The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder (35 page)

“Oh God,” he said. “Oh sweet Jesus Lord.”

Then the scent of old floors polished with lemon oil, and I am lying on the old four-poster bed, the soft chenille bedspread underneath my back, Tuck’s body on top of me. Then my body on top of his. Then side by side. I loved him in ways he’d never been loved, because I myself had been well-loved in a good marriage. I did things I’d dreamed about doing but never had, not even in all those years of marriage. I also let myself do things I had never thought of before. All those teenage years of yearning were the best aphrodisiac possible. He gave me more than any of my fantasies had.

Our stamina was fueled by the memory of our teenage arousal. Slow dancing to “When a Man Loves a Woman” on the gym floor, our bodies touching, Tuck’s head bent, his lips grazing my shoulder, our hips swaying.
Oh, God. How can it be that I am sixteen again?
Again and again we entered and explored and pleased, and there was so much moaning that at one point we both started laughing at the same time, and it was soon after that we finally stopped to rest.

Later we climbed into the big old tub, and Tuck said, “Lean back.”

He reached out for my bottle of baby shampoo.

For a moment, I froze. Strangely, after all the intimacies we’d just shared, it just felt too intimate to have Tuck wash my hair. I wasn’t ready to have him hold the weight of my head in his hands.

“Come on, this won’t even sting your eyes,” Tuck assured me.

“Okay,” I said, and leaned back to wet my hair. When Tuck began to rub the shampoo into it, I felt so unprotected. But the time for that fear had gone. As Tuck massaged around my temples, the day and night began to catch up with me. I began to drift off.

I floated deeper into the doze, and pictured myself in the river on whose banks La Luna rested. I pictured myself being held in M’Dear’s hands.

To wake me, Tuck gently rocked my head. He climbed out of the tub, filled an old pitcher, and began to rinse my hair.

“You’re pretty good for an amateur,” I told him.

“That was kind of intense, wasn’t it?” Tuck asked. “I mean, when I was holding your head in my hands, I could have done anything to you. At the salon, when you wash people’s hair, do you feel that?”

“Yes, sometimes. Most of the time. But I feel all sorts of other things, too.”

After rinsing my hair, Tuck smoothed it down my back. “Calla, I can’t believe that you still have such long hair. It’s been years since I’ve even met a woman whose hair wasn’t gelled or sprayed to death.”

“Hey, let’s don’t knock styling,” I said, joking.

“I just mean, in the world I lived in, a woman over twenty-eight with a long, full mane of hair pulled back into a braid was pretty rare.”

Then we went back into the bedroom and climbed under the covers, breathing in the scent of old line-dried cotton sheets and clean bodies.

Before we drifted off, I whispered, “In high school, I dreamed of having you inside me.”

“I dreamed of it in high school and ever since.” Tuck hugged me tightly to him.

“Have you been loved enough?” I asked.

“Tonight? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“No, I mean, have you been loved enough, period?”

He frowned, and turned away from me. I waited, remembering the young boy with his beat-up suitcase, getting off the bus in La Luna.

“No, Calla,” Tuck said, turning back to me. “I don’t think I have.”

I closed my eyes and breathed. I knew there was more to say, but now was not the time.

Our breathing filled the room, joining with the sound of the river.

“Calla,” he said, “you awake?”

“Yes,” I said. “Are you?”

“Barely. I want to talk to you, though. I want to tell you about my grandfather. What I said in his eulogy today: that he wanted what was good for me, no matter what the cost? Well,” he said, his voice shaky, “you were the biggest cost. I don’t blame him. But he was blind. And I was blind.”

“What do you mean?” I said, propping up on one elbow.

“I’ll tell you. Do you remember how we promised we’d write each other every day?”

I was silent for a long moment.

“Did you ever write any letters?” I asked.

