Between Heaven and Texas (25 page)

C
HAPTER 42

L
ydia Dale was relieved when Rob Lee finally quit crying and fell asleep a few miles outside of Waco. The closer she came to home, the more nervous she got about how the family would react to what she'd done.

No, that wasn't quite true. Only Taffy's response caused her concern; everyone else would be fine. Dutch would be supportive, as he always was. Mary Dell might be hesitant at first, perhaps even feel a little guilty, but she would get past that. Taffy would . . . Well, who knew what Taffy would do?

Lydia Dale took the last two miles of her journey at very slow speed, partly to avoid hitting potholes, but mostly to give herself time to mentally rehearse the possible menu of her mother's reactions and think up responses to each. The thing to do, she concluded, was to keep things light and cheerful, to act as if she was shocked that Taffy would be upset. And why should Taffy be upset? After all, she hadn't done anything wrong.

By the time she drove through the gate, she felt ready to face her mother. But her confidence waned when she pulled up to the house and saw Taffy already standing on the porch, frowning with her arms crossed over her chest, looking exactly like she used to when Lydia Dale was a teenager and had stayed out past her curfew. Lydia Dale turned off the ignition, jammed on the parking brake, and opened the car door.

“Hey, Momma. Kids asleep? Thanks for keeping an eye on them.”

Taffy ignored her greeting. “Where in the world have you been? You had us worried half to death.”

Dutch, Mary Dell, and Graydon joined Taffy on the porch. Lydia Dale opened the back door to retrieve Rob Lee from his car seat.

“I had some errands to run. Didn't Graydon tell you?”

“What kind of errands take sixteen hours to run? Where have you been?”

“Fort Worth.”

“Fort Worth! Why in the world did you go there? And why did you take your old pageant treasures?”

Lydia Dale, who had only slept seven hours out of the previous forty-eight, decided she was too tired to keep up the pretense of cheerfulness. It obviously wasn't going to work anyway.

“Before we go through the third degree,” she sighed, “could somebody help me bring in my stuff? Sis?”

Graydon beat Mary Dell to it. He strode quickly toward the car and grabbed Rob Lee's car seat.

“Let me take him. I'll put him to bed.”

Lydia Dale smiled gratefully and handed the sleeping baby off to Graydon, who took him inside; then she retrieved her purse and the diaper bag from the front seat.

“What about the rest of it?” Taffy asked. “Don't tell me you stuffed them all in the trunk. They'll be all crushed!”

“You mean the gowns?” Lydia Dale held her breath a moment before deciding to get it out and over with. “They aren't there. I drove up to Fort Worth today to meet with two pageant coaches, a lady who sells quinceañera dresses, and a junk man . . .”

“A junk man!”

Lydia Dale plowed ahead, ignoring her mother's outburst: “. . . and sold them—the gowns, the tiaras, the scepters, everything. It's all gone.”

She had expected Taffy to sob, or shout, possibly even to faint, but instead she just stood there, staring at her with an expression of disbelief tinged by something deeper and harder to pinpoint—betrayal and profound disappointment, the look of a child who has just been told that there is not and never was a Santa Claus. It was harder to take than a harangue. Lydia Dale had known that selling her pageant memorabilia would anger Taffy. She hadn't realized it would hurt her.

“Momma . . .”

She stepped toward her mother, arms open, but Taffy wouldn't submit to the embrace. Instead, she held up one hand and turned her face toward the wall, two tears slipping silently from beneath her closed eyelids. Dutch came over to comfort his wife, placing one hand between her shoulder blades and moving it in small circles.

Mary Dell looked almost as shocked as Taffy. “Sis, if you needed money, you should have talked to me. All you had to do was ask.”

“I know that,” Lydia Dale said quietly. “You've always been there for me. When Jack Benny didn't carry his weight or show up for work, you wrote out his paychecks just as if he had. And when he left us, you still kept sending them, even after Donny left you to carry on alone and take care of all of us. I know you'd do anything to help me, sis. Just like I would for you. All you have to do is ask. But the thing is, you never
do
ask.

“The other day, in the car, when you told me about maybe being able to buy the dry goods store . . . you were all lit up,” Lydia Dale said, her own face brightening as she remembered. “I hadn't seen you that happy in a long time, and I decided that I wanted to help you stay that way. A couple of days ago, I realized that I could.”

