Forever Friends (6 page)

When he was gone Charlotte asked, “Are you all right?”

The older woman shook her head and then turned away. “I just got a bad feeling about something,” she said.

The young pastor studied her parishioner, who was also her friend, unsure of what to say about her premonition. This trip meant so much to Jessie; she had planned and saved for so long. She was excited when she and James first decided to go. She had never mentioned any concern up until now, the day before her departure.

It was unlike Jessie to be worried. This anxiety was out of character for the otherwise unwavering and sensible woman. Jessie had always been the kind of person who made her decisions and then followed through, no regrets, no doubts. This hesitation, this possible change of mind, perplexed the young minister, and she wasn't sure how to respond.

“Here, you're going to need this,” James said as he returned to the room and stood next to the two women. He held open Charlotte's coat for her to slip on. “Especially with that big wet spot covering the front of you.” He elbowed his wife in the side as if she had been the cause for the soiled condition of Charlotte's apparel.

“Yeah, thanks, I knew I'd need it when I left Margaret's earlier.” She put on her coat and buttoned the front. “What's the weather like in Kenya now? I know you said it would be warm, but just how warm will it be?”

“Seventy-five degrees yesterday, the paper said.” James rubbed his hands together. “T-shirts and shorts, that's what we got packed.”

“And umbrellas; it's still rainy season,” Jessie added. “But warm. Might be a little cool at nights, but they say it's mostly like the weather in southern California.” She stopped. “Of course, I don't know what the weather in southern California is like.”

“Well, I'm sure it will be perfect,” Charlotte said, thinking of her own desire to travel. “And I know you won't miss this stuff,” she added, meaning the winter storm that had blown through North Carolina, bringing with it a mixture of ice and snow.

“No, we picked this time to go so that we could enjoy some summer weather in winter.” James headed toward the front door.

“I just hope the plane won't have any problem getting out of Raleigh,” Jessie mentioned with a hint of trepidation as she moved around the table and followed Charlotte, who was walking behind James.

“Oh, I'm sure they've gotten everything cleaned off by now. The roads are fine.” She turned to Jessie. “And when do Lana and Wallace return from their trip?” Charlotte remembered that they had gone to the mountains for the weekend. They had not been in church for a few Sundays, which was unusual for them. They were the most active young couple in the congregation.

“Tomorrow,” Jessie replied. “I hate that I won't be able to see them before we leave.” Her voice took on the worried tone again.

“Yeah, I know they'll miss you.” Charlotte reached into
her coat pockets, trying to find her gloves. “Can Lana even cook?” she asked innocently.

Jessie laughed. “Yes, she can,” she said, her voice with just a bit of sarcasm and sounding a little more relaxed. “And I know I spoil them. I hear it all the time from Janice and Dorothy.”

“You want to see the freezer before you leave?” James had his hand on the doorknob but then stepped away with the invitation. “She's made enough food to last those children for three months.” He winked at his wife. “She's cooked more in the last two weeks than she's cooked in her whole life!”

Jessie folded her arms across her chest. “Well, I worry they won't get enough to eat. They both work so much, trying to get Wallace through school and draw an income, they don't even have time to enjoy a decent meal.”

“I'm sure you take care of their dietary needs just fine, Jessie,” Charlotte replied.

“Needs? She makes sure that grandson gets anything he wants. And that baby?” James shook his head. “That baby is going to be fat, and it's going to be her great-grandmother's fault!”

“It's only baby butter and you know it,” Jessie said to her husband.

“Baby butter now, but one day it's just going to be fat.”

“Okay, that's my cue to leave. No need to start a fight the night before your big trip.” Charlotte stepped toward the door, then turned to give Jessie one more hug. Before doing so, she set down her purse and communion kit and whispered
in her ear, “Everything's going to be fine. You just got the traveling jitters is all.” And she pulled away, gave her a reassuring smile, picked up her things, and walked outside.

“James, take care of her,” she said as she passed him.

“Count on it,” he answered, turning on the light as the preacher hurried down the front steps.

She waved from her car, and the couple stood and watched until Charlotte had driven out of the driveway. Then James pulled the door shut and turned off the lights.

