Come Rain or Come Shine (2 page)

Father Tim had smiled then, and nodded. ‘Good,' he said like he really, really meant it. ‘Getting married at home is good.'

She had also written them a long letter.

So no Vera or Oscar or hair bound up in a chignon. She knew all about those beautiful, seductive things; she had spent years looking at dresses and hairstyles and being a bridesmaid at glamorous weddings. Then for some reason she never expected, none of that mattered anymore. She had done it in her head over and over—the shoes, the jewelry, the music; she had walked down the aisle a thousand times and saw heads turning and heard the little gasps of approval. She felt a new kind of joy in knowing that she and Dooley would have something more wonderful than the grand wedding, the awesome honeymoon, the lingerie as ephemeral as mist.

‘We could even have a barefoot wedding,' she said to Dooley.

‘Wait'll y'uns step on a bee,' said Harley. ‘Or one of them black snakes. That'll cure y' of barefooted, I can tell y' that.'

She and Dooley had dug deep to wait through the last years of college and vet school. How would she direct herself while he focused on academics? Her art instructors had been crazy about her portfolio; they said she could go anywhere and do anything. So she pursued jobs in publishing, in advertising, and then in design, but wherever she applied, it was ‘the economy.' Here, there, everywhere, the economy.

While Dooley was on a totally defined path, she was constantly trying to figure things out in a wandering sort of way. She resisted, without really understanding why, Olivia's generous offer to underwrite a graduate program in art and design at Pratt, which anybody in their right mind would go for if they could get accepted. She adored Hoppy and Olivia,
who had given her everything, including their name and their amazing love, but the answer was no, and so there she went again, wandering like an Israelite.

What saved her in these final couple of years was teaching art to children at a nonprofit in Chapel Hill, where she moved to be near Dooley. She had learned more from her students than she could ever teach. It had been, in some ways, the time of her life, and she had loved each of them fiercely.

Perhaps she would teach again one day. But what she wanted now was to work with Dooley in the clinic. Though it was an established vet practice of thirty-five years, the changeover would be big and how they handled it would be important. She would be there for Dooley completely.

Dooley stopped and wiped the perspiration pearling on his forehead. ‘You've been workin' really hard. You and Cynthia both. Thanks for everything. I want you to know we appreciate it.'

‘Thank you,' he said, ‘for the chance to do it. We're having a good time.'

Herding Dooley's new cattle into the pasture a couple of weeks ago had been the hoot of the month. They were a start-up herd of five heifers with the self-determination of a vestry. It had taken a village to get them off the truck and through the open cattle gate. The hauler had left more room
than needed between the trailer doors and the gate, so there went Willie and Harley, racing to head one off from the barn, and there was Lily brandishing her apron like a matador as another trotted toward the corncrib. He had stood by the trailer like a bump on a log, waiting for directions from Dooley.

‘I was no help,' he said later of receiving no directions.

‘I didn't want you running around like that.'

‘Because I'm old?'

‘Not
old
. But well, you know . . .'

He did know. He'd be into the double sevens at the end of June. Knees stiff, harder to keep the weight down, the occasional diabetic flare-up. Worse, he hadn't run seriously for nearly a year, something he hadn't confided to his doctor, who ran twenty miles, three days a week.

They worked for a time, silent. The buzzing of flies, a vagrant bee, the scent of grasses they were trampling.

Nobody was talking about the honeymoon. All he and Cynthia knew was that Hoppy and Olivia had offered something exotic, Hawaii or the Caymans, he couldn't remember, and according to Cynthia, the offer had been ‘gently declined.'

‘So. Any honeymoon plans yet?'

‘See that house in the grove? That window over the front porch? That's it.'

‘Aha. If you change your mind, you know we'll do anything we can. We'll help sit the farm, give a hand to Willie
and Harley.' He and Cynthia had sat the farm for the Owens a few years back and managed pretty well.

‘What would you do if Choo-Choo and th' girls got out?'

‘I'd do whatever Willie and Harley were doing.'

Dooley laughed. Things were okay. What he'd said earlier about children had been forgotten.

‘Hammer an' staples,' said the fence doctor.

Ha! Something he could absolutely recognize.

‘Sammy's pumped about coming to the wedding,' said Dooley. ‘He texted me last night.'

Sammy. Almost twenty-two, now, with a manager, dental veneers, and a hot name on the pro pool circuit. He had hoped to adopt Dooley's brother a few years back, but Sammy Barlowe didn't want to be adopted. ‘My daddy made Barlowe a bad name,' Sammy said. ‘I'm goin' to make Barlowe a good name.'

He had loved Sammy as well as he knew how. But it was Father Brad, the then-new hire at Lord's Chapel, who had stepped up to the plate and worked wonders. Thank God for Father Brad's boot camp. He would take the camp himself if he weren't so . . . along in years? Aged out? What was the language to be learned for being old?

Dooley worked for a time, silent, squinting, then stood back and viewed the repair. ‘Done. That's it. We can pack up and go in.'

