Authors: Sharon Poppen
Amy walked slowly to the casket as I slipped into the pew and reached for Susie’s hand. We sat not knowing what to do and watched quietly. Amy stood peering down at her dead mother’s face. Her profile revealed nothing of her inner thoughts.
How long she stood there, I have no idea. Looking back, it seemed forever and yet it also seemed to be a brief flash of time. There was a surreal dreamlike quality to everything, which was enhanced by the prisms of the stained glass windows reflecting around the room. As we watched, something happened that jolted Susie and I back to reality.
Amy leaned forward and spit on her mother’s face. She pivoted about, looking neither right, left or at us and walked briskly out of the chapel.
I came to my feet and glanced several times between Amy’s retreating back and the casket. I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and looked to Susie.
She stayed my hand and met my eyes. “No. Let’s go to mother.” She nodded toward the casket. “What happened is between her and her mother. We’ll probably never understand it and we should never talk about it either.”
I nodded my agreement, took my daughter’s arm and quietly walked up the aisle and out in to the sunshine. Neither of us looked back.
*****
Shortly after the funeral, we went to see Doc Andrews about Susie’s pregnancy. Amy held Susie's hand while we talked, but she did not offering any frightening comments about the agony and pain of childbirth. She just held her daughter’s hand.
Jeff came over that same night. He and Susie informed us that they were going to get married as soon as possible. The three of us discussed the pros and cons of many options. Amy was a silent observer. None of us thought to solicit her opinion.
It was Jeff, bless his heart, who said to her, “Mrs. Lawrence, I don’t want you to worry about Susie. I love her and will be kind and gentle to her. I will always treat her with the utmost respect.”
Amy smiled and took his hand. “I know you will, Jeff. I never worry about Susie when I know she’s with you.” She looked over at me. “You are very much like her father and Susie had the good sense to see that. I’m happy for you both. I believe you will have a wonderful life together.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Lawrence.”
She smiled and pulled her hand from him. “Now, if you’ll all excuse me I’m a little tired. I’d like to go to my room.”
We all stood and bid her goodnight as she headed up the stairs.
Susie walked Jeff to the door and they said their goodnights. When Susie came back into the parlor, I patted the sofa next to me. It had been our nicest evening since Amy’s ill-fated birthday party.
“Want to talk, honey?”
Susie curled up against me. “I do. How did you know?”
“I like to think I know my little girl pretty well. That is in most things.” I smiled and raised my eyebrows in question.
She blushed, then smiled back. She focused on the ceiling. “I was seeing a lot of grandmother and mother just before the prom and they had me feeling funny about a lot of things. They got me to wondering about things they said or insinuated. Like what you did to mother.” I groaned. She took my hand and looked at me. “Never, for a minute did I blame you for anything. What happened between you and mother is none of my business. As for me, you have always been the kindest most patient father. If you did …, um did …”
“Baby, I must be honest with you.” She tried to interrupt, but I put my finger to her mouth as I continued. “What I did to your mother was in essence a rape. I was insensitive to her feelings. I have always regretted my impatient actions.”
“Doc Andrews told me that you had waited and tried to be understanding, but that mother had quit trying to resolve her problems and that’s what made you angry.”
“It’s no excuse for …”
This time, she refused to be quieted. She interrupted me. “At any rate, I was becoming afraid that maybe they were right. But I also knew I really cared about Jeff and I liked the way I felt when we were together or thought about him. Jeff has always been wonderful to me. But, what if they were right. Oh God, I didn’t want what they said about men to be true. My common sense told me to look at Grandpa and Grandma Lawrence, Uncle Phil and Aunt Pat, and Uncle Tom and Aunt Kelly. But, I was spending so much time with mother and grandmother that I lost some of my perspective. I thought about the fact that you and mother did not share a bed.” She looked away and then met my eyes. “I also knew about your nights out.”
Her words were like a knife plunged right into my heart. I had let her down. I had caused her such pain. I gathered her into my arms. She came willingly and snuggled close. I whispered through my silent tears, “Oh, my baby. I’m sorry. So very sorry.”
She stayed in my embrace as she continued, “Then the prom came with a perfect opportunity to be with Jeff, all night. I decided that this would be as good a night as any to see how things really were.” With this, she pulled out of my embrace and looked up at me. “Daddy, I don’t want you to hold any bad feelings about Jeff, because I seduced him. He said no, but I was insistent. It’s a wonder he has any respect for me at all. I’m so lucky he still loves me. But I knew I had to find out about myself. In reality, I used him. He was wonderful. It was the first experience for both of us. We were awkward and a bit embarrassed, but it was still beautiful and wonderful. Daddy, I just couldn’t marry someone and have it possibly end up like you and mother. Please don’t find me disgusting. Please forgive me.” Her eyes registered a pleading insistence.
My heart was heavy and I’m not sure if it was sadness or happiness, probably a mixture of both. I held her sweet little face between my hands and managed to say, “Susie, Susie.” The lump in my throat was making it difficult to talk. “You could never be disgusting. The forgiveness doesn’t need to come from me to you. No. It’s me who needs your forgiveness for making such a mess of things.” We fell into each other’s arms.
She sobbed as tears streamed down my face unabashedly.
I found my composure first. I whispered into her hair. “I wanted everything to be completely storybook for you, my precious daughter. It didn’t happen that way. But, when I look at you and Jeff, I feel you’ve conquered your doubts and have found happiness. If I’m right, everything is fine with me.”