“Cold out there,” he said. And then he asked, “You going to bed now, or do you have more packing to do?”

Jessie rubbed her hands up and down her arms, still standing at the door, distant and worried. She waited and then walked into the den and began picking up the towels and napkins from the coffee table. “I have a few more things to take care of before I'm ready for bed.”

James followed her into the kitchen. “You gone through everything on your checklist?”

Jessie smiled, thinking about the twelve-page checklist she had made months ago. Everything was on that list, including doctor appointments, currency exchange ratios, instructions to Lana and Wallace about watering plants and which locks had keys, bills that had to be paid, and notes to herself about things to buy and what luggage to pack.

She had started the list as a sort of joke when the trip was only a dream that the two of them spoke of in whispers as pillow talk, when it was only a fantasy to stretch them beyond themselves and into adventure. Then as the list began
to have tasks that could be completed and marked off, the dream began to grow legs and walk around like a creature with its own breath and purpose. And once they completed assignments, like visiting a travel agency and getting passports, they studied the calendar and set a time. Late January of the following year.

When they first decided on the exact departure date, the twenty-fifth, it seemed so far away neither of them really believed it was true, but they highlighted it on their calendars and continued to mark off items from Jessie's list. Buy traveler's checks. Find out about insurance. Decide which cities they would visit. Get the necessary shots. And before they realized it, they were only days away from the trip and they had done everything that needed to be done.

There was no reason not to go to Africa, no cause to postpone their plans, and there was nothing they had not completed in the preparations. They had thought of everything. Everything. But Jessie was still clouded by something she couldn't explain.

For a few days she considered that it was Margaret; but she knew now that her friend was fine. She worried about her children; but they convinced her they could take care of themselves. She thought about international travel and considered that she was just anxious about potential harm; but she had never been an overly cautious person. She prayed about it and wrestled with it; but she just could not decipher the trouble that lay so near the surface of her plans.

In the beginning Jessie had loved the thought of going to Africa, of visiting the land of her ancestors. She treasured the idea of being in a new world, a different world, of traveling to a place she had only seen in pictures. She envisioned herself there, walking along the dirt roads to find a remote village, shopping for carvings or brightly colored scarves in the open-air market in the city, tracking animals across a vast yellow meadow. She enjoyed the idea of sharing this adventure with her husband, the fact that this was something they were doing together. She loved it and was excited about it, but when the excitement settled down, she was also burdened by it, nervous about it, frightened of something she could not name.

From behind her, James reached his arms around his wife's waist. “Do you want to call Wallace at the hotel and talk to him again?”

She shook her head no.

“Do you want to send an e-mail to the travel agent and get more information about the safari?”

She answered again with a shake of her head.

James took a breath and then asked, “Do you want to cancel?”

Jessie turned around in her husband's arms, standing very near to him. Face-to-face, she stared up into his eyes. Deep and earth brown were these eyes that held her so gently. Eyes that could not hide the depth of feeling he had for her. Eyes that could not cover up the condition of his heart.

It was clear now to Jessie that James loved her, clear and
tangible in a way it had never been before, demonstrated in all the things he had done. She became aware of his devotion with each task they marked off her checklist. During months of preparations and chores, she saw it in the way he willingly turned their dream into reality by taking care of details and considering possibilities without ever complaining about how long it was taking just to get ready to go.

His love, his deep and abiding love, was clear from the way he laughed without irritation when she became frustrated at the questions she wanted answered, the problems that had to be solved. His love was proven by the tender way he had rubbed her hip when the malaria vaccination caused a huge knot. It showed in the straw hat he had driven three hours to the beach and three hours back to bring to her so she would have one on the trip; and it spilled out, loose and unfettered, with the extra money he had given to her a week or so ago.

“Trash cash,” he called it. “Money to burn at the markets or in souvenir shops.” And he handed it to her like it hadn't cost him a thing, and she knew he had given up the thought of buying the new tractor he had wanted just so they could have a little more in their expense budget.

