The Wedding Gift (13 page)

Doc Miller says I was real
lucky, and would be able to have as many more babies as I wanted.
He was the first one who made me roll over and face
away.

You can’t do that kind of
thing with Jessie though, she just stepped around to my other side.
She did this two more times until the pain from moving around was
making me cry and I begged her to stop it.

“
Please Jess, just go on
home; I don’t feel like talking now
.”

Jessie ignored me, of
course. She just sat down beside me and took my hand and said if I
didn’t want to talk, that was fine; she would talk and I could lie
there and push my morphine pump. I was too beat to fight, so I just
nodded and laid there with tears trickling down my face which
Jessie every once in awhile brushed off for me.

She told me how, after I
slid down onto the floor, that “
fat pussy,
George
” just stood there looking shocked,
and that it was Donny Readle who pushed his way through the crowd
around me to get to me first. Jess said he had picked me up and
continued holding me right up until the ambulance got there; that
my blood had covered his gray suit - his only suit, I knew - and
that she told me he had been so gentle when he laid me on that
stretcher … that he wouldn’t let the ambulance men touch me until
he had put me down himself. Hearing about that roused me a little
bit, and I asked what George had been doing while another man was
carrying his bride around. Jessie just sneered and said he had been
“
crying on his mama’s
lap
”, which I hoped to God was one of her
exaggerations.

Jessie got real serious
then and said “
Hey, Leeann, I know you are
feeling real bad right now, but did you ever think that maybe this
is like a gimmee pass? You don’t love George, and you only got
married because of the baby, which wasn’t exactly a planned
pregnancy anyway. You could annul this marriage, no problem. Hell,
Miz Willets would be happy to pay for it, I bet, and probably give
you money to boot. You could just put this behind you and start
over. I think you’d be glad you did later on. My God, girl, do you
realize that tomorrow is your eighteenth birthday? You’re too young
for this, Leeann. You need to let your mama and daddy take you home
when the doctor releases you. Don’t stay married to that asshole …
him and his crazy mama
.”

Jessie didn’t understand,
and I knew she couldn’t understand, tough as she was. Jess was
still a girl like I had been yesterday. The biggest thing that had
happened to her so far was getting her diploma last week. She had
loved the same nice boy all her whole life, and there was no messy
rebound relationship in her life; no pregnancy and now this … this
blood and pain and a feeling of emptiness that shocked me because I
hadn’t even wanted this baby, had I?

And Jessie, well she could
talk about annulment like it was a get out of jail free card, but
the thing was I had married George. Granted our for better or for
worse had come awful fast, but I knew that if I didn’t at least
try, I would feel guilty all my life. I felt sick remembering what
I had been thinking about in the church two minutes after I had
married him. I had been raised a Christian and I had learned early
on that God could hear our bad thoughts loud and clear. If he had
heard mine yesterday, well then losing my baby was a righteous
punishment and I wasn’t fixin’ to give him anything else to be mad
at me about in a hurry.

If George asked me for an
annulment, I knew I wouldn’t say no, but if he didn’t, then I was
going to stick it. I was different now, and as much as I wanted all
this not to have happened, it had and I had to live with the
choices I had made. I tried to tell Jess some of this, but she just
told me that the morphine had made me more of a drama queen than
usual, and I obviously needed more sleep. She told me she would see
me in the morning and then she kissed me goodnight. I figured if
she had done that I must really look like I was on death’s door. I
knew why Jess thought I would be different in the morning; it’s
because she thought that I was still a kid like she was, but I
wasn’t. I know that just having bad things happen to a girl doesn’t
make her turn into a woman right away, but it does cut something
out of you. I think that something is being a kid and all that goes
with it.

