Bittersweet Creek (5 page)

Julian

B
eulah Land could go to hell.

Damn her hide for dredging up memories of the first time Romy and I sang that song. We were each about seven, and both of us had wandered to the creek that bubbled between our farms. Our mamas would've had a fit if they'd known we'd wandered into the woods where the coyotes lurked.

They called the creek Bittersweet, but it was nothing but sweet back then. I liked to walk there and look over at the Satterfield land and wonder if they were really as bad as Curtis made them out to be. The fact that the creek was far enough away from the house so I couldn't hear my mother's cries when Curtis smacked her was another reason I hid out there.

One day I heard someone singing as I approached. A little girl with black pigtails hopped from one side of the creek to the other, singing about islands in the stream and asking how anyone could be wrong.

I knew that song. Mama listened to the local country radio station in the mornings while she got me ready for school. She also had every Kenny Rogers cassette ever made.

I sang about sailing away to another world and invited her to come with me. She stiffened at the sound of my voice, but then she gave me a wide grin and kept singing.

We didn't know about lovers or making love back then. That came later when Coach decided I needed some extra tutoring in English. Somehow, as we stumbled through Shakespeare, we began to see our relationship as a little island of sanity in that teeny creek. She was the one who figured out I couldn't read but I could listen. And that's how she fell in love with me.

I fell in love with her the moment I saw her jumping over that stream like some kind of woodland fairy in knee-patched Sears jeans. And up until the night she gave up on me I had always thought we really would find a way to sail away together.

Instead, Romy disappeared to Vanderbilt, and I hid out in Mamaw's abandoned house licking my wounds.

And now I'd agreed to sing our song like the damn fool I was.

Romy

B
eulah handed each of us a microphone, and I willed myself to smile as I looked out into the audience. Thank God Richard wasn't there—this wasn't something I wanted him to see. I wanted to look at Julian, to see if he caught any irony in the words as he sang them, to see if I could figure out exactly what had happened on the night of our high school graduation.

Julian, however, was focused on the little blue monitor.

He didn't need the monitor. We used to sing this song all the time both as kids and back in high school when Bill had experimented with a “family night” and made anyone under twenty-one wear a fluorescent wristband to show they weren't old enough to drink. Julian had never once looked at the monitor back then.

He sang the first part about feeling a peace unknown, his voice reverberating through me. I had forgotten its honey timbre, the twang he'd picked up from years of listening to country music and nothing else. I snapped to and sang with him about the blindness of tender love. Then there was the part about dedication.

I stared through him. I had been blind. I had given the required dedication. Kenny and Dolly were so wrong about not needing conversation, though. What had Julian McElroy ever given up to me through words? He'd given me his body, but there had always been a part of him he'd held back. If I'd been anything other than young and stupid, I would have seen we were headed for trouble because there were so many questions he wouldn't answer.

My eyes were drawn to his when he sang to me about how I wouldn't cry and he would hurt me never.

As we sang about starting and ending as one and interspersing “uh-huh”s with making love, I blushed. I couldn't help it. I threw myself into the lyrics, forcing myself not to shout “
how can we be wrong?
” because I knew we'd been wrong but I still didn't know the how or why.

I didn't need to know how. I only needed Julian's signature on the dotted line. The why wasn't important. My eyes landed on Genie, who studied us with her head tilted to one side like a zoologist studying primates. What did she think about Julian and me singing a song about making love?

Blessedly, the song came to a close. The Fountain patrons erupted in applause, either not noticing the undercurrents or reveling in them. Julian stepped off the stage then reached over to give me a hand.

“I need to talk to you,” I blurted as I jumped down in front of him.

He put both hands on his hips and leaned back. “Go on, then.”

“Outside would be better.”

Julian cut a glance to Genie. “Thought you were here with her.”

“She can wait for a minute.” I gestured toward the door and Julian headed off while GiGi Taylor started singing the world's most off-key version of “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy.”

I cleared my throat as I stepped over to where Genie sat. “I need to step outside and have a word with Julian. Do you mind waiting?”

“I can do that.” Again she had the look of an anthropologist taking notes on human behavior. I began to wonder if she secretly worked as a spy for the Paris family. Would she report back to Richard? Tell him I was singing in bars with my ex?

Ridiculous. What did she care?

Heart still pounding, I walked across the bar and out the door before my confidence could leave me.

