The Wedding Tree (33 page)

She shook her head and blew out a smoke ring. “That Joan—'bout as gullible a girl as you could find. That shyster promised to take her to Paris. Paris! Can you imagine fallin' for a line like that? She'd even asked me if I'd watch her dog while she was gone. She had this scraggly little mutt she loved more than life itself.”

She shook her head. “Anyway, Joan was in a mell of a hess, as we used to say, when she found out she was pregnant. She didn't have people.”

Hope's forehead wrinkled. “People?”

“Family. Her people had all moved away or died off. She was a sweet girl—she had a real soft heart. Little soft in the head, too, I think. If you saw the way she carried on about her mutt, you'd know for sure she was a mite pixilated.” She pointed to her head.

“Anyway. This man—name was Charlie; I called him Charlie Horse, because he always wore such a long face—starts comin' to the bar pretty regular, every couple of weeks or so. He's a woebegone-lookin' fella. Don't know as I ever saw such a hangdog face in my life.”

I pictured the man in the photo with his heart in his eyes. I could just imagine how he'd look if that heart had been broken.

“You remembered his name,” Hope said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Honey, I remember everything that happened. He and Joan had one of the strangest stories you ever heard.” She took another pull on her cigarette.

“Anyway, Joan hated to see folks lookin' sad. We all did. Customers down in the dumps never left good tips, and they have a way of dragging down the mood of the whole place. But that wasn't why Joan chatted him up. Like I said, she had a soft heart. It was her downfall, really, being that soft. She said he seemed lonely. So they started talking, and before you know it, she's told him her situation.

“Well, Charlie offered to help her out. He said he'd take care of her when she started to show and couldn't work—that he'd pay her rent and buy her groceries and pay for the doctor.”

“So they had an affair?” I asked.

“No. That's the weird part. He just wanted the baby. Said he was gonna tell his wife he'd had an affair and gotten a girl pregnant, and he wanted to bring the baby home and have his wife raise it as some kind of punishment or payback or some such. He had this wild scheme about his wife padding her stomach and tricking everyone into thinking she was pregnant herself.”

A mellow musical gong sounded, like the recorded dinner announcement on a cruise ship.

“That's lunch,” Miss Darlene said. “I've gotta go in if I don't want to miss out.”

“We won't keep you but another moment,” I said. “So what finally happened?”

“Well, Joan worked at the bar until the beginning of the sixth month, and then Hank—he was the owner; kind of a gorilla, but not as bad as some I've known—told her she had to quit. Said she was bad for business, too much a reminder of the wages of sin. The boardinghouse she lived in kicked her out, too. Life was hard on unmarried pregnant girls back then.” She took another toke of her Virginia Slim.

“Hank had this dive of a house he rented for special customers to use, if you get my drift, and Charlie sublet it for Joan.”

“He treated her well?” Hope asked.

“Oh yeah. He was real good to her—paid for her food, maternity clothes, and everything else. Took her dog to the vet and bought it a collar with her new address on the tag because that mutt was always gettin' lost. He even bought her a new set of luggage so she could move somewhere else after everything was all over. Toward the end of her pregnancy, he even paid a woman to cook and clean and take care of her after she had the baby. Beulah was her name.”

Darlene paused as a woman in blue scrubs came out the door. “Charlie would visit Joan every Friday. He'd drink and caterwaul about how his wife was cold and mean to him. Joan realized he didn't really want the baby. He only wanted to make his wife jealous, and the wife wasn't actin' jealous; she just acted as if she despised him. He'd talk about his wife and cry. He was a weepy drunk.”

She took another pull off her cigarette. “Well, as Joan's belly got bigger and bigger, the baby started to seem more an' more real. Joan started thinkin' about the poor little thing, an' she decided she didn't want a sad-sack crazy man and a woman who didn't want his baby to be raisin' it. But she needed financing, to make it through the pregnancy, so she led Charlie on—and on the side, she started makin' adoption arrangements with a local doctor. He found a couple in Alabama willing to pay good money for the baby. She'd get a lump sum and the doctor would get a nice fat finder's fee.”

Darlene inhaled a deep lungful of smoke. “By then, Charlie had moved to Jackson with his wife, and he was comin' by every Tuesday and Thursday evening. Joan delivered the baby at home on a Wednesday night, and the doctor whisked the baby out of state. Joan didn't call Charlie like she'd promised she would when the baby came. Instead, the next night when he was due to visit, she made sure she had another waitress, Sarah, and her husband, Ben, with her, as well as Beulah. She was worried what Charlie would do when he found out the baby was gone.”

“Oh, wow,” Hope whispered.

“It's a good thing she had people with her, because when Joan broke the news, well, Charlie went crazy. Not violent crazy, just crazy crazy. They say he let out a loud yowl, fell to his knees, and rolled around on the floor, then got up and paced and cried, cried and paced. Sarah's husband poured him glass after glass of bourbon until Charlie was in a stupor.

