Authors: Susan Wingate
“Georgette.” Vanessa said it in a
whisper. “For crying out loud, Georgette, I know this seems bad now.”
I stopped momentarily to see if
she was joking but she wasn’t. I started to cry audibly.
“Oh, now, now. Look, things will
be fine.”
“No
they
won’t.
They’ll
never
be
fine
again. Everything is over. I can’t do it. I
thought I could but I just don’t think I can.”
“Please, Georgette, don’t cry.
You’re going to make me cry. I have to greet people in less than a half hour
and I always look like a lobster when I cry.”
Vanessa came over to my side. She
held me with one arm around my shoulder and tried to console me. I still
couldn’t stop crying but in those few minutes, I felt how kind Vanessa
could be. Her perfume smelled like jasmine
tea. She was petting my head and talking me down. I finally lowered my hands
from my face and took in a deep breath.
“I’m sorry, Vanessa. I guess all
the stress just got to me.”
“You gonna be okay?”
I nodded I would.
“Good. That’s good.” Then she
grabbed me face front and said, “Now, what the hell are we gonna do with only
one waiter?” She smiled at me for the first time since I’d known her.
Well, needless to say, every
dinner was late coming out and getting to tables. The waiter, José and Vanessa
served tables, bussed and earned every dime they made that night. I cooked over
seventy dinners. Vanessa was warm and greeted everyone with a smile. And, she
was a whiz on that cash register. I overheard her proclaim to a customer,
“Well, stranger things have happened I’m sure.” As she commented, she patted
Mr. Rigger on the back as he was leaving. Mr. Rigger had lived in Sunnydale
nearly sixty-five years. He and his wife, Bethany, frequented the diner often
when Vanessa and Bobby were still married. They stopped coming in after the
divorce, but started back up about seven years ago. I guess they forgave Bobby.
Never once had they spoken to me.
CHAPTER 3
Going through my husband’s
belongings was one of the saddest times in my life. Prolonging the advent of
this task was my first desire. Let It Be, the Beatles song, came to mind.
“Mother Mary where are you?” I’d poke my head into his closet and smell his
scent. Then, I’d shut the door. Time after time, I’d go through the same thing.
Sometimes when the mood hit, Gangster, my cat, and I would sit on the floor and
rummage through old pictures, newspaper clippings and letters he’d mailed to
me. He was funny that way. Instead of handing me a card or note, he’d
mail them to me instead. What a thrilling way
to receive someone’s love, federally!
On one of those days looking
through boxes and memorabilia, I happened upon an old letter hand written to
Bobby with a cancelled stamp dated June 1, 1980. Bobby’s name and address was
written in a pen I would soon come to know well. The letter was from Vanessa.
The date was years before we met and married. When I realized what I’d found a thousand
feelings flooded my mind, questions, you know. One question that rang in me was
why he would hold onto a letter from his ex-wife for so long. It wasn’t some
long- felt proclamation of love or bitter words from a recent argument. The
letter was
more, how shall I say, informational.
She was relaying a story from her childhood, a specific event that happened
long ago. After I read it the questions weren’t resolved in the least. In fact,
it created more questions for me. This is what it said:
Dear
Bob,
I
don’t quite get why you care or why you want to know about this. But, here you
go. When I was only eight years old, Terrence and I talked and threw rocks at a
saguaro while Uncle Joe and father would hunt dove and quail.
“Stay
here and don’t wander off or you’ll get shot!” Father warned us as they
disappeared into the brush with rifles at their sides.
The
desert didn’t offer much shade that day only a few scraggly mesquite where we
could sit if we dared! This wasn’t the first time Terrence and I went out with
father and Uncle Joe. I remember many times during our outings we would have to
shoo away a tarantula with a stick or see a rattler slither by. We’d scream
ear-piercing shrills and father and Uncle Joe would run back to us out of
breath. Like I mentioned, I was only eight and Terrence was seven. We were
little kids and petrified of the dangers we might find in the desert. While we
waited, we would talk and throw rocks.
I
remember one time, father let Terrence hold and aim the gun. After much complaining
about it, he let me too. I was a girl and back then, girls weren’t supposed to
behave that way—at least, not while parents watched. But, I made such a fuss,
father let me hold and aim it too. Then I did a most unforgivable thing. I
pulled the trigger!
When
it fired, I fell backwards. The kick of the gun was fierce and knocked me on my
butt.
Father
ripped the gun out of my hands and got in my face. He screamed at me and told
me I was never to do that again.
My
heart broke because he’d never yelled at me before, that was mother’s job, that
and to threaten us with harsher action from father, that usually never came.
This time he pulled me up by one arm, cracked my ass, and told me to go sit in
the horse carriage. A few minutes later Terrence came to sit with me. I was
still crying and he called me a big baby.
“I’m
not a big baby! I’m not a big baby!” I jumped down from the carriage and walked
up to father and Uncle Joe. I had my say to father and turned to walk back to
the carriage. My father stopped me by grabbing me by my shoulder. That’s the
day father and I had a ‘meeting of the minds’. We’ll call it that, anyway.
That’s the day he called me ‘young lady’. For many girls back then that might
have been a compliment. Not for me. I fumed. Turned around and hot-footed it
back to Terrence.
I
guess I’ve always been self-assured. A good trait, I guess, when you need it.
You have to pick your battles—that’s my motto.
Well,
Terrence laughed and laughed when I got my butt whipped because he felt mother
and father normally treated me with kid- gloves (his words, not mine). Terrence
had always been the one, how shall I say, put to the task! Ha! He’d get a
beating at least once a week. Usually, on the weekends when he’d run off to the
watering hole to swim. Not only did he swim but he’d smoke cubebs and drink
homemade beer with one of the other boy’s whose parents used to make the stuff.
