Come Rain or Come Shine (27 page)

Dooley. Her spoken repentance could be a gift to him or it could be a stone. She prayed against the stone. If she waited beyond this day, she would be free to keep believing the old lie that Dooley understood, that it was all forgotten, and she should forget it, too.

She thought maybe he had forgiven her, but there was no way of knowing. Throughout his school days in Virginia and Georgia and North Carolina, he often came to visit Pooh and Jessie. He was always open and kind with Buck, but distant from her. She hadn't known how to find again the small bond they had when he was little, before he went to her poor daddy and then to Father Tim. He had been the one she dumped the care of all the others on, and he'd done his very best and she had never even thanked him. No, they didn't talk of such things, the old times, their holocaust. How is it that one can turn to God and believe and be changed, but
not changed enough to accept the consequences? She knew it was dealing with the consequences that would make her strong, bring her closer to her children and to God; it was perhaps what makes people good, if becoming good is ever really possible.

And maybe, just maybe, it wasn't too late for Jessie. She and Buck felt Jessie was lost to them. But starting now, she would not accept that. Starting now, she would do everything in her power to keep from losing Jessie again. She would talk to her tonight, after they got home, and this time she would enter fully into the consequences of Jessie's rage and contempt.

She found Pooh on the back porch, tossing pebbles toward the woodshed and waiting to walk her to the barn where Buck was helping Willie.

‘I'm so sorry.' The breath was raked out of her.

‘What for, Mama?'

‘For everything.'

She went to him and put her arms around him. Her seventeen-year-old son, her dear Pooh—the one she had ‘kept,' if it could be called keeping.

He looked into her eyes, unafraid, and listened.

‘For all the times I neglected you and left you and didn't look after you and love you enough.' She tried to hold it back, but she could not, she could not.

‘That's okay, Mama.' He patted her shoulder. ‘You can stop crying if you want to. It's okay.'

Lace prayed on her walk to the barn with Dooley and Jack Tyler. Maybe Sammy and Kenny and Pauline would just avoid one another or maybe there would be some kind, any kind, of healing. Just a start would be a relief.

She had never had a problem with drinking, but she knew how it worked, she had lived with it. It was demons unloosed, it was total craziness and consuming bondage and she understood the pain of that bondage. But she was weary of Pauline clinging to the role of victim.

Pauline and Buck were standing outside the entrance to the shed. She had always embraced Pauline first; she was startled when Pauline embraced her.

‘I'm so happy for you,' said Pauline, realizing suddenly that she was also happy for herself and Buck and all her children, if only for this fleeting moment. She embraced Dooley and felt his reserve and stood away and pressed his hand. ‘So proud of you,' she said. She hoped to speak with him before the evening ended and was surprised to find that she looked forward to it, was eager for it. Her mission, after all, was to acknowledge and confess, she was not seeking miracles.

He saw Pauline smile as she took Jack Tyler's hands and looked into his upturned face.

‘The dam has burst,' he said to Cynthia. ‘It will soon
overflow the banks and water the dry land for the harvest to come.'

She assumed he was talking about the long-awaited wedding and was amused by what sounded like the proclamation of Jeremiah on a good day. It was his special white vestments, of course—after a stint in all that brocade and gold trim, he could on occasion sound positively biblical.

Dooley squatted and patted his shoulder. ‘Climb up here,' he said to Jack Tyler. He liked the feel of his son's sturdy legs on his shoulders, the heft of this boy. Dooley stood then and took his wife's hand. ‘Ready?'

‘Here we go,' she said.

‘Here we go!' said Jack Tyler, holding on.

The lanterns, so many!—even along the rafters, and the candle flames dancing against the shade of evening. The roses, the great masses of Seven Sisters everywhere, and the long table with its double rows of fancy napkins and shining plates and sparkling glasses and the miniature hand-carved replica of Choo-Choo at every place.

This is what they had worked for, prayed for, dreamed of. And here it was, with everyone happy and cheering and clapping as they entered the shed—all of it so much more than they could have imagined.

‘Everything looks so beautiful, so perfect,' Lace said to Lily.

Lily was in recovery from a scene in the kitchen that involved her sisters.
No
, Violet could not sing with the band, she had not been
invited
to sing with the band, what was she
thinking
? Then Arbutus requested leftovers to take home to her brick house with a screened porch, which was the most outrageous thing she ever heard of.
Leftovers
, she said, are what this couple will be
livin'
on for days to come, give me a
break
. Then Rose's back went out because she wore the wrong shoes.

