Heart of Gold (22 page)

Looking up, he tracked the flight of two gulls soaring high overhead, and as he stood there, with the sounds and sights of the crashing waves, myriad voices played in his head: Mal, bluntly suggesting he grow up; Roni, telling him to see the wizard for a brain; but mostly it was Zoey's pain-filled cries, begging him to stay. Hearing her pleading to be sent back to foster care for the sake of her parents' love was horrifying. He drew a weary hand down his face and wished he could prescribe himself something to help him get over himself and be content. But he wasn't, and that was the problem. He wasn't content with his response to Roni's career any more than he was content with what his stance on the matter had wrought. He mulled over his dilemma for quite a while, then walked back to the car.

The next morning his mother answered the doorbell.

“Reggie!” Enveloping him in an exuberant hug, she placed a kiss on his cheek. “What a surprise. So good to see you! Come on in. Your father's at the hardware store and should be back in a few minutes. I'm baking cookies for the reverend. His reward for giving a short sermon on Sunday.”

Laughing, he followed her into the kitchen and, yes, fresh-baked Toll House cookies were chilling atop racks on the countertop, their mouthwatering fragrance filling the air. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt sporting the name of her church. To him she'd only aged maybe one minute since he'd seen her this past summer. Her coffee-brown face bore the soft lines of a woman approaching seventy, but the eyes were still as sharp as they'd always been. “How're my girls?” she asked. “And how dare you visit without them.”

He stopped.

She must've have seen something in his face. “Please tell me you aren't divorcing.”

“No. I just need some time away to think.”

She didn't hide her skepticism. “About what?”

He sat. “I don't know, Ma. I thought I was happy with her going back into the business, but truthfully, I'm not.”

They took seats at the kitchen table.

“That makes me an unenlightened man, I guess, but a part of me wants her at home—not crisscrossing the globe or spending all her time in the studio.”

“You're not proud of all the strides she's made since the shooting?”

“I am, but—”

Her voice turned soft. “But what? You really want to deny the world the gift she's been given?”

“No, but what about her responsibilities at home and to Zoey?”

“If my granddaughter were a newborn or a toddler, I'd have to agree, but Zoey's ten, and lord knows she isn't helpless. She can help make dinner when Roni's away, and she's old enough to clean up after herself and do her own laundry, if it comes down to that. Is she upset about Roni's career, too?”

He shook his head.

“So this is just you.”

“Yeah.”

“Then let me be honest. I'm so proud of Roni I can't stand it. After witnessing all that violence, if it had been me, I'm not sure I'd've ever found the strength to go back out on a stage again. But she has. She did. That's something to celebrate. Nothing about her says Suzy Homemaker, Reggie.”

“I know, but is it wrong for me to want her to be that?”

“Of course not, but you need to come down from Planet Ideal and live here with the rest of us on Planet Real Life. Roni is who she is. Just like I am who I am. I love being June Cleaver and Donna Reed. In fact, the reason I went to college was to get my MRS.”

“What?”

She nodded. “I had no desire at all to enter the workplace. Your grandmother worked her fingers until they bled raising four girls alone, and her goal was to send me and my sisters to college so we could marry well and not have to work from dawn to dark, or as the old folks used to call it, from no light to no light, the way she did.”

“Mom, I don't believe that.”

“Why not?” she asked, sounding amused. “All I ever wanted was to marry a man who adored me, keep his house, and have his sons. And your daddy was nice enough to play along.”

Reggie didn't know what to say.

“God gave Roni work to do, and as her biggest fan, I need you to chill. She'd never be happy being me, Reg. You know who Dear Abby was, right?”

He nodded, not sure how this tied in to the conversation, and waited for her to explain.

“I read her every day while growing up, and when people wrote to her to ask if they should get divorced, she told them to ask themselves this: Are you better off with them or without them? So you, my eldest son, need to ask yourself the same. Are you better with Roni or without her?”

“With.”

“Exactly.”

The timer went off on the oven, and she left the table to grab a potholder and take out the last baking sheet holding the reverend's now done cookies. Reggie watched her use the spatula to lift each one off the sheet and place it gently on the rack to cool. “Can I ask you a personal question?” he said to her.

