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Did he even recall that Belinda had taken some to sell at the drugstore? A thrill sliced through her with the telling—and satisfaction when his eyebrows rose in surprise.
“It’s not all that much money, really, but it’s nice to have people want them.” She suddenly felt very shy.
“I’m glad you’re doin’ so well with them. I told you when Belinda took some, that I’d be glad to put them in the Stops. You seemed like you didn’t want to do that. You said it would be too much work.”
“I guess I didn’t think they would sell. And I didn’t realize how easy it was to get them printed. It’s nice, too, that Belinda handles the business part. All I have to do is the creating then. I’m not so good at business things.”
He gazed at her, then sipped his coffee. “You were when you worked at Berry Corp.—good at business.”
She was surprised by his compliment and didn’t know what to say to it.
“You can tell Belinda to count the Stops as another outlet. It’s silly not to. You own the Stops, too, you know.”
“That’s true,” she said. “I just didn’t think of it, and I guess Belinda didn’t, either. She’ll be excited when I tell her. She has all these plans.” She was a little embarrassed by Belinda’s elaborate plans, to tell the truth.
John Cole told her the best location would be at the larger Berry Truck Stop and suggested places for display. He said he would alert the clerks. She simply nodded to everything, while drawing a birthday cake.
Quite suddenly, she was gazing straight into his blue eyes.
They broke the gaze at the same time.
John Cole said, “Well…I guess I’d better let you get to it…and I’d better get on to work. I’m already late.”
He went out the door, and she reached for her mug of coffee, finding it empty. She felt self-conscious about going into the kitchen. He might think she was finding an excuse to follow after him.
She felt like crying…silly, silly.
And then, suddenly, there he was in the doorway.
He said, “Would you have a minute to talk…about us?”
Emma managed to get out, “Well…yes. Of course,” and had to clear her voice in the middle of it.
Did he want to talk about a divorce?
Panic swept her. She didn’t think she could talk about divorce. She would just say she had to focus on the wedding. Dear God, keep me sensible.
John Cole came back into the room and straddled the chair, then sat there gazing downward. The little-boy-lost expression came over his face and shoulders. It was an expression with which Emma was thoroughly familiar, and not so impressed anymore.
In fact, he did this so long that she began to get annoyed. She wanted to say, Will you get to it, already? I have things to do, and I am not takin’ over your emotions on this thing.
Just when she was at her last nerve, he said, “I’ve had a lot of time to think the past few days.”
He paused, and something seemed required on her part. “I have, too,” she got out.
Another moment’s pause, and he said, “I’ve missed it here…. I’ve missed you, Emma.”
She was surprised by his direct and intense gaze. “I’ve missed you, too.” Her voice cracked.
“I know we’ve had some difficulty for a few years. I know I’ve been busy…and that you haven’t been happy.”
He paused yet again, but she had nothing to say.
He continued then, going on to say that he knew he kept getting too busy with his work, and that he just wasn’t too good at talking. As he went on in this manner, she began to get impatient again. It was all of a similar vein to what he had said in the past, whenever she had tried to motivate him to see they had problems in their marriage that needed to be addressed—namely that he needed to take part in the marriage.
The idea struck her, though, that his speaking voluntarily just now was taking part.
“I’ve really missed us, Emma.”
“I have, too.”
Silence stretched again, while they each sat there as if waiting to see what the other was going to say or do.
“I was thinking…”
“I’m glad you…”
They both stopped.
John Cole said, “You go ahead.”
“No, you go ahead.”
He shifted and gazed at her, and she had about decided he wasn’t going to say anything when he came out with, “I was thinking that…if you are willin’…maybe we could go see a marriage counselor.”
“What?”
“I thought we could go to a marriage counselor. I got this card from the bulletin board at the Stop.” He pulled a business card out of his shirt pocket and passed it over to her.
She looked from the card to John Cole, and then back to the card again. “You want to go to a marriage counselor?”
“Well, you said once that you wanted to do that. I think it would be good to try.”
