(2008) Down Where My Love Lives (66 page)

IT WAS WEDNESDAY NIGHT, AND WE'D BEEN PAINTING the better part of three days. We'd started in the kitchen and then moved down the back hall and into our bedroom. When we got to the door of the nursery, holding a paintbrush and a roller, we looked at each other and scratched our heads. Neither one of us wanted to tackle the real issue-guest room or nursery. Amplifying our dilemma was today's date-a fact that was not lost on us.

I looked at Maggie, who was staring blankly into the room, and said, "I'm tired of painting."

She dropped her brush in the bucket. "Me too."

The sun was disappearing, the tree frogs were tuning up down at the river, the wood ducks were jetting like F-16s overhead, and daylight was almost gone. Maggie and I watched in amazement as an enormous moon, as big as Christmas, rose directly in front of us and popped its glowing head over the treetops.

We sat on the porch teaching Tick how to eat the last of Old Man McCutcheon's produce. Maggie sat on the top step, feet spread, watermelon between her knees, and her face, hands, and cutoff jeans covered in red juice. When the wind blew, the frayed edges of her shorts flittered like tiny fingers. She took a bite, chewed, leaned back, funneled her lips, and then blew like Shamu out across the front yard. Messy but effective.

The shiny seed spun like a football some fifteen feet across the yard and into the grass where about fifteen other seeds lay. In the process she'd pretty well covered the porch steps, and me-sitting downwind-in spit spray. I looked at the yard and knew in about three months we could quit stealing from McCutcheon, because we'd have watermelon growing right here at the base of the steps.

Given everything that had happened, Dr. Frank had held off starting Maggs on a low dose of oral hormone therapy. But now that life had returned to mostly normal, he'd scheduled an office visit. Tomorrow. Maggs didn't like the idea, and neither did I, but she'd been moody lately. Knowing this, and seeing its effect on me, she agreed to try it a month and see what happened.

Because eating watermelon makes me have to pee a lot, I walked inside. When I came back out, Maggie was staring out across the cotton, looking at the river, white paint caked on her forehead and red watermelon juice smeared across both corners of her mouth. Resting at her feet were two clean, folded towels. She looked at me, the river, then back at me. "You want to go swimming?"

With all the pregnancy stuff the last few weeks, I hadn't really pressured Maggie to be with me. I just figured that was not what she needed. I looked from the river back to her. "Do you mean swimming or ... swimming?"

She smirked ever so slightly, waved her head back and forth as if she were weighing the options, and said thoughtfully, "Swimming."

I scooped Tick into my arms, and we raced barefoot through the grass-corn on one side and cotton on the other. Midway down, we spooked two deer that were feeding through the corn, and then Pinky spooked us. She was rooting along the edges of the corn rows and looked up as we passed by. Her mas- sivejowls, caked with mud, shook like jelly rolls as her lower jaw ground the kernels of corn against the top.

We reached the river, and I climbed the gently sloping bluff and Peter Panned off into the moonlight while the Milky Way showered down about me. The black water covered me, and the gentle current pulled against me. Few things in life were sweeter. I surfaced, swam toward the bank, and dug my toes into the sandy river bottom.

Maggie stood on the bank, pulling her tank top over her shoulders. She slipped off her jeans, waded in, and wrapped herself around me, her short hair sticking up and out. Chill bumps ran up and down her arms, but she pressed her warm chest to mine. The river moved around us, carrying away old memories and filling the empty places left behind.

Because that's what rivers do: they do life.

From downriver, the sound approached slowly. It filtered up through the trees, then across and around us like fireflies dancing on the daylight. Moments later, Bryce appeared. Buttnaked but for the boots, he stood, his face beet-red, blowing through the pipes. He stood, his soul spilling out through his fingers and the tips of the pipes. He played for several minutes. If I'd ever worried about Bryce, and I had, my fears disappeared with those fading notes. Moments later, having said what he came to say, he stepped into the water and faded away downriver, carrying his song with him.

