Forever Friends (10 page)

“O. T. went off to the war like all the men did. My brother Jolly didn't go because of something, I can't remember now, and, well, I was too young. We stayed on the farm and worked, and O. T. wrote us letters from all the places where he fought, and Jean would read them to me. She was like a big sister, but she worked as hard as any of us boys did.” Dick smiled, thinking about how strong and capable the young woman was.

“A couple of years later, O. T. came home. They stayed with us for a while, and then they built their own place; and they seemed happy.”

He paused, remembering the days from his past when family was everything to him. “I thought they were happy,” he added.

“Years went by and finally Jean got pregnant. She really wanted a baby. They had been trying for a long time. O. T. seemed pleased.” He thought about how his brother had called him with the news. Dick had been out of town, gone to a training session to be a funeral director. He remembered being surprised that O. T. had found out where he was staying.

He remembered how later they made a nursery, how O. T. built all the furniture and how they painted it yellow since they didn't know if it was a boy or a girl.

“Just before it was time something happened.” Dick's voice cracked. “The baby died.” He cleared his throat. “Before the little girl was born, she died inside Jean.”

Beatrice was surprised to see the tear in her husband's eye.

He went on. “And it was bad for a while, harder on them than anybody imagined.”

Beatrice dropped her head at this point, seeming a little sorry that she had demanded her husband speak of his family's private pain.

“People just didn't talk about babies dying back then. It was considered a private matter, and nobody ever asked any questions about that sort of thing.” Dick continued to tell the story unhaltingly, as if it had been his idea to share it in the first place.

“O. T. mentioned it a time or two when we'd be together, that he worried because he wasn't sure Jean had dealt with the passing. He said she still kept the baby clothes and wouldn't talk about trying to have another child, that she had become withdrawn and didn't seem to care about anything.” Dick paused, remembering the conversations.

“But then he'd soon change the subject and we'd talk about other things and I never thought much about it. I just assumed they would figure out how to put the past behind them and go on with their lives, the way all of us did in those days. I just assumed it was all going to be all right.”

Beatrice slid her hands into the pockets of her sweatpants. She moved from side to side, steadying herself in her stance,
feeling pity for her husband, who had never understood the quiet ways some people suffer.

“I guess it was much worse than anybody knew.” He faced his wife like he thought she might answer. “Looking back now, I think maybe I should have been there for him more. I should have paid more attention to things, helped him and Jean out.”

Beatrice did not respond.

“What I'm trying to say is that the marriage and the war and the baby, it was all a lot harder on Jean.” Dick scratched his cheek and then rubbed his fingers across his eyes. “And O. T.,” he added, “than anybody knew.”

His brother had quit calling during that year after the death and he was never at home. Dick remembered how he thought something was wrong, something had changed, but he had never mentioned it. “I guess it just never got dealt with.”

Beatrice nodded in sympathy.

“Anyway, he's not doing so well these days.” Dick held out his right hand in front of him and appeared to study it, turning it from the front to the back.

Beatrice understood that her brother-in-law's condition had worsened in the last few months, but she wasn't following Dick's line of thinking. She didn't see the connection between the baby's death that happened decades ago and his present deteriorating health.

“And Jean, well, she's just having trouble with some things right now,” Dick continued.

Beatrice didn't ask for an explanation since she assumed her husband still had more story to tell.

Dick hesitated at this point, then faced his wife. “There's a young woman who's been visiting him at the nursing home.” Dick put his hand down on the arm of the chair. “A young woman Jean doesn't know.”

Beatrice raised an eyebrow. Things weren't becoming clear, she thought, but at least they were becoming more interesting.

“Jean says the woman claims to be his daughter.” Dick stopped and picked up his glasses. He folded them and stuck them in his shirt pocket.

Beatrice considered the shock of such news for a woman. She wondered how it must have been for Jean to discover such a thing about her husband.

“O. T., of course, doesn't recognize the woman, so he can't answer any questions, and Jean, well, she's just trying to figure things out.” He remembered the phone call he had gotten when she first told him the news. “So, she asked me a month or so ago to help her sort through the legal situation now that this woman has shown up.”