“I did. They’re in a box that I found late last night in Papa Tucker’s study with a letter to me,” he said. I stared at Tuck as he continued. “I read late into the night until I couldn’t take it anymore. I brought the box over here this morning, to give to you, if you wanted it. If you cared about the letters.”

“Where is it?”

“I asked Sonny Boy to put it in his old room for me.”

“Well?”

“Do you want to see it?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe I’ve had enough surprises tonight.” I sat up, pulling my hair into a loose bun. “All right. Go get it.”

He slipped his jeans back on, and I could hear the floorboards creak in Sonny Boy’s old room as my mind raced.

When he returned, he was carrying an old leather-bound box. We sat on the floor and opened it. Inside were a stack of letters. As I picked them up, the image of the girl I once was felt so strong it was like she was in the room with us.

Tuck held one of the letters up. “I read them yesterday after reading the letter from my grandfather. He explained what he had done. Actionable. It makes me sick. And it could only have happened in a small town where a man like Papa Tucker could actually intercept mail. Can you imagine it? He threatened Jean Randolph, the postmistress—said if she didn’t hand over every one of our letters, he would fire her husband, who worked at the cotton gin.” He paused. “He said he wanted me to have a fresh start, to leave La Luna behind. He loved you, Calla, but he said he loved me more.

“He wasn’t a demon, Calla, although part of me still feels that way. Remember that day our senior year, when I went off with my mother and drunken father in his truck?”

“I remember it clearly.”

“Well, my father pulled out a pistol and threatened to kill me if I ever tried to get my mother out of that horrible drunken marriage.

“Papa Tucker was there. And his reasoning afterwards—or as he put it to me—was that there was no way that he could keep me safe as long as I was in the state of Louisiana—that he could keep me away from them, but he could never keep them away from me.”

“God,” I said. “I feel physically ill.” I reached over and took a drink of water.

“You wrote me,” I said, looking through the letters.

“I wrote to you almost every day, Calla. I let myself wait until 1972, the new year. No letters came—”

“But why didn’t you take my calls at the dorm?”

“I never got your messages. Believe me, Calla.”

“Tuck, this is almost too much to grasp.”

He squeezed my hand.

“Oh, no,” I said. “My letters. That I rushed to the post office each day to make the afternoon pickup.”

A few minutes of silence went by as I tried to take it in. Then I picked up a letter I had written him and we read it together.

We were both crying.

“I remember the day I wrote that letter. I was in the café after bussing all my tables at Melonçons’. I sat down with a Coke and put my feet up. My feet hurt bad because I had forgotten where I’d left my innersoles.” I couldn’t continue speaking, so I picked up a letter from Tuck from the stack.

“Tuck, this is too big to take in all at once.”

She must have known, too. There is no way Miz Lizbeth could not have known. All the time—my God—my family’s oldest, dearest friend—“Uncle Tucker”—and Sonny Boy’s godfather. All the time!

As if reading my mind, he said then, “Miz Lizbeth—she wasn’t a part of this.” Then he tenderly put his hand on my shoulder. After a moment he helped me up off the floor, and we got into bed.

We held hands under the covers and rested.

“Calla, do you think we could have a second chance?” Tuck asked.

I lay there, surprised at how calm I felt in the face of all this.

“Let’s see what tomorrow brings,” I said.

“Thank you, Calla. If there’s a chance, I’ll wait.”

“Let’s rest,” I said, fluffing my pillow and turning off the bedside lamp. We were quiet for a long time, just breathing.

“He’s at rest up there at last, I imagine,” I said.

Tuck sighed. “Miz Lenora is resting too. And your Sweet. Now all three of them are up there.”

“Hmmm,” I murmured softly.

We grew silent again.

Then I said, “Maybe they’re not resting at all. Maybe they’re all up there playing Bourrée.”

Tuck laughed softly.

It was as if we were saying little prayers through these simple sentences.

“May I roll over and hold you?” Tuck asked.

“That would be a very good thing to do,” I said, turning to my side, feeling his body spoon against mine, his face near my neck, his knees in the crook of my knees. I liked the way he asked my permission, the way he took no gesture for granted.