He’d come home like a man on a night out with the boys. He’d say in his
defense, “We was only drinking milk and smoking corn silk, Pa!” But, no milk
I’ve ever smelled, smelled like that! He was just a boy, too. He hung out with
some older kids and even though mother and father tried repeatedly to stop it,
he’d still meet up with them one way or the other. They all turned out to be
perfect gentlemen. They got newspaper jobs, riding bikes door to door
delivering… and selling too for the local rag in Kingman.
That’s
just one of the many memories I have about Terrence. Hope you enjoy.
Love,
Vanessa.
As I said, the letter read like
it was written to an old school chum, nothing inflammatory, except maybe for
poor Terrence.
Bobby never mentioned
Vanessa’s family, his in-laws. The glimpse of Vanessa’s brother made me realize
how little I knew about her—about how little I knew about many of the people
I’d lived with over these years, here in Sunnydale. I guess maybe I always
assumed Vanessa’s family was all dead, like mine. I guess I never really
thought about it. I folded the letter, stuffed it back into its envelope and
put it back into the box.
CHAPTER 4
Maybe it was a coincidence of
wishes when I cursed him.
We’d never
really had any big fights, I think I mentioned that before and we’d been
married for nearly fifteen years when it
finally happened. For the past month, however, Bobby had been edgy, and
out-of-sorts. He seemed more forgetful lately and he kept to himself. We’d just
finished with an early Saturday dinner and I had the lasagna pan soaking. My
hands were red from the hot soapy water—washing dishes and wiping down
counters. Bobby
pulled out the day’s
newspaper, opened to the sports page and covered the entire freshly cleaned
table with it. For whatever reason it irked me and I told him he’d have to wipe
off his
own ink smudges when he was done
reading. He’d been off emotionally and physically, if you get my drift and
seemed to
be taking things out on me.
For the past month, mind you, I
had
taken his slight abuses but tonight I got to the boiling point and popped my
lid. After my spiel about recleaning the
dinner table, he made some under-the-breath comment I could barely hear.
“What did you just say?”
“Nothing.” He grumbled.
“You did say something. And,
dammit Bobby tell me what it was.” My voice began to quaver.
“I said, ‘you sound like
Vanessa.’” He buried his head deeper into the paper.
I threw my wash rag at him and it
hit him in the back of the head. I was getting teary because we’d not been seeing
eye-to-eye for over four weeks. I stormed off and went into the bedroom.
He always talked about Vanessa in
the kindest way, but lately I was hearing her name come up more and more like
he missed her or something. We’d talk about going on a road trip and he’d say,
“When Van and I were younger we used to…” Then, I’d bring up wanting to go to
Phoenix too for a night at the symphony and he’d bring up the fact that they
used to go to Laughlin to see shows there and
Phoenix, but they always seemed to enjoy the Laughlin shows more. It
seemed that every time I said something he’d
get nostalgic about Vanessa.
He missed Roberta terribly. She’d
pushed him out of her life after her parents split and he married me. It broke his
heart. Roberta could be very cruel and vindictive. At first, he blamed it on
her age and immaturity about married life. After years, however, hearing her
snide comments and feeling her rejection, he began to go inside himself. Bobby
laid down the law—we weren’t allowed to
bring up Roberta even in passing light conversation. Her
name was forbidden from our household. Still,
we
couldn’t
hide from Roberta’s presence within our
community.
Roberta had been on the
fast-track in Sunnydale from the day she finished high school. She left
Sunnydale to school in Las Vegas. She commuted three days out of the week for
two years to go to the community college there. Then, after she transferred to
the university, she moved there until she graduated. Her degree was in
engineering like her grandpa. She’d scored highest in her class. She cut her
long orange hair into a professional do to better suit her
upcoming
career. Her new boyfriend was in her
graduating class as well and when she finished college, she moved back in with
Vanessa and Bobby. After a year, the boyfriend, Rick, followed her from
Vegas to Sunnydale, proposed and they bought
a home here.
Roberta free-lanced and Rick went
back and forth from Sunnydale to Bullhead City and Laughlin where he worked
during the week. His returns home were always a little tense but after a few
hours of reestablishing their relationship Roberta and he slipped into their
usual weekend routine.
It was only a couple of years
after that Vanessa and Bobby got divorced and since that time, Roberta had
treated her father like a pariah. Even though he acted tough on the outside, I
knew his heart was crumbling because of it. He never missed an occasion to send
her a card—her birthday, her anniversary, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s
Day, 4th of July—or write her a note
to
“touch
bases”
with
her.
Roberta
never reciprocated. She was aloof and cold to her father.
He always blamed Vanessa and one
day called her on it. Vanessa stood her own and told Bobby he was living a
fantasy—that he needed someone to blame for his own actions and the only person
who seemed the reasonable suspect was
her, that’s what she said, anyway. He flung the phone across the room
when he was finished talking with her and cried. That was the first time I saw
him cry. He couldn’t blame anyone but himself, himself and me, that is.
As time lolled along, he began to
feel the longing less but something seeped into our marriage so slowly that it
couldn’t
be seen or felt until it stood
like a monolith before us. It just appeared one day—big as life. By that time,
it was too late. We’d been at odds and hurt and pain will breed anger. I was hurting
and needed my old Bobby back again. I attempted to reenact things we’d done
when we first got together. I bought sexy lingerie,
and body butter, made candlelight dinners,
and read dirty books to him, I’d cook while wearing only an apron with
spiked heels, and sit on his lap naked. We tried
several times
to make love but he
couldn’t. It was me. Surely, it was me.