A chance of a lifetime, p.17
A Chance of a Lifetime, page 17
Bennie in the Army. At the time, right out of high school, it would have horrified J’Myel, and Calvin wouldn’t have been too thrilled about it. Now…she would probably thrive in it. She was smart, capable, and impossible to intimidate. She wouldn’t take crap from anyone, she would look out for her fellow soldiers, and she was a motherly, healing sort.
There were a hell of a lot of soldiers who needed the motherly, healing sort.
He’d reached the official western edge of town: the city limits sign posted on either side of the street. Hands on his hips, he heaved a few deep breaths as he crossed the street, then started east again. This time he went two blocks north and made the return run on streets lined with trees, houses, signs of life. There was no order to the types of neighborhoods he passed through: A thousand-square-foot house stood next to one four times its size; old ones beside new ones; starter homes and fix-’er-uppers next to large, gracious beauties. There was one house, three stories tall, built by an early oilman of sandstone blocks, with a detached guest house, that filled an entire city block, fenced in with wrought iron. One day I’m gonna dance in their ball room, Bennie used to say.
Calvin made a mental note at dinner to ask her if she ever did.
He walked the last half mile home, working the kinks from muscles that had gotten overtired from the extra distance. As he stepped into the shower, an ice-cold bottle of water in hand, he did a mental evaluation. Tired, sure, but he’d done longer road marches plenty of times, complete with a fifty-pound ruck. Nothing was hurting, his head was clear, and the muscles in his gut weren’t knotted. He wasn’t grinding his teeth, his fists weren’t clenched, or any of the other things he used to keep a tight grip on his stress. His mood was good, stable, even lighter than usual. He felt right.
He felt all right.
When he pulled into Mama’s driveway, the screen door opened before he could shut off the engine, and Bennie came toward him. He got out of the car and circled to the other side, opening the passenger door, then focusing his gaze on her. She wore jeans that hugged her curves with a red, white, and blue sweater. Her hair was down, a million curls for a man to get his fingers wrapped up in, and she smelled incredible. Looked incredible. Probably tasted incred—
He gave himself a mental smack.
“Do I need to run back in and get something to cover that seat?” she asked, then ducked under his arm as he pushed the door all the way back. He’d folded and wrapped one of Elizabeth’s quilts so it hid every bit of exposed foam. Bennie smiled, slid in, and rubbed her palm lightly over the fabric. “Good as new, huh?”
Calvin closed the door, got in his own side, and fastened his seat belt. “When did you get so finicky? You used to wade in mud, sleep on the ground, stick your hands underwater trying to noodle a catfish from its hole and then gut and clean it.”
“I grew up,” she teased. “I got a job where I didn’t have to do any of that.”
“No, you have to deal with sick people, changing their beds, their diapers, their gowns.”
“There will come a time, Calvin,” she said breezily, “when you’ll hurt yourself trying to outrun a bullet or you’ll break your ankle while running or some idiot will blast through a red light and crash into your, uh”—she rolled her eyes—“vehicle, and you’ll need nurses and aides and be so grateful they’re there.”
“Oh, I’m grateful, all right. I just wouldn’t want to do the job myself.”
After settling in, she rested her arm on the open window and smiled at him. “Where are we going?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Doesn’t matter to me. Pick whatever you’ve been missing.”
He considered all the hometown foods he hadn’t yet sampled as he backed out of the driveway, then headed east. “How about Bad Hank’s?”
“That’s always a winner. Plus, they’re giving free food to active duty and vets today. But didn’t you have Bad Justice’s barbecue for lunch?”
“There’s no such thing as too much barbecue. Hot links, spicy bologna, ribs, and a baked potato, all slathered with Hank’s Devil Sauce.” He made a smacking-good sound that earned him a chuckle.
About halfway there, she sighed softly. “Remember when our parents used to let us ride our bikes to Bad Hank’s and bring home dinner?”
“Yeah, they made us take the back streets so the only busy streets we crossed were Main and First. At the stoplights, of course.”
