The Wedding Tree (26 page)

adelaide

T
he next morning, I was eating a bowl of oatmeal Nadine had prepared when Hope entered the kitchen, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. “How was you evening, dear?” I asked.

“Lovely.”

“I bet it was.” I cast a pointed glance at the aide, who reluctantly left the room. She already knew what I was going to ask about, but I wanted Hope to answer freely. I waited until she was out of earshot, then leaned forward. “Eunice Ivy says Matt kissed you.”

The incredulous look on Hope's face made my finger itch for a camera. She glanced at the clock over the oven. “It's not even seven o'clock, and you've already talked to Mrs. Ivy?”

I nodded. “She was waiting on the porch when the aide arrived at six. She couldn't wait to tell me. She said you saw Peggy spying on you, and that's when you came inside.”

Hope turned away to pour a cup of coffee. “Was the whole town watching?”

“Just the neighbors.” I gave her a wink. “In the future, it's probably best to do your canoodling someplace more private.”

“We weren't . . .” Hope's face flamed. “It was just a good-night kiss, that's all.”

“Oh, I don't blame you, dear. He's a very handsome man. But
not much happens in this town without everyone finding out. It's always been that way.”

Hope opened the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of yogurt. “That must have made things hard for you with Charlie and Joe.”

She was deliberately changing the topic. I recognized the tactic, having employed it plenty of times myself, but I let her get away with it, because it was high time I told her the part I'd been dreading. “Oh, my—that's God's own truth. And there are other truths I have to tell you. What do you say we get back to my closet when we finish here?”

“Sure.”

After breakfast, Nadine gave me my medicine, and I told her we didn't want to see her until lunchtime. Hope and I moved into my bedroom, where I settled hard into my rocking chair. I paused a moment, then gathered my courage. “Open the closet. On the floor on the left side, there's a box with a red lid. I want you to pull it out.”

Hope found it and brought it over to me.

“Open it, dear.”

She set it on the blanket chest beside the rocker and lifted the lid. I reached in and picked up an infant-sized little white sailor suit. It was yellowed, but the red and blue trim was intact. I smiled. Seemed like yesterday that I was burping a baby on my shoulder.

“This was Eddie's?” Hope asked.

“Yes.”

Next she lifted out a dress Mother had made for Rebecca—white eyelet, now yellowed. Hope oohed and aahed over it.

My chest tightened at what was coming. “Pull out what's under it.”

She lifted out two layette sets, still in tissue, unworn and pristine. One was yellow, one was green. She lay them across my lap. I didn't realize my eyes had teared up until she handed me a tissue.

“Mom told me you had a stillborn baby,” Hope said softly.

And all of a sudden, here we were—at the very part I didn't want
to talk about, even though we'd been heading toward it all along. “Well, dear, that's not exactly right.”

“No?”

“No. That's what everyone thought, but . . .”

A cloud was settling over me—a dark cloud of stormy memories. “Sit down, dear. There's something I need to tell you.”

1947–1948

Life went on for us after Joe's last visit, but I started avoiding marital relations with Charlie. Something about seeing Joe again had stirred up a streak of bitterness. Maybe it had always been hiding inside me, but I didn't fully realize it until after Joe's second visit.

The magnitude of all I was losing out on—travel, adventure, earth-stopping sex—hit me anew. I was angry. Angry at God, angry at fate, angry at Charlie—even, God help me, angry at my children and my parents and grandparents. I was angry at everyone who put daily demands on me, who kept me trapped in what felt like a life of drudgery.

Mostly, I think, I was angry at myself—and anger turned inward festers.

I couldn't stand for Charlie to touch me. I'd feign a headache, or fatigue, or pretend to already be asleep. “It's your wifely duty,” Charlie finally told me.

Well, he was right—but having him tell me I
had
to make love with him just made me all the more reluctant. I gave in, but I acted like a rag doll instead of an active participant. I resented him, and my resentment—my passive aggression, I guess you'd call it—well, it tore Charlie up on the inside. He wanted something from me that I wouldn't give, and the more he wanted it, the more stubborn I grew.

“Tell me you love me, Addie,” he'd beg.

“I love you,” I'd say, my voice flat as a pancake.

“Say it like you mean it.”

“I am!”

But I wasn't. And God help me, but there was something about his begging, something about the naked neediness of him that made it hard as the dickens for me to give him what he wanted.

“Kiss me back when I kiss you,” he'd tell me.

I'd pucker up like a fish, but keep my lips immobile.

“Open your eyes,” he'd say as he made love to me. I'd gaze at the ceiling like a store mannequin.

He'd pepper me with questions. “It's Joe, isn't it? It's Joe again.”

“How could it be? You made me send that letter.”

“Did he come here? Did he come when I was gone?”

“Yes!” I finally told him. I was at the end of my rope, and I wanted to wound him, to make him realize all his efforts couldn't stop Joe from loving me. “Yes, he came here. He didn't believe I wrote that letter. He wanted me to go away with him. I refused and he left. End of story.”

But as far as Charlie was concerned, it was just the beginning. It ate at him. He questioned me more and more. Did I sleep with Joe? Did I kiss him? How long did he stay? Did he see Becky? How many times had he visited? The more he questioned, the more perverse and angry I grew. He started drinking again. The more I withheld affection, the more he drank. And the more he drank, the more I withheld.

After a month or so, he begged my forgiveness and tried wooing me. He brought me flowers. He did the dishes. He had his parents watch the children so he could take me on a romantic weekend to a cabin by a lake near Jackson. Bless his heart, he couldn't have known that it would remind me of that blissful time with Joe. He only knew that I sobbed all weekend. Charlie cried, too. “How can I make you love me?” he asked, making me feel like a monster, but not making it any easier to show him affection.

