The Woman He Married (6 page)

Gina crossed to her, her expression softening at the sight of tears. “Girl, you’ve got to face these things sooner or later.” Wrapping her arms around Josie, she gave her a gentle squeeze.

“What’s happened to the Josie I used to know?” Gina said in a soothing voice. “Where’s my fearless friend who, in college, stood up to that pretentious sorority when they forced your roommate out because they thought she was too fat—and when they ignored you, you spiked the sugar-free punch at their big Greek Week party with ipecac?” Gina asked.

“Yeah, remember they colored the punch crimson,” Josie said with a little giggle, wiping a tear from her eye. “They were barfing all over each other. I
probably
overdid it a little.”

“Ya-think? Some of them didn’t even make it to the bathroom. It looked like some “B”-rated sorority massacre movie,” Gina said with one hand on the counter for support, the other resting on her abdomen as she started to giggle.

From tears to laughter, Josie said, “There weren’t very many white togas by the end of that party.” Hysterical now, Josie couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a good laugh.

When Gina’s laughter subsided, she asked, “Does he know who you are?”

“Who?”

“
Montgomery
,” Gina responded in a
don’t-play-dumb
tone.

Josie sighed. “I don’t know how he could. I mean back then I was Josie McClain, radical human rights activist. Now, I am simply Jocelyn Bearden—wife, mother…” her tone grew sarcastic, “…and apparently doormat.” She paused, thinking a minute. “How could he recognize me? I mean, half the time, I don’t even recognize
myself
anymore. Besides, Brian was really the one who took down Old Man Montgomery, not me.”

“Right, but he couldn’t have done it without you,” Gina reminded her.

“And you. Besides, we couldn’t let Brian rot in jail. What choice did we have?” Josie was lost in thought for a moment, remembering how scared she was when they took Brian away, until the present summoned her back. Popping and sizzling on the stove top, the gumbo was starting to bubble over.

Moving quickly over to the stove, Josie reduced the heat. While it was true there was a time when she would have told John to “go to hell”, though probably not in those exact words, this morning, the fact was that, for whatever reason, she didn’t and now she must maintain the status quo—for now, anyway.

The chiming of the clock in the hall reminded her that time was running out and Josie decided they’d better get on with it. “Thank you,” she said, “I never could have done this without you.”

“Oh, I think you could. The Josie
I
 
know
is capable of anything once she puts her mind to it,” Gina said with a supportive smile. “And besides, what are friends for?”

* * * *

While navigating the windy roads between her children’s schools, Josie used this time to get a few things done. Before Gina left, she’d recruited the rest of her family to come and help that night. Despite what John might have thought, Josie
was
a pro at multi-tasking, but she wasn’t
that
good. Driving and writing instructions for Gina and family, she listened to Beth talk about her day.

“…then Miss Debbie put shaving cream all over the table so we could write letters and numbers in it…” the child said, twisting a blonde curl around one of her chubby little fingers.

Josie pretended to listen while, on her cell, she begged forgiveness from her hair stylist for not only missing the appointment, but for neglecting to even call.

“But we didn’t really want to write
borin
’ old letters; it was more fun to just squish it.
A’ccept
these two boys kept eating it. Ooh, gross.” Beth wrinkled her freckled nose and pursed her full lips in the rearview mirror.

“Ooh, gross,” Josie mimicked as she clicked her phone shut and turned into Bobbie’s school.

Before she’d left, Josie had noticed she hadn’t yet polished her toenails for the evening, so she had grabbed a bottle of polish on her way out. The carpool line at Bobbie’s school was moving pretty slow, so she whipped out the polish, propped one foot up on the dash and started painting while the other foot worked the brake, inching them along.

She finished painting her other set of toenails just as Bobbie hurled the door open. Rocking the whole van, he tossed his backpack to the other side and jumped in excitedly. “Guess what, Momma?”

Beth was still talking, but now her topic had switched to why she thought Princess Fiona couldn’t possibly stay turned into an ogre—after all, princesses weren’t green. “Hey, butt head, I was talking,” she objected, glaring at her brother.

“Language,” Josie reminded her, realizing how painfully obvious it was that Beth had two older brothers.

Bobbie ignored his sister. “Guess what, Momma?” he said again.

“What?”

“Mom!
I’m not finished—” Beth and Bobbie were talking at the same time but Beth stopped when she realized that Bobbie’s story was more interesting.

“
Brandon
said his uncle Ernie sat down on the toilet, and there was a snake in it. And it came up and bit him right on the butt,” he reported, eyes wide, enunciating every word. “Isn’t that cool?”

“I don’t know if I would go straight to ‘cool,’” Josie said, cringing.

“Momma,” Beth whined, “what if a snake gets in our toilet and bites
my
butt?”

Oh, Good Lord,
Josie thought, knowing she didn’t have the energy for this right now.

Taking control before the conversation got out of hand, she said, “Son, I really don’t think
Brandon
’s story is completely accurate.”

