Marriage Seasons 01 - It Happens Every Spring (16 page)

"Oh, my stars and garters," Patsy exclaimed. "Send him over
here, and I'll teach that young man a thing or two. I've got the
salon's dishwasher going half the day. And the washer and dryer
run nonstop too."

Kim nodded. "I love it when Derek does his part to make the
family run smoothly. When I walk in the door after work, right
away he'll say, `What can I do to help you, Kim?"'

"Now that's a man!" Esther said firmly.

"Hold on a minute," Steve said. "I thought we were talking
about the women in adult videos."

"But don't you see, those aren't real women," Kim said. "If a
man wants a real woman to meet his needs, he has to do his part.
Derek is always trying to figure out how to be a better husband."

"How did you get so lucky?" Ashley asked.

"Well, I think he may believe he's competing with my exhusband, but as far as I'm concerned there's no contest. Of course
we've had our ups and downs, but overall Derek is amazing."

"A man with that kind of attitude isn't going to be patronizing
an adult-video store," Patsy said, returning to the matter at hand.
"If we can keep good, wholesome businesses in this area, it will
help our property values, Steve. Keep things in their proper place, I
say. Look at Bagnell Dam. The strip there reminds me of a carnival
midway. Bumper cars, arcades, fudge makers, tattoo parlors, hippie nostalgia shops, bungee-jumping towers, car shows. None of
that is my cup of tea, though I know it brings in tourists. But this
town is called Tranquility! It just makes me so upset!"

At that moment, the roar of a lawn mower blasted through the
wall that separated Just As I Am from Rods-n-Ends. Patsy clenched
her teeth as the teacups began dancing across the table. Outside the
salon's front window, the school bus rattled to a stop and kids
poured out onto the parking lot. In a moment, the door flew open
and Kim Finley's daughter, Lydia, raced toward the alcove, her
cheeks red and her dark braids flying.

"Mommy!" she cried out over the lawn mower. "Luke got sick at
school, and the lady at your office said you were helping with a surgery, and so Daddy came to get him!"

"Joe picked him up? But it's not his day!" Kim exclaimed, standing so suddenly her chair fell over backward. "If I've told that man
once, I've told him a hundred times-he cannot see you two unless
it's his day."

"But, Mommy, Luke is sick!"

Grabbing her daughter's hand, Kim Finley fumbled for her cell
phone as she hurried toward the door. Ashley covered her ears to
block the growl of the lawn mower, and Esther rolled her eyes as
she shook her head.

"Well, Steve," Patsy said. She focused on the Just As I Am sign painted over the cash-register desk and blew out a breath. "Come
on, honey. It's your turn."

Brenda sat on the end of her bed and stared down at the cat lying
on the floor between her feet. Nick LeClair had gone home for the
evening and wouldn't be back for two weeks. Another project had
come up, and since it overlapped with the kids' spring break,
Brenda had urged him to accept it. Then when he came back, he
would lay the vinyl floor in the basement, set up the potting bench
he'd been building, and leave to start another job he had waiting
for him at a house in Camdenton.

All that morning, Brenda had painted the basement walls the
way Nick had taught her-cutting in at the edges and then using
the roller for the middle. In the afternoon, she prepared two of her
family's favorite casseroles and refrigerated them. When Justin
and Jessica came home on Saturday to start their vacation, Brenda
wanted to have everything ready so she could spend as much time
with her kids as possible. They would have their picnic day on the
lake, a chick-flick afternoon for herself and Jessica, a trip to the
outlet mall in Osage Beach to shop for spring clothes, and several
ventures to favorite local restaurants.

Setting her palms on her knees now, she gazed at her wedding
ring, tainted with green latex paint. As she studied the gold band,
she recalled the moment that morning when Nick's hand had covered hers and his deep voice murmured near her ear. Even now,
the thought of his breath on her cheek made her shiver.

How could she have let herself stumble into such a trap? Brenda
shook her head. As if under a spell, she had stopped being angry
with Steve and convinced herself that his behavior toward her no
longer mattered. No longer resenting him or feeling hurt by his
abandonment, she had simply become indifferent, erased him from her heart-as though she had hit the Delete button on her
computer and blipped him out of her existence.

As if by the same magic, Nick LeClair had ceased being a handyman, the twice-married owner of A-1 Remodeling, and a grandfather of two. He was Brenda's confidant. Her closest friend.
Funny, interesting, complimentary, he grew into the person she
looked forward to seeing every morning. She valued his opinions.
She sought his ideas.

An invisible line had been drawn in front of Brenda the moment
she married Steve Hansen. But at some point in the past few weeks,
she had stepped over it without even realizing what she'd done.
Nick had suddenly begun to change from a rangy, paint-splattered
construction worker into a handsome, desirable man. In his presence, she felt young and silly. She even giggled. When he flirted
with her and teased her, she flirted right back.

Nick's blue eyes had burned into her mind, and she saw them as
clearly as a pair of sapphires as she labored over her turkeytetrazzini and broccoli-chicken casseroles. Their conversations
replayed in her mind from the moment she awoke alone in the
morning until she finally fell asleep at night in her cold bed beside
her silent, distant husband.

"Brenda?" Steve's voice suddenly filled the master bedroom,
startling her into a guilty flush. "Are you all right?"

She lifted her head and tried to look at the man she had married
so many years before. She recognized his familiar shape in the
doorway, but where was Steve? What had become of the boyish
athlete who had swept her off her feet? Why did she suddenly long
to run away from this stranger in her bedroom, run down the road
and through the woods and into a pair of arms that smelled like
warm flannel and fresh-cut pine?

"I'm fine," she managed. "Fine. Really."