Lydia Dale took the diaper bag off her shoulder and set it down in the dirt. Taffy, tears still in her eyes, turned and watched along with the others as Lydia Dale opened her purse and took out a white envelope with a blue rubber band around the middle, so fat that the flap wouldn't close over the contents.

“Yesterday, I talked to Mr. Waterson. He wouldn't budge on the price, but I got him to agree that if we could put five thousand dollars down now and another five before you open, and then seven hundred a month until the loan is paid off, the store is yours. He's going to carry the loan for you. We'll have to get some papers drawn up so it'll be legal and all, but he's agreed to everything and he's not even going to charge you any interest.”

“What?” Mary Dell blinked in disbelief. “Why would he do that?”

“Because he's not stupid,” Lydia Dale said. “You're the only real prospective buyer he has, or likely will have. He's not doing you any favors letting you buy it, trust me. I took a look at his books; his sales have been down every year for the last five. Mr. Waterson doesn't have the energy or vision to reverse that trend, but you do,” Lydia Dale said, holding the envelope out to her sister. “There's six thousand two hundred and fifty-two dollars in here. Go ahead. Take it.”

Mary Dell pressed her hand over her mouth. After a moment she pulled it away and said, “I can't take it, sis. It's too much.”

“No, it's not,” Lydia Dale protested. “Mary Dell, do you remember when we were thirteen and that revival came to town? The one with the big, tall preacher who had a voice like a foghorn?”

Mary Dell nodded. “They set the tent up in that vacant lot where the kids like to play football. I remember.”

“Remember how we only went to the revival because a bunch of the boys from school bragged how they were going to let a snake loose in the tent?” Lydia Dale went on, knowing that her sister recalled it all perfectly well. “We thought it would be funny to see all the ladies scream and we wanted to show off to the boys.

“But then that preacher started preaching, starting out low and slow, then going a little faster and a little louder, then a little faster and a little louder still, steady and sure, like a freight train pulling a load uphill, until he got to the top and hurtled down the other side, bellowing that there were people sitting in that tent who were going to hell for having impure thoughts . . .”

Mary Dell smiled. “He came to stand in front of us, looking right at us, and you thought he knew what we were up to and that wanting to see the women scream at the sight of a snake was what he meant by ‘impure thoughts.' ”

“Uh-huh,” Lydia Dale confirmed. “I started to cry. And all the people around us started moaning and praying, thinking that I was laboring under a burden of sin, which I suppose I was, just not the way they thought.

“When they started the music for the altar call, I wanted to go up front. You hissed at me and grabbed my sleeve, told me that we'd already gotten ourselves saved at Vacation Bible School three years before, and that once you'd been saved you couldn't get
more
saved, and to sit down and quit trying to make a fool of myself.”

Mary Dell was grinning now, and her shoulders shook with laughter as she remembered that day.

“But you wouldn't listen,” she said, picking up the story where Lydia Dale left off. “You were terrified of going to hell. I was so mad at you because most every boy in our class was there, and I knew if you went down the aisle, they'd be making fun of you from then until doomsday.”

“That's right,” Lydia Dale said, “and they did too. Not quite until doomsday, but nearly. But I did it anyway.

“And at the last minute, you grabbed my hand and came with me, right up to that big old preacher, who laid his hands on our heads and prayed while the band played ‘Don't You Hear Jerusalem Moan.' Do you remember what you said to me, right before we went up?”

Mary Dell shook her head.

“You said that I was your sister and that wherever I was going, heaven or hell or on a fool's errand, I wasn't going without you. I've never forgotten that.”

Lydia Dale swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, leaving a blackish smear. “I don't know if this idea of opening a quilt shop will turn out to be a little piece of heaven, or hell, or a fool's errand. But whatever it is, I'm going to be with you every step of the way. So you're going to take this money, and you're not going to feel guilty about it. Not for one minute. Why should you? Those gowns are as much yours as mine anyway. You sewed most of them.”

“From fabric I bought!” Taffy shouted.

Having recovered from her momentary shock, Taffy launched into the sort of tirade Lydia Dale had been expecting. Eyes blazing, she pushed Dutch aside and marched down the porch steps to do battle with her daughter.

“Do you know how hard I worked so you could go to those pageants and win those tiaras? How many miles I drove, how much money I spent, how many hours I spent helping you rehearse? Do you have any idea of all I went through for that? Do you?”

