Chapter Twenty-Five

Rue

“Son of a bitch.”

I stepped back from the stove, sucking on the fingers that I had just burned on molten macaroni and cheese, and then paused. Rubbing my hand over my belly, I glanced down apologetically.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know I shouldn’t be saying things like that. I wouldn’t want that to be what you remember about my voice.”

I suddenly felt my throat close up with emotion and my eyes start to sting with the tears that had become all too familiar in the last several weeks since I had seen Richard. I had been trying not to let this happen. In fact, I had been having some serious talks with myself about the reality that was going to befall me in just a matter of weeks. My due date was in exactly 16 days and I was counting them down with a mixture of emotions that I had a difficult time sifting through. I was looking forward to my back not aching anymore and to being able to look down and see my knees again. I was telling myself that by next summer I could be in a bathing suit again sitting in a baby pool in the front yard of Grammyma’s house waiting for Sue Ellen to come by with fresh homemade peach ice cream.

Alright, so that wasn’t so terribly different from what I had been doing the day before, but at least next summer I could wear something cuter and not look like a beached whale when I tried to get up out of the pool to eat a half gallon of said ice cream.

In the next breath, however, I was already grieving not feeling the baby’s little kicks during the day or the hiccups that made my belly bounce when I had had too much to eat too quickly. I was struggling to wrap my mind around the idea that I wouldn’t have her inside of me to talk to anymore. Though I knew that I could keep writing her letters, I didn’t know if I would be able to bring myself to do it. It was just too hard to think about. For now, the letters that I wrote were tucked safely away in the scrapbook that I had been making her, protected in the pages among pressed flowers and leaves, pictures and ultrasounds, doodles I had made in the waiting room at the maternity center, and notes from Christopher and Tessie. I could keep them there, pretending that one day I would be able to give them to her, to hand her the book and sit with her while we talked about how she came to be and laughed about the memories that I had preserved from this time. Once she was born, though, I wouldn’t have that hope to hold onto anymore. If I wrote a letter to her I would have to put it in an envelope, address it with whatever name Richard and Flora gave her, and send it away. I would never know if she actually got it, or even if she did, if she cared what it said.

The thought was too much for me sometimes, and I had spent many nights since walking away from Richard that night wondering if I had made the right choice. Saving Grammyma’s house was so important to me that I hadn’t thought this decision all the way through. I had simply jumped on the opportunity, allowed my fear and the emotions that I was feeling in that moment to control me rather than taking a step back and trying to look at what was happening through some sort of filter of logic. Maybe if I had done that, I would have been able to come up with another solution. I would have been able to find another way to come up with the money to pay off the house and not have to go through this.

Even as I thought that, however, I knew that that would have been the truly wrong choice. No matter what I was going through right now and the pain and heartache that I knew was coming, if I had the opportunity to go back and change my mind, I knew in my heart that I wouldn’t do it. I had told myself in the very beginning that I wasn’t going to experience any of this. I was going into it with a clear mind and a confident spirit, I convinced myself. I wasn’t going to struggle with feelings of loss when it was time to give birth because I was never going to look at this baby as though it was mine, but that wasn’t the way that it had happened. I had connected with this baby in a powerful and completely unexpected way and for a brief moment in time I thought that I was going to be able to continue on with that connection and allow it to flourish. Losing that possibility made the impending separation even more difficult to fathom, but it also reinforced that this baby was something truly spectacular, and that I would never want for her not to exist. Even if my only purpose was to create and carry her, and ensure that she was brought into the world safely so that Richard and Flora could raise her, I was proud of that contribution and I would take the pain that was to come as payment for the joy that I was able to feel now.

I was reaching for the wooden spoon in the macaroni and cheese again, ready to try for a second time to get some into a bowl so that I could sit in front of the television and eat as had become my routine in the last several days, when I heard someone knocking on my door. I checked my phone to see if I had somehow turned it off. When I saw that it was still on and that no one had called, I got a sense of dread in my stomach. People around here might stop by in the late morning or early afternoon to drop off a pie or have a chat on the front porch, but they weren’t going to come over uninvited in the evening, especially not around suppertime. This meant that there was something seriously wrong. There could be a barn fire or some kind of accident. Jimmy Kudrow could be stuck up in the big tree again.