Beatrice dropped her eyes away from her husband. In the time of her silence, while respecting her husband's privacy, she had imagined all sorts of situations. She thought there could be financial concerns, that Jean couldn't pay the bills, that O. T. had spent all their money in one of his periods of confusion before he was institutionalized. She imagined that Jean was having family troubles or her own health
problems or even that she was lonely and Dick was comforting her.

Beatrice had never considered that her husband, brother to a hero, was forced to face the disappointing knowledge that the person he had adored and worshiped for so long was not the immortal entity that he had set him up to be. O. T. was just a man, and he had made a mistake twenty years ago or more and fathered a child outside of his marriage. Beatrice wondered who was taking the news the hardest, O. T.'s wife or his brother.

She knelt down in front of her husband and lay her head in his lap. She tried to imagine what Jean was feeling, the betrayal of so long ago suddenly forced to the surface. She thought about O. T., a man confined to a bed in a strange place, confused and unforgiven, unable to explain what had happened. She thought about the young woman, boldly appearing at the doorstep of a father she had never known. She considered Dick and how he troubled himself into thinking he could have altered history, that he believed if he had been more of a brother to O. T., then perhaps he wouldn't have turned to somebody else, somebody who got pregnant. Finally, Beatrice began to understand the weight of knowing more than a person wanted to know.

She sat that way, kneeling before her husband, her arms wrapped around his waist, while dusk faded into darkness. She stayed in that position for almost an hour, just holding him, just thanking him for letting her know what had happened.

Before she finally stretched her legs and got up, before they changed the subject and talked of simpler things, before the lamp with the automatic switch turned on and gave light to the dark room, she wanted to tell her husband that what had happened to his brother really wasn't such a big deal, that it was Jean's problem and that he had no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed about it, that he couldn't have kept his brother from making the choices he made. She wanted to say that he had no reason to feel as if he couldn't talk about what had occurred, that people make mistakes and that O. T. was just like everybody else.

She wanted to say that Jean would work things out for herself, that she could manage this unfortunate situation on her own. But she didn't. Because sitting there near him, watching him sort through the disappointment and surprise of a brother's frailty, watching him struggle with how to help his sister-in-law, watching him think he was somehow responsible, she now understood that secrets are held for all sorts of reasons. A person doesn't always know why they can't speak of certain things.

They did not talk about it again that night. They completed a few tasks, read, paid a couple of bills, and finally separated to their bathrooms. They changed for bed, turned off the light, got into bed, and said good-night.

When they lay in the bed, Beatrice backed herself into her husband and, reaching behind her, pulled his arm around her, falling asleep with the gentle and regular puffs of his breath warming her neck.

When she got up to take her walk in the morning, he was still asleep, so she didn't wake him. She left the bed, the room, and the house quietly, and when she returned, he was gone. To his office, she supposed but considered that perhaps he had taken off to check on Jean.

“A secret's a funny thing,” Beatrice said to herself as she sat at the table thinking about O. T. and Jean and the past that had revisited them. “A person can run away from lots of things, but the truth will always chase you down.”

She sat for a minute and thought about calling Louise and telling her what she had learned. She wondered if she should talk to Margaret or maybe even Charlotte, but then she remembered how it was finally to hear and possess a secret, how long she had waited to have one of her own.

And now, suddenly, she realized that keeping a secret was harder than she had imagined, weightier, like a long and heavy board balanced across her shoulders. It was easier to carry than guilt or anger, but it was still, by itself, a difficult thing to maintain.

She remembered her talk with her friend and how Louise had told her that having secrets was usually not a good thing and that she should think of herself as lucky that she didn't have any. She remembered how the words had stung like a woman evicted from her home having to hear somebody complain about housework.

It had seemed condescending and patronizing, and it had angered Beatrice. But now, now that she had a secret, now that she understood her husband's need for silence and the
lumbering nature of carrying a brother's burden, now that he had shared with her the real reason for his distraction and the sudden need to be gone, she realized that a secret was not such a lovely thing to have.