This coming Friday, thanks to a very thoughtful gift from the new Miz Kavanagh, she was drivin' to Myrtle Beach—totally alone!—where she would lie in th' sun an' ruin her skin and get her head back together.

‘I recommend th' barbecue,' Lily told the bride. ‘Th' coleslaw's to die for, you want th' deviled eggs on th' yellow platter not th' other platter, an' Miss Louella's biscuits are blue ribbon. As for th' chicken—so-so. But don't bother, I'll fix y'all's plates right now, before th' band rolls in.'

Lace kissed her on the cheek. ‘You're the best,' she said.

Lily had been watching the busy little woman in spike heels and goofy glasses. She was a worker, all right.

‘Get you a plate,' said Lily.

‘Oh, I'm not a guest,' said Vanita. ‘Just, you know, a professional—gettin' ready to pack up an' go home.'

Lily smiled, which she realized felt good to her face. ‘We do takeout,' she said, loading barbecue and all the trimmings on a paper plate.

Mary Ellen Middleton had never met a cleric with such a lot of physical mien. Not that clerics didn't have muscle and all that—surely they did, some of them, anyway. And not that his physique was overdone, not at all. Just—robust, perhaps, though that sounded like a Cabernet. Father Brad was different. He didn't smell of church, if one could say what such a smell would be, but of something light and moving that couldn't be caught or confined.

When they met earlier today at the fence, she made conversation as best she could, based on what she'd heard. ‘So I hear you have . . . lived in the wild?'

Oh, what laughter he had. He was brimming with it, absolutely running over.

‘I'm no John the Baptist,' he said, ‘but yes, I like the outdoors. You can ask Sammy Barlowe about that. And you?'

‘I've had my nose in a book most of my life. Except during summers at the lake when we took out the canoes, and I was on a swimming team in college. And I love fishing, come to think of it.'

‘Trout? Salmon? Marlin?'

‘Crappie,' she had said, amused.

Just two minutes ago, she had looked for him among the chattering throng at the food tables and saw him talking with Father Tim's brother.

Yet as soon as she took her plate to the table and sat down,
he popped into the chair next to her, with his own plate. How did he do that? Perhaps clergy had a knack for being everywhere at once.

‘Wonderful wedding!' he said, putting the napkin in his lap. ‘Memorable in every way, to say the least. Thanks in part to Beth, who is a wonder.'

‘She is, I agree. Thank you.' She felt suddenly shy with him, though they had talked earlier about his deceased wife and his daughters and grandchildren and she had spoken briefly of Paul. He had brought out his cell phone and scrolled away until he was able to show pictures that she could barely see because of the glare. Everyone did that these days, she couldn't understand it.

He looked at her and smiled. He was very direct and very nice-looking. If she had to find just one word for him, it would be
vivid.
No blur. Sharp contrast. Alive. She hadn't felt really alive since Paul.

‘What's your schedule?' he said, tucking into the barbecue.

‘To the hotel in Wesley tonight and back to Boston in the morning.'

‘May I ask who you're going back to?'

‘My eighty-four-year-old mother, still living on her own. My piano; my cat, Sofia; my orchids.'

‘Orchids! They never rebloom for me. I'm a nut for gardenias.'

‘I love gardenias,' she said. ‘But they're so finicky.'

‘Completely. You never know where you stand with a
gardenia. With a geranium, yes. With a pot of ivy, cool. But gardenias? It's easier to raise teenagers. Nevertheless, I'm hooked.'

‘Then there's the maidenhair fern,' she said.

Clearly he enjoyed laughing.

‘So, Mary Ellen, I ask you—why are we talking about houseplants? I'd rather know if you like your fries with ketchup or aioli, whether you've ever rafted the Colorado River or fried trout beside a stream in Montana. In the morning, you'll be flying to Boston and I will be . . .' He looked up to the rafters, as if seeking words.

She was smiling. ‘You will be . . . ?'

‘Bereft!'

She laughed.

He didn't know how he said this stuff. He never said this stuff. He was outgoing in the pulpit, outgoing on a raft with a berserk youth group or asking the parish for money if absolutely necessary. He was, however, notoriously shy around beautiful women.

Kate had been gone eight years and there had been nobody since; his Marine Corps motto had applied there, too. Kate had been the love of his life and now, out of the blue, here was somebody else he didn't want to let go.