1635:The Dreeson Incident

Chapter 56

Grantville, April 1635

Every guest who lived inside the limits of Grantville proper climbed somewhat inelegantly out of the back of Ray Hudson's flatbed farm truck, which was doing Easter Sunday taxi service today. Vera Hudson was waiting at the front door. "Where is Missy?" she asked, as she surveyed the guests.

Debbie went into the hall and concentrated on putting her coat on the rack, trying not to look at her sister Aura Lee's face. Easter was April 8 this year, not really an early date for it, but the weather was still chilly. "I told you that she was going to dinner at Wes and Clara's, Mother. I told you that last week."

"She should have come with you."

Debbie concentrated on taking deep, regular, breaths. "I also told you why. That since you preferred not to include Ron and Gerry Stone in your Easter, she has chosen to have dinner at a house to which they had also been invited."

"I had no obligation to invite those boys."

"Nani," Bill Hudson said, turning around from his immediate preoccupation with Jessica Booth, who was simultaneously Vera's apprentice as a master gardener and his own fiancee. "If you don't want to acknowledge that there's something between Ron and Missy, that's your business. But Ron is, in fact, my partner. I am living in his house right now."

"Mother," Aura Lee said.

Her brother Ray, Bill's father, touched her shoulder. At the kitchen door, his wife Marty was making "keep the lid on" gestures behind Vera's back. She and Ray did, after all, have to live with Vera on a day-to-day basis. The rest of the family-with the exception of Willie Ray, of course-could pick and choose how often they came out to the farm.

"For that matter, where's Joe?" Vera was momentarily distracted.

"At the fire department, of course. I told you last week that he had pulled volunteer duty shift this afternoon. Most of his VFD shifts fall on holidays now that he holds the exalted title of Secretary of Transportation of the State of Thuringia-Franconia." Aura Lee seemed to find it very interesting that she was wearing gloves, which she would need to pull off one finger at a time. "And that Billy Lee would be going with him. He's a cadet there now that he's sixteen. With Eric in Erfurt, it's just Juliann and Dana of the kids today. Besides Bill, of course."

She didn't add that her thirteen-year-old Juliann hadn't really wanted to come. Or that Ray and Marty's Dana hadn't really wanted to come, either, if Missy wasn't going to be there. Those two cousins were the same age. "Juliann and I need to leave early. We're meeting Joe and Billy Lee at Eden's for supper."

"Making an extra trip for Ray, I suppose." Vera went back to her original grievance. "You should have put your foot down and told Missy to come, Debbie."

Chad Jenkins cleared his throat. "Mom went to Wes and Clara's too. So she's having dinner with one of her grandmothers."

That earned him a withering glare.

Debbie clenched her jaws and with her right thumb and middle finger, twisted her wedding and first anniversary rings back and forth on her ring finger, knowing her mother would notice it.

Chad put his arm around her. She looked perfectly calm, but he could feel the tension in her shoulders. "Vera," he said. "We could go to Wes and Clara's too. It's not too late. They aren't eating until two o'clock. Ray could drive us back into town."

"Vera," said her husband Willie Ray. "Let it be. This time, let it be."

"It's too bad that Bryant had to work today," Eleanor Jenkins said. "It seems that he hardly ever comes to family occasions."

Lenore, Chandra, and Clara all looked at one another.

"Perhaps some other time," Lenore said.

Missy had an uneasy feeling that this was not the best thing to be talking about. She knew that Bryant was under observation in connection with the demonstration at the hospital, but she hadn't learned it from them. Ron had it from Cory Joe, and that was so she would know what to say in case anything about Bryant came up during her and Pam's conversations with Veda Mae and Dumais.

Distraction, distraction, my kingdom for a good distraction.

"Gran," she said. "I was looking at your picture wall the other day. Why isn't Mom and Dad's wedding photo there?"

"Because they didn't have one," Eleanor Jenkins said rather shortly.

