Pulling Home (3 page)

Joe used to deny the other soft spot by downplaying the importance of it in his

daily routine. He finally fessed up six months ago, albeit unwillingly and with a promise from his wife and her friends that his secret stayed within the confines of the Wheyton home.
Joe Wheyton loved On Eden Street.
Obsessively. The man planned his doctor’s appointments, woodworking, and yard care around the 3:00 o’clock spot when the soap aired. When he did have to miss it for an occasional doctor’s appointment and such, he taped it to watch as soon as he got home. For all his gruff mannerisms, Alice’s friends discovered what she herself had known for years—Joe Wheyton might act like Archie Bunker, but deep down, he was more Mr. Rogers, (plus sixty pounds, minus the
Won’t
you be my neighbor
voice.) “Alice, what time do you expect Christian and Kara?” This came from Joyce as

she heaped two spoonfuls of sugar into her coffee.

“The plane gets in at five twenty-five. Jack’s supposed to pick them up if he

doesn’t get called to the hospital. I’ve got Angie Mulligan’s boy as backup.”

“You should have told me,” Joyce said. “Walter could have gone. It would do him

good to have something to do other than go to work and sit home sulking while he waits for Ginny to tell him to come back home.”

“She might not, you know,” Tilly said, matter-of-factly. “Some women get a taste of freedom and then they don’t care about the kids or the husband.” Tilly wagged a bony finger. “All they can think about is trying to be twenty-one again.”

“I know that,” Joyce snapped. “You think I don’t know that?”

“That’s why sometimes it’s just easier having one to worry about,” Marion said,

not looking up from her knitting. “Odds are better you’ll have less heartache.”

“Some people think having one child isn’t fair to the child.” Joyce crossed her

arms over her ample middle and stared at the top of Marion’s steel-gray head. “Some call it a punishment.”

Marion shrugged. “Rose don’t act like she’s been punished, neither does Hannah.

How about Kara, Alice? She seem punished?”

Alice rested her hands on either side of her coffee cup. “No. I wouldn’t say so.”

She paused. “Though I think she’d love to have a little brother or sister.”

“Of course she would,” Joyce said.

“Maybe the wife doesn’t want any more,” Tilly speculated.

Marion clucked her tongue and turned up her beaky nose. “Audra Valentine? It

wouldn’t surprise me, after the way her mother carried on, the poor thing probably knows nothing about mothering.”

“The grandmother raised her.”

“Of course she did. The mother ran around with every man who’d look at her. I

heard she was seeing Ben Cummings.”

“I heard John O’Connell.”

“Edgar Vanderwalt, too.”

“Stop.” Alice sucked in a deep breath. “No matter what we think about her mother or her, she’s still my son’s wife and she’s the mother of my granddaughter. Besides, I may not be very fond of the woman, but she isn’t,” she paused, reached beyond her daughter-in-law’s murky past for the proper words, “like her mother.”

“Of course not.”

“No.”

“We all know that.”

Of course, they all thought she was
exactly
like her mother, maybe worse. What kind of woman ran away with a man who was practically engaged to someone else? And took him two thousand miles away from a mother who had already lost one child? It was pure wrong and if that little hussy thought they couldn’t do the math, she could think again. Kara Rachel Wheyton pounced into the world eight months after the supposed wedding date and the only reason none of them brought it up was because they knew Alice had suffered enough and no amount of candle lighting or prayers to St. Jude would lessen her burden.

The phone rang then, piercing through their distasteful recollection of Christian’s,
ahem
, wife. Alice rose and reached for the cordless phone. “Hello.
Audra?
”

Speak of the she-devil.

“Audra?” Alice’s voice dipped. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Tilly, Joyce, and Marion fell silent. Marion glanced up from her knitting.

“What?
Oh, God, no.
” Alice’s words plummeted to a barely audible, “Dear God, please no,” seconds before the phone slipped from her fingers and crashed to the floor.