She was content, in a way, now that she knew, relieved that she didn't have to guess about it anymore, pleased that Dick had trusted her enough to tell her. But now knowing that Jean was having to face more than just her husband's imminent death and that Dick was having to deal with his hero's past mistakes, Beatrice wasn't sure that knowing the secret made her feel any better.

She reached out for Jessie's postcard again and placed it on the table before her. With her right index finger, she outlined the lioness and the cubs and the tree. Using small, delicate movements like an artist, she painted herself into the photograph of a mother and her babies, a family of creatures from God's own hand, and pondered the weight of betrayal and the sudden outing of truth.

“I guess having a secret is a bit like having your picture taken,” Beatrice said out loud as if somebody was listening, “every one you keep or tell steals a little of your soul.”

She put the card on top of the pile of mail, got up from the table, and slowly, like a woman suddenly grown old and wise, went back to the bathroom to take a shower.

Y
ou need to come to the church.” That was all the voice on the other end of the phone said. Charlotte was still asleep when the call came in. She stumbled a bit with her reply. She felt herself being pulled away from a bus.

“Who is this?” she asked as she sat up in her bed, reaching for the clock. It was 7:15
A.M
., Monday, her day off. She
remained unclear, the dream of the bus and the strange old woman starting to pass beyond the edges of her mind.

It had been about her father again; this much she knew. He had been a player in her dreams at least once a week for the past few months. Sometimes his role carried the entire story, and sometimes he was just a bit actor, a face in a crowd, an unobtrusive presence in an otherwise crowded scene. But he had been always present and always a man bigger than life, his large size always noticeable.

For years she had nothing of him in her nighttime fantasies. Even when there were dreams of her mother and Serena, he was missing, unaccounted for, never represented. And when she woke and remembered the emotions of seeing her dead sister or encountering the blocked memories of her alcoholic mother, the daughter did not even miss her father, barely noticed his familial absence. But now, in the past year, in the months of structured therapy, he had suddenly emerged, a force with which to reckon, a memory to be recalled.

Marion had encouraged her to record the dreams, claiming that they bore important information about her relationship with her dad and the unfinished business of what they did and did not have. Charlotte agreed that these new dreams held clues of how she really felt, what she honestly remembered, but she had discovered that recording them was a difficult task to perform.

It was something she had to do just after waking because if she didn't jot the dream down right away, it quickly
slipped out of her memory and was gone, just as if it had never happened. She'd feel a sense of having been visited, having almost remembered things, but if she didn't wake up and reach for a pad and paper to list the contents of the dream, she could hardly recall its existence. It was as if there was a part of herself that preferred them to stay shrouded in darkness, unleashed only in sleep.

She turned and saw the journal next to the phone and considered putting the caller on hold just so she could write down the dream she now clearly remembered but that would probably be gone in a few minutes. She was unsure what to do.

“Is this Charlotte Stewart?”

She did not reach for the book. “Yes,” she answered, the images already starting to fade.

The dreams were merely images at first, a string of pictures flashing before her like pearls on a necklace. One by one they emerged, scenes from her childhood frozen and captured, long ago forgotten. The family sitting around the table at mealtime, the birthday cake placed before her sister's shining eyes, the group posed in song; the two of them, father and daughter, standing in front of an old car, the little girl shielding her eyes from the sun. Images of lost memories that were now beginning to tell stories as she slept.

Mostly when the dreams stretched into more than just flashbacks, they would be pieces of anticipatory events, slices of a life bent in waiting but squeezed into distraction. Sometimes in her dream she would be expecting news, confirmation
of a proposal or arrangement, and other times she was waiting for a person to emerge, someone to meet her, an angel unveiled, or perhaps she herself was preparing to travel. She was, however, never able to receive the thing or the person for whom she waited, never able to leave, because there always seemed to be some task to complete, some activity in which to participate. And apparently, because of the distraction or activity, she had never, in the four or five weeks in which the images had turned into scenes or stories, ultimately found or uncovered or had revealed to her the thing for which she had waited. It had become a pattern of unfulfillment, and she was beginning to sense that her subconscious was simply mirroring for her what she knew all too clearly. The desire of her heart, the immeasurable longing, could never be satisfied.

