Asked For (16 page)

“Jeanie?” Lana pulled back from the hug, wiped loose strands of hair from her face, and looked…looked at a beautiful young woman who resembled her childhood friend. “Jeanie? Is that you?”

Jeanie was no longer plain, a simple curly-headed best friend from childhood. Jeanie had rounded out perfectly, and her hair made handsome circlets around her face, shiny twists and bends that framed her striking features. Jeanie’s eyes, her nose, her cheeks, all fine enough on their own, were accented by a hint of powder, a little rouge, a dark line along the eyes that made them look even larger. She was lovely. Lovely like Lana had never been, never would have been, even if she hadn’t married so young and borne five children one right after the other.

“You’re gorgeous,” Lana whispered.

“And look at you!” Jeanie squealed.

“She’s a sight for sore eyes, isn’t she?”

Lana stepped away from Jeanie’s clutch. Him. That’s who Magdalena meant. There he was—Jim—strolling toward Jeanie, and grinning. Lana felt her cheeks fire crimson. She was anything but a sight for sore eyes. She was at her worst, she always was when Jim appeared, but now noticeably worse as she stood next to Jeanie. The wind caught Lana’s hair and blew it across her face. She shouldn’t have left it loose when she followed Magdalena outside. She shouldn’t have been measuring herself against Cletus’ first wife. She swept her hair aside with one hand and tugged at her baggy dress with the other. She noticed that Jeanie’s dress fit. It was faded like Lana’s, but it accentuated the sort of shape Lana envied and lacked.

“Jim.” She blushed even more. It was all she could think to say. He stood looking at her, his easy grin warming the places she was cold, drawing her back to Grandma’s barn, her cow, the happy times Lana had spent there with him. And sometimes Jeanie.

“You look good,” he said.

She shook her head, the blush flushing warmer. Jeanie looked good, not her. Magdalena kicked up a gallop around Jim. Around and around she went, Harold and Alex joining in her train. Jim grinned, but his eyes stayed with Lana. She looked back at him, his content grin, the warmth of his eyes. He would make a fine prince when he finally asked someone to ride away with him someday. It must be Jeanie. Sadly, it wouldn’t be Magdalena.

“You look good like a wife,” Jeanie said with a happy laugh. “Your grandma tells me all about you every time she gets a letter. Why don’t you write me?”

Because you were sweet on Jim. I couldn’t… I was being a wife, a good wife so my children would fare well, so my husband would take care of us.
“I’ve been busy,” Lana said. She watched Magdalena hem Jim in with a circuit. Lana looked up at Jeanie, at the faint shade of blue above her eyes she hadn’t noticed before, the soft tinge of pink on her lips.
I’ve been being a good wife to my husband so he’d be a good father. Maybe even love these girls someday. I’ve been doing what I’m supposed to.

“Well, if you have time to write her, you can write me, too.” Jeanie latched onto Lana’s arm and dragged her to where Jim stood. Magdalena and the boys swung wider and included Jeanie and Lana in their laps, pinning the three of them into one circle.

“Were you going somewhere when you stopped?” Lana asked, stepping back to widen her children’s circle.

“Here!” Jeanie laughed. “I’ve been begging Jim to bring me ever since he came with your grandma. He was always too busy or had some other excuse. Finally I told him I wouldn’t take no for an answer anymore, so here we are!”

Lana tried to laugh with Jeanie. She wanted to steal a glance at Jim, see if she could decipher his excuse for refusing their friend, while Jeanie prattled on, words stringing together in an endless gaiety. Lana wondered if she used to laugh like Jeanie, happy and easy. If she had, she’d forgotten how.

Jeanie kept her hold on Lana’s arm and grabbed Jim’s with her other, then swung them toward the house. “Invite us in. I want to know everything you’ve been doing as a wife and what it was like to be a bride. Everything.”

Lana pressed her lips into a thin line. She didn’t look at Jeanie as they marched forward to the house. She couldn’t look at Jim. Wasn’t it obvious she’d never been a bride and was failing as a wife? With her free hand she gathered her loose hair and laid it over one shoulder. She hated to wish her childhood friends to be gone, but she did. Cletus would be furious that Jim was here, and he’d never be comfortable around someone like Jeanie.

