Waking Up Joy Page 12

  Since nothing remains a mystery for long in Spavinaw Junction—unless it was hidden in the Talley chimney—I got on the horn right away. Before I could blink, I had a list of ideas and my gang of helpers. Thelma, of course, was one of my volunteers. Her, Peter, and Mary Sue had started coming around again and Thelma said she loved the idea, but found an opportunity as we met at Carey’s house for a planning meeting, to give me her all-important advice. According to Thelma, I should’ve “sought counsel” from Reverend Wilson before I ever started, to get his take on the whole thing, of course.

  “Why would I do that, Thelma?”

  “Because, honey.” I hated when she called me honey, like I was her sister or true friend. “We all know you’re delicate right now. Peter and I talked about it this morning.”

  Oh you did, did you? I could just wring that Peter’s neck.

  “Even Mary Sue agrees,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “That you don’t want to overexert yourself,” Thelma finished.

  Well, I didn’t call the reverend, but I guess Thelma did, because a few mornings later, when I was still dressed in my pink-flowered satin pjs, my hair standing at all different angles, and my freckles exposed in all their glory, minus the Maybelline, I heard Reverend Wilson’s ratta-tat-tat on my door. It just happened to be a morning after one of my particularly sleepless nights, during which I’d had three nightmares, baked two dozen snicker doodles, and scribbled a list of eleven things I might do in order to raise money for The Tulip House for Girls.

  Reverend didn’t seem to mind my appearance as he sat looking over my list, his gnarled hands resting lightly on the cane that lay across his knees. He must have been one of those people who developed arthritis early because he’d had those hands, with varying degrees of twistedness, for as long as I could remember. Of course, I didn’t care about his hands. Nobody did. He was a good man, the same humble soul who’d taken responsibility for the . . . um . . . bodily noise I’d made at my Momma’s funeral in front of the whole church, the entire community, in fact. Why would he care what I looked like without makeup, or even notice my cheeks flushing red at the memory of that day?

  “These are good ideas, Joy.” Reverend Wilson smiled, which wasn’t what I was expecting at all. “I especially like the one about the barbecue supper here at the Talley house. Raise your prices on the meal by a dollar. I bet people will pay it for a good cause.”

  “You mean you didn’t come over here to tell me I’m too ‘delicate’ to be working so hard at raising money for The Tulip House for Girls?”

  “Of course not. I have a special place in my heart for that home. Your Momma did a lot of work there, as you know, and so have I. And you’ve never been delicate, now, have you?”

  I smiled, knowing instantly he meant this as a compliment.

  “Course,” he said. “I didn’t come here to talk about Tulip House, but I did come to check on you.” He handed back my list, and the way he stared into my eyes made me touch the swollen tissue beneath. It wasn’t only lack of sleep that bothered me that morning. I hoped he couldn’t see any traces of the tears. I’d awoken not an hour earlier to racking sobs, from a nightmare about Jimmy that was really not scary, only sad. Dreadfully heartrending.

  “Nothing’s wrong, Reverend.” I shrugged my shoulders, letting the lie roll right off. “I just can’t sleep.” He nodded, as if he’d expected me to say exactly that, and I knew he didn’t believe me.

  “Prayer might help,” he said. I smiled in response, a reaction I forced, not able to find enough energy to explain to a preacher that my prayers weren’t working anymore. I’d been hiding in the balcony on Sunday mornings listening to sermons, and taking in Jimmy’s songs, but while my former young lover’s voice still moved me the way it always had, the meanings of the words didn’t sink in like they used to.

  Reverend and I sat quietly in the living room, him on his usual settee in the corner and me in a chair where Momma used to sit when she was still with us. I squirmed in my seat, my hands on my knees, like a nervous un-praying child, listening to the slow tick-tocking of the grandfather-sized grandfather clock.

  Tick-tock! Tick-tock! Tick-Tock!

  Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. The tick-tock sounded like a series of gunshots in the quiet of the big living room. I’d never thought of Momma’s house—my house—as eerie before, but the sheer size of the living room made it feel cavernous and the tick-tock echoed through it, reminding me of a haunted mansion straight out of Tales from the Crypt. I jumped up, opened the little door of the clock, and stopped the pendulum.

