Queen Bee Goes Home Again (36 page)

The two of us sat in silent commiseration for almost a minute.

“It's not going to happen for us, is it?” I finally asked.

“I don't know,” he said. “I honestly don't know. But for now, we have to stay apart. I said I had enough self-control for both of us, but that's not true. If I'm going to sort out this thing spiritually, I have to stay away.”

My inner Puritan understood completely, but my hedonist shouted,
Fight for him, the way you want him to fight for you! Show him how it's done.
She finished with a seductive,
Kiss kiss, kiss,
that sent me straight back into heat.

Maybe it was time for me to give up my HRT at last and be neutered.

“Can we still talk to each other on the phone?” I asked him.

Pain permeated his answer. “Not yet. Not now.”

He was right, of course.

I finally knew what it felt like to lose someone I truly loved—or was Connor just another fantasy I'd concocted?

What difference did it make? I still felt it, and the anguish of my divorce paled in comparison.

Fighting back tears, I managed to choke out, “Bye,” before hanging up.

Immediately, the phone rang again, making me jump. But the screen only said
wireless.
The last thing I wanted was to talk to some salesman, but my finger automatically pressed the talk button. My voice soggy with sheets of silent tears, I managed to answer, “Hello?”

“Lin, what's the matter?” Phil responded with concern. “Why are you crying?”

Even after all these years, he could still tell from a single word.

“Because I didn't even know what love was when I married you, and that wasn't fair to either one of us.” Why was I telling
him
?

“Aw, honey,” he said with compassion he'd never shown before. “Nobody knows what they're doing when they marry young. I didn't, either.”

Clearly, he'd changed his responses, at least. He'd never been sympathetic before, just offered solutions, then left.

“I never appreciated you the way I should have,” he soothed. “I was an idiot for leaving you.”

I willed away my sadness over Connor so I could be in the present with Phil. “No,” I told him. “You had good reason to leave me, because I never really loved you.”

I waited to see how he'd respond, but he didn't, so I went on, baring it all. “You deserve to be with someone who loves you for who you are. And so do I.”

“But I want
you,
” he said. “I love you. I
need
you.”

All about Phil, as usual,
my skeptical self declared.
And not even original.

Old, fat Elvis had done it better.

“Can't we try again?” he pleaded. “If it doesn't work out, I swear, I'll give you a divorce, this time with alimony.” When I didn't answer, he sweetened the pot. “We can even put it in writing. I'll have it drawn up today. I swear on my mother's grave.”

Why
was he pushing so hard, in such a hurry?

Do not swear
 …
Let your yea be yea, and your nay be nay.

I felt a check in my spirit, warning me that he was lying, but I couldn't say why.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail,
flashed into my brain, the knights crying, “Run away! Run away!”

Enough. “Phil, I can't talk anymore. Please, just leave me alone for a while. I need to study. I'm taking seven courses, and I have two papers due day after tomorrow. I have to focus on that.”

“Please, baby,” he pleaded with surprising urgency. “Let me see you.”

My sympathy evaporated with a
poof
. I hated it when he called me baby.

“Just give it a try,” he coaxed. “You won't be sorry, I swear.”

Phil had sworn a lot of things to me over the years, but rarely kept his word, casually brushing off his broken promises with a merry apology, as if he'd just eaten the last cookie in the package instead of ruining my plans and my trust.

“Phil, I'm hanging up now,” I told him. “If you care about me, leave me alone. I need time to think.”

“I'm not giving up!” he hollered as I hit the off button.

I set the phone down. “I am.” Then I went to bed and pulled the covers over my head, crying for what seemed like hours, till I finally fell asleep from exhaustion. My last waking thought was,
I can't do this, God. I can't fix it. Uncle. Just take me home to heaven.

But He didn't take me home to heaven.

I woke up at ten the next morning with a red nose, swollen eyes, and blocked nosels. I called Miss Mamie and pleaded a cold, which she believed.

“I'm not surprised,” she said. “Going back to school with all those kids who don't know enough to stay home when they're sick.”

