The Potluck Club (6 page)

“Got caught? Got caught doing what? We’re just going to sit at the pool and talk.” He held up his hand as though he were taking an oath. “I swear.”

I bit my bottom lip and looked up just in time to see several of my classmates stepping out of the elevator. “I gotta go,” I said, standing.

Jack stood too, taking my hand in his as though we were spies passing notes. “Meet me,” he whispered. “Come on.”

I gave him a coy look from the corner of my eye. “Maybe,” I said with a smile, knowing I would indeed somehow, some way, manage to be at the pool at 11:00 that night.

Jack was right. All we did that night was talk. And the next night, and the night after that. By the fourth night, though, we were all over each other. Not in a bad way. We just started kissing, and we kissed all night long . . . or at least until about 1:00 when I went back to the room, where Laci waited for the nightly report.

When we left D.C., I cried. Jack and I exchanged addresses and phone numbers and promised to stay in touch, but I felt like my insides were coming out and that I might as well go home and die. No boy from Alma, Georgia, would ever compare to Jack Dippel. As soon as we got on the bus, Laci handed me a little gift: stationery she’d stolen from the desk in our hotel room and a pen. “Go ahead,” she said. “Start writing him. You know you want to.”

I couldn’t mail letters to Jack from the house, so every day when I went into town for my shift at the restaurant, I’d drop a sealed-with-a-kiss envelope in the mailbox outside the post office. I told him he’d better not send letters to my house but instead send the letters to Laci’s with no return address, which is what he did. He’d also call me every Friday when I spent the night at her house, and we’d talk, me stretched out on Laci’s satiny bedspread with tiny goose bumps up and down my body. Jack Dippel had a way of doing that to me.

I should have known a relationship started on secret meetings and deception would lead to disaster, but I was young and foolish and so in love I couldn’t see straight. That included when fall came and I took a clerical job with Dr. Thomason. I told Jack I wasn’t planning to go to college right away because I was unsure what I wanted to do, but the truth was my parents couldn’t afford to send me and my grades weren’t good enough to get me a scholarship. Truth be completely told, what I wanted more than anything was for Jack to somehow arrive in Alma and take me away.

Laci and I talked about it all the time . . . what it would be like to be Mrs. Jack Dippel. We continued to hold on to that dream even when Jack told me he was dating a girl in college but still had feelings for me.

“I just want to be honest with you, baby,” he said during one of our Friday night long-distance marathons. “It’s not that I don’t love you, because I do. You know I do.”

Tears welled up inside me. “I know you do,” I whispered.

“Are you crying? Oh, man. Don’t cry. Baby, please don’t cry. I can’t stand it when a girl cries.”

“I won’t,” I said, crying all the more. Laci was in the room. Her brow was furrowed as she brought me a box of tissues from her dresser.

“I swear to you, it’s just to have someone for parties and things like that. She’s not you, Goldie.”

“Okay.”

“She’s not even pretty.”

I coughed out a sarcastic laugh. “I have trouble believing that.”

He paused then, quiet so long I thought he’d hung up on me. “Tell you what. What if I come to Alma next month for Christmas?”

My heart literally stopped beating. “What?”

“Seriously. I want to meet your family anyway, and it’ll give us a chance to be together again. I’ll come the week before so I don’t mess with my mother’s plans for the holidays.”

By this time I’d sat straight up on the bed. “What?” I asked again. “Jack, don’t you know my parents don’t know about you? Haven’t you figured that out?”

“Don’t you think it’s time they did? I mean, after all—”

“After all what?”

He paused again. “Look, baby. We’ll talk about that later.”

“We’ll talk about what later?”

He laughed then, the soft, adorable little laugh I’d come to love so much. “Who loves you?”

“You do,” I said so softly I’m surprised he could even hear me. “That’s my girl.”

