Anyway, Louisa was out back in the vegetable garden when he drove in. Honestly, I was worried that she was going to get Brandon to bring over a pickup truck and use that to bring her damn vegetables up to the house instead of the garden cart she’d been using trip after trip after endless trip. I kept asking her how many towns we had to feed and for how many years following the nuclear attack for which we were obviously preparing. I seriously wished I knew something about gardening, something useful I mean, like what would kill off healthy vegetable plants that were producing way too much. How many string beans does a body need? How much zucchini and canned tomatoes? I’d come in to use the bathroom and was being as slow about getting back out to help as I possibly could, which is why I happened to be lingering in the living room. I might have been sort of looking at a magazine, in fact.
There was Gary getting out of the car, and pretty soon he’d be at the front door. I wouldn’t mind visiting with my nephew, but I knew it wouldn’t go over well if Louisa thought that was my idea, so I ducked out of sight and locked the front door so Gary would go around back and find us both diligently working. Then Louisa would avoid him by handing him off to me, I’d be doing her a favor and get out of picking beans, amen.
I sidled back from the door, ducked down again, and scurried—stepping over Marvelle, past Harold’s recliner, still there, and through the kitchen to the back door, Jessie at my heels. I moved off the back steps to the garden, dodging roaming chickens with what might have been considered uncharacteristic speed.
“Sorry I took so long, my digestion’s not quite right today,” I said, and started pulling beans.
“Eating more vegetables,” Louisa said. “Good for you.”
“Yup. Bless your heart.”
“Don’t start with me, Sister. They are much better for you than meat.”
“I know, I know. Is Gus coming again tonight?” I fervently hoped he wasn’t, and I especially hoped they weren’t going to take a nap together before dinner, because let me tell you, their naps didn’t involve a lot of sleeping as best as I could discern. Seriously, can you fathom? There I am turning the television up so loud you’d think I was Charlie, or taking Jessie for a walk, anything I could think of. Louisa would have some of her special tea, and Gus would have just the Wild Turkey ingredient, straight up, and they’d both have these silly smiles on their faces and be passing secret looks at each other like they were Brandon’s age, which must have been eighteen but honestly, he looked twelve to me.
“Might come by, but he had to take the truck in for maintenance or something and so his schedule is messed up. He told me about it but I didn’t pay a lot of attention once he started explaining what was wrong.”
“Half the time he shows up in the squad car . . .”
“True, but I guess the deputy’s squad car is in the shop. So they’re down a car. I told you I quit paying close attention. Can you pull those weeds while you’re in that row?”
I was hot and hungry and couldn’t figure out why Gary was taking so long to figure out that no one was coming to the front door. Why didn’t he walk around to the back of the house? He sure knew where to find us. He’d done it before. Louisa plain couldn’t hide from him, she’d told me. I admit I was hooked on the notion of sitting in the cool—well, maybe not cool, but cooler—house with iced tea, visiting with my nephew and maybe sharing memories of Charlie with him without feeling guilty. What a welcome rescue he was going to be.
Isn’t it strange how we think one thing is going to happen and something utterly different happens? Inside we are so disappointed and have no idea that life might just have handed us a huge gift. And it’s so difficult to remember to be open to that possibility, isn’t it? Because we never know when it might be the case.
Anyway, as it happened, I was annoyed with Gary for dawdling because now it was his fault that I was getting fried and still picking beans—and now even being instructed to weed, which was truly adding insult to injury because, I mean, why? Let the fall frost kill the weeds. This ground wasn’t going to be planted again before spring, right?
I went into a spin cycle then; teary, I wanted my old life back. I wanted my husband tinkering with stupid stuff out in our garage in Atlanta. I wanted a good game of bridge after a ladies’ lunch at the club, all of us wearing colorful slacks with coordinated blouses, necklaces, matching earrings. I’d gotten to be a decent enough player that I was always asked to be someone’s partner, never had to go looking for one. In comparison to her own, I thought Louisa saw my life as frivolous, or maybe just overprivileged, lacking depth and meaning. Perhaps she thought easy come, easy go. I only knew that in moments like this when some small disappointment opened a door, I’d be overcome with the giant loss of Charlie and our life together. And I didn’t feel like I could cry to her because we were only married fifteen years and it didn’t compare to the long shadow of her life with Harold, well over forty years when he died. Maybe I could have, and she’d have understood that even though he wasn’t the father of the babies I’d lost, he wasn’t the man who abandoned me, either. He never would have, not if he could have helped it. Maybe she would have understood that love isn’t measured in length of time, but in tenderness and gratitude. But now there were things she’d not told me, and things I couldn’t tell her.
Five minutes turned into ten, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. Had Gary left? Was this the one time he wasn’t going to, in Louisa’s words—snoop all over the place until he sniffed her out? (I’ve mentioned how he gets on her nerves, haven’t I? For the first time, I truly found myself on her side of the fence, except for not sniffing her out, the irony of which wasn’t lost on me.) “I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” I said. Perhaps I could have been smarter, since that was exactly what I’d claimed before.
“I’m the one with a bladder the size of a pea, and I’m not running in every fifteen minutes,” she said, giving me The Look, the same tilted chin, squinty-eyed Look we both learned from our mother that said I’m Not Buying This Crap.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. I’m not discussing this,” I said. “Your hair is a mess. Have you got a box of your color? Let’s get those roots done,” I said as I dumped the meager pile of green beans I’d picked onto her much larger pile and headed for the back door. I hate it when she catches me like that.
“Go around, not through those! Stop! Those are winter squash and pumpkins.”
I turned, trying to grind my shoe down a bit on whatever I was standing on. “Do we have to can them?”
“Well, pumpkin, sure, but not winter squash. Good grief, what do you think we make pumpkin pie with, huh? Tomatoes?” She shook her head at my astonishing ignorance and laughed.
Hoping I was killing a pumpkin vine, I twisted my foot again before dutifully getting out of the garden to make my way to the back door.