Filed to story: Love on the Sidelines (Natalie & Karl)
I shifted enough to see her. “Not anymore. I’m not wasting another second of my time on him.”
“What are you going to do?”
By sheer determination I pushed myself to my feet. “I’m going to forget that Karl Hayes ever lived. I’m going to that party tonight and I’m never looking back. And I’m going to be the best damn wife in Morganville.”
“But the baby is Karl’s.”
“No,” I told her, my voice cold. “The baby is mine. Mine and Hugh’s. Karl will never touch it.”
And so my simmering anger began its slow journey toward hatred. That day at the cemetery I had told Frank Hayes that Karl would never be like him. Now I knew the truth. Karl was worse.
With Hugh and Jenna’s support, I made it through the party that night. Jenna had been right about the whole town knowing where Lindsey had gone. Gossip and speculation flew in every direction, fueling my anger with every word.
“I don’t know why everyone is so surprised,” Gretchen Treece commented to Helena. “They were two of a kind. Peggy told me she saw them at the drive-in quite a few times in that old truck of his, and the windows were always fogged up. It’s disgusting the way some people carry on.”
I ground my teeth together, smiled, and moved away, but I never doubted the truth of her statement. Why should I? Karl himself had told me he wanted everyone to think he was dating Lindsey. I was simply so stupid and trusting that I believed his reasons were innocent.
The next afternoon, I went to the beauty shop and had my hair cut off. I told Hugh it was because it would be easier to care for during my pregnancy, but the real reason was because every time I went by a mirror, I remembered how much Karl had loved my long hair. Sometimes revenge takes simple outlets.
Surprisingly, the new, shorter style suited me. I had topped out at a whopping five feet, two inches, and with my small bone structure, the feathery cut gave me a pixyish appearance that made my eyes seem huge and mysterious.
There was one last chore I had to take care of before I could I get on with my life.
The pendant Karl had given me had to be disposed of. I sat in my bedroom for a long time that afternoon, staring at it. And in the end, I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. Instead, I put it carefully into a box and drove out to the farm.
Once there, I went to the barn, to Karl’s room. It was the first time I’d been back in weeks, and it was as if all traces of Karl had been erased from the earth. His clothes were gone and the sheets and blankets on the narrow bed had been washed and replaced, leaving no trace of his scent.
For the last time I allowed myself to cry, and even as my tears fell I cursed Karl with every breath. When it was over, I put the box containing the pendant into the linen closet, shoving it all the way to the back on the top shelf. Then I shut the door, on the closet and on Karl.
After that, life settled into a routine I welcomed. Hugh joined his father fulltime at the mill and I took on the role of wife with a vengeance. Even Aunt Darla could find no speck of dirt in my house, and she did look.
The Judge found an excuse to come by almost every day, and I welcomed his visits.
Together, we planted my first vegetable garden, each row laid out with mathematical precision. The once empty flower beds around the house now bloomed with shrubs and flowers; Azaleas, Japanese Holly, and Spirea backed geraniums, petunias, sweet peas, and hosta, with several colors of crepe myrtle thrown in for height and contrast.
When Hugh and I judged the time was right, we gathered our families and broke the news about the baby. Everyone was ecstatic, and I entered an entire new world I’d never paid much attention to before; the southern tradition of educating first-time mothers by passing on bits of wisdom gathered from the generations of women who’d gone before.
“Natalie!” My mother yelped when she caught me reaching for a bowl on the top shelf of the cabinets. “Stop that this instant. Don’t you know you’ll wrap the cord around the baby’s neck?”
When I was plagued with heartburn, Aunt Darla told me that it meant the baby would have a lot of hair.
Helena got into the act by warning me not to let anything frighten me because it would “mark” the baby. It seemed everyone had examples of this type of phenomena, and they regaled me with them at every opportunity. I laughed the stories off, but my poor obstetrician, a transplanted New Yorker, was horrified when I repeated the tales to her, and ordered me not to listen to a thing my family said. I don’t think she ever quite grasped the concept of southern tradition, and a few years later she moved her practice back to “civilization”.
Everything seemed rosy and perfect on the surface, but nothing could have been farther from the truth. In spite of the act I was putting on, I was in more pain than I’d ever experienced before. You can’t turn love on and off like a light switch, no matter how hard you try. All you can do is wall it off, one brick at a time, until you’ve created an impenetrable fortress around your emotions. And once that fortress is built, you camouflage it so well that even you can’t see it anymore. That’s what I did with my love for Karl, and hate became my camouflage. It affected everything in my life. For the first time, I lost sight of the core of the sweet gum tree and now saw only the pale fibrous wood, warped and untrustworthy.
One major consequence of this change was my sudden inability to trust Hugh. I’d been stupid once and believed everything Karl told me. It wasn’t going to happen again, and if Hugh seemed too good to be true, then he must have an ulterior motive.
My fantasy ended with a resounding crash as I tore the blinders from my eyes.
I spent a lot of time watching Hugh, wondering why a man would seem so happy about a baby that wasn’t his. If he’d ever exhibited the slightest interest in children before, I might have understood. But he hadn’t. Now he was suddenly playing the expectant father to the hilt and my suspicions were running rampant.
There was only one conclusion I could reach. I’d been right about Hugh from the beginning. He didn’t love me. He had pursued me only because it was what his family wanted and expected. And while he had plenty of money, if he kept his parents happy he stood to inherit an industry that controlled an entire town and the area surrounding it. Maybe he did care about me in a way, but our relationship was more like that of a brother and sister than husband and wife. I was his trophy, the most suitable candidate to help him get what he really wanted, respectability and power, both precious commodities in our small southern town. The baby was simply window dressing, something that would complete the picture of a happy family he was trying to project.
I knew deep inside that his happiness, like mine, was merely an act, albeit a convincing one. He helped Jenna and me with the nursery, doing most of the manual labor. We teased him unmercifully when he put the rails of the crib on upside down and had to redo them. And as my girth expanded he became more solicitous, insisting I stop working so hard around the house, making sure I had something to prop my swollen ankles on. He would rest his hand on my stomach, laughing when the baby kicked vigorously. Toward the end of the pregnancy, he even attended Lamaze classes with me.
It didn’t take me long to figure out that these warm exhibitions occurred for the most part when others were around. Not that Hugh was ever anything but kind. But as my pregnancy progressed, he seemed to lapse into brooding silences more often when we were alone, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d reached the same conclusion I had. Because I finally realized just how big a mistake we had made in marrying for the wrong reasons. A mistake I now had to live with and handle alone. Jenna thought Hugh had wings and a halo, and my family had their own small crisis to deal with.
A week before Christmas my mother came over to help me decorate our tree. My normally effusive mother remained silent as we strung lights, her brow furrowed. I waited, knowing she’d get around to what was on her mind sooner or later. Finally, with a sigh, she sank onto the couch.
“Your father asked me to marry him.”
This news came as no surprise to me and I smiled. I’d wondered how long it would take him to get up the nerve.
“What did you tell him?”
“That I had to think about it.” She nibbled her bottom lip. “It would mean moving to Jonesboro and leaving the Judge.”
“Mama, it’s not like the Judge will be alone. Aunt Darla and Aunt Jane will still be there to take care of him, and Jonesboro is only twenty minutes away.” She looked up at me, her eyes pleading. “What would Jane think, Natalie? I can’t hurt her again.”