See, when you’re a stupid
kid, you just believe in things …that’s really what being a kid is
all about. You believe summer won’t ever end and that your parents
are happy all the time and that just because you love a boy, why
he’ll love you right back and you two will just go on and live
happily ever after like people in the movies do. I know other
people have had lots worse things happen to them, and I am sorry
it’s so, but it ain’t my fault that I got to be born somewhere
where I was real happy. And I’ll tell you something else. You ask
all them people who are sad and they’ll tell you straight up that
if they could have one wish, you know like what genies give, well
that wish would be that they could just go back and be a kid again,
only maybe this time in a time and place where people was good to
them. There ain’t nobody who ever really wants to be a grown-up …
it’s just something that happens to you. I guessed I wasn’t a woman
yet, but I wasn’t a girl anymore either. I was just stuck somewhere
in between.

Thinking about tomorrow
being my birthday, which George and I had planned to celebrate in
Hawaii, just made me start to cry again so, when the nurse came in,
she must have figured that I was in bad pain, which I was, but not
that kind, and she hit my pump two times, before pulling up my
covers. That was my wedding night.

Chapter 19

The next morning George was
sitting at my bed side when I woke up. He looked like a dog’s
dinner, all hangdog and unshaven. When he saw me looking at him he
gave a little jump, like I was some dead person come back to life,
then he took my hand and asked me how I felt. I said okay I
guessed. I asked him what he had done about our honeymoon
reservations and he told me not to worry about it, we would go as
soon as I was feeling better. Then he said all choked up like
“
I love you, Leeann, and, Honey, there is
something we got to talk about
.”

I have always hated that
sentence; no good ever comes out of it.

I knew it was here, Jessie
had called it. I knew that just like in that movie with Sandra
Bullock 'While You Were Sleeping', things had been decided for me.
George was going to tell me that our marriage had already been
annulled and that I had to give back the ring, and probably the
earrings too, or his mama would have me jailed for grand theft
diamonds.

I started crying real hard
before he could even start talking; it felt so horrible to be
rejected a second time - first Donny and now even
George.

He looked real startled,
and started talking fast. “
Honey, Honey,
it’s just a damn tacky little townhouse. I don’t know who told you,
but it’s not a big deal, Sugar. You’ll get used to the mansion
right quick and, hell, it’s like I told Daddy, it’s where you
belong. The prettiest girl, the best house, Leeann. You’ll be just
like a queen there, and heck, Sugar, we’ll have us fifty more kids
if you want ‘em. Stop crying now, Sugar
.”

Well I did stop crying,
because I wanted to know what the hell he was talking about, so
that’s just what I said to him, I said “
George, what the hell are you talking about? I thought you
came in here this morning to ask me for an
annulment
.”

He looked even more like a
fly swallowed by a calf than usual when he said
“
Hell no, I don’t want an annulment! Why?
Do you want one?
”

I shook my head.

He grinned then and said
“
No, this ain’t about no annulment, Sugar.
I am trying to tell you about where we are going to be living when
you get on out of here
.”

Now I was purely confused
again, but I was also real relieved not to be getting shoved out
onto the sidewalk, so to speak; that’s why I didn’t even get real
upset. I figured the townhouse had fallen through, and maybe that
was best. After all, the townhouse had that cranberry carpeting …
and that room with the white crib in it. Besides, I had liked that
part about where George said the “
best
house
”, so I was sweet when I asked him
“
What mansion are you talking about,
George Willets? And you had better not be talking about Bethany
House
.” I laughed a little when I said it,
just to show how I didn’t hate his mama, which I surely did, but a
smart girl knows just when to shut up about that sort of thing, and
I can be real smart sometimes …no matter what Jessie
says.

George got this poop eating
grin on his face and said “
Well, Sugar,
Mr. and Mrs. George Willets are moving into Willets
House
.”

I froze like a deer in the
headlights. I think my blood might have even froze up too. There
was only one Willets House, the murder house, the haunted house …
the house where my brother had been hurt so bad he had never woken
up again, the house he died at. My reaction was quick.
“
No George, not that house, I can’t live
in that house. Hell, Baby” -
little nervous
laugh here
– “kids dare each other to even
get close to it, and you want me to live there?
”

George wasn’t smiling
anymore. He was mad, I could tell. This George was the same George
I had met the day Jessie and I told him I was pregnant. He pulled
himself up as tall as he could (not very) and said in this old
lecturing voice “
Well, Leeann, I am real
sorry that the best house and lands ever built in Oklahoma isn’t
good enough for Miss Leeann Worthier, the Corn
Princess
.”

