Forever Friday (2 page)

Over the next few weeks I made deliveries and asked questions. Some thought it odd that a total stranger would take such an interest in their kin. Others spilled all they knew to me, even digging up yellowed newsy letters. I selfishly decided not to mention the postcard albums unless someone asked about them, and no one did. So I concluded they were kept secret. In some ways, it even seemed the postcards had been written for me. But I couldn’t keep them, not in good conscience anyway. At the end of my quest, I’d take them to an Alexander relative as “accidentally overlooked.”

Gabe’s typewriter went to their niece, Alice Davis. Alice recently had knee replacement surgery and was, in her words, “convalescing
nicely.” I spent a rainy afternoon wrapped up in her thoughtful recollections. She also told me about the Alexanders’ deceased longtime housekeeper, Priscilla Galloway, whose daughter, Yevette, looked after Pearl during that final year. I contacted Yevette and scheduled an appointment to meet with her the following week.

I suppose my obsession with the postcards was as much a matter of timing as anything. The stinging loneliness of my divorce still lingered, the blunt ache of a failed marriage. As I sent a confirmation e-mail to a somewhat reluctant Yevette, my eyes settled on a folder I’d saved with messages from my ex-wife. I opened it and clicked on her final e-mail. Even though it was dated approximately two years prior, devastation washed over me as though I were reading it for the first time.

The words “someone else” were, unsurprisingly, still the most painful.

Someone else?

In twelve years of marriage we’d had our share of difficulties, but hadn’t everyone? I had never doubted our love, nor envisioned a life
without her. Other than what couldn’t have been helped, where had we gone wrong? What could we have done to prevent disaster?

For each hour I pored over the Alexanders’ postcards, I wondered if I could ever love another woman. Worse, after striking out in my first marriage, did I deserve a second chance?

I didn’t know. I thought I should have the best that life offered until the woman I loved walked away. At first I blamed her. Then I blamed myself. But one thing was clear: Pearl and Gabe knew something Haley and I’d missed. So I’d seek the source of the Alexanders’ wisdom. And learn from past mistakes. My gut told me that time was my friend
and
my enemy. If I bogged in my quest, despair could scar into bitterness.

Years ago I discovered that jotting my thoughts on paper, then punching them into a computer, helped me organize. Helped me process. So by recording the Alexanders’ story, I hoped to uncover their secret. I suspected that something Gabe called “The Long Division” in the poems was key to their marital longevity. But I still had many postcards to contemplate, along with a few loaned letters and whatever I might glean from Yevette. If feeling bold, I’d fill any remaining blanks in the Alexanders’ story with my own interpretations … or longings.

Could a man turn an about-face after marching in the wrong direction for more than a dozen years?

At this point, I could only hope.

Bayshore Extended Care Facility, 2004

Mrs. Alexander

Mrs. Alexander lay in her hospital bed at Bayshore Extended Care and daydreamed of being anywhere but there. She despised the bland food, her beige room, and the incessant talk-show tripe from a television across the hall. Living in the same building with a bunch of elderly people was taxing at best.

To make matters worse, the patient roster listed her as Pearl Garnet Alexander. She’d hated the name for most of her ninety-nine years. Not the Alexander part. Alexander was her married name and had been since 1926. Before that she’d been a Huckabee.

Pearl Garnet Huckabee.

One jewel-encrusted name was bad enough, but she’d had to endure two. That was until her seventh summer birthday when she decided her family must call her Huck.

Huck Huckabee.

Her mother, Annise, refused at first, saying she’d spent many precious hours considering a fancy name for each of her thirteen children. And now her youngest daughter insisted on a plain name like Huck. A boy’s name. It would remind folks of that poor orphan in
Mark Twain’s novel who smoked, drank, and caroused up and down the Mississippi with a runaway slave.

But Pearl argued that slavery, thank goodness, had ended during the last century and borrowing a name from a grand tale like
Huckleberry Finn
only made one appear just as grand.

So at age seven and a half, the name Huck stuck.

Stuck like globs of grammar school paste, gently smoothed, then hardened over time. Somewhere in that half year, the glorious transition occurred. Family first, then friends. By Thanksgiving, using her given name was unthinkable.

Huck sat up in her bed. She adored the name Huck; its carefree, adventuresome aura defined her. Lamar, her good-natured twin brother who was six minutes older, had wanted a nickname too, but nothing caught on until they were in high school. He was a natural at baseball, especially when it came to hitting well-placed grounders. And since a fast ground ball was labeled a
daisy cutter
, Huck had immediately dubbed him Cutter. A few of their classmates had mischievously tried to call him Daisy, but without success. He carried the name Cutter for the rest of his life. After Huck married Gabe Alexander, they’d ardently followed Cutter’s career from the minor leagues into the majors.