This trip, with its long list of necessary arrangements and costly tasks, with its considerations and decisions that had to be made before they ever stepped aboard a plane, this trip, with its wardrobe and expenses, had already given her the thing for which she had longed the most. Proof. Real and veritable proof. He loved her. He was home to stay. And now
with this tiny but undeniable sense of dread or doubt or worry, this thing she could not name or diagnose or put a finger on, she wondered if what had been acquired in the planning for the trip, being convinced of her husband's love, had really been all that she had wanted in the first place. And now maybe the trip itself was not a good idea.

Jessie stared into his brown and loving eyes and answered the question. “No,” she said, trying to persuade herself, “I've been waiting for this opportunity my whole life. To travel across the ocean, to visit Africa, to be with you. It's everything for me.”

James held his wife tightly against himself.

She closed her eyes, resting upon his chest, trying to make a way to accept it. The plans were made. The tickets were bought. The organizing had been organized. The children would be fine. Everything was as it needed to be.

They were going to Africa. To Kenya. To Nairobi. They were breathing life into the dream. And sometimes, Jessie understood as she stood within her husband's arms, just that, just the act of watching a dream come true, just that and having it happen at her age, could peel away a woman's courage.

Maybe she was fearful only because she had never come this far. Her unsettling notions were merely the wash and release of fragments of fear, of never daring to dream so deeply and never probing the depth and expanse of desire. She was overwhelmed by the love of James and by the capacity to re
alize a dream. It was enough, she decided as she wrapped her arms around James, to cause her a bit of panic.

“Surely,” she spoke to the dark corners of her mind, the low but troubled space in her soul, “surely, that's all this feeling is.”

And she took a breath and leaned into her husband, hoping that whatever lay ahead would not diminish what she had only just begun to know.

W
ell, how did she get it in her hair?” Lana was arguing with Wallace as he was hurrying to get ready for the night shift.

“I don't know,” her husband answered from their bedroom. “I gave her a piece after her snack, and I thought she
threw it away before I put her to bed.” He pulled out a shirt from the closet and put it on.

“I can't believe this,” Lana said as she saw how much of her daughter's hair was caught in the wad of gum in the back of her head. “I'm going to have to cut just about all of it off.”

The little girl was quiet, standing in her crib as her mother tried to pull as much of her hair away from the gum as she could. She was biting on the ear of a stuffed animal.

“Daddy!” she exclaimed and threw down the toy and held open her arms as Wallace walked into the room.

“No, baby, Daddy can't hold you right now.” And he studied the mess his wife was trying to clean up. “I didn't know she had it in her mouth when I put her down.” He sounded sorry.

Lana blew out a puff of air. “Just take her,” she yelled and left the room. She walked into the kitchen for the scissors. When she returned, he had picked the baby up and was holding her.

“Well, turn her around so I can get it out.” Lana reached up and began to cut, trying to remove as little of her daughter's hair as possible. It didn't matter how careful she was; a large chunk was now missing from the back of the baby's head. The young woman threw the gum wrapped in the curly brown hair into the trash can.

“I'm just glad it wasn't a piece of candy or something dangerous.” She put the scissors on the dresser. That was the first swing, and then came the second. “Maybe when I'm not here we should leave her with my mother.”

Wallace was waiting for that. He was surprised only that it had taken this long before she said it. In recent months she had been much quicker with her insults and innuendoes. He looked at his wife, trying to think of the right thing to say. She sighed, rolling her eyes, and took Hope from him. Without an answer to satisfy her, he shrugged his shoulders helplessly and left the room.

Lana knew she should go after him, knew it wasn't a big deal, knew that gum stuck in a baby's hair wasn't worth this amount of anger and tension, knew that this was an opportunity to create some goodwill between them. But after the disastrous mountain trip and after so many months of false apologies, she, just like Wallace, had run out of ways to say she was sorry.

He was in the kitchen, the cabinets opening and slamming, and she shut the door. She put the baby in the crib and sat down on the floor, her back against the wall. She thought about her life, trying to measure how far things had gotten, trying to count the steps she would need to take to get to the place she once had been.

She faced the open window, the crisp winter night sky full of stars and the distant sounds of traffic, and tried to imagine that she was happy, that she was settled and at peace. Pretending that she was living the life she had always wanted to live, she tried to find a thread of pleasure inside her; but she could find nothing of hope or delight. All that was there was unrecognizable, unimagined, and the pieces were tangled and gnarled, her heart a tight web of disappointment.