Shoot, I knew I should have
said it different. Mama always said “
Sugar
catches more flies than vinegar
” and this
situation called for a lot of sugar.

I smiled my best beauty
pageant smile at George and wished I had let Mama or Jessie make me
up and put a new nightgown on me as they had wanted to, but I would
have to make do with what I had. I started talking fast.

“
George, Honey, I didn’t
mean that it wasn’t a beautiful house, or that it wasn’t the best
place in town, hell in all of Oklahoma. And, Sugar, I know it’s
your family house. It’s just that such bad things happened there
and well
…” I looked down behind my hair
acting all fragile like, "...
my big
brother, you know he died there. I didn’t mean to make you mad,
Baby. I’m … well, Georgie, I’m scared to live there, that’s
all
.”

He looked real appeased
after my little speech, and sat down by my bed again. I figured we
could work this out. Hell, I could live in an apartment if I had to
… this would be all right.

George smiled at me a
little and said “
Oh, that old haunted
house stuff, huh? Shoot, Leeann, you’re a grown married woman now.
You should know all that is a bunch of crap. I’ll tell ya
something, Baby … if you knew what I went through to get us that
house, you’d be real proud of me. Why, when Mama got to the
hospital yesterday, she already had her ducks in a row. She was
gonna move us right into Bethany House the minute you got out of
here. Well I guess just you, actually, as I already live there, but
you know what I mean. And she had Daddy on her side as usual. He
had already agreed with her to put the townhouse back on the
market, and you know he can, because the company bought it, so we
didn’t really own it ourselves. But, Baby, I knew that you wouldn’t
want to live with Mama. Sure, she is the sweetest woman alive, but
a girl likes her own house, and that’s just what I told Mama and
Daddy right to their faces
.” He paused for
breath and obviously for praise from me too.

Well I was proud … and
shocked too, that he had stood up to his mama and daddy, but I
still didn’t understand how that had led to us moving into horror
mansion, so I said to him, this time being real sweet
“
Oh, Honey, you were just right telling
them that for me. So then how did Willets House get into the
conversation, Sugar?
”

George, he was getting all
puffed up now telling me about his heroics and he said
“
Well, this is the best part. I followed
Daddy outside of the hospital here when he went out to have a
cigar, and, Leeann, I just straight up cornered him. I told him
that my whole life I had wanted that house and that, except for the
last thirty years, that house had always been lived in by Willets,
and usually a George Willets to boot. And I reminded him of how I
was married now, and to the world’s most beautiful
girl
.” George grinned at me and squeezed my
hand. The best I could muster in return was a kind of sickly
smile.

It didn’t slow him down a
bit. He was puffed up like a blowfish and he kept right on
talking.

“
And I said you were a
local girl as well as being a beauty queen, so I deserved that
house. Besides, us moving in would make the house just Willets
House again and stop all that murder house and haunted house crap
once and for all, and, do you know what, Leeann, Daddy was plumb
knocked out by my logic! Shoot, he said he had never been prouder
of me in his life, and that I was just right. Willets House was the
house he had grown up in. He said that his daddy, and his daddy’s
daddy had grown up there too and that it bout broke his heart the
way everyone talked about that house and seeing it set empty all
these years. Then hell, Leeann, he told me how he had wanted him
and Mama to live there after Uncle Roger died, and have his own
son, me, born there, but that Mama had thrown such a fit about it
that he gave into her and built Bethany house instead. I tell you
something, Leeann, my daddy has never talked to me like that. You
know what else? He did this real amazing thing last night after I
left you sleeping here. When I got home, he called me into his
study and, Leeann, he gave us the title to Willets House and the
land free and clear! He said 'Son, if you are man enough to want to
face down people’s stories and take your wife and live in our
family home, then you are man enough to own it free and clear …
it’s your wedding gift from me
.”