Hope Springs - 05 - Wedding Cake (13 page)

She sat down on the bed, unsure of whether to open it. She knew James had lived another life while he was away. She knew he had never filed for a divorce so she assumed that meant he had never married again, at least legally, but she had never asked him about what things had been like for him while he was so far away. In the years they had been together since he had returned, they had not spoken of the time they were apart. They had not discussed whether they dated or whether one of them had fallen in love with someone else. They had not talked about their lives as single people, and neither of them had confessed to anything more than their lonesomeness for the other.

She turned the letter over and over in her hands. It could be nothing, she thought. It could be a newspaper clipping sent to him from an old friend. It could be a letter telling of birth or death or even something about a happening in Hope Springs. But she would never know unless she opened it to read it. And opening other people’s mail was never the way of Jessie Jenkins. She did not snoop. She did not busy herself with the activities and happenings of her friends and family unless she was invited into the situation.

Like most folks her age, born in the Depression era, Jessie had grown up poor in a house with too many children, and since they never had much of anything, no bed of their own, no new toys or
store-bought clothes, not enough food, never extra coats or winter clothes, they valued the things they did have. They valued honesty and loyalty, hard work and respect. Her parents could not give their children material things but they had made sure they handed them down the things that matter most. And staying out of other people’s affairs, letting private things stay private, had been a lesson Jessie had learned at a very early age.

She got up from the bed and placed the letter on the dresser next to an ashtray that James used to empty his pockets every night. She decided to keep at her chore of spring cleaning. She pulled out everything from under the bed, assessed what needed to stay there and what could be put in the attic or taken to Goodwill. She straightened the blankets and quilts in the trunk, and started in on the drawers where she and James kept their clothes. She arranged and folded all of his and then had moved over to the dresser where she kept her clothes, the one with the letter resting on top, when she heard the back door open and knew that James had come home for lunch.

While Jessie stayed at home, cleaning, cooking, taking care of various and assorted grandchildren or great-grandchildren, making calls for church or for a campaign of some kind, James helped their son, James Jr., as he tried to make a living farming. Having his father around had certainly helped things, but it was still hard, and even with the second set of hands, James Jr. still had to work nights just to make ends meet.

Jessie finished folding the shirts and sorting the socks and slid the drawers back in. She glanced over at the letter and waited for James to come back to the bedroom. She heard his steps coming closer.

“Hey baby,” he said as he rounded the corner and stood inside the door. “You still cleaning this room?” he asked.

“We got too much stuff,” Jessie commented, and pointed to the piles of clothes and linens she was planning to bag and give away.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” he asked, shaking his head. “We grew up with one set of clothes for work and one set of clothes for Sunday church and that was all we ever needed. Now it seems like we got to have a set of clothes for every day of the week.”

“More like every day of the month,” Jessie added. She sat down on the bed, and James came over and sat down beside her.

“You get the ground plowed?” Jessie knew that her husband was driving the tractor that morning since he and their son were planning to start breaking and turning the soil for the spring planting.

“We got the upper field done but then the tractor just cut off and we couldn’t get it started again. I think the carburetor is dirty.” He glanced over at the clothes on the floor. “Did you clean out my stuff too or is that just yours?” he asked.

“That’s just mine, if you can believe it,” she replied. “You’ll need to sort through your own stuff since I don’t know what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of.”

James nodded. He looked back in front of him and saw the letter on the top of the dresser. “What’s that?” he asked, and leaned up to get a closer look.

“Fell off the shelf in the closet,” Jessie answered. “I thought it might be important.”

James reached for the letter and held it in his hands. He folded it and stuffed it in his front shirt pocket. It was clear to Jessie that he recognized the letter and that he didn’t want to open it in front of her.

They sat in an awkward silence.

“You ready for lunch?” Jessie asked, and stood up from the bed. She brushed off the front of her blouse and pants and headed out of
the room into the kitchen. Once there, she started preparing lunch for herself and James. In a few minutes he joined her.

“Leftovers okay?” she asked as she pulled dishes from the refrigerator. They had eaten chicken and rice and a few vegetables the night before, and there was plenty for them to enjoy another meal. She opened containers and poured them into pots on the stove.

“Did you read the letter?” James asked as he eased himself into a chair at the kitchen table.

Jessie just shook her head. “You want any bread?” she asked.

“No,” he answered. “No bread.”

She stirred the rice and chicken together and turned up the gas on the green beans. “Tea or water?” she asked.

“Tea,” he responded. “And I’ll get that,” he added.

Jessie nodded.

James stood up and got glasses out of the cabinet. He filled them both with ice and reached into the refrigerator and got out the pitcher of iced tea and poured both glasses full. He then placed them on the table while Jessie stood at the stove. He sat down again.

“You wanted tea, right?”

She nodded in response. Jessie kept stirring the chicken and rice, the beans, and then walked over to get plates. She seemed to have nothing else to say.

“Her name was Ramona. I dated her off and on for six years. She had a daughter by her first husband. We met at work. She was a bookkeeper. Mostly, we were just friends.”

Jessie spooned out a plate full of food for each of them. She placed the plates on the table, turned off the stove, and sat down across from her husband. She closed her eyes and prayed, “Lord, for the bounty of this, thy table, we give you thanks. And may this food nourish our
bodies so that we may be of greater service to you. In Christ’s name, amen.”

“Amen,” James repeated, and lifted up his eyes to look at Jessie. She simply started eating her lunch. “Don’t you want to ask me something about her?” he asked meekly.

