Dwelling Places (29 page)

Jodie

It is immediately after the Christmas pageant, of all times and places, that Rita motions Jodie to join her in one corner of the fellowship hall. The crowd is still milling around, kids exuberant from a performance completed, standing with each other and their parents, gulping down cider, hot chocolate, and cookies. The long tables are luxurious against the discount paneling and concrete floor, their plastic tablecloths bright in reds and greens, and holiday platters heaped with treats. Three coffeepots are lined up on the table against the wall. The room is crowded and busy, and yet Rita is oblivious to everything and everyone except Jodie.

“Come talk to me,” she says. Jodie expected this order last night. Even with Marty and the kids there, with bodies scattered throughout
the house, Jodie waited to be summoned upstairs for a private talk in the bedroom. But Rita showed nothing but a poker face throughout the holiday.

Now Jodie starts to say, “This isn't a good place to talk,” but Rita has already staked out a space near the Christmas tree. It is against the room's outer wall and therefore in drafts that seep under both the door and the south windows. Now that the children's grab bags have been distributed, no one lingers there.

So Jodie walks over to stand in front of the fragrant pine branches. Her mother-in-law holds a plate that bears her own zucchini cake as well as some chocolate–peanut butter bonbons made by the pastor's wife. She carefully cuts away a bite of the cake with her plastic fork.

Jodie considers saying something about how well Kenzie sang tonight, but she knows that it is pointless. So she waits.

“I don't know what to say to you, Jodie. I really don't.” Rita looks at her food while she says this.

“There's not much you could say that I haven't already said to myself.”

“You know my opinions on most things, after all these years. I don't have to tell you what I think.”

The voice is so steady that Jodie relaxes slightly and takes a drink of hot chocolate from the cup that she holds in both hands. It occurs to her that Rita has chosen this place and time to protect them both. In the presence of friends and neighbors, neither one will do or say anything unseemly. Jodie sees the wisdom in this and knows that it is the only way Rita will ever operate. She is a woman above screaming matches. Everything she does is part of some larger strategy.

“You take a vow,” Rita continues. “‘For better, for worse, in sickness and in health.' You take what's given you.”

Jodie feels heat in her face. It has been a while since she was visited by true shame. She has spent virtually all her life until recently doing her best not to do anything she would be ashamed of. Now she is rooted to the floor. From one slender branch of the Christmas tree a crocheted angel dangles close to her left eye.
God, I don't want to be
here. I just don't.
But where else could she be, in Beulah? If she went running from the scene, where could she possibly end up? She drinks more cocoa, which is already growing lukewarm.

“You know that life with Taylor Senior wasn't easy sometimes.” Rita is watching the pastor, who talks with one of the other men. They are examining one another's plates in the way that people always compare at church buffets.

“I know, Mom, and I don't know how you've done it. You were a farmer's wife for forty years, which is a feat in itself. Then in practically a day you lost it all.” She can't bring herself to name those losses specifically. “And you just found something else to do. How can you do it—just shift gears and keep going?” She has marveled at Rita's resilience, but never out loud. It's something of a release to voice it now.

Rita looks at Jodie more deliberately than she has in years. Jodie knows her mother-in-law is more upset about this betrayal than she'll ever show. She also knows that condemnation is not the fuel that keeps Rita going. Those hazel eyes that shine from delicate nests of laugh and worry lines will always be looking for some action to take, something to make everybody better.

“Well,” Rita says, “I'm a woman. And I'm old. Either one of those things teaches you to accommodate to changing situations.” She isn't trying to be funny.

“I'm not seeing Terry anymore.”

“He's the teacher, isn't he—the Jenkins boy?”

“Yes.”

“I've known him since he delivered papers when he was a kid. He's not a bad man.”

“Hardly any of them are.”

“But he's not likely to take you away from all this—he has too many ties to here.”

Jodie looks across the room at her husband, who is talking with the parents of Jenna Braeburn, the girl who read the poem. “Actually, he wants to take me to Disneyland.”

“He said he'd take you to Florida?” Rita's disbelief is clear.

“No, the one in California.”

“Do you
want
to go to Disneyland?”

Jodie looks at her mother-in-law and sees that the question is earnest. It gives her permission to ask herself, in that one, clear moment, what she really wants. “Actually, I've always wanted to see Dublin. My mother's people were Irish.”

“Well, dear, Disneyland isn't really on the way, is it?” Rita gives a sudden, short laugh that makes no sound but causes her tummy and bosom to bounce. The sparkle in her eye cuts Jodie clear to the heart, and she turns away from the room to examine the various angels that dwell in the thicket of evergreen. She finishes the cocoa, down to the sweet, grainy dregs, while blinking back tears. Then Rita speaks.

“You know what?”

“What?” Jodie sees that Rita is looking toward the coffeepots. The pastor has just broken into a loud laugh. He is holding a plate in one hand, his cup of coffee in the other. His elbow is out, jabbing at Bob Franklin playfully, in case Bob has missed some punch line, and his head is cocked the opposite direction toward another man, who is adding his own comments on something.

“A banty rooster and a Baptist preacher can look a lot alike,” says Rita.

Jodie stares at the scene. “He does sort of move like one, doesn't he?”

“What a silly thing—I just looked over there this minute and thought banty rooster. Must be that potbelly.”

“I don't want to ruin everything.” Jodie wishes she were a young bride, mourning a ruined gravy or sheet cake. More than once, Rita wrapped her in a hug and saved a culinary disaster, back when everything was so new and full of promise.

“Maybe nothing's ruined yet. But you can't expect a secret like this to stay secret.”

“Have you heard something?”

