Miss Julia Renews Her Vows (5 page)

On the other hand, I reminded myself as I went upstairs, if Hazel Marie kept to her stated resolve, there would be a wide space in the bed between them tonight and a grouchy Mr. Pickens in the morning.

Lloyd’s door was open and his lights still on, so I stuck my head in before going to our room. He was sitting up on the bed, still in his shorts and polo shirt—his wedding attire—with his knees bent as he played with something electronic.

“Lloyd?”

He looked up from the cell phone he’d been tapping, his face lighting up with a brilliant smile. “Hey, Miss Julia. Come look at this.” He held out his phone so I could see the tiny screen. “Here’s a picture of Mama, and here’s one of J.D. and this one’s of both of them.”

“Well, my goodness, what won’t they think of next?” I took the phone and looked at the picture of Hazel Marie and Mr. Pickens smiling out at me. “It sure is small, but just as clear as a bell. Show me how to get to the others.”

He did, showing me how easy it was to snap a picture, then to run through the album, so to speak. “You just aim it and press this button. And you’ve got a picture.”

Amazing, and I hadn’t even mastered a throwaway Kodak.

“Guess what else I’m doing,” Lloyd said, and went on before I could. “I’m texting everybody I know to tell them about my new daddy and my new . . . whatever they are.”

Well, I thought, maybe I hadn’t needed to have a luncheon after all. Lloyd would have the word out long before I could announce it. Except no one I knew would recognize a text message if it jumped up and bit them.

I sat on the side of the bed and smiled at him. “So you’re feeling all right about it?”

“Miss Julia,” he said in that serious way of his, “this has been the happiest day of my life.”

“What did you think when they told you about the new babies?” It had crossed my mind that the boy might suffer from suddenly having to share the limelight with two little intruders. He’d been an only for so long, you know.

“Well, at first I couldn’t figure it out,” he said, frowning. “I mean, Mama and J.D. just got married this morning and the day wasn’t even over and here they were saying twins were on the way.” He looked at me, wide-eyed. “All I could think of was ‘Boy, that was fast.’”

My stomach knotted up and a powerful urge gripped my chest, as my face contorted with the effort to contol myself. I had to exert every fiber of my being not to roll on the floor, laughing.

“But then,” Lloyd went on, “when they said they’d really gotten married in San Francisco, I thought, ‘Whew.’ Except I wondered why they hadn’t told anybody. Especially me.”

I didn’t know how to respond, but for his sake I said, “They didn’t tell me, either.”

“You know why they didn’t, don’t you?”

I shook my head, afraid I’d say something different from what he’d been told.

“It was because they felt so bad for doing it when I wasn’t with them.” Lloyd beamed. “They planned to do it all over again anyway when I could be there, but then Mama got sick and first one thing and then another happened and this is the way it worked out.”

“Well, it’s something we can laugh about for years to come, isn’t it?” Actually, I was about to choke already from holding myself back. I had to get to my feet and get out of the room. “It’s been a busy day and tomorrow’s another one. School, you know, so you need to be in bed.”

I hurried across the hall to the room that Sam and I were sharing until Hazel Marie could go up and down stairs again. I quickly closed the door and hurried to our bed, where Sam was reading.

“Sam,” I said, gasping from the laughter that I could at last release, “you’ll never guess what Lloyd thought when they told him about the babies.”

After telling him between ripples of laughter what Lloyd had said, I could finally laugh as long and as hard as I wanted to, so I put my head on Sam’s shoulder and did it until I cried. And kept on crying until I ended up in deep sobs and floods of tears, with Sam murmuring, “Julia, Julia, it’s all right.”

Straightening up and drying my face with the edge of the sheet, I said, “I don’t know what brought that on. I thought I’d strangle myself, trying not to laugh, and here I am crying like a baby.”

“Stress, Julia,” Sam said, running his hand up my arm. “That’s what it is. You’ve been under a lot of it here lately, and now you can let it go. It’s a wonder you’ve been able to bear up.”

“Well, the way I feel now, I could just cry all night and turn into Emma Sue Ledbetter.”

Sam laughed and drew me to him. “Cry all you want to, but stay Julia for me. And listen, we’ve got them married and they’re still with us, with no plans to move off with Lloyd, so you can rest easy now.”

“Yes, well, I guess. I still have to get through the luncheon and all the tall tales I’ll have to tell. But I’ll make a vow to you, Sam, I am not going to get myself in a situation like this again. I have never in my life done so much storytelling as I’ve done during all this. And now,” I said, struggling again to speak as more tears cut loose, “and now I’m wondering if we did the right thing. What if they’re both miserable? What if they should’ve never married? I’ll never forgive myself if I’ve pushed them into something neither of them wanted.”

“Julia,” Sam said, wrapping me in his arms, “you have to stop taking on everybody’s problems. Hazel Marie and Pickens are both adults, and you didn’t push them into anything. They’ve done what is right and, if it doesn’t work out, why, nothing’s been lost and a father to those babies has been gained.”

“You’re right. I know you’re right. I keep forgetting about those babies, which is the strangest thing. It’s the
expecting
them that’s worried me, not the two little real people who’ll be coming. That sounds silly, I know, and I’m as bad as LuAnne, being so concerned about appearances, but I so wanted to protect Hazel Marie and Lloyd.”

“And you have,” Sam said. “Nobody could’ve done more, and they love you for it. And I do, too, but if you keep comparing yourself to Emma Sue and LuAnne, I’m going to have one nightmare after another.”

