“That’s because when the Lord has to deal with the chronically mule-headed, even He sometimes has to do something to get their attention.”
“But the cemetery, Mary Tate?”
“Yes, the cemetery, Sadie.” She stuck her tongue out from the side of her mouth and doggedly whisked the mascara wand repeatedly over Sadie’s skimpy lashes. “I think it’s the perfect job for you.”
“
Why?
” Sadie blinked and backed away before her eyes got caked shut with the inky stuff. “Because I’m unfit to work among the living?”
“Because you’ve experienced your share of grief and loss. Stand still, will you?” Mary Tate withdrew three shades of lipstick, surveyed them, then handed Sadie an elegant black-and-gold tube. “When people in pain come to you, whatever you say or do will carry real meaning. You could help a lot of people in that kind of job, Sadie.”
How?
she had wanted to cry out. How could she help other people when she hadn’t even been able to help herself?
“No. No, I couldn’t.” She applied the neutral-color cream over her dry lips, pressed them together, then stood back and checked her slightly improved reflection again. “Could I?”
“Yes. You could and you should.”
Sadie sighed. “If I really believed that…”
“Then what? What would you do, Sadie, if you let yourself dare to believe in your own potential?”
Her pulse quickened. She couldn’t even imagine the possibilities.
Once upon a time her younger self might have come up with a staggeringly fabulous list of dreams and goals and the sacred secret hopes of her heart’s fondest desires. But
she wasn’t young anymore. Hadn’t the doctor used those very words when she begged him to give her some reason why she had lost her baby?
She shook her head. “I’m not a kid anymore, and this is not taking laps around the school track, Mary Tate. No matter how much you try to build me up into thinking I have it in me, I’m not taking the job.”
“Why not?”
“Why would I?”
“Aside from providing comfort—for yourself and others—it would provide you with a more independent lifestyle.”
She folded her arms. “That’s what they say about adult diapers, but I’m not rushing out to get me some of those just yet, either.”
“A job would make you feel useful again.”
“My family finds me quite useful, thank you very much.”
“Used and useful are two very different things.”
Sadie answered with a warning glare.
“If nothing else, taking that job would get you out of the house.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m out of the house already.”
“Okay, okay then. How about feeling productive? A sense of accomplishment? How about feeling appreciated?”
“My family a…uh…um…I
am
out of the house.”
“Terrific. That’s a start. Now all you have to do is build on it.”
A start. Just what Daddy said she needed. Just what got her heading over here from the VFW Hall to begin with—to see if she could start something.
“Go inside the drugstore and tell that husband of yours you’re taking that job.”
That wasn’t the something she had in mind.
“If that doesn’t make Ed lift that balding head up from filling prescriptions and look at you—really, really look at you—I don’t know what will.”
Make Ed really look at her? Wasn’t that what she’d been longing for?
“You’re right! Why didn’t I think of that?” Sadie gave her friend the briefest of hugs and hurried off, calling, “Mary Tate, you’re brilliant!”
“Hear that, girls?” Her friend’s voice trailed out behind her as she stepped-halt-stepped back to work. “I’m brilliant. If y’all aspire to the same, I suggest you learn to glide-pause-glide like the regal maidens you’re supposed to be—and for land’s sake, quit peeking!”
Brilliant. She’d begun the day with her only plan to sit in the dark and hide from the world, and now she had a whole new objective. She’d tell Ed she was taking the job.
Not that she
wanted
the job. But to tell Ed about it—what a jolt that would provide.
The kind of jolt that could set a man thinking about all he had taken for granted. That could make him look at his wife with new eyes, with new gratitude for all she had done for him. It just might work.
T
he old tin bell jangled when she pushed open the glass-and-wood front door with its gold scroll letters proclaiming: Downtown Drug. With a deep breath and a lighter heart than she’d had in quite a while, Sadie stepped into the cool quiet of Ed’s domain.
“Mrs. P.”
“No time to talk.” She breezed past the newly hired employee, trying not to dwell on the look of total shock on his freckled face. “Is Mr. Pickett in the back?”
“Mr. Pickett?” The boy’s voice crackled. “He’s not…Mr. Pickett went to lunch.”
She stopped in her tracks. “Lunch?”
Ed Pickett never left the store in the middle of the day. Not to attend the children’s school functions. Not to check on her when she had the flu or worse. Not even to go to the doctor when he cut his hand and needed stitches. That day he’d wrapped up his wound, waited until five and then showed up at the clinic blustering to his brother-in-law to take care of it quick so he could get back in time to close out the cash register.
Sadie glanced around at the tidy rows of over-the-counter remedies, foot-care products and hair dyes. No sign of forced entry. No strange blast marks or eerie lights that the cable-TV shows described as characteristic of alien invasion. It would have to be something that wild and unbelievable to pry her husband from the store at this time of day.
“Are you sure he
went
to lunch? Because I’ve been standing outside the Academy for the last fifteen minutes.” She jerked her thumb toward the right side of the pie-slice-shape building. “Seems I’d have seen him leave, just like I saw Carmen Gomez come in.”
