Waking Up Joy Read online

  Do you ever think about it?

  My question hung in the air, unheard and unanswered, like it had for years. I’d come to a point once, a long time ago, after he met my eyes in church and then looked away, when I decided he’d moved on, no matter what shared experience drew his eyes to mine on Sunday mornings.

  His song found my wondering mind again, so soft and mournful. I let the words flow through my ears and into my heart until they became clear.

  Blessed Assurance.

  He remembered my favorite hymn, although I wondered if he really felt assurance, or if he was there to make sense of my crawling around on the roof and hanging myself. If anyone knew what I’d been doing around the chimney, it was him.

  You know, don’t you?

  On the day my brothers and sisters found me dangling from that dratted rope, I’d almost been ready to let the sad ending be written. They say the truth will set you free, and maybe that’s why I’d climbed up there, to free the truth, even if only for myself, and just look where it got me.

  I hadn’t figured on falling as part of my plan and I’d only figured a little bit on what he might think of my decision. The current truth was that I didn’t know him anymore. Even as tingly as I got when he looked at me, he’d barely looked at me over the years. Only on those sweet Sunday mornings, and the mere fact he’d ignored me and what we shared, the rest of the time—the beautiful and the terrible—had caused me more pain than those few tingles were worth.

  I heard a chair screech on the floor and then clunk to a stop next to my bed. The sweet song that had surrounded my hospital bed stopped and silence engulfed the space. Just when I began to think I’d been dreaming again, his voice, un-singing and soft, filled the room.

  “Joy.”

  Darn it.

  His voice was molasses. It stretched into me and I felt the back of my nose burn like it always did before tears came. A lump in my chest grew as I remembered what had been done, what we had done to help each other and to hide the truth. We made a promise, foolishly like two teenagers would do. Our desperate efforts seemed a good plan at the time, impulsive and from a place of despair and fear, but logical to us.

  I heard a heavy whoosh in the chair and a click of the bedside lamp. I could smell him, oh dear Lord could I—Old Spice aftershave. The room was achingly quiet and the machine that kept me breathing was the only sound in the stillness that stretched on like the years that lay between us, before he’d become the music leader and long before he became the mayor of Spavinaw Junction. It could have been two seconds that passed or it might have been two days. When you’re trapped in such a state, it sure is hard to tell.

  I focused in on his breathing. It was ragged. So was mine, which surprised me, since the machine was so smooth with its timely, predictable whishes and whooshes. Was I really so excited to see him? I realized I was. Not happy, not sad, but simply excited. A part of me, a big part I admit, felt affirmed that he’d finally come to me; although, he sure had taken his sweet time.

  And then, his hand was on mine, squeezing. The gasp trapped in my throat was stolen by the machine.

  Oh, that hand!

  I could never forget the feel of it. My emotions wouldn’t obey. I tried to be cynical and cold, but one moment I was angry at his abandonment of me, and then with only a stroke of my hand I was aching for more touch, and more than making up and being friends. Oh how I longed to squeeze his hand in return, show him I knew he was there, not only so he’d tell my brothers and sisters I was okay, but that I was grateful for his visit.

  It was no good. As hard as I tried, my own hand lay in his like a limp fish.

  “Joy.”

  His voice was warm liquid and I wondered if it might bring me out of my body. My heartbeat raced and the incessant beep-beep of the machine echoed it. My breath was still ragged and as a result, I expected the medical staff to come running in at any time.

  Without warning, his hand, strong and calloused, left mine and took my heart. Just as suddenly, I felt its warmth, tracing, very gently, along my cheek, over my jawbone and to my collar-bone, where his thumb caressed. I wondered if he could see the flush I felt creep along my skin when I felt his breath across my lips and oh my word, if only I could have puckered up. It might have been a real kiss, a sinful kiss since he still wore his dead wife’s wedding band, maybe, but a kiss.

  “Sweet Joy.” His voice was a soft rumble, and then, in just a feather of a touch, his lips swept mine.

  Oh, sweet Jesus.