Early in the marriage Lana had convinced herself that any difficulty she and Wallace would face would come from the outside, from prejudiced people who didn't understand their love, from those who would try to pull them apart, claiming that they were too young, too different, too immature. Displeasure and regret and the tickle of wondering what might have been were intimate foes for which neither Lana nor Wallace had readied themselves, and now they wrestled to survive.

Lana leaned back and closed her eyes, remembering the recent trip. A desperate attempt to shore up the marriage, the trip to the mountains was intended to be a weekend of romance and rest and reconciliation. They could be alone, without the baby, without family, and reclaim the love they once believed could weather any storm. Instead, it had turned into three days of increasing clarity that the gap between them was deep and steady and formidable.

 

They left Hope with her parents and took off early Friday morning. With a full tank of gas and a stack of old cassette tapes, they drove out of town listening to the music they had discovered together and enjoyed in the early days of their dating. Wallace turned up the heat, and they rolled all the windows down, the cool breeze dancing across them, the sun high and bright. Lana seemed easy with him, singing the songs, reclining in the seat, and once even reaching across, touching him gently on the leg.

They talked of old friends, a wedding that was planned in
the spring and how Wallace was pleased with his job as a night clerk. They discussed Jessie and James going to Africa and where they might go if they planned a trip of a lifetime. She said Australia and he agreed, and they considered the things they would do, the various places they would visit. They laughed about how his grandparents seemed so young and in love the days before their departure, and he mentioned how he hoped that they might feel the same at their age.

She smiled when he told her how good she looked in that same old pair of jeans she had worn the winter before she was pregnant, how she still had the sexiest figure. After about two hours on the road, she even closed her eyes, falling asleep on his shoulder; and Wallace began to think that a trip had been all the relationship needed, that it was the cure, the remedy. He thought that just having a chance to be alone without their daughter or parents or grandparents was going to bridge the gap that had opened between them. He congratulated himself that they had only needed the opportunity to drive out and away from those things that had become too familiar, a chance to forget what had only recently come to pass.

But once they arrived at the hotel, once the door was shut and they were alone together, once he put his arms around her and tried to show how much he cared for her, she grew stiff and distant, claiming she was tired and wanted to sleep.

In the past he would not have pushed her; he always retreated, giving her the space she requested. But after the free and easy trip they had just enjoyed, the light conversation,
the way they fell into the gentle fashion of how things used to be, he was so hopeful, so expectant, so sure they were on the right path, he couldn't give up.

“Come on, baby,” he said, sliding his hands down her back, trying to undo her bra.

They kissed and he felt her loosen.

“You feel so good. I've missed you. I've missed making love to you.”

She was hesitant. It had been almost six months since they had been together, and she had been relieved when finally, after so many nights of being denied, he had quit asking. She worried that if she relented this time she would have to go back to the constant struggle they endured in bed. They would have to return to what had been the most unsettling part of her melancholy, the most awkward part of her discontent.

She hated saying no to Wallace. She hated herself for not feeling what she believed should be natural for a wife to feel about a husband. She was ashamed that she considered sleeping with another man when she knew her husband would do anything she wanted, try anything she requested.

The sex between Lana and Wallace had been good for both of them since they had been together, so it wasn't that she had become dissatisfied. She simply was not interested in making love, not with her husband, not with anybody. Roger, the man she was seeing, was just a means to flee the constant ache of loneliness, a distraction from the emptiness inside her. Roger didn't necessarily please or excite her. But the game was inter
esting. At least with him, when she refused to get a hotel room or slip away to his apartment, she did not feel guilty or improper. At least when she denied his advances she could feel good about herself, feel some pride in her choice. At least when she said no to him she felt like she was doing the right thing, which was so unlike how she felt at home.

When she tried to figure it out for herself, Lana didn't know how she lost had her drive. She wasn't sure what had caused the break inside her. She did not understand how such a thing had happened, but she certainly knew when it had happened. During her nine months of pregnancy, the desire, the arousal, the need for intimacy gradually wrapped itself around Hope; and when the time came, it labored and slid out with her at birth, leaving Lana barren and bereft of passion. She pretended that she wanted to get close to Wallace. She acted like she needed him but after almost two years, she had faked all the longing she could.