“Where we got off our bikes and walked them across, of course.”
“Liar. The only time we actually did that was when J’Myel’s mom tried to sneak after us about a block back in her car, but we saw her right away.”
The easy mood from their laughter lasted until they were parked in Bad Hank’s lot. The sky was darkening quickly, the western horizon a dozen shades of pink, red, purple, and gold, and a chill tinged the air. Blues music drifted out the door, along with laughter and some amazing smells.
Calvin held the door for Bennie, and together they followed a waitress to a table in one corner. “There are no small tables in Bad Hank’s,” Bennie remarked, and the waitress finished for her, “because there are no small appetites.” With a flash of white teeth, she went on, “What can I get you to drink?”
Bennie asked for tea. After a moment, Calvin ordered beer. Across the table, she remarked, “So you finally got over that bad experience with your first beer.”
“I was thinking about that today. Yeah, a good beer is a treat sometimes.”
She fiddled with the gold bracelet around her wrist, then reached up to lift a gold pendant from the rounded vee of her sweater and slid it along the chain. “How are you settling in? It’s been…what? Three weeks?”
“Or so.” He shrugged, turning his chair so his back was to the wall, gazing out across the dining room.
“You want to trade places?”
The question made him blink. He’d thought he’d been smoother than that.
“I don’t mind. I know a lot of people like to have their backs to the walls. Don’t want anyone sneaking up on them.”
Be strong. Tell her, “Nah, no, thanks. I’m fine.” But sitting at a right angle to the table made for difficulty eating and for looking at a beautiful woman who had the ability to make him feel hopeful. On top of that, he’d look like an idiot.
“Okay. If you don’t mind.”
She picked up her purse and gave him a sly smile that completely altered the meaning of her response. “I never mind.”
Once they’d resettled, switched their drinks, and given their orders, Bennie rested both arms on the table, then leaned her cheek against her fist. “Can I ask you something?”
Her question could be totally innocuous, or it could be one of the big-deal ones that the shrink team always wanted to talk about. Muscles clenching in his gut, he shrugged, pretending he didn’t care, wishing to hell he really didn’t. Just please, God, don’t let it ruin the evening. Don’t let me ruin it.
“What happened between you and J’Myel?”
* * *
Bennie was so intent watching for the slightest sign of emotion to cross Calvin’s face that she forgot to breathe, a shortcoming she realized as soon as she tried to take a drink and choked on her tea. Coughing and sputtering, she accepted the napkin he offered, patted her eyes dry, and muffled one last cough before laying it aside to watch him again.
There was plenty of emotion crossing his face—anger, regret, bitterness, defeat, failure, sorrow. She had never known any details about their falling-out, just that J’Myel slowly stopped mentioning Calvin in his phone calls and e-mails, and when Calvin did come up, J’Myel was abrupt, hostile even. At some point, everything he said became dismissive, scathing, or derisive, and after a while, it was as if Calvin had never existed.
Bennie had pushed for answers from J’Myel—getting married without Calvin there had seemed impossible—but she’d learned nothing. Leave it alone, he’d told her repeatedly. It don’t matter. He don’t matter.
She had always thought that must have been her mother’s attitude toward her and her father. We didn’t matter, either. And it had never satisfied her need for a reason. Just one logical understandable reason.
Would Calvin tell her to leave it alone? Would he try to convince her that J’Myel didn’t matter? She was wondering when suddenly he slipped from his upright, on-alert rabbit’s posture, always ready to flee, and slumped back in his chair. “What did he tell you?”
She fiddled with the pendant she wore, a gold heart that J’Myel had given her right after they started dating. It had been surreal, finding herself intimate with her best bud, falling in love with the kid she’d played and run wild with practically her whole life. The necklace had helped make it more real.
“Nothing,” she said at last, “except that he didn’t want me talking to you. I was engaged to him. I was supposed to support his decisions.” One of her few regrets about her relationship with J’Myel. She should have stood up to him, the way she’d always stood up to other people, grabbed him by the ear like Gran would have done, and had a come-to-Jesus meeting with him.
