“Yeah, I think you’re right.”
Everything just melted inside of her. She had always been able to count on John Cole’s excellence as a father.
It was a lot to take in. First she was getting divorced from her husband of thirty-two years, then her son was getting married, now her husband was coming home.
What about sleeping arrangements?
She entered their bedroom and gazed at the bed—king-size, solid cherrywood. She had bought it back when they got their first home. John Cole never had paid much attention to the interior of the house. Every time she bought something, he would grouch about her spending money on it, but then, when the piece was in the house, he always really liked it.
There was no way John Cole could manage sleeping in the guest room. He would end up making the family room his bedroom and his recliner his bed.
She entered the walk-in closet, where one side still contained most of his clothes, with a line of boots and shoes below. She gathered up her nightgown and robe and slippers, carried them down to the guest room, then threw them over the end of the bed. She wasn’t going to move her clothes, because she could not have anyone know she wasn’t still in her own room. Then she returned with two large wicker baskets to the bathroom, where she swept her things off the counter and out of the drawers, carrying them down to the guest bath and tucking them in the cabinet.
Subterfuge was going to be a lot of work.
3
Emma and John Cole
She kept watch and saw his truck coming up the drive. She hurried to the back door to meet him, but stopped in the kitchen doorway.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” He carried his duffel bag and shirts in a bag from the cleaners. “I’ll put these away—I’ll be right back,” he added, as if she might think he was never returning.
Emma watched him go off down the hall, then turned and flew around the kitchen, pulling the bowls of chicken salad she had already prepared from the refrigerator, closing it with her foot as she ripped the plastic wrap from the dishes. She arranged the salad—made John Cole’s favorite way—with sunflower seeds and halved grapes on a bed of lettuce, with celery sticks and cherry tomatoes on the side. The effect was something as pretty as a magazine cover.
Maybe John Cole would see what he had been missing.
Realizing her train of thought, she yanked out the celery sticks, as if to tone down the inviting food. He likely wouldn’t eat them, or even notice, anyway.
Studying the prepared plate of food, she thought that she was in a most frazzled state. But then again, what other state was natural for a woman in her situation?
Hearing the sound of the television, she went to the entry of the family room. John Cole was standing there in the middle of the room, remote control in hand, staring at the television. Headline News was on—a report on a disaster somewhere.
Emma was not certain what she expected of him, but she did think he could have thought of something better than to turn on the television at that particularly significant moment.
She said, “I have your supper ready. Do you want to eat in here?”
“Yes…that’d be nice.”
She didn’t know why she had bothered to ask.
They sat in their respective chairs, a large table in between them, facing the big-screen television, where NASCAR highlights flickered on the screen.
Emma had for so long wanted to buy a regular couch, so that they could sit side by side. She thought if they could have sat close together, held hands and touched more intimately, they might have revived their passion for each other. But John Cole had refused to give up his chair.
She wondered what he might have done if one day, when he arrived home, she was burning his chair out in the yard. She imagined the scene. The hardest part would be getting the chair outside. John Cole had a heavy-duty dolly in his garage, though. She probably could use that. Or else smash the chair apart with a hammer and take it out piece by piece, about like one did a cooked chicken.
Then she began to imagine shooting out the television with a shotgun. They did not have a shotgun. She would have to borrow one. Vella Blaine had a shotgun; that woman’s prowess with a gun had been written up in the newspaper. Perhaps Vella would lend Emma the shotgun—or maybe Vella hired out as a crack shot. The television would be an easy target.
Just then, she realized that John Cole had begun talking, telling her how good the chicken salad was.
“Thanks for makin’ it,” he said. “I was more hungry than I imagined.”
“You’re welcome.”
Their eyes met and skittered away from each other.
Emma tried to think of something else to make conversation. Her conscience pricked, and she said, “I told Johnny that we would give him and Gracie money toward a nice honeymoon—I didn’t say how much, just that we would.”
John Cole nodded. “Okay.”
More NASCAR watching.
“Do you want to call your daddy and ever’ body tonight and tell them about Johnny and Gracie?”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “I guess…if you want to.”
“It’s up to you. He’s your daddy. I thought of callin’ Mama, but she’s up in Oklahoma City at one of her writer things, and I imagine she’s really busy up there and won’t hardly hear a word I say. You know how she is. Unless she calls here, I’ll just wait until she gets home on Saturday.”
John Cole, looking really tired all of a sudden, said he didn’t feel like calling. “We might as well wait until we have a date and details to tell ’em, anyway.”
She said okay. They finished their meal without further conversation, while NASCAR continued on the television.
Later, Emma sat at the kitchen table with a yellow legal pad, and a wedding etiquette book and wedding planning magazines that she had bought over the past few years, knowing that this day was bound to come. Dreaming about it. Actually trying to prepare herself for the change to being the mother of a man married to a woman.
John Cole came in and said what he so often did, “Oh, there you are. I wondered where you’d gone.”
“I’m right here. I’m workin’ on a preliminary list of people on our side for the invitation list. There’s more than I had imagined. If the wedding is here in Valentine, I imagine that most all of your side will come over. Well, maybe not Violet—I think she’s still got the agoraphobia. But I know Charlie J. and Joella will come and bring your daddy, and most everyone else will come, too.
“Then there’s quite a few Berry employees and some other business people it would be nice to invite. With just my first thoughts, I’ve come up with over seventy people, and that is not including the church congregation. It’s customary to invite the entire church where the ceremony is held, and I think we would do best to prepare for about a third of them to actually show up, especially the ones that have known Johnny from childhood.”
“It might be enough to cause them to decide to have the weddin’ up north,” John Cole commented, bending into the refrigerator.
Emma gazed at the list. “Well, we can easily keep it to just family. That isn’t so many…and I think Johnny will want his family there.”
The idea of having the wedding far away from home about made her sick. But then she reminded herself to be glad that Johnny had not run off and eloped, as he had often said he would do.
She looked up and saw John Cole, a Coke in hand, leaning against