The Sweet By and By (3 page)
Her
people, on the other hand . . . a dad she hadn't heard from in years, and a flower-child mother stuck in the dried-up soil of the '60s.
Jade knocked off her clogs and dug her toes into Roscoe's warm, thick fur. He sighed and kissed her ankle with a lick. Her vision of her wedding had been a handful of friends and family gathered around as she and Max pledged themselves to each other in a peaceful, solemn, simple ceremony. Jade had never imagined she'd find true love again. But Max had captured her heart.
Why should she invite the one woman who could destroy it all?
Amber hues muted the last of the Iowa blue day as the sun rounded the horizon toward the west, taking with it the last bit of warmth. An icy breeze nipped Beryl's face as she fumbled for her house keys, her arms loaded with mail and groceries, a pack of hungry dogs swirling around her feet, panting and yipping, splashing drool on her shoes.
“Willow?” That girl, where'd she run off to today? “Willl
oooow
?”
Between the doctor's appointment, the aggravating man in front of her at Prairie City Foodsâwho paid his fifty-dollar tab in quartersâand the crowding of her daughter's mangy mutts, Beryl was fresh out of straws.
Willow, please suddenly appear. Open the door. Help me inside.
Beryl's arms were starting to tremble from balancing her bags. And she craved a cigarette. Her mind's eye pictured the pack she had stashed in the back of the pantry.
Dr. Meadows had demanded she quit, but right now, he could stuff his no-smoking advice. Beryl would smoke him right along with her Virginia Slims.
“Willow!” As she stretched to slip her key into the lock, Beryl's packages crashed to the gray porch boards. Her key slipped from her fingers.
She swore and kicked at the mail. A slick ad for cheap pizza sailed over the yard. Pepper, the little Jack Russell, bounded after it, yipping and snapping.
The remaining dogs watched with heads tilted and tails wagging. “Yes, she's one of you,” Beryl said. “Embarrassing, isn't it?”
Stooping to retrieve her keys, purple and brown spots swirled before her eyes and she stumbled forward as a ringing sounded in her ears. “Mercy . . .” Beryl drew a deep breath, sitting and propping her back against the kitchen door.
Sooner or later Willow would come along. Not to check on her mother, but to feed her dogs.
Pepper returned with the pizza ad, wrinkled and frayed, sticking out both sides of her jaw. She dropped it on Beryl's lap.
“Thank you, Pepper. Now, if you could, please open the door.”
The dog sat, panting, grinning. Beryl lifted her hand to brush the pooch's head. The wind had swept away the warmth of the afternoon and a fall chill seeped beneath her skin, but Beryl couldn't motivate her old, tired bones to move. When did fifty-nine start to feel like a hundred and nine?
“Beryl, what the heck?”
Willow stood on the bottom step eating a red apple, her T-shirt askew and her hair tousled. Next to her stood Lincoln, Beryl's occasional handyman. A long, yellow piece of straw stuck out from the side of his head, and he was smiling to beat the band.
Darn it, Willow. Leave the help alone.
“Your stupid dogs knocked me over.”
“Why didn't you call me?” Willow wedged the apple between her teeth and offered her mother a hand. Lincoln steadied Beryl once she got on her feet.
“I did. But you were”âshe looked at Lincoln as she unlocked the kitchen doorâ“
busy
. How about teaching your canines a few manners?”
“I'll see what I can do.” Willow took a final bite of her apple and tossed it into the yard. “Read to them from Emily Post tonight or something.”
“Oh, please, not Emily Post.” Beryl gathered her purse and one of the grocery bags. Every joint ached. “Bring in the mail and groceries for me, Willow, please. Lincoln, how about seeing to the busted porch screens I've already paid you to repair. Maybe I can enjoy a few nights of fall before winter drives me inside.”
“I'm on it right now, Mrs. Hill.”
In the boxy, warm kitchen, Beryl dropped her things onto the red, cracked-ice Formica and chrome table, an antique from her childhood, and snatched up the teakettle. She hankered for a hot cup of sweet tea. Then a cigarette. Yes sir, tea and a cigarette.
Still outside on the porch, Willow laughed low to the rhythm of shuffling feet. Lincoln responded in a deep, muffled tone.