Jack came at Christmas that year and met my family—a tenser Christmas there has never been since the birth of Jesus. Hoy Jr. was living back then and in his own place with his wife and their baby, so I talked him into letting Jack stay with them. By the end of the second day, Jack had sweet-talked Mama into loving him and had nearly won over Daddy too. By the time he went home—me crying like a lovesick fool—he’d won over the entire family, our pastor, and half of Alma.

Jack Dippel is just plain good at winning people over. The only person by this time who didn’t love Jack was Laci, and I guess with her knowing everything, she saw right through him. Sometimes I wish I had.

Two years, five “other girlfriends,” and a college degree later, Jack and I got married. We honeymooned in D.C. for the sake of sentiment, stayed in the same hotel, and, at Jack’s insistence, “met” by the pool at 11:00.

“We’ll make out a while then go upstairs,” he said, nibbling on my neck as we rode the elevator to the seventh floor.

We stayed in room 714. I’ll remember that number till the day I die, I think.

“Where you will really become Mrs. Jack Dippel,” he concluded, his eyes all twinkly. My goodness, how that boy could sweet-talk.

“You are the most romantic thing I’ve ever known,” I said back to him. “Marriage to you is going to be so wonderful.”

Yeah, well. We’ve been married nearly thirty years now, and it’s been anything but wonderful.

Not that I regret marrying Jack. We have a beautiful daughter, Olivia, and the most precious grandson anyone has ever seen on God’s green earth.

Olivia and her husband, Tony—who owns an antique shop over in Breckenridge—named the baby Brook, after my family. Brook is almost three years old, and—as my mama would say—he’s a cap pistol. He’s also the near spitting image of his grandfather. God help all the girls who will fall into his spell when he grows up. I can only pray to the good Lord that he doesn’t sin like “Grandpa Jack.”

When we came home from our honeymoon, it was to Summit View, where Jack had taken a position at the local high school as the football coach and eleventh-grade history teacher. With his charismatic ways, he soon had everyone eating out of his hands and thinking he was the best thing since sliced bread. Jack’s family lived in Denver, so every Sunday after church we’d pack ourselves into his Ford Pinto and drive the two hours to spend the rest of the day with them.

Jack had two younger brothers who still lived at home, though the older of the two was already attending Regis University. The younger was a sophomore in high school and cuter (if you can imagine) than Jack. All that to say that Sundays at the Dippel home were loud, with Dad Dippel and his sons watching whatever sport was being aired that day and Mother Dippel and me working our fingers to the bone in the kitchen, trying to keep up with them.

I remember well the afternoon Mother Dippel and I finally grabbed a quiet moment to talk. She’d made a pot of coffee to go with the chocolate pound cake she’d baked the afternoon before. When we’d finished serving the men, we retreated to her sewing room, where she kept a little love seat and a black-and-white television set. We curled up, both of us, on either end of the love seat, our hands wrapped around the coffee mugs, and began talking like we were old friends.

Like Laci and I used to do. How I missed Laci.

That’s when she told me. “You know,” she said quietly. “You know that Mr. Dippel has never been the most faithful of husbands.”

My mouth dropped open, I’m just sure it did. “What do you mean?”

She looked me straight on. Like me, she was short in stature, but a bit rounder—what with three kids having lived in her womb. She was by no means unattractive, though. She kept her hair styled, and though she didn’t wear any makeup, her face was just as pretty as it could be.

Mother Dippel stretched out her right hand, showing off a brilliant emerald and diamond cluster ring. “Affair number one,” she said.

Up until that moment I’d always admired that ring. She didn’t wear it a lot—it seemed she had so many rings she could accessorize every outfit she owned with a different one. That wasn’t the end of it, either. Rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings. You name it, she had it.

“Affair number one?”

She withdrew her hand, using it to point to the emerald and diamond earrings dressing her ear lobes. “Affair number . . . what was it . . . five, was it? Yes, five.”

“Mother—”

Before I could finish, she jutted her wrist toward me. “Affair number eleven,” she said as the diamond bangle bracelet winked at me from where it teetered.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, truly confused.

