Homefires (75 page)

His lips claimed mine again. Yes, I was glad he’d stopped me.

It came like a bolt of lightning. Kirk called me into the small kitchenette of our salon and closed the door. “The phone call – ” he began and stopped, biting his lip. Kirk had taken the call in the salon’s kitchenette ten minutes earlier, as I finished Mrs. Curtis’ hair style.

“What?” I croaked, black premonition washing over me.

“I don’t want to tell you this, Neecy,” he whispered, his lips trembling.

“What’s happened,” I asked hoarsely, wanting with all that was in me to
not
know.

Kirk gripped my icy hands, his gaze holding mine. “There’s been an accident – your dad’s been killed.”

The pain that lanced me was visceral, gripping my gut and twisting torturously around every organ in its orbit to burst into denial
. “No-o-o
,” I wailed. “Not Daddy. Please – not Daddy!” Kirk wept as I keened and howled my grief, his big warm fingers tethering me to him and to reality. His forehead pressed against mine and I knew his loss was as great as my own. Dad was the father Kirk had always yearned for. And now, just when I’d finally gotten to know the real Joe Whitman, the sweet, giving man who’d always hovered just on the perimeter of our experience, he was snatched away.

It hit me like a Mack Truck. My last biological brace – gone. Life’s conveyer belt brutally plopped me into my father’s vacated space. Until that very moment, I’d not known the weight of his position, not until I, myself, teetered, heels dug in, on the brink of the unknown, where mortality is a stark, grim fact that precedes forever. Now, incredibly, Daddy had already made that mysterious crossing to the other side. This fact
separated us indelibly, pulled the rock-hard
father-
surface from beneath my feet and left me staggering, groping for footing.

Dawn became an unexpected fortress who took charge, gently washing my face and weeping with me, making calls to Trish, Chuck and other family members as I alternately fought hysteria then embraced it. Neither Heather, now living two hours away, nor Toby, both married and residing near Asbury Seminary in Kentucky, would arrive until the next day. Kirk would close down shop and join us later.

Later, as Dawn drove me to join relatives, another cold irrational fear blasted me. Daddy, my genetic link, was gone. I’d grown so secure with the Daddy and Anne alliance through the years that I’d simply taken family-solidarity for granted. Now, with Dad’s abrupt departure, the chasm he left loomed murky and frightening.

Had
Daddy
been the glue? Did glue equate the
genetic
, after all?

Terrifying thoughts spiraled through my mind –
will I lose my family? “Blood’s thicker’n water”
droned Grandma Whitman’s ghost. Did Anne feel that way, too? Just a little? The small child inside me wailed and howled forlornly as I entered Anne’s house.

Anne’s house. Not Dad’s and Anne’s house anymore.

Will Daddy’s void change her?
She loved me, yes. But suddenly, I felt keenly DNA stripped, the stepchild of folklore. A sea of familiar faces filled the den. Yet, standing in the midst of them all, eyes streaming tears, I felt utterly alone.

“Neecy!” Anne’s voice rang out and through a blur I watched her sail like a porpoise to me. “I’m so sorry about Daddy, honey,” she murmured and gathered me into her arms.

Terror scattered like startled ravens.

What she did next took my breath. She looked me in the eye and said gently, “He’s with your Mama now.”

I snuffled and gazed into her dear face. “H-He always put flowers on Mama’s grave – ”

She looked puzzled, then smiled sadly. “No, honey, he didn’t put the flowers on her grave.”

“Then who – ”

Anne looked a mite uncomfortable for long moments. Then she leveled her haggard periwinkle gaze with mine. “I did.”

“You?” I asked, astonished. “All those years?”

“Yes.” She wrapped me in her arms again and truth smacked me broadside. Blood is part water. Grandma just didn’t get it. With love blending them, you can’t tell one from the other.

Kirk arrived moments later, as if to punctuate my reassuring discovery. Like Kirk of old, he burst into the room with his head high, eyes searching until they lit on me. Swift as an arrow, he came to me and unashamedly gathered me close, murmuring in my ear that “everything will be all right, honey. We’ll make it through this.”

Through swollen, red eyes, I gazed at this man who was not blood kin, who was once a virtual stranger, whose love had elicited from me a vow to live with him – in unspeakable intimacy – until death. And in that instant, I was struck with the sheer implausibility of it all.

Then he smiled down at me as we stood there, surrounded by whispering on-lookers, yet
alone.
His big fingers lifted to gently touch my cheek as he lowered his face to brush noses with me. “I love you, Neecy,” he whispered, his eyes, those magnificent green eyes, clouded. “I’m so sorry I ever caused you pain.”

“But – ”

“Shh.” His cheek melded to mine as his breath ruffled the hair on my temple. “
Kirk’s
back,” he said hoarsely, “and I’ll never leave you again.” His arms tightened to still my quietly sobbing body. “Never.”

And he won’t. Because as implausible as two strangers bonding in matrimony seems, the fact of prevailing commitment stirs and sustains a mysterious chemistry that
works.

“I’ll take care of you, Neecy,” he whispered brokenly.

“I know.” I gazed at him through tears, saying the words because he needed to hear them. Saying them because they were true. “I know you will, Kirk.”