My saving grace was that Charlie started traveling. His early efforts to convince his father to branch out and expand the hardware
side of the lumber business started paying off. Instead of just running a retail store in Wedding Tree, they'd become a supplier to out-of-town five-and-tens and general stores, providing them with nails and screws and other items. There were plans to open another full lumber store in another small town. Charlie was usually gone two nights a week, and on those nights, I would breathe easier. The children and I would usually have dinner with my parents or his parents. None of our surviving grandparents were doing too well at that point, and my maternal grandmother lived with my parents.

One morning after Charlie had been on a trip—it was the Saturday before Easter, I distinctly remember that—he came home at ten in the morning. That was unusual, both because he'd been gone on a Friday night—and Good Friday at that!—and because when he traveled overnight, he was usually far enough away or had enough business to keep him busy all day, so he never returned before evening. The other thing that was unusual—for the hour, anyway—was that he reeked of alcohol. I don't know how he'd driven home in that state; perhaps he finished off a pint in the driveway. All I know is he was slurring his words when he stumbled in. He seated himself at the kitchen table, sent Rebecca outside to play, told me to put on a fresh pot of coffee, and ordered me to sit down.

“There're going to be some changes around here,” he declared. “I've decided that what's good for the gander is good for the goose.”

I eased myself into the chair across from him, thinking he'd drunkenly mixed up the metaphor. I was about to say something, but his eyes held a diamond-like glint that made my blood run cold. “What kind of changes?”

“It's high time you 'preciate all that I've done for you. Not every man would marry a woman pregnant with another man's child, then put up with her treating him like dirt.”

“I—I do appreciate all you've done, Charlie.”

“No.” He thumped his hand on the table so hard the saltshaker slid off the cherry-printed tablecloth, onto the linoleum floor. “In order to 'preciate it, you need to fully 'xperience it for yourself.”

By then, I felt like I had ice in my veins. “What are you talking about?”

He glared at me, all cold-eyed. His nose was red and I saw a glimpse of evil in him that I'd never seen before. It struck me as the underbelly of love; if you flipped the emotion over on its back like a turtle, the opposite side would be black and sin-soaked and gin-fumed. Anyway. He sat there, his eyes red and shining, scary as any Halloween mask. He leaned forward, his forearms on the table. “You're gonna raise my illegitimate child, and you're gonna love it as your own.”

I must have half laughed, because he pounded the table again and stood up. He loomed over me, and for the first time in a long, long time, I was scared—physically afraid—of Charlie. This was a man I didn't know.

“I got a girl pregnant.” He hitched up his pants, as if he was proud of this. “She's gonna have a baby, and she's gonna give it to us to raise.”

I stared at him, uncomprehending. “We're . . . going to adopt?”

“No, damn it. Aren't you listening? No adoption's needed. It's mine.” He thumped his chest with his right hand.

I sat there, trying to take this in. Charlie had been unfaithful? The thought sent my mind reeling, but the matter of adultery didn't hurt at first. Oh, it did later—but I knew I was largely at fault for that. At that moment, I simply couldn't process what he was saying. “You want everyone to know you're having an illegitimate baby?” I asked.

“No. And no one ever will, because they'll think the baby's yours. You're going to start wearing padding.” He leaned back against the kitchen counter, a pleased smirk on his face. “People will think you're pregnant, and when it gets close to time, we'll go to Mississippi. Dad's planning on opening a store up there anyway; I'll stall it until the timing's right. Folks'll think you had the baby there.”

I felt as if I were in a nonsensical dream. “That's crazy. It'll never work.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for starters, no one will believe I'm pregnant.”

“They will if you look like you are.”

“But it's ludicrous, Charlie. Women touch other women's pregnant bellies. Especially family. Your mother. My mother. My grandmother. Your grandmother. It will never, ever work.”

“It Goddamned
better
work!” His fist thundered on the kitchen counter so hard the toaster keeled over. I don't know what was more surprising, the toaster falling or Charlie taking the Lord's name in vain. In all the years I'd known him, I'd never heard him do that.

“You'll make it work. You'll keep them from touching you.”

“How?”

“That's your problem.” He staggered back to the table. “I'm sure you'll think of something. You do a damn fine job of keeping
me
at a distance.”

“I'd—I'd have to see Dr. Henry.” He was the town doctor who'd attended me during both pregnancies.

“Nah. We'll say you're seeing someone in Mississippi since that's where the baby's going to be delivered.”

My thoughts were like a goldfish in a bowl, circling round and round, making no progress. “Charlie, this is insane. I won't do it, and you can't make me.”

He leaned toward me. “Can't I?”

“No.”

“You want to lose your children?” His mouth curled into something that sent a shiver up my spine. It was evil, pure evil. He pulled a flask out of his pocket, unscrewed it, and took a long swig. “I've kept some of your letters from Loverboy. You think any judge in this parish would think you were a fit mother if I were to pull those out?”

Eddie woke up in his crib and started to cry. I left the room to see to him. When I came back to the kitchen, Charlie was gone, and so was his car.

•   •   •

Charlie came back before midnight and passed out in bed beside me. The next day was Easter, so I got up, pulled my church clothes
out of the closet, then slept the rest of the night on the sofa. I wasn't going to awaken him. Let him miss Easter service. Let him miss the family luncheon. I'd say he wasn't feeling well and wouldn't get out of bed; everyone could draw their own conclusions. Let the whole town talk about him, for all I cared.