Magdalena galloped ahead. She turned just inside the door and waited, her eyes on Jim as he came through behind her. The thrum of Magdalena’s rapid little hoof beats hammered in Lana’s mind. She didn’t want her daughter to be that way, a girl who felt she needed to wrangle love and attention from whomever she could since she couldn’t wrangle it from her father. Jim was wonderful; he would make a good prince. But not every man who came along in Magdalena’s life would be that way.
I must be a good wife. Give my husband more sons, make him happy, for Magdalena’s sake, for our other children’s sakes.

****

It was Jim who helped Lana make the supper and fill the dishes for the table, while Jeanie stayed in the next room and rattled on and on to Cletus about her and Lana’s childhood. In one hour Jeanie had filled their house with more words than the seven of them had in all the years they’d lived here together. Lana kept one eye on the two of them from the kitchen, watching for that look Cletus got before he exploded. Cletus’ silence had no effect on Jeanie’s gaiety. Either her zest for life was more powerful than his stoniness, or her sensitivity to rebuff was more blind. Whatever it was, Jeanie was comfortable. There was no fear in her eyes, no thought that Cletus, or Jim, would be anywhere but there, listening to her, letting her ramble on as freely and gaily as she pleased.

“She does go on, doesn’t she?” Jim asked. He leaned against the block table in the center of the kitchen. He grinned and watched Lana mound mashed potatoes into a bowl. “Butter on that?” he asked. He stepped near the washpan and grabbed a bowl of fresh butter, as if he’d been doing this with her for years. Lana glanced again toward the dining room table, where Jeanie pinned Cletus with her unending monologue.

“Yes on both counts.” Lana smiled. “But I thought you liked that. Jeanie, that is.” She watched him spoon a glob of butter out of the dish. It felt good to work alongside Jim again. She liked to smile. It may have been the first time she’d done it while cooking or serving a meal as Cletus’ wife. She glanced at the kitchen doorway, worrying Cletus had seen. He would be suspicious of her and Jim’s gaiety, but he was focused on Jeanie, not paying attention while Lana and Jim were in the kitchen. It was only at the moments they stepped through the door with something else for the table that his focus switched. He would stare at Jim then, follow him with his eyes while Jeanie plowed on, oblivious to the shift in attention.

“I don’t know if I can live with that,” Jim said. He lowered his voice, and kept his back to the kitchen door. “That constant talking.”

Lana frowned as she watched him spoon the butter onto the potatoes. “But I thought…”

He looked up the same moment she did, the boy that had been her friend way back then, now a man who still fit so naturally beside her. They worked well together, he for pay, she because she had to. Just like always.

Jeanie droned on in the other room, her words like droplets in a river, meshing into one solid, powerful force that couldn’t be stopped. Lana listened to the background hum of her childhood best friend, then glanced toward the doorway the monologue streamed through. She looked back at Jim, the friend who’d spent so many of his evenings helping her…or not helping her, as Grandma used to insist…just like he was doing now.

“I’m quiet,” he said. “I like quiet people.” His eyes held such intensity they touched her, and she felt them, like a warm attentive clasp that held onto a friend. It looked familiar. It felt familiar. He’d done this before, when they were growing up.

Jim was waiting for her to respond, to say something that would help him. It was her turn to do something for him, to be that friend back. When she said nothing, he went on. “I always saw myself with…you know, with…someone like…”

She lifted the bowl of potatoes and extended it to him, the pool of melted butter sloshing against the rim of the small pond he’d made in the top. He wrapped his fingers around half the bowl, but he didn’t take it. His fingertips touched hers, a contact that said he wanted an answer, needed something so he could go on.

“I always saw myself with you, Lana. I never said it. I wish I had, but I had no idea you’d be taken away so young, and without you telling me first. Now I’m trying to see myself with someone else, with someone different, and it’s hard. It’s easier to at least imagine them like you, exactly like you, since it can’t be you.”

Lana’s heart raced. It ran like Magdalena’s pretend pony, but it was galloping away, not alongside Jim like he’d always thought would happen. “I…I had no idea.”

“Lana, we were kids then, and in some ways you still are.”

“I’m not. I’m far from a child. Just look at my life, my family, all I do…” It sounded like she was arguing, but she felt like crying. They came from somewhere deep inside, tears that simmered like a molten ache.

“I’m talking about the inside you, not the outside. The part that never had the chance to learn about being loved…no matter what.”

