Homefires (7 page)

Our own thing was each other. It was building a new, better life, seeing only the good in one another. Tonight, on a cool October evening, it was going to Jimbo’s Nook and spending our last two dollars on his incomparable minced barbecue sandwiches, holding hands and listening to
Silhouettes
from someone else’s jukebox-deposited change.

“Let’s dance.” Kirk took my hand and turned me into his arms. The place was nearly empty except for a couple of teen girls who watched us wistfully, dreamily. I held my breath, hoping Kirk’s second left foot was off duty tonight. He only stepped on my toes twice during that song.

“Here’s to the newlyweds,” Jimbo said, pulling change from his apron pocket as he came from behind the counter. “What’ll it be, Neecy?”

“
Special Angel
,” I said, grinning all over myself. It was our favorite. “Thanks, Jimbo.” Slow-dancing, we relived high school sock hops, whispering and laughing, reminiscing over Callie’s gypsyish, uninhibited behavior and Moose’s doofus, sweet ways and silly drunken escapades.

The teen girls put more change into the jukebox and
A Certain Smile
kept our feet moving and our hearts beating as one. “Let’s adopt each other’s family,” I gushed impulsively, warmed and magnanimous and crazy in love.

He gazed into my eyes for long moments, a slow, cool analytical look that suddenly warmed and made my heart do a flip. “Case you hadn’t noticed, darlin’,” he drawled lazily, “I
have
adopted your family as my own. I feel closer to Joe than I’ve ever felt to my own father.”

That was true. “That’s what I wish I had with your family,” I said longingly

Kirk’s face turned to stone. “Is something wrong?” I asked quietly, my heart thumping hard. He stared over my head now, avoiding eye contact. I felt his withdrawal

“I wish you could accept—reality.” His uneasy gaze lowered and swept over my features. “I don’t want them to hurt you.”

I let it drop. Our wave lengths weren’t in the same atmosphere. But that was okay. I was learning our childhood experiences veered us emotionally in totally opposite directions.

“I’m glad, Kirk, that you’re close to Daddy,” I said, then stopped dancing suddenly. The room was beginning to spin crazily and the lights to blur. “Kirk?” I grasped the front of his shirt. “I’m dizzy. …”

“Neecyyyyyyy……”

My name echoed on and on. Then, everything went black.

“Eight weeks pregnant,” was Dr. Woodruff’s diagnosis.

Pregnant and so sick I turned green. Honest – as Kirk is my witness. My finely tuned senses augmented smells and sights, that’d once enthralled me, into stench.

Suddenly, Kirk’s cigarettes stank worse than any other scent in this vast universe. Just a whiff of their smoke – that invaded every molecule of indoor space – sent me scurrying to the bathroom to throw up or as Grandma Whitman would have said, to puke.

Unrefined though she was, I had to agree. There
is
a difference.

Finally, by the third month, I had only to glimpse a Winston to start the violent heaving, not always making it to the bathroom in time.

Kirk was considerate and loving but terribly addicted to nicotine and had to justify
why
he didn’t just lay them aside. So, it goes to reason that he decided a part of the nausea was in my head, especially since, at that unenlightened time, some doctors propagated the theory that the nausea was at least partly psychosomatic

“How come you get sick just
looking
at a cigarette, even before smelling it?” he asked in his most guilty moments, wiping my brow with a damp cloth as I sprawled noodle-limp on the sofa.

I could have argued it wasn’t only the sight of his cigarettes that set off fierce puking but thoughts of sweet pickles, onions and even innocent golden iced tea, but I was simply too depleted to react.

“Huh?” he’d persist, trying to shift his features from
guilty
to
imposing
by furrowing his brow.

“I don’t know.” I took the cloth from him and washed my lips. “It just happens.”

“Ahh, honey,” his expression swung to undiluted anguish. “I’m so sorry you have to go through this.” A furious hand swiped through his hair. “It’s not fair.”

“Sure it is,” I whispered, cupping his rigid, frustrated face in my palm. “For whatever reason, that’s the way God planned it.” I smiled weakly. “I’ll be okay. Just give me a few minutes.”

He grew quiet after that –
throbbing
with a guilt I could not assuage. I knew he would quit smoking
if
he could.
When
he could. And I knew that just as he wasn’t perfect, neither was I. I knew by now there
was
no Knight in shining armor.

But I knew, beyond a doubt, that above anything on earth, Kirk loved me. And quite suddenly, he was as cow-eyed as me over little gurgling, cooing babies.

The day Heather was born, Kirk threw away his cigarettes. “I don’t ever want my children to see me smoke,” he said in his mind-made-up way, then kissed me like Rhett Butler did Scarlett .

Anne told me that during my final labor, Kirk wedged his face into the crack of the Delivery Room door to watch Dr. Woodruff and his team scurry about while two patients delivered at once.

Kirk was as proud a Dad as a man can be. “I love you a thousand times more than before,” he told me in his velvetgruff voice. “Thank you, Sweetheart.”

In those words, he handed me the world.

