Homefires (58 page)

Moving from Solomon had, in a way, shut the door on
then.
Made me take a step from it. Nighttime still brought horror flashes and bad dreams that drew me to my feet and away from Kirk, who tried so hard to be there for me.

“Come on back to bed, hon.” His deep voice would rumble from the den doorway and he would come, take my hand and lead me back to our soft mattress-dent. “Let’s work our way through this together.” And beneath the covers, he would wrap his warmth around me and lull me from the nightmares, to
now.

I had no agenda. Could not even fathom one. Nor, I think, did Kirk.

New beginnings did have their effect on our family. The first day in our new residence turned into a memorable event. We’d all four, after putting away clothing and fishing out towels, sheets and pillow cases, dashed out to Winn Dixie for groceries. Afterward, we put them away and explored the apartment, made
ours
by familiar pieces of furniture.

“
Man!”
Toby whooped, sitting and bouncing on the side of his single bed in the cramped quarters; a two bedroom unit. “This is like
camping out!”

Four paces across the room, Dawn sprang rubbery and flat-footed, on her mattress, squealing, “
Campin’ out! Campin’ out!”

The siblings would, until we found a house, share the room.

“We gon’ have hot dogs for supper, Mama?” Toby, thirteen now and all legs and arms, fidgeted with the small television rabbit ears.

“Sure, why not?”

Kirk’s arms seized me from behind, swooped me off the floor and swung me round and round until I screeched,
“Sto-o-op! You crazy man!”

We tumbled into a heap atop Toby’s mattress.
Plop, plop...
the kids ascended on us like squiggly worms, tangling us into silly, giggling knots

“
Stop, Toby
!” Dawn shrieked, her little face red as blazes.

I disengaged myself from the cluster and cut him a sharp, sidelong glance. “What you up to, Toby?”

Shifting upright, he was all round-eyed innocence, exposing and turning his hands as proof. “Nothing, Mom. She yells at
nothing.”

“Aaaiiiii!”
Another blood-curdling scream afflicted my ears. “You
lie, Toby!”
Dawn burst into earnest tears. Nobody, but
nobody
does
tears
like Dawnie. Today, with her mouth in square rage-rictus, eyes squeezed tight, tears looked big as clear glass marbles dropping off her chin.

I glanced in time to catch Toby’s smug peek at his little sister. “Gotcha!” I growled.

He wiped his face clean, but it was too late. “I saw that look, son,” I raised my eyebrows at him. “You know she’s smaller than you and you’ve teased her mercilessly since she was born.”

He flashed his boy caught-with-hand-in-the-cookie-jar grin. “I’m just playing with her, Mom. Dawnie, I just tickled your foot.”

Dawn roared, “Don’t
touch me! I’ve tol’ you a hunerd times, Toby-y-y!”

At four-and-a-half, Dawnie was becoming quite adept in self-defense, especially the verbal brand. “Toby, you know what happens when you over-tease little puppies while they’re young, don’t you?’

“Yeah,” he conceded, still grinning. “They get
mean.”
His head swung to address Dawn on that last word, provoking another yowl.

“I’m not
mean!”
she shrieked, stiffening and clenching fists into tight little knots.

“Dawn, he didn’t mean it that way,” I lied and shot a meaningful look over her head at Toby.

“I’m sorry, Dawn,” Toby said, not too convincingly. Dawn regarded him with a wariness far, far ahead of her years. It didn’t help that his blue eyes still glimmered with mischief. I am convinced sibling rivalry never sleeps.

I sprang up, leaving Kirk sprawled on the floor, tickling Dawn’s tummy.

“Last one in the kitchen’s a rotten egg!” I yelled and sprinted. Kirk lost.

The day after our move to upstate’s Harborville, a small foothills town, I went on a shopping frenzy. Our new location brought us within a reasonable driving distance to kin without having them popping in unexpectedly. Somehow, I knew family spontaneity would suffer for a season, but they would, in the process, be spared the heartache of knowing. Even so, the distancing hurt.

First thing I tackled was my hated reflection in the mirror. A Merle Norman makeover transformed sunken, fearful eyes into exotic confidence and gaunt features into highlighted – least it’s what the saleslady told me – classic beauty. I knew the war paint helped, however, by the amazement on Kirk’s face and the way heads now turned my way. I didn’t seek attention. But it was there and like a warm springtime breeze lifts dead leaves into the air and gives them a life of their own, so did the unaccustomed favor lazily stir pleasure within me.

I would never again neglect that marvelous, feminine toilette ritual. Doesn’t matter what Pharisaical church folk think anymore. The ceremony has little to do with vanity.
Au contraire
, I am truthful in saying I am not a stunning natural beauty. Few women remain so, past thirty, without cosmetics. I figured that when my husband turned to another woman, he gave me the green light to use every weapon available in makeup’s arsenal.

Next, I bombarded department stores with money Kirk stuffed into my hands.

“Buy something pretty,” he insisted, meaning it from the tips of his toes. In the past, when selecting clothing, I’d never thought past practicality and bargain. This freedom to be extravagant slightly overwhelmed me. But not for long. I was ready for something different.

Strobe images of Roxie hovering about my husband steered me to designer racks. I tried on clingy silk creations, romantic ruffles, and long-flowing skirts of wisp and soft colors.

