Chin Up, Honey

2

Emma

Just as soon as she waved Johnny and Gracie off, Emma raced back inside to the kitchen wall phone and called John Cole on his cell phone number.

While listening to the rings, she tucked the receiver into her neck and began to clean the dishes. It rang five times, and then voice mail picked up. It wasn’t even John Cole’s voice, because he had never put a message on it.

She jammed the receiver back onto the base and finished cleaning up in a vigorous manner. As she considered her options for reaching her husband, she all but wiped a hole in the counter.

John Cole had mentioned plans to drive to Oklahoma City. This did not mean he had gone, because he rarely made hard-and-fast plans. But he was a man of a few habits, and one of those was to stop into his office at the end of each day. She could call him there, but John Cole never did answer the office phone. It would be answered by Shelley Dilks, his secretary. Office manager, as the woman had made a point of saying.

It was annoying as all get-out to have to go through the woman to reach her own husband, Emma thought, again reaching for the telephone. She paused with the receiver in hand. The possibility that John Cole might have told the woman about their…situation caused a sort of short circuit in Emma’s brain. Then she remembered guiltily that she had told Belinda Blaine.

Taking a deep breath, Emma dialed the office number. It rang twice before the woman answered.

“Berry Enterprises offices, Shelley Dilks speakin’.”

“Hello, Shelley. This is Emma. Is John Cole in?”

“Well…yes. Just a minute and I’ll see if he can get the phone.”

And why would he not get the phone for his wife? Emma squeezed her eyes closed. If Shelley Dilks knows and spreads the word about me and John Cole, I will snatch her baldheaded.

“Hey. Emma?”

At John Cole’s voice, her eyes flew open.

“Yes…hello.” She thought his tone actually seemed welcoming, as if happy to have her call him. Although maybe she imagined it. She had not felt at all certain about anything with him for a long time.

“Are you in your office?”

“Well, yeah. Why?”

Just then the receiver was about jerked out of her hand, as she had become so agitated that she was walking right out of the kitchen and had reached the end of the phone cord.

“John? Are you there?”

“Yeah.”

She lowered herself on the kitchen stool to prevent further accidents. “Are you in your office alone?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, I have somethin’ important to tell you. I don’t want you distracted by Shelley or somebody and stuff goin’ on. Why don’t you close your office door?”

“It is closed, Emma Lou. What is it?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Suddenly the fact of Johnny’s engagement was too big and tender for words. She pressed a knotted hand to her chest, as her memory f lashed back through the years and she recalled telling John Cole of having gotten pregnant at last, after their years of desperate trying. She had done this same thing, gotten him on the phone and not been able to say a word.

“Emma?” he said with a bit of alarm.

“It’s good.” She reached for a tissue.

“O-kay.”

She imagined that familiar patient expression he got when he settled in to out-wait anything and everything. John Cole could have the patience of Job. It was annoying.

She swallowed, took a deep breath and got it out. “Our John Ray is gettin’ married.”

“He is?” His tone was more confused than surprised. It generally took John Cole some time to absorb news of such magnitude.

“Yes, he is.” She doubled over and stared through blurred eyes at her red-painted toenails.

“I just saw him yesterday mornin’.” He still sounded confused. “I took over some cases of oil for the Lawton store. We’re runnin’ a special this week, and I let him have a case that I got from the supplier as complimentary. He didn’t say anything about gettin’ married.”

“He talks to you about money and business. He talks to me about life and love. Besides, I don’t think he had asked her then. I kinda’ got the idea it all happened last night…that he got the ring just yesterday.”

“He just bought a car.”

“I don’t think there’s a limit on these things.”

The line hummed with disapproving silence.

She said more gently, “Our son is a man, grown and fully capable of makin’ good decisions for his own life.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Then, “Who is he marryin’? Is it the one with the long, dark hair—Gracie? Is that her name?”

“Yes,” Emma said, with some impatience at his question. Who else could it have been? John Cole just didn’t pay attention to anything besides business.

