The Wedding Gift (14 page)

When George finished his
touching father and son story, he had tears in his eyes. I knew if
I had been Jessie, she would have made a snorting sound, but I
wasn’t, I was me, Leeann, the girl who was always looking for ways
to make her own daddy happy and proud. I didn’t think at that point
there was much I could say to sway George off this idea and, as in
every big situation of my life, I needed to talk to both Jessie and
my mama before I jumped one way or another, so I needed to get rid
of him for a while so I could talk it out with them. I leaned up
and kissed him and then fell back on the bed, like it had caused me
horrible pain to do so, and said in this weak little voice
“
That was a beautiful story, Sugar, and if
that’s what you want, then that’s what we’ll do. Now, Honey, I
don’t feel so good. Would you mind getting my nurse for me?
” He got all loving and concerned, and called
himself a fool for getting me so tired and headed out to get the
nurse.

As he got to the door, I
called out to him “
Hey, Georgie, just one
thing ....”
He said "
What, Baby?
" and I asked him what he
had meant when he said that about always wanting that house? He
came back a little into the room and told me that, yeah, since he
had been a little boy, he had thought it was the most beautiful
house in the world, and that being as how it was the real Willets
home, he felt he belonged there and not at Bethany House. He said
“
It’s just that up until I had you,
Leeann, it wasn’t worth fighting for
.”

I was sorry I’d asked, and
just smiled and waved him on out to the nurse’s station.

Chapter 20

Shoot, this situation was
worse than I thought. That house was obviously as much George’s
lifetime dream as Donny Readle had been mine, and I knew for a fact
that people just didn’t let go of their dreams that
easy.

Later on when he was gone
and Jessie and Mama were there, I told them the whole horrible
story and just laid back and waited to hear their ideas on how to
get out of it ... and waited .... and then waited some
more.

They looked like
slaughtered calves. Well, to be strictly honest, Mama looked like a
slaughtered calf and Jessie looked like the one who could be doing
the slaughtering but, mad or not, she still didn’t have any better
ideas than Mama did. Mama said that George was my husband now, and
a girl had to do what her husband said, even when it was too damn
dumb to comprehend - well that last part I added in. She said it
was God’s plan for us to obey our husbands and that, after all, it
was a fine big house, really the most beautiful house she had ever
seen … and that there were no such things as ghosts. Why, that God
had sent that poor family on up heaven; even that poor crazy girl
Robina a long time ago. And that, yes, it would be hard for her at
first, coming to see me in the place where her “
poor baby Charlie had met his maker
”,
but that she would pray on it, and that she suspected it would all
be fine in the end.

Oh shoot, that wasn’t what
I wanted to hear, so I got a little mean and asked her what she
thought Daddy would say about this. She looked at me real sad for
such a low blow, and said that she thought Daddy would
“
come around to visiting me there too,
once he had thought about it
.”

I looked at Jess then. I
knew she would not agree with anything Mama had said, and I was
right about that, but I should have known … she just went right
back to “
You need to annul this dumb ass
marriage and tell that fat asshole George where he can shove his
precious Willets House
.”

Oh, Mama was shocked by
that. She told Jessie that she felt sorry for poor Mark if that was
the kind of attitude she was going to bring to her own marriage one
day, but Jessie just laughed and said that Mark knew what he was
getting into anyway. “
Miz Elma, there are
too ghosts, and Willets House has got ‘em
.”

Mama got all puffed up and
told Jessie that if she had ever once gone to church she would know
that was not so, and what was Jessie saying? Was Jessie implying
that her own sweet boy Charlie was a ghost too … that his sweet
soul was trapped at Willets House along with everyone else’s - that
maybe he was in the tree, or the bottom of the pool - is that what
Jessie was saying to her?

You got to hand it to Mama;
she might have been the only one who could shut Jess down. Jessie
loved my mama … a lot more than she loved her own, to be strictly
honest, and she would not have hurt her for the world. Listening to
them two arguing started me thinking that maybe Mama had a point.
After all, I was a Christian too, and I didn’t really believe that
everyone who died just ended up sitting in a tree or a pool, or
hell, hanging out down at the Piggly if they had a heart attack
there, like say Mr. Mahoney did last year. People had to go to
better places than that after they had passed on and I strictly
believe in heaven. Though I thought Mama might be wrong about
Robina moving on up. Yes, there was forgiveness, but I did not feel
it extended to people who killed four innocent children, no matter
what the bible said.

So, all that this talking
and thinking meant was that I was right back where I had been
earlier. I could either move into Willets House and hope for the
best, or I could move back home with Mama and Daddy, though, after
Mama’s speech about girls having to do what their husbands said, I
wasn’t so sure she would be all that supportive of my running back
home.

I knew my daddy would be,
or then maybe not, because now he did like George, and I knew that
Daddy thought people who believed in ghosts were damn fools, so
maybe I didn’t have to make a decision after all; maybe it had been
made for me already.

They let me out of the
hospital six days later, and George had the limo brought right to
the hospital so I could lay all spread out in comfort on the ninety
mile drive back to Dalton from Oklahoma City. I enjoyed being made
a fuss over, but really I felt fine and I looked fine too. I had
lost about six pounds in all the trauma, and was right now tucked
into my True Religion jeans and a Michael Star t-shirt looking all
right, if I did say so myself.

George, he was all excited
and worked up. He talked a mile a minute on the trip back about how
all my clothes had been moved into Willets House already. He told
me that though his daddy had insisted all these years that the
house be kept exactly as it was - well, except he said that
naturally his mama had to have the antique wallpaper in some of the
rooms replaced all those years ago because of “
stains that wouldn’t come out
” and of
course everything had been repainted and kept up - but that it was
my house now and if I wanted to change anything.
“
Then, just go ahead, Sugar, knock
yourself out
.”