Uncle Wes winked from across the table. "Actually," he said, "they did. I'm sure that Debbie still has it somewhere. But it was a polaroid. If it had been up on the wall all these years, exposed to daylight, it would long since have faded away. Maybe you could have her get it out and make a sketch from it, Lenore. That would last a lot longer."

Missy looked at him. "There has to be a story in this somewhere. One that nobody ever bothered to tell Chip and me."

"I was down in Charleston, then," Wes said. "I'd been working there ever since I graduated from WVU. Chad called me and asked whether, if they came, Lena and I would put them up while they waited out getting the license and all. I told him that I could do better than that. I knew people around the courthouse by then. If they gave me a date, I'd have the judge prepped to waive the waiting period for good cause, so they could get it all done in one day. That's what they did. Drove down Friday, starting the first thing in the morning, the day after Christmas. Got the license. Married in the judge's chambers with Lena and me as attendants. The judge's secretary took the polaroid of the five of us. That was always his present to couples he married."

"They didn't even have the courtesy to call and tell us that they had done it," Gran said. Missy thought that her voice was the embodiment of "miffed."

" I called and told you," Wes pointed out.

"That's not quite the same thing."

"I called and told Willie Ray and Vera. I even called and told Bruce and Lily Jefferson. For that, I should have received a decoration for 'heroism above and beyond the call of duty.' "

Missy had a suspicion that there was more to this story than Uncle Wes was sharing with her.

From the expressions on Lenore and Chandra's faces, they had the same thought.

All three of them looked at their grandmother.

"I'm not going to tell you," she said. "If Wes wants to, he can, as far as I'm concerned. Keeping in mind that it will be from his perspective, of course."

Clara nodded, encouraging him to go on.

"Bruce and Lily, Don Jefferson's parents," Wes said. "Ever since he was killed, they had been trying to suck the life out of Debbie. Acting like vampires, trying to turn her into a white marble statue on his tombstone, labeled 'The Tragic Young Widow.' A perpetual monument to a dead boy. Willie Ray fought them; got her back into school. Backed her on going for a teaching certificate. But they weren't giving up." He frowned. "Vera and Lily were best friends. Vera sort of agreed with her. I'm pretty sure that for eight years, Debbie never went out on a date. It wouldn't have been worth the grief they would have given her."

Wes' frown was suddenly replaced by a wicked grin. "I don't know exactly what Chad did to persuade her that he was worth the grief they were undoubtedly going to give her. He wasn't quite that confiding in his big brother. But I beg leave to doubt the official explanation he made at the time, which was that the big bad spider enticed the dainty little fly into his web by offering to let her look at exploded diagrams of the brand new 1981 model year engines in place of the traditional etchings. They did not have the hypnotic effect of the up-to-date WVU Economics Department bibliography of readings on international trade policy I would have used in the same situation. But…"

"Dad!" Lenore said.

Her father wrinkled his nose at her. "Whatever it was, it worked and you now have an Aunt Debbie."

"In any case," Wes went on, "Let me figure. He graduated from WVU in December 1979, a semester early, and came back to Grantville to manage the garage after Dad's stroke. It was just before Labor Day in 1980 that he called to say that Debbie had agreed to marry him. That's the way he put it. Not that they were engaged. You've probably noticed that she doesn't have a traditional engagement ring. Don's parents made it very plain that she would offend them grievously by wearing one and Vera didn't think it would be 'appropriate' when Debbie had removed Don's rings so very recently."

"Look," Missy said. "I've always known that Nani didn't like Dad, but this is simply off the wall. Where did Mom get the ring she wears?"

"Chad got it for their first anniversary," Eleanor said. "Amethyst for her birth stone surrounded with opals for his. A wraparound for the wedding ring. Considering that he was salting away most of his money to be ready to buy the dealership when Lou Prickett got to the point he had to give it up, it was providential that both of them had stones that were reasonably affordable. Chad didn't have a lot of spare cash at the time."