“No, thank the Lord.” She looks at Jodie, and for the first time her features register agony. She quickly reaches into her purse and brings
out the envelope. Jodie takes it just as quickly and puts it in the large pocket of her sweater.

Mack

“I'm afraid that my family will always think of me as ill.” Mack has barely greeted George today. He meant to make small talk, something like, “Don't you have a life of your own? I can't believe you're free to see me three days after Christmas.” But more and more, he is impatient with this room and these hours. At the same time, he likes George more all the time, wishing that he could know the man in another capacity. But how do you become friends with the person who's been given the authority to dig around in your heart and soul? He keeps talking.

“They don't have any confidence in me, and I can't say as I blame them.”

“What makes you so sure of that?”

“I fell apart. And I still take enough pills every day to kill a horse. Who knows how long they'll work, or if I'll take another dip like before?”

George just looks at him. Mack spreads his hands across his knees. “In their minds, I'll always be sick, ready to crack up.” He waits while the silence laps around them. “Jodie's trying to trust me, because she's obligated. But I'm afraid I've killed whatever respect she used to have. And the kids—I've lost all credibility with them. They don't respect me—maybe they even fear me. They don't really think I have a right to tell them anything now.”

“So. Prove them wrong.” George has the expression today of someone who won't take crap from anyone. Mack wonders how tired George is of listening to all of
this
crap.

“How?”

“I won't pretend that you're not at a great disadvantage. The truth is, often the person who struggles the most is the very one who must prove the most. No one can fight your battles, and yet you
must fight them. Another dynamic that's important to note,” he says, picking at some lint on his Levis, “is the way a family can sometimes appoint one person to be the problem, so to speak, even for matters that are not his doing. A family may have a designated ‘sick' one, and as long as they can believe that the family's problems revolve around the sick one, no one else has to take responsibility or initiative.”

Mack considers this. “That doesn't seem to fit. They're all working hard. Except for a couple of things Jodie's said when we're in the middle of a fight, none of them have talked like I'm to blame. I just don't think they can have much faith in me—because I'm…weak, or something.”

“Oh, I'm not talking about outright blame. Given what you've told me about your family, I don't perceive them as being malicious. But there can still be a
perception
that all the family problems would just go away if
you
got better. So that in itself puts loads of pressure on you.”

“And I'm just supposed to prove them wrong.”

George smiles for the first time today. “That's all.”

Mack laughs, not sure what to say next. George leans forward and shifts his weight in the chair. “It's at this point that you reach down and use the strength you're not even sure you have. You look at your situation and ask yourself what you might be doing that could help in some way, and you do that. Don't make a production of it. Just take the initiative and act as if you're worthy of respect. When they see that you respect yourself and trust yourself, they'll begin to adjust.”

They eye each other, as they often do when George says something that Mack doesn't quite believe.

“Mack, you've been demonstrating this sort of strength all along. You made the decision to move to the stone house, and you made choices about how to spend your time there. You took up a bit of photography, just because it seemed like the right thing to do. You took hold of the situation when Young Taylor landed at the sheriff's. You decided it was time to move home. You've done all of this on your own, and you'll keep doing stuff on your own. And the more you do,
the more you'll prove that you're back. Even if your kids and wife don't respect you or trust you, my guess is that they really want to. So give them reasons.”

Mack sighs.

“This is a glorious time, Mack. Life's opening up again for you. The language you use, the things that concern you, the things you're attempting—they're all evidence of getting better.”

“That's hard for me to see.”

“Well, that's why I'm here.” George flashes a little satisfied smile.

Jodie

They're in the parking lot of the little motel, in Jodie's truck. She thinks that she'll be stronger somehow if she's not sitting in Terry's car. Of course, she also thought she could do this without crying, but here she is, her eyes and nose leaking while she wipes them with some leftover napkins from Taco Bell.

“I just think this is a decision you don't have to make right now.” Terry rests his back against the passenger door, one leg tucked up on the seat. He is fairly calm and a little angry.

“Well,” Jodie tries for a deeper breath, “I think we hurried into something.”

“Seemed right on time to me.”

“Of course. You're not the one with a family.”

“Jodie, you needed this. You were about to disappear, just go away and never come back.” His tone softens. “Do you really think you can go back to all of that, and it'll just be okay? Doesn't work that way. Once love dies, it's gone.”

“And you're the expert because it already died on you once. You were married, what, two years?”

“I had the sense to get out before we did too much damage.”

“And I'm the stupid one because I've stayed? You know, for a lot of years it worked just fine. You—” She jams a fist to her mouth, trying to let the words out in some controllable way. “You think that you
understand my whole life because we've been…screwing around for a couple of months.”

“No, I don't.”

She shakes her head. “Some people can live two lives at once. But I'm—” Another tear slips down. “I'm so, so tired, and I can't do this anymore.”

“Change always hurts, Jodie.”

She thinks it's happening now, the flaws beginning to show. The bliss has just lifted its wings and is setting off for someone else's backyard.
Change always hurts.
How profoundly unremarkable. The expression on his face is sincere.

“Some hurt we bring on ourselves,” she says.

He faces the front windshield, unfolding his leg and turning from her. “You've done exactly what you wanted to do.”

“Yes.”

“So just tell me what you're going to do now.” The anger is altogether present now.

“I want—I'm going—to go home. And not see you anymore.”

He opens the car door and gets out. Doesn't even shut the door but walks the step or two to his car, gets in, and drives off. Doesn't look at her. No good-bye, or sorry, or thank-you.

No matter what she does or who she's with, when she finally speaks her piece, the anger follows.

She doesn't cry for long. But she drives slowly all the way home. The land is barren, the muddy fields trickling rain, and bits of remaining cornstalks making the place seem devastated as if by war.