Marriage Seasons 01 - It Happens Every Spring (29 page)

Brenda did her best to think of something to say to the group
staring at her as they stood in awkward silence against the wall, but
she couldn't. A weight on her chest and heart pressed down so
heavily that she could barely breathe. A large, bitter lump in her
throat ached with such agony that it stopped any words she might
have wanted to speak.

"Would it bother you if we gave Cody a shave and haircut?"
Patsy asked. "Because if you'd rather not-"

"He really needs it," Esther cut in. "Wouldn't you agree,
Brenda? We'd like to see your new basement too. Could we work
on him down there?"

Brenda peered at the women. Cut Cody's hair? Shave him in the
basement? She didn't want to think about the basement. Or Cody.
Or anything.

"The poor thing doesn't look well at all," Esther said, speaking
in a low voice as if Brenda couldn't hear her. "Look at her! She's
not even dressed."

Brenda had tried three times to get dressed that morning, but
couldn't.

"I had this kind of trouble once," Kim confided to the other
women. "Around the time of my divorce. I remember sinking so
low I thought I would never see the light of day again-and didn't
care to."

Esther shook her head; then she propped her hands on her hips.
"Ladies, we've got to get Brenda up and around before she withers
away right in front of us."

"We can't just pick her up," Ashley said.

"Oh yes, we most certainly can!" Esther Moore marched toward
the rocker. "Cody, go down to the basement and wait until we get
there. Don't you think of running off again, buster."

"My name is Cody," he said. "Who do you think you are?"

Esther visibly bristled for a moment. Then she patted Cody on
the shoulder. "I'm Mrs. Moore, and don't you forget it."

"Mrs. Moore," he repeated as he left the room. "Mrs. Moore."

Though Brenda tried to protest, she couldn't fend off the
women who surrounded her. They led her to the master bedroom
and began doing things to her that she didn't like or want. Kim
swabbed her face with a warm, wet washcloth. Patsy ran a brush
through her hair. Ashley and Esther pulled off her pajamas and
slipped things over and around and up her limp body. A purple
blouse took the place of her flannel shirt. A pair of jeans slid up to
her waist while flip-flops nudged between her toes and under her
feet. Someone popped a piece of peppermint chewing gum into
her mouth. Someone else circled her neck with a string of beads.
And then the cluster of women propelled her forward toward the
bedroom door, out into the hallway, and down the steps to the
basement.

"Why, this is simply lovely!" Esther Moore exclaimed. "And,
Cody, aren't you a good boy to sit so nice and still right there on the
chair?"

Brenda held on to the handrail as she descended the stairs and
the basement came into view. She half expected to see Nick LeClair
standing there in his paint-splattered jeans and ball cap. "Hey
there, girl," he would say. He had called several times the first couple of days. Brenda let the answering machine pick up, and then
she deleted the messages. After that, he stopped trying to reach her.
She missed him. And she resented him.

"Look at these different shades of green!" Ashley said, turning
circles in the center of the vinyl floor. "Did you know green is my
favorite color? Brad says it's because it goes so great with my hair.
Brad loves my red hair, but he hopes we don't have a boy. He
thinks red-haired boys are nerds. Oh, I'm not supposed to tell anyone that we're trying to have a baby."

"For pete's sake," Esther snapped. "Brad Hanes thinks redhaired boys are nerds? That is the biggest heap of foolishness I've heard in a long time, Ashley. And you can tell your husband I said
so. Now, Brenda, you sit right here. Patsy, can you work in this
light?"

"I'll get a broom," Kim volunteered.

Brenda watched them through a sort of brown haze. Nothing
they were doing made sense. Why were they here?

"I'll start with his beard," Patsy declared as she slipped a plastic
cape around Cody's neck and shoulders. The women had positioned the young man in the potting area near the sliding glass
door and the new sink. Patsy eyed Cody as a sculptor might study a
block of marble. "I just love to see a man's face," she said as she
walked around him, "especially if he's got a nice, strong jaw. Do
you remember if you have a good jawline, Cody?"

"My daddy always helped me shave," he told her. "We had a
razor, and we put soap on our faces, and we shaved in a mirror that
we hung on a tree. My daddy said a man ought to look good even if
he don't have nothing to eat and can't find a job."

"Your daddy was a smart man," Patsy said. "If you don't look
good, you don't feel good."

"That's why you put good clothes on Brenda, huh? Because she
wore her robe every day, and it made her feel bad to look bad."

"Mostly we just wanted to get her back into the world."

Brenda watched as Patsy snipped off the bushiest part of Cody's
long brown beard. She tried to think how long it had been since
she'd seen the women who were now bustling around in the basement. First they oohed and aahed over the sewing area with its long
built-in table. Esther said there was a time when she would have
given her eyeteeth for a place like that. She had sewn all her curtains as well as most of the kids' clothes on her kitchen table, and
she'd had to move the machine whenever mealtime came along or
someone had homework to do.

Nick's plate with two hot dogs from Rods-n-Ends always sat on
that table, Brenda thought. A soda. A napkin. She had walked into
his arms right there where Esther Moore was standing. He had pulled her close, and she had felt the strong muscles in his shoulders. She would have kissed him. How could she deny it? How
could she live with it? How could she escape it?

"I don't believe this!" Ashley cried out on spotting the drawers
and cubbies in the crafts zone. "This is too awesome, Brenda! You
could put different kinds of beads in here, and wire and elastic
cording and everything. How come you haven't done anything
with it?"

Brenda looked at the neatly ordered area. She couldn't remember why she had wanted it. Nothing creative came to mind now.
Beads, wire, elastic cording? What would she do with those things?

"Would you ladies come over here and take a look at what I've
just discovered!" Patsy's excitement drew Brenda's focus from the
crafts area. "Take a gander at this chin, gals! And how about the
jawline? Cody, I have a feeling you might turn out to be quite
handsome."

