Hope Springs - 05 - Wedding Cake (6 page)

Louise glanced down at her sweater.

Beatrice continued. “You send a small donation every month to the Humane Society because deep down you think animals are much closer to God than people. You’re very smart, read a lot of historical fiction, and you’re all paid up on your funeral costs.”

Louise set down her fork and stared at Beatrice.

Beatrice took a bite of cake, chewed, and swallowed. She smiled. “And George Cannon owes you for taking care of his wife, so you marry him, let him take care of your household needs, pay your bills, and then when he dies, you get all of Roxie’s things and all of his life insurance and Social Security.” She took another bite of cake. “This is really good,” she said. “How much money does he have, by the way?”

“I don’t know,” Louise replied. “I wouldn’t imagine there’s a lot. He and Roxie never lived a life of luxury. But really, that’s of no interest to me.”

“Well, it should be, and you should find that out before you jump in his bed,” Bea responded.

Jessie took a bite of cake. She had nothing to add to Beatrice’s line of reasoning.

“But aren’t you forgetting something?” Louise asked, still astonished at her friend.

“What?” Bea asked. “Oh, the wedding,” she noted, and then put down her fork. “Hey, why don’t we do a double ceremony with James and Jessie?” She clapped her hands together at such a great idea. “We will already have all the necessary flourishes and attendants! It would be perfect!”

“No, I’m not talking about the wedding ceremony,” Louise said. “I’m talking about the fact that I don’t love George Cannon. I thought you were the great romantic. Shouldn’t two people love each other when they get married?” she asked.

Jessie nodded. She thought what Louise was saying made perfect sense.

Beatrice made a kind of shooshing noise and waved the idea away. “Love?” she asked. “I’m with Tina Turner on this one,” she added. The other two women looked confused. “You didn’t see that movie about her and Ike?”

The two friends shook their heads.

“What has love got to do with it?” she asked.

Louise shook her head. “Aren’t you even curious as to why he drove down here to ask me?”

Beatrice shrugged. “Not really,” she responded. “I suppose it was
what, guilt? Loneliness? The need for a companion? He’s dying and doesn’t want his children to make decisions for him?” She took the last bite of cake. “Does it really matter?”

“I would say that yes, it matters quite a lot.” Jessie had finally chimed in. She was stunned to hear that Beatrice seemed to know so much without hearing the entire story. “Louise shouldn’t enter into a marriage with a man she doesn’t love. Louise is gay. She’d be selling out to marry a man.”

Beatrice looked over at Jessie, then turned to Louise. “So what, that she’s gay? Haven’t most gay people our age been married to a straight person at some point in their lives? And furthermore, do you think Louise is ever going to look for a woman to love? Do you think she shouldn’t get married because she’s waiting for the perfect woman?” She waited. Neither woman replied.

“I rest my case.”

“Well, even if I wasn’t going to try to find a companion for myself, somebody I could really love, I don’t think that means I should settle for somebody I would never pick, somebody I don’t love.”

“George loved Roxie. You loved Roxie, and Roxie loved both of you. I think that’s enough of a foundation for a marriage right there. The love you shared for the same woman makes you somehow connected. So why not renew the friendship you had at one time with George and find out why Roxie loved him? Maybe you’ll find something there that gives you a little bit of joy. At the very least, you’d feel closer to the one woman you have loved. And after all, she would want you to have her stuff.” Beatrice took a sip of her tea and pointed again to the sugar.

Jessie reached over and took out three packets. She shook her head again as she handed them to Beatrice. “I don’t agree with you, Beatrice.
Louise deserves to have real love in her life as much as anyone. I don’t think she should settle for anything less in a relationship. This just doesn’t seem right.”