“Alice? Alice!” Tilly sprung from her chair and thrust a lanky arm around her

friend. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Alice shook her head as a fine tremble coursed through her and settled on her

shoulders. There were tears in her eyes, on her cheeks, running down her chin. Pain and agony roiled inside her chest, fighting to get out, scream what must be said, what must be put into words but would never be understood. “Christian,” she managed, sinking into a chair, shoulders slumping forward as she buried her face in her work-worn hands.

“Christian.”

Tilly, Joyce and Marion stood inches from their friend, drenched in their own

tears as they waited for her to speak, knowing what she would say, seconds before she uttered the awful, irrevocable agony of truth. “Christian’s dead.”

“I never forgave him for marrying her and leaving us. And now, it’s too late.”—

Alice Wheyton

The Wheyton house was a beige two-story lodged between a ranch and a tri-level

on Sycmaore Street. For the casual passerby, Joe Wheyton’s profession could be

evidenced in the brick and mortar surrounding the house—red brick next to the front stoop, red brick strewn in patterns of sidewalk and path leading to a backyard, where again, red brick stacked upon red brick to form a massive fire pit and patio. It was a modest home, yet comfortable enough to have raised three children here, though Rachel only lived to age eleven. They’d buried her on a frosty, winter morning and now, twenty years later, their second son would be laid alongside her.

Alice decided one day of viewing at Gilcrest Funeral Home was all she could

take. No one could expect her to go through this again—God not again—and yet, here they were. She’d refused the valium Jack brought over and flushed them down the toilet so she wouldn’t be tempted to pop all five in her mouth and be done with it.

It was the child who would get them through this. Kara was a Wheyton, from the

pale blueness of her eyes to the tiny cleft in her chin. She was only eight, but she would pull them through with her soft innocence and lopsided smile. The mother was another story. Audra Valentine. She still didn’t like to think of her as a Wheyton. The woman didn’t belong here. It didn’t matter that she was beautiful and poised, Alice saw none of that. All she saw when she looked at her was their Christian. And now he was dead.

It would be crazy to blame the woman for her son’s death, but she did blame her

for stealing years and thousands of memories they could have clung to now.
She
was the reason their son moved to California, the reason he stayed away, doling out two visits a year like a miser, and then only eight days at a time. At least Alice had squelched Audra’s plans to get a hotel. Did the woman think this was San Diego? The closest Holly Springs had to a Holiday Inn was Lonnie Larson’s four unit rental.

There would be no sleep tonight, not with the pain of her son’s death clawing at her and the constant reminder of his shocking decision nine years ago sleeping upstairs.

Alice decided on fresh air to clear her head. She flicked on the back porch light and spotted her husband sitting on the steps. “Joe?” She made her way toward him. “Why are you sitting in the dark?”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

She sank onto the steps beside him, the thin cotton of her nightgown rubbing

against his arm. “Me neither. I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep again.”

“You should have taken one of those valiums Jack left.”

“I told you, I’m too numb already.”

“He’s just trying to make it easier for you.” Joe blew out a long, thin line of

smoke from the cigarette he wasn’t supposed to be smoking.

“What are we going to do?” Her voice slipped and cracked open. “I don’t think I

can get through this again.” The softness of his T-shirt muffled her words. “It’s too much.”

Joe threw his cigarette on the ground and pulled her close. “I know.”

“Why did it have to be him?” Pain thrummed in her soul. “He was kind, and

good, and oh, God,
why
did it have to be him?”

“I don’t know.” He pulled her closer and stroked her hair.

“I talked to him three days ago. Think of that. Three days ago he was alive. And I was snippy with him because he was cutting his trip short a day to get back for a research project. I told him he never spent extra time here and two times a year was nothing.” She clutched his arm and wiped her face against his sleeve. “I said he had a responsibility to let us know our granddaughter. Oh, Joe, what did I do? How can I live with that?”

“It’s okay. The boy knew you loved him. We all loved him.”

“He was the best part of all of us and I never told him that. I never forgave him for marrying her and leaving us and now, it’s too late.”

***

coffin, far enough away to remove her from the immediate onslaught of visitors who had come to pay their respects, a steady stream of sound and movement, inching toward her, threatening to suck the air from her lungs, suffocate her with their sympathy.
We’re so
sorry...to be taken so young...an aneurysm we heard...so sorry...the poor child, Kara,
isn’t it?