  I felt the warmth of his mouth hover over my cheek for a few seconds and all I could think was that I very badly wanted his lips planted back on my own.

  Then again, who did he think he was? I’ll tell you who he wasn’t! He was no longer the young man who promised me the moon and said informal wedding vows with me in the woods. This was not the man who walked through darkness with me and promised to make everything right again. This was not the man who got baptized beside me in the same waters where we swam together every summer day, and discovered you and me goin’ fishing in the dark, years before it would ever become a country song.

  I cannot forgive you, if that’s what you’re after.

  I wished he could hear me, this man who’d just stole a kiss from me; this buffoon who left me in the dark with no flashlight to find my way out, figuratively speaking.

  I really do hate you, Jimmy Cornsilk.

  This was the guy who chose Fern over me, the man who refused to stop wearing a ring even after she died of cancer. I know, I know. That sounds judgmental of me, but you don’t know everything yet, and now he thought it was okay to taste my lips while I lay in a hospital bed. Excuse me while I choke on my breathing tube. And if that doesn’t make you hate him as much as I do, then you should’ve been at Fern’s funeral when yes, his hollowed brown eyes dared to find mine in the church, while my own sister, Carey, sang Amazing Grace over his wife’s dead body. Now doesn’t that beat all?

  I really should hate you, Jimmy.

  Of course, I couldn’t have stopped the tremors I felt that day at her funeral. Why was he looking at me? Did he blame me for his unhappiness? For the hell he currently found himself in? Or was he blaming me for the out of tune rendition of his favorite hymn wrenching itself from my sister’s mouth? I couldn’t have stopped her, either. She would sing for anyone who was too nice or desperate to tell her she couldn’t carry a tune. That’s how things are in small churches. The talent pool is very small.

  Naturally, Jimmy’s and Fern’s daughter, Fernie, twenty-something at the time, had no idea how badly Carey sang or what sordid things lay between Jimmy and I, when she chose music for the funeral. I’m sure she had no idea that her conception was a big bone of contention between her father and I. If she’d been aware, she probably would have banned me, my sister, and my whole darn family from the funeral all together, but all she knew was that she’d lost her beloved mother and that her father couldn’t be expected to sing at his own wife’s funeral. Carey and I were both once her beloved Sunday School teachers, and so she probably thought the nice thing to do was ask one of us to sing. I’d said no. How could Jimmy have even let her ask?

  I do hate you, Jimmy.

  Fernie certainly didn’t know how much her mother Fern and I disliked each other, all the way up until the last week of her mother’s life.

  I can’t breathe.

  And there were his lips, one more time. I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming in the hospital again or if his lips were real, but just in case, this time I parted my own and let my breath escape.

  Do you feel that?

  I don’t think he felt it, because after another chaste graze of his lips on my cheek, he put his warm palm on my forehead and brushed back my hair.

  Why can’t I hate you?

  Now that he’d kissed me, if you could call it that, I was done for. Sure, it was only a graze of a kiss and mighty presumptuous on his part, but it was what it was: an indefinable longing of a moment that lay between my hovering cons
ciousness and his pumping heart that warmed mine through his lips.

  I couldn’t believe the room wasn’t a flurry of activity because of my racing pulse, but of course it was only a flurry in my world, somewhere between awake and what—dead? My mind swam back, literally swam—it seemed as I felt a not unpleasant coolness wrap itself around me, through the creek where we used to go together.

  At the creek, I had built the confidence to sneak away from my brothers and sisters. The only water I was afraid of was in the Spring of Good Luck, so I wasn’t afraid to traipse along the gravel banks and jump into the deep, blue-green water for a dip with hunky Jimmy Cornsilk. It wasn’t tropical like the beaches I dreamed of going to someday, but it felt like paradise when I was with him.

  “Joy.”

  Yes?

  I heard him whispering beside my hospital bed under his breath, but couldn’t make out all his words. Maybe he was praying for me. I was thinking, the good Lord knows I need a good prayer, when he squeezed my hand.