“Finally, around three in the morning, he left the house. He wasn't drivin' too good. Sarah and Ben left shortly thereafter. They found Charlie standin' on the side of the road, a pistol in his hand.”

“Oh no!” Hope murmured.

“Apparently he'd accidentally run over Joan's dog. The poor thing wasn't dead, but he was in bad shape, so Charlie had gotten his pistol out of the car and shot it to put it out of its misery. Ben grabbed the gun and put it in his own car. He said he was afraid Charlie might try to kill himself.

“Sarah and Ben drove on home, but Charlie wrapped that dog in a baby blanket—apparently he had one in the trunk for takin' the baby home—then turned around an' carried it up to Joan's front door. Well, Joan was hysterical. She thought he'd killed her dog out of spite, to get even with her. She was scared he'd come back to kill her. Charlie tried to explain that he was sorry as sorry could be, an' that he'd come back just to apologize, an' he figured she'd want to bury her dog, but he was drunk an' not makin' all that much sense, an' Joan was terrified.

“To make him go away, Beulah hauled out one of the brand-new suitcases Charlie had bought for Joan. She gave it to him an' said, ‘Bury the dog in this.' Charlie left, an' Joan hightailed it out of state the next mornin', despite just birthin' a baby two days afore. Never saw nor heard of either one again.”

The musical gong sounded again.

“That's last call.” Darlene pulled her cigarette from the holder, snuffed it out in the sand on the concrete ash can, then put the holder in a pocket hidden in the side of her muumuu. “I gotta go
on in or I'll miss a meal. The food's not that great, but I won' be cheated out of anything I'm due.”

I had a feeling she'd had a life of being cheated—and the person who'd probably cheated her the most was herself.

“Thank you for talking to us.” I pulled out another twenty and handed it to her.

“My pleasure. Thank you kindly.” She took the bill and stuffed it in her bosom. “My goodness, it's been a while since I've been around a real gentleman!” She gave me a coquettish little wink, and for half a second, I could see her as she must have been back in the day—all womanly wiles and compliments and southern charm, parting men from their money easy as a comb parts hair.

adelaide

I
sat there, my hands limp in my lap, as Matt and Hope finished telling me all that they'd learned in Mississippi. Relief flowed through me like some kind of intravenous painkiller. Charlie hadn't killed that baby after all! He'd never even seen it. It wasn't even his! And that blood on his clothes—it had belonged to the woman's dog. And the pistol was missing because that man Ben had taken it.

I'd no sooner tasted the sweetness of relief than regret shoved its ugly snout in my face. Oh, heavens. I'd been so unfair to Charlie. So hideously, horribly unfair!

Charlie had tried to tell me, hadn't he? He'd tried to tell me afterward, but I was too angry—angry and disgusted and revolted. I'd just turned away.

Oh, I should have known he couldn't do such a thing! I should have been more sensitive! But I'd been too wrapped up in my own heartache to think about his. I must have spoken out loud, because Hope tried to console me, but the memories were crowding in, and I couldn't hear anything except my own thoughts.

1948

I'd hated lying and pretending to be pregnant, but by the time the baby was due, I felt like I
was
having a baby. I was looking forward
to having a new little life to nurture. I'd been hopeful that it could be a new beginning for Charlie and me.

But when there was no baby, it all boiled up inside me again, worse than ever. All that Charlie had put me through, forcing me to deceive my friends and family like that! I felt like such a wretchful fraud.

Of course, he must have felt that way, too, when he married me and pretended Becky was his—but that had been a good thing, a happy thing. He'd gained a child.

I had no one to talk to about it but Charlie—and I hated him. I deplore having to admit it—hate is the worst sin, isn't it?—but I did. It churned in my belly like battery acid. And I'm so sorry for it! But for months there, I just hated him.

The most shameful thing about my behavior is that I was furious he picked that particular time to turn over a new leaf. He stopped drinking, he was an attentive father, he read the Bible. He was good with the children, considerate toward me, and did chores around the house without me even asking. The nicer, the more godly, the kindlier, the more thoughtful he was, the angrier I got. I was so, so angry—white-hot, blue-flame angry.

Everyone thought I was cantankerous because I was grieving the baby. Mother insisted that Dr. Henry come see me. I was mortified. All the lies about why I hadn't seen him—his questions about my problems with the baby—why, I didn't know what to say. He thought I was having another nervous breakdown.

And maybe I was, because that's when I wrote to Joe. I couldn't keep all the secrets inside anymore. They were just eating me up, just gnawing at me day and night.

I wanted to telephone, but I couldn't. Long-distance calls went through a local operator, and the whole town would know my business. Same thing with sending a telegram. So one day, while Charlie was at work and the kids were playing at my friend Marie's house, I sat down and wrote a letter. I told him how I couldn't bear for Charlie to touch me, how just looking at him made me sick.
How I dreamed about just not waking up, but I didn't want to leave my children motherless.

I begged him to please come and get me before I lost my mind.

Well, the phone rang before I finished. It was my neighbor Marie—Becky had fallen and cut her head, and it looked like she might need stitches. Well, I dashed out the door without another thought. I just dashed.

