Miss Julia Meets Her Match

Table of Contents

 

VIKING
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First published in 2004 by Viking Penguin,
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Copyright © Ann B. Ross, 2004

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

eISBN : 978-1-101-11876-4

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“Where y’all gonna live?” Lillian asked, as she beat three eggs, one after the other, into a bowl of cake batter. “If you thinkin’ ’bout tyin’ the knot, somebody gonna be movin’.”

“I’m not studying a move.” I was at the kitchen table, folding towels taken from the dryer. The window rattled from a gust of late April wind, and I glanced outside to see more rain clouds moving across the sky.

“Huh. You better be studyin’ on it, Miss Julia. ’Cause either Mr. Sam be movin’ in here or you be movin’ in there.”

“That’s too far down the road to worry about,” I said, not wanting to worry about it either down the road or at the moment. “And, see, Lillian, that’s part of the problem. Tying the knot. I don’t know that I want to be tied to anybody, even Sam, who’s as fine a man as I’ve ever known. But that’s what happens when you marry. I’ve had a taste of doing things my way, you know, since Mr. Springer passed.” I smoothed out a hand towel, smelling the packaged fresh air aroma rising from it. “Even if that freedom came too late in life to be of much use. Lillian, do you realize that I was married for almost forty-five years, and never had a moment’s peace? Always fearful of what would set him off, what would displease him, what I was doing wrong, and on and on. Now, I don’t have to answer to anybody, and I’m not at all sure I want to give that up.”

“Mr. Sam, he seem like he pretty easy to get along with,” Lillian commented as she greased three cake pans, then sprinkled flour in them. “I doubt he pull on that knot too much. ’Sides, he tied up, too. Least, the man s’posed to be.”

“Yes, and isn’t that the trouble?” I pushed aside the hand towels, folded, stacked, and ready for the linen closet. “Everybody expects a wife to toe the line, but a husband? I tell you, Lillian, the only change marriage makes in a man’s life is he gets his food cooked and his laundry done.”

“I don’t know as I’d go that far,” she said, as she poured the batter into the cake pans, then shook each pan so the layers would bake evenly. “ ’Course, I jus’ look at other folkses’ marriage, not mine. ’Cause you hit the nail on the head when it come to mine.”

“Oh, Lillian,” I said, just done in by all the decisions that were piling up, waiting for me to get to them. Well, actually only one decision, but from that all the others would flow. “I don’t know that I want to marry anyone again, much less have to decide where to live when,
if,
I do.” I rested my head on my hand. “It’s more than I want to deal with.”

I lifted my head then, as more thoughts on the subject jumped up in my mind. “You know, it used to be that where a couple lived was never a question. The man decided, and that was it. The woman was expected to pull up stakes, leave her family and friends and everything else and go wherever he said. And be happy about it, too.” I bit my lip, remembering my own wretched experience. “I don’t think it was ever even discussed when Wesley Lloyd proposed to me and, Lord knows, it didn’t occur to me to question whatever he said. I took it for granted that I’d leave my home and move into his. Not that I wanted to stay home, but still.”

“I think that what the Bible tell a woman to do,” Lillian said. She opened the oven door and arranged the pans on a rack, the heat making her brown arms glisten with perspiration.

“Well, that’s where you’re wrong, because it’s the other way around,” I said. “It says a
husband
should leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife.” She and I looked at each other, as we both recalled that while I’d done my share of cleaving to Wesley Lloyd, he’d done a good bit of his to somebody else.

But turning my mind back to the current problem, since Wesley Lloyd was dead and gone, I’d been up one side and down the other over it, and I still couldn’t decide. Hazel Marie’d said she knew exactly what I ought to do, but her mind was filled with one romantic notion after another, so I wasn’t a bit surprised by where she stood. Then she’d gotten serious and said, “Miss Julia, all you have to do is decide what
you
want, then just do it.”

Well, of course that was the crux of the matter. I didn’t know what I wanted—whether to marry again and run the risk of another betrayal or to stay a single widow and run my life the way I wanted to. I don’t mind saying it—I had thoroughly enjoyed doing just that the past few years since laying Wesley Lloyd in his grave, especially since I had free rein of half of his sizeable estate, Little Lloyd being the beneficiary of the other half.

Actually, I’d hardly ever made a decision based purely on my own wants. There’d always been responsibilites and obligations to other people that came into play and, as I am of a generous nature, I usually bowed to whatever somebody else wanted.

So, ever since Sam had come up with the idea of us marrying, I’d been keeping myself busy, trying not to think about it in hopes that I wouldn’t have to give him a final answer. I didn’t want to lose him, but I wasn’t sure I wanted him full-time, either. The fact of the matter was, I was about half mad that he hadn’t left things as they were. But, no, he had to bring up something that put my life in turmoil.

Well, Lord knows, he’d hinted around about it long enough, but when he finally got serious, the actual thought of being his wife, with all that that entailed, made my heart leap inside my chest. But I’d answered with my head, and my head said, “Don’t rock the boat.” Still, he’d kept on and on at me, telling me I’m not getting off the hook, that he’s a patient man and sooner or later I’m going to give in and make him a happy man. And to tell the truth, the upshot of it all put me on edge so bad I could hardly stand it. I’ve prided myself on being a fairly decisive woman, but the agitation and indecision I’d been under made me ready to bite somebody’s head off.

The one thing that did tempt me, though, was Sam’s ability to make me laugh, which I did whenever he started rattling off his many admirable qualities. I don’t think Wesley Lloyd made me laugh even once during all the years of our dour marriage. He made me frown a lot, cry on too many occasions, and nurse a sorrowful heart all the time.

Lord, I never thought I’d even consider such a thing as marrying again. Once you’ve done it and suffered from it, you’re not all that anxious to get back into a similar situation. Of course, Sam was not Wesley Lloyd Springer, not by a long shot. I’d gone into marriage with Wesley Lloyd without an inkling that such a respected pillar of the church and the community could’ve ever done what he did—which was to enter into more than a decade of dalliance with Hazel Marie Puckett, produce a son and heir, and leave me to clean up the mess he left and end up with both mistress and son living under my roof. And if you think that’s a strange arrangement, you wouldn’t be the only one. But by this time I’d come too far to let what other people think bother me. Lillian says I’ll have stars in my crown for doing it, and I don’t doubt it, even though it hasn’t been as hard as I’d feared or as one might think.