“Her name is Ramona and she has a daughter and mostly you were friends,” she recapped what she had just been told. “What else do you think I might need to know?”

James glanced down at his plate of food, picked up a fork, and took a bite. When he had swallowed, he continued. “I didn’t tell you about her because I didn’t see the point,” he explained, even though he had not been asked.

Jessie ate a few more bites and took a drink of her tea. She wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Six years is a long time just to be friends,” she noted. “Which six years were they?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” James responded.

“Which six years were they? The six years as soon as you got to D.C., the six years at the end of the time you were there, or six in the middle?”

James thought about the question. “I guess they were the six years near the end.” It appeared as if he hadn’t really measured the time of when he was seeing someone else.

Jessie nodded and kept chewing.

“I didn’t mean for anything to get started,” he explained. “I just felt sorry, I guess, for her and her daughter, all alone like that in the big city.”

Jessie looked up at her husband. “You felt sorry for her?” she asked, the anger starting to show. “You felt sorry for her and her daughter, all alone like that in the big city?”

James dropped his head.

“You left me with four children, took off without as much as a good-bye, and you found a woman in D.C. for whom you felt sorry and became her friend? Is that pretty much what you’re saying?” Jessie could feel her throat tighten, and she could tell she wasn’t hungry anymore.

“Our children were grown,” he responded.

“The girls were fifteen and sixteen. James Jr. and Robert were barely out of high school. None of them were what I would call grown.” She placed her fork down beside her plate. “And even if they were, you think I wasn’t lonely or hurt or broken when you left? You think I didn’t need support?”

James had no reply.

“And what kind of rationale is that anyway? You think that would somehow make it okay that you had a girlfriend? Because she was alone with a child?” Jessie shook her head, got up from the table, and emptied her plate in the trash can.

“Did you leave me for her?” she turned around and asked.

James looked up at Jessie, then he glanced away.

“Oh my God, you did! You left me for another woman? And then you came back and pretended that you missed me the whole time, that you don’t know why you did what you did. I always thought it was the need to get out of Hope Springs, that you wanted to live somewhere else, but it wasn’t somewhere else that pulled you out of here, it was someone else!” Jessie dropped her plate in the trash can and turned to place her hands on the sink to steady herself.

“It wasn’t like that,” James said as he made his way from the table to his wife. “I didn’t know Ramona when I moved. I swear. I met her later, a lot of years later,” he confessed. “I didn’t leave you for her.”

He stood behind her, waiting for something more. Jessie turned around and faced her husband. She studied him, studied his face, his eyes, trying to find the answer she knew she would never have.

“It doesn’t really matter when you met her, does it?” She shook her head. “You left me and you took up with her and you didn’t come back until what you had with her didn’t work out. That’s about it, right?” she asked.

James turned away from Jessie. He didn’t reply right away, and then it was as if he wanted to say something more, explain in some new way, and then suddenly realized it was futile. He nodded. “Yes, if you put it that way, I suppose that’s about it.”

“All this time and we never talked about your years away. I thought I could get past it all. I guess I thought you were in D.C. pining for me and just not able to make your way home. I don’t know.” She stopped, turned to the sink, and looked out the window, and then turned back to her husband.

“But now this. Now, finding out you weren’t alone.” She blew out a long breath. “I can’t be with you right now. I just can’t.”

Jessie pushed him out of the way, grabbed her coat and purse, and headed out the back door.

“Jessie, wait,” he called out to her, but she was already out the door.

James watched her leave. He pulled out the letter and considered calling Louise or Beatrice to let them know what had happened, but then thought better of it. He knew that Jessie would handle this in her own way.

C
harlotte watched from the front window as Donovan got out of his car. He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved black Western-style shirt. He had on his boots, the black ones with the small gold plate at the toes. He walked over to the passenger’s side of the car, opened the door, and cleared off the seat. He took papers and a ball cap and put them in the back. Charlotte smiled as he dusted off the seat and then closed the car door. There was something tender, she noticed, about the way he was preparing for her to join him.

He walked toward the front door, and Charlotte moved away from the window so that he wouldn’t see that she had been watching him. She waited until he rang the doorbell before opening the door.

“Hey,” she said, her heart beating a bit faster than it had been a few minutes earlier.

“Hello,” he said in response.

Charlotte stood inside the door and he walked in, going just a few
steps inside while she shut the door and moved in front of him. Their dates were still polite and still a bit awkward. “You want something to drink before we go, a soda or tea or something?” she asked.

“No, I’m good,” he responded.

The two of them stood without speaking for what seemed way too long to Charlotte, and suddenly she could feel her hands start to sweat. She wiped them on her pants legs. “Well, let me just get my purse and we can go.” She walked past him, heading for the bedroom.

“You may need a heavier jacket too,” he called to her.

“Oh, okay,” she responded, wondering where he was taking her that required a heavy jacket. She assumed her long-sleeved blouse and sweater would be warm enough for the spring evening.

She walked into the bedroom to get her coat. She paused for a few seconds in the hallway just to try and catch her breath. She was surprised at how nervous she was. They had been out a couple of times since Carla came to the shelter, and even with the awkward way they were with each other, especially knowing that his ex-wife seemed to know every time they went out, Charlotte had felt as if the two of them were growing closer. She had enjoyed her time with Donovan so much over the previous few weeks, she found herself showing signs of the falling-in-love syndrome that she had heard the women from the shelter talking about, signs she had never really experienced before.