The Potluck Club (31 page)

“Tell me,” I spoke softly. “Tell me why you love him so much.” She leaned her head against the back of the sofa, rolling her head toward me. Her eyes now danced. “Oh, Aunt Evie . . . he’s so . . . so . . . deep down, he’s truly wonderful.”

“Deep down.”

“Other than the fact that I’m pregnant with his child and unmarried, you’d like him. Did I ever tell you how we met?”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so.”

“He’s a pharmaceutical representative. Very successful. I was in Daddy’s office one day—we’d gone out for lunch together—and Gary was there, sitting in the front office waiting when we returned.” She placed her hand over her heart. “My heart just went wild the minute I laid my eyes on him . . . and he felt the same way about me.” She smiled. “He followed me to my car, asked me for my number . . .”

“Well, I hope you had enough good sense not to give it to him.”

Leigh grinned at me.

“Leigh!”

“He’s the most giving person you’d ever want to meet, Aunt Evie. He’s not only handsome—did I tell you he looks like a six foot six Ken doll?” I shook my head no. “He does.” She grinned again. “But that’s not why I love him. I’ve never known anyone who is as giving as he is. He gives to so many charities, works with the homeless, helps build houses with Habitat for Humanity.”

I pressed my lips together and nodded. “He sounds wonderful . . . in every way but one.”

She sighed. “Maybe I’m being too hard on him.”

I sat ramrod straight. “Now you listen to me, Leigh Banks. Don’t you dare go soft on me here. Not at this stage in the game.”

“I won’t.” Her voice was so soft I wasn’t sure she’d even spoken. “So what did he say this morning?”

Leigh shrugged her shoulders. “The same, more or less. Nothing’s changed except that he actually said he misses me more than he anticipated. But don’t you worry. I stood firm.” She sat up and sighed. “By the way, where are you going so—how do you say it—gussied up?”

It was my turn to sigh. “I have to go see Vonnie.”

Leigh was taken aback. “You act like that’s a chore.”

“Today it is.”

“What’s so special about today?”

I paused before continuing. “Leigh, if I tell you something, will you promise to keep it between the two of us?”

“You know I will.”

I spent the next fifteen minutes explaining to Leigh what I knew about Vonnie . . . about Vonnie and Joseph Ray Jewel . . . and about Vonnie, Joseph Ray Jewel, and a young man named David Harris. Which, at the end of it all, wasn’t much.

“So what are you going to do?”

I wondered about that very question myself. “Well, for starters I’m going to march myself out there this morning and talk to her. I don’t have a clue as to what I’m going to say, but I figure that after all these years of knowing one another and loving one another like sisters, I owe it to her to be up front with her. I’ve wrestled with this and wrestled with this and I’ve prayed some more. And this is what’s right.”

Leigh leaned back again. “It seems to me you’ve got a lot of issues to settle. This thing with Vonnie, Ruth Ann’s death . . . and Vernon Vesey.”

Vonnie looked as though she’d been crying since the day she was born. She also looked like she’d slept in her clothes and that she’d lost her brush. She had what appeared to be one of Fred’s handkerchiefs in her right hand, which she used to wipe at her nose and dab at her eyes.

I had to knock on the side door of her house—the one I’ve used for years—for a good five minutes before she answered, which she did without saying so much as a hello and then retreated back into the house. I let myself in, closing the door behind me, and followed my old friend into the family room, where she now sat in her favorite chair, holding Amanda Jewel.

“Amanda Jewel,” I said.

Vonnie looked up at me with red-rimmed eyes. “That’s right.” She returned her attention to the doll cradled in her arms. “How’d you find out?”

I took a seat on the sofa, dropping my purse and keeping my feet planted firmly on the floor, pressed against each other. “Long story.”

“Tell me about it.”

I didn’t say anything at first. “No, Vonnie. Why don’t you tell me about it? Like you should have done when we were back at Cherry Creek.”

“I couldn’t back then, Evie,” she whispered.

“But why not? We were friends, weren’t we?”