  Reverend looked amused. “Did somebody die?”

  He leaned forward and placed his elbows on his bony knees. His ancient looking jacket reminded me of a mortician’s.

  “It’s the old way,” he said when I scrunched my face in question. “To stop the clock on the exact second that somebody dies. I figured with Bess’s superstitions, you would get the joke.”

  I glanced over at the clock. Seven-thirty-eight. Who stops in at somebody’s house this early in the morning?

  I feel dead when I wake up from my nightmares.

  “I feel dead, sometimes,” I blurted. Since he didn’t looked shocked, I continued. “Dead or in some kind of trance. And then, other days I have insurmountable energy, like a . . . a . . . hummingbird.”

  He nodded his head like I’d said the most normal thing in the world.

  “So it’s typical?” I asked. If so, then I was going ahead and picking out my own casket.

  “Typical to feel like a hummingbird?” He asked.

  I knew he was only teasing, but I sighed just the same. How could I expect anyone to understand why I’d been on the roof? All the things that’d happened in the hospital? The stuff that’d been crisscrossing my dreams and thoughts since I’d been home?

  A part of me, inexplicably, wished Jimmy had come to check on me, instead of Reverend Wilson, but of course, this was a weekday and Jimmy would be working. And then there were his previous visits when we sat two feet apart and I didn’t talk to him at all, even though I’d felt his eyes on me each time, studying, stirring my emotions into a raging storm just beneath my freckled pale skin. There was no way I was giving him the satisfaction of talking to him as if we’d never kissed, never planned to get married, never gone through the horrible thing that made us hide our secret in the chimney, and especially as if he’d never abandoned me for Fern. I reminded myself I should not feel guilty at all for being attracted to Doc. But at the moment, I didn’t want Doc. I wanted Jimmy. He was the only one who’d understand everything I was thinking. He would believe me.

  Jimmy. Come back to me.

  “You were in a coma,” Reverend Wilson was saying, and I blinked three times before remembering what we were talking about. “You were as close to death as anyone I know has ever been, except for your father, of course”

  “Reverend, can I tell you something?”

  “Tell me anything, Joy.”

  I moved to sit beside him and realized the old love seat was the most uncomfortable seat in the house. No wonder Momma had always ordered us to sit there when we were about to receive a talking-to.

  “It’s really going to sound strange. Course, Carey thinks I have mental problems anyway, you know.”

  He nodded, but didn’t laugh along with me.

  Oh, Reverend. Maybe you think I’m ‘mental’ too.

  “Just spit it out, Joy.” The map of wrinkles under his eyes seemed deep with experience. I would have bet my favorite Emmylou Harris record that he’d heard a lot of people’s secrets. I wouldn’t doubt if he had a wrinkle for each secret he carried, and he had a lot of wrinkles.

  “Reverend . . .”

  “Yes.” He said it like an agreement and his glassy eyes were the sincerest as I’ve ever seen. For a second there, I remembered him looking at Momma just this way. I’d come in from the garden and they were at the kitchen table, his hand resting over hers on the table top.
To me, it had looked sweet, like something two elderly friends would do, but now, I remembered that they’d been sitting together like that ever since Daddy’s funeral. Now that I thought about it, they weren’t old back then.

  “What is it, Joy? You can tell me.” I wanted to ruminate more on the hand-holding between Momma and Reverend Wilson, but he was staring at me, waiting to hear my secret. That’s what I’d give him, but, I decided, only one.

  “Reverend . . . my dad came to me when my heart stopped in my coma. It was Daddy who blew the breath back in me.”

  He sat there, looking at me like I was a stranger.

  “I heard everything. I knew what was going on. I heard my brothers and sisters fighting,” I said. For a moment I saw the clouds part in his eyes and I knew he understood what I was saying, but then the fog rolled over him.

  Disbelief.

  “I heard you praying for me. You said, ‘Lord, please help Bess’s daughter. Keep Joy with us.’”