In this dream, Charlotte remembered as she held the phone next to her ear, she is at a bus stop. She waits with a duffel bag filled with heavy items. She is not burdened by what she carries, but she is impeded by the weight and the awkwardness of having to balance the bag and its contents upon her back. There are others waiting with her, a couple of men, more women, some with bags and suitcases and some with nothing in their hands.

When the bus arrives and the door opens, everyone moves toward the front. Charlotte, as she peers through the windows of the bus, notices that it is her father driving. He is young and big, tall, the way she remembers him from early photographs and first recollections. He sits, filling up the entire driver's seat, his right hand on the door lever, his left on
the large black steering wheel. They are big hands, hands of a working man, tan and callused. He never looks at the passengers, never sees his daughter. He doesn't seem perturbed or unhappy, just focused on the task at hand.

Charlotte feels nothing for her father, not surprise or anger or pleasure, and as the other people begin to get on board, Charlotte turns to see a lady sitting in front of the bus, on the bench. She is an old white woman with gnarled hands, small and bony, hardly the size of an adult. She wears a blue scarf on her head, and her clothes are wrinkled and unkempt. She seems, however, unbothered by how she appears and is polishing a silver candlestick like the kind at church, the tall ones that stand on the altar in the center of the chancel.

Charlotte is struck by the gleaming silver, the tarnish lifted and the shine reflecting in the light of the sun. And as in all the other dreams where she is pulled away from the task at hand, she is torn between staying at the bus stop and asking the woman to polish the items in her duffel bag and doing what is apparently intended and getting on board. Her father patiently waits as the other people hurry by her and step onto the bus. The young pastor is just opening her bag, the bus door still ajar, when the phone call interrupted her sleep and her dream.

“It's Grady, Charlotte,” the voice not at all apologetic for waking the minister.

Charlotte cleared her throat, trying to pay attention to the conversation someone was seeking to have with her and
trying to push the dream aside without forgetting it. She watched powerlessly as the pictures fled her mind. Grady Marks, she remembered, the deacon chairman, the lay leader of the church.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

“I think somebody broke into your office. The door was standing open. I came by to check on the heat because I wasn't sure it got turned off yesterday, and I noticed that it wasn't shut and locked.” He waited to see if Charlotte was still listening.

“Did you call the police?” She got out of bed.

“No,” he answered. “I thought I'd talk to you first.”

Charlotte was surprised that he had not taken matters into his own hands, something the church leader was known to do, and called his buddies at the sheriff's office before he had contacted her. She knew that it was unlike him, and she wasn't sure whether this was a good sign or a bad one.

“I'll be right there.” She hung up the phone and threw on some clothes and walked over to the church.

It took only a few minutes since the parsonage was next door. When she came in, Grady was sitting in the choir room, just across the hall from the pastor's office. When the door shut behind her, she heard his chair slide across the floor and he met her in the entryway.

“Did you go in?” she asked as she pushed the office door open.

He nodded his head and followed her as she walked in. “I
didn't touch anything, though, and I called you because you'd know better than anyone what was missing out of here.”

She turned on the lights and looked around.

At first sight, nothing appeared to be out of place. Her desk was just like it was when she left yesterday after the worship service. The remaining bulletins were on the shelf by the door going into the outer office, and the communion set was exactly where she had placed it, on the corner of the small table positioned next to the window. The drawers of her desk were not open, and the phone and answering machine were in their usual places.

She moved her eyes slowly and attentively across the room. The plants were there; the curtains were still hanging; the bookends and the books had not been taken.

Grady walked into the other office. He switched on the light and checked the other door.

