Hope Springs - 05 - Wedding Cake (18 page)

There was a pause.

“Is that why you married me?” Louise asked. “Are you trying to make amends with Roxie for what you did by marrying me and giving me all of your worldly goods, her worldly goods?”

George thought about the question. “Mainly, yes, I guess so.”

Louise nodded, thinking about the answer. “Well, we are some pair, aren’t we?” she asked, punching George again in the side. “She’s probably just laughing at the two of us, old and ornery and together.”

“Still the peacemaker, I’d say,” George responded. “Still the peacemaker,” Louise repeated.

There was a pause in the conversation, and George slapped his leg and stood up. “Well, I’ll let you get settled. I’m going to go see what I can rustle us up for supper,” he noted.

“Thank you, George,” Louise said, looking up at her new husband.

“Thank you, Louise.” And he headed out of his bedroom, leaving Louise to make herself at home.

C
harlotte watched from the front door of the shelter as Donovan helped Carla into the front seat of his car. He was smiling at his ex-wife as she grabbed him around the neck, pulling him closer to her as she sat down. He said something to her, she laughed, and he shut the door. He walked around the car and was getting in on his side when he looked up at Charlotte briefly, like it was an afterthought, waved, and dropped down in his seat and shut his door. He was still smiling when they drove away. Donovan was taking Carla to a doctor’s appointment and then driving her to visit her mother somewhere out of town. She planned to stay with her family for a few days.

Donovan’s ex-wife was doing much better physically, and Charlotte was hopeful that this trip meant she would be moving out soon. There were discussions about possible living situations for her, including moving back home with her parents. Carla had more options of places to stay than most of the women at St. Mary’s. She had family
members who were willing to take her in and several friends who had even asked her to come live with them. Charlotte had spoken to Carla about these possible residential options, but Carla was noncommittal and reported that she preferred staying at the shelter.

Charlotte hadn’t wanted to admit it but she was getting a little perturbed with her resident. She was pushing Carla to find housing as soon as possible. The two of them had already had a couple of intense conversations because Carla had broken a number of shelter rules. She had brought a friend into the home, she had not carried out her assigned tasks to clean and cook, and she had confessed to taking phone calls at the shelter from her husband while he was in jail. Charlotte had expressed to Carla before she left that she was hopeful that this trip would help Carla find clarity about where she was moving next. Charlotte was losing patience with her and the entire situation.

Maria was standing beside Charlotte, watching as well. When the car pulled out, she made a kind of clucking sound and turned aside, walking away.

“What does that mean?” Charlotte called out, shutting the door.

Maria turned back around. “It means nothing,” she replied.

“Oh, come on, you know you meant something with that noise.” Her voice had a ring of irritation in it.

Maria shook her head.
“Pobre la mujer que no se da cuenta de lo que pasa debajo de supropios ojos.”

“English, Maria,” Charlotte barked.

“He and his ex-wife are too close,” she said. “And you should put a stop to it,” she added. She headed down the hall. “And she needs to find another place to live.”

“What do you think I should—” Charlotte stopped. She realized that she was talking much louder than she usually did. She remembered
that the newest resident, a young pregnant woman who had arrived the previous night, bruised and scared, was napping in one of the bedrooms. She followed Maria. “What do you think I should do?” she whispered.

Maria walked into Charlotte’s office and took a seat across from the desk. Charlotte walked around her desk and sat down in her chair.

Maria shook her head. “I don’t know,” she replied. “But you can’t keep acting like this friendship is fine with you. It’s obvious to me and to everyone else that you’re bothered by this.”

“Who is everyone else?” Charlotte asked. She figured the women in the shelter had been talking about her relationship with Donovan when she wasn’t around, and that bothered her almost as much as Carla’s friendship with her boyfriend.

“Iris, Darlene, Gilbert,” Maria replied.

“Gilbert?” Charlotte asked. “You’ve told Gilbert?”

Maria waved the question away. “Gilbert already knew before I told him anything. He saw your starry eyes the first time he saw you look at the police officer.” She touched the sides of her hair. “Gilbert misses nothing when it comes to
cosas del amor
, matters of the heart,” she translated.

“He also said that it was bad business for Donovan to spend so much time with his ex-wife.” She hesitated. “This he knows because he sees them at church together, not because I say anything to him at home.” She placed her finger against her lips, demonstrating her determination not to break confidences ever again.

“They were high school sweethearts,” Charlotte explained. “They were married. They’re friends,” she added.

“And she relies too much on him,” Maria pointed out. “And he sees no problem with that.”

“He’s helping her through a bad situation,” Charlotte rationalized.

“He’s meddling in another family’s business,” Maria countered. “It isn’t good for him and it isn’t good for her. And if her husband finds out, it won’t be good for anyone.” She crossed her legs, smoothing down the front of her dress. “Isn’t that part of the reason she’s here in the first place? Wasn’t he jealous of her first husband?” She sat up tall in her chair. “Maybe he had reason to be jealous?”

Charlotte didn’t answer. She leaned her head against the back of her chair. She knew that all these things Maria was saying were things she had already told herself. She had even tried to talk to Donovan about her concerns about his friendship with Carla. She warned him about being too close to her and how that might affect everything, from legal proceedings to Carla’s relationship with her husband.

When she brought up her concerns, he would listen to Charlotte, appear as if he took her seriously, but then time would pass and he would never do anything about stopping his ex-wife’s behavior. Carla called him every time he and Charlotte were on a date and he took every call. She asked him to run errands for her, which he did. It even seemed to Charlotte that there was a possibility that the two of them had hatched some plot to seek revenge on Carla’s husband, who was soon scheduled to be released from jail. She had not asked Donovan about that because she didn’t want to believe that he was capable of such a thing. And she certainly didn’t want to be an accessory to illegal activity, and she wasn’t sure if she would have the courage to turn him in if there were indeed such plans.