“I'm not paying you to make out with Willow, Linc.” Beryl called as she stuck the kettle under the faucet and cranked the water.
“Leave him alone. He's not robbing your paid time.” She dropped her armload of packages to the kitchen table. The canned beans tumbled from the plastic sack and rolled to the edge.
“Willow, please don't ding the table.” Beryl could still see Paps' face the night he brought the table home to surprise Mother. The summer of '56. Or was it '57? Elvis had been on the
Steve Allen Show
that night.
“I didn't ding the table.” Willow stacked cans in the center. “I'm going to help Lincoln.”
“He don't need your kind of help. I want my screens fixed.” Beryl fired up the burner under the kettle, thinking she'd best put the groceries away while she had the energy. Sliding the mail away from the table's edge, she reached for the bean cans. “It's not like me to tell you who to be with, Willow, but at least let him take you to dinner first.”
“Dinner? This is a fling, Mama. No big deal.” Willow swung open the pantry doors, searching. “If I let him take me on a date, he might start thinking I'm his girlfriend.”
“Heaven forbid. Does Linc know it's just a fling?” Beryl shoved Willow aside and set the cans on the middle shelf, then turned to the table for the bread, spaghetti, cereal, and two-liter of pop.
Willow shrugged, taking the pop bottle from her mother and setting it on the pantry floor. “If he doesn't, he will soon enough.”
“Do what you will, but be honest.” Beryl retrieved her favorite teacupâa gold-rimmed Lennox with holly leavesâfrom the cupboard, then stared out the window by the sink, waiting for the water to boil.
Tank Victor's harvested field ran along the hem of the fading-green backyard like a pleated, coffee-colored skirt.
This view always took her back to the summer of '67. She'd been standing by the same field when Mother agreed to let her spend the summer in San Francisco with her college-age cousin, Carolyn. Mother's reluctant yes dropped Beryl into the heart of the Summer of Love, an inaugural member of the counterculture that permanently inked her life.
“You miss it?” Willow fell against the counter next to Beryl, peeling cellophane away from a Twinkie.
“Depends. Miss what?”
“Farming.”
“No, not really. I'm not sure you can call three seasons of corn planting âfarming.' I did like driving the tractor. Actually, I was thinking about my first summer in California.”
“The year of the hippie. Paps had to drive out to San Francisco to bring you home for your senior year.” Willow stuffed half the Twinkie in her mouth and tossed the wrapper in the bin under the sink.
“So you've heard the story. Sorry to bore you.” Beryl glanced over. “How can you eat those things?”
“You were an original wild child, weren't you, Beryl?” Willow munched on the second half of the Twinkie, dusting her hands against her jeans.
“Not wild. Free. Different from Mother and Paps. They were so square-thinking and backward.”
“Compared to you, maybe, but it doesn't mean they were wrong, Beryl.”
“I thought you were going to help Lincoln.” Beryl reached for the ceramic blue canister and lifted the lid for an English Breakfast tea bag.
“You told me to leave him alone.”
“Now I want you to leave me alone.”
“I called you at work today.” Willow didn't leave but remained propped against the counter, picking at the jagged edge of her broken thumbnail. “They said you were on leave or something.”
Nosy little girl.
“I'm taking some vacation, getting some things done that I needed done.” Beryl scooped sugar into her teacup, two teaspoons tonight instead of oneâhot tea was no good unless it was sweetâand resituated the ancient art deco napkin holder Mother owned when Eisenhower was a mere general.
“What things?” Willow opened the kitchen's junk drawer and picked around the pens, pencils, bread ties, glue, safety pins, and what all.
She was fishing in the pond of none-of-her-business. “I'm a senior teamster, Willow, and your motherâeven if you do call me Berylâand I don't have to answer to you.” The kettle started a slow steam. “What are you looking for in that drawer?”
“A nail file.”
Beryl stepped beside Willow and dug to the back of the junk. “Here.” She cut the air with a well-worn but sufficient emery board. “Ask Lincoln to chop some wood before he goes home tonight. I might like a fire.” Lately, she craved the simple, homey things she'd once found confining and antiquated.
“Yeah, okay.” Willow filed her nail and dropped the board back into the drawer, then reached for the mail. “Is everything okay, Beryl? You seem edgy these days. More than usual.”