I rushed to the front door and pulled it open before even looking out of the window to see who it might be. Depending on how long he had been up in the tree, every second might count. When I saw what was waiting for me on the porch, though, I wished that I had taken those few seconds to check. Maybe then I would’ve just gone back to the living room with my bowl of macaroni and cheese and ignored the knocking until it stopped. Standing there in the glow of the porch light, silhouetted against the dying light of the evening, was Richard.

My mouth opened and closed a few times, but I couldn’t seem to get any words out. Instead, I stepped back and started to close the door. Richard reached out and flattened his hand to the door to stop it, stepping one foot inside to further prevent me from closing him out.

“Rue, please. Just give me five minutes.”

I wanted to tell him no. I wanted to just slam the door in his face, sit down on the floor, and cry. But something about the way that he looked stopped me. It wasn’t the expression on his face or even the emotion in his eyes, though both seemed deep and sincere. Instead, it was what he was wearing. I hadn’t noticed it when I first opened the door because I was so startled to be seeing him standing there, but now that I had had a minute, it was all I could focus on.

“What are you wearing?” I asked, looking him up and down.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

I nodded and stepped back, letting him come inside after me. I closed the door and turned so that my back was to it, still trying to get my mind to process the image in front of me. The body that was forever enveloped in exorbitantly expensive suits, silk, and khaki all tailored specifically to him was standing there in worn, faded jeans and what looked like a discarded old mechanic’s shirt. Richard held his arms open and I noticed he was holding a handful of wild flowers that appeared to have been just plucked out of the ground.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I think it looks like you got stuck in some sort of natural disaster and are showing the benefits of a relief effort. Where did you get those things?”

“I went to the thrift store in town,” he said, beaming at the revelation.

“The thrift store?” I asked, as shocked as I was bewildered. “How long have you been standing on my front porch? The thrift store would have closed at least four hours ago. Darryl does night fishing this time of year because it’s so hot and he likes to take the afternoons off so that he can nap before he heads out.”

“I offered him a little bit of extra cash to open up for me.”

I rolled my eyes and let out a sigh.

“Of course, you did.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Richard asked, looking crestfallen.

I shook my head, cocking my hip in a gesture that had the dual benefits of looking sassy and relieving the painful pressure that was building up in the joint from standing too long that day.

“Nothing. Is that it? You just came by to show me…what?... your poor holler-folk Halloween costume? Are you done now, because I’m really hungry and would like to get back to my dinner now.”

I walked away, hoping that he would see himself out, but he reached out and took my arm, turning me back toward him. A shiver went through me at the touch of his hand, but I pulled away from him.

“Come to dinner with me,” he said.

“Didn’t we already go through this?” I asked. “That didn’t go so well, either, so let’s just not revisit that particular disaster.”

“But that’s what I want to talk to you about,” he said.

“We already talked Richard. There’s nothing more that I have to say to you.”

I knew that was a big lie. My heart felt like it was tearing in two with everything that was inside of it to say, but I couldn’t bring myself to say any of it. Besides, I think that I used up all of the words that I was allowed to have about this particular situation when we were in the restaurant or in the limo afterwards. All of words that I was allowed to have, and quite a few that I probably wasn’t allowed but had gone right on ahead and used anyway.

“Well, there’s a lot that I still need to say to you.”

I was a little surprised with the force behind the words, and I fell quiet for a second. Finally, I nodded.

“Go ahead,” I said. “What do you want to say?”

“Please just go to dinner with me,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about this standing here in the middle of the foyer.”

“So, like always, you get to decide how everything is going to go,” I muttered.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Richard asked.

His voice sounded slightly hurt but I was so filled with emotion at that moment that I didn’t really care what he was thinking or feeling.

“Nothing.”

“So, will you go?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said.

By now the macaroni and cheese is going to be congealed anyway. Grammyma always said not to even try the boxed stuff, but did I listen to her? Of course, not.

“OK. I’ll wait here while you get ready.”

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“What do you mean get ready? What if I told you that I was ready right now?”