That was true, too.

“I'll bring you some homemade organic chicken soup within the hour,” she said. “No antibiotics. Just a little salt. You'll feel better right away.”

I balanced the risk of her seeing me against the promise of hearty chicken broth. I could always put an ice pack over my eyes for a while. “Okay. Thanks. I'll leave the door unlocked.”

“Needn't bother,” she shot back. “I have a key.”

Finally presented with the opportunity to broach the subject, I reared up. “And where, pray tell, did it come from?”

“The locksmith, of course, silly. You didn't think he was going to leave me without one, now, did you? After all, this is still my house.”

The Mame had just sprayed the garage apartment like a tomcat marking his territory.

I gave up. “Of course it is. I'd just like to know when you're coming inside, especially when I'm not here. Or when I am.”

“Sure. I promise,” she said, her dismissive tone telling me she had no more intention of keeping that promise than Phil had of keeping his.

Miss Mamie shifted gears. “Do you feel well enough to come to breakfast? I'll make French toast. Tommy and Carla were …
up
till the wee hours. Then she left at six-thirty this morning to meet a client. Tommy'll probably sleep in.”

Miss Mamie's French toast. My favorite. The ultimate comfort food, even with low-calorie syrup. “I can come down. I'll probably feel better on my feet.”

“Good. Take your time,” she said. “I'll be ready when you get here. You can study in the den of iniquity afterward, if you want to.”

Frankly, the idea of a big, clean desk and its comfortable new executive chair appealed to me.

So I put ice on my eyes for ten minutes, then dressed in stretch jeans and a mock turtleneck under my sable jacket (another remnant of my past life), and dragged my book briefcase down the stairs, across to the big house, and back up to the family room.

It was all worth it when I walked into the warm, cozy kitchen of my childhood. I shoved Connor and Phil behind a steel door in my mind, then slammed it. Focus on the present. Don't project the worst.

After a gloriously fattening breakfast, I retreated to the study. Now spotless, the room was a haven of quiet and light. I started writing my paper on my new notebook computer, and before I knew it, Miss Mamie called me to lunch.

After we ate our chicken soup and salads, I was back in Daddy's study working when the doorbell rang and Miss Mamie answered it.

“Flowers for Miz Lin,” the deliveryman said. “Agin.”

“Thank you.” I heard my mother close the door without tipping. “Lin,” she called.

“I'm in here!” I rose just as she walked in with yet another big bowl of red tulips.

Summoned by the ruckus, Tommy finally emerged from upstairs, disheveled, and followed Miss Mamie into the office.

The Mame frowned as she set the tulips on the den's new coffee table in front of the new leather couch I'd found at The Dump. “They're from Phil,” Miss Mamie announced with open disapproval. Brows lifted, she stared down at me. “The card says ‘Marry me.' What's that all about?”

About your reading my personal messages, I wanted to say, but didn't. “I told you: Phil claims he's been born again and wants to remarry me,” I said.

I'd mentioned the marrying part to her before, hadn't I?

“Why on earth would he want to do that?” she and Tommy asked almost in unison.

Apparently, I'd left that out.

I shrugged. “He claims I'm the wife of his youth, and he wants to do right by me now.”

Tommy's eyes narrowed. “Surely you're not considering
marrying
him.”

Miss Mamie's spine went rod-straight. “Remarriage, indeed. As if you could overlook what he's done to you.” She glared at me. “Mark my words, Phil's up to no good, as usual.”

Tommy peered at me with sympathy. “The trouble is, he struck a nerve with Connor.” He frowned. “I have a few friends in law enforcement. Is it okay if I try to find out what's really going on with Phil?”

“Knock yourself out,” I told him. “I've given up. On him
and
Connor,” I said, realizing that it was true as the words came out. “I'm through wanting what I can't have, and not wanting what I can. From now on, I'll just go to college and stay here to look after y'all. And Daddy.”

Tommy and the Mame exchanged pregnant glances that said they weren't buying my resignation for a second, but I didn't care.

“Now, I need to get back to my homework.”