“He says that he’s trying to get her settled on her own,” Charlotte said to Maria. “He claims that he’s helping her get a place in town,
that they have some mutual high school friends who may have a room for her.” She blew out a breath. “I told him that I was concerned that Carla was depending upon him too much and that she needed to make some of these decisions for herself, to have some say about her own life. I tried to explain that she needed to do that for her own self-esteem and that it would be better for her in the long run if she was able to say that she managed this time in her life on her own.”

Maria rolled her eyes. “She is a user.”

“Maria!” Charlotte said sharply. “She is our client and our resident,” she noted. “She is a victim of domestic abuse. She deserves our nonjudgmental care.”

“Señor, perdóname,”
she said, making the sign of the cross on her chest. “I do not mean to speak ill of a victim but she knows exactly what she’s doing with your officer.” She shrugged and looked away. “Even Darlene says the same thing,” she added.

“Darlene says what?” Charlotte asked, already regretting her question. She tried not to participate in the women’s talk that happened at the shelter. She tried to stay above the gossip and what she called “the fray.” As the executive director, she liked to maintain a professional distance with all of the residents. She was extremely displeased that the women knew as much as they did about the man she was dating. Carla talked a lot about her former husband and her former marriage to all the other women, and Charlotte figured that they actually knew as much about Donovan as she did.

“She says that Carla asks her about the two of you, where you go, what the two of you are doing, how serious it is.”

Charlotte leaned forward, dropping her head in her hands. She glanced back up at Maria again. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I’ve
talked to Donovan. He doesn’t seem as concerned as I do. He just tells me that there is nothing between the two of them anymore and that he knows best how to help Carla.”

Maria made the clucking sound again. When she glanced over to Charlotte, her friend was glaring at her. She quickly stopped.

“Don’t you have some forms to file?” Charlotte asked.

Maria stood up from her chair and turned to leave the office. “I’m sorry, Charlotte,” she said. “I only want for your happiness,” she added.

“I know, Maria, I just don’t know what to do about this,” she responded.

Maria nodded and left the room. Charlotte rested her elbows on the desk, dropping her chin in her hands. She thought about Donovan and how close they had become over the previous months. Things had started to become more and more serious, or at least that’s what she had thought.

She had met his family, his parents, a grandmother, a couple of brothers. She had liked them and was happy to learn some of the Navajo traditions. She had enjoyed large family meals with them. She loved hearing their stories and laughing at their humor. She liked watching Donovan with his mother and his nieces and nephews. He was easy with them, putting aside his tough cop exterior as soon as he drove onto his parents’ land. She thought they seemed to approve of her too, his mother taking her under her wing, showing her how they baked their bread in the large outdoor ovens found behind the houses on the reservation. She had not seemed annoyed or aggravated with Charlotte when she asked questions about Navajo customs or traditions. On the contrary, she seemed pleased to hear of Charlotte’s interest, and she answered every question to satisfaction.

Charlotte and Donovan had talked about everything in their courtship. They had discussed their childhoods, their religious and political views, their likes and dislikes, their dreams. They had even discussed taking a trip back to North Carolina so that Charlotte could introduce him to her home and family. Everything about the relationship was moving ahead so beautifully. Everything between them was feeling ordered and lovely and right. Everything except his former marriage and his ex-wife, who seemed to grow more and more needy of Donovan as his relationship with Charlotte deepened. She was sure that he knew how she felt about Carla and how concerned she was at how much Carla called upon Donovan. Maria was wrong about that, Charlotte thought. Charlotte had been very clear about her concerns and her discontent with the relationship between the ex-spouses.

And yet, Donovan demonstrated some sense of duty toward his ex-wife, some connection that Charlotte couldn’t understand and couldn’t control. At first, she thought it was just a macho thing, the strong policeman taking care of the vulnerable, victimized woman. She had certainly witnessed that kind of relationship between many of the residents at the shelter and some of their protective friends or family members.

Later she thought the ongoing relationship had to do with that special bond that happens with first lovers. Charlotte knew that Donovan and Carla had been together when they were very young, and she knew that the feelings involved in a first love were very deep, the bond very strong. Both of them clearly acknowledged that they were each other’s first love, and that fact was one they shared readily and easily. And first loves were hard to abandon.

Not that she knew any of that firsthand. As far as she could remember, she never really had a “first love.” She had a crush on a student
teacher in high school and she had fallen for a professor in college. She had dated a few guys that she’d liked but she had never really had that kind of “first love” experience that both Donovan and Carla had talked about when they referred to each other in conversations. Charlotte thought that maybe the fact that they were each other’s first was the reason they were so close. She wasn’t sure.

She also wondered if their connection was that they had been mar-ried and Donovan would always feel like a husband to Carla even if they were no longer together. She wondered if there was some Navajo custom of being bonded in marriage, a bond that would never dissolve no matter what happened to the relationship. Charlotte knew that Donovan believed that all beings, animal and people, were connected and that people were somehow related to each other in a way that must be honored through offering assistance and care. He had also told Charlotte that he believed that if people connected themselves to others through the sharing of stories and especially the sharing of love, then they became responsible for each other until their deaths.

At the time he had said this, early in their dating, she thought he was speaking of them and explaining that even though they didn’t know each other all that well, they had shared something important and significant, and because of that, he was committed to her as his friend forever. Looking back at the conversation and thinking about it while considering his relationship with Carla, Charlotte suddenly considered the notion that he was trying to explain to her about his devotion to his ex-wife. She wondered as she sat at her desk, still aggravated at the attention he showed to Carla, if he wasn’t speaking about the two of them at all, but rather that he was really trying to justify even then his ongoing relationship with Carla.