Wes nodded. "The way Bruce and Lily, and Vera for that matter, reacted was more than a little 'off the wall,' to use your phrase. Sure, he was younger than Debbie, but not all that much. Three and a half years. Three years and eight months, to be exact. They went on about it as if it was a lot more. Debbie was a kid the first time she got married.

"They were intending to get married over Christmas, so as to have at least a few days of honeymoon, given that she was teaching. So they started trying to schedule a wedding at First Methodist in Grantville. Nothing before Christmas would work, according to your Nani. There was Anne's school program. There was Anne's Sunday school program. There was Anne's holiday piano recital. Debbie couldn't possibly miss a one of those, of course. At least not according to Vera."

Missy thought, Anne again.

Wes went on. "Then they started trying to find a day between Christmas and New Year's. Nothing suited Vera. So nothing was set. My personal opinion is that Vera and the Jeffersons were hoping to drag things out until Chad gave up. Which led to the Charleston expedition. Lena and I had been intending to take them out to dinner, so they would have a little celebration, but the truth is that by the time the ceremony was over, the two of them were so tense that they practically twanged each time they touched. So instead, we took a phone number where we could reach them in case of dire emergency, told them to come back on New Year's Eve and we would take them out to dinner then, and I wished them good night. Even though it was three o'clock in the afternoon."

Wes' grin took on an even more wicked slant. "I have to say that by the time they reemerged into public view five days later, they were a lot more relaxed."

His mother frowned at him disapprovingly.

"Be calm, Mom," Wes said. "Clara doesn't shock as easily as Lena did."

Chandra giggled.

Missy blushed. This was a new way of thinking about her parents. Very new.

Wes' expression changed to regret. "Unfortunately, I didn't put in a separate call to tell Anne. I wished that I had, later, even though she was only nine. Vera and Lily had a week to work on her before Chad and Debbie got home. And they were both absolutely convinced that the marriage was a mistake. That there was no way it would last."

Saluting his mother, he added, his voice a little ironic, "I know you didn't think that it would any more than they did, but at least you never tried to revoke a signed treaty."

Missy glanced quickly at Ron and Gerry, wondering how they would take a conversation that had turned serious about family business.

"I thought that Debbie was bringing him more… complications. .. than any twenty-three year old man really needed," Eleanor grumped.

Missy nodded. "Thanks."

She had a lot of new information to process. As family dinners went, this one had been a doozy.

Chandra dropped the kids off. With about six cubic feet of equipment, she thought.

"You know, Aunt Debbie, this is really nice of you. Back when I asked you, of course, I didn't know that Clara was expecting yet. But now, I sure wouldn't feel right about asking Dad and her to keep them when she's so far along."

"I've had it on my calendar since Thanksgiving, honey bun. Between Gertrude and Missy and me, it's no problem to manage four of them for a few days. I know this situation with Nathan has been eating at your mind."

Chandra didn't quite smile. "I guess that's what you can call it. At any rate, it's been going on long enough. I can't put it off any longer."

"How are you getting to Frankfurt?"

"I bought a passage on the regular freight wagon as far as Erfurt. It's slow, but it's reliable. Those oiled canvas covers keep rain off a lot better than anything a person riding a horse can wear. And Heinz has put cushions on the passenger seats. He got the idea from the pews at church. From there, I'm riding with Martin Wackernagel. The courier, you know. He comes down to Grantville regularly."

Debbie laughed.

Chandra caught her ride.

Debbie hadn't exactly forgotten what it was like to have four small children in her house. Except for brief occasions when they came as guests and then went home again, she had never before had four small children in her house at one time. Plus the dishwasher broke and the repairman said he was going to have to have a part fabricated by the one-off shop behind the hardware store.

Gertrude would have to get up for school in the morning, so Debbie had sent her to bed.

Which was why she and Missy were washing dishes at eleven-thirty p.m.

"Why don't you have a wedding photo, Mom?" Missy asked. She had finally gotten up enough nerve to tackle research in the primary sources. She wanted her mother's version as well as Uncle Wes' version. "It's about the only thing missing from Gran's wall."