EPILOGUE THE PRESENT

 

The moment had come. I stood beside the open sepulchre, breathless at dashing from work to be here at the cemetery at this appointed time. I trembled with emotions long buried and now resurrecting. I’d opted to work today, as usual, and await the summons from the funeral home when the truck bearing such precious cargo arrived. I’d thought it would help to keep my mind occupied until this moment.

The past two weeks had been hell. The decision to move our daughter’s remains began soon after Dad died and was buried, according to his wishes, in the little church cemetery where generations of Whitman ancestors lie. No Ph.D. inscriptions mark their headstones. My kin were poor, simple,
good
folk who were too busy surviving squalor to worry much about schooling. Not until my dad’s generation was education upgraded to “important.”

My gaze swung to his headstone, a low-cut marble one that not only meets Anne’s fashionable criterion but also allows the custodian to mow flush and maintain a well-kept look. I stood between Dad’s green mound and the gaping earth readied to receive my daughter’s corpse.

My attention skittered to Dawn, whose long, denimed legs dangled lazily from her perch on a nearby, older tombstone, a pose so at odds with her grief-ravaged face that my breath hitched. Last week, she’d waged a fierce appeal to view her sister’s remains.

“Mom, it’s not unthinkable, you know,” insisted my wonderful strong-willed girl-woman. “Medgar Evers was disinterred after thirty five years and was so well-preserved they held a wake. Krissie’s been dead at least ten years less. There’s a good chance she could be viewed.”

The room had begun to spin as I gazed at her, not knowing how to react.

Dawn’s voice rose slowly, steadily, like an elevator. “Wouldn’t you like to see her once more, Mama? I mean – just
once more
?” Her stricken azure gaze beseeched me to agree.

Tears filled my eyes and I pinched my forehead. “Oh, Dawn – I don’t think I could say goodbye again...I said goodbye all those years ago. I don’t know that I can do it again.”

“But Mom –
I’ve never seen her
.” Her declaration was a whimper, an unheard of thing for Dawn, one that pierced me. Of course, she wanted to see her sister. Everybody in the family remembered the live Krissie, could still hear and feel her energy, her laughter, her goodness and her love. We’d all
known
her.

All except Dawn. Now she stood before me, her need a throbbing passion.

I took a deep steadying breath and gazed at her. “I’ll talk with the funeral director and see what he says, honey. I understand how you feel. I’ll do everything I can to make this happen.”

And I had. But in the end, it wasn’t enough. “Discourage Dawn,” had been the mortician’s counsel. “Occasionally, a viewing is possible, but more often, it isn’t. Once the vault’s seal is broken,” he shrugged, “It won’t reseal. Not only would you have to go to the expense of a new vault, there is no guarantee you’d get a viewing.”

Kirk had made the final difficult decision not to risk it. For once, I yearned with all my heart for the affluence to disregard monetary concerns during that emotional decision. But we’d already spent well over two thousand dollars to disinter and relocate the burial site. New vault prices began near a thousand, not a sum to sneeze at nor one that fit into our already strained budget. By now, I’d curtailed to part-time work in order to spend more time writing and had published some short stories. All with Kirk’s blessing. Kirk was, again, the main breadwinner. Without his financejuggling genius, we’d not have enjoyed as many comforts.

Had I been in charge, we’d have been destitute.

Still, it stung that we couldn’t simply order the vault seal broken. I keenly felt Dawn’s disappointment and lost dream. But an amazing thing happened. Dawn took the defeat with remarkable grace and pitched herself into planning the memorial service set for the upcoming Sunday afternoon.

Today, on its eve, our family congregated at the cemetery to watch the earth-stained vault poise majestically in honeysuckleflavored stillness to bid us a brief, somber greeting. Warm golden
May sunlight kissed its metallic surface for the first time in twentyodd years. Our moist-eyed regard was hushed and reverent, almost apologetic for disturbing the eternal rest.

Dawn hovered closely, her features grim and deferential. Her banker husband, Charles, an Al Pacino, drop dead gorgeous look-alike, watched her with concern, his arm draped protectively around her.

I missed Heather’s calming presence. She, Sam and their daughter Angela would arrive late tonight, along with Toby and his family, for tomorrow’s ceremony. Sam had begun attending church with Heather in their first year of marriage and experienced a conversion experience that still had my eyes rolling with astonishment.
Watch out, world!
Sam Chase would be a pulpit-dynamo.

He and Heather’s move to Asbury, Kentucky, situated them two streets from Toby’s family and settled the brothers-in-law, elbow-to-elbow, in the seminary’s theological school. At times, I had to tack my feet to the floor to keep from leaping into infinity with joy. They would all drive in a caravan, arriving late tonight, Toby, wife Joellen, three daughters Michelle, Tiffany and Kennedy and Heather’s family.

That supportive family unity helped me through today’s sadness. It helped me watch the crane lower the casket into earth once more and stifle a piercing cry at life’s injustice. It helped me face tomorrow.

Sunday dawned fair and sunny. Today was my bittersweet, poignant Mother’s Day gift. A sweet gardenia-laced breeze caressed my face ever so gently, and I knew she was present. I felt her essence, that indefinable,
ageless
, unique aura that depicted Krissie the baby, toddler, child and adolescent at once. I experienced anew the splintering regret that she’d not experienced adulthood. Never been kissed and romanced. Never known motherhood. So many nevers.