“I don’t disagree with you, Jessie,” Beatrice noted, pouring the sugar into her glass of iced tea. “But Louise isn’t ever going to pursue someone to love. So why not take the full benefits that you and I get in our marriages from somebody who has pursued her?” She looked over at Louise. “You can’t tell me that you haven’t really considered this. Otherwise you would have sent George packing as soon as he asked and you’d be laughing about this whole thing instead of telling us about it as if you’re looking for an answer.” She took a sip. “So tell Jessie the truth. You have really thought about it, haven’t you?”

Jessie looked at Louise and waited for an answer but Louise simply hesitated and, shaking her head, just glanced away.

T
he phone call from Officer Donovan Sanchez to St. Mary’s women’s shelter was not a social call. Maria answered the phone and immediately transferred it to Charlotte. Just by the tone of his voice, by the way he asked to speak to the executive director, Maria could tell this was entirely business. She didn’t know for sure what the Gallup Police Department was doing calling the shelter but she had her ideas, and she knew it wasn’t about a police officer asking someone to go out on a date. She got up from her desk to listen because she knew arrangements were going to need to be made for another battered woman being referred to the shelter.

“Charlotte Stewart speaking.” Charlotte was working at her desk, trying to finish the end-of-the-month reports. They were due in a couple of days and she was pushing to meet the deadline.

“It’s Donovan,” and he paused for only a second. “We have a victim here at the station. She’s pretty messed up but she won’t go to the hospital. You got room?”

“Of course,” Charlotte answered, surprised to hear from Donovan and with such a professional request. It wasn’t unusual to hear from the Gallup police, but generally one of the female officers assigned to follow up domestic abuse cases called. She had never dealt with Donovan professionally but she was glad to hear his voice even if it was business. “And I’ll contact our on-call nurse to see if she can come by to check her out,” she added.

“You going to be there in an hour?” he asked.

Charlotte saw the clock. It was almost five
P.M.
“Yeah, I’ll probably be here all night,” she replied. “Are you bringing her?”

“I am now,” he responded.

Charlotte couldn’t help herself, even with the news of another battered woman coming to the shelter; she smiled. Officer Sanchez was definitely making an impact on her. “Then I’ll see you soon.”

“Yep, I need to fill out some reports and assign another officer to go and pick up the husband, the perpetrator,” he added, “but we should be there in about an hour.”

“We’ll be ready,” Charlotte noted, and then asked, “What’s her name?”

“Carla Fairhope,” he replied.

Charlotte waited for a second, thinking that the name sounded vaguely familiar.

“Carla Sanchez Fairhope,” he added, and Charlotte sat up in her chair.

There was a pause in the conversation.

“It’s my ex-wife.”

Charlotte was at a loss for words. She looked up and saw Maria was standing in the doorway. She wasn’t sure how much the other woman had heard.

“I’ll explain when I get there,” he said, his voice softer than before.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Thanks,” Donovan said, and hung up the phone.

“Señor ten piedad!”
Maria was making the sign of the cross. She put down her hands and waited for instructions.

“We have another resident coming. Donovan—” She stopped. “Officer Sanchez,” Charlotte said, opting for a more professional tone, “will be bringing her in about an hour. He said that she was in pretty bad shape but that she won’t go to the hospital. So call Laurie and ask if she can come over to check her out.”

Maria nodded and turned around to go and make the call to one of the nurses who volunteered her services to the shelter.

“Wait, Maria, there’s something else.” Charlotte stopped her.

Maria turned back to face Charlotte. She waited for the additional instructions. She wondered if there were children coming as well and whether they had room for a family.

“It’s somebody you know,” Charlotte said.

Maria crossed herself again and braced herself for the news.

“It’s Carla Fairhope,” she announced. “Carla Sanchez Fairhope.”

Maria shook her head as if she was unsure of the name, and then she immediately recognized it.

“Is this going to be okay for you?” Charlotte asked. She knew that Maria knew the family but she wasn’t really sure how close they were.

Maria was still surprised by the news. She shook her head. “I don’t know the Fairhopes,” she said. “I know Isabella and Daniel. I don’t know Daniel’s family.”

