Miss Julia Stands Her Ground (10 page)

Christmas had never been what you'd call a joyous time for me, since Wesley Lloyd Springer, my husband of some forty-five years, hadn't had a joyous bone in his body. Each year we spent the holidays going to church every time the doors opened, and at that time of the year they opened every time we turned around. I declare, I got tired of it, but it wouldn't've done to mention it. Wesley Lloyd's temper grew shorter and his comments more abrupt as soon as people started hanging wreaths and stringing Christmas lights. And Christmas music? He snapped the radio off as soon as he came home every evening.

“I get enough of that racket downtown,” he'd say. “I don't need to hear it in my own house.”

Lillian, who kept to the kitchen when she heard his car in the driveway, turned her radio off before he stepped into the house. I know she enjoyed the Christmas music, for I'd occasionally hear her singing along with it during the day. When I went in to visit with her, we'd sit at the table and drink coffee while we shelled pecans or chopped citron and candied cherries, and talk together. With the smells of cinnamon and nutmeg, and the sight of cake layers cooling, and Lillian herself in a red apron, I felt as if I were in some Hallmark Christmas
card scene. Until, that is, Wesley Lloyd came home each evening, and I had to be the lady of the house again. He didn't approve of consorting with the help.

He just didn't like Christmas. I'm not sure he even approved of it. According to him, Christmas celebrations in the form of trees, holly, gift giving, and caroling were late and deplorable English and German additions that took away from the true meaning of the season. All the so-called merriment did nothing but disrupt the routine of business, and true spirituality was all but lost in the secular, materialistic society we lived in—I'm quoting him.

“It's supposed to be a Christian holy day, Julia,” he'd say to me. “And just look at everybody and his brother out spending money they don't have and buying things they don't need. I tell you, there ought to be a law.”

You can see how that kind of attitude would tend to take the joy out of a person. Oh, we had a Christmas tree on the table in the front window, but only because he didn't want people passing by to think he was strange. Which, the further away from his demise I get, the more I realize he was. At the time, though, I didn't know any different.

We exchanged gifts, too, one apiece, because Wesley Lloyd did not approve of going overboard in any way, shape, or form. He'd been firmly against spending money on frivolous things, so we bought each other needful and useful items, things you had to have anyway. I'd gotten it in my head one year to give him something different, thinking he might get the hint that I'd prefer something other than a small kitchen appliance, which I never used anyway since Lillian did all our cooking. So I'd studied and searched and finally came up with a beautiful cashmere sweater for him, which meant that I'd had to dip into household money in order to afford it. I'll never forget the sick look on his face when he pulled it out of the box on Christmas morning. At first I'd
thought he was ashamed because his gift to me of a flannel nightgown was nowhere near the level of a cashmere sweater. But it hadn't been that at all. As far as he was concerned, he'd followed the rules he'd set down that limited our spending on Christmas gifts, and I hadn't.

He let me know about it in no uncertain terms, and from then on I stuck to socks, gloves, and the occasional pair of Hanes boxer shorts.

So I can't say that I was expecting anything different that first Christmas I had Hazel Marie Puckett and Little Lloyd under my roof. To tell the truth, I expected it to be worse. After all, I'd had several months of serious jolts to my system, what with Wesley Lloyd's sudden and unexpected departure from this vale of tears and the even more unexpected appearance on my front porch of his longtime mistress and their peaked and unattractive little son.

With all that hanging heavy over me, I couldn't get in the Christmas spirit no matter how many times I went to church. In fact, it was all I could do to make it through each day. I was still having to steel myself against the whispers and stares and head shakes of all those who disapproved of the way I'd handled the mess that Wesley Lloyd had left me. I tried not to care, and most of the time I didn't, but then I'd catch a pitying glance thrown my way and I'd have to struggle with my anger at Wesley Lloyd and at Hazel Marie, as well as with my despair at that child who looked just like him, all over again. In the face of all the talk and the snickers behind my back, it took all the strength I could muster to hold my head high and keep up a Christian front, much less stir up any Christmas spirit.