Peter had wanted to come and help her through this but she’d told him, no. She

owed Christian this much, for everything he’d given her.

Christian’s Aunt Virginia sat next to her, a frosty white-haired woman with three strands of faux pearls draped around her neck and a clump of tiny ones clipped to her ears. Aunt Virginia was Joe Wheyton’s oldest sister, the matriarch of the Wheyton family, a duty passed on to her with the death of Annabelle, Virginia and Joe’s mother, twelve years before. Aunt Virginia was a retired English teacher who treated her family like her students. If there was a lesson to be learned in any given situation, then the good Lord willing, Miss Virginia Wheyton was going to teach it, not from practical experience, mind you, but from the books she’d read and the ideas she’d formulated from those books on how things should be, how life should be.

Christian had told Audra all about his Aunt Virginia, how she’d never married,

never left Holly Springs except to see Jack receive his medical degree and once, to have a breast biopsy that turned out negative. She still lived in the same house she grew up in, three blocks from St. Peter’s, the parochial school where she’d taught for four decades before retiring seven years ago.

“No mother should have to see her child in a coffin,” Aunt Virginia whispered

none too quietly. “It’s not natural.”

Audra stared at the edge of the coffin. The golden blond of Christian’s hair spilled out in smooth waves from the crown of his head. Would it still be soft, or had death stripped the texture, drained the shafts and left them stiff and coarse? She hadn’t been able to touch his hair, hadn’t been able to touch
him
, not in the casket, lying there, so unnatural, eyes closed, hands folded over his stomach. He didn’t look like he was sleeping. Anyone who knew him knew he couldn’t sleep unless he was on his stomach or curled on his side with a pillow partially covering his head. That was Christian sleeping.

This straight back, stiff hands folded thing, this was Christian looking uncomfortable, unnatural. Dead.

“There’s Pastor Richot, nice looking man he is, and a true saint if ever there was one.” Aunt Virginia sighed and nodded toward the man clasping Alice Wheyton’s hand.

Tall, with silver hair and wire-rimmed glasses, his features were kind, his demeanor approachable, as befitting a man of faith. “Too bad he’s Lutheran,” she said under her breath. “Even so, Father Benedict could learn a thing or two about humility and suffering from that man.”

Audra remembered Father Bartholomew Benedict and his insistence that no one

stand in the back of the church during Mass. More than once, he’d halted his sermon mid-sentence to summon the offenders by name to a pew. She’d never cared for the man but Grandma Lenore believed a priest stood on the right hand of God, next to good and righteousness.

“Father will come by soon enough.” Virginia Wheyton grabbed Audra’s hand and

stuffed a rosary in the middle of her palm. “Pray for your husband’s parents. They’re the ones who need the prayers, not the dead, their fate is already decided.”

Why did he have to die? Why did everyone she loved always have to die?
Not the
dead...not the dead...
The woman’s words droned in her head, sucked her back to the childhood she’d fought so hard to overcome...

Growing up Audra Valentine hadn’t been easy. She’d been conceived in the back

seat of a beat-up Chevy and dumped on her arthritic grandmother’s lap while her own mother primped and plied herself with rum and coke, or sometimes, gin, and other men’s flattery. It had all ended badly, with Corrine Valentine overdosing on valium ten days before her thirty-first birthday.

“
Audra? Audra!” Aunt Virginia’s high-pitched voice pierced her brain, pulled her back. “Did you not hear a word I said?”

“
I’m sorry. I guess I didn’t.”

“
Well, for heaven’s sake, pull yourself together and go say hello to your brother-in-law. I know it’s been years since you’ve seen Jack but give him a hug before people start thinking you hate us all.” She lifted a bony finger and pointed. “He’s the good looking one in the doorway. And the woman with him, that’s his future fiancé.”

Audra had prepared for this moment for days—no years. She knew she would

eventually have to face Jack Wheyton again. But why now, when she was weak and

vulnerable and in such pain? The truth slid out—nothing short of death would have put her in the same room with him.