Once and Future Wife Read online

  Finally, the interstate ended and Jennie turned left onto Meeting Street. Downtown Charleston was just a few blocks away, and she pulled into a parking lot two blocks from the church.

  A Greek goddess, Jennie thought. But it seemed that even a goddess was not immortal.

  As she slipped out of her car, and walked past the old market, the clear, mournful notes from a trumpet floated across the city.

  Just a closer walk with Thee, Grant it, Jesus, is my plea.

  Jennie knew the words. She’d heard them countless times, played on the old piano in her church in Whitesburg. The sound of the trumpet, though, reminded her of a time, many years ago, when she heard the old hymn at Preservation Hall in the French Quarter of New Orleans. She recalled that Emma had grown up in a small town in a rural parish near the Big Easy. As she turned the next corner, the music halted abruptly, and in the silence that followed the church’s bells began to toll.

  The hearse glided onto Church Street, so Jennie picked up her pace. A small group had congregated in front of the white stone church, under the portico that stretched over the walkway, out to the street. She could easily pick out Thomas and the girls. The others, Jennie guessed, were Emma’s relatives, waiting to proceed into the church, following the coffin.

  Even from a distance, she could see that Christa and Amy were crying. Alexis held her father’s left arm and was wiping her eyes. Tasha’s head was down and she seemed to be staring vacantly. A priest stood beside them with one hand on Thomas’s shoulder. She’d been expecting to see Thomas talking with the girls, trying to comfort them, but he simply stood, unmoving, between the priest and Alexis.

  She paused, searching for a route that would take her past the family, rather than through them. She felt self-conscious attending the service, worried people might think she was attempting to be included as a member of Thomas’s family. People could say cruel things, and she did not want to be the occasion for someone’s thoughtless comment to hurt Thomas or the girls.

  As she realized that only the center door was blocked and she could enter through the small door to the left, she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “Miss Jennie, how have you been?”

  She looked up to find Richard Lindsay, Thomas’s brother, beside her. He had always, for some reason, called her Miss Jennie, even when she and Thomas had been dating. She had not seen Richard in years, and she smiled up at him.

  “Hello, Richard. I’ve been doing well. How about you?”

  “Doing fine, Miss Jennie. Just fine.” He glanced over his shoulder at the hearse. “Sad day today.”

  Jennie nodded. “It is.”

  They stood in silence for a moment.

  “How is Thomas?”

  Richard shrugged. “You know Thomas. Stiff upper lip. When I arrived, he smiled and clapped me on the shoulder as if I had driven down for a beach party. He’ll do the same to you, I suspect. Probably give you a hug. His eyes, though, are vacant, but you can see he’s hurting.” He paused. “We Southerners are well-trained at hiding our feelings behind our smiles.”

  The hearse pulled to a stop and the bell fell silent. The priest stepped forward to receive the body.

  “I’d better escort you to your seat.” Richard took Jennie’s elbow and began to guide her around the family, toward the door. Jennie caught sight of Thomas, with his arm over Amy’s shoulder. She met Christa’s eye and nodded a greeting.

  They stopped as they entered the church and Jennie glanced about. The pews were packed with people. A few were standing in the back.

  “There is no place to sit,” she whispered. “I’ll stand over there.” She pointed toward a corner beside the last row of seats.

  Richard ignored that and cleared his throat, gesturing forward. “You remember Elizabeth, the girl I married right before…before you and Thomas split up?”

  Jennie nodded.

  “She’s ahead on the fourth row. She saved seats for us.”

  Jennie stepped back. “With the family?”

  “With Elizabeth and me.”

  “No. No way.” She shook her head emphatically. “I’m not…” Her eyes grew large.

  “Wait…You were outside waiting for me,” she said, almost accusingly.

  “Miss Jennie, I’m simply following instructions. Alexis told me what to do and I have much better sense than to cross that child, especially today.”