Julian

A
s a general rule, I wasn't much of a pacer, but being alone with Romy for the first time in ten years? That had to qualify as an extenuating circumstance. It ate me up to think of her with her city boyfriend—especially after we sang together, her voice humming through my body. But what could I do about it? I'd sealed my fate the night I hadn't shown up at Wanamaker's store.

Knowing Romy, that night she'd packed entirely too much for our honeymoon—especially since I'd planned to keep her out of her clothes as much as possible. I had a vision of teenage Romy, lugging that old red suitcase of her mama's as she walked up the road. We had agreed to meet at three in the morning, a time of night when no one should be passing. Her mama's suitcase was too old for wheels so Romy would have fumbled along the road, occasionally passing the suitcase from one hand to another as her arms got tired.

Once she got to the store, she probably sat down on the suitcase and hugged herself. She didn't let anyone but me know it, but Romy was still afraid of the dark or, at the very least, afraid of not being able to see where she was stepping. Considering the wrong I was about to do her, she should have been more scared of me.

The screen door to the tavern popped open, and she flew outside, jarring me back to the present. She had to have been born running because I'd never seen Romy Satterfield slow down for anything or anyone. I used to kid her she was a blur.

Then she stopped.

“You wanted me?” I asked.

Poor choice of words
.
Or wishful thinking.

She sucked in a big breath to help her carry on: “Julian, I need a divorce.”

I opened my mouth to say yes, to say I'd known this day was coming. Instead my traitorous lips said, “No.”

“What do you mean, no? Who do you think you are? You can't begin to think you could just leave me on the side of the road with no explanation and think I would still want to be married to you. I swear, Julian McElroy, I don't know what kind of demon cupid shot me with his arrow and made me think for one solitary moment I wanted to be married to you. Four years of college and almost six years of teaching and you have not so much as called or sent a note or said you were sorry. Now you want to tell me you aren't going to give me a divorce? That is the most ridiculous—”

“Just stop.” Whatever it was that had been squeezing my heart for the past ten years loosened its grip, and I grinned. Romy Satterfield was the only person I knew who started using bigger words and more of them when she got mad. Most of us resorted to shorter words and repeating a lot of them.

“Just stop? Are you out of your mind? I can't believe I managed to screw my courage to the sticking place to ask you this question and that you, of all people, would tell me no after all that—”

“Why'd you have to go all
Sweet Home Alabama
on me? Why couldn't you ask me years ago?”

That shut her up. She studied the gravel for some time and we listened to the frogs sing. Finally, she looked up at me. “I couldn't bear to look at you.”

Tears glistened at the corners of her eyes, and I had to look away from the hurt. I kicked at the gravel, making a rut in the ground. “So I guess you're really in love with this city boy. If you're willing to come out here and look at me.”

She crossed her arms, angry again. “Yes, I love Richard. And he loves me.”

My brain told my mouth to say, “Pass the pen,” but “I'll think about it” came out instead. Now that she was finally home and standing in front of me, I couldn't let go. I knew I should. I knew I was being selfish, but I couldn't seem to give her the answer she wanted. Not for that guy. Oh, hell, not for any guy. Who was I kidding?

She flew at me, but I grabbed her wrists and pulled her near. I came close to kissing her, close enough that her breath got shallow just like it always used to. Back in the old days I would sometimes hold my lips just an inch from hers and wait for that hitch in her breath. And I
could
kiss her. She was, after all, my wife—at least on paper.

“Julian, please.”

Please sign the papers? Or please kiss her? I didn't know which, but I was about kiss her when Genie appeared at the door.

“Julian, you're up.” Genie assessed the situation, and her eyes narrowed. “Romy, are you okay?”

I let go of her wrists as if they'd scalded me.

“I'm fine. I was just coming back in.”

Genie nodded, but opened the door wider instead of making a move to go back inside.

“This isn't over,” Romy spat to me over her shoulder before walking back in.

No, it
is
over. You are going to make it over. Remember what happened the last time you were at The Fountain?

How could I forget? Those first few years after Romy left I was on a mission to piss off as many Baptists as I could. I drank, I smoked. I picked bar fights. I flirted like a sonuvabitch.

But one night in particular, Pete Gates started telling a story in the back corner. A group of men hung on his every breath as he described in vivid detail everything he had done to a girl and everything she had done to him. To hear him tell the story, other women were involved, even a well-endowed horse. I sidled over out of curiosity but spewed my beer when he suggested Romy Satterfield was the woman in question.

