CHAPTER 26
Carlton surprised her the following Friday evening with three gifts.
They sat on the front porch swing of the farmhouse, blessedly alone. After Aunt Bess had fed them well and Papa had taken a walk outside to smoke a rare cigarette while Nelson and Irene went to town to take in a picture show, she and Carlton glided nearly without effort in the swing. In the silence between them, interrupted only by the squeaking of the chains, Alice-Ann wondered if her brother and Irene ever argued during those long drives to town and back. Or did they —as she would were it Carlton and her —pull down some dusty field road to kiss and make up? To make things better, were they living with Carlton’s parents and not in a place of their own?
Oh, the cottage . . . Within six months, Carlton said, he’d have the house ready for them to move into. Maybe sooner, he added, planting a kiss to the tip of her nose to seal the promise.
Papa made his way up the front porch steps just then.
“Did you enjoy your walk, sir?” Carlton asked.
Papa nodded as he shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “Sometimes a man just needs to think a bit.”
“To sort things out?”
“It’s the mark of a real man, son,” Papa answered with a slight smile. “When life comes at you fast, take a little walk and have a little talk with the good Lord. He’ll straighten things out for you.”
Carlton grinned. “I’ll remember that, sir.”
Papa sighed. “Well, then . . . I ’spect I should go inside and help Bess out.”
Alice-Ann shook her head as he entered the house, the screen door slamming behind him. Her father hadn’t helped his sister out once in all the years they’d lived under this roof as a family.
Carlton turned to her. “Now that we’re alone and not likely to be interrupted any time soon, I have a few surprises for you,” he said.
“You do?”
He bounded out of the swing, nearly sending her feet over shoulders. “Sorry,” he said, steadying her. Then he laughed and she did too. “I’ll be right back.”
If he’d been excited about getting out of the swing, he sure seemed to take his time walking to his car and back. But when he finally emerged from the shadows and back into the sunlight and then under the shade of the porch, he held two envelopes —one pale pink and shaped like a greeting card, the other a long white business envelope —and a small box wrapped in thick white paper.
“What’s this?” she asked.
Carlton returned to the swing and sat next to her again. “An early birthday gift.”
“First things first,” he said, extending the pink envelope. “Open this one.”
Alice-Ann took it from his hands. “Obviously a greeting card.”
“Don’t get sassy on me.”
She slid closer to him. Their hips touched, sending electric pulses through her body. “Open it now?”
“Please.”
Alice-Ann used her fingernail to pop open the seal, then pulled out the card. She held it up, the face of the card toward him. “It’s really a birthday card.”
Carlton answered with a grin. “Read it.”
“‘Happy birthday to the one I love . . .’” She tilted her head and eyed him. “Aww.”
“Read.”
She opened the card. “‘Roses may be red, and violets may be blue, but they’ll never be as beautiful as —’” Alice-Ann took a deep breath. Pressed her hand against her chest. “‘As beautiful as you.’”
He kissed her cheek, then whispered, “It’s true.” He kept his face close to her ear and she felt the warmth of his breath there.
Alice-Ann batted her eyes to keep from crying. “I love you, Carlton.”
“I love you too.”
She giggled. “No, silly. That’s what it says right there.”
He straightened and looked at where her finger pointed to his signature. “So it does.” He took the card from her. “That’s not all it says.” Carlton opened the card fully and handed it back to her. “Reeeeead,” he encouraged.
“‘Dear Alice-Ann, I’m now a full-time employee at the newspaper.’” She gasped as she dropped the card and threw her arms around him. “Oh, Carlton!”
His laughter shook his chest, pressed against hers, bringing it up and down with his. “Happy?”
“Yes. So happy for you.”
He kissed her lightly. “For us.”
Alice-Ann nodded. “For us.”
He reached for the second envelope. “Now open this.”
She retrieved a thick stack of papers with too many words and numbers for her to comprehend at first glance. “What is this?” She flipped to the back page, saw Mister Dooley’s signature next to Carlton’s, then looked up for an explanation.
“Remember the other day when Nancy took you to the soda shop for lunch?”
“Of course. It was only three days ago and we were late getting back. Mister Dooley and Miss Portia didn’t even fuss, which, by the way, I still find a little strange.”
“She was actually keeping you out of the way.” He pointed to the papers. “That’s a house loan, Alice-Ann. I bought the cottage for you.”
Alice-Ann opened her mouth to speak —what she’d say, she had no idea —but only an eek came out.
“Cat got your tongue?”
Alice-Ann nodded.
