2-in-1 Yada Yada (44 page)

The first thing Denny did when he got home was ask if the mail had come. What he meant was, did he get anything from the Board of Education? School would be starting in a couple of weeks, and he still hadn't heard whether he'd been cut or retained. Didn't blame him for being frustrated. He'd started putting out résumés, but I could tell his heart wasn't in it. He was still hoping to go back to West Rogers High and pick up with the guys in the sports programs he'd been coaching all last year.

Yet Friday's mail had only contained the usual weekend ads, the gas bill, more medical bills from my surgery, and a note from my mother, saying she was feeling better now and maybe they'd come to visit for my birthday.

At least that was a good month away. I'd worry about that later.

As we had loaded the car, I'd decided to take the initiative.
“Oh.
Tried to call Adele at the salon, but she never returned my call.”
Denny frowned, but I'd just left it there. It wasn't a good time to tell him about Avis's call anyway, not with Amanda in the car.

Whatever was eating Denny obviously hadn't been left behind with the dirty pile of clothes he'd stripped off before his shower. He punched on the car radio, filling the moody silence with WBBM news discussing the latest tense negotiations with Iraq about UN weapons inspections. I waited till we finally made it onto I-80 heading west, where traffic opened up, the speedometer climbed, the air began to cool, and the sinking sun colored the high cirrus clouds like children with sidewalk chalk. When a string of commercials announced the top of the hour, I reached over and turned off the radio.

“Denny? Talk to me.”

He glanced sideways, a rueful smile breaking his stony expression. “Sorry, babe.” He jutted his chin toward the horizon. “Don't get to see a sunset like that too often. S'pose we could catch a sunrise over Lake Michigan, if we got up early enough, but—”

“Denny.” I nailed him with a look. “I mean, talk to me about what you're thinking. This is supposed to be an anniversary getaway, but I feel like I'm riding with a robot, and you're”—I waved my hand in little circles—“off in la-la land.”

He sighed. “Sorry, Jodi. Don't mean to be a wet blanket. It's just . . . I don't know. I feel like I should be home combing the want ads, searching the Net, sending out résumés, whatever. I'm kicking myself that I've waited so long to look for another job, but I kept hoping that no news was good news.”

“I know.” I turned my head away, watching golden cornfields zipping past. Half my mind wanted to scream,
“It's just two measly
days! If you wanted to sit home with the want ads, what about last
weekend?!”
The other half of me realized I'd been ignoring the whole looming job disaster too. No way could we make it as a family on just my salary teaching third grade. Not with college on the horizon for Josh next year. Even without college! But, just like Denny, I'd kept hoping.

Behind the wheel, Denny cleared his throat. “And don't take this wrong, but . . . gotta admit I'm worried about the money—for this getaway, I mean. It's a great idea,” he added hastily, “but I didn't know you were planning something, and with the ‘salon surprise' and dinner at the Diamond and all . . .”

I put my smile on high beam. “Aha. That's one worry you can cross off your list. I'm paying for this weekend myself, with sewing projects I've been getting from some of the busy moms at Uptown— mending, table runners, curtains, stuff like that. Already got enough to pay for one night. One to go.”

He turned to me, jaw dropping. “You? Sew?”

I grabbed a carrot stick and would have thrown it, but I didn't think braining him was worth sending the car across the median and piling into oncoming traffic.

“See?” I teased. “Twenty years married and there's still stuff about me you don't know.”

He laughed then, and the last of the uncomfortable silence blew out somewhere on I-80. I scooted over as close as my seat belt and the console between the seats would allow and kissed the dimple on his cheek. Now maybe we could enjoy this weekend.

Yet one nagging thought tugged at me. I still hadn't told him about my talk with Avis about Adele and MaDear.

A CARVED SCULPTURE OF A BALD EAGLE greeted us as we drove into the lodge parking lot around eight-thirty, a half-hour before the dining room closed. Two dinners were included in our weekend package, so I convinced Denny we should take advantage of it before we even checked in. Didn't work. We had to have dinner vouchers from the front desk. So I left him to order salads and entrees in the rustic pine dining room while I hustled to the main desk and got us checked in.