“She is the only girl he has been datin’ for the past six months, at least…but I think he’s known her since way last fall, when she moved to Lawton and came into the store up there. They met when he helped her get her keys out of her locked car. She’s the really pretty one that you said looks a little foreign and has all that hair. She wears clothes like something out of a fashion magazine. Lots of black, like they wear up north. They haven’t broken up once in all these months. He’s brought her out here twice this spring to Sunday dinner…oh, but the second time, you were gone to the NASCAR races down in Dallas.”

That her son had only brought Gracie twice, now three times, in those months seemed a telling commentary. Gracie was special.

“I’ve seen them together a number of times,” John Cole said in a defensive tone. “I dropped by his place and took them to lunch at Wendy’s once. She seems a nice girl.”

“All of his girlfriends have seemed nice. Well, except for that one that had the line of earrings not only in her ears but in her nose and eyebrows, too, and it wasn’t that she wasn’t nice, she just seemed a bit obsessed with poking holes in her body.

“But Gracie is a woman, John Cole, not a girl. She’s a lovely, intelligent and solid young woman. I knew from the first time I saw her that Johnny was ready to settle down. I told you that, remember? Johnny never had a girl like her before. We talked about that. She’s young, but she is an assistant manager for the M. Connor store—her mother is an executive of some sort for the entire M. Connor chain,” she supplied, refreshing his memory with important facts.

He said, “I don’t know what those stores are.”

“It’s a chain of very upscale women’s clothing stores in malls from coast to coast. The one where Gracie works just opened last fall.”

John Cole avoided the mall like the plague. He bought most of his clothes at Tractor Supply or Wal-Mart stores. Emma didn’t necessarily see anything wrong with this; they had once seen a famous country-western star wearing the same shirt as John Cole down at the Dallas airport. The man had even laughed and pointed at John Cole. The shirt was a real nice Panhandle Slim, no-iron and all. Still, refusing to go into a mall did limit one’s clothing choices.

“You will probably have to go to the mall to get a good suit for the wedding.” Her thoughts raced on. “It may be that you will need a tux. I think Gracie comes from a right well-to-do family. The wedding may end up being real fancy. We might have to go down to Dallas to get you a suit.”

This was met with silence that she only barely noticed, because her mind was running along with possible contingencies. She went on to tell him that the kids wanted the wedding sometime in the middle of September, but were in consultation with Gracie’s mother and all their friends about the exact date and location.

Gracie’s mother might want to hold the ceremony in Baltimore, although the kids seemed to favor a wedding right there in Valentine, which would be the most practical thing. Johnny’s friends and family were all within driving distance, and most of Gracie’s friends were in Dallas. There wasn’t but Gracie’s mother up in Baltimore. Apparently Gracie’s mother had been divorced since Gracie was a baby, and her father was not in the picture. From what Emma had gathered, the only other family was Gracie’s mother’s parents, who spent a lot of time in Paris.

“I can understand if her mother would want to have her only daughter’s wedding up there where she is, but it will sure be a mess tryin’ to haul everyone up there. Your daddy won’t go, because he is never gonna step on a plane.” John Cole’s daddy said that if a plane broke a fan belt, there was no place up there for it to pull over.

“We could all drive up,” said John Cole.

The image popped into her mind, all of them in a long caravan, like a bunch of gypsies. She thought of the luggage her mother would require. Her mother practically took her entire home when traveling.

“Mama said somethin’ about a writers’ conference in September. I hope it won’t be on the wedding day…or if it is, that she hasn’t already paid for it.”

“We’ve got the big Convenience Store Expo up at Oklahoma City in September,” said John Cole. “The second week in September.”

To which Emma instantly replied, “I don’t think that is near as important as John Ray’s wedding. You can miss it one year.”

“I was just mentionin’ it, Emma Lou.”

She bit her bottom lip.

Then she said, “We’ll know more about everything on Sunday. The kids are comin’ for dinner—we’re gonna have a little family engagement celebration and talk over the wedding plans. I think it would be good for you to be here on Sunday, if you can.”

“I’ll be there,” he said instantly.

“Well, good.” Then, “John?” When heart-stopping serious, she used his first name.

“Yeah?”

“I think it would be a good idea for you to come on home. We just can’t do the divorce now. It would tear Johnny’s world apart at a time that is supposed to be filled with joy—his and Gracie’s special time. We need to just drop the idea and make everything seem normal, at least until after the wedding. Don’t you think so?”