Charlotte continued taking inventory of the things in her office, noting that her pictures remained on the wall, supplies were on the desk, the clock was keeping the right time. She slowly paid attention to everything in the room, examining from side to side, up to down; and as she stopped to focus on the area around her chair she noticed that the CD player was missing.

She walked around the desk and scanned the area near the trash can. Grady came back to where Charlotte was. He stood just in the doorway that separated the pastor's office from the other room.

He watched her for a minute and then asked, “Anything gone?”

Charlotte didn't want to report the missing item just yet. She wasn't sure it was in fact missing and decided instead to hear what else the church member obviously wanted to say.

He seemed convinced there had been a break-in.

He waited, and when his pastor didn't respond, he glanced into the office behind him and then out the window next to Charlotte's desk and then without hesitation said, “I see that Vastine and Peggy's grandson is staying with them.”

Charlotte faced the deacon. Suddenly she understood the reason for his concern and the early-morning call. She figured she'd play along. “He's been home two weeks. He was at church yesterday.”

She waited to hear more of the older man's implications.

“Yeah, I saw him standing around here before service.” Grady leaned against the frame of the door. He was wearing navy pants with a jacket that matched, a uniform for work, his name stitched in red and white just over a left breast pocket. A ball cap covered most of his forehead, and he lifted the brim a bit so that he could stare at his pastor eye-to-eye.

Charlotte didn't respond.

Grady threw his left leg across his right one. “He was in jail, is what I heard.”

Charlotte was still quiet. She knew that the teenager's story would be shared among the church members, and she hadn't been sure how they would react. With such a lack of subtlety in Grady's conversation, she felt a sinking
in her stomach at what had apparently already been discussed.

He folded his arms across his chest, heavy and dramatic, like he was lodging a complaint. “We have a history with that boy,” is how he said it.

“A history?” Charlotte asked. She pushed her chair away from the desk a bit without losing eye contact with her parishioner.

“He stole some things from us the last time he stayed with Vastine and Peggy.”

Charlotte rested her hands on the arms of her chair; she tried not to take a defensive position. She looked around some more, still trying to locate the CD player. She raised her eyebrows, waiting for more of the story that he seemed willing to tell.

“And he was how old then?” she asked innocently.

“Eight or nine, I don't remember,” he replied.

“I heard he was more like six or seven.” Charlotte remembered what Peggy had told her and corrected Grady in hopes that, once he was reminded of Lamont's young age when he was in Hope Springs before, reason might cast aside his unproved ideas of blame.

“Well, I don't recall how old he was; I just know that we had trouble then and now he's back and—”

Charlotte didn't let him finish. “And we have trouble now?” She phrased it in a question. “Grady, I don't see that anything is missing. I probably just didn't lock the door.”

The deacon had a toothpick in his teeth, and he pushed it from one side of his mouth to the other.

“Does everything appear all right in the other office?” Charlotte remained at her desk.

Grady nodded, the toothpick still twirling between his teeth.

“Then I don't think we've got a problem.” She paused. “Do we?”

The older man shook his head and studied his pastor. Charlotte could tell that he was contemplating saying more. She braced herself for what was coming.

“Well, the other men and I talked about it, and we agreed that somebody should keep an eye on him.” He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket. His name lifted off his chest.

Charlotte felt herself turn red. Not only had there been discussion about Lamont's return to the community; a decision had been made about how he would be treated.

As his words settled upon the young minister, Charlotte realized that once again she had underestimated the malice and the harm that can be done in a church. She understood that Peggy's embarrassment and shame had as much to do with the reactions of her community to her grandson's criminal activities as they did with her serious considerations that she had been at fault. The DuVaughns had never spoken of their burden or concerns about Lamont because the Hope Springs church members had already made it clear that they would never welcome the boy back into their midst.

Charlotte felt a tightening in the back of her throat.

“Grady,” she said as calmly as she could, “the DuVaughns
have their grandson staying with them because Peggy needs some help taking care of Vastine. Lamont was kind enough to move in with them and look after his grandfather.” She sat straight up, rigid and undeterred. “You and I have been through a lot together,” she added.