  “Joy. I—”

  Maybe he was going to say he was sorry. All I wanted, okay, not all, but one thing I’d always longed for from Jimmy was an apology. The following silence was almost too heavy to bear and if I hadn’t smelled the cologne that would’ve sent chills along my arms in a different time and place, I would have thought he left. He was patient, it seemed, and I thought he’d decided not to say anything else.

  I was starting to feel faint, wondering when the next whoosh of air might come from the machine, and was close to sliding back into that deep sleep again when he finally spoke.

  “Joy. I remember . . . I know why you were up there.”

  I knew it!

  My eyes shot open.

  When I saw his beautiful face, his dark eyes flashed, softened, and then he gasped. Tears, real, moist drops that I wasn’t sure were my own, filled my eyes just before he disappeared and I felt them run down my temples. My eyes swirled in their sockets, searching, but all I could see were tubes, lights, and the muted ceiling tiles.

  Where had he gone?

  There was a commotion and more lights shining in my eyes. The cute doctor was there—I don’t care if anyone believes me or not—and he smiled, but I hardly cared, since Jimmy had just been there a moment before. The doctor’s light was so bright and my lids were so heavy, I strained to keep my lids up. Even the corners of my mouth were heavy.

  God knows I tried. I wished I’d had those toothpicks I was always teasing the kids about propping their eye lids open with when they were tired. But no matter, just like the eyes of my sleepy nieces and nephews at bedtime, my eyes eventually shut on their own accord, which by now I knew was not a good thing at all.

  Not at all. Who knew when my eyes might open again?

  “Her breathing tube is out. The mayor was just visiting her. He said she reached up and tore it away.”

  I did?

  I tried to wiggle my arms, trying to remember moving them. They were as heavy as sandbags.

  A plea came from the nurse I had decided was definitely Clara, my childhood babysitter and Momma’s friend.

  “Joy Talley.” She said my name in such a calm, but insistent voice, she sounded like Momma.

  Oh Momma. I have something important to tell you about a charm that I should have told you a long, long time ago.

  And then, I remembered that Momma was dead.

  *

  I sensed Jimmy had run off, which made me feel like a jilted lover all over again, even though I wasn’t his lover anymore.

  Not a romantic thing to do, Jimmy.

  I heard the scratch of a pencil beside my bed, and the clink of what might have been a clipboard. I smelled lemon drops and heard candy clink against teeth.

  “Joy,” he said. “When are you coming back to us?”

  Ah, Doc. As soon as possible.

  I was feeling much better, like I could wake up any day, but how could I tell him? I felt him raise my eyelids and he shined that silly pen light in them. I strained to see him past the glare and in a lucky moment, he switched off the light and peered into my eye. My goodness he really was a looker with brown hair and brown eyes. He looked part Cherokee, like many of the folks in Spavinaw Junction, but he must not have been from my town. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember seeing Doc before. He smiled while my eyelid was still up and my heart skipped a beat. His hair looked thick and brown. His eyes were golden and his skin the color of honey, like his voice.

  My eyelid dropped.

  Oh, Drat.

  “You have one hell of a family, Joy.” He laughed quietly and I wasn’t sure if he meant it as a good thing or not. “Can you believe they tried to talk me into busting you out of here for your mom’s funeral?”

  It’s about time!

  “I told them it’s very unconventional to take a coma patient out of the hospital, let alone to attend an event. They could get in big trouble.”

  Do the hospital police have to know?

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Doc said. “They’re very persistent.”

  Chapter Six

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  For a minute, I thought I’d died and gone to Graceland. I was really ticked off because, as I’ve always said, I don’t like Elvis and didn’t want his music at my funeral. It wasn’t until I smelled the lavender that I realized I must be at Momma’s funeral and not my own.

  Y’all busted me out!

  I wondered if they’d talked the hospital into letting me out for the funeral, or if they’d just gone ahead and kidnapped me.

  “These people are crazy, Clara.” Doc’s very out of breath voice buzzed around me. “Who does something like this?”

  “Like what, kidnapping their comatose sister from the hospital?”

  They both chuckled, not sounding alarmed.