Kirk’s eyes, at first stunned, took on a gleam as he surveyed me moving decisively about in mere straps of shoes, transforming – with alluring creations – my skinniness into fashionable chic. After a detour to the perfume counter, a spritz of Chanel had him trailing me like a bloodhound.

I think, on some level, Kirk didn’t want change. Was threatened by it. But his love and concern was such that he aided, abetted and encouraged my whims. And my desperate self-focus was such that I received it as my due.

“I love everything about you, Neecy,” he murmured that night in our little Harborville apartment. Toby and Dawn, exhausted from “camping out,” had crashed hours ago.

“I’d love you if you didn’t wear a speck of makeup or a stitch of clothes,” Kirk insisted huskily. When I burst into raunchy laughter, his eyes misted. “I mean that.”

My lips still twitched. “I was laughing about the ‘stitch of clothes.’” Another new freedom was spontaneity and it felt good to explore that side of me. I’d never, ever, been given that right. The new me grieved that I’d never taken it. Then, my laughter faded as our gazes ignited and we began to make slow, thorough love.

Kirk lifted his head from a tender kiss and gazed at me. “You look great in those new clothes.” His eyes took on a deeper, sensuous glimmer. “You excite me.”

Oh, I knew. We were both like little kids in a Disney park. Each new discovery brought out more unknowns about ourselves.

In spite of himself, Kirk, complex creature he is, grew to love the changes in me. His flexibility turned me on. The more urbane he became, the more my love grew. The old rigid,
pugnacious Kirk became more and more obscure in those coming months. It was a magical time of laxity for both of us. It was like meeting again for the first time, seeing only the attractiveness and the good.

Yet, a part of me remained indelibly altered.

“You’re beautiful – even without makeup,” Kirk would say over and over. And he showed me in a thousand different ways that he meant it. Only thing was, I was no longer innocent and past actions drowned out his words. Roxie’s exotic beauty had been – as any honest female would attest – artfully enhanced with makeup. Kirk could protest till Christ’s return that it – the enhancement – did not affect him, and I would know better.

“I’m doing it for
me,
Kirk.” My pat answer seemed to assuage his guilt. Oh, yes, Kirk was eaten alive with regret. I knew it would run its course. Everything does. My heart responded to his remorse. Couldn’t help
but.
Yet, superceding that was the fact that I now
thought
for myself. The old me was dead. Killed.
Slaughtered
.

I was glad. Janeece disgusted me, her and her wimpy ‘yes, dear,
whatever you say, dear
,’ her
anything to avoid an argument
mentality. Her fearful, needy eyes and trembling hands made me wince and turn away in shame. Oh, I was indeed glad to see her gone.

It was not a calculated creation, the new me. It was survival in its most ignoble form.

Black and white emerged from gray, in 3-D clarity.

Between arguments – I was now a worthy opponent – we made passionate love. Kirk, who always had loved a good fight, got off on my new sauciness and became quite creative with ways to “court” and stir excitement. I reaped the very best of my husband in those months, knowing,
wishing
I could be more appreciative. Old habits die hard and an ember of the
I must make everybody happy
remained. I was like a bionic creation whose mechanical parts fit together but who needed an experienced technician to finely tune the intricate computer emotional system.

The two-sided drama mask was
me.
Especially during the following era, one that still, in my mind’s eye, flashes past like a beautiful flaming comet, at a distance incredibly romantic but up close agonizingly hurtful.

I did not want to love Kirk to the degree that I had before. A measure that made me trust blindly and stupidly. That devotion had destroyed me.

Kirk was equally determined to win back that devotion.

Kirk, magnificent in battle, pulled out all the stops.

And me, even the new me, could not resist this hero, the man of my dreams. Heck, he was the man of every woman’s dreams. Handsome, lean and strong, tender, considerate, an exquisite lover, outstanding father. Yet, I knew if he asked for the thing locked inside my heart, I would leave him.

I did not speak it aloud. And I knew if Kirk truly loved me, he would never require of me my
last ounce of dignity.

Kirk, brilliant man that he is, knew. He’d discovered the key to my heart and handled it with utmost respect.

That, in the end, was what turned the tide.

It took two weeks to get our phone installed. I used a pay phone at Winn-Dixie to call Heather’s dorm room at Winthrop College. I’d tried three times to catch her and failed. This time, a girl named Connie answered and I left a message for Heather. In the meantime, Kirk scouted out buildings for a hair styling salon. That would be our tent making. In the meantime, we lived off savings squirreled away by Kirk in years past.

“I don’t want you out of my sight,” Kirk teased, even as his eyes declared him dead serious. “I’ll never tire of being with you.”

“Someday,” I said, “I’d like to finish up my teacher’s accreditation requirements, but more immediately, I’d like to carry my weight for a change.”

A shadow flickered over Kirk’s features but was quickly gone. I’d explained to him that I’d felt inadequate through the years because of his ingrained tendency to measure worth by earning status. These days, I didn’t hold things inside. Couldn’t. Once opened, the door to hurts refused to close off again. They tumbled out and it felt good to examine and put them aside with constructive action.

Working with Kirk was a milestone to reclaiming myself.

I agreed to Kirk being my on-job instructor. That meant I could earn wages while learning the essentials of hair styling.
So began our day-to-day, hour-to-hour togetherness. A new frontier.