When I came back with the vouchers, he was sitting at a small wooden table, lit only by a dimly burning candle lamp, sipping one of two glasses of red wine. I hesitated. Did I forget to tell him that drinks
weren't
included? And besides, this would be the first time alcohol had appeared on our table since the argument that led—

He cocked an eyebrow at me, reading my mind. “I know. Drinks not included. This is on me.” He grinned and raised his glass. “To us. Twenty years.”

I sat, wishing he hadn't, but he reached across the table and took my hand. “Thanks, Jodi, for . . .” He glanced around the lovely room, almost empty of diners now, with its big stone fireplace, wooden rafters, wilderness paintings, and stuffed game heads. “For this. We've needed to get away. Even with the job thing hanging over my head. This is good.”

I relaxed. This was good. Even the wine was good. Our celebration. And no one had to drive anywhere.

Our waiter—a suntanned college-age kid, probably working at the state park for the summer—hovered over us, whisking away every dish the moment the last bite made it into our mouths. They wanted to close up. When we shook our heads at the dessert menu (“Dessert not included”), he seemed visibly relieved. We let him clear the table, and Denny paid for the wine, but still we lingered.

Suck it up, Jodi. You can't avoid telling Denny much longer.

“Denny?” I hated to break the mood, but carrying it alone was starting to eat at me. We needed to be able to talk about it. “I called Adele at her shop, like you wanted me to, but they said she was busy, and she didn't call back.”

“I know. You told me.”

I forced myself to keep looking at his face, even though I was twisting the starch out of the napkin in my lap.

“But I did learn something. Avis called. So I told her we'd been trying to call Adele but hadn't connected yet—remember Avis stayed behind to help Adele with MaDear after she freaked out? Avis got kinda funny, suggested we let it rest for a while.”

Denny's eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“That's what I wanted to know, but you know Avis; she doesn't want to gossip. I told her that put us in a hard place—Adele doesn't want to talk to us, but we don't know why. Like it was our fault.”

“And?”

I folded and unfolded my napkin. Anything to postpone saying what I had to say.

“Jodi.
What did Avis say?”

“She said . . . she said that when MaDear was a little girl down in Mississippi, only her name wasn't MaDear, of course. Sally, I think. She was only ten or eleven, and her older brother . . .”
Oh God,
help me.
It had been hard enough to hear the words, but saying them . . . I could hardly push them out of my mouth. “A bunch of men— white men—came to their farm one night and dragged her big brother—his name was Larry—out of the house, yelling something about talking disrespectful or uppity or . . . or something. The family was terrified, and the next morning they went looking for him. And they found him, in the woods . . . strung up in a tree. Only fifteen. Lynched.”

I dared to look at Denny's face. He didn't seem to be breathing.

After a few silent moments, he croaked, “And the other day, MaDear thought . . .”

I nodded, feeling miserable. “Thought you were one of the men who killed her brother, come back to get her—little Sally.”

6

D
enny spent the rest of the evening in a numb silence. I didn't blame him. What was there to say? I finally gave up the idea of cozy conversation and fell asleep over the novel I brought along.

When I woke up the next morning, sunlight and leafy shadows were dancing through the windows of the log cabin that was ours for the weekend. I stretched . . . and realized the other side of the bed was empty.

I sat up. “Denny?”

No answer. And the door to the tiny bathroom was wide open.

I raised my voice. “Denny!”

“Out here.” His muffled voice came from the other side of the cabin's one and only door.

My left leg ached with its usual morning stiffness as I pulled on a pair of shorts under my sleep shirt and limped outside in my bare feet. Denny was sitting in a rustic Adirondack chair, cradling a large Styrofoam cup of coffee.

“Here.” He reached down beside the chair and came up with a second Styrofoam cup. “Hope it's still hot.”

Now this is nice.
I lowered my body gingerly into a second wooden lounge chair and took a sip of the black coffee. The “Pioneer” cabins—as opposed to the “Deluxe” cabins—had no stone fireplace and no TV, and they were farther away from the lodge, but I figured, it's August! Too hot for a fireplace. And we had better things to do than park ourselves in front of a television. Besides, these were cheaper.