She squeezed her eyes closed.

“Yeah, I think you’re right.”

Everything just melted inside of her. She had always been able to count on John Cole’s excellence as a father.

It was a lot to take in. First she was getting divorced from her husband of thirty-two years, then her son was getting married, now her husband was coming home.

What about sleeping arrangements?

She entered their bedroom and gazed at the bed—king-size, solid cherrywood. She had bought it back when they got their first home. John Cole never had paid much attention to the interior of the house. Every time she bought something, he would grouch about her spending money on it, but then, when the piece was in the house, he always really liked it.

There was no way John Cole could manage sleeping in the guest room. He would end up making the family room his bedroom and his recliner his bed.

She entered the walk-in closet, where one side still contained most of his clothes, with a line of boots and shoes below. She gathered up her nightgown and robe and slippers, carried them down to the guest room, then threw them over the end of the bed. She wasn’t going to move her clothes, because she could not have anyone know she wasn’t still in her own room. Then she returned with two large wicker baskets to the bathroom, where she swept her things off the counter and out of the drawers, carrying them down to the guest bath and tucking them in the cabinet.

Subterfuge was going to be a lot of work.

3

Emma and John Cole

She kept watch and saw his truck coming up the drive. She hurried to the back door to meet him, but stopped in the kitchen doorway.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” He carried his duffel bag and shirts in a bag from the cleaners. “I’ll put these away—I’ll be right back,” he added, as if she might think he was never returning.

Emma watched him go off down the hall, then turned and flew around the kitchen, pulling the bowls of chicken salad she had already prepared from the refrigerator, closing it with her foot as she ripped the plastic wrap from the dishes. She arranged the salad—made John Cole’s favorite way—with sunflower seeds and halved grapes on a bed of lettuce, with celery sticks and cherry tomatoes on the side. The effect was something as pretty as a magazine cover.

Maybe John Cole would see what he had been missing.

Realizing her train of thought, she yanked out the celery sticks, as if to tone down the inviting food. He likely wouldn’t eat them, or even notice, anyway.

Studying the prepared plate of food, she thought that she was in a most frazzled state. But then again, what other state was natural for a woman in her situation?

Hearing the sound of the television, she went to the entry of the family room. John Cole was standing there in the middle of the room, remote control in hand, staring at the television. Headline News was on—a report on a disaster somewhere.

Emma was not certain what she expected of him, but she did think he could have thought of something better than to turn on the television at that particularly significant moment.

She said, “I have your supper ready. Do you want to eat in here?”

“Yes…that’d be nice.”

She didn’t know why she had bothered to ask.

They sat in their respective chairs, a large table in between them, facing the big-screen television, where NASCAR highlights flickered on the screen.

Emma had for so long wanted to buy a regular couch, so that they could sit side by side. She thought if they could have sat close together, held hands and touched more intimately, they might have revived their passion for each other. But John Cole had refused to give up his chair.

She wondered what he might have done if one day, when he arrived home, she was burning his chair out in the yard. She imagined the scene. The hardest part would be getting the chair outside. John Cole had a heavy-duty dolly in his garage, though. She probably could use that. Or else smash the chair apart with a hammer and take it out piece by piece, about like one did a cooked chicken.

Then she began to imagine shooting out the television with a shotgun. They did not have a shotgun. She would have to borrow one. Vella Blaine had a shotgun; that woman’s prowess with a gun had been written up in the newspaper. Perhaps Vella would lend Emma the shotgun—or maybe Vella hired out as a crack shot. The television would be an easy target.

Just then, she realized that John Cole had begun talking, telling her how good the chicken salad was.

“Thanks for makin’ it,” he said. “I was more hungry than I imagined.”

“You’re welcome.”

Their eyes met and skittered away from each other.

Emma tried to think of something else to make conversation. Her conscience pricked, and she said, “I told Johnny that we would give him and Gracie money toward a nice honeymoon—I didn’t say how much, just that we would.”

John Cole nodded. “Okay.”

More NASCAR watching.

“Do you want to call your daddy and ever’ body tonight and tell them about Johnny and Gracie?”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “I guess…if you want to.”