Her lips formed a thin line. “Listen to me, Goldie, and listen good. Jack’s father is a good man in every way but one. He works hard, provides well, and has never once laid a hand on me in any way other than sexually.”

I blushed, thinking I’d never heard my own mother speak of sex in any form or fashion—not even when she was talking about gender. Now . . . Mother Dippel . . . this . . .

“He’s a good man,” she repeated. “He just has this . . . need, I guess. He’s always been discreet about it, and goodness knows this city is big enough I don’t ever have to run in to any of these women, whoever they are.”

“Then how do you . . . ?”

“How do I know?”

I nodded.

“I know because there’s absolutely no other reason for a man to shower a woman with so many baubles when it’s not her birthday, their anniversary, or Christmas. That’s how I know.”

I bit my bottom lip so hard I nearly drew blood. “But why are you telling me?”

She took a thoughtful sip of her coffee. “So you’ll know what to look out for.”

“Me?” I squealed, sitting straight up.

Her lips grew thin again. “Jack is a good boy, but he’s his father’s son. I’m no fool, Goldie. Don’t you be one, either.”

I thought about Mother Dippel’s words all the way home, casting glances over to Jack in the driver’s seat, him looking as handsome as ever, I thought. I’d promised Mother that I wouldn’t repeat any of our conversation to anyone, and I’m certainly a woman of my word, so when Jack said, “What are you thinking about so quiet over there?” I answered, “Just thinking how lucky I am to be married to you.”

Which of course garnered a dimpled smile. He leaned over for a kiss, and I obliged, wrapping my arms around the strong biceps of his right arm. “We’re happy, aren’t we, Jack?”

“Of course we’re happy.”

“I mean, we’re really happy.”

“I’m really happy. Are you really happy?”

I nodded in answer. “These have been the most glorious ten months of my life, Jack Dippel,” I said. “I can’t imagine being any happier.”

He looked at me then, taking his eyes off the road long enough to draw me in closer to him. I squeezed his arm, then kissed him near his ear. “I promise you I’ll make you the best wife forever and ever.”

“You’ve already done that,” he said sweetly. “You’re the best a man could ask for.”

The following year—in our fourteenth month of marriage—Jack surprised me with a pair of diamond stud earrings.

For no apparent reason.

Except one.

7

That woman is loyal to a fault . . .

From his usual spot at the café window, Clay Whitefield saw Coach Jack Dippel drive by.
Wonder where he’s off to
, he mused with some suspicion.

As far as Clay was concerned, Coach Dippel was a snake, no two ways about it. Back when Clay was in high school, he’d been the idol of nearly every guy on the team, but once those like Clay had grown up and learned the truth behind the legend, they weren’t so impressed.

How a man could do a woman like Goldie Dippel the way Coach had was anyone’s guess. She’d always been the kind of lady who bakes cakes and pies—good cakes and pies—and takes them down to the boys at the volunteer fire department and to the nursing home.

“The kind of woman you hope to find for yourself one day,” Clay had heard himself earlier that day saying to Tate Tucker, an ex-team member and the current nursing home administrator. Clay had just made his weekly visit to get the necessary stories for “News from the Home Front,” a keeping-you-informed gossip column about the elderly who lived and died there.

Tate was munching on a homemade cookie fresh and hot from Goldie’s kitchen.

“You got that right,” he said, nodding then pointing to the basketful of goodies. “Loyal to a fault and sweet as Southern pecan pie.”

8

Steaming the Locals

I pulled my white Ford Bronco into the Gold Rush RV Park, just two miles west of town. I usually enjoy this area by moonlight, the tall pine forests standing like giants under the twinkling stars. Trouble was, I couldn’t see the stars with the glare of all the artificial lights. The overhead beams look like spotlights on the great white motor homes scattered around the picnic tables and jungle gym and trampoline. Trampoline? Now, there’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.