She looked up at me so suddenly I thought her neck would snap. “He was Mexican-American, Evie.”

I returned my thoughts just as forcefully. “It was the sixties, Vonnie. Good gosh, everything we’d ever thought was true went flush down the toilet. From the day Kennedy was killed in ’63, not another thing made sense.” I allowed a matter of moments to relive that fateful day in November, then finished with, “You could’ve told me.”

Vonnie looked around her family room before looking back at me. “How could I tell you, Evie? What did you know about love? One kiss from Vernon Vesey did not make you the Elizabeth Taylor of Summit View.”

I stood up and began to pace. “You know, I’m so sick of everybody bringing up that kiss from Vernon. Everyone thinks that just because I never quite got over it that means I don’t understand anything else in the love and sex department.” I pointed to her. “Well, I do. I might’ve locked my heart away early in life, but it kept beating. I was happy for Ruth Ann, wasn’t I?”

Vonnie stood, still clutching her doll, and made her way to the kitchen, all the while saying, “That was different, Evie. Ruth Ann married Arnold McDonald, Summit View’s golden boy.” She stopped at the kitchen counter and turned to me. “Do you want anything? I’ve got some beef stew in the freezer I can microwave if you’re hungry.”

I stomped a foot. “I want the truth!”

“All right. I loved him. I loved him, I loved him, I loved him! God knows I loved him more than I’ve ever loved another human being my whole life . . . and yes, that includes Fred.”

My hand flew over my mouth. How could she be married to a man she didn’t love as much as her first husband? How could she share a bed with someone she wasn’t able to give herself to com–Shepherd_ pletely? Maybe I wasn’t as savvy in the love and sex department as I thought.

“If you’re wondering if Fred knows, he does. He knows I loved Joe, he knows I married him, he knows I had a baby with him,” she said quietly. “And,” she added even more quietly, “he knows I lost it all.”

I walked over to the kitchen table and pulled out a chair. “Well, Von, that’s the part I don’t understand.”

Vonnie joined me at the table. “Are you willing to listen . . . to listen and not judge me?” she asked, setting Amanda Jewel in her lap as though she were a real child that could not be ignored or forgotten.

I looked at her for a good ten seconds before I answered. “Yes, I believe I am.”

She told me the story—the whole story—of loving Joe, of marrying him, of losing him to the war. She told me about her mother’s reaction to her pregnancy, of leaving for L.A. to live with Maria Jewel and learning to make Mexican tamales. She told me about the day she heard that Joe had been killed, about going into labor and giving birth, and then about her mother coming to tell her she’d lost the baby. “Why would I doubt her?” she concluded.

She was crying, and I was crying with her. “Have you spoken to your mother?”

“I have.”

“And?”

“She’s apologetic . . . begging for forgiveness . . . but . . . I need time, Evie.”

“Of course you do. What about Maria Jewel?” I asked, but Vonnie only shook her head.

I fidgeted with the fringe of the woven place mat in front of me. “And Fred?”

Vonnie shrugged. “It’s been difficult.”

I couldn’t look at her when I asked my next question. “What are you going to do about David Harris?”

I could feel the tension from all the way across the table. “He’s my son and yet he’s not. Did you know he was raised by that actress person?” I nodded, but I’m not sure she saw me. She continued, “He’s my son and I don’t even know him. Lord, what he must think of me.”

I looked up then. “He came looking for you, didn’t he? That must mean something. You owe it to yourself to see him . . . to talk to him. Vonnie, you owe it to yourself.”

“We’ll see. I have some praying to do on that matter, and I need to confer with Fred a little more, when he’s not as emotional as he was this morning when we talked.” Vonnie looked down. “What about the others, Evie? What do they know about all this?”

I waited for her to raise her chin and looked her in the eye. “Donna knows, but you know that.” She nodded. “And Leigh knows. But to my knowledge, none of the other Potluckers have put it together.”

“I don’t know if Donna will ever forgive me.”

I reached across the table and patted her hand. “Give it time. She’s young.”