As she pictured herself standing inside Nick's embrace,
Brenda's pretend world suddenly crashed before her like a Christmas ornament shattering on the floor. As she imagined herself racing toward Nick, she pictured his wife opening the door of their
mobile home. His grandchildren would be seated around the dinner table. He would look quizzically at Brenda and ask why she had
come and what on earth she was doing on his doorstep. Clueless,
he would recall only that he had showed her how to paint corners
that morning. He would be dumbfounded if she told him she had
made up her mind to escape to a cabin in Colorado and that she
wanted him to go with her so they could live together happily ever
after.

People didn't do ridiculous things like that. Nick wouldn't want
such a life. Neither would Brenda. She had a husband, three children, a nice home, and a neighborhood. She was a Christian and
went to church and had taught Vacation Bible School every summer for fifteen years.

"What are you thinking about?" Steve asked, taking a step closer
to the bed.

"Vacation Bible School."

"Are you planning to help out again this summer?"

She stared at him, blinking. Noah's ark. Daniel in the lions' den.
The Ten Commandments. All her life, Brenda had known the stories, the rules, the morals and codes of the Christian faith. As a little
girl in St. Louis, she had realized that lying to her parents and slapping her little sister were sins. Not only had she hurt her family, but
her behavior had displeased God, too. Filled with remorse, she had
repented, given control of her life to Jesus, and been baptized. Her
own children had grown up with Christ at the center of their
world-so much so that Jennifer was now in Africa doing missionary work, teaching people about God, and leading them away from
evil and toward the light.

"Brenda?" Steve asked again. He looked down at her, concern
etched on his face. "Are you sure you feel okay? You look pale."

"I'm not going to teach Vacation Bible School this year," she
said. "You know I'm not going to church anymore."

"How come, Brenda?" He sat down beside her on the end of the bed. "What's wrong? Can you just tell me what's going on with
you?"

"I'm not sure where God is these days. I don't know who I am
anymore. I'm so tired of everything ... the past, the way I used to
be, my old way of thinking."

"I liked the old you," Steve said. "You were happy and busy. We
used to do things together."

"That's over now, isn't it?"

"What? No, nothing's different. God is still right here with us.
We're married. We have this house with the basement all fixed up.
The kids are coming home tomorrow. We've got money and
friends and our church. Things are good."

"Really?" She looked into his dark brown eyes. "But you're not
here anymore ... here in this marriage. And neither am I."

"That's ridiculous, Brenda. Of course I'm here. I'm sitting right
beside you on our bed. I come home every night, and if you'd stop
feeling so hostile toward me, we could love each other and get back
to normal and be happy again. I don't exactly know how to say this,
honey, but you've got some kind of a problem. I'm not sure what's
going on, but why don't you go talk to Pastor Andrew? Maybe he
could recommend a counselor or a doctor. Ever since Jennifer left
for Africa and Justin and Jessica went off to college, you've been
acting. . . well, different."

"So I'm the one with the problem?"

"That's how it looks to me. I sure don't have any problems. I'd
be fine if you could just stop giving me those icy stares all the time.
I love what I'm doing, and the prospects are incredible. My agency
is busy seven days a week, and houses are moving so fast I can
hardly keep up. I'm thinking of expanding into commercial real
estate. And in fact, I have an idea I wanted to talk to you about ...
but I don't even want to broach the subject unless you can hear me
out without getting mad."

Brenda moistened her lips. Mad? How could she be angry at
someone who didn't even exist?

Steve was sitting there beside her, so familiar and yet so irrelevant. He was talking, but she couldn't concentrate on the flow of
his words. She could no longer make him matter.

It had nothing to do with the kids leaving home or Nick LeClair
murmuring in her ear. It was Steve. He had walked away, and
finally-after crying and raging and hurting for weeks on endfinally Brenda had shut the door behind him ... and locked it.

"You can say whatever you want," she told him. "I won't get
mad."

"Well, it's about the strip mall at Tranquility." He practically
jumped off the bed and began to pace around the room. "I'm sure
you've heard that someone wants to put in an adult-video rental
store. Patsy's beside herself over it, and Pete drew up a petition to
protest it. He's got enough names to make a strong case to the
landlord. Dr. Hedges is furious. He's threatening to move his business. Parking is limited at the mall, and Dr. Hedges doesn't want
his chiropractic patients having to leave their cars in front of a pornography shop. So there's a good possibility that we can put a stop
to this thing just by pressuring the owner. But, Brenda, I've been
thinking about. . . well, about buying the strip mall."

"Oh," she said, her voice flat.

"It would mean we'd have to go into debt for a while, but I think
we could swing it. The kids' college costs are covered, and you and I
both have new cars. With the basement almost finished and that
cost budgeted in, we don't need to fix anything else around here."

"Except our marriage," she put in.

"What?" He shook his head. "Listen, our marriage is fine. Something's wrong with you-probably just a midlife thing. I've asked
you to go see Pastor Andrew. Please do that. If anyone can help
you, Brenda, it's him."

"I see."

"What I'm trying to get across is that I'm pretty sure I can rent
out every space in the mall-to good people. It won't be easy, and
I've never done anything like this before. There's a possibility that we could take a financial hit. But you know how hard I work and
how much I believe in the future of the lake. So this could be a great
thing for us. We might even make a lot of money, Brenda. A lot.
What do you think?"

She picked at the green paint on her wedding ring. "I don't
know. I'd have to-"

"Hang on. I've got a call coming in." He reached for his cell
phone. "It's Justin," he mouthed to Brenda as he glanced at the
caller ID and took the call.

"Hey, bud," Steve said into the phone. "We're looking forward
to seeing you on Saturday. Everything okay down there?" He
paused and glanced at Brenda. "Your mom's right here. Do you
want to talk to her? ... Okay, well, just tell me about it, then."