The Potluck Club (30 page)

I nodded, then fished the can out of my skillet, keeping my back to my husband. “Oh! Yes, I saw it.”

“Say, you sound like you’ve been crying.” He gently turned me to face him. “Those are tears. What’s wrong, Vonnie?”

I stared up at him and simply said, “Goldie left Jack.”

Fred gave me a peck on the forehead. “Can’t say that didn’t serve him right, from what I’ve heard. But don’t let it get you down. Maybe this will help set things straight between them.” He sniffed the air. “Smells good. What’s for supper?”

“We’re having chili, but I’m running behind schedule. Would you like a piece of my apple rhubarb pie while you wait?”

“Sounds perfect,” he said, pulling a plate out of the cabinet. “Now all I need is the pie server.” He put his hand on the handle of the utensil drawer.

“No! Wait! It’s in the sink,” I practically shouted.

“Okay,” he said as he turned toward the sink and cut a big slice of pie. I handed him a fork from the dish rack on the counter, then leaned against the cabinet and took a deep breath.

Fred noticed. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

I shook my head. “I think I’m coming down with a chill.”

“Maybe I should finish cooking supper. Now, where’s your big spoon?” Once again, he reached toward the drawer.

I playfully slapped away his hand. “Donna borrowed it. I’ll finish dinner; you go sit down in front of the TV.”

I pushed him toward the living room. When his back was turned, I picked up a magazine off the kitchen table and fanned myself. Whatever was I going to do?

I turned and looked at the man who had been a part of my life for more than thirty years. Sure, he wasn’t Joe, but he was a good man, a kind man, a man I loved.

I shuddered. My private nightmare was soon to become common knowledge. For heaven’s sake, the story was on the front page of the paper, just beneath my picture. People were bound to figure it out. Donna already had, and who else?

I touched my breast as if to still my rapid heart. If I didn’t tell Fred, he would find out anyway. How would he take the news that I’d betrayed him with a secret past?

I opened the refrigerator door and pulled out the pound of hamburger I had defrosted. There was nothing else to do but cook dinner as I tried to figure this out.

Later, Fred helped me clear the table. I had already secretly moved the article and photo to my purse, to avoid any unpleasant surprises.

When everything was put away, I said, “I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to run over to see Mother.”

“Vonnie, I thought you didn’t feel well. Maybe you should think about going to bed.”

“No, no, I’m fine.”

Fred walked over to the hall closet. “I’ll go with you then.”

I stalled. “Oh, Fred, I really need to spend some time alone with Mom, if you don’t mind.”

Fred hung his coat back on the hanger. “Well, okay, but don’t stay out so late. I’m kinda worried about you.”

A few minutes later, I pointed my Ford Taurus out of Summit View and our secluded mountain valley and headed toward Frisco. Mom and Dad had retired to a tiny condo with a great view of Lake Dillon and the surrounding mountain peaks about ten years ago. Back in the sixties, the powers that be had bulldozed the original Frisco town site, dammed Ten Mile Creek, and rebuilt the town just above what is now Lake Dillon.

When I pulled into the driveway, I froze. How would Mother respond to my demands that she explain the past?

When I rang the doorbell, Dad opened the door. “Vonnie! What brings you out so late?”

I gave Dad a kiss on the cheek. He was in his eighties, healthy and spry, though he battled high blood pressure. He’d retired from his job as pharmacist at the Gold Rush Drugstore, and that was almost two decades ago.

“I need to talk to Mom. Girl talk. Do you mind?”

He chuckled. “I can take a hint. I’ll go into the living room and study for my Sunday school lesson. Your mom’s in the kitchen. But I have to warn you, she’s in one of her moods.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Who was at the door, dear?” Mother called when she heard Dad retreat back to the living room. I answered for him. “Mother, it’s me.”

She looked up and saw me standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

“Vonnie?”

I sat down across from her at the kitchen table, where she was reading a copy of the
Gold Rush News
. The paper was turned to the article on page three.

“Mother, do you know why I’m here?”