“She feels betrayed. First Doreen,” she said, sending a chill through me, “and now me.”

I patted her hand again. “Give it time,” I repeated. “One thing I can testify to is God’s goodness where time is concerned.”

Vonnie looked at me and smiled; it was a faint smile but a smile nonetheless. “Don’t I know it. After all this time . . . I have a child. I have a son.” She clutched Amanda Jewel to her breast. “My baby is alive.”

41

She’ll set you straight . . .

Clay’s best attempts at following Donna were just that: attempts. He’d covered nearly every street he could think to drive down but hadn’t seen her Bronco until some time later, heading back for her bungalow.

He had managed to see Evangeline Benson’s car parked in the Westbrook driveway, not that it had anything to do with anything. He smiled to himself though. Evangeline was probably setting Vonnie straight on something or other.

Later that evening he watched several hours of mindless television. With each commercial he walked over to his desk, picked up the PLC file, and flipped through it as though he were looking for something, some clue, some single item in all his notes that might give him an inkling as to what was going on with the ladies of late.

But he found nothing.

42

Measured Steps

Olivia’s morning sickness (that was really afternoon sickness) took a sudden turn for the worse on Tuesday afternoon, forcing her to ask me if I’d be willing to cook supper and clean up afterward. “That’s why I’m here,” I told her, and she gave me a look that read
No, that’s not why you’re here, but as long as you are . . .

I cooked, served Tony and Brook, and checked in on Olivia, who napped fitfully in the master bedroom. Tony—stretched out in a blue leather recliner—watched television while I gave Brook his bath, dressed him, and then handed him off to his father, who then read him a story from
My First Bible Story Book
while I cleaned the kitchen. By the time we’d kissed Brook good night and I’d checked on my daughter one last time, I was too tired to do anything more than climb between the covers of the bed in what was now “Nana’s Room.” I hadn’t closed my eyes more than a few minutes when the phone rang. Tony answered: “Oh, hi, Jack,” followed by, “I think she’s already gone to bed, but I’ll check.”

The closed door of my room cracked just enough to let in a muted shaft of light. I slammed my eyes shut, hoping Tony would assume I was asleep and not attempt to wake me, which is exactly what he did. When the door clicked shut, I reopened my eyes as though it would help me hear better.

“She is,” I heard my son-in-law say, followed by, “No, I won’t wake her for you, Jack. She’s had a long day and she needs to rest . . . she’s feeling a little sick and is in bed too . . . No, sir . . . No, sir . . . I will. Good night.” I smiled, feeling blessed to have such a knight in shining armor, even if he was married to my daughter.

The following morning Olivia woke feeling well enough to get Brook ready for preschool. As soon as she left—leaving me alone in the house with a cup of coffee and the
Gold Rush News
—I curled up on the end of the sofa, spreading the paper out on the seat beside me. I read the article about Vonnie’s dog and the bear, laughing out loud at the quote from Evangeline about Donna.
Lord, will those
two ever have anything in common?

I turned next to the classifieds, a one-page listing of houses for rent and for sale, lost and found items, legal notices, and—most importantly—employment. I’d never worked in my entire life, other than in my teen years back in the restaurant and at a medical office. There weren’t any ads for medical clerks, and I was too old now for toting trays high over my head, too stressed to keep food orders in my head, so the “Wanted, Server” ad for Rosey’s was out.

There were executive listings for Denver and Dillon, a few shops over in Vail and Breckenridge needing salesclerks. I could do that, I decided. I could sell stuff. I thought about the pay scale, wondered what minimum wage was now—which I’d make and which wasn’t enough to put a roof over my head or food in my pantry. Maybe Lisa Leann was right. I needed an attorney.

My focus shifted from the employment ads to the advertisements. “Divorce Made Simple,” one read. “Chris Lowe, Attorney at Law.” Chris was the husband of Grace’s pianist. Even thinking about Carrie caused me to flinch. Sunday I’d opted not to attend services at all, until I could make up my mind as to what to do.