None of the cabins had kitchenettes, though. “Where'd you get the coffee?”

“Coffee shop.”

We sat in silence for a while, with just the sound of the leaves whispering secrets and bird songs dipping and trilling.

“Did Avis say anything else?”

Denny's question shot out of the blue, like time had collapsed and we were still in the lodge dining room, still talking about Avis's phone call. It took me a minute to transition from peaceful-morning-with-coffee to the shadow that had obviously been lurking in Denny's soul all night.

“Anything else?” I repeated.

“Like why she thinks we shouldn't talk to Adele about it.”

“Oh.” I tried to remember. At the time, I'd been so shocked I couldn't say for sure if there'd been anything else . . . except— “Yeah. She said something about ‘dealing with MaDear's memories was bringing up a lot of old demons for Adele.' And Adele couldn't deal with those and worry about our feelings too.”

Denny's jaw tightened, and he just stared into the trees for several long minutes, his coffee forgotten. I battled my own feelings: sad for MaDear, who lived through such horror at a young age, worried about why this was so heavy for Denny, and irritated that it intruded so heavily on our weekend.
You gotta help me, Lord.
What are we supposed to do with this? Can't You just make it go away
for a couple of days?

Pray. That was it. Why did it still take me so long to get to the first line of defense when upsetting things happened? Avis . . . or Nony . . .maybe even Florida . . . if they were here right now they'd be circling our chairs like warriors doing battle with fear, confusion, disappointment, anger. All those sneaky spiritual fiends out to trip us up. Hadn't I learned anything in the last several months, riding life with the Yada Yada Prayer Group? I could just hear Avis say,
“It's not your battle. It's the Lord's!”

“Denny?” I reached out for his hand. “Let's pray about all this, okay?”

I HAD NEVER THOUGHT of prayer making me hungry, but Denny and I were both ravenous by the time we let go of each other's hands, wet with sweat and tears. Somehow we were able to “leave it there” in God's lap and enjoy our day.

After showering in the tiny shower stall and breakfast at the Starved Rock Café, we hiked up to the actual “Starved Rock”—a huge flat-topped pinnacle at the edge of the Illinois River, where a historical marker told the grim story of a band of Illinois Indians who starved to death on top of the rock, surrounded by enemy warriors below. Hard to imagine all that fierce drama now as we made our way up a walkway with safety railings leading to the top.

Still, that little hike did me in, and I chose to soak my leg—okay, all of me—in the hot Jacuzzi next to the indoor pool while Denny hiked a longer trail. By the time he came back an hour later— muddy, sweaty, and grinning—I was sure this was the perfect treatment for what ailed me, not those physical therapy sessions Dr. Lewinski had ordered. I said so to Denny, but he merely showed off by swimming thirty laps in the pool.

We made love in the cabin in the afternoon, trying not to giggle as sightseers roaming the grounds walked past our cabin and tried to peer in the windows. “Wonder what these cabins look like inside?” called a woman's brassy voice. Fortunately, we'd drawn the muslin curtains. Still, it made me feel weird, like a couple of teenagers caught making out.
Really
making out.

The sightseers kept poking around, which put a damper on passion. “I could go to the door,” Denny murmured, nuzzling my ear, “and ask, ‘Can I help you?' ” The thought of Denny confronting strangers at the cabin door, buck-naked, ended all restraint. I belly-laughed till I cried, and Denny laughed too. Loudly. The snoopers beat a hasty retreat.

Oh God, it feels good to laugh. Don't let the laughter die.

WE DIDN'T TALK MUCH on the way home the next afternoon, but it was a different silence than the tension that had filled the car on the way out of the city Friday evening. We both knew the job thing was still unresolved and Denny would have to hit the ground running to find something at this late date. And MaDear's confusion . . . neither one of us knew how to compute that one, so we just kept praying all weekend. That felt good, just admitting, “We don't have a clue what to do, God,” and “Heal her hurt, Jesus,” and “Make a way out of no way about this job thing.” It felt good praying together. Why didn't Denny and I do that more often?