“I’ll start on the renovations this week, working some nights and weekends.” He cocked a brow. “I’ll expect some help.”
She nodded again, happiness welling up inside her. The two of them, working side by side in the house she’d loved for so long. She’d scrub the floors while Carlton tore out old boards and replaced them. And she’d paint the walls while he took care of the trim.
Carlton wrapped his arms around her and laid his forehead against hers. “I bet you want to kiss me right now, don’t you?”
She giggled. “Yes, but if I kissed you as hard as I want to, Aunt Bess and Papa would be out here faster than that song you hear from the Zenith ends.”
“Hmm . . . what is the name of that song?” he teased.
“You know good and well what it is. ‘People Will Say We’re in Love.’”
“Gotta appreciate Bing.” He turned his face toward the open door and windows, looking for signs of life inside, then turned back. “Kiss me,” he said, “and kiss me well so I can give you the third gift.”
Alice-Ann did as she was told, her head swirling from sheer happiness. What had she ever done to deserve such joy? Such love? Or a man such as Carlton? What goodness had she shared with the world to earn a man who would work at a job he wanted, to live in a house she’d dreamed of?
Whatever it had been . . .
They broke apart. “Doodlebug,” he said, his voice hoarse. Then he cleared his throat and offered her the small, wrapped box. As the heat in her cheeks rushed back to where it had come from —wherever that was —she tore into the paper to find a black box. She lifted the top slowly.
“Carlton . . .”
He took the ring from a nest of cotton and held it toward her with shaking fingers. “May I?”
She lifted her left hand, felt the cold metal of yellow, white, and rose gold that had been carved into tiny flowers and vines encircling a cluster of diamonds. “This was my great-grandmother’s.”
“It’s amazing.”
“You’re amazing.” He cupped her face with his hand and she rested in it. “I love you so much, Alice-Ann.”
Alice-Ann closed her eyes, allowing the tears to slip between her lashes. She nodded. “So happy,” she whispered. “I’m so, so happy.”
“I promise you,” he whispered back, “I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you’re always this happy.”
She nodded again.
This was good. This was enough.
“I’m worried,” Alice-Ann admitted to Aunt Bess that evening as they washed the dishes and put them away.
“About?”
“Well . . . the wedding, for one thing.”
Aunt Bess pulled her hands out of the soapy water, flung some of the suds back into the sink, and then reached for the drying cloth in Alice-Ann’s hands to finish the job off. “What about it?”
Alice-Ann peered into the sink. “Are we done?”
“Except for your papa’s coffee cup, which he’s still got in the living room. Now, talk to me, Alice. Where’s your worrying coming from?”
Alice-Ann wiped down the last pan and walked it to the cabinet where Aunt Bess stored it. “For one, it’s going to cost money. And right now Papa doesn’t have any to spare. None of us do.” Unless, of course, your daddy happened to be a doctor. Although even by Claudette’s standards —if she were honest —the September wedding hadn’t been what it might have been without the war.
Aunt Bess poured herself a cup of coffee and set it on the table. “Join me?”
Alice-Ann nodded.
“I’ve been thinking about this too,” Aunt Bess said as she poured another cup.
Alice-Ann took cream out of the Frigidaire. “You have?”
“I was thinking we could have the service at the church, of course.” She set about preparing her coffee the way she liked it and Alice-Ann did the same. “Then we’d all come back here. I’ll bake the cake. Have some little finger sandwiches. Some cheese straws. Make my punch you always liked so much.”
Alice-Ann wrapped her fingers around the warmth of the cup as she stared into it. Without raising her head, she asked, “What about my dress, Aunt Bess? Because I know we can’t afford to buy one like Claudette wore.” And she didn’t dare ask about the one in the hope chest, the one she’d always hoped to wear. She understood now that losing someone to war carried the deepest pain, and she loved Aunt Bess too much to ask her to open the old —possibly unhealed —wound. “Maybe you could make mine as well as the bridesmaids’?” Who, of course, would be Claudette and Maeve.
“Oh, Alice . . .”
Alice-Ann looked up. Sadness settled in her aunt’s eyes, but then, before Alice-Ann had a chance to say how sorry she felt for causing such emotion, Aunt Bess brightened. “I think I can do you one better than that.” She stood. “Come on to my bedroom with me.”
Leaving cups of coffee behind, Alice-Ann followed her aunt to the bedroom she rarely walked into, for no other reason than that she felt Aunt Bess deserved some level of privacy.
