The following article was originally posted on the Street Light website.
Photo by Tsuyoshi Kozu on Unsplash.com.
Spring. Finally. After several snowstorms, ice, and being stuck in the house for days on end, Louise couldn’t wait to get in her yard. The daffodils had bloomed, the forsythia had appeared on stage and the February camellias were still struggling with their winter memories. There was plenty of work to do: mulching, feeding, cleaning up windblown trash, picking up sticks, planting grass seed, trimming bushes, pulling her pots out; she was so glad she had her yardman Buddy to help, insofar as her husband Robert wasn’t much help.
The garden, other than family and church and friends, was her elixir. Her life. She was just like her late mother in that regard.
The sun slanted through the kitchen window as if one of Mother Nature’s cliches and she sat down for one more coffee before she drove over to church for book club. Robert had just returned from walking their Golden Retriever, Honey, now as arthritic and slow-moving as they were.
Robert asked what her day would be like, and she looked at his kindly grizzled face. Fifty-two years of marriage; they had really become more like brother and sister than spouses.
Glancing over the newspaper headlines, Robert said, “I am off for golf then to run a few errands. Cards tonight with the boys,” although what he really wanted to say was we need to talk about money except they had done that yesterday and Louise had cried and said if they lived in an apartment she couldn’t have a garden and what would she do with all of her family’s antiques? Robert didn’t want to bring that up again. At least, not yet.
As she drove down Main Street to the Baptist church next to Chandler Park, she savored the signs of spring in most yards—the grandiose mixed with the eyesores; local attorney Cobb Powell’s brick Federal mansion with the perfect aristocratic yard although everyone knew it was a team of landscapers who kept it up—Mrs. Powell just picked flowers or drank wine with her friends on the terrace; Old Man Hobson’s house, white paint peeling off, gutters askew, children too lazy to care. Today the town workers were cleaning up the park—dead branches, leaves, and blown over wreaths around the veterans’ memorial. In the distance she could see a police car in front of the Mays’s house again. Last time it had been a too-much-beer argument.
Louise was leading book club today and she was giving a presentation on Albert Williams’s The Book By My Side, published in 1951—something that had belonged to her great-grandmother. (There is but One book observed Sir Walter Scott.)
Each time Louise pulled into the parking lot of her beloved church, she felt her spirits lift. “Good Morning!” she called as she walked in the basement door and saw her friends hovering about the coffee pot and putting coats on the backs of chairs and handbags on the tables. There was Mimi Hubbard who had just lost her husband to cancer so they were all taking good care of her, and Hollis Lee was staring at her funny but she was the biggest gossip in town so who knows what she was thinking, and there was Betsy Garrett who had invited them to dinner Friday night but she couldn’t thank her in front of the others because she didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.
“Can’t wait to hear your lecture,” said Robin Reed, the doctor’s widow as she hugged Louise. “The Bible as history, biography, and poetry—love it. And can I borrow your book when we’re finished?”
“Of course. And as you know, it was a gift to my great-grandmother from John Davis, the presidential candidate.”
“Your great-grandmother must have been quite a woman.”
“Oh, she was. Knew all sorts of people. We even have a book of poems signed by Robert Frost with a special inscription and a poem written just for her.” The widow’s eyebrows went up and Louise couldn’t help but puff up with a bit of pride. That was her great-grandmother from her father’s Yankee side who lived in Philadelphia and had even been presented at the Court of St. James. She knew many of the New York glitterati.
The book club was a success, or at least the women pretended like they were interested even though they had heard Louise’s grandiose stories before. If the truth be known, these gatherings were as much about chitty-chat and catching up as they were about the Bible but so be it.
A lift in her heart after a beautiful morning with such good friends in the comforting embrace of her church, Louise drove to Rocky Hill, the next town over because the Food Lion was better than the one in Dunley. As she passed The Dogwood Inn, a white clapboard house from the 1950s with a big porch—the only hotel in town and the type of place where yes, soldiers and visitors to the local army base stayed but also people who had been evicted, sold drugs, sold their anatomy, benefitted off the sale of anatomy and succeeded in killing themselves. Louise looked over and saw her husband, coming out of the office door, baseball cap at an angle.