The scream bubbled up. She didn’t want it, not now, not ever. She shook her head, shook it hard until she saw what she’d been unable to see before. “You knew,” she said. “You knew about my father…that I really didn’t have…”

“Your grandma told me. Way back when, when I first started coming around to help you. She didn’t want you to be hurt by some careless remark, or taken advantage of, so she told me. I was careful with you after that, I was slow. Whoever your father was, I grew to despise him. He’s the only man I’ve ever imagined punching in the mouth.” The bowl left her hands then. Jim took it, slipped to the other room, and carried it to the table where Cletus sat. Lana’s hands hung in midair, a half moon of warmth that was slow to radiate away.

Jeanie’s flow of verbiage changed. It took on an extra trill when Jim entered the room. Magdalena’s little gallop revived, and Cletus hollered for her to settle down. Lana listened to the life in there that she was a part of, a part more detached than she realized. “I didn’t know how…” The interactions in the next room made familiar noises while she breathed, thought who she was, who she was supposed to be.

She lifted a platter of meat and followed Jim. She was alone, an alone she’d always been but had been unaware of. She walked to the opposite side of the table from where he stood, and set the platter far away from the potatoes.

“Oh, how good this all looks and smells.” Jeanie made over the meal. Jim stayed where he was, Magdalena near his side. Lana looked at Cletus. His glare left his oldest daughter and transferred to Lana, then to Jim. Jeanie’s enthusiasm became background noise again, with Cletus’ stare much more distinctive and loud, but not as loud as Lana’s heart.

“Let’s eat.” Lana forced her way into Jeanie’s flow of conversation. She gathered her children, brought the oldest to stand behind their chairs, then showed Jeanie and Jim theirs, putting them side by side before she came to stand behind her own.

Cletus never rose. His eyes were on Jim, then Lana. He grunted. Lana and the children sat. Jim and Jeanie followed suit.

“How formal,” Jeanie cooed. “I love it!”

Cletus stared at Lana’s friend as if he were seeing her for the first time. Lana prayed Cletus would just fill his plate and let Jeanie’s comment pass.

“You really are the man of the house. I like that!” Jeanie smiled at Cletus. Lana stared from a cloud that wouldn’t go away. She was watching her husband, this man she was wed to but had never smiled at the way her friend did. How did Jeanie do it? How did Jeanie know?

Jeanie’s glow cast a radiant reflection on Cletus’ face. His usual stoic demeanor was lost in its sheen, his guard softened in its warmth. Jeanie’s flattery became infectious, her warmth thawing his icy hardness. Lana watched Cletus’ eyes stay on Jeanie as he groped for the bowl of corn. His fingers found it, and he dragged it to his plate. He started to ladle a spoonful for himself, but he stopped, spoon midair, and then he laid it back in the dish and extended the bowl to Jeanie.

“And a gentleman, too,” she cooed again, rewarding him. “Thank you.”

It was like watching a play she was supposed to be in but didn’t know her part. Lana studied her childhood friend handling her husband. Jeanie knew about men because she had brothers, brothers-in-law, and most of all a father. Cletus said nothing. He didn’t smile, he didn’t blush, he didn’t nod, he merely reached for the next nearest dish and served himself a roll, then passed it on. A new look lit his face, not the kind that turned stony, the kind Lana elicited from him. This one was the kind Lana’d always wanted to see. Just not this way. Not when he was looking at someone else.

“Lana, this meal is wonderful! I didn’t realize what a good cook you were.” Jeanie smiled, a genuine smile, a genuine compliment. Lana knew she should reply, thank Jeanie, but she was frozen, nothing would come out.

Jeanie turned to Jim, her face all alight, and she placed one hand, long slender fingers, on his arm. “Don’t you admire the way Lana’s husband takes charge of their house? Yet he’s so considerate, too. And isn’t Lana the perfect wife? Doesn’t it just do something to you?”

Jim nodded. He took a bite of corn.

“Now, you eat well, dear Jim,” Jeanie continued. “It’s a long drive home tonight. But I know you can do it. You’re strong too.” She squeezed his arm.

The room shifted away, everyone tumbling Jeanie’s direction. Cletus stopped chewing and stared at Jeanie’s hand. Even Jim. He continued to work the corn in his mouth, but he stared at Jeanie’s fingers where they wrapped around his arm. Magdalena scooted her chair nearer Jim’s, her face contorting into a scowl as she glared at Jeanie’s hand. Lana’s other children were entranced by the strange jauntiness and conversation at their table. They watched her old friend, their food barely touched.