She gazed at him.
“Okay, you said it a lot of times.” He got to his feet. “I wasn’t ready to do it before. I apologize for that. But…look, I’m ready to give it a chance, Emma. Are you?”
Well, of course, she had to say yes. Heaven help her, though, because she also had to stop herself from rolling her eyes.
And somehow, during the course of it all, she ended up agreeing to be the one to make the appointment.
“New Hope Counseling. Catherine Owens speaking. May I help you?”
Owens? Emma checked the business card. New Hope Counseling Center, Theodore M. Owens, Ph.D. and Catherine Owens, Ph.D., LMFC. Individual, Marital and Family Counseling.
The therapist was answering the telephone?
“I would like to make an appointment, please,” Emma said. “But first, can you tell me something about the therapists?”
“Certainly. There are two of us—myself and my husband, Ted Owens. I am a licensed clinical psychologist, and licensed marriage and family counselor. I’ve been practicing for twenty-five years. Ted is a licensed clinical psychologist and has been practicing for thirty-four years.”
Emma felt at once reassured by their ages and a little put off. They might be worn out.
“We both counsel all manner of issues, but I generally handle women’s issues, and Ted handles anger management and all addictions. What sort of difficulty are you having?”
Emma said, “Uh–we would like marriage counseling. My husband and I.” She had the idle thought that maybe they needed anger management, too.
“All right. I would be glad to help you with that,” the woman said in a positive manner that Emma instantly appreciated.
The woman gave Emma several choices for appointments, and Emma chose Thursday afternoon the following week.
Later, when she told John Cole the time of the appointment and the name of the therapist, he said with a note of alarm, “Therapist? I thought we were seein’ a counselor.”
“We are. That’s what marriage counseling is. Therapy.”
“Oh. And it’s a woman?”
“Yes,” Emma answered.
After several seconds, he said, “Oh,” again and let it go at that, demonstrating that he was learning when to shut up.
6
1550 AM on the Radio Dial
The Sunday Morning Gospel Hour
The music faded, and Winston came on. “That was Barbara Mandrell’s rendition of ‘Amazing Grace.’ Glad to have you here with us this bright mornin’, where our generous sponsors this week are the Valentine Voice, the area’s award-winning newspaper, and the good folks of the First United Methodist Church.”
He paused for a thoughtful moment. “We have a First Baptist Church, too. As far as I know, those are the only Methodist and Baptist churches in town, so I don’t know why they don’t just call themselves the Onlys—the Only United Methodist or the Only Baptist.
“Anyway, the folks at the First Methodist invite you all to join them this mornin’ for services. Sunday school is about to commence over there, I think…ah, I can’t find my listing…”
He felt odd. A little swimmy-headed. He saw Jim Rainwater shoot him one of his worried looks.
Averting his eyes to the tune list, Winston looked through his reading glasses and read, “And now here’s Ricky Skaggs, givin’ us some bluegrass gospel.”
His chest felt a little tight. But a man did not get to his nineties and not have a lot of odd-feeling moments. Not wanting the kid getting his shorts in a knot with worry, he pushed up from his chair, saying, “I’m goin’ to the john. Don’t get worried.”
He tried not to shuffle his steps as he left the room. He had a sudden and odd longing for Willie Lee. Sunday mornings were the one time since school had gotten out that his little buddy did not accompany him. Willie Lee’s mother insisted on a quiet family gathering around the breakfast table on Sundays.
But in that moment, Winston wished so much for the companionship of the boy that he had the disconcerting sense of being close to tears. It rather rattled him. It was said that when a body went into a heart attack, emotions got all mixed up. He had experienced a heart attack a number of years previously, but mostly what he recalled was waking up and people annoying the hell out of him.
In the bathroom, he splashed water on his face and dried it with a paper towel. He purposely avoided looking in the mirror. These days the image in the mirror was some strange old man, not himself at all.