Her mother almost laughed. Or almost sobbed. It was hard to tell.

"We wanted to get married at Christmas so we could have a sort of honeymoon, even a few days. It was that or wait until school was out. We were scheduling a wedding, or trying to, around Anne's school play, Anne's Sunday school program. With your Nani, to tell the truth, really wishing we weren't scheduling a wedding at all. Your Gran too, I think. I'm sure, even though she kept her mouth shut. To me, at least. I have no idea what she said to Chad. I think, even now, that I'd rather not know. Just in the interest of amicable relations. Anyway, it couldn't be before Christmas; it would have to be after, everyone insisted.

"That was long before Simon Jones became minister at First Methodist, of course. The man we had then was inclined to listen to Nani. She was taking on as if the remarriage of a widow was something shameful. Equivalent to the woman taken in adultery. She didn't even want us to hold it in the sanctuary. She wanted us to go to the parsonage. Street clothes. No attendants. No guests. No reception. She didn't want Anne to be present; Don's parents agreed with her. If it had been possible in our culture back then, I think they would have hired mourners, the way the down-timers do now to follow the hearses through the streets.

"Finally, believe it or not, with nothing procedural decided here in Grantville, we drove down to Charleston the day after Christmas, got the license there, and got married at the courthouse, with Wes and Lena as witnesses. Wes knew people there because he'd been working in Charleston for several years, ever since he graduated from WVU. He persuaded the judge to waive the waiting period, so we didn't have to perch somewhere for three days. We've never had a church ceremony.

"It isn't as if we launched ourselves into marriage to the sound of joyous celebrations, surrounded by legions of well wishers. So no wedding photo for the wall. In our dresser, I have a polaroid snapshot. I can show it to you. The judge's secretary took it. The four of us with the judge, in his chambers. That was his gift to all the couples he married. It's really faded, even though I've kept it in an envelope. If it had been up on Gran's wall, exposed to the light, it would be entirely gone by now."

"Mom," Missy asked. "If things were like that, why did you marry Dad?"

Debbie looked up frowning. "Your father can be very persuasive when he sets his mind to it. And he was persistent."

That wasn't much help. "Come on, Mom," she said.

Missy could almost see her mother counting up the birthdays and deciding that Missy was old enough to hear this now.

"Nobody ever said that I had a full figure and it's a lot fuller now than it was then. Before we were married, Chad had never seen me undressed. He'd seen me in tee-shirts and shorts, of course, driving me between WVU and Grantville for two years. Anyway, after we started, well, sort of dating, I thought about letting him see more, like me in a bathing suit. Two piece. I wasn't, um, all that sure that he was prepared for stretch marks."

Debbie fiddled with the dishcloth. "But any occasion that I was wearing a bathing suit, he would have been too. I wasn't quite ready to deal with that much… uncovered physique yet, the summer before we got married."

Missy gave her mother one of those looks.

"Well, all right. Being a young schoolteacher in any small town has the wonderful inhibiting effect of being the under watchful eye of not just your current students' parents but also that of all your former students' parents and future students' parents, as well as anyone in the school administration, as well as all the students from your school. Adding Don's and my parents was just frosting on the cake. Both of us all but nude in public when we started kissing, word would spread like wildfire."

Her mother would obviously rather not have said that. Perhaps as a slight revenge, she added, "Which is something that you might want to keep in mind in regard to Ron Stone, now that spring is coming. Considering how far the two of you apparently managed to strip in a snowbank in the middle of February."

"That," Missy said a little stiffly, "was a one time aberration."

Debbie's face clearly expressed her doubts. "Keep in mind how far aberrant you would have been by the end if you hadn't started out wearing parkas," she admonished. "You both had melted snow in your underwear and I did not buy the 'snow angels' explanation for one second.

"Anyway, Chad had to have been able to tell, by looking and feeling through my clothes, that he wasn't getting 'lush.' And when the time came, he seemed happy enough with what there was of my body. Ah… Well, it wasn't very impressive, but it worked fine. All the parts were in order. I got pregnant with you kids and all that."