When he had disappeared, Maggie nodded toward the bank and tugged on my arm. Fingers locked, we waded through the current and climbed up the bank. While the moon lit the water droplets cascading down her back, I handed her a towel and spread the blanket across the sand. She toweled off, knelt beside me, and ran her fingers through my hair.

She was just about to kiss me when something out of the corner of her eye grabbed her attention. She tilted her head and stared. Leaning closer, she squinted and held the towel up to the moonlight, and that's when the wrinkle reappeared between her eyes.

Seeing the change, my voice cracked. "Are you okay?" Maybe I had pressured her too soon. Maybe something reminded her of something she wanted to forget.

Without a word, she jumped up, grabbed her clothes, and started a fast jog back to the house. By the time I got into my jeans, she was out of sight. I slipped on my shirt, picked up Tick, and walked back to the house, kicking the dirt and wondering where I had just messed up.

I reached the barn and climbed the steps into the loft, where the light in the bathroom was shining through the crack at the floor. I laid Tick on the bed and tapped lightly. "Maggs? "

"Yes."

"You okay?"

She didn't answer, so I took a cold shower, climbed into bed, and counted to a million. Maggie finally stepped out of the bathroom, wearing sweats, and quickly got in bed. Her feet were cold, and she pulled the covers up around her shoulders. She scooted over next to me and placed her arm around my stomach.

I didn't know much, but I did know that if I opened my mouth, I'd only get in trouble, so I started doing my times tables, and when I got tired of that, I started trying to think of the largest prime number I could find.

Finally Maggie whispered, "I don't really want to go see Dr. Frank tomorrow."

He had told me she'd be moody without the hormones and would probably protest right up to our appointment.

"Okay." I figured we could talk about it tomorrow when she had gotten over whatever was bugging her.

A few minutes passed, then she tapped me on the shoulder.

I was getting a bit exasperated. "Honey. What?"

Tick heard my change in tone and dug his muzzle under a fold in the sheet.

She laid her head on my chest and placed her palm flat across my heart as Tick climbed up our legs and plopped himself in a cavity created by the sheets and shapes of our bodies. "I don't want to go because I don't need to."

Dr. Frank had predicted that too. She'd argue that she didn't need any hormones, and it would take me to convince her that she did.

"Well, okay, but Dr. Frank said it might help."

She patted my chest. "No, you don't understand."

I was getting a bit angry, so I sat up straight in bed. "You're right. I don't. Why don't you-"

Maggie shoved me backward onto the pillow. She hooked her right leg over both of mine, wrapped her right arm around and under me, and then tent-pegged it into the bed. She raised her head, the moonlight shining in her eyes and revealing the tears and the smile painted there. "I don't need them because my body is making its own."

I squinted one eye while trying to translate what she was saying.

She pulled up the covers, closed her eyes, and said, "Don't worry. I'll take you swimming again in about a week."

Tick had rolled over on his back, paws in the air. He was out cold.

LYING ON AN OLD LUMPY MATTRESS IN THE LOFT OF OUR barn, beneath all the star-filled wonder of the Milky Way, God spread his blanket over us, and when I studied it, the frayed edges and seams had been hemmed. Faint stitching meandered across the quilt like country roads on a state map. I shook my head. What makes the broken whole? How does deepdown pain, interwoven like sinew, come untangled?

I looked at my wife, her breathing easy, her spiky hair growing out, her fingernails scratching my chest. Then I looked at us-two chipped and cracked cups, and yet despite the fact that we were leaking like a spaghetti colander, we could still pour water. Still laugh. Still hope. Still cry. Still dream. Still take a swan dive into the moonlight where the mystery of the river would meet us, bathe us, and make us whole.

I wrapped my arm around my wife, pulled her toward me, and felt her heart pounding powerfully inside her. My drumbeat. Our rhythm. It resonated, filtered back down within me, and came to rest somewhere alongside my soul where I'm most alive, where I am me and we are us, where I know pleasure and pain, heartbreak and rage, where I hope, dream, and begin again-down where my love lives.