“Carmen?”
“Yes. Surely you know who I’m talking about, the cosmetics sales rep? I saw her come in not ten minutes ago. Didn’t you see her?”
“Oh.
Carmen
.” He laughed unconvincingly. “I—I forgot, she’s in the stockroom setting up for a, uh, product demo.”
“I see.” Since when did they start doing product demos in the storage room? Maybe the same time Ed took actual, leave-the-pharmacy-floor lunch breaks. “And Mr. Pickett is…?”
“On lunch break?”
“On lunch break at…?”
“On lunch break at…” The kid’s lips moved but he hardly made a sound. His gaze roamed the ceiling like someone struggling to mentally piece together the jackpot puzzle on a game show. “Oh! Mr. Pickett is on lunch break…at this very moment.”
The kid grinned.
A knot rose in Sadie’s chest. She thought of going to check with Carmen to see if she had a more satisfying answer, then hesitated.
What would charging in on poor Carmen, asking questions about Ed’s whereabouts, do? Make Sadie look like a jealous middle-aged shrew, that’s what.
She trusted her husband. He had never given her reason to think he’d so much as bent his wedding vows, much less broken them.
Ed loved Sadie.
He honored her.
And if he knew what was good for him, he also obeyed her.
Not that she ever ordered him around, of course. Just that Ed was the kind of man who implicitly understood the meaning of the old phrase
If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy
.
Not that Sadie could qualify as happy, but that had nothing to do with anything she could lay at Ed’s feet. Her gripe with him wasn’t that he’d hurt or betrayed or even so much as toyed with cheating on her. It was that her husband hadn’t seemed to even notice whether she was happy or sad or even in the room in such a long while.
Inattentiveness, yes. But capable of infidelity? Not Ed.
“I can tell Mr. Pickett you stopped by, and when he has the time maybe he can just reach you at home,” the young clerk offered, sweeping his arm out to shepherd Sadie toward the door. “You know—that you’ll just be hanging around until you hear from him.”
Sadie blinked and cocked her head. “You make me sound like a loyal spaniel waiting for my master’s call.”
“No, ma’am. I wouldn’t call you a dog, not by no means.”
“Well, thank you for that.” She smiled, sighed, then let her gaze wander to the street beyond the door. Guess she had no choice but to go home and resume her vigil in the
chair until somebody needed something else from her. “When Mr. Pickett returns, tell him—”
“Don’t you dare do that, Ed. I’ve finally got you just where I want you.” Carmen’s lilting Georgia accent coming from behind the closed stockroom door rang through the quiet storefront like a hammer shattering glass.
“Was that Carmen talking to Ed?
My
Ed?” Sadie asked it aloud but did not intend it as an actual question.
“Nothing is going on, Mrs. P., I promise.” The clerk’s heavy footsteps thundered along behind Sadie as they both went flying toward the storeroom.
Or was that relentless pounding the sound of her heart?
Ed and Carmen.
How could he?
How could she?
How could Sadie not have seen it coming, and how would she ever cope with the aftermath of this ugly turn of events? Hadn’t she already suffered enough? How could God heap more on her now just when—
Sadie flung open the door.
Carmen jumped as if she’d taken an electrical charge.
Ed sat up. “Sadie!”
“Ed?”
He stood up, yanking the yellow terry-cloth towel from around his neck as he did. “I didn’t realize you were…I just let Carmen…I hope you didn’t think…”
Plip
.
Slimy purple gel dripped from the tip of his nose to splat on his shoe.
Sadie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “A facial, Ed?”
Ed wiped his chin with the big towel now draped around his neck. “I can explain.”
“You can explain?” Sadie plunked her hands on her
hips. The rush of sweet relief she should have felt in finding nothing more untoward than personal grooming going on behind the closed door did not come.
Sadie was mad.
She had every right to be mad.
And she wanted Ed to know about it.
“Letting another woman give you a facial? This from a man who once spent an entire beach vacation without ever once getting into the water because he had pronounced my pink-bottled depilatory ‘too girlie’ to use—” she should have stopped there but she had to take it all the way, concluding with her eyes narrowed “—on his back hair!”
Carmen showed the good form to stifle her laugh at that. “Honestly, Sadie, I’ve asked him to let me show him this line of men’s products for a year, and now the company is having this contest—an all-expenses-paid trip to Cancún—for the rep who gets the most new accounts this quarter. But Ed said—”
“I said I knew the men in Wileyville, and they wouldn’t see the good of slapping a bunch of goo on their faces to look nice for the hogs.” He swiped away the last of the facial gel and grinned.
Carmen’s eyes glittered and when she smiled, not a single line formed in her young, soft brown skin. “So I told him I could change his mind about that if he’d just give me an hour of his undivided attention….”
“An hour? An hour of your undivided attention, Ed?” That newest bit of information hit Sadie like a sucker punch.
“Just a little bit of time, Sadie, that’s all.”