Aunt Bess had never been one for anything froufrou, and her room exemplified that. Plain white walls boasted only a few family photos, along with —over the narrow bed —a framed embroidered sampler displaying a tin watering can filled with pansies that her own mother had stitched. Alice-Ann had heard Aunt Bess say, time and again, that aside from her Bible, the handwork was the most valuable thing to her heart.
At the foot of the bed sat the simple hope chest, filled with treasures Alice-Ann never thought to plunder through. Aunt Bess headed straight for it, and when she’d knelt down to unlatch it, she said, “Close the door behind you, Alice.”
Alice-Ann did so, then joined her aunt on the floor, her knees pressed into the worn braided rug that covered most of the room’s hardwood floor. She peered inside the cedar-scented trove, her eyes widening at the collection of yellowed letters tied off with ribbon, the silver-framed photographs, two silver candlesticks, an old mink wrap, and a long white box covering the bottom of the chest.
Aunt Bess busied herself removing the items on top, handing each one to her niece, mumbling things like “This was your great-aunt Sybil’s, who I never cared much for . . .” or “When I’m dead, be sure to read these letters if you really want something to cry about.”
“Here we go,” Aunt Bess declared, pulling the box from its confines. She laid it on the floor between them and ceremoniously pulled the top away. “Here we go.”
Alice-Ann fell back on her feet, her mouth gaping open, her breath escaping her. Her aunt dared to expose the old wound. Somehow, in time, she’d healed past the pain of losing her beloved. Enough, now, to personally share the dress she’d intended to wear. “Aunt Bess . . . it’s —it’s simply . . .”
Aunt Bess plucked the wedding dress up by the sheer, lacy bell-shaped sleeves, drawing it out as she stood.
Alice-Ann’s eyes traveled up, past the tiers of creamy satin to the deep V-neck swathed in lace. “It’s like something out of Gatsby,” she whispered. To speak any other way would have seemed irreverent.
“As you know, it was mine,” Aunt Bess said, holding it up to her shoulders. “Clearly,” she stated, looking down, “I was a lot thinner back then.”
Alice-Ann stood. “Do you want to talk about it, Aunt Bess?”
“I know what you think,” Aunt Bess said matter-of-factly. “That my fiancé died in the war.” She draped the dress across the end of her bed.
“He didn’t?”
Aunt Bess returned to the hope chest and busied herself replacing the items she’d laid on the floor. “No.”
“But I thought . . .” She fingered the hemline of the wedding gown, wondering now if she should wear it, lovely though it was.
Her aunt sighed into the chest. “His name was Paul. Paul Trenton Pearson.” She closed the lid. “He was a handsome young man. The handsomest. Blond hair. Eyes as blue as a summer sky after an afternoon rain. I’d never seen anything like them before.” Her eyes met Alice-Ann’s. “Nor since.”
Alice-Ann eased herself onto the bed beside the dress. She slid her fingertips beneath the lace of the sleeve and marveled at the translucence. “I don’t understand . . .”
“He was handsome, all right, but he —” She walked to the occasional chair near the open window framed by sheers, overlooking the fields on the south side of the property. Alice-Ann remained silent as Aunt Bess took a moment to get comfortable, both with herself and her story. “He took to the bottle, I’m afraid.”
Alice-Ann tried to imagine Aunt Bess with anyone who drank. Or swore. Or even smoked cigarettes. She couldn’t. “Before the war?”
“No. He . . . Let me go back a little, if you will.” She took a breath. “Paul and his family didn’t live here. In Bynum. He and his people came from Collins.”
“Then how’d you meet him?”
Aunt Bess gave a half smile. “A church social. His daddy was a preacher over there and once a month Mama and Daddy would pack us all up and we’d go for Sunday night sings.” Her head bobbed. “Mama’s first cousin went to church there and we’d make a whole day of it. Spend the night.” She sighed. “Oh, those were wonderful times, Alice.”
Alice-Ann nodded. She adored it when Oak Grove sponsored sings. Seemed that everyone from every country church in the county came to stand together, hymnals spread wide. Piano ivories danced under the fast fingers of one pianist or another as the congregants bellowed songs like “The Sweet By and By” and “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”
“We started keeping company, as we used to say,” Aunt Bess continued. “We’d always sit together at the sings, and as time went on, about once a month he’d come here to visit on a Sunday afternoon.” She nodded once and tilted her head. “Then . . .”
“The war.”