  My whisper was quiet, but it hit Reverend Wilson like a rock in the forehead. His eyes widened as he stared at the grandfather clock, at Momma’s black and white photo on the wall, at his feet, and then at me.

  “You were in bed, Joy. I know this because I was at the hospital. River called me and I drove right over and sat in the lobby. I prayed for you the whole time.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said, as quiet as the breeze blowing the kitchen curtains. “Daddy was there. He was real. I don’t care what you say.”

  There. I’ve said it.

  Since he couldn’t seem to respond, I continued. “And the other thing is, that I’m in love with Jimmy Cornsilk.”

  He raised his watery eyes to mine, and I could see he wasn’t surprised.

  “Even when Fern was alive.”

  He looked at me, like he was expecting more.

  “But now, after my coma, I’ve realized what a fool I’ve been. How much time I’ve wasted. I’m going to move on.”

  At that, he just smiled.

  I’ve really done it now. Bring on the straight jacket, or at least doom me to hell.

  But he didn’t. I waited on egg shells for him to say something. Time passed, despite my stopping the ticking of the grandfather clock, and Reverend Wilson just kept shaking his head, widening his eyes like he had something in them he wanted to get out, and rubbing his temples. I was pretty sure I knew what he was thinking, but as so often happens when I think I know all about someone, he opened his mouth, and I found out I was wrong.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‡

  Even though I hadn’t even made breakfast for Ruthie and Bobby who had stayed over—again—I had an itch to get out of the house. Thanks to Reverend Wilson’s visit, I felt energized, so I left Ruthie and Bobby a note and drove to Momma’s Curls.

  “Joy!” Nanette set her comb down, leaving Thelma in her chair with half-combed hair and rushed to me.

  When Carey saw me, she did the same thing, so maybe, I thought, they were moving on from their ridiculous worries about my brain.

  “Look at you!” Carey immediately started messing with my hair while Nanette took my chin in her hand and peered at my eyebrows. “I hope you are here to let us work on you, Sis. You look awful.”

  “Carey,” Nanette said.

  “It’s okay. She’s right.” I walked to the empty chair next to Thelma and sat down. “I still like it long, but it needs a trim.”

  “And let’s face it,” Thelma said. “A color.”

  “I do not,” I said. Thelma was always sticking her nose in where it didn’t belong. I looked to my sisters for back up.

  “We don’t color red-heads, Thelma.” Nanette went back to combing Thelma’s hair, leaving me to Carey.

  Carey picked at my hair like I had head-lice. “Red hair fades with age, but yours looks like it’s highlighted. I wouldn’t mess up your hair for anything.”

  I sighed, relieved.

  “But you need to start using some mousse, Sis. Do something about that frizz.”

  “I can’t be at tomorrow’s Tulip House meeting,” Thelma said.

  Praises!

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Thelma. You’ll sure be missed.”

  Carey winked at me. She only got along with Thelma when she needed backing up on something nobody else agreed with.

  “Peter said he’ll make the cupcakes, since I can’t.” Thelma said this like Peter’s cupcakes were atrocious, so this would be a grave injustice.

  “I’m sure we’ll manage.”

  Nanette, always looking to keep her customers happy, finished combing Thelma’s hair and began to fluff it up.

  “I’m sure going to miss your cupcakes, Thelma. Don’t you tell anyone, but his cupcakes are like eating a dried up sponge.”

  Thelma laughed, even though she was Peter’s self-proclaimed best friend. “I sure won’t tell him you said that, Nanette, but it’s true.”

  Backstabber.

  I huffed, while Carey sent me a warning look, smiled, and handed me a Diet Coke. For the next few hours I let them work their magic. By the time I left, I’d been washed, scrunched, buffed, moisturized and my toenails and fingernails were painted the lightest pink. I hated nail polish, but I had to admit, it made me feel put together. Even Thelma complimented me in her own grumpy way.

  “You do look a lot better than you did a few hours ago.” She leaned back in her chair while Nanette filed at her toenails, which I didn’t mention to her looked like they were yellowed and several months overdue for a trim.