He threw the paper towel in the trash and stood bracing himself on the windowsill, trying to summon the memory of the man he had been in his prime, tall and straight, with steelgray hair and a chiseled jaw. It wasn’t so much what a person looked like. It was more how a person envisioned himself—that was what a person projected.
Just then a movement beyond the window caught his attention.
A figure was walking along the side of the road in the distance. A young man, wiry and with a bare torso, what must have been his shirt hanging down from the waist of his jeans. He was moving at a fast pace and kept looking back over his shoulder, then up and down the road, in a curious manner.
All of a sudden, in one swift motion, the fellow jumped over the barbed-wire fence around the pasture across the road and disappeared.
Winston jutted his face closer to the window. His vision was not what it once had been, of course, which was why he couldn’t drive any longer. Yet he knew he had seen someone, and now he was gone. Just disappeared right before his eyes.
He was about to check his own pulse when he saw a head pop up from the tall grass along the fence line. Yes, it was a head. It turned from side to side, looking up and down the road. The growing sound of a siren reached Winston’s ears.
The head disappeared into the weeds. A few seconds later, a sheriff’s car came speeding past, lights blinking and tires throwing up dust. The siren faded.
Thrilled that he had not gone round the bend and started imagining things, Winston thought of telephoning the sheriff’s office, but he wanted to see if the head popped up again, so he kept staring at the spot.
No head showed. He looked as far as he could up and down the road. He wondered if the figure had moved on in the cover of the sand-plum bushes to the cedar trees.
There came a rap. “Winston…you okay?”
He jerked open the door. “I’m fine. Things get slower when you get older. You’ll find that out. Everything you got is gonna drop south and get slow as molasses in January.”
Jim Rainwater shook his head and turned, heading back to his controls.
Winston followed, thinking again about telephoning the sheriff’s office, when the door to the building opened and Willie Lee came through it.
“I am here,” he announced and came straight over to Winston.
“And so you are.” Winston gazed in surprise at the boy and his dog. The boy’s eyes were very blue behind his thick glasses.
“Willie Lee insisted on comin’ down here early and waiting for you,” said Tate Holloway, the young boy’s stepfather, who followed the boy and the dog through the door.
“Well, that’s fine…I appreciate you, buddy.”
“Winston—you ready?” called Jim Rainwater.
“I’m comin’ straight away.”
Willie Lee slipped his hand into Winston’s larger one, and together they went into the studio, where Winston sat back down, put on the headphones and pulled the microphone close.
Willie Lee and his dog took their accustomed places, while Tate pulled up a stool and opened the Sunday paper.
Winston drew himself up. “Gather ’round, children. We’re ready for the anniversaries.”
Finding his voice, in fact all of him, returning to full strength, he read clearly from the listing in front of him, sending congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Ryan Showalter, who were to celebrate their third anniversary on Monday, and to Frank and Lisa Ruiz, celebrating a whopping six months, and to Herbert and LaVerne Riddick, who the past week had celebrated fifty-four years of marriage.
“I’ve known little LaVernie since Herbert brought her up from down in Hennrietta, Texas,” said Winston. “I asked her the other day what was her secret for her lengthy marriage. She said it was because Herbert never forgot their anniversary. Herbert told me that LaVernie never let him forget it. Now that’s what I call two sensible people—a woman who says what she wants, and a man smart enough to listen.”
Vella was in charge of the altar f lowers that month at the First Methodist. She had bought pots of blooming bromeliads on special from the Home Depot and saved the Ladies Circle some twenty-five dollars. Actually, she saved herself some twenty-five dollars, as she bought them through the Blaine’s Drugstore account and donated the f lowers, thereby transferring the expense in part to Uncle Sam. So she was doing her part and keeping the economy going. Things just passed along in life.
“Let me help you.”
She was a little surprised to see Jaydee Mayhall coming forward. He took one of the pots right out of her hand. “Well, thank you, Jaydee. Please set that one over by the piano.” She wondered what he wanted; Jaydee was not a man to do something for nothing.