We slept this way until a few hours later, when we woke, each of us having grown used to sleeping alone.

Tuck turned to me.

“God, you are so lovely,” he said softly.

“Umm,” I said, in the most languorous tone I’d heard come out of my body in years.

Then he pulled me to him and hugged me tightly. Our bodies, no longer young, were relaxed and open. I could feel little endorphin-angels flying rapturously around the bedroom at the sight of us, our armor dropped. We had both lost enough in our lives to know that such perfect bliss does not last. But we also knew enough to surrender to this one glorious moment.

Once Tuck was asleep again, I got up. I was tired, but my body needed its daily morning swim. Quietly I put on my vintage kimono and left the house. Walking down to the pier felt good, my muscles stretching. My arms swinging at my side. I felt happy at the prospect of a swim
.
I walked through the backyard toward the river, thanking everything. Everything needed thanking, deserved to be thanked, and I felt I hadn’t done it in far too long.

Just as I reached the pier, the sun was rising. I stood there, not moving for a moment. Then my long-legged body that weathered every storm began a slow easy dance. With my mother. A private dance, just the two of us. Then I opened out to the sun, to embrace the fiery star that brings us life. In the year since I moved back to La Luna, I’d frequently felt tiny sparks inside my body. Today I danced, welcoming a new little white spark inside me that was glowing. Welcome, little spark, to this body. Sun, moon, male, female, old, young, death, birth. I opened my arms to everything.

At the end of the pier, I dropped my kimono and dove into the La Luna River.

The waters were still warm, after the long months of scorching heat. I slowly swam the crawl, letting my neck roll lazily from side to side as I breathed in. Legs doing strong flutter kicks, arms cutting into the water smoothly with hardly a splash. I switched to the breaststroke, my arms reaching in front, my legs cutting a sharp scissors kick.

Then I smoothly rolled over onto my back. I could hear the sound and feel of my love-tired body rolling over in native waters. Lifting my arms up above my head, and then back down, I pressed my body forward with strength. After swimming for a while, I stopped kicking and let myself float, just let the La Luna hold me up. I could feel the waters of my mother’s womb when she carried me; I could feel the waters of my own womb.

As I lay on my back, a gate opened inside me, and forgiveness began to flow through my body. The words of the old spiritual—
Will the circle be unbroken, by and by, Lord, by and by
—came to me. As the tune thrummed through me, I forgave M’Dear for dying. I forgave myself for wanting Tuck while I was married to Sweet. I began to forgive Uncle Tucker for betraying me, for robbing Tuck and me of years of love. The hardest to forgive was the oil company whose greed killed my precious husband at the same time that it was killing my homeland. This is one I’ll forgive, but not forget. This is one I’ll keep score on.

Mainly, I forgave Tuck. He meant no pain. And now he was offering love.

I looked up at the sky. The old longing to see myself reflected in M’Dear’s eyes began to dissolve, as if the river’s current were washing it away. I blinked, and then I was no longer looking for her eyes as I had been, without knowing it, for so many years. Instead I was looking clearly at an early morning blue sky. I no longer needed my mother’s eyes to reflect me. I could do it myself.

“Hey Calla!” I heard Tuck call from the dock.

I began to tread water as I looked in his direction. He stood barefoot, wearing a pair of ancient jeans, a T-shirt, and a sweatshirt flung around his shoulders.

“I want to marry you, Calla Lily Ponder!” he said.

“You’re crazy!” I laughed.

“Okay,” he said, holding up a red plaid thermos he pulled out of a canvas bag. “Then how about a cup of coffee?”

“That’s more like it.”
For now
, I thought, swimming toward him.

“Bet you don’t remember how I like it,” I said, pulling myself up onto the pier. I could feel him gazing at my naked body. Leaning over, I squeezed water out of my long hair, so thick it took some muscle.