He was more than proud of his son's vet school credentials and his wedding coming up and his bull coming in.
Youth wasn't entirely wasted on the young. But he was sobered, too—by the big responsibilities that lay ahead. It was no dream anymore, it was the real deal.

‘I'm in over my head, Dad. I look at you—always so patient. I can never be patient like you.'

‘I don't know that I'm so patient. Ambrose Bierce called patience a minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.' He had always liked that.

‘You goin' to cry at my wedding?'

‘I'm not planning to cry. I'll leave that to the women.'

Dooley grinned, wiped his hands on a rag. ‘I cried at your wedding.'

‘You did?' What a wonderful thing to know. ‘So, okay. I'll cry at yours.'

They had a laugh. He put his arm around his boy, slapped him on the back.

‘I love you,' he said.

She sat on the side of her bed and stared at the painting without seeing it.

It was easy now to forget the fights and the tears, but still hard to forget the devastating disappointment that came nearly a year ago and the grieving that followed. She had wondered if they could survive that, but they did, because there was love they didn't even know they had till then. A raw new strength was born from that grief, and for the first
time they both understood that no matter what, they could do this.

So the waiting had been a good thing, like a huge investment sufficient to pay out over a lifetime. Most important, the waiting had been worth it because she had lost the fear of surrendering her heart. For years she had believed her strong will could be enough to make their relationship work. At one point she decided her courage could be enough. And during one of her crazier phases she tried to believe that just being pretty, as some said she was, could be enough.

But none of that was enough for the great journey they would be taking. She came to know this during his second year at vet school, after a long week of prayer and loneliness and weeping. She had surrendered her heart once before, as a kid, when Preacher Greer brought revival to the Creek. She had jumped down from the tree limb and Preacher Greer had prayed for her and she was warm for the first time in her life. To think that she must again surrender the core of her being was too much. Surely it was more than was needed to get by.

He had come home to Mitford that last weekend of October—documented in her Dooley book for three long pages—and with an ease unlike any she might imagine, she had at last opened her heart to him completely.

It was every prayer answered, every benediction composed into one.

She remembered his weekend smell of a burger on the highway and his shampoo and his favorite jacket with the top
button missing, all that, and his hands cold from the October wind. She had held him, unguarded and certain, and he looked at her and she knew that he understood. Dooley really got stuff that didn't come with words.

Words! For days she had wanted to write a special word in the Dooley book, but things had been so crazy. She cleaned her brushes and went to the shelf and took down the once-blank book and let it fall open of its own accord. Some days it fell open to the really good times. Now it fell open to the other times.

Oct 19~ He called last night and said he was sorry. We are always sorry about something with each other; then we have to go back to school before we finish working things out. This is incredibly hard. Sometimes I don't want to do it anymore and he says he doesn't either. But we can't stop. I can't stop loving him.

Oct 22~ I painted all day yesterday. Drove to the country and had no idea where I was going. Found a farm and climbed over the fence and set up my easel in the field. D doesn't understand how solitude is the only way to get my work done~ he is always ‘up and doing with a heart for any fate,' according to Fr Tim. But people say we are so much alike~ both of us with scary childhoods, both adopted by people who gave us everything, both working hard in school to prove whatever. But we aren't alike at all. It was our experiences that were alike. I am quick flame, he is slow-burning
ember. Or maybe it's the other way around. Our counselor who has a woodstove says any good fire is both.

Oct 25~ D almost never tells me what he's thinking. It's like when we're together I'm jumping into a river with no idea which way the current is moving.

The counselor Olivia gives us lives near the grounds at school. But unless D comes here, we have to do the sessions on the phone like a conference call. D definitely does not like to do this, but we know it is helping. I can't really think about anything right now without crying, I didn't cry for years because I couldn't. Olivia says crying is good for nearly everything and she should know since she had a heart transplant before she and Hoppy were married. She says if it hadn't been for Hoppy diagnosing the issue and getting her to Boston, she would not be here to cry ever again.

Nov 6~ It was this date ten years ago when I was legally adopted by Olivia and Hoppy and since I never had a middle name the attorneys said if I wanted one this would be a good time so I took Harper. That will be your last name, they said, do you also want it for a middle name? And I said yes.

I could not imagine O and H would keep me forever and if anything happened I would always have this special name. I thought they pitied me~ a poor Creek kid in a mashed-up hat with stringy hair and dirty clothes.

They kept loving me but I had a terrible fear of loving
them back. I did everything I could to keep from loving them back.

It was totally exhausting for all of us. I could see it in Hoppy's face where I also saw patients dying and his heart condition that he wouldn't confront and the years of lost sleep and Olivia's drained look when we tried to talk. All of it probably caused by regret that they had taken me in. All I knew is that I did not deserve to be loved~ it was their own fault for trying to do the impossible. I wanted them to just leave me alone because they didn't deserve to suffer because I couldn't love them back.

And then the year I studied in France and painted and they came to see me and somehow~ I honestly think it was the way the light moved over the lavender fields~ my heart was very full for them and grateful and I was able to say to the concierge, These are my parents!