mourned his departure.
“Jack, we can have dinner anytime. Go see your mother. Who knows? Maybe she’s really sick?”