  “Now, you go home and rest,” Carey said.

  “Sure thing.” I gave her what I hoped was a convincing smile.

  “Promise?” Nanette said.

  “Of course.”

  “Besides,” Carey said in my ear. “You need to look good for you-know-who, when he shows up to see you.” She whispered it so that Thelma wouldn’t hear.

  “I thought you didn’t approve of Doc,” I whispered.

  “I don’t.” She whispered back. “But since when do you ever listen to me? At least you ought to look good if you’re going to act frivolous and carefree.”

  I kissed her cheek.

  I was wrong about you, Carey.

  But I wondered what Carey would think if she knew I’d heard her leading the conversation about switching me off when I was in a coma.

  I’ll try to forgive her.

  I walked out to the car I now shared with Ruthie and admired the cleaning job she, Bobby, and Carl had given it the day before, amidst spray hoses and flying sponges.

  To be a kid again.

  I started driving toward home, thinking about what I’d make them for lunch, when I made a U-turn.

  *

  Carey would burn my bacon if she knew I wasn’t going home yet, but what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. I promised myself I wouldn’t be long. I just needed a moment that didn’t involve the kids or my sisters and brothers. To throw my sisters off, I parked a block away from the church and took the alley behind the stores. A few people raised their eyebrows at seeing me, but just as quickly they smiled and said hello. I swear most of them gave me one of those smiles that said, “You’re secret’s safe with me.” Carey’s reputation to be just a tiny bit controlling is widely known. It wouldn’t surprise me at all, not at all, if she’d told everyone in town to call if they happened to see me out of my cage.

  Piano music floated out the church window: hard notes followed by gentle plucking that quickened my steps. I climbed the little hill and pulled out my key to the church. When you volunteer there as much as I have, you get your own key, so I went in through the side, took a back staircase, and sat in the balcony shadows where I could barely see between the curtains. I didn’t really need to see. I only needed to hear. Listening to Jimmy play always made me happy. Even when we were young, he had played for me, usually the guitar that he kept in his pick-up truck, and on a few occasions, had written some songs just for me.

  As he began to sing In the Sweet By and By, I wondered
if he ever thought about when we were young, before everything went wrong.

  Those were the best times.

  Blessed assurance . . .

  I listened to his voice soar from the auditorium into the balcony and the thought I still couldn’t get out of my head niggled at my conscience. We were standing on the front porch of Momma’s house only a few days earlier, both adults, Jimmy’s graying sideburns crinkling as he gave me a sad smile. He pulled me close and I melted, utterly dissolved, in his arms. But then he had kissed the top of my head again. Not what I had in mind.

  Why do you bother to hold me, Jimmy? Are you just being a friend?

  But, a friend loveth at all times.

  The thought spun through my head till I was dizzy, reminding me that he hadn’t loved me at all times. I couldn’t trust Jimmy. So then, why had I felt safe for just a moment in his hold when I should’ve been feeling betrayed? And why had my skin sizzled when he touched my face and then ached when I heard his heart beating, as he pulled me into his chest.

  Friends don’t make each other feel that way.

  Of course, Doc made me feel that way, too, but it was different. And with all the touching and hand-holding, Doc hadn’t kissed me yet. Maybe when he said he wanted to get to know me, he didn’t mean it like that after all.

  How am I to know? It’s not like I’ve been practicing.

  As the music of Jimmy’s voice caressed my cheek in the balcony, a glimmer of hope sputtered deep inside my chest. I replayed his arms encircling me, his breath in my hair, his kiss on top of my head, and the beating, no, thundering of his heart in my ear as I pressed my cheek to his broad chest. Maybe, I dared to imagine, Jimmy knew we couldn’t ever be just friends. Maybe he wanted more than a kiss to the top of my head, but I hadn’t done anything to let him know. The glimmer sparked just as Jimmy sang the last note of his song, reminding me of his lips brushing mine in the hospital. I tell you what, I might be naïve, but I’m not stupid. I know what electricity is.