  “But I’m not family…”

  “Alexis, Christa, and—I think—Amy would disagree with you.”

  “But what will people say?” They will say I’ve come to see Thomas, Jennie thought. Just like Kara did…Well, Kara was wrong. They will be too.

  “People will say what they will say.” Richard glanced over his shoulder. “In any case, if we don’t move on, we’ll be trampled by the procession.” He tugged on her arm and Jennie reluctantly followed.

  Halfway down the aisle, she spotted one of Thomas’s neighbors. She did not remember the woman’s name, but vaguely recalled being introduced. The woman looked straight at Jennie, her eyes dilating in recognition. Then the woman turned and whispered to the person sitting next to her. That woman turned and stared too.

  Jennie noticed similar reactions twice more before she reached her seat, and she was certain her face had turned stop-sign red. Richard’s wife glanced up without smiling as they reached the pew and moved over so the two of them could enter.

  As they began to sit, the organ fell silent and the priest’s voice carried from the rear of the church.

  “I am the resurrection and I am the life…”

  The procession moved slowly up the center aisle. Jennie recognized the young woman carrying the processional cross as a friend of Christa’s. The priest followed, then the pall bearers, carrying the lead-gray coffin peeking out from under the green cloth that covered it. Finally, the family trailed behind, Thomas and the girls leading the way. Jennie recognized several members of Thomas’s family and she wished Richard and his wife were with them, rather than baby-sitting her.

  As he passed, Thomas turned his head in her direction. She was sitting on the aisle, so he must have seen her, but there was not even a flicker of recognition in his eyes. He appeared dazed, almost as if he were sleep walking. Alexis still held his arm and Jennie realized she was not offering comfort, but physical support, and she was guiding him down the aisle. Jennie glanced away. Thomas had been the strong one in their marriage, and her heart broke to see him not in control. She’d known that he had loved Emma, and she could tell he would never fully recover from his loss. Any woman who did choose to chase after him would have a long, hard race ahead of her.

  The members of the family filed into the rows at the front of the church, closing the doors to the box pews behind them. The coffin was placed at the foot of the steps to the high altar.

  “God of grace and glory, we remember before you today our sister Emma Louisa…”

  Jennie’s eyes focused on the coffin and she remembered the woman whose body lay within it. The so-called Greek goddess.

  After Jennie had dropped her petition—and after all the horrible things that had happened back then—she and Emma had become friends. They had connected on Facebook. They had traded recipes. They would meet for lunch whenever they found themselves within fifty miles of each other. Jennie lived in Whitesburg, Georgia, a couple of hours west of Atlanta and when she would make the seven-hour drive to Charleston to visit the girls, Emma would insist she stay at their house, invitations Jennie almost always declined.

  “Why won’t you accept her invitations?” Kara had once asked.

  “Because, it’s weird enough that Thomas’s wife and I are friends and one of her daughters calls me Aunt Jennie. If I started staying with them, I’d feel like a multiple wife.”

  Kara had laughed. “And you say you have no feelings for Thomas.”

  Ignoring that, Jennie had continued, “Besides, Thomas barely speaks to me and I feel like a piece of extra furniture when he is at home.”

&n
bsp; The Bible readings followed. Four of them, Jennie noted, shaking her head as she recalled her father’s complaint that Episcopalians never read the Bible, one of many problems he’d had when she had joined Thomas’s Episcopal Church.

  After the last reading, Alexis rose and walked up the steps toward the altar.

  “I’m the only one with nerve enough to do this.” She squinted at her sisters, sitting together in the front pew, then she opened a folder and placed it on the lectern. She took a deep breath.

  “Emma was my mother.”

  Jennie closed her eyes and bit her bottom lip. The words may have been true, but that didn’t mean they were easy to hear, especially in front of all these people.

  “I do not say this to disparage my birth mother, who was absent from my life for many years. I say it because it is true.” Her eyes cut quickly to Jennie and then back to the lectern.