Some days were easier than others, for I was learning that Hazel Marie had a sweet and open disposition. Naive and gullible was what it came down to. She had to've been, or she wouldn't have put up with a decade-long association with a
married man. I still couldn't understand it, but then, I'd never had to worry about where my next meal was coming from nor been burdened with an out-of-wedlock child, either. Maybe if I'd been in her shoes I'd have taken whatever crumbs that came my way, too.

As for the child, well, at first, I could hardly stand to be near him. Nine years old, and as much like Wesley Lloyd as anybody could be. Every time I looked at him, so thin and pale and wispy haired, all I could see was his father, and be reminded of what his father had to have engaged in to end up with this reproduction of himself. Add a smattering of freckles, thick glasses that slid down his nose, and a hangdog look about him, and you can see why I wasn't exactly eager to clasp the child to my bosom.

Besides, the boy needed a firm hand. He needed instruction on how to look people in the eye when he spoke to them, how to sit up straight, how to shake hands, and, Lord help us, how to blow his nose. I tried to bring some order and discipline to his life, and to Hazel Marie's as well. That's what they had been sorely missing, but, living as they had from week to week on Wesley Lloyd's meager handouts, who could wonder at it? Wesley Lloyd had never been known as an overly generous man, a state of affairs that I was thoroughly acquainted with. He was tight as a tick, if you want to know the truth.

Of course, I was getting my own back by this time, for all the assets he'd spent a lifetime amassing and stashing away were just sitting there waiting for me when he keeled over. I take that back.
Half
of all his assets came to me, since he'd left an even bigger mess with a last-minute handwritten will that made the child wealthy and me destitute. It took Sam Murdoch, Binkie Enloe, and the state of North Carolina to make sure that justice was done and I got my due.

To my credit, when it was all straightened out, I found I
had no resentment in my heart at what was put in trust for the child. I had come so close to being stripped of everything that the half I finally got looked as if it would last my lifetime. If, that is, I exercised good judgment and made careful use of it. Just knowing it was there eased my fears of an impoverished old age, and I intended to stretch it out in a prudent manner so that it wouldn't run out before I did.

Still and all, I felt a certain amount of buoyancy at the thought of having financial assets that were totally under my control, and nobody else's. But you don't immediately overcome the habits of a lifetime, especially when those habits had been constantly dinned into your head. And, as I felt some obligation to teach the child fiscal responsibility and frugality, it behooved me to set an example and make sure that he and his mother didn't let their sudden wealth go to their heads.

And, if I'm honest, I have to admit that more of Wesley Lloyd's attitudes and opinions had rubbed off on me than I realized. Even though I'd disagreed with him more times than not, I'd kept my mouth shut and let him rant on about whatever was exercising his mind at the time. But, without realizing it, I'd gradually absorbed some of his viewpoints, in spite of myself.

Needless to say—but I will, anyway—I was shaken to my core when the extent of my absorption of his frame of mind was brought home to me during that first Christmas. But after my eyes were opened, I came to realize that I didn't have to put up with Wesley Lloyd any longer. I could have opinions, viewpoints, and attitudes of my own if I wanted to. And, boys, I wanted to.

It took me a while to get to that point, however, because I was still so wrapped up in my anger at Wesley Lloyd in spite of the fact that he'd been dead and buried some four months by the time that first Christmas rolled around. To say nothing
of my bitter resentment toward Hazel Marie for her youth and beauty, even though she was bordering on forty and just this side of trashy looking. How could my husband have preferred her to me, who had led an exemplary life conforming to every dictate that issued from his mouth?

And that child! I can't tell you how it ripped out my heart every time I looked at him. He was a pitifully poor substitute for the children I never had, but I intended to do my duty by him if for no other reason than the fact that I knew no other woman in the world would've opened her heart and home to her husband's bastard son.

Besides, it was the Christian thing to do, as anyone would tell you if they didn't have to do it themselves.

From the distance of a few years now, I could look back and see how wrong I was to project forty-something years of bitterness onto Hazel Marie and that innocent boy. Yet I still can't see how, given my temperament and my husband's betrayal of his marital vows, I could have done it differently. We all have to learn, you know, and that first Christmas with both of Wesley Lloyd's families—licit and illicit—under one roof was a learning experience from which I have yet to recover. Thank goodness.