Everyone gathered around as Patsy's razor absorbed the last of
Cody's beard. The women were giggling and elbowing each other,
and Ashley even reached out and laid her hand on his smooth
cheek. Cody looked up at them and gave a wide grin.

"Mercy sakes alive!" Esther gasped, taking a step backward and
throwing her hands up in horror. "When was the last time you
used a toothbrush, young man?"

"What's a toothbrush?"

"Just as I suspected. And of course he can't have been to the dentist." She turned to Brenda. "Have you thought of making a dental
appointment for this boy?"

Brenda couldn't think of a response. She didn't want to remember dental appointments, because that made her think of her children. She had betrayed them by longing for a man other than their
father. She didn't want to be in the basement, because that
reminded her of Nick. She hated the purple blouse, because Steve
had bought it for her years ago when he went to an auto-parts convention in Arizona. And that was a faraway time when she and her husband had held each other and loved each other and felt so
happy to see each other again.

"I'll help you out," someone said, slipping an arm around
Brenda. It was Kim Finley. "I can talk to the dentist I work for. He
makes exceptions for special cases, and I'm sure he'll be happy to
clean Cody's teeth and check him over."

Brenda leaned her head against Kim's shoulder. "Thank you,"
she whispered.

"Do you have any idea what's making you sad, Brenda?" Kim
spoke in a low voice. "Don't tell me what it is. Just nod if you
know."

Brenda thought about Steve and her children and Nick. All the
lost things. All the emptiness. All the shame. She nodded.

"Is there one thing I can do to make it better?" Kim asked.

"No, because my kids . . ." Despite the lump in her throat, she
had managed to say it-the loss that had started it all, the empty
hole into which she had poured a terrible mess of sin and failure.
And now tears welled again in her eyes.

Kim's arm tightened around her. "Your children are not gone,"
she whispered. "You still have your memories of Jennifer, Justin,
and Jessica. And they'll always have part of you with them-your
love, the things you've taught them, the memories you made
together as a family. They're turning into adults, but that doesn't
mean they've cut all ties with you, Brenda. Right now they're trying
out their wings. They'll come back to the nest now and then to
reconnect with you. And you know why? Because they love you.
They always will."

Brenda tried to gulp down the flood of emotion inside her, but
she couldn't. Instead she surrendered to it and let Kim hold her
close as she wept. In a moment, she heard voices around them.
"What's wrong? Is she all right? Why is she crying?" And Kim was
mouthing the word again. "Kids. She misses her children."

After what seemed like a long time, the racking sobs began to
subside, and Brenda heard the scraping sound of boxes being pulled from under the stairs. Hammers pounding in nails. Chatter
and exclamations. Then Kim was drawing away, saying she had to
go back to the salon to meet the school bus.

Brenda nodded, empty-armed. For a while, she could only look
down at the flip-flops on her feet. She recalled that the shoes had
belonged to Jennifer and then to Jessica. And now, worn-out and
thin, they were hers.

"Look at this!" Ashley called out. "Patsy, you did Jessica's hair in
this picture, didn't you?"

Brenda managed to blink away enough tears to find that the
women had been unpacking her storage coolers and that photographs of her three children now covered the wall of the sewing
area. There was Jennifer leading a Bible study group on a mission
trip to Atlanta. Justin, standing tall with his soccer teammates.
Jessica, riding her tricycle. The three of them, bobbing up and
down in the country-club swimming pool. Jennifer, wearing the
uniform for her first job-working at the concession stand of the
outlet mall's theater in Osage Beach. Justin, proudly displaying a
stringer of crappie that he and Steve had caught in the lake. And
Jessica-

"I have to admit," Patsy said as she cradled the framed photograph, "this style I created for Jessica when she won homecoming
queen was one of the best updos in my entire career. See how the
curls fall so soft and pretty around her forehead and temples?"

"You had the perfect model," Esther murmured.

Patsy nodded. "I don't imagine you could find a prettier young
lady than Jessica Hansen. She is pure peaches and cream. The boy
who marries her-"

"It's the garage door opening!" Ashley shrieked as a grinding
noise echoed through the basement. "Steve must be home-and
we need to get out of here. Hurry up and hang that picture, Mrs.
Moore. And, Patsy, how fast can you buzz Cody's head?"

"Quick as a wink!"

Something was up, and Steve didn't like the look of it. As his car
pulled up the incline of Sunnyslope Lane in Deepwater Cove, he
recognized the string of vehicles lined up in front of his house.
Esther Moore's Lincoln, a virtually pristine relic of the 1980s, was
parked on the street near the driveway. The battered Honda that
Ashley Hanes had been tooling around in since her sophomore
year in high school sat right behind it. Patsy Pringle's pretty blue
Chevy came next. And Kim Finley's minivan had passed Steve's car
on his way into the neighborhood.

Having some visitors might be all right, Steve had decided at
first. He was so concerned about Brenda that he had taken to dropping by the house two or three times a day to check on her. She just
sat in the living-room rocker and barely spoke to him. When he sat
down beside her, took her hand, or tried to say something to her,
she turned her head away and began to cry. Steve had never known
what to do with Brenda's tears. In the past, he'd always pulled her
into his arms and held her until whatever had upset her came spilling out. But now she pushed him away and refused to utter a word.

If some of Brenda's friends had come over to cheer her up, that
couldn't hurt. But then Steve noticed that Cody's familiar lanky
figure with its bushy, knotted hair no longer occupied the porch
swing. The idea that the young man might be inside the Hansen
house tied an instant knot in Steve's stomach. He didn't want to
kick the kid out, but he had tolerated just about as much as any
man could be expected to endure.