  Jennie looked at the floor. She felt as if eyes were boring into her back, the accusing stares of several hundred people. She deserted her children, she could almost hear the words. What kind of a woman does that?

  “Although Emma married Dad just three and a half years ago, she was my mother in fact, if not in name, for almost fifteen years.” Alexis’s hand trembled as she sipped water from a small glass.

  “The week before Emma and Dad married, I was at Emma’s house, helping her pack. Even if you are moving two blocks down the street, everything has to be packed up, carried to the new house, and, then, unpacked. In the bottom drawer of her desk I found a folder that contained awards she had received over the years.

  “Along with these awards, I found a paper I had written in my seventh-grade English class. I had no idea she had ever read the essay, much less that she would keep it in a folder with awards she had received. We had been assigned to write essays about the people who we most admired. I had written about Emma. I want to read that paper to you this morning because I cannot express my feelings for Emma any better than I did at that time.”

  Her voice cracked and she bit her lip. After a pause, she took a deep breath and slipped a sheet of paper from the folder. Even from where Jennie sat, she could see the sheet was worn, as if it had been handled repeatedly as it was read over and over again.

  The church was silent, even her sisters held their tears, as Alexis held it up. The paper quivered as she began to read.

  “The person in the world who I most admire is my mom, Emma Coleman. She’s not really my mother. My mom left us years ago, but Emma acts like my mom.”

  Jennie pulled a handkerchief from her purse and dabbed at her eyes. I tried, Alexis. I really tried. I wanted to be a good mother. I just…couldn’t.

  “A couple of weeks ago, my sister and I spent the night at her house while Dad was out of town. I woke up at midnight, screaming from a nightmare. I was crying and shaking all over. Emma picked me up and held me. She rocked me, although I’m really too big to be rocked in a rocking chair. Then she took me to her room and let me sleep with her in her bed. That’s the kind of thing mothers do.”

  I did that too, Alexis.

  Jennie had the urge to stand and call out to her. She remembered the time clearly. Alexis had been three years old. It was just before Jennie got really sick. There was a thunderstorm, early one morning, two a.m. The lightning lit the house as if it were high noon and the thunder…Jennie had never heard thunder so loud in her life. The storm had been directly over them. The lightning would flash and the thunder would roar at the same time. Jennie was hiding under the covers herself, and Alexis began to scream. Jennie ran into her room, scooped her up, and dashed back to bed.

  I did take care of you, Alexis. Jennie averted her eyes to stare at the window above the altar as her mind continued to assert itself.

  “I love strawberry pancakes,” Alexis continued. “Whenever I sleep over with Tasha, Emma cooks them for breakfast, just because they are my favorite. Tasha likes them too, and she always wakes me up early so she doesn’t have to wait for breakfast. Cooking special foods is something mothers do.”

  Cinnamon toast, Jennie remembered. You loved cinnamon toast. We had it for breakfast on your last birthday, the last one before I left.

  “I can talk with Emma about anything. A couple of months ago—” Alexis’s head popped up, a small smile on her face, “I’m skipping some of this to protect the guilty…Robbie.”

  The congregation laughed. Jennie saw a tall blond boy, who was sitting to one side, turn bright red.

  “A couple of months ago,” Alexis glanced at the boy again, “a boy kissed me behind the gym during lunch. I was afraid I had done something really bad and I told Emma about it. We talked for a while. We agreed that boys are weird and kissing is cool.” Laughter rang through the church again.

  “From the mouth of a babe…” the voice of the woman sitting behind Jennie carried through the room, and Jennie joined in the laughter now too.

  “Emma suggested I wait a couple of years before I really get into that kind of thing. Mothers are always willing to talk with you.”

  I’m glad you had Emma. Had I been there…

  Jennie shook her head. Had she been there she might have reacted like her father would have. Not something you’d want to put in an essay…

  Her attention went back to Alexis.