Taffy threw up her hands in disgust. “And now, without so much as a by-your-leave and after all
I've
done for you,” she snapped, clearly slighted that Lydia Dale had mentioned only Mary Dell's sacrifice, “you run off and sell off our best memories to a junk man. A
junk
man!”

Taffy stood in front of her daughter with her chin jutting forward and her hands on her hips, demanding an answer.

“Momma, do you ever stop and listen to yourself? I wish you would. Whose ‘best memories' are you talking about? Look around,” she said, spreading her hands, “and you'll see
my
best memories. This place, this house, our family—those are the prizes I carry with me. I don't need a display case filled with rhinestone tiaras and titles to imaginary kingdoms to hold on to because they're all right here,” she said, pressing her hand to her heart.

“But if I can sell off a few dusty old relics that you
say
belong to me so that someone I love, someone that you love too, can have a chance to make
new
memories, then I say call up the junk man. And tell him to bring cash.”

Lydia Dale reached down, picked up the diaper bag, and looped it over her shoulder once again.

“I'm going to bed now. I've got to get up early and help with the sheep.”

She kissed her mother and father good night, hugged her sister and pressed the money-filled envelope in her hand, then straightened her shoulders and, with head held high, walked through the door looking more like a queen than she ever had.

When she glided past the darkened corner of the kitchen where Graydon, who had been hesitant to walk onto the porch in the middle of such a personal family exchange, was hidden, it was everything he could do to keep himself from reaching out from the shadows to pull her into his arms.

C
HAPTER 43

M
ary Dell and Moises were on call that night and would make their first round of the night in another hour, but Graydon took a stroll to the sheep pens before turning in just the same. The four ewes currently in labor appeared to be doing fine on their own, so he headed to the tack room, lit the kerosene lantern, and pulled off his boots.

He hadn't had more than four hours of sleep at a stretch in the last three weeks. And yet he knew that if he lay down, he wouldn't be able to sleep. His mind was too filled with thoughts of Lydia Dale to grant him rest.

She was as beautiful to him as she'd ever been, in some ways more beautiful than she'd been at eighteen, when he first laid eyes on her. Motherhood and maturity had made her body more womanly and even more desirable, at least to him. How was it that every man in town was not in hot pursuit of her? How could they fail to see what he saw in Lydia Dale—a lovely, kindhearted, strong-willed woman who had more strength and courage than he'd given her credit for? Perhaps this too was something that had come as a by-product of motherhood and maturity, a filling out and filling in that endowed her with a depth and complexity that made him realize he'd only just begun to appreciate all there was to her. He figured a man could spend a lifetime trying to really understand everything she was, and that he'd like to do exactly that.

How was it possible that Jack Benny had pushed her away and abandoned those three beautiful children? Graydon couldn't understand it, but one thing he knew for sure: Jack Benny didn't deserve a woman as fine as Lydia Dale. Then again, neither did he.

Graydon unbuttoned his shirt and sat down to eat the cold chicken Taffy had wrapped for him. It was good, but Graydon wasn't enjoying it the way he usually did.

He felt anxious and unsettled, not exactly angry, but filled with the kind of nervous energy and generalized discontent that sometimes sends normally peaceful men into barrooms in search of a fistfight.

He pushed the plate aside and paced back and forth across the room in his stocking feet for a few minutes, finally stopping in front of the steamer trunk in the corner, craving relief. He pulled the horse blankets off the trunk, opened the lid, and bent down to reach for one of the black-labeled bottles. But his fingers froze only inches from the object of his desire, the liquid comfort that had numbed his emotions, dulled his painful memories, and clouded his judgment for so many years—for too many years.

Graydon closed his empty fingers into a fist, dropped his head down, and closed his eyes, thinking. He tapped his fist against the inside wall of the trunk in a steady drumbeat for more than a minute until, having made up his mind, he opened his eyes and lowered his torso into the trunk. Moving quickly, he filled his arms with liquor bottles, then toted his burden out to the old shed where the trash barrels and garden tools were stored.

One by one, he opened the bottles and poured the contents onto the ground, leaving a dark, wet circle on the thirsty soil, then tossed the empties into one of the barrels before pulling a couple of cast-off newspapers out of another barrel and laying them on top.

When the job was done, he went back to the tack room, sat on the edge of the bed, and pulled off his socks. The soles were stained brownish red with dirt picked up on his journey to the tool shed, so he tossed them aside, took off his jeans, turned out the lamp, got into bed, and immediately fell asleep.