Homefires (49 page)

Sunday morning, I walked out to the church early, before folks began to arrive. Kirk had already gone to study and pray. Toby and Heather had eaten breakfast and were dressing for service. I’d not slept well the night before. Nor had I been able to eat much. Papa’s death had taken what little stamina I’d held onto during the Roxie-trauma, leaving me with a nervous stomach and insomnia. A bad case of nerves, actually. And depression. My old nemesis. But I’d get through it, I told myself, hating my weakness.

I mounted the church portico steps, inhaling fresh morning air. I walked over to the end and gazed out at the grave. “Good morning, Krissie,” I whispered, then turned my gaze upward to azure infinitude. “Someday, I’ll come to you, you know.” I closed my eyes for a second, then turned to go in.

That’s when I saw it. Roxie’s car. The red sports car Moose had worked so hard to pay for.
Moose, where are you?

I quietly let myself in. My heart pounded like a bass Congo drum tripped into syncopation. My breath caught in my throat as my feet moved swiftly, soundlessly over the carpeted corridor to Kirk’s office. I paused inside Cal’s office, at the closed door and listened. Silence.

Then I heard voices. From the kitchen. I moved in that direction like a tracking jungle cat, my breath coming in spurts, not deep enough to sustain life. I stopped and took several deep breaths, hand clutching chest, until I felt oxygen reach my fingertips again, then commenced my trek.

Laughter. I stopped dead. Roxie’s trickling laughter. “Kirk, you’re too much.”

It wasn’t what she said. It was the
way
she said his name. As though she
knew
Kirk.

I took two, three more silent steps. Until I could peer around a corner into the dining area. Kirk lounged on the corner of a table, his profile to me. Roxie stood before him, almost between his legs, yet not quite touching him in that instant. Both were grinning from ear to ear, as if at some private joke. Their gazes remained locked, amused. Roxie’s next words were so low I couldn’t hear. Kirk nodded.

I could stand it no longer. “Kirk?” I barged into the room.

His head turned indolently. Not an eyelash moved to reveal any discomfort. I halted, as though frozen by some invisible force.

“Yes?” His reply was formal. Like I was intruding.

Any peace I’d gained since his avowal the previous week took flight. I stopped and looked coolly at Roxie, who merely gave me a dismissal glance and Kirk a smile as she breezed past me in a new designer outfit of ultra feminine ruffles and flounces that set off every sensuous line of her statuesque shape. In the wake of her departure, I inhaled Channel No. 5. Expensive. Moose’s money bought it.

Kirk remained seated on the table, watching me with such ease I wanted to scream at him. Kirk knew.
He knew
how I felt and
still
allowed her access to him. I didn’t say a word. I simply let him see my displeasure, then spun and left. I went home, pulled the cover up to my chin and called out to Heather as she started out the door, “I’m sick. Tell Charlie to lead the choir. Put Dawnie in the toddler nursery with Donna.”

I knew it would cripple the service, but for once, I didn’t have the strength to care. I was too sick to cry. I closed my eyes and sank into momentary numbness.

In that moment, I hated Kirk Prescott for his denial ability. For his duplicity. For his callousness. And I hated myself for loving him.

The tears puddled.

The following days blur in recall. Mask in place, Kirk stepped onto another stage. Everything in the universe adapted to his chameleon shift so smoothly that it missed not a beat.

Everything except me. I’d shifted from
normal
the morning when I saw, felt and heard the simmering intimacy between my husband and this woman who called Kirk
‘my pastor’
with emphasis on ‘
my
’...who drove Moose away as surely as I breathe, by taking, taking,
taking –
sucking the life from him before he disappeared. Just as she now sucked the life from Kirk.