Missy took a very deep breath. "What went wrong? Nobody explained it to me, back then. Nobody explained anything."

Debbie looked at her. "Long run or short run?"

"Both. If you will."

"Long run, I couldn't shut the door. Sometimes you have to shut a door. I couldn't admit to myself that the way things had worked out, for all practical purposes, Anne was my younger sister rather than my daughter.

"I don't want to blame anyone else. Don's parents would never have liked it that I was marrying again. Bruce and Lily might, just barely might, have accepted my remarriage if I had chosen a man fifteen or twenty years older than I was, well established, and they could have persuaded themselves that I was marrying again for the sake of security. Stability. Something like that.

"But Chad was just getting started, he was younger than I was, and he was, ah, obviously very, very healthy. Which didn't really give them much leeway for fooling themselves that there wasn't a physical attraction component involved in my decision to marry him. Which, as far as they were concerned, was adultery. Betrayal of Don. Even after nearly ten years.

"Maybe, even then, they would have tolerated it better if I had given Mom and Dad custody of Anne. But I didn't. Wouldn't. I did still want to hang on to Don, in some way, through Anne. Even though, by the time I remarried, it was really too late for that. The first few months of our marriage were the easiest, before I put my foot down and insisted that Anne was going to live with us.

"By the time Anne reached her teens, things were very, very difficult. The year after you were born was one of the worst. She was rebellious, Chip turned from three to four and was incredibly active, I was dealing with a baby. Next year almost the same, except that Chip turned from four to five and I was dealing with a toddler. I was tired all the time, like the energy was draining out of me.

"I kept telling myself that if I could hang on until Anne started college, everything would calm down. In 1991, she was scheduled to start WVU. Tuition paid, board and room paid. Three days before she was supposed to leave, she announced that she had changed her mind. Didn't want to go. Wanted to stay with Nani and Pop and commute to Fairmont State, instead. Nani said yes. Pop put his foot down and said no. He thought she needed to learn to live independently. Don's parents got involved. Anne blamed me. Us. Chad. She went to WVU. But she made us regret it. Not academically. She did really well. But the tension built up and built up.

"By then, I was staring forty in the face. Exhausted all the time. Not that… responsive to Chad. Starting to feel, really feel, that I was quite a bit older than he was. One thing led to another."

"You mean," Missy said, "that he had an affair and you threw him out."

Debbie's face turned pale.

"It's true," Missy said. "Nobody explained anything to me at the time, but I found out later. Could you really expect that I wouldn't?"

Debbie shook her head. "I suppose not."

"Why did you take him back?" Missy had decided to press the issue. This might be the best chance she ever had, with her mother a captive audience at the sink. "Why did you take him back. After he had done that?"

"Once I realized that my wounded pride wasn't worth it."

Debbie stopped. "That isn't quite true. It's only a tiny part of the truth, though I guess it had to come first. We didn't plan that meeting as leading to a reconciliation. Just that we finally had to get together and resolve some issues. We couldn't leave the separation hanging forever. We had to decide something. I hate to say it, but before Chip went to live with Grandma Jenkins, he wasn't dealing with the situation well at all. By then though, he and your Gran were getting along well enough that I started having nightmares about having him live with your Gran any longer. Nightmares about having my experience with Anne repeated. We had to come to some sort of closure."

Debbie laughed suddenly, a little bitterly. "In a way, we owe the reconciliation to Anne, I suppose. I asked Gran to take you for the day so your dad could come over to the house without the extra emotions that you'd bring into the situation. I was surprised when she said, 'About time the two of you got this mess settled.' I didn't tell Mother and Pop he was coming. Anne was living with them again and working at the clinic in Fairmont.