“A little bit of time out of the middle of the day. An
hour
for my husband to laugh with and joke with and discuss his work with and…and…and give his attention to—and
don’t take this wrong, Carmen, I think the world of you—a woman who sees him mainly as a means of hitting her sales quota and winning a quarterly contest. While I sit at home day after day literally pining my heart out for someone to notice me, someone to talk to me.”
Ed hung his head.
Carmen looked at her shoes.
Only the sound of brakes squealing out in the street broke the silence.
Sadie turned to storm out.
“This is ridiculous.” Ed threw the towel to the ground. “Sadie, wait!”
Wait?
She stopped in her tracks and jerked her head up. Wait for what? Hadn’t she waited long enough?
In fact that’s
all
she had done. As the years went by, Sadie had become nothing more than a lady-in-waiting.
Waiting on her teenage children to stop looking at her as if they thought she had the brain capacity of a half-stuffed sock monkey. For them to, as it says in Proverbs “rise up and call her blessed.”
Waiting for the day when the man she’d married would finally decide he’d worked enough, come home early, sweep her into his arms and tell her how much he loved and appreciated her.
Waiting for things to settle down emotionally and perk up romantically, to work out financially, and for her tummy, hips and thighs to finally, finally, fit into the fabulous, electric-blue size 8 summer dress she’d splurged on more than two years ago.
Sadie was waiting, basically, for her “real” life to begin.
She had not deluded herself. She had expected to be in for a long wait.
But then she had
been
waiting most of her life.
Waiting for her wayward mother to one day come walking back through the door.
Waiting for her two sisters to stop acting like wounded, bickering children and be a real family.
Waiting for her daddy…
Daddy
. After all these years, Sadie was still waiting for her daddy to grow up.
Well, maybe she had waited long enough. Maybe it was time, at last, to take action, to start something, as she’d been advised.
Sadie drew a deep breath and turned on her heel. “Ed, I came here to tell you something. Mayor Furst has offered me a job, and I—”
The bell dangling from the front door clanged to cut her off.
“Sadie! Ed! Y’all better get outside quick!” Panic edged Mary Tate’s voice, and then she was gone.
“Come on.” Ed had his arm around Sadie in a heartbeat, guiding her toward the door.
Carmen and the new clerk didn’t linger behind, either.
The old floorboards shook with the combined weight of the four of them practically running for the front door.
Ed reached the door first and pushed ahead of Sadie, probably thinking to blunt the impact of whatever Mary Tate had beckoned them out to see. “What’s wrong? Are Ryan and Olivia okay?”
“It’s not the kids.” Mary Tate motioned to Sadie that it was safe to come on out to the sidewalk. Then she pointed to a spot halfway down the block. “It’s the big child.”
“Martha Tatum Fitts McCrackin!” Moonie climbed from the front seat to the back of his prized vintage yellow boat of a convertible Cadillac, waving like a castaway sailor signaling a rescue ship. He took a seat at the back,
in a position not unlike “the girls with high hair” who rode in the holiday parades, and pointed to the crumpled fender. “Looks like I had a bit of trouble at the drive-thru bank.”
The blonde cupped her hand to her mouth and hollered back the perfect setup for the ornery old man who had just promised Sadie he’d behave for a good three or four days. “That branch doesn’t have a drive-thru, Moonie.”
“Does now,” Ed muttered seconds before her daddy gave the same reply.
By then two police cars had arrived, and the officers practically scrambled all over one another trying to do the honors of giving Moonie both a stern talking-to and a hefty traffic ticket.
Meanwhile, the president of the bank had come outside with a handful of customers trailing on his heels. The bank staff stopped short of the sidewalk, but each did manage to find a spot near the plate-glass windows to feign working while they watched their boss make wild gestures and rap his knuckles on the hood of Moonie’s car.
The ruddy-faced old man finally hopped out amid it all, tipped his hat and began handing out his business cards, probably with a caveat that they’d better spell his name right when they reported the incident in the paper.
Sadie leaned her head back on her husband’s chest, letting the vibration of his gentle laughter ease away all the emotions she’d struggled to cope with a moment earlier.
Ed leaned down and brushed his lips over her cheek. “Forgive me?”
She dug her elbow into his side. “No.”
“Yes, you do.” He buried his nose in her hair and inhaled slowly.
“Things have to change, Ed,” she whispered.
“I know. For starters, sounds like you’re going to have a new job.”
“No, for starters, I’m going to have to meet with my sisters and decide once and for all what we are going to do about Daddy.”
“And then you’re going to have a new job?”
“Who knows? If I can get my daddy straightened out, then I might just have myself a whole new life!”
“If you wait until you get Moonie straightened out, darling, you may be too old to start a new life.”
He’d intended it as a joke, she knew, but that didn’t make it sit any easier with her. Maybe she had already been waiting too long. Maybe she’d never have the kind of life she dreamed of. Maybe God had other plans for her.
And all that she could do about that at the moment was…to wait and see.
Wait and see
.