Charlotte nodded. She thought she remembered the line of family
members that Maria had mentioned a week or so earlier but she wasn’t sure. She also understood that Maria knew a number of the clients who came to St. Mary’s, so that really wasn’t the main issue. She was concerned mostly because they both now understood that this was Charlotte’s new boyfriend’s ex-wife.

Charlotte never worried about the issue of confidentiality with her number one volunteer. Maria had never divulged names of clients or ever spoken to anyone about who was staying at St. Mary’s. She understood that not only were the identities of the residents not to be shared, but neither was the location of the shelter. Maria never even told anybody that she volunteered there. So Charlotte wasn’t concerned about Maria telling anyone that Carla Fairhope was checking in, but she did think that Maria needed to know who was coming and to decide whether she wanted to be there when Carla arrived.

“I have no business in your relationships. A woman has been beaten, and she needs shelter and care and protection. That is all I intend to provide her when she comes.” Maria appeared very serious.

Charlotte nodded in return and Maria left to make the necessary calls. Charlotte made her way to the bedrooms in the back of the house. Two of the residents were busy cleaning.

“We have somebody else joining us,” Charlotte reported.

The two women turned to Charlotte.

Iris, an older woman, still recovering from the bruises she received two weeks earlier from her grandson, shook her head. “Jesus Almighty, how many of us are there out there?” she asked.

“More than you’ll ever hear about,” Darlene replied. She was younger than Iris, about forty, and had just escaped from her second
abusive marriage. She had been at the shelter for six months and was still trying to find a new place to live.

“Can you help me make the spare bed in your room, Iris?” Charlotte asked. It was unusual for the shelter since they were almost always full to capacity, but on that particular day they actually had an available bed. Earlier that week, they had enjoyed a good-bye party for a previous resident named Lois and her two children. Lois was one of the lucky ones and could stay in the area. Her abusive boyfriend had been sentenced to a number of years in prison, and Lois had found a job at the casino in Sky City and a place to live just on the outskirts of the pueblo.

Iris had been in the room by herself only a couple of nights but she, like all of the other residents, knew resources at St. Mary’s were to be shared. There were always more women in need than there was space, but the residents, glad to be safe, never complained.

“There are still two drawers empty too,” Iris said. “And if she needs more, I can move my stuff under the bed.”

“I don’t think our newest resident has much stuff,” Charlotte responded. “She’s coming from the police station, and the officer said she was pretty messed up.” Charlotte sighed. “So she probably just ran for her life, and you know what that means.”

“She ain’t got nothing but the clothes on her back,” Darlene answered.

Charlotte nodded, and Iris shook her head, making a kind of
tsk tsk tsk
sound.

“I just can’t believe that this kind of thing happens like it does. My husband never laid a hand on me, not in forty-three years of marriage, and I will never understand what happened to my grandson
that made him snap like he did.” Iris reached up and touched the bruise that was still visible above her eye. She had required twelve stitches to sew up the gash that had been the result of being hit by a baseball bat. Her grandson was twenty, still living at home, and had been charged with assault and battery and drug possession. She was brought to St. Mary’s because her daughter and son-in-law said that they couldn’t keep her and their other two children. She had nowhere else to go when she was released from the hospital. Charlotte was trying to help Iris find suitable housing at a retirement home, but she wanted to get the older woman healed up before moving her into her own apartment.

“Your grandson was on crack,” Darlene noted, remembering her housemate’s story when she arrived. “Drugs will make a person violent and crazy.” She shook her head. “I should know because I been on both ends of that kind of violence.” Darlene was a recovering addict. She had been in and out of group homes, halfway houses, and women’s shelters since she left home at sixteen. But she was proud of herself because she celebrated ten years of sobriety and being clean. She and her second husband had quit drugs at the same time, and she always thought his violent streak had to do with his use of cocaine. She almost died the last time he threw her down the stairs at the apartment where they lived, and after that last time, she finally quit making excuses for him and moved into the shelter.