I never let on to Jesse Ray that I was more relieved than I was disappointed about us never having children together. The one thing that we did agree to was to not share this information with Miss Rosetta. And certainly not with the rest of my in-laws, because telling any one of them would have been like broadcasting it to the world. I decided that if I told anybody else, it would be Miss Odessa.
Thinking that I was depressed about the whole situation, because I walked around the next few days with a long face, Jesse Ray whisked me off to Hawaii a week after his confession. We had planned to spend two weeks frolicking on the beach in Waikiki and eating in all the best restaurants on the island.
The weather was so nice, I was tempted to walk naked up and down the secluded beach outside our window, like I’d seen a few other women do. But Jesse Ray didn’t like that idea, so I wore a wide sarong over my thong bikini.
“I wanted to have a child as much as you did, baby. But I couldn’t risk losing you by telling you I couldn’t,” Jesse Ray told me over a tall pitcher of mai tais on the balcony of our luxury beachfront hotel room. He wore a flowered, short-sleeved shirt and a pair of baggy shorts. Earlier that morning, before I woke up, he’d gone out and picked flowers, which he had pinned to my hair. He was doing every little thing he could to help me get over what he’d told me. I was enjoying all the extra attention, so I decided to “milk that cow” dry.
“But I found out, anyway,” I said, feeling light-headed. I had already had three drinks and was working my way through the fourth. Jesse Ray nodded and looked away. “If we want this marriage to work, we have to be open and honest,” I said. “About everything. I don’t care how small a situation seems to you, if it involves me, I want to know about it. And I want you to be one hundred percent honest. You can expect the same from me,” I stated, looking my husband in the eye so hard, he had to blink and look away again.
I was learning more and more about Jesse Ray each day. One thing that was clear to me now was that he was the kind of man who always said what he thought somebody wanted to hear. That had a lot to do with his success. However, I didn’t think that that was a good characteristic to apply to marriage.
It didn’t take me long to realize that I was going to do the same thing to Miss Rosetta. I knew she would continue to badger me about having a baby. And, I was all prepared to tell her one lie after another about why I didn’t get pregnant. The best one I could come up with was the one about me having a tilted womb. I had read about a woman with that same problem in one of Miss Odessa’s magazines years ago. It was the kind of lie that I could get a lot of mileage out of. And, since Miss Rosetta was already in her golden years, I didn’t think that I’d have to use it for too many more years. It saddened me to know that I could deliberately deceive someone I loved. But that’s exactly what Jesse Ray had done to me! I told myself that if Miss Rosetta made too much of a fuss about having more grandchildren, Jesse Ray and I could take in a few foster children. That way if they started acting a fool, like so many kids I knew, we weren’t obligated to keep them.
Jesse Ray coughed and cleared his throat, interrupting my thoughts. I was glad he did, because my mind was off on a tangent. “That’s the way it’ll be from now on. In that case …,” he said, then paused, scratched his neck, and gave me a mysterious look. His eyes roamed up and down the entire length of my body. “Please dispose of that sarong as soon as you can. It makes you look like a piñata.” I bolted from my seat and ran into one of the two spacious bathrooms in our suite. Behind the door was a full-length mirror. I didn’t agree with Jesse Ray’s assessment of my appearance, but I changed into some white shorts and a plain halter top, anyway.
The best thing about the sudden vacation was the fact that nobody knew where to reach us. Well, I had told Miss Odessa and Jeanette and Nita, but I’d made them promise not to call me unless it was a matter of life and death. At the last minute, before we left the house, I called and left the same information on the answering machine that I had bought for Mama and Daddy. But I wasn’t even sure that they’d use it, even if one of them died.
When Jeanette called me eight days into my vacation, the first thing I said to her was, “Woman, somebody better be dead.”
There was a long pause before she told me. “Your mother-in-law had a massive stroke last night.”