  “Thank God, we checked in on her, or she’d be here without us.”

  “I’m getting fired, Clara.”

  “You’d better not! If they fire you, they’ll fire me too.” I guessed Clara didn’t want to go back to her babysitting days.

  Good job, brothers and sisters.

  As they discussed how to get me back to the hospital, they poked and prodded, I assume to make sure they wouldn’t need a second casket.

  “It’s too late now, Doc. The funeral’s about to start. We might as well go all out and let her stay.”

  What’s happening? Tell me how everything looks.

  Nobody heard, so I was relegated to my own ideas about how the funeral my sisters had planned without me was turning out.

  “You knew Joy’s mom, Clara?”

  “Yes. Once upon a time, I knew a lot about Bess Talley that I wished I didn’t, but I adored her anyway.”

  Anyway?

  “Full church.” Doc’s voice confirmed what I would have expected.

  “I love all the lavender candles,” Clara said. “They smell nice. She would’ve picked that scent for peace, I think.”

  My head grew fuzzier as I tried to discern the whispers that rippled over the church.

  “One time, Bess made a tea to help me find true love,” someone said.

  “She had a tea for what ails you. And a chocolate, too.”

  “She sure did.”

  Giggles from the back row.

  “Remember the tea she made for the principal when Rory got caught kissing girls in the janitor closet?”

  A man laughed. “She put hooch in it.”

  “Lucky for Rory!” another man said. “The principal was so worried about being accused of drunkenness, he forgot all about the punishment.”

  “For shame,” said an older woman, but I thought I heard laughter in her voice.

  “Grandma said she was a witch!” That declaration came from a teenage boy and was followed by the sound of a sharp slap and a hiss.

  “She loved her family.”

  “She sure did. Bless her heart.”

  Yes, God bless Momma.

  Sniffles from around the church. Outright crying. A wail here and t
here, possibly from my sisters. From beside me, someone took my hand. It was large and warm and the scent of Old Spice filled the air.

  Jimmy. You came.

  Of course he had. He’d probably helped arrange the music. Mayors and music leaders went to all funerals in Spavinaw Junction. It didn’t matter who died.

  When his hand squeezed mine, I tried to calm my heart palpitations.

  “Glad you got here in time, Doc.”

  “No problem, Mr. Mayor.”

  “Sometimes her brothers go nuts and do some strange things,” he explained and his voice spilled over me. Why would Jimmy be involved at all?

  “You mean things like kidnap their sister when she’s better off at the hospital?”

  “Especially things like that, but they mean well. Like I said, those boys can be a little nuts sometimes.”

  “Who you calling nuts?” It was River, the only person able to joke during his own mother’s funeral. “The girls were in on it, too. I want that recorded somewhere. I’m proud of ‘em.”

  “I think this is all off the record,” Jimmy said.

  I heard the clap of their hug, the way men in Spavinaw Junction hugged without touching except for the slap of hands on shoulders. Jimmy offered his condolences to my brothers and sisters, who magically appeared around us.

  “Thanks, man.” Rory. “And did you take care of the Sheriff? Wouldn’t want him trying to arrest us for bringing our sister to a funeral.”

  In a coma, in a wheelchair.

  “Don’t worry about him. He won’t say a word.” With that reassurance, Jimmy was gone and I was left feeling confused about where exactly he fit into anything having to do with me. He’d always been friends with people in my family, but never me; definitely not ever me. He’d kept a very careful distance away from me for more than twenty years.

  My heart was swollen. It hurt.

  The lavender candles permeated the air and Elvis music filled the church. It almost seemed like Momma might walk in any minute and start singing along. I was surprised, but happy, that the girls remembered how to arrange all of this without my help. I inhaled, thinking it was easier to take large breaths here. Other scents met my nostrils including River’s lingering cigarette smoke, Carey’s lilac perfume, and Nanette’s favorite honeysuckle lotion. I wanted to wrinkle my nose at Rory who was sweating, a problem he’d always had when he was nervous. I heard my niece Ruthie doing her best to calm several giggling children.