“Oh, you,” I said, laughing while I untangled myself from his arms and got ready for bed.

Once I was beside him and snuggled up close, I had the strangest recall of certain events in the early days of my first marriage. Not knowing any better, I’d slip closer in the bed to Wesley Lloyd, wanting, I expect, some reassurance that he was happy with me. “Move over, Julia, you’re crowding me,” he’d say. Or “Get on your side of the bed.” It was off-putting, to say the least, and I quickly learned to keep my distance. Learned it too well, if you want to know the truth, for Sam had proved to be just the opposite and I was having to learn all over again the joy of touching the one you loved.

I was almost asleep when Sam said, “Julia?”

“Hmm?”

“Larry Ledbetter dropped by the house this afternoon.” Sam was speaking of his house, probably while Mr. Pickens was packing his suitcase.

“What’d he want?” I mumbled, not particularly interested in a pastoral visit, unusual though it was.

“Wants us to participate in a few study sessions he’s dreamed up. We’ll meet on Monday nights for about six weeks, just to see how it goes. He wants us to provide a stabilizing influence, whatever that means. I said we would.”

My eyes popped open. “A stabilizing influence for what?”

“For young couples in the church. Seems it’s to be an enrichment course mainly for them.”

“Spiritual enrichment?”

“No.” Sam let a second or so pass, as my eyes began to close. “Marriage enrichment.”

I sat straight up in bed. “
Marriage
enrichment? Marriage
counseling
? Is that what it is? Sam, how could you? I don’t want to be counseled about anything, especially our marriage. What does Pastor Ledbetter know about it, anyway? He’s no expert. All you have to do is look at Emma Sue to know that.”

Sam drew me back down beside him. “We’re not going to be counseled, Julia. If anything, we’ll be there to help counsel the others. Give them the benefit of our experiences. Besides, Ledbetter won’t be the counselor. He’s got somebody lined up who knows what he’s doing. A Christian psychologist, he said.”

“That does not reassure me,” I said, lying stiff beside him. “I don’t trust psychologists as far as I can throw them, and anybody who has to tack his Christianity onto his occupation is somebody to stay away from. ‘Go into thy closet and pray in secret,’ or something like that. But don’t
advertise
it just to get clients. I mean, you don’t go to a Christian barber, do you, expecting to get a better haircut?”

I could sense Sam smiling in the dark. “I agree with you, sweetheart, but let’s humor him. We haven’t done much in the church lately, and I thought this would be easy enough. We can drop out anytime you want to.”

“What about now?”

Sam laughed. “Look at it this way. We might pick up a few pearls that would help Hazel Marie and Pickens. Of course, the sessions would be ideal for them, but it’s a little early along to be suggesting it.”

The possibility of helping them get a good start in their marriage put a different light on it, and I relaxed, thinking I could take notes on salient points and pass them on to Hazel Marie. I wouldn’t dream of attempting to counsel Mr. Pickens, even from a safe remove.

I turned over and scrooched down, ready for sleep. “Well, okay, but I’m taking it one Monday at a time. You might end up going by yourself and see what kind of model that would be.”

Sam laughed and put his arm across my waist. “I’ll risk it.”

As I walked down the stairs the next morning, I heard a chorus of voices and laughter coming from the kitchen. I glanced at my watch, thinking I was running late. But no, if anything I was a little early, but obviously others were already up and stirring.

Pushing through the kitchen door, I saw Mr. Pickens, Lloyd, Latisha and Lillian filling plates, looking for backpacks, laughing and carrying on as if they were in Grand Central Station.

“Hey, Miss Lady,” Latisha sang out. “I’m gonna go to school today, ’cause I had to go to a wedding yesterday an’ couldn’t make that ole school bus.”

“Good morning, Latisha. I’m sorry you missed the first day of school, but we were glad to have you with us. Aren’t you in the first grade this year?”

“No’m, I’m goin’ in that ole kindygarden, an’ it don’t matter if I miss a day or two, ’cause I already know everything they gonna say, anyhow.”

Lloyd laughed and helped her pour milk on her cereal. “Just wait, Latisha. Next year, you’re gonna blow that first-grade teacher away.”

“Miss Julia,” Lillian said, “you want eggs this morning?”

I nodded and drew a chair out from the table. Mr. Pickens came over with a heaping plateful and sat beside me.

“Sam not up?” he asked.

“He’ll be down in a minute.” I cast a careful eye in his direction, trying to read his expression to determine just what, if anything, had taken place during his wedding night. “How’s Hazel Marie this morning?” I asked, then could’ve bitten my tongue off. Knowing him, he’d put the worst possible spin on my question.

And he did. He looked up at me from under those black eyebrows, grinned, and said, “Blooming like a rose. I think married life agrees with her. It sure does with me.”

I rose from my chair like it had a spring in it. “Here, Lillian, let me take that.” Meeting her halfway across the kitchen, I practically snatched a platter of scrambled eggs from her.

Hazel Marie, in another sweat outfit, came in then from the back hall at the same time that Sam entered from the dining room, their appearances adding to the noise level but relieving me of responding to Mr. Pickens. The man was beyond belief, giving me that smug, self-satisfied grin of his, as if all Hazel Marie had needed was him.

From the looks of her, though, he may’ve been right, for she did seem more at peace than I’d seen her in a long time. Her eyes were clear and her complexion had lost the blotches that all that crying had etched on her face. Mr. Pickens gave her a kiss as she sat down beside him, then they whispered together for a few minutes, a rudeness that I overlooked given the circumstances.