Instead, she’d let him dictate to her, and she’d lost one of her very best friends. It wasn’t possible to have so many very best friends that you could throw one away without feeling the loss.
After another long moment, Calvin unclenched his jaw and shook his head. “Truth is…I don’t know.”
His response left an unsettled dissatisfaction seeping through her. “You must know something, Calvin. You were there, you were seeing him every day, talking to him, hanging out with him. Did you argue?”
He shook his head again, slowly side to side, his gaze distant. After a long time, he sighed, then answered in a low, heavy voice, “When we went in the Army, we were gonna have good times. We knew we were gonna go to war, but we were gonna kick ass and save the world. We were all gung-ho through training, but when we got over there, when we got into real combat, when people were trying to kill us and we were trying to kill them and we were seeing people die—our troops, theirs, civilians…”
His haunted gaze met hers, sending a shiver through her, one of pain and regret. Lord, how sorry she was he’d gone through that. He’d seen things no one should ever see, done things no one should ever do, and all his naïve youthful ideals had been shot to hell. He’d had to grow up quickly—and hard.
“It wasn’t good times then, Bennie. Our buddies were dying, and we were afraid of dying, and we had to get tougher and stronger. After about three months in Iraq, I went up to our lieutenant one day and said, ‘I changed my mind, sir. College is looking real good about now. Can I go home for a while and think about it?’
“He just laughed, and so did I, and he sent me on my way.”
Despite his relaxed posture, tension flooded through him. She could see it spreading from his eyes and his jaw, tightening the muscles in his arms and chest, knotting his fingers around the beer he hadn’t yet tasted, and reaching across the table into her. She wished she hadn’t asked the question. She needed to know, but did her need to talk about it take precedence over his desire not to tell?
“The lieutenant died a couple days later.”
“Oh, Calvin…I’m sorry.” Dropping the gold heart to dangle on its chain, she took his hand, gently, forcibly unfolding his fingers from the bottle, gripping them in hers. “I’m so sorry.”
For a time he stared down at their hands, then slowly tightened his as if he needed to hold on to her. She’d teased him in high school that he had elegant hands for a boy. Artistic creative hands, for a pianist, a painter, a surgeon. He’d laughed, extending his long slender fingers as wide as they would spread, and said he had basketball hands.
“J’Myel…” His voice was husky and thick, the way her own voice got sometimes when she talked about her husband. He cleared his throat, swiped his nose with his free hand, and looked at her again. “I started taking college courses as soon as we got out of training. I worked hard, studied hard. I picked one hell of a career for myself, but going through everything we were going through, I was damned if I was going to come out with nothing to show but a few medals. And that was when things started going wrong with J’Myel.”
Though Bennie hadn’t made the connection back then, she wasn’t surprised now. With his perpetual life-will-always-be-fun attitude, J’Myel hadn’t thought much of people going to college. He wasn’t going to spend another four years or more sitting in classes, not when he’d just finished thirteen years of it. He was going to live a real life doing real stuff, he’d boasted—not reading about it, not learning about it, not sitting in an office working it like some jerk. She assumed he’d outgrown that prejudice since he hadn’t made any snide comments when she’d started nursing school, but he’d been seventy-five hundred miles away. Maybe he’d seen acceptance as his only option at that time.
“When I wasn’t working or in class, I was studying. I didn’t have much time for going to bars or meeting girls, so—” Abruptly he stopped, guilt flushing his face.
She smiled. “I’m going to presume this was before he and I started dating.”
“It was,” he assured her. Finally, he took a drink from the beer, his head tilted back, the muscles in his throat rippling ever so slightly under his skin. Was it wrong of Bennie to be thinking what a lovely sight that was when they were discussing her dead husband?
She’d loved J’Myel. Always had, always would. But she had plenty of love left over, and she was much too young to spend the rest of her life in mourning. He would understand. And if he didn’t, well, that would be another come-to-Jesus meeting.