Oh, Kirk didn’t acknowledge Roxie’s hold over him. In those days, Kirk didn’t acknowledge
anything.
The two of us functioned on different planets, spoke different languages.
From there, equalization plunged even lower. Kirk moved as though nothing had altered. I moved as though everything had changed. Like a zombie, yet this time, the zombie had feelings that bled and screamed and pleaded eloquently for help. A plea unheeded. Kirk’s denial shot to new zeniths. We spoke to each other, but there was no communication.

Kirk’s premise was that Roxie was his best friend’s deserted wife. Plus – most significantly – he was her pastor and in her time of grief and rebuilding her life, she needed him.

“How can I not be here for her, Neecy?”
had been his reply to my reaction in the church fellowship hall. “We were only talking, for goodness sake.”

“What about?”
I have a right to know
w
hy she was in your face, oozing, rubbing her sexuality all over you, flaunting and seducing you with her French fragrance, laughing over little things known only to the two of you. Why she’d never let me get to know her on any level, allowing neither Cal nor me to comfort her.

In that last moment of spontaneity, it was, to me, a simple matter of Roxie having jumped a boundary that canceled access to my husband. Not her pastor.
My
husband. I was still naive enough to believe I could call her on it and that Kirk would concede to what
I
felt.

Kirk stared at me as though I’d grown trees on my head, sprouted spiked hooves on my ears. I’d never before questioned Kirk’s ethics or faithfulness. Nor had I challenged his pastoral sovereignty or confidentiality.

Kirk’s expression puzzled me, made me uncomfortable, insecure. He shook his head and said softly, “Neecy – jealousy is a terrible, terrible thing.” He walked away from me that morning without another word. Just
jealousy is a terrible, terrible thing.

Was that all it was? Me? Jealousy?

My head spun from self-talk. Despite my wish to believe Kirk, I could not turn off my rationale. My rationale did not jive with Kirk’s contention – that nothing existed between himself and Roxie. Kirk was ultra gentle with me on other counts in life. Except with the issue of Roxie. I was beginning to think I
did
have mental problems.

To me, she was
the
issue.

Every time I turned around, she was at the church. She’d taken to dropping by the office at all hours of the day. Her reasons were incessant and, to my humiliation and horror, valid. Kirk’s expertise with finances and legalese were now my curse. He was simply too brilliant and too male to not show off his genius to the helpless,
flaky
, forsaken Roxie.

That her beauty was perhaps another snag did not elude me for a heartbeat.

“She’s driving me up the wall,” Callie sniped one day when I walked out to the office to spend time with her. I now dreaded time alone. “Would you believe,” she sat back in her chair and clicked her ballpoint pen rapid fire, “she’s jealous of
me?
Glares at me when she goes into Kirk’s office, then when she comes out, gives me this smug little ‘
nya nya’
look.”

“Why is she jealous of you?” I asked, feeling as sick as I’d ever felt in my life. Like an invisible tiny insect cowered in a torture chamber crammed with Goliath’s, all stomping at me, determined to squash me underfoot.
When did Roxie ever arrive at ‘jealous?’ What gave her the right?

“Because I try to keep her away from Kirk.” Callie’s ebony gaze glittered with fury.

“But he won’t cooperate with you.” My voice was dull and flat. Resigned.

Callie’s expression softened. “I think Kirk is thinking like a pastor. Roxie’s simply being what she is. What I’ve always known her to be.”

“Same difference.” I turned in my chair and gazed out the window at irate black skies.

“Neecy, we’ve got to trust in God to take care of the outcome.”

“Um hmm.” I gazed unseeing as the sky erupted and began to weep, splattering and rivuleting the window.
Trust in God.... So easy to say. Almost glib.
I knew she was right. But at the moment, I’d lost contact with myself.
Who
would reach out to God?

Am I losing my mind?
I took a deep, ragged breath.
So tired. No sleep. Can’t eat....

“You okay, Neecy?” Cal’s voice brought me back. She watched me closely. “Look, honey. You need to get that stupid Roxie off your mind. Kirk’s too smart to get mixed up with a
bimbo like her. Or anybody for that matter. That man loves you.”