To his credit, Richard barely even glanced at the booty-short length pajama bottoms and threadbare tank top I was wearing in an effort to combat the heat that was getting to me even though I was keeping the air conditioning blasting. He simply shrugged and pointed toward the door.

“Alright. Great. Let’s go.”

I glared at him and whipped around to stomp up the stairs to my bedroom.

“Out of your ever-fucking mind. Seriously think I’m going to be seen in public looking like this? What’s wrong with you?” I muttered under my breath as I stomped.

I knew very well by the time that I got to the bedroom that I was very close to falling off the rails, but I didn’t care. This baby was going to be inside me for another couple of weeks, and I was going to ride that hormone excuse right up until they popped a pacifier in her mouth and declared me officially done with being pregnant.

****

Richard

That was not the reaction that I was hoping for.

I had gone to town that afternoon and paid to have the thrift shop opened up to prove something to Rue, and that wasn’t that I was the same overbearing, over-indulged prick that she evidently thought I was. Now that she was up in her bedroom slamming drawers so loudly that I was slightly worried some of the ceiling plaster was going to come down, I realized that anything that I thought I was going to accomplish by showing up here was probably futile. She had made it very clear to me when she walked away from me at that restaurant that she didn’t want anything to do with me personally anymore. From that moment until the baby was born, we were nothing but business acquaintances on either side of a transaction, and when that transaction was over, we didn’t have any further need to be a part of each other’s lives.

That just hadn’t been good enough for me. Not then and definitely not now. I had wanted to go back to her apartment the day after that night, to force her to talk to me so that I could tell her what had really happened between Flora and me at the hotel earlier in the evening, but something told me that going after her so soon after it all happened was the worst thing that I could do. She was devastated and overcome with a level of emotion that I knew that I couldn’t even begin to understand. I felt like I needed to give her some time, just a couple of days to calm down, and then I would be able to talk to her. When I tried to call her, however, she never answered and soon I was blocked. I went to her apartment and found it completely empty, but the moving crew said that they hadn’t had anything to do with this move. I couldn’t get in touch with Christopher or Tessie, and I didn’t have contact information for any of the people I had met in Whiskey Hollow. None of them had had reason to give me their phone numbers, and far be it for any of the businesses around here to actually have websites.

As soon as that thought rolled through my mind I winced and chastised myself for it. That was exactly the type of thought that had driven Rue away from me and had put me in the position that I was in now. I really didn’t mean it the way that it sounded. It was a world that I didn’t understand, and that made me nervous, but it was also a world that I saw shining through Rue’s eyes every time she smiled and heard in her voice, especially when she got sleepy. It was also something that I knew that one day, a day that was coming sooner and sooner, I was going to see in my daughter.

Our daughter.

Above me I heard the door to Rue’s closet slam and a little bit of plaster from the ceiling came drifting down. I watched it fall to the floor in front of me and shook my head at it. That’s alright. I’ll make sure it gets fixed.

If I can convince Rue to let me.

Finally, I heard Rue coming down the stairs and I looked up at her. She looked so beautiful it nearly took my breath away. She had brushed out her thick hair until it hung shining around shoulders left bare by the sundress she was wearing. White and covered in delicate eyelet, the dress fell to her ankles and accentuated her growing belly. I wanted so much to reach out and gather her up into my arms, to kiss her and tell her I loved her, but I knew that I couldn’t. There was more that I needed to say to her before that. She needed to know what happened and why before she would ever be able to take that and fully know how she felt about it. Instead, I reached up to take her hand and help her down the last few steps. Though I wasn’t sure she would, Rue accepted my hand and held it lightly in her fingers until she was standing beside me. The touch of her skin on mine again was warm and tingling, and I wished that she wouldn’t let go. But she did, and I had nothing left to do but usher her out of the house and toward the surprises that I had waiting for her.

I turned to close the door behind us as we stepped out of the house and when I turned back around to go down the steps I nearly ran into Rue. She was stopped at the first step, staring ahead of her at the old grass-studded gravel parking area in front of the house.

“What is that?” she asked. “Where’s your limo?”

I stepped up beside her and couldn’t help but puff up my chest slightly. I hooked my thumbs in the beltloops of my pants the way that I had seen some of the other men do and rocked back slightly on my heels.