"Chad and I were sitting on opposite sides of the living room, sort of talking around what to do, the way we had every time we had tried to come to some kind of a resolution before. Then I heard a key in the front door and Anne came in. I didn't know she was coming. It was a Saturday morning, she should have been at the clinic, but she'd exchanged shifts with another nurse who wanted a weekday afternoon free for her child's teacher conference. When she saw Chad there, she started to spout Mother's lines, which I had been hearing for nearly two years. 'Time to get rid of him. What is he doing in this house? Pull the plug, take off his rings, get a divorce.'

"First, I pointed out that it was his house, really. Which it is. This is the old Williams place. We bought it when it came on the market because he had a sentimental attachment to it and I adored all the oak and walnut woodwork. It's where your Grandma Jenkins grew up. Her parents moved into it after her grandfather died and your father used to visit them here. After Grandpa Joe died, Grandma Esther eventually went to live with your Great-aunt Elizabeth and sold the house. It's not the easiest house to keep, even after all the remodeling we did, but that's fine.

"Then I said that I had taken off her father's rings long after his death, but Chad was still alive and we were still married.

"Finally, I guess, she pushed me too far. I stood up and said, 'I don't want a divorce. I want him to come back to me and have things right between us again. More than anything else in the world.'

"I've never seen Anne look so shocked.

"But not much more than Chad did, honestly.

"Not that I even knew he would be willing to come back. He'd never said so. I kept thinking to myself, the whole time we were separated, that he was probably waiting for me to get to the point where I would cut the knot and set him free to get on with it. He wasn't quite forty, yet. He could have started his personal life over, easily enough.

"Just saying that had brought me to my limits. I couldn't do or say anything else, right then. I was standing there, shaking like a leaf. I couldn't believe that I'd said that.

"Anne opened her mouth to say something else.

"Chad got up and put his arms around me.

"Then he laid down the law to Anne in no uncertain terms. The first time since we married. He told her that she was an adult woman and a registered nurse now, not a ten year old child. So she had two choices. The first was to go home, think about the fact of our marriage in a reasonable way, and come back in a couple of days when she was prepared to talk and act rationally. The second was to go home and not come back at all. And he added that if she went wailing to Vera and Lily and sicced them down on us before we were ready to deal with them, the first option would drop out of the picture.

"She stood there looking at us for a little while. Then she left.

"The next week was worse than when we told our families we were getting married in the first place. Chad's father was dead by then, so the only oasis of calm was provided by Wes and Lena. They were back in Grantville by then. Wes had left the state government and taken the job with Marion County Parks and Recreation.

"I don't know what Wes said to your Gran, either, but I know he said something, because I know that Chad didn't have a chance to talk before we officially broke the news to her. She heard the news, nodded her head, called Chip and then stood stiffly with her lips closed tightly as Chip started bringing all the boxes of his stuff down from his room. They were already packed. She didn't like it, not one damn bit but knew that if we'd settled it between us, it was better this way. She's one tough lady."

"Why did Dad come back?"

Her mother looked at her. "I don't know, really. For the sake of you and Chip, I suppose. Chad never said. I'd said that I wanted to have things right with us again. Once we decided to get back together, it seemed to me as if asking more questions would be like picking at a scab. That things might never heal over if I kept trying to examine them under a microscope. Even if they weren't quite entirely right, that was better than an open sore.

"Of course, I never really understood why he married me in the first place. Why he wanted to. He told me he loved me, but guys always say that. He could have dated any girl in Grantville. Any girl in Fairmont or Clarksburg, for that matter. Someone he had met in Morgantown. And he did date a lot of different girls, up until the day in May he told me we were getting married. Out of a clear blue sky. Actually, it was cloudy and started to pour rain almost right away. So he could certainly have married someone younger. Someone without all the tribulations and problems I brought him. Anyone he wanted. Someone with whom things would be simpler. I always realized that."

Missy nodded. She had a lot to think about.

She wished that she had the guts to ask one more question. Were you ever in love with him? Did you love him, Mom? But she didn't. Not right now. She had a feeling that she'd pushed her mother about as far as she dared. It sure wasn't because you wanted to be Mrs. County Commissioner. Or Mrs. SoTF Senator. You hate the politics. Why did you marry him, Mom?