“He started hanging out with other guys, guys like him, into partying and good times and living the life,” Calvin went on. “When I got promoted ahead of him the first time, he was ticked off. The next couple times, he was really pissed. He wouldn’t see it was because he was just doing the bare minimum the job required. He called me college boy and suck-up, among other things. When I finished my degree and got commissioned, he finally got down to the point, to what was really bothering him.”
Bennie’s shoulder muscles started to cramp, and she realized she was hunched forward, wound tight as a spring. At any moment, whatever was coiled inside her might release, shooting her across the table in a quivering mass. She consciously relaxed her shoulders, rolling them, stretching them down from her neck, as B.B. King and Eric Clapton combined their guitar mastery on a soulful tune coming from the speaker mounted above them.
“Ambition was kind of a dirty word to J’Myel.” She didn’t feel disloyal for saying what everyone knew. His mother was a paralegal, his father a bank finance officer. They’d always encouraged him to study hard, work hard, and make the best life possible for himself.
That ain’t me, J’Myel used to say. He was a live-for-today worry-about-tomorrow-when-it-comes sort of guy. If he wanted to do something, he did it. If he had money, he spent it. If he saw an opportunity, he took it, and he never worried about the consequences. He’d been carefree, happy, and always up for anything, and she’d loved that about him. She’d known when he proposed that she would have to be the responsible one in the marriage, and she hadn’t minded. She’d been good at keeping him in line.
And she’d honestly thought that before long he would grow out of it. That a couple combat tours of hard living would make college and an air-conditioned office look a lot better—for his own sake, for hers, and for the family they were going to have.
Maybe he would have grown out of it…but time hadn’t been on his side.
The waitress interrupted to deliver their food: a regular dinner plate for Bennie, a super-sized one that was loaded to overflowing for Calvin. After she left, they sat in silence a bit longer. Bennie was patient. She could wait as long as it took Calvin to finish.
He released his grip on her hand slowly, the callused skin of his fingertips sliding along her fingers, across her palm, brushing her wrist, before he finally let go. After unwrapping his silverware from the napkin, he squirted Bad Hank’s Devil Sauce over his entire meal and stabbed a piece of brisket on his fork, but he didn’t lift it to his mouth.
“He said he left home with his best bud.” Calvin’s affect was flat, no emotion in his voice or on his face. “Two black kids out to save the world, but somewhere along the way I forgot that I was black. I was trying too hard to be white, he said. And that was the last thing he ever said to me.”
Bennie cringed. Trying too hard to be white was the worst insult in J’Myel’s arsenal. She’d believed all this time that whatever had come between the men had been of substance, something that might be worth ending a lifelong friendship, something that they shared responsibility for. She’d been wrong.
It didn’t speak well of her husband.
It didn’t speak well of her that she’d acceded to his demands that she cut off contact with Calvin, too. She should have insisted on an explanation, but of course he wouldn’t have given it, not when the truth would have tarnished his reckless and fun-loving knight’s armor.
Heavens, she’d loved such an idiot.
After being mostly quiet for so long, now it was her turn to talk. “I’m sorry, Calvin. I’m sorry he took that attitude, and I’m sorry I took his side. It was just easier to go along with him than to argue, and I really didn’t want to argue. We had so little contact, and I wanted to keep things happy.”
She expected him to shrug, brush off her apology. That was what people usually did. Instead, he ruefully shook his head. “I missed you, Bennie. With J’Myel out of my life, then you, it felt like part of my soul had been ripped away.”
Her breath caught in her chest, and guilt washed over her. When he’d left town to go to basic, she’d promised she would always stay in touch, that she would be his link to home and real life and normalcy, and she’d done it until J’Myel convinced her otherwise. She was ashamed that her always had lasted only six years.
“I missed you, too,” she admitted. “I’d seen you guys every single day for nine years, and then you were gone. I didn’t know what to do with myself. There was no one to hang out with, to sit with in church. No one to cheer up or to cheer me up or to tease mercilessly. It was tough.” On second thought, she added, “Not your kind of tough, of course.”
