The Wedding Gift (30 page)

“
Well, didn’t ole Robina
mention that baby, Leeann?
”

I just nodded. My mouth was
dry now.

“
Well see, Leeann, that
worries me. Seems to me Robina has already proved she is no
ordinary ghost. Looks from where I’m sittin’ that she can talk to
you wherever you are and she killed your brother, she killed
George, and, somehow, I get the feeling that it might be better to
do what she wants from here on in
.” Jessie
grinned at me real wide. “
Well, unless she
goes telling you to kill someone for her, because I swear to God,
Girl, unless it’s Miz Willets, well killing someone would be plain
wrong!
”

I was too scared to laugh
this time. “
What do you think I should do,
Jess?
”

She shook her head a
little. For the first time in living memory, she didn’t look like
she was certain, and I didn’t like that at all. Jess knowing what
the hell everybody should do all the time was a constant in my
world.

“
Leeann …shit, I’m not
sure here. But I think we have to get you back into that house. And
once we do that, I think you have to fall asleep. Wherever she’s
taking you, I think you have to be asleep, or at least unconscious,
for it to happen. Now stop looking at me like that! I’m going to be
sitting right beside you the whole time, so if she tries to knife
up your sleeping body, well then, I will sure try my damndest to
stop her. And as to getting inside that house, well somehow, and I
don’t even know why I am saying this, I think it won’t be hard this
time. I think we’ll have help this time
.”

She sat there looking at
me, dead serious, her big gold eyes just looking at me, to see if I
had as much courage in my whole body as she did in her little
finger.

I breathed in deep.
“
Yeah, okay, Jess, let’s do this. I don’t
know where she wants to take me, and I don’t know why it’s me to
start with, except I’ve been thinking about this a while now and I
figure maybe it’s because we kind of had the same story, you
know?
” Jess nodded, so I went on kind of
thinking out loud while I was talking to her. “
Yeah, see, two girls, with maybe not much going for them
except people thinking they were pretty and all, and then we both
married into that terrible family, and nobody liked us doing it.
But I’ll tell you, Jess, the story changes out real quick right
there because she loved Roger, but I didn’t ever love George, and
she had living children by him and then killed them! And if she
ever loved Roger Willets one millionth as much as I love Donny
Readle, then how she could have killed his babies no matter what,
is something I will never live long enough to understand. So now
maybe Robina, see, she picked me because she thinks we are alike,
but we’re not! And Jess?
” I reached over
and took her hand here, even though I knew she hated stuff like
that, “
I’ll tell you something else; maybe
one of the reasons we aren’t alike, could never be alike, is
because Robina it seems like lived out her whole damn life alone …
all alone and without one person she could trust. And see, I’m
different there for sure, ‘cause no matter what happens to me in
that house, and no matter how much I love Donny Readle, for me …
well now, and all the rest of my life too, God willing, that one
person for me, it’s you. So now what I’m going to say, you had best
listen to real good because this ain’t easy for me either, Jessie.
So you best stop crying right now, because if anyone around here is
going to act like a pussy, well I get to; I am, after all, in a
fragile condition here
.”

Jess laughed a little but
she was still crying hard.

“
Okay Jess, here it is.
You promise now. You swear to me, on all our years together, that
if she comes for you, that no matter what, if I am asleep or not,
that you will get the fuck out of there as fast as you can. You are
gonna do this Jess or it’s no deal. Because, so help me God, if I
wake up, and you are dead then there won’t be no need for Robina to
kill me, ‘cause I will take care of that myself, even if it means
taking my baby with me. Oh shoot, maybe I am just like her after
all, huh?
”

Jess had crawled up in bed
with me now. We were all wound around each other, like we used to
sleep when we were real little. And, just like then, I was rubbing
her back while she cried. What I knew, and no one else did, is that
about a thousand nights during our childhood this was how Jess fell
asleep. Oh shoot, yeah, there came a day when she got so damn tough
and hard that nothing more could touch her, but for awhile there,
when we were just little girls, well it took her a while to
understand why her daddy never came home, why Santa always forgot
their house, and why her drunken whore of a mama brought other men
home. Sure it took her a while to get big enough and tired enough
to know that her mama was gonna hit on her hard every chance she
could, right up until the days when she started to think Jessie
might just hit her back.

Anyway, this isn’t
something I like to talk or even think about. Jessie is like the
bones in my body but her secrets aren’t mine to tell. I have only
said this much because what people might never understand otherwise
is how it is with Jess and me. Shoot, I never doubted for one
second that Jess wouldn’t risk her life to save mine, but I wasn’t
going to let it go down like that.

The way I saw this was I
had dug this hole all by my lonesome … my stupid greed, my choice
to sleep with George and marry him … all my choices. Now here was
my Jessie, finally, after ten bad lifetimes in that bad house she
grew up in, finally happy with her sweet Mark, living the life God
intended for her at last, and I would be damned, literally damned,
if because of her love for me, and her little lion’s heart, I were
to let her stay there and be killed by Robina, killed in a place
that she never would have been if it hadn’t been for me. Well let’s
just say there are lots worse things than dying. Funny enough, I
knew that was a truth now shared by me and Robina. This secret was
one I would never let my Jessie find out if, having survived her
parents, she didn’t already know it.

So now, just for a little
while, it was like it was back then when it used to be me taking
care of her. I rubbed circles on her back and told her it would
most probably be okay, and I guessed we would go tomorrow night
after George’s funeral because, what the hell, might as well make a
day of it, huh?

I felt her little shoulders
hitch, maybe laughing a little. I hoped so. I could never be as
funny as Jess, or as brave, but I was real good at loving the
people I kept close in my heart. So I prayed awhile, hoping that
maybe all that deep love I had for Jessie and Donny and my family,
for this baby, well maybe it could pull us all through. I believed
it would. Either way I was pregnant again and tired again, and it
felt so familiar and good to be curled up around Jess that we both
fell asleep just like that.