Brimming with relief, maybe some fear but all excitement, I pulled the blanket up around our shoulders and slid my fingers inside hers. She hooked her leg around mine like a wisteria vine spiraling up a fence post, and we slept.

SUMMER 2000.

I was sitting in my office, paying bills, shaking my head at the numbers looking back at me. It was over. My pipedream had come to an end.

I had shut my door because I didn't want Christy to see me hanging my head in my hands. Maybe I should've taken that job. In my file cabinet next to me, hung the folder where I kept all the rejection letters. Currently, there were 85.

For eight months the letters had been returning. Slowly at first, then almost one a day, now maybe one a week. I had quit going to the mailbox months ago. Broken man.

I looked at the yellow note stuck to my computer screen that read, "126"-my reminder of the number of times that F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise had been rejected. It was little consolation.

Early in 1997, Christy and I had returned to Jacksonville. Thinking I'd continue working as a teacher, I applied everywhere from college to high school. When the phone didn't ring, my brother-in-law took mercy on me and gave me a job working at his insurance agency. Fast forward to 1999. After two years of hard work, we had taken his agency from a rather small one to a very successful one. That had everything to do with Tommy's ability to sell and, to a much lesser extent, my ability to help him put legs on his promises.

Because of this, I had caught the eye of the corporate officer of the insurance company we represented. Friday afternoon came and, with Tommy's blessing, I found myself sitting in the President's office. He was offering me a job-asking me, in short, to do on a much larger scale what I'd been doing the last few years for Tommy.

Did you ever see that scene in the movie, The Firm, when Tom Cruise was brought in to meet the Memphis attorneys? Remember the feeling in that room? How they laid the envelope on the table? My experience reminds me of that scene. The red carpet, the leather couch, the view out the windows stretched for miles. So did the opportunity-six-figure money, benefits, signing bonus, yearly bonus. Life on a silver platter.

There were just three problems. The first was travel and lots of it. I'd be living on planes and in hotels. The second was the job itself. I just didn't enjoy the insurance business. I needed it, still do-I'd just rather someone else sell it. The third was that little voice inside my head-and he was screaming at the top of his lungs.

Before I left the President's office, he paused and looked me in the eye. Dick Morehead had risen to the top because he worked harder than anyone else, was pretty close to brilliant, and because he was good at reading people. In that instant, he was reading my emotional pulse. He said, "Charles, life's too d-n short to not do what you love."

I nodded, "Yes sir."

He paused again, this time longer, "Charles ... life's too d-n short to not do what you love."

I knew my decision before I left his office.

He asked for an answer by Monday, so I shook his hand, stepped into the elevator, and asked myself not what new car I was about to buy or what new white-picket-fence-neighborhood we were moving into, but how was I going to explain this to my wife.

Word spread quickly, and before I got home the phone started ringing with congratulations. "Vice President? Wow!" I found it difficult to talk with my stomach in my throat.

After a few hours at home, I'd made little progress with Christy. She was already painting our new house.

I didn't sleep much. Somewhere around three in the morning, Christy tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, "That's a lot of money." I watched the ceiling fan spin and knew it was going to be a long weekend.

My argument was simple. I could survive the travel, could work at the job and maybe even excel, but no matter what I did or how I tried to appease him, I could not quiet that little voice inside my head.

Christy's argument was also simple-take the money. Write in the morning. Late at night. Do both. Do whatever you've got to do, but take the money.

We argued most of the weekend. Not finger-pointing, shouting, or ugly stuff, but gut-wrenching, who-are-you-and-what-doyou-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up stuff. Our son, Charlie, was almost two, John T. would be here in a few months, and we had outgrown our house. The only thing I had working for me was that Christy knew my heart-she had read my novel (what is now The Dead Don't Dance), and she believed it was good. Maybe even good enough.