“I'm fine.” Beryl snapped off the burner under the kettle and filled her cup.
“Can't a woman take a few days off without the third degree? My starsâ”
“Whoa, she
actually
sent it.”
“Whoa, what?” Beryl stirred as she carried her cup to the table, her rattled nerves calming. She didn't want Willow to know. Not yet. There was time.
Standing by the table, Willow stared at a ridiculously red envelope. “Good for her.”
“Good for who, girl? What are you yammering about? Is that a Christmas card already? It's only the first of October.”
“Uh, I'm going to see if Lincoln is ready for dinner.” Willow tossed the envelope to the table. It landed in front of Beryl.
“Dinner? He just started working.” Beryl slid the chair away from the table and angled to sit down, reading her name inked in gold across the front of the plush linen envelope. “And wouldn't that be like a
date
?” Lincoln's music drifted through the house as the front door squeaked open.
The kitchen light faded as evening shoved the sun westward around the curve of the earth and Beryl inspected the suspicious letter. Sipping her tea, she turned the invitation over.
Jade Fitzgerald.
Her fingers let go.
Don't it just figure
.
“Well? Aren't you going to open it?” Willow had returned and stood in the doorway.
“She's getting married, isn't she?” Beryl gripped her teacup to steady her trembling hands.
“November fourteenth.” Willow opened the silverware drawer before sitting in the red-ice and chrome chair across from Beryl. She slit open the invitation with a butter knife.
“Haven't heard from her in three years, and the first I do, it's this.” Beryl slid the invitation free and stared at the embossed script.
“Last I looked, your dialing finger wasn't broken.”
Jade Freedom Fitzgerald and Maxwell Charles Benson along with Mr. and Mrs. Rebel Benson . . .
“Have you met him?”
“At Christmas.”
“And?” Beryl didn't expect to read her name on the invitation, so the sting of disappointment surprised her.
“He's great, sweet, charming, good-looking. Seems to really love Jade.” Beryl's youngest child shuffled the salt and pepper shakers between her hands. “He's a lawyer.”
Beryl peered up from the five-by-seven card. “You're kidding.”
“His family's firm has been around, like, seventy years. Full of Southern charm and good-ol'-boy power.”
“So she found a man like her father after all. My efforts wasted.” Beryl clicked her tongue against her teeth.
“Some effort,” Willow scoffed. “All two ounces of it.”
Let her be. She had a right to speak her mind. Even if she had no idea what she was talking about.
. . . cordially invite you to stand in witness as they exchange marriage vows Saturday, November 14, 6:00 p.m. First Baptist Congregation Church, Whisper Hollow, Tennessee. Black tie required.
“Fancy wedding, I see. Black tie.” Beryl tucked the heavy card back into the envelope and laid it on the table with a pat of her palm. “How long have you known?”
“Six months. I'm her maid of honor.”
“Does she really want me to come?”
Willow shrugged. “She mailed it, didn't she?”
“Someone did.” Probably not Jade, if history was any indication. Beryl sipped from her teacup. “Were you going to go without telling me?”
“No . . . well, actually . . .” Willow eased back, hooking her elbows over the top of her chair. “If she didn't tell you, yes. I've never understood what's between you two, and I'm not going to get in the middle.”
“She's never said?”
“Neither have you.”
Beryl set her cup in the saucer and pushed it away. The tea had already cooled beyond her liking. “Why don't you and Lincoln run down to the Dairy Queen for dinner? Bring me a small chocolate shake.”
“That's it? All you have to say?” Willow rose from the table, sliding the chair underneath. “Bring me a chocolate shake?”
“Remember, a small shake. A medium is too much.” She got up and headed for the kitchen staircase. “Do you need money?”
“No, no . . .” Willow patted her jeans pockets. “Beryl, you okay?”
“I thought you wanted to go to dinner. Get going.” Beryl climbed the back staircase to her room as Willow's “Dinner break, cowboy” resounded through the house.
Gripping the faded quilt draped over her bed, Beryl knelt to the floor and peered underneath. Between the dust bunnies and storage bins she spotted the old sewing box stuffed with pictures, her old memories rising and etching the fiber of her soul.