So just where was Mr. Gabe Alexander? It was Friday. He would leave work soon and she should be ready. The nurses had lied about last week’s postcard. Said there was no mail, even though she’d later heard snippets of truth sprinkled among condescending little whispers. And here it was Friday again. There would be a new card with a lovely picture on the front. On back, a wonderful verse composed just for her. Over the years Gabe had missed only one Friday … that dreadful week he’d slept alone in intensive care.

Huck peered out the window. A budding mixture of pink and white azaleas signaled the end of the mild Houston winter. She smiled, recalling a glorious spring day from long ago. She’d boarded a Main Street trolley engaged to Clark Richards and disembarked enamored with Gabe, falling heart-long in love that night on a deserted Galveston beach. Each time he breathed her name his eyes twinkled. Even after sixty years when he could barely catch his breath.

She refocused her attention back inside the room and reached for the phone, thankful to have it back. The nurses had removed it until she’d promised them—and Yevette—that any future calls would be made in a responsible manner. It was embarrassing to have bothered that sweet child with such trivial matters. But an entire month without a trip to her own hairdresser had been a true emergency. A lady’s hair style and color set her image.

The current postcard situation was equally dire and Yevette must agree. Hiding someone’s private mail was the same as stealing. It was a federal offense, and there was only one responsible thing left to do.

For the second time within a week, Huck Alexander dialed 911.

It took only minutes for the wail of sirens to reach her ears. She lay back and smiled … remembering the first time she saw Gabe.

March 1926

Houston, Texas

Huck

“Pardon me, sir. Do you have oysters?”

The young man behind the counter sported an easy grin in response. “Oysters? Of course. With or without pearls?”

“Without,” Huck replied, never having liked pearls because of her name.

“Too difficult to chew?”

She nodded. “Harder to swallow.”

“It’s a good thing oysters don’t grow diamonds.” He glanced at her ring finger. “Not that you need, or even want … um …” He cleared his throat.

She suppressed a giggle at the glass intentions of men. The clerk’s clean-shaven smile and quick wit intrigued her, even though the remark was a bit too friendly. As an English teacher for the prestigious new Sidney Lanier Junior High School, her reputation was fragile. And even though she wore no diamond, she
was
engaged.

Then she noticed his eyes. Horizon eyes. Heaven-brushing-the-sea colored eyes.

She should have bolted out the open door of Cecil’s Fish Market & Seafood Emporium. Run to the Market Square streetcar stop and never looked back. Should have, but didn’t. Could have, but wouldn’t.

His easy grin returned, now adorably crooked. “My name’s Gabe Alexander.”

“Well, Gabe Alexander, I’d like a small amount of your freshest oysters, please.”

The sea-sky eyes moved closer. “I’ve never seen you in here before, Miss …?”

“Shucked.”

“A pint of oysters for Miss Shucked,” Gabe called to a snickering clerk.

“I dare say someone’s hooked a tiny humor fish,” Huck replied. “What’s your clever bait?”

“The most beautiful lure.” Caught in her gaze, he placed the jar in a paper bag and pushed it slowly across an enamel-top counter.

Huck’s cheeks warmed. “What do I owe you?”

“Your name. Then we’ll haggle price.”

She opened her purse to buy a little time. What was the harm in an innocent nibble? It would be their first and final flirtation. “It’s Huck. Huck Huckabee.”

“How about I treat you to dinner tonight, Miss Huck Huckabee?”

Closing her purse, she clutched the bag, then smiled a calculated smile. “Why, Mr. Gabe Alexander, you already have.”

Over the next few weeks, as the cool bluster of early spring warmed into April rain, the memory of Gabe Alexander intruded upon Huck’s private thoughts. His smooth, fair forehead, slightly receding into boyish sandy curls. His gentle face supported by a strong jaw. But it was Gabe’s eyes that pierced her most, invading her dreams. More than mere color was an infusion of honesty and kindness. A “Mister Jack” depth of vision, she recalled, where heart met heart and soul met soul.

At age ten, she’d encountered Mister Jack a few weeks after discovering a secret glen along the banks of a thickly wooded creek that flowed between her parents’ property and the woodland home of Texas hero General Sam Houston. Bathed in crisp blue sunlight, the glen became her private Shakespearean stage, its circular floor covered with soft Bermuda. Here, she would act out scenes from
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
or
Romeo and Juliet
.

One day, after a particularly spirited rendition of Juliet’s death speech, she spied a small bush at the glen’s edge covered with pale pink blossoms. She approached the bush slowly, never having noticed it before, its simple beauty stark and intriguing.