Her belief in Kirk pierced my fog, made hope flutter.

She smiled at me. I smiled back.

“Yeah,” I said, feeling my heart lift for the first time in days.

That night, I initiated sex. Something I rarely did. Oh, I’d always been responsive to my husband’s touch. Our passion had not diminished. But for the first time since the Roxie invasion, I felt a surge of confidence that I
was
first in Kirk’s life.

“Ahh, darling,” Kirk kissed me breathless, then rolled over onto his back, cupped hands under his head and grew still. That was it. As in
do me.
I stared at him, feeling my bubble of buoyancy
splaaatt
and flatten into a cold solid sheet of nothing. I had expected –
something
from Kirk.
Needed
him to give, to resurrect and validate me. Tonight of all nights I needed that. A sudden urge to flee seized me. Leaden, numb, I slid from bed and reached for my robe.

“Where are you going?” Kirk asked quietly.

“Kirk – I,” my fingers shook violently as I buttoned my housecoat and slid my feet into slippers. “I need to take a walk. I’m keyed up...I’ve not had much rest lately and need to clear my head.”

“Why?”

I wasn’t up to an all out argument or recriminations so I headed for the door. “I just told you.”

“You don’t know what you’re walking out on.” His words, so quiet, so enigmatic, so challenging, stopped me dead and stirred my anger.

I whirled around and squinted through the darkness to where he lay, relaxed, flat of his back, waiting to be serviced. Did he actually say that or was my mind playing tricks? I narrowed my gaze at his indolent pose. “What do you mean, Kirk? What
am
I walking out on?”

His still silence sizzled an unspoken message of sexual domination.

Why, you would subjugate me further
.

Not in this lifetime, Buster. I spun and dashed from the room, shaking with indignation and hurt. How could he
not
know how I would take that? I strode through the front door
and across the lawn. A night light illumined church and parsonage property so I walked briskly within and over its silvery confines, desperate to purge myself of churning, swirling forces that spawned anxiety, shredded nerves, cancelled sleep, destroyed appetite, mocked tears, and pummeled my body into a heap of garbage. That told me I was unloved and unlovable.

I dropped to my knees beneath a tree and dug my fingers into the soft sand. “Oh, God,” I moaned. “Please help me.” My hands plowed deeper into the bog as tears dripped and added to its moistness. “I-am-so-alone,” I whispered through my teeth, not wanting to chance being overheard. By whom?
Who
would overhear? taunted the oozy, black thing that swirled and sucked away at my substance.
Who cares enough?

I knew. Something deep, deep inside me
knew
. Kirk would not come and find me.

I sat on the ground for a long, long time, staring dully at the starry sky. How far I’d come from that girl who’d believed in true love. Life seemed crushed from me. My limbs resisted movement, but I forced them to carry me into the house and into the kids’ bathroom, where I ran a tub of water then crawled in, hoping to cleanse away sand and tension.

“Mom?” Heather came in to use the bathroom, squinting sleepy-eyed at me. She’d been asleep for hours. “You okay?”

“Um hmm.” I smiled but failed to fool her.

“I know about Roxie chasing after Dad,” Heather said matter-of-factly.

I gazed at her, dry-mouthed and blurry visioned. “Why – how?”

Heather’s nose rose a notch and she cast me a sidelong look of disgust. “Anybody would have to be
blind
not to see it. Besides, I’ve been out to the office when Callie tried to keep her away from Dad. No way, Jose. She’s
nuts.
”

My heart lurched. Please, God, protect Heather. But I did so need somebody.... “I thought I was imagining things,” I said, hardly recognizing my scratchy, hoarse voice.

My daughter looked at me with wise eyes. “Mom, I’m beginning to think you’re the only one around here with any sense a’tall.” With that she swooped to plant a solid kiss on my cheek. “’Night, Mama. I love you.”