The two of them moved reluctantly toward the kitchen.

After the kitchen's swinging door closed behind them, I heard a muffled hosanna of “French toast!” from my brother.

Smiling, I settled back to work.

Once the paper was finished, I had a big human biology assignment. I was doing very well in that class, despite the fact that my Nigerian lady professor was barely intelligible in English, although I'd managed to decode some of her lectures as the weeks passed. (I found out later that all the lecture notes had been available somewhere in the maze of our campus network.)

I stood up, stretched, cracked my knuckles, then looked for my mother. I found her in the family room that opened onto the kitchen, sitting on the sofa and listening to
Focus on the Family
on the radio while she stitched yet another kneeler for the Methodists.

“Mama, do you have any more of that chicken broth? I could use a mugful.”

“There's plenty.” Miss Mamie laid down her needlework, her expression wily. “It certainly cleared up that cold in a jiffy, didn't it?”

If only it could do the same for me. “I wish it could heal my heart.”

Tommy snuck up behind me and affectionately hooked his arm around my neck. “Okay, Sissie-ma-noo-noo. No more about Connor and Phil. Back to the books for you.”

I let him drag me back to the desk, then sat down.

Miss Mamie arrived with a fresh mug of chicken soup. “Good for what ails you.” Then she herded Tommy out and closed the door behind them.

You cannot lose what you never had, I told myself for the thousandth time. My dream of Connor might never have materialized, but how it hurt to let it go.

Just get me through this day, Lord, and then the next. Help me to be present in every moment.

I prayed it. And prayed it. And prayed it.

If only I could feel it.

 

Fifty-four

Phil kept sending me presents with cards asking me to marry him, but I never responded and blocked his number.

But at night, whenever I was tired or discouraged, mourning washed over me, flooding my soul till I cried myself to sleep, which only made me more disgusted.

I'd never been a blubberhead. Why was I crying so much?

Was it possible to go through puberty again? I hadn't been so emotional since I was twelve, and now my face kept breaking out.

The real question was, how many tears would it take to wash Connor Allen out of my life?

 

Fifty-five

On Tommy's and my regular Friday morning visit to the Home on March first, we walked in to find Aunt Glory and my cousins Laura and Susan huddling in the foyer, Aunt Glory's lace handkerchief dabbing away at her eyes.

I halted in my tracks.
Uncle Bedford.

I closed my eyes and tried to prolong the moment when it still felt as if he were in the world.

Laura burst into tears and headed straight for me, her arms extended. “Ooooh, Lin,” she sobbed out, collapsing over me to hug the smithereens out of me. “It's Daddy.”

Poor Uncle B. Poor Daddy.

And it
would
happen on the nurse's morning off.

I mustered myself to help. Like all Southern women, I knew my role with funerals, our time-honored Southern transition from life to the hereafter. “I'm so sorry, honey.”

Still wearing my cousin around my neck, I reached out and took Aunt Glory's hand. “I know you must be devastated.”

My aunt gave my hand a brief squeeze, clearly satisfied that I'd said the right thing, regardless of the relief she must be feeling. We were ladies, after all. Out of respect for the departed, none of us would officially acknowledge that relief. Ever.

After a while, we'd be able to say, “He's gone to a better place,” but only after Aunt Glory said it first.

Cousin Susan came over and gave me a pat on the shoulder. “We know you loved him, too.”

Finally, Laura let go of me. “The hearse is on its way,” she murmured. “Mama insisted on calling Finnegan's because it's so close.”

“Would y'all like us to have the reception at our house,” I volunteered, then stupidly added, “or are you going to have the services in Atlanta?”

Aunt Glory said, “Here,” at the same moment her daughters said, “Spring Hill.”

Spring Hill? Where Atlanta's nobility were put to rest? Talk about pricey.

I hugged my aunt, leaning close to her ear to whisper, “You're the widow, sweetie. It's your call, not theirs. I'm sure you can work this out.” I pulled back and said in a normal tone, “Do you mind if we go make sure Daddy's okay?”