As he stood there in front of her, his heart beating so fast she felt his racing pulse more strongly than she felt her own, she realized that he was desperately trying to save the marriage, desperately trying to hold on to what they had, desperately trying to get close. So she softened and decided to try as well.

There, away from home, surrounded by the dark mountains, a green fence holding them both in, she decided to let him inside her again, to see if maybe there was something that had not been lost or stolen or smashed, something that might bind them back together.

After all, she had enjoyed the lightness of the trip too, the ease with which she had napped. She had liked being alone with him in the car, no baby in the backseat, the two of them free and driving out of town. She had enjoyed the conversation, the interested way he spoke to her, the confidence he exhibited behind the wheel. So she chose to let him hold her, let him be close to her. She gently pushed him away and began taking off her clothes. Wallace moved the suitcase off the bed, lay down, and watched as she undressed. He was overcome with desire and pulled her into himself and, with great affection, began making love.

Lana willed herself to be ready. She lay aside the sorrow, ignored the pang of disillusion. She calmly and faithfully resisted the urge to jump up and run away. The young wife, in a grand attempt to please her husband and fortify their marriage, steadied herself, preparing her soul, her mind, her body for the reunion. She tried to open herself, make room for him, create a space in the twisted knot that was her heart; but she quickly recognized her failure.

The weight of his body on top of her, the frenzy of his excitement, the desperate push and pull of him inside her, launched Lana even deeper into the disappointment she could not name. By the time he was finished, exploding in unrestrained pleasure, Lana had retreated further into herself, and the space between them had widened.

Wallace opened his eyes and looked down at her as she lay beneath him. Clearly unaware of how far they had drifted
away from each other, clearly unsuspecting of how tangled and jumbled his wife's thoughts and feelings had become, he expected to find the girl he had first loved.

He expected to find the familiar sweetness of delight and the way she used to shine. He expected it all to be suddenly and completely all right, but in that one glance he now understood that neither the drive and the music nor the holding of hands, the nap on the shoulder, the ease of the summer day, the time alone, even the intimacy of sex—none of it would be enough to reclaim all that had been lost. Whatever had pulled them apart from each other had polarized them, frozen them in positions with no visible way back to each other.

He got up and walked into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. He showered while Lana rolled over, the sheets cold and stiff.

They spent the rest of the weekend speaking only of topics chosen with care, superficial subjects, polite conversation. They did not touch each other again, sleeping restlessly at the edges of the bed, and they drove home painfully aware the neither of them had a clue as to what might save them.

 

“I'll be late,” he yelled from beyond the room. And the front door slammed shut.

Lana waited a few minutes before getting up, the quiet and emptiness in the house settling around her. She went over and shut the window and returned to the crib while Hope lay down without any direction or assistance from her
mother. The baby's smile dulled once she realized that her father had left, and the young woman started to tell herself that her daughter's lack of affection toward her was one more sign that Wallace had poisoned everything in her life.

She wanted to say that it was Wallace's fault that she felt so unloving toward and unloved by their daughter. In the beginning she tried to make herself believe that he was the cause of her misery, both as a mother and as a woman. She wanted nothing more than to say that he was to blame for the fact that she wanted to leave everything, him, the marriage, their baby, the town, that he was the reason she could no longer cry. But even when she first began to feel so broken, she knew she was being unfair. She understood that the indictment she placed on her husband was undeserved and improper.

None of her trouble was his fault. It wasn't anyone's fault. She simply could no longer find the path that at one time had been so clear. She did not know how or why, but she suddenly found herself in unfamiliar and perilous territory, and when she tried to remember what she was doing, where she was going, how she got to where she was, she realized she had lost her way.

“Go to sleep,” she instructed Hope and left the room. She reached up and turned off the light and walked down the hall toward the kitchen.

She was collecting and stacking the dirty dishes when she looked on the table and noticed an envelope stuck behind the napkin holder. She pulled it out and saw that it was a letter
from Mrs. Jenkins to Wallace, something his grandmother must have written before she left. Lana put the dishes down and opened it as if it were also addressed to her.