“Sure.”

“Did you love Dad when you two got married?”

“Honestly? No, not at first. In fact, when we first hooked up, I barely knew him, but what I did know, I liked.”

“What do you mean?”

“While the rest of us were raising our fists and taking over campus buildings, your father was in class. When everyone was partying on weekends, he was at the library. He stood out for that. That and the fact that he was on the dean's list. I thought he'd make a good husband and a good provider, so I checked him out. He was funny, smart, and charming. The love came much later, but it didn't stop us from having fun or pulling together as we made our way. Now he's my world, and I know I'm his.” She glanced his way and said sincerely, “That you and Roni love each other and always have is something special, Reggie. Don't screw it up by trying to fit her into a box.
Carpe diem
, because not many couples have what you have with that beautiful wife of yours.”

He sighed audibly.

“Not what you thought you'd hear?”

“No.”

“It's a mama's job to tell you the truth, even when you don't want to hear it.”

He chuckled. “I guess.” He looked over at the amazing woman who'd raised him, and realized he'd learned more about her in the past few minutes than he had his entire life growing up. Every kid he knew wanted her to be their mom because no matter what he or his brothers were into, she was there: field trips, science projects, making costumes for Halloween, den mother, after-school chauffeur . . . and no one could bless out an umpire better or more colorfully than Jasmine Rochelle Garland.

“Remember the time you were kicked out of Drew's high school baseball game?” he said. Drew, named for the Dallas Cowboys star receiver Drew Pearson, was Reggie's middle brother.

“Yes, and I still say that ump went to the Ray Charles School of Umpiring. I was right behind the plate, and your brother threw a strike.”

Drew was on the mound with the bases loaded, thanks to an error by his left fielder. There were two outs. The count on the batter in the box was three and two. Drew threw the pitch. The ump called a ball, walking in the man on third, and their mom, who lived and breathed sports, went ballistic. You'd've thought she was the coach, the way she jumped down from the stands and got in the ump's face. The crowd went nuts. The ump threw her out. Reggie's dad very calmly picked her up and carried her off the field while she kicked and yelled the entire way. She was banned from games for the rest of the year.

Hearing the front door close, Reggie looked up and smiled as his dad entered the kitchen. Charlie Garland was approaching seventy, but like his wife, he wore his age well. When he saw Reggie, his face lit up with surprise. “What are you doing here, Doc?”

They shared an embrace. “Thought I'd pay you a visit. Make sure you weren't causing trouble.”

“Now, you know your mama's the only troublemaker in this family. Speaking of family, where's my songbird and my baby bird?”

“They're at home.”

“She hasn't kicked you out, has she?” he asked, laughing.

When Reg went quiet, his dad said, “Aw hell. What happened?”

His mother interrupted them. “I'm due at the library for a board meeting.” She kissed her husband on the cheek. “You two visit. I'll be back later—and Charlie, remember what the doctor said about you and sweets. One cookie, okay?”

He chuckled. “Yeah, right. I won't eat a dozen. That's all I'll promise. You go on so me and the doc can have our man time.”

She rolled her eyes. “Reg, are you staying for dinner?”

“If you'll have me.”

“Good. See you later.”

Once she was gone, his dad grabbed three cookies. “Come on out to the garage. You talk and I can load up the truck.”

On the way, Reg asked, “What're you working on?” His father had been building houses for as long as Reg was alive. Drew was also an architect and builder. Baby brother Isaac, named by their mom for All-Pro running back Isaac Curtis, was a hotshot landscaper.

“Driving down to Pin Point in the morning to help your brother with some Habitat houses he and his crew are putting up. Ike promised to fly in, but when he checked with Candi, she told him he had a wedding to attend and couldn't come.”

Ike was married to a witch of a woman no one in the family could abide, not even Ike, to be truthful, but they'd been man and wife for five years. “Why doesn't he just divorce her?”

“Because she's the most beautiful woman this side of the Mississippi—outside of your mother, of course.”

The garage, although orderly and neat, was filled with the tools of his father's trade. Table saws, levels, hammers, lengths of stacked wood—if a carpenter or builder used it, his father owned at least two.