And it ended up that, yes, she needed stitches. And by the time I got her to the doctor's office, and we'd been seen, and all the stitching and instructions and everything were taken care of, it was supper time. I panicked, because I remembered I'd left the letter out. I hurried home, but it was too late. Charlie had already seen it.

I knew, because the letter was gone. So was the bottle of scotch hidden in the back of the kitchen cabinet—and the cabinet was open. There was no sign of Charlie, which meant he must be out drinking.

I thought about what I had written—the cruel things I'd said, the vile way I'd portrayed him, the revulsion I'd expressed—and, well, I just felt heartsick. Ashamed. Horrified. Horrible. The truth is, Charlie's biggest flaw was loving me, and I'd turned him into a monster. I was literally nauseous at the thought of how much that letter must have had hurt him.

But on another level, I felt something else: relieved.

He'd have to agree to a divorce now. He couldn't want to live with a wife who felt the way I did. He just couldn't. I sagged into my chair. I was tired, so tired of hiding my feelings. So tired of running away. It was time to confront this thing, head-on.

I put the children to bed—I had to cut Becky's shirt off her little body, because it pulled on over her head, and there was another round of tears because it was her favorite shirt. This last crying spell left me completely exhausted, but I was too upset to go to bed. Charlie was out drinking, and there was no telling what he would do when he got home.

I heard a knock on the door. I saw police lights outside. My first
thought was,
They're bringing Charlie home because he passed out drunk
.

But it was John Carter, an officer who was a couple of years behind me in school, and he was alone. He pulled off his cap and twisted it in his hands in a way that made my stomach pull back against my spine. “Mrs. McCauley, I hate to tell you this, but Charlie's been in an accident.”

The breath whooshed out of my lungs. Every scrap of air seemed to leave the cells of my body.

“He's at the parish hospital.”

“Is he . . .”

My heart was in my throat, gagging me with terror.

“He's alive, but it's bad, ma'am. He ran into the bridge culvert.”

“Was anyone else . . .”

He misinterpreted what I was going to ask. Apparently he'd had other experiences with drinking men, men who'd been found in situations hard to explain to their wives. “Oh, he was all by himself, ma'am. Completely alone. But . . . he'd been drinking.”

“I—I see.” That certainly wasn't news. I put my hand to my throat. “Was any other car involved?”

“Not that we know of. Someone might have run him off the road, or maybe he swerved to avoid an animal. Or maybe he just lost control of the car.” He looked down at it his boots. “He smelled awful strong of whiskey.”

Oh, dear Lord—did he do it on purpose? The thought made my legs turn to rubber. I clutched the doorframe.

“You okay, ma'am?”

“I think maybe I should sit down.”

He came into the room and helped me get settled in a chair. I ran my hand over my face. He brought me a damp towel from the kitchen, which I put over my eyes for a moment.

“Is there someone you want me to call?” he asked.

His mother. And my mother. They both needed to be called. I pulled off the towel and shook my head. “I'll do it.”

I moved as if in a stupor. I'm not sure if I thanked him. I called—oh, thank God for family!—my mother first. She called Charlie's parents, then came over to stay with the kids, and my father drove me to the hospital.

The whole time, I was making bargains with God.
Please, God. Let him live. I'll do anything. I'll be good. I'll be a faithful, loving wife till death do us part. I will. I swear I will.

Charlie was in surgery when I got there. The doctors told me he'd broken both legs and his back, and he had chest injuries and head injuries. If he made it through surgery and the long recovery period that was to follow, he might be paralyzed from the waist down. They warned that he might not remember the events of the accident or even a day or two before. I prayed he wouldn't remember the letter.

But he did. They allowed me to be with him in the recovery room. As soon as he came to, he opened his eyes, looked at me, and closed them again. “I'm sorry,” he murmured.

“For what?”

“For not getting out of your way.”

Well, guilt just opened its enormous jaws and swallowed me whole. Let me tell you a thing or two about guilt. It's a monstrous glutton with shark teeth, rows and rows of teeth that cut and cut and just keep on cutting. There's no smooth esophagus you eventually slide down—just cuts and more cuts, and then you're in the belly of the beast, all hacked up and bathed in acid. And just when you think it might be easing up, that ugly monster spits you out, then bites down and starts chewing on you all over again.

I vowed to turn over a new leaf. I would become a better person. An upright person. A person of total integrity. I would do what the boys in the war had done: I would put one foot in front of the other and keep on marching, keep on slogging. The only way out is through. I realized now, when it was maybe too late, that the key to life was just that simple. Wherever you are, whatever situation you're in, the only way out is through.

I stayed at the hospital the next few days, while Charlie's life hung in the balance. He didn't speak again, and I began to hope I'd misunderstood him or misinterpreted his words. Maybe he wouldn't remember the letter after all.

But when I finally went home to sleep at the insistence of Mother, I found the letter and a note from Charlie tucked under my pillow.

Can't live without you.

Funny, I thought. Because I was finding it nigh near impossible to live with myself.