She looked up at me. “Oh Daddy, I love you so much. You’re the greatest.” She was smiling through her tears and it was infectious.
“I hope you’ll always feel that way, because I think you’re the greatest too.”
She was smiling now and I thought I saw some of that twinkle coming back into her eyes. She became serious again. “Dad, do you think there’s any hope that Mother will find some happiness now that grandmother can no longer influence her?”
I had given up on Amy years ago and felt I had to answer Susie honestly. “I doubt it.” Her sad face caused me to add, “But, we can hope and pray for it. Okay?”
“I will. Everyday.”
*****
Susie and Jeff had a quiet little wedding with only family in attendance. His folks felt like I did. They wished the circumstances had been better, but they liked Susie and welcomed her into their family circle with open arms.
The young couple took up residence in a little cottage on his father’s ranch and settled down like the happy newlyweds they truly were. Jeff went to work with his father out on their ranch. He said he wasn’t giving up on college, just postponing it. I believe him. Jeff is the kind of boy who does what he says he’s going to do. He is a man of his word. Besides, he’s crazy about my daughter so he has to be an all right guy.
Susie’s pregnancy went unbelievably fast and before we knew it, she was the ecstatic mother of a seven-pound baby boy. Jeff was delighted, to say nothing of the rest of the Lawrence clan. She had an easy birth and the doctor said she could probably have a dozen or more babies with no problems. It wouldn’t surprise me if they do, because those two kids have enough love in their hearts for that many.
Like I said at the beginning of my story, it’s looking down at this little bundle of joy that is my grandson that somehow makes everything I’ve been though worthwhile. I feel good about the future and actually look forward to each new day. I just turned thirty-eight and I’ve heard that life begins at forty.
And best of all, Amy seems to be finding some peace and happiness. She has been coming to my room, to my bed almost nightly for the past month. It’s not perfect, but it has definite possibilities. She seems happy most of the time.
Just last night, after an unusually long and warm joining, a full moon radiated a golden glow that crept slowly through the window, across the room, up onto my bed and came to rest on the face of a contented, smiling Amy.
The End
AUTHOR’S BIO:
Sharon Poppen (
www.sharonpoppen.com
) esides in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. She has won awards from Arizona Authors Assoc. and National League of American Pen Women. Her western novels
After the War, Before the Peace, Hannah, Abby-Finding More Than Gold
and
her sci/fi novel
Regardless
are available at Amazon Books, most web based book sellers and from her website. Her work has appeared in such publications as
A Flasher’s Dozen, Desert Treasures, Skive, Offerings from the Oasis, A Long Story Short,
Apollo Lyre
and
Laughter Loaf
. Her workshops on Journaling, Short Story Writing, Novel Writing and Blogging bring rave reviews.
After the War, Before the Peace
- Historical/Western/Romance
Hannah
– Historical/Western/Romance
Abby-Finding More Than Gold
– Historical/Western/Romance
Regardless
– Gay/Sci-Fi
For your enjoyment,
the first chapter of
the novel
by Sharon Poppen
Dreams and Losses
January 1898
Chapter One
Abby wrung the last pair of socks and dropped them onto the mountain of clothes in the large wicker basket. Despite the icy, winter wind whipping across the unprotected porch, a ring of sweat beads glittered across her brow. The large tubs of wash and rinse water steamed and hissed in the frosty, morning air.
She wiped her brow with the back of her hand, then dipped the sweat soaked hand into a large, galvanized rinse tub. As she dried her hands on her apron, she winced at the burning sensation. Her red and cracked hands looked more like the hands of an ancient matron than that of a colleen of only seventeen years. Abby sighed and flexed them.
Someday, oh someday
, she thought as she pictured lily-white, manicured hands adorned in gold and diamond rings. The image was so real that, for a moment, she forgot the pain.
“Oh, Love! How they must hurt.” Her Aunt Kitty had come out to the porch. She clasped Abby’s hands between her own. “Let me get some balm.”
Abby’s emerald green eyes smiled into the warm, hazel eyes of her dear aunt. “That would be lovely.” Abby touched Kit’s arm as she turned to go. “Wait, let me finish hanging the clothes, then I can relish the balm.” She grinned and added, “and, maybe some tea?”
“I’ll start it now. Hurry, Abby. This wind will give you a chill.”
As the door to the kitchen closed, Abby buttoned her fisherman’s sweater and lugged the basket to the edge of the porch. She looked down to see the heavily laden pulley lines of frozen clothing and bedding on the first and second floors dancing stiffly in an arctic Chicago reel. After pinning a pair of her uncle’s overalls to the line, she pulled the squeaky pulley forward.
“That you, Abby?” The shrill voice of Mrs. O’Brien called up from the floor below.
“’Tis, Mrs. O’Brien. And how are you this chilly, sunny morning?”
Abby leaned over the porch railing that, while firm, sorely needed a coat of paint. She stared down into the chubby, liver-spotted face of their lonely neighbor. The woman’s daughter and son-in-law worked long hours leaving the poor old girl alone most of the time.
“Oh, ‘tis a glorious day. The air is so clear.”
Abby smiled. Mrs. O’Brien thought every day the good Lord allowed her was a glorious day.
“Abby, love, could you do me a bit of a favor?”