His father leaned against his well-used and well-loved truck and munched on his second cookie. “Your mother and I have bets on how long it'll take Ike to wake up and kick Candi to the curb. Now, Drew and his dynamic Darlene will probably be married till an asteroid takes out the earth.”

Reg laughed softly.

“Not sure why, but we Garland men seem to attract gorgeous women, and in your brother's case that initially blinded him to that girl's obvious faults. I mean, look at us. None of us would qualify to be heroes in those romance novels your mother's always reading—we're short, squat, and if you take away our glasses we'd be lost for the rest of our lives. We're not handsome men.”

Reggie had to agree.

“But you married Roni, who is as fine as that voice of hers, and your mother? Goodness. The day she walked up to me on campus and asked if I'd marry her, I thought I was going to have a heart attack and drop dead right there at her feet.”

“She asked you?”

“Yeah. Craziest damn thing that ever happened to me. I thought I was being—what do the kids call it today?”

“Punked?”

“Yeah, punked. I just knew the frat boys had put her up to it, or that I was on
Candid Camera
.”

“But you weren't.”

“No. She was sincere, and what was a boy like me supposed to do? Say no? She was a tall, leggy sorority goddess. A campus beauty. Even her name was beautiful. Jasmine.” He chuckled as he appeared to think back. “My mother—your grandmother—wanted to know if something was wrong with Jas. ‘Why would a girl like that want to marry into our family?' she asked. I had no idea, but we got married the day I graduated, and I've been thanking the gods and worshipping at her feet since. She's my princess, and I'm her very happy frog.”

Reggie wondered why he'd known none of this.

“So,” his father said, “let's cut to the chase. Do you think that because your songbird has left the nest, she's going to fly away?”

Reggie didn't want to answer.

“I'll take that as a ‘Yes, Dad' and tell you there's no shame in that, son. Took me years to realize that when Jas said, ‘Till death do us part,' she meant it. Worrying whether my beauty was going to wake up one morning and wonder what the hell she'd been thinking kept me awake many a night in the beginning. Roni loves you. I've seen the way she looks at you when you two are together. If she wanted someone else, she'd have no problem finding him, and we both know it.”

Reggie agreed. That his father had suffered with the same issue helped him immensely.

“I named it the Garland Panic. It will pass. I promise.”

“When did you become so wise?”

“Your old man's always been Yoda. You and the rest of the grasshoppers just never listened.”

“Then this grasshopper says thank you.”

“No problem. Feel better?”

“I do.” And truthfully he did.

“Good. Now, how's the clinic? Busy?”

“No. In fact, I closed it down when I left.”

“You need to keep busy. Having time on your hands and nothing to occupy the mind can give you what the Buddhists call Monkey Brain.”

“Monkey Brain?”

“Look it up. In the meantime, I'm going to sign you up to work with me for the next thirty days.”

Reggie's eyes widened. “Dad, I can't be gone thirty days.”

“Why not? Didn't you come down here to work this stuff out?”

“I did.”

“Then thirty days will give you time to think, miss your wife, and for her to miss you. Absence does make the heart fonder. Years ago I spent thirty days on a build in Texas, and nine months to the day after I got back, Ike was born.”

“Dad!”

“What—you think you and your brothers got here by immaculate conception?”

Reggie dropped his head.

“Come on. I know building houses isn't your forte, but if somebody gets hurt, you'll be good to have around. Let's get this stuff loaded. We'll leave first thing in the morning.”

That evening, after checking out of the hotel and bringing his luggage to his parents' home, Reggie made himself comfortable in the bed in their guest room and listened to the quietness of the night through the open window. His conversations with them seemed to have lifted the shadows covering his heart and soul, and he felt more like himself again. He knew his issues wouldn't be cured overnight; life rarely waved a magic wand to make problems instantly disappear. But the sense of renewal that filled him made him want to hop on a plane, fly home to beg Roni's forgiveness, and make love to her until the cows came home. He checked the time on the illuminated clock on the nightstand. He was pretty sure she was still up, so he dug his phone from beneath his pillow and called. “Hey, baby.”