“I bought a truck,” I said.

She turned and looked at me disbelievingly.

“You didn’t trade in the limo for that, did you?” she asked.

“No,” I said, shaking my head, feeling somewhat less puffy at the tone of her voice. “The limo is back in the city with Abraham. He brought me down here, so I could buy the truck and then he went back.”

She nodded, but it seemed less like she was acknowledging what I was saying and more like she was trying to appease me. Turning back to the truck, Rue walked down the steps and across the yard. She walked around the perimeter of the truck, examining it. As she did, I started to notice more of the dings and dents in it than I had when I was standing in the sparse used car lot. I had been promised that the hulking, somewhat bulbous blue truck had a lot of character, and that that was perfect for fitting in around here. Now that I was seeing the little patches that the man had assured me were just a bit of flaked-off paint and noticing that they were actually bits of rust, and sections of the body that looked distinctly like they had been rammed by either large animals or human heads, I was wondering if that was actually the case at all. By the look on Rue’s face as she walked around the front and back to me, I was fairly certain it wasn’t.

“You bought this from Cletus, didn’t you?” she asked.

I nodded.

“How much did he charge you for it?” she asked.

“Four thousand,” I told her, feeling a little bit of uncertainty in my voice.

Rue laughed, but quickly rolled her lips in and covered her mouth to try to muffle it. She shook her head.

“Oh, Richard. He added an extra zero when he saw you coming.” She glanced at the truck again. “Maybe an extra two zeroes.”

“Well, let’s go. I’m sure you’re hungry.”

She looked at me as if she wanted to make a snappy comeback, but at the same time she couldn’t really deny that she was hungry and wanted to get going as much as I did. We climbed into the truck and I waited while she wrestled her seatbelt into place around her belly. I had the compulsion to reach out and touch the full swell. It had been weeks since I had been able to touch her belly and feel the baby moving around within her. I knew that the baby would be bigger and stronger now, and I longed to feel her, but I didn’t push my luck. I had gotten Rue into the truck with me. That was the first step. I still felt like I needed to step lightly or risk her hopping out and heading back to the house, taking any hope right along with her.

“Where are we going to dinner?” Rue asked as the truck lurched somewhat reluctantly to life and started away from the house.

“That’s up to you,” I said. “We can go anywhere you like. Is there anything in particular you’re craving?”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw her tense slightly and turn to look out of her window without answering me. Something about the question had bothered her and I felt guilty for asking, even though I wasn’t entirely sure what I had done wrong. We continued on in silence for a few more minutes. She hadn’t given me any directions, so I was just driving toward town. I wanted so much to tell her everything that I was thinking, but I held back. I wanted to spend more time with her. I wanted to give her back the night that had been taken from us, but in a way that would show her what I was holding in my heart. Only then would I be ready to tell her everything, and feel confident that she was ready to hear it.

Suddenly I felt an ominous shake in the truck. I gripped the wheel harder and eased up on the gas a little, wondering if I might have offended it as well. The truck shook again, and I saw Rue reach up to grab onto the handle above her door. Her hand pressed to her belly and I knew things weren’t looking good for our road trip. Deciding it would be better to go ahead and swerve off of the road rather than having the truck die right in the middle of it, I turned slightly and let the truck glide into the field to our side. We had gotten a few yards in when the truck seemed to take one last shuddering breath and then stopped. I turned the key a few times, but it was completely futile. The engine didn’t even sputter. It was finished.

This is just getting along spectacularly well.

“I guess I can get out and push,” I said.

“If you were going to push, why did you come out in the middle of a field where the tires are going to sink into the dirt and make it virtually impossible to get out on your own, because I promise you that that is not the pushing that I’ve been preparing for?”

I peered out of the window at the ground below and then back at her.

“I don’t think that I really thought this all the way through,” I admitted.

“Mmm-hmm,” she said in acknowledgement and unhooked her seatbelt.

Well, that’s it. I had a good run. Actually, no. No, I didn’t. That was terribly unsuccessful.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

I figured at least if I knew where she was headed, it would be easier to follow her.

“I thought that you wanted to have dinner.”

“I do,” I said.

“Then come on.”