I should've known the whole thing was a lie, but I'd had a few beers too many and maybe some leftover pain pills. At the sound of her name, I scattered those men and started throwing Pete Gates around like a rag doll, beating him up enough to land him in the hospital. I totally trashed The Fountain, then promptly wrapped my truck around Lester Ledbetter's tree. If I'd hit a car or hit a tree on anyone's property other than ol' Goat Cheese's, I would've been in jail.

That night I looked at how the massive oak had crumpled the front end of the truck and how the truck had splintered the tree and came to the conclusion there was too much of Curtis in me to even think for one moment that I deserved to be with any woman, much less Romy. I'd poured the last of those pills down the drain and cut back on the beer. I'd apologized to both Pete and Bill, helping pay for hospital bills and busted-up tables and chairs. That didn't change who I was or what I could do.

Beulah leaned out the door this time. “C'mon, Julian, we don't have all day.”

A quick glance told me what Ben had been up to while I was outside. He'd pulled up two chairs to the table where Romy and Genie sat and was now standing onstage with “Ebony and Ivory” cued up behind him.

Benjamin Little, Esquire, was a dead man. And no way would a jury of my peers convict me.

Romy

I
t was hard to say which was worse: having to share a table with Ben and Julian or listening to Ben and Julian's painful rendition of “Ebony and Ivory.” Ben sang more like Frank Sinatra than Stevie Wonder, and Julian sounded far more like Brad Paisley than Paul McCartney. Even Beulah winced through the whole thing and offered a mulligan with piano accompaniment in a lower key, but Julian's vehement no ended the issue—thank goodness. A few of the rednecks in the back muttered because they still hadn't quite reconciled themselves to the fact that humanity could, indeed, live in perfect harmony like those keys on a piano.

Ben took the seat next to Genie, which left Julian sitting next to me. Fight or flight warred within me with a heavy emphasis on flight. Spite took the upper hand, though, and I raised my hand to signal for another beer. Damned if I was going to let Julian make me walk out of The Fountain. As bad as that song was, he was the one who needed to leave.

“So, Romy, what've you been up to?”

A casual observer would think Ben Little was making pleasant conversation. I knew he was up to something because he and Julian were thicker than thieves and had been since playing high school football together. By this point he knew about that morning's accident, and he knew I was seeing Richard Paris. He would've known who Richard was, too, because, well, everyone in the state of Tennessee knew who Richard was.

“Just getting settled in today,” I said. “I'm going to be here for the summer to help Daddy out since he broke his leg a couple of weeks ago.”

“I wonder how your father managed to get to the hospital after that happened,” Ben said. “A man like that all alone out in the barn.”

Julian choked on his beer. My eyes shot from Ben to Julian. “Did you help him out?”

“Happened to be mending the fence on that side when I heard him yell.”

Hank Satterfield, stoic extraordinaire, had, of course, left out this part of the story. “Well, thank you, Julian. I'm glad you were there that day.”

“You're welcome.” He shifted in his seat—just enough for me to see there was still more to the story. When I looked at Ben, he was glaring at Julian, his lips in a thin line. But I could've told him that was all he was getting out of him. Julian McElroy could be the poster child for “hostile witness.”

“Well, I was thinking we should sing a rendition of ‘YMCA' before we go,” said Genie. “I'll be the construction worker.”

“No!” all three of us said together.

“I mean, I think it's about time for me to go home,” I said.

Julian nodded toward the two empties in front of me. “Are you sure you should be driving?”

I opened my mouth to ask if he thought he was one to talk, but I saw he only had one beer bottle in front of him. The other empty was a water bottle. Interesting.

“I'll be fine.” I stood up too quickly, knocking the chair behind me and interrupting Old Man MacGregor's off-key rendition of “You Never Even Called Me by My Name.” I swayed a little in spite of myself and bent over to pick up my chair.

“You do remember that you rode with me, right?” Genie said.

The fact that I'd forgotten that crucial piece of information suggested I was, indeed, in no shape to drive home—not even in my imaginary car. Still, I would sit there all night before I'd let Julian drive me home. He muttered something about “stubborn women” under his breath.

The smart thing to do would have been to order water. Instead, I chugged my Bud Light and raised my hand for another.

“Well, if I'm not driving . . .”