The next day, leaving the hospital, Kirk won a good-natured tug-of-war with Anne over who’d carry Heather to the car. My stepmother stayed with me for a week, caring for me and the baby, cooking delicious meals and keeping the house tidy for company who paraded through to see the new little Crenshaw.

Motherhood was the most marvelous thing and I reveled in it, loving my child – mine and Kirk’s creation – with a passion that surpassed anything I’d ever felt. Within weeks, Heather’s round solidness filled my arms and heart with delicious pleasure. Her apple cheeks glowed with perpetual pinch-pink rosiness and, from the beginning, she moved and held herself erect with amazing strength. “Just look at that,” Kirk crowed, rounding his chest like Charles Atlas.

Her Aunt Trish, at twelve, was quite good at tending the baby, who could be a tad demanding at times. Daddy, still youthful, did
Papa
with aplomb and beamed when folks declared, “but you’re too
young
to be a grandpa.”

Sometime during those days, Daddy took Kirk under his wing and began parenting him, giving him the respect missed in younger years and boasting to anybody who’d listen about his great son-in-law and what a hard worker he was.

My heart nearly burst with happiness seeing the two men most dear to me loving one another.

When Heather was six weeks old, Kirk drove us to Asheville to see MawMaw and Papa and they made over the baby as if she were a one-of-a-kind edition. I rocked her on the front porch of their little white, five-room cottage and looked across the vast mountain range and saw a golden castle afar off, etched amid myriad spring greens coating the majestic highlands, glistening in the sunlight, and I felt as if I were dreaming.

“What’s that?” I asked MawMaw, who came out her screen door, looking endearingly fluffy in a fashionless, loose-fitting cotton print dress, bearing frosted glasses of iced tea. Papa, more Panda-like than ever in clean overalls and shirt, trailed her with a tray of sliced homemade chocolate cake. He’d long ago taken to growing one side of his salt and pepper hair long
at the part, then sweeping it over his bald spot, which stretched from one ear top to the other.

“That’s Biltmore Castle. Where the Vanderbilts live.”

Kirk fed me cake while I nursed Heather, modestly covering myself with a light blanket and we talked and reminisced until dusk about days gone by, especially capers attributed to Chuck and me. Nobody could work up a celebratory mood like my grandparents, whose laughter rang and bubbled and roared at the humor found in most everything under the sun, didn’t matter what, they always ferreted out a funny twist.

MawMaw’s laugh billowed out in husky, rhythmic tumbles that tossed back her head, dilated her nostrils and brought tears to her eyes, while Papa’s rolled out like popcorn popping, halfmooning his gray eyes and shaking his entire body. I always thought Papa’s face looked like the Man in the Moon. Classic caricature. Marvelously loveable. Their mirth showed me a side to life that valued me. Theirs was laughter unbridled yet kind. I do not recall their teasing ever making me feel awkward or diminished.

My uncle Gabe and Jean, who lived nearby, came over to visit and the laughter increased for a spell before everyone on the porch began to settle into a quieter contentment and soon, began to yawn. That brought on more soft chuckles about it being contagious. Kirk mentioned Daddy was leaving the mill to pursue his lifelong ambition to barber, something he’d done during World War Two in the barracks after discovering his talent for it.

“Is that so?” Gabe’s interest in Daddy kept Kirk talking.

My grandmother fell deathly silent, and I saw her deflate at the mention of my father’s name. Her resistance to affirm the existence of Joe Whitman attacked my spirit with shame and horror and helplessness.
Why?

“When you seen Chuck?” MawMaw’s whispery, choked aside didn’t interrupt the men’s conversation.

“Not since before Heather was born. Actually – it’s been over a year.”

MawMaw rocked the cadence of one in a trance, desperate and vacant. “I saw Joe and Anne right before we moved up here,” she said quietly so as not to be heard by the men, whose
talk flowed. “They run into us at the Company Store. Had that little boy of their’n with ‘em.”

Cole. Little Cole.
Her cold reference to my baby brother chilled my heart.

I knew Anne had fussed at Daddy for feuding with his ex-in-laws. “They’re the kids’ grandparent’s, Joe,” she’d kept reminding him. Anne’s late mother and MawMaw had been good friends, a thing that drew the two women together. And I knew Daddy’d let up a bit on his hostility, giving me a growing sense of things being set aright.

But MawMaw continued, rocking maniacally, staring into the night. “Anne said, ‘Cole, say
hey
to MawMaw and Papa.’ And Joe kinda nudged him to speak to us.” Her rocking grew heavier and the air thickened about me until it began to choke me as MawMaw went on. “I thought to myself how Joe’d took my grandchildren away from me and then wanted to push this one at me.”

Shock and sick disillusionment cascaded over me at my grandmother’s unkind referrals to the innocent little guy I adored. He obviously wasn’t anything to MawMaw. But he was my
brother.

The muddled genetic pool into which I toppled washed a pall over me, a heavy black ooze that snuffed and vanquished all the joy of this visit
.
Gabe kept the conversation afloat with Kirk as I battled the knot in my stomach. Kirk droned softly on, supplying Gabe with family divulgences, oblivious to MawMaw’s stricken features and Papa’s concern for her, all barely discernable, all screaming at me.