George pulled out his
little vial and did a line, offering some to me, but I was jittery
enough as it was, so I just told him maybe later and said the same
thing to his offer of champagne. I was on pain pills and, besides,
it wasn’t even ten a.m.. I made a note to myself to keep an eye on
George’s drinking as I was not going to be like my Mama and let him
be drunk every minute of his life and laugh about it. He was still
going on about the house and then he said, like a damn fool, that
he had his daddy's man Avery over there right this minute, filing
the pool for us.

Well, My Lord, I had to
pull his ears back a little for that. I asked him if he thought I
wanted to swim in the pool my brother had died in, though, to be
strictly honest, I guess it wasn’t the same because if the pool had
had water in it that day, then not much would have happened to
Charlie, and Donny’s legs would not have got broke either, so
mostly I was just saying it to be contrary and because I was
nervous. It did make me kind of mad that George was so damn happy
about everything; it seemed insensitive to my feelings.

He didn’t act sorry a bit
though, he just said all logical like “
Well shoot, Leeann, are you gonna want to swim down at the
public, when you have your very own pool right outside the door?
Hell, I figured you’d have Jessie and your girls over all summer
just tanning your sweet selves, and that I would be in eye candy
heaven
.”

Well that was a pretty good
point, what he said, and it got me to thinking too. My very own
pool where me and my friends could play Tim McGraw music at one
million decibel volume if we wanted and where we could drink
pineapple and rum all day if we felt like it, my very own pool
sitting outside my very own mansion house. Shoot, I had been
looking at this thing all wrong, I saw that then.

I sat up and grinned at
George and reached for his vial, I told him “
Shoot, Sugar, when you’re right, you’re right. Give me some
of that, I am going to have the time of my life with that house,
and with you too
.”

He laughed, all happy, and
asked me how long the doctor said it would be before we could start
having “
some real fun
”. I told him four weeks and acted like I was sad about it
too, which I purely was not. Then I asked him what his mama had
said about all this and he started laughing so hard he choked on
his drink and I had to pat him down before he could tell me a
thing.

He said that she had taken
to her bed, threatened his daddy with a divorce - as if poor George
Sr. could ever get so lucky - and said she would never set one foot
inside that house if we insisted on living there - as if I could
ever get so lucky.

I was thrilled with her
conniptions, but acted real serious and concerned when I asked
George why she was so upset. He told me it was on account of how
his mama just hated Robina Willets down to her feet, and said that
she had felt like a second class citizen while Robina was alive. It
still galled her to this day that, to everyone in Dalton, Robina
had been the Mrs. Willets, while his mama had just been the wife of
the younger brother.

I asked him if he’d ever
heard about Robina being mean to his mama, and he said no, that as
far as he had heard … and he hadn’t heard much, but that Robina had
never acted much like being a Willets had mattered to her at all.
George said for some reason that just made his mama madder, and
then of course Robina went crazy and disgraced the family name by
killing everyone in sight. But, to tell the truth, he said he had
always thought that his mama made his daddy build her Bethany
House, not because of the crimes, but because to her it was
Robina’s house, and she just couldn’t put up with that.

Hmm, I thought that was
real interesting what George had said. I grinned at him and tossed
my hair and said “
Well, it’s Leeann’s
house now. Maybe your mama will like it better this way,
huh?
”

I got to hand it to George;
he knew in one what I was really going for, and he grinned and
hugged me to him.

“
That’s right, Baby, it’s
Miz Leeann’s house now and everybody that doesn’t like it can just
go straight to HE double LL, can’t they?
"

I leaned back against him
feeling good for the first time in a week. Then the limo slowed
down and we were outside the big wrought iron gates with the fancy
cursive W’s on them, and we were driving down the fancy circular
driveway, and we were there.

I looked up at that huge
white mansion with its twelve pillars outside and more fancy
windows than I could count, all reflecting nothing but the day
outside, and I knew right then somehow that this was still Robina’s
house, not mine.

Chapter 21

I shook off my negative
thoughts 'cause it don’t do nobody a lick of good to start thinking
thoughts like that. I got out of the limo and headed inside to my
new digs with my head high.

George had to stop me at
the doorway, so I could be carried over the threshold, and that boy
sure needs to get himself to a gym, because I don’t weigh a pound
over one hundred and fifteen with my clothes on, and he panted and
grunted like I was Audrey Steppes, which pretty much killed the
romance of the moment for me.

I was glad he had done it
anyway; all that nonsense had kept me from getting nervous about
actually, finally, walking through the door of the house that had
been a dark legend my whole life. But here I was and, looking
around, all I felt right that minute was awe. My God, this was the
most beautiful place I had ever seen; it was even better than
houses that you see on television.

George and I were standing
in this high ceilinged round area, the foyer I guess it’s called. I
looked up, and do you know that the ceiling, which was about fifty
feet above my head, was made of stained glass. I gaped like a fool,
and George laughed, real pleased with my reaction, and started
dragging me along behind him to show off the house.

When you walked out of the
foyer, there was this huge grand area where you could fit about a
hundred people without crowding them, and the staircase … oh, it
was something.

There was one of those
double staircases, where you could walk up one side and down the
other, like in movie houses or really good hotels. I did not know
houses people lived in had anything like that. There was a
chandelier that must have been twelve feet long, but the ceiling
was so high that it was still a good thirty feet above our
heads.