Chapter
44

Of course Jess woke me up
with a kick to my shins, saying “
Leeann,
what the hell? God you are such an irresponsible asshole letting me
go to sleep like this! Shit, I’m gonna be late for work for sure
and it’s all your fault! Shoot, and now Tully is gonna be pissed at
me and I got to ask him if I can take tomorrow night off too so we
can go ghost busting. Shit, I figure, he’s gonna be so mad this
time, he’ll fire me for keeps!
”

Tully fired Jessie about
once a week for any number of things, and then usually hired her
right back the next day.

As she was rushing out the
door, her hair standing straight up and her clothes all wrinkled, I
thought she looked like the world’s prettiest chipmunk, and I
laughed at her, which of course made her mad so she told me
“
Well, maybe I do look like one of them
nasty old tree rats, but you look like the village slut lying there
in bed all day like a worthless thing. Now that I think about it,
calling you the village slut, well in light of recent events
…” Jessie was grinning and on her way out the door
she said “
Well, anyway, I’ll see you at
the funeral tomorrow, young Miz Willets. We’ll get together after
that to plan our escapade, that is if old Miz Willets doesn’t up
and kill you at the services. You know, Leeann, that wouldn’t
surprise me a bit, course then if old Miz Willets does kill you, it
will deprive Carlene of the pleasure of killing you. And you got to
admit, Leeann, she has every right to do it, seeing as how you’re
such a husband stealing slut and all
.”

I told Jess as how that
would be a damn shame, as this particular husband stealing slut was
just itching to get her hands back on that old boy now that she
mentioned it. And that, yeah, go on to work and try to not set
anyone on fire.

I was referring to an
incident that had taken place where Jess had accidentally, at least
I think it was accidental, set fire to one of the customers at
Tully’s when she had been making a flambé dessert at the table. But
the circumstances were suspicious. That same guy had stiffed her on
a tip a week previously, so it’s hard to say, but after firing her
for that one, Tully decided to give her the benefit of the doubt
and hired her back two days later.

That made her laugh and she
took off, and I gave about a minute’s consideration to getting out
of bed finally. But after thinking how much I had ahead of me the
next day, I just pulled Muffin back to me and started day dreaming
about what I would like to do to Donny, say, if we were out at Lake
Injun right about now; or in the back of his pickup for that matter
and then, thinking about him, made me decide to call him up. He
picked up on his cell after one ring and I could tell he couldn’t
talk, so I told him just to listen, and then I went on and told him
some things I had been thinking about. When I heard him make this
pathetic groaning sound, well I figured I had done enough, so I
just said that I loved him, and I would see him soon.

Now this part, well it
means a lot because I knew Carlene was with him … probably in the
middle of a big ugly argument, but he whispered real low that he
loved me too. So after I hung up the phone, why I clutched it to
me, all the way back into sleep.

Chapter
45

Today is George’s funeral
and, wouldn’t you know it, it’s raining! Rain is something that
happens about two days a summer here in Dalton and - of all the
damn times - this was one of them, as if this wasn’t morbid and
weird enough already.

It was just going to be
Mama, Daddy and me, along with Jess, at the funeral. Randy and Mark
had already missed too much work, and Sarah Beth, feeling that
Tallulah was too young, was staying home with her.

Daddy was already in a
state as, no matter what the occasion, him having to put on a suit
always made him spoil for a fight.

Mama was doing her usual
routine with him. “
Now, Charlie Honey, you
just settle down here in front of the fan. My, don’t you look
handsome? Good Lord, Jessie, what in the name of our creator is
that you are wearing child?
”

Well you had to laugh
despite the solemnity of the occasion. Jess was wearing black but
it was not exactly funeral black, if you get my meaning. It was
this real small, real tight black dress that I had bought her
during our honeymoon in Miami, and she had on the black stilettos I
had bought her too.

Now Jess is real tiny, as I
have mentioned, but for all that she has perfect legs and perfect
boobs too, and you could see a hell of a lot of both in that getup.
To make matters worse, she had insisted on wearing this huge black
picture hat to top off her ensemble. Jess said Mark had told her
she looked just like Audrey Hepburn, which in strict truth she did,
except that Audrey Hepburn’s movies were all G rated and Jess was
at least PG 13 in that outfit.

Daddy perked up at the
sight of her and said that he thought maybe old George would rise
from the dead when he saw her. Mama was torn between Daddy being in
a good mood and what other people would think when we walked in
with Jessie but, as always, she came down on the side of if Daddy
liked it, then so did she.

At least Mama was real
pleased with my appearance. Knowing that every single person in
Dalton would be eyeballing me, I had picked out a real plain grey
linen dress and pumps. My hair was in a French twist and the makeup
I had on just made me look solemn. Gray eye shadow, and pale
lipstick - I looked real dignified.

Daddy said I looked just
like an angel, which was good since we were taking the devil to
church with us in the form of Jessie. That made us all start
laughing … except for Mama, who has no sense of humor about the
devil. She told us to pipe down and remember that we were going to
a funeral for poor George who had been a beloved member of our
family and to be thoughtful of that fact. I saw Daddy and Jess roll
their eyes but, out of love for Mama, they settled down and we all
squeezed into Mama’s little Datsun car.

The church was packed. It
was the same church where I had married George. It had been such a
little time ago, but seeming far away now. We had to park a block
away and walk in the pouring rain. We were all quiet on the way
except Jessie, who cursed the rain, her high heels, and asshole
George for being buried on the only rainy day in summer. But I
think maybe Jess was just doing her own whistling in the dark,
because by the time we got to the doors, she was quiet
too.