She jerked up in surprise. What would he be coming out of there for? This was not good. Most of the time people didn’t go to The Dogwood for noble reasons. Louise was so rattled she drove over to Food Lion and pretended to look at things and tried to be nice when Marion Smith asked how she was doing and Betty Rich wanted to talk about the library fundraiser. She left without buying anything and when she got home, she was relieved Robert’s car wasn’t in the driveway.
Could this be true? A side of him she had not expected. Maybe his new energy wasn’t from the pacemaker. A dried-up old toot with bad knees and sour breath having a roll in the hay at The Dogwood? With whom? Someone from church? A waitress? How come they didn’t drive to Farmville and stay at The Super 8 and eat at Olive Garden? Small town life is charming except no one, and I mean no one, has privacy.
By the end of the day she had worked herself into such a tizzy, once Robert left for his card game she invited her old friend Libby Early over for a glass of wine. They had known each other since grade school and Libby was funny as well as plain speaking. They were both sitting in the living room, Louise rocking back and forth in her grandmother’s chair, Libby sitting on the sofa as they both tried to keep the cheese and crackers away from the dog.
Libby smiled. “You look nice in that blouse. Peach suits you. What is wrong with your finger?” Louise, taking a gulp of wine replied she had snagged her nail on a sweater and broken it below the quick.
“Are you all right? You seem rather addled. Do you want to talk about something? Are you sick?”
“No. I saw Robert coming out of The Dogwood today.”
“What? Are you sure? Not possible. What in heaven’s name would he be doing there? Before you panic, well, I am too late, you have already panicked, maybe he was running an errand or wanted to talk to Dimitri. Oh, scratch that. What would he have to talk to Dimitri about?”
“The thought of him rolling around in one of those tacky rooms with some strumpet has just about done me in.”
“Have you asked him what he was doing there?” Libby sipped her wine and helped herself to a cracker. She glanced at the painting of Louise’s great-aunt above the fireplace, a grand oil with the aunt wrapped in a gold and red brocaded stole and looking down sternly, probably shocked that her relative could have such bad taste. Men. The nerve! For all the world to see! What happened to the era when a gentleman kept his Playboy hidden in some drawer upstairs?
“No,” said Louise as she rocked back and forth so hard, she spilled her wine. “I didn’t want to hear his lies.”
“But what if he tells the truth?’
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Why don’t you confront him? Or better yet, why don’t you go over to the hotel and ask Dimitri what he was doing there?”
Louise’s stomach clenched at the thought.
“Well, maybe not. I can’t see you doing that.”
“Thank you.”
“You could follow him.”
“He would see my car.”
Two glasses of wine later and a hug and goodbye to Libby, Louise microwaved a potpie for dinner which burned the roof of her mouth, emptied a Steuben vase of fading pink camellias, and waited for Robert to come home. She would politely confront him. She walked Honey around the block, people’s houses all lit up like happy castles of warmth and hope where husbands weren’t seen coming out of The Dogwood.
Around ten, she heard the side door click—she was sitting on the sofa, struggling to read the Richmond newspaper, Honey asleep alongside, when Robert walked in.
He hung his coat, an expression of surprise on his face when he saw she was still awake. He patted her shoulder and asked if she’d had a nice evening.
Louise stood up, telling herself not to be nasty. “Why did I see you coming out of The Dogwood yesterday?” There she had done it. Good for you she thought.
Robert grimaced and gave her a hug. “Sit down,” he said. “I have been meaning to talk to you about this. I have been telling you that money is tight though you really haven’t wanted to listen. I went to Dimitri to talk to him about working at his brother’s car dealership. They are looking for part-time salesman. It would just be a few days a week. Give me something to do. There is only so much golf I can play. Or beer I can drink. Give us a little extra money for whatever. You understand.”
“Yes, but why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wanted it to be all organized before. Thought it would ease your mind.”
Her answer was another hug, and she stumbled a bit because of the wine.
“Hold on to me, Sweetie. Hold on to me.”
Oh, she would, Robert. She would.