Mother burst into tears.

I was surprised at how frail she looked. Of course, she was in her eighties, but somehow, since I’d seen her a few days ago, she seemed to have shrunk. Her wrinkled face looked drawn, and her coloring was almost as pale as her snow-white hair.

“Vonnie, you’ve got to believe this when I say to you, I did it out of love.”

I sat rigid in my chair. “We’ll get back to that, Mother. First I want to know what happened.”

Mother covered her face with her hands and began to weep. “Vonnie, I . . . oh, Vonnie!”

I sat quietly, listening to her sobs. Finally she was able to speak. “In a way, being found out is a relief to me. What I did, I did because I was a foolish woman. I couldn’t accept that my daughter had married a Mexican man and was having a Mexican baby. I don’t know. I figured it was for the best. You were young, you could get on with your life, have other children.”

She looked up at me for support. I offered nothing other than my attention.

“I . . . I know what I did sounds dreadful.”

I waited as she paused. She seemed to be trying to decide how to begin. Finally, she said, “Maria called me to tell me Joe died and that you were having the baby. At the news, I took the next plane from Denver to L.A. By the time I got to the hospital, you were in real trouble with your labor. Maria had remained faithfully beside your bed, but I insisted she leave. I told her it was my responsibility to take care of you. You probably don’t even remember that, do you?”

I shook my head. “Not really.”

“No small wonder. You were in shock; then with the drugs they gave you to relieve the pain of your labor, you were pretty much out of it. And really, it just about broke my heart to see you like that.” I stood up and got a box of tissues off the nearby writing desk and handed it to Mother. She took a tissue and held it tightly.

“You were so pale, so broken, and my heart broke right along with yours.” She dabbed her eyes. “Shortly after I arrived, the doctor said you needed a C-section. You signed the papers, of course, but you really didn’t know what you were doing. By then, I’d made my decision. With your husband dead and your heart broken, I didn’t see how you could raise a child alone, especially a child of mixed race. So I called an L.A. attorney and talked about how we could put your baby up for adoption.”

“What!? But you had no right!”

Mother sighed. “I realize that now.” She stopped talking and looked down. “All I wanted to do was to take you home and make things better for you.”

She sat silent until I said, “Go on.”

“It seemed this attorney handled adoptions for the stars, and Joseph’s baby seemed perfect for one of his clients. When the baby was born, the client, hiding behind shades and a hooded fur, took your son home to be his mother.”

“But I never signed any papers. How could she take my baby if I never signed any papers?”

“You did. You were still heavily sedated. You thought you were signing a release for the baby’s burial.”

It took a moment before I could speak. I stammered, “But Maria, she wouldn’t have allowed for that. How could you have gotten this past her?”

“By the time Maria got back to the hospital, everything had already been taken care of. Like you, Maria thought the baby was dead.”

I leaned back in my chair, hardly able to breathe.

“Vonnie? Are you okay?”

“I don’t know, Mother. I don’t know.” I stood up.

“Can you ever forgive me?” my mother asked, her eyes pleading with mine.

I simply couldn’t answer.

I drove home in silence. When I entered the house, Fred was getting ready for bed. “Vonnie, you’re as white as a ghost!”

I sat down on the edge of the bed. “Am I?”

Fred, dressed in his red plaid pajamas, sat down beside me. He placed the back of his hand on my forehead. “You don’t seem to have a fever.”

“Fred, something has come up. And before I tell you what it is, I want to tell you what you mean to me.”

Fred wrapped his arm around me and drew me toward his shoulder. “There, there. It can’t be all that bad, can it?”

“It can.” I pulled away. “Fred, you’ve been a wonderful, faithful husband to me all these years. And I have grown to love you dearly.”

Fred looked concerned. “But?”

“But there’s something I never told you about my past. Something that has come back to haunt me.”

“For goodness sake, Vonnie! What kind of past could you have had?”

“The paper. You saw the paper tonight?”

“Yes, we already talked about your article.”