“But he said—”

“Then he was probably in an outhouse or something.” Josie turned her attention from the road momentarily to Bobbie, with a look letting him know she didn’t want any more argument.

“Beth… Baby, we have
never
had any snakes in our house,” she said in a soothing voice. Which wasn’t entirely true, they lived in
Alabama
, but at the moment that information was on a need-to-know basis.

As they drove on to Jack’s school, Bobbie couldn’t stop talking about the snake, what it looked like, what would happen if it was poisonous, and whether or not venom could be sucked out of a person’s butt…

When Jack got in, the first thing he said was, “Did you wash my blue basketball shorts? I need them for tonight’s practice,” brushing his straight, sandy-colored bangs, in need of a trim, off of his forehead.

“Uh, no.
I didn’t have time. My day was obscenely busy. How was yours?” Josie said into the rearview mirror with just a hint of sarcasm.

“Mo-
om
,” Jack said, rolling his eyes.

“Besides, no basketball today, little man. Your daddy’s important dinner is tonight.”

A ten-year-old going on twenty, Jack started in. “Why do
I
 
have
to be there?” he whined. “They aren’t my friends. And why do I have to stay in the guest house with the babysitter—I’m not a baby.” He crossed his arms, sat back in a huff and glared at Josie through his father’s eyes in the mirror.

“Yeah, Momma, I’m old enough, too…” Bobbie chimed in, following Jack’s lead.

As the complaining continued, Josie felt like someone had dumped a pile of bricks on top of her and was continuing, slowly, to add one at a time.

“All right, that’s enough. You’re having a sitter and that’s final,” she said firmly, cutting the tone of their complaining to quiet groans.

She thought about an episode of Murphy Brown she’d seen a long time ago where Faith Ford’s character—a perky southerner—reported that her excessive cheeriness was due to the fact that her mother had told her, and her siblings, that their father kept a suitcase packed in the closet, and that if they weren’t happy
all
the time, he would simply take his things and leave. Although border-lining on emotional abuse, right now Josie was considering this scenario as a viable option, knowing that there were moments in every mother’s life when she had to stop and ask herself: “
Is a little dysfunction too high a price to pay for a few moments of peace?”

Outside a light sprinkling of rain began to fall. Turning the wipers on low, she headed for home.

* * * *

After last-minute preparations for the dinner, Beth whining about wanting to wear her princess dress, with a tiara, the dog getting loose in the house and leaving a trail of muddy paw prints, and various other shenanigans that occur at the most inconvenient times when one has three children, the metaphoric alarm in Josie’s head finally sounded, indicating that she’d reached her maximum capacity for stress and could now explode.

“What’s the matter with everyone around here?” Josie yelled when one of Bobbie’s karate kicks tipped over Beth’s Barbie house in the family room. How
it
got into the family room was a completely different issue.

“Get over here and clean this mess up,” she said, her face hot, jaw set, and feet stomping as she made her way toward the mess.

Bobbie and Beth stood frozen, eyes wide, near-terrified.

“Now!” she commanded, kneeling on the floor, gathering up the shrapnel that was strewn about her feet.

When the Barbie house was back in Beth’s closet, Josie sat them all on the couch to watch that little yellow sea sponge dressed in square pants. It was on an hour earlier than usual.
Thank the lord.
“And don’t move,
even
an inch
, until it’s time to get ready,” she said through clenched teeth before she stalked off, putting some much-needed distance between herself and her offspring.

Once inside her bedroom, Josie sat down on the bed and took a few long cleansing breaths. She always felt bad when she lost it with her children. After all, they were just being kids and it wasn’t like they sat around scheming to sabotage her every move. Or did they?

It was six o’clock, only one hour before supper and dangerously close to when John would be making his appearance. Exhausted, both mentally and physically, Josie couldn’t bear the thought of having to change and make
herself
presentable. And, to make matters worse, she didn’t even have her new dress and shoes, which were the only reasons she’d been looking forward to tonight at all.

Josie puffed out her cheeks,
then
released the air as she scanned her closet for something suitable. She’d already been seen more than once in most of her nice dresses. The other women coming tonight dressed very stylish, and she always felt a little frumpy next to them.
What’s a woman to do?

Make do, as usual.

Slipping into a classic black dress she hadn’t worn in years, with a square neck and three-quarter length sleeves, and plain black strappy sandals, she headed into the bathroom to finish getting ready. Too exhausted to wrestle the mass of curls staring back at her from the mirror into something stunning, she twisted her hair up and secured it with a plain black clip. As she was pulling out a few wispy curls from around her temples, she looked up with a start when John appeared in the mirror’s reflection.

Standing in the doorway of the bathroom, he was slipping a cufflink into the sleeve of his crisply-laundered shirt. Around his neck, his tie hung, waiting to be knotted. Their gazes met in the mirror.

Butterflies formed in her stomach as she wondered when he planned to surprise her with the bracelet—
before the dinner,
maybe?

“Is that what you’re wearing?” he asked as he crossed the travertine floor and stopped next to her.