“Paul came of age in 1916, and of course, he enlisted. Rode a horse from Collins to here and asked me to marry him. Said he wanted to make it official before he went off. But I wanted to wait.” Sadness settled in Aunt Bess’s eyes. “He was gone two years.” Her sigh fell across her lap. “It seemed to be forever back then, but it wasn’t long when you think about it. Still, the war had done its deed.”
“But he came home?”
“Back to Collins. Daddy and Mama drove me there to welcome him back.” She smiled again and Alice-Ann knew Aunt Bess recollected a memory she’d not share with her niece. “We went off, the two of us . . .” She raised her eyes. “I told him about how Mama had already made my dress —that one there —and about all the ideas I had dreamed up for the two of us while he’d been gone.”
“So then why —?”
“That’s when he pulled a bottle from his coat pocket. Had the audacity to offer me a swig.” Her eyes became hooded again. “I tried, Alice. Over the next weeks and months, I did all I knew to do to talk him out of it.” She waved a hand. “And it wasn’t just that he took a nip now and then. Paul —Paul couldn’t seem to stop once he got started and then he —he seemed to become someone else. Right down to his language.” She winced. “And most importantly, he didn’t seem to feel the same about God anymore. Of all the things the war had done to him, that was the worst.”
At least Carlton had returned with his faith intact. In fact, he was about as close to perfect as she’d ever imagined a godly man to be. “So you ended it?”
“I ended it.” She shook her head as the words fell away.
“How did you end it?”
“I stayed up with Mama half that night, talking things out. She said the decision was mine, but then she asked me a question I still think about to this day.”
“Which was?”
“She said, ‘Bessy, can you see yourself with him for the rest of your life?’ And then as she left my bedroom, she turned to me and said, ‘You know, hon, you can’t choose who you fall in love with, but you can choose who you marry.’”
“That’s . . . profound.”
“Mama’s always been a smart old bird.”
Alice-Ann nodded, thinking of the grandmother who now lived in Screven County with her widowed sister. She hadn’t seen her in a while and she’d have to remedy that. Make sure she knew that her granddaughter was getting married. “Did you pray about it?”
She smiled fully. “That’s what I did the other half of the night. Between Mama’s words and God’s reassurance that I’d be all right . . . He laid a verse from the Good Book on my heart. ‘The troubles of my heart are enlarged: O bring thou me out of my distresses.’” She nodded. “And he did. The next day I took the ring back to Paul.” She harrumphed. “He didn’t even beg. Said I was being childish and that he’d always thought I’d be the mother of his children instead of one of them.”
Alice-Ann pulled her hand from under the lace. “That had to have been difficult.”
“One of the hardest things I ever lived through. Back then, Alice, a woman didn’t have a whole lot of options other than getting married.”
Alice-Ann understood.
“I was scared, I don’t mind telling you,” Aunt Bess continued. “Scared of what my future would look like. Scared of never finding another man to love me.” Her brows shot up. “I guess you know how that turned out.”
Alice-Ann felt her shoulders sink. “Oh, Aunt Bess. I’m so sorry.”
“I put the dress away, and that was that. I left Bynum, went to live with Aunt Sybil over in Sylvania, and helped her with her growing family. Then your mama got sick and your daddy needed me and . . . well, you know the rest of the story.”
Alice-Ann shook her head in an attempt to get the pieces to fall into place. “Aunt Bess, why have I always heard that your fiancé died in the war?”
Aunt Bess stopped rocking, stood, and walked to the bed. “I never said he died. I said I’d lost him to the war.” She brought her fingers under Alice-Ann’s chin as she smiled. “And I did. If it hadn’t been for that war . . . well, who knows but the good Lord.”
“Do you know what happened to him?”
She chuckled. “Oh, he married. Had a houseful of young’uns.”
“Oh, Aunt Bess . . .”
“What’s done is done.”
“Did you ever —do you ever regret it?”
“No, ma’am. Marriage and a houseful of children doesn’t always equal a good life. In fact, I have no idea if he’s happy or not or if he ever got himself straightened out. I hope so. I honestly hope the best for him and his.” She pursed her lips. “What kind of a Christian woman would I be otherwise?”
Alice-Ann stood and wrapped her arms around her aunt. The older woman’s soft flesh brought comfort like a fully fluffed pillow at the end of a long day. “You’re the best Christian woman, Aunt Bess.”
Aunt Bess hugged her back, then released her. “Now, Alice,” she said, the strength returning to her voice, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk of this in town.”
“Of course not.”
“Well then.” She looked back at the dress. “Why don’t you try it on,” she said, bossy as ever. “And let’s give this lovely frock a purpose, shall we?”