I walked toward the window and peeked between the blinds at the darkness. “But, Fred, that was only one of two articles that pertained to me.”

“What, you entering the talent show at the Breckenridge barbeque cook-off next weekend?”

I turned back to face the man I loved and pulled our sitting chair before him, then sat down, reaching for his hand.

“Fred, the story about the missing Jewel. The boy looking for his mother?”

“Do you know her?”

I dropped eye contact and took a deep breath. Then I looked back into my husband’s worried face.

“Then who is it?”

“I’m the missing Jewel. I’m David Harris’s mother.” I pulled out the wedding photo of me and Joseph Jewel. “I was married once before to a man named Jewel. I’m his widow, Fred. And the boy in the picture? David Harris is our son.”

39

Can’t figure her out . . .

Clay hardly slept that night. Woodward and Bernstein were especially loud scurrying about in the wood shavings and running on the wheel, but that wasn’t why he couldn’t sleep. It was more a feeling he couldn’t shake, like he was on the verge of something big. Maybe even bigger than he could handle. But he just couldn’t figure it out.

Around 3:00 a.m. he finally got up, made another cup of “at home” coffee, peered out the window at the silent street below, then settled in his chair and flipped on the television.

All the President’s Men
was playing on AMC. “Hey, guys,” he said over his shoulder to the noisy gerbils. “You’re on TV.”

They neither noticed nor cared.

It was gonna be a long night.

40

Preserved Memories Shared

I heard the phone ring while I was brushing my teeth. It stopped after the second ring, so I assumed Leigh caught it. I turned the tapwater off and poised myself to listen for the sound of her voice calling me to the phone but didn’t hear anything.

I dressed in the long denim skirt, turtleneck shirt, and patchwork denim jacket Leigh had picked out for me when we’d gone shopping with Lizzie and Michelle. I paused at the dresser long enough before leaving my bedroom to glance at myself in the mirror . . . and frowned. I looked like an old woman trying to pass herself off as being twenty years younger. I leaned forward to take in my reflection, patted at my hair for the sake of vanity, then pinched my already pointed nose.

I found Leigh in the living room looking out the front window. “Good morning,” I said. “Anything happening out there I should know about?”

Leigh partially turned from the window, already shaking her head. “No, not really. It’s definitely turning colder out there. The weatherman said we’d only see about midforties today.”

“It’s that time of year, all right.”

She turned completely. “You look nice.”

“I look silly.”

Leigh moved toward me. “No, you don’t.” She stopped, taking me in fully. “You just need some accessories. What happened to the necklace and earrings we bought for this outfit?”

I brushed her away. “Oh, goodness. Leigh, women here don’t fluff up so much. Haven’t you noticed how they are? Airs are put on about as much as Maybelline. An updo is a ponytail.” Leigh laughed, and for the first time I noticed that her eyes were a bit puffy. “Have you been crying?”

Leigh placed the palms of her hands on her cheeks. “Maybe. A little.”

I touched her forearm. “What’s wrong?”

Leigh shook her head, her eyes brimming over with tears. “I dunno. Maybe I’m just a little hormonal right now, you know what I’m saying?” She turned her head away from me, but I squeezed her arm, silently begging her not to turn away.

“Who was that on the phone?” I asked, wondering if the phone call and the tears were somehow related.

“Gary,” she said in a whisper.

I watched her for a moment before continuing. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she wasn’t officially crying. “Let’s go sit down on the sofa, shall we?”

We sat. I looked at her, and she, once again, looked out the window as though something or someone were about to show up. “Leigh? Talk to me, sweetheart.”

She shook her head. “I dunno, Aunt Evie.” The dam broke, and for a moment I simply allowed her to weep. When she was done she hiccupped a few times before whispering, “I just love him so much, Aunt Evie. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt for anyone like I feel for him, and I can’t imagine ever feeling this way again. He’s the father of my baby, and here we are nearly an entire country apart, pretending we have nothing to hold on to.” She splayed her hand over her stomach and rubbed lovingly.