“It’s up to you. He’s your daddy. I thought of callin’ Mama, but she’s up in Oklahoma City at one of her writer things, and I imagine she’s really busy up there and won’t hardly hear a word I say. You know how she is. Unless she calls here, I’ll just wait until she gets home on Saturday.”

John Cole, looking really tired all of a sudden, said he didn’t feel like calling. “We might as well wait until we have a date and details to tell ’em, anyway.”

She said okay. They finished their meal without further conversation, while NASCAR continued on the television.

Later, Emma sat at the kitchen table with a yellow legal pad, and a wedding etiquette book and wedding planning magazines that she had bought over the past few years, knowing that this day was bound to come. Dreaming about it. Actually trying to prepare herself for the change to being the mother of a man married to a woman.

John Cole came in and said what he so often did, “Oh, there you are. I wondered where you’d gone.”

“I’m right here. I’m workin’ on a preliminary list of people on our side for the invitation list. There’s more than I had imagined. If the wedding is here in Valentine, I imagine that most all of your side will come over. Well, maybe not Violet—I think she’s still got the agoraphobia. But I know Charlie J. and Joella will come and bring your daddy, and most everyone else will come, too.

“Then there’s quite a few Berry employees and some other business people it would be nice to invite. With just my first thoughts, I’ve come up with over seventy people, and that is not including the church congregation. It’s customary to invite the entire church where the ceremony is held, and I think we would do best to prepare for about a third of them to actually show up, especially the ones that have known Johnny from childhood.”

“It might be enough to cause them to decide to have the weddin’ up north,” John Cole commented, bending into the refrigerator.

Emma gazed at the list. “Well, we can easily keep it to just family. That isn’t so many…and I think Johnny will want his family there.”

The idea of having the wedding far away from home about made her sick. But then she reminded herself to be glad that Johnny had not run off and eloped, as he had often said he would do.

She looked up and saw John Cole, a Coke in hand, leaning against the kitchen counter, gazing at the floor.

He was here—home—she thought, running her eyes from his head to his boots.

His eyes met her own. She felt a little silly, getting caught looking at him, but she couldn’t just look away now that he had seen her.

He said, “You know, I just keep thinkin’ about how small he was when he was born and yet he had those really big feet.”

“Oh, my gosh…” She remembered, too, and smiled. “…They didn’t fit any of the booties that came in the newborn sets.”

John Cole gave a small grin, then tipped up his Coke and drank deeply.

Emma looked back at the list of names in front of her. She could not believe that John Cole remembered any of that, much less spoke of it. Tears welled in her eyes. And for some odd reason she was afraid for him to see.

“I guess I’m goin’ on to bed,” he said.

“Good night.” She saw him pause uncertainly. “I’ll come later,” she said. “I’m sleepin’ in the guest room. I…thought it might be best.”

There, it was said. She checked his face for his reaction. There was nothing.

He nodded and said, “Good night.”

Her chest felt crushed. But then, “John Cole?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for comin’ home.”

“He’s my son, too, Emma.”

His words struck hard. She opened her mouth to reply, to say that she well knew that. But he was already out of the room, and for some reason, she couldn’t figure out exactly what to say to stop him.

Lying against the pillows in the darkened guest room, Emma gazed out into the hallway and saw the dim silvery light shining from the television down in the master bedroom. She could faintly hear voices. It was funny how so small a light and soft a sound could go such a distance in a silent and dark house.

She fluffed her pillows, lay back again and breathed deeply. Over the past few days, she had often felt that she just could not get enough air. She felt that way now, tried inhaling deeply again, then repositioned the pillows and herself. Accepting that she was as comfortable as she was going to get, she lay staring up at the ceiling and recalled the conversation in the kitchen.

It was rare for John Cole to reveal any deep emotional thoughts as he had in speaking about Johnny as a baby. Sometimes she didn’t think John Cole even had any deep emotional thoughts, nothing beyond a fondness for television, car racing, making money and Coca-Cola.

He’s my son, too. As if she did not know that, as if to say that she tended to act like Johnny was all hers.

She supposed she did, a little. After all, she had so desperately wanted a child.

And John Cole had done his very best to give her one, too.

4