  “Emma Coleman is my most admired person. She and Dad aren’t married, but they had a date a couple of months ago. Christa, Tasha, Amy, and I are all hoping.” Alexis smiled demurely at the crowd, then slipped the paper back inside and closed her folder before taking her seat.

  Jennie dropped her eyes, struggling not to cry.

  As the service continued, Jennie continued to think about her children, how she had failed to be the mother she should have been, and how grateful she felt that Emma had stepped in to take her place. Her thoughts were interrupted when the church fell silent. She lifted her head as the priest approached the coffin, raising his hand in blessing.

  “Into your hands, we commend the soul of our dear sister, Emma Louisa. Acknowledge her, O Lord…receive her into the glorious company of the saints in light.”

  Jennie, Richard, and Elizabeth were among the last to leave the church. As they reached the door, they joined a mass of people, both mourners and tourists who were visiting the old cemetery, congregated in front. A trio stood across the street, just inside of the old cemetery, trumpets in hand, and the strains of “When The Saints Go Marching In” filled the air.

  I know she’s marching with them, Jennie thought. An old-line Southern lady—as sweet as sugar and as tough as nails. I pity Saint Peter if he tries to bar the gate to Emma Lindsay.

  A few people were singing and swaying to the music.

  “Emma’s family,” Richard told her. “People from the bayous of Louisiana seem to have a better attitude toward death than we do here in the holy city of Charleston.”

  The burial was private, for family only, and Jennie was firm in her refusal to allow Richard to drive her to that service. “I’ll walk down to the house,” she told him. “I do need to speak to Thomas and the children before I start home.”

  They stopped beside Richard’s car and he faced Jennie, then spoke. “Alexis was not intending to hurt your feelings when she said Emma was her mother, you know.”

  “I know.” Jennie glanced down. “Emma was Alexis’s mother. A good thing too, since I never acted like one. Early on…I just…I wanted to…” Jennie released her breath in a deep sigh. “It’s complicated. I feel badly when I hear things like that because I know I should never have left them.”

  “The children?”

  Jennie caught Richard’s eye. “My family. All of them.” She focused, once more, at the ground. “What do you think Alexis would write about me? ‘The mother I never knew’?”

  “You know better than that.” Richard placed his hand on Jennie’s shoulder. “Alexis is very proud of you, of the way you pulled yourself together, turned your life around.”

  “How would you know?”

>   “We talk. She told me.”

  “I’ll never be her mother. Not now, even.”

  Richard shook his head. “No, you won’t…Her BFF, maybe?”

  Jennie laughed. “Maybe so.”

  The hearse began to move. “You need to go, Richard.”

  “See you later?”

  “Maybe for a few minutes. I can’t stay late.”

  She hugged him and began to walk away, pausing at the corner to watch as he joined the convoy to the cemetery. The hearse pulled away, led by two officers on motorcycles, sirens blaring.

  The walk to Thomas’s house from the church was only a few blocks, and it would be impossible to park her car much closer than it already was, but it was bitter cold and Jennie shivered as she reached a second intersection where the wind blowing off of the harbor struck her full force, causing her to stumble. She regained her footing and gazed up at the sky, still the color of lead, and sighed.

  She’d heard that the baby—she would be christened Louisa, her mother’s middle name—was still in intensive care, and Thomas had insisted the priest baptize her at the hospital at mid-afternoon. That would give Jennie a good chance to slip away.

  She walked down Church Street, paying little attention to the houses, stepping carefully over the bricks that paved the block on which Thomas lived. She had often tripped on the uneven pavement and she found walking in heels to be rather tricky since she wore them with difficulty even on flat surfaces.

  “I hope someone is here,” she said to herself as she reached the house. She pulled the brass knocker back and let it fall three times. As the sound of the last knock died away, an elderly woman opened the door.

  “Hello, I’m Jennie Bateman. I was a friend of Emma’s. I’m from out of town and I feel like I need to speak to Thomas and the girls before I start back. I was wondering if I could wait…”