Chapter 19 #4
remember how I got him to agree to go to marriage counseling with me, but after a few sessions, he told me on the way back
home in his truck that he wouldn’t be going back. He looked at me and said, ‘I just don’t love you anymore, Gemma. I don’t
plan on breaking up with Becky.’ I asked him, ‘Well, where does that leave me?’ And he said to me, ‘Stay or go; that’s up
to you.’ And Lord only knows why I’ve chosen to stay all this time.”
CK answered, “Because you’re a good mother. You’re protective and have considered your daughter’s feelings over your own.
That’s noble, Gemma, but Carolina is a big girl. She can handle this.”
“I’m sure, just like my brother and sister, that she can sense that something isn’t right in your home,” Nell said.
“I’m sure she can,” Gemma replied. “We’ve never discussed it, though.”
“So you knew about his affair at the lake this past July? Gemma, I had no idea. You two seemed like your normal selves,” CK
remarked. “You were kind to him, and yes, he was awful to you.”
“And the Oscar goes to . . .” Gemma said sarcastically.
By the time the grandfather clock in the dining room chimed eleven times, the group of friends had played several more rounds
of cards and were ready to turn in.
“This sure was a crazy night. It felt like a mash-up of four or five Julia Roberts movies,” Gemma said.
“Yeah, and I’m ready for bed.” Celia Kate yawned and stretched her arms over her head as the tiredness from their night finally
began to set in.
Nell placed the deck of cards back into its box while the others stood and slid the heavy dining chairs under the table.
“Girls?” Moira interrupted them, her voice quiet and hesitant. Her hair had been washed and framed her sleepy face with damp
waves.
“Mo? Hey, are you okay?” CK walked toward her and gently touched her elbow.
Moira nodded with a small smile. “Yeah, I’m fine. Completely fine,” she reassured them. “Are you all headed to bed, or can
we talk for a little while?”
CK was exhausted but wanted to be a good friend and support Moira, so she suppressed a yawn. “Of course.”
Erin rubbed her eyes but nodded, and Nell added, “Absolutely.”
“Let’s go to the hearth room,” Moira suggested, much to Gemma’s relief, because the faint smell of acidic stomach still lingered in the living room.
With Dove and Pearl following close behind their mother, the group walked through the spacious and beautiful kitchen, where
CK offered to make a pot of coffee. The others agreed and moved into the adjoining hearth room, which featured a large bay
window that overlooked the backyard. The window had a bench crowded with tall peach cushions.
One wall of the room displayed a brick fireplace with an ornate mantel, and a television was mounted above it. Another wall
was decorated with a collection of photographs showcasing the Allyson family. Each image, framed in a variety of wooden styles,
captured cherished moments from throughout the years.
In one photo, Bradford and Brent were just little boys. Their hair was fluffy and brown, and they wore bright life jackets,
ready for a day of boating on the Ogeechee River. Another picture depicted the middle school boys fishing eagerly at the shoreline
of their backyard, their expressions full of excitement as they cast their lines into the water, while another picture of
them, older, with height and distinctive jawlines, showed them standing confidently in tall rubber boots, their proud dad
beside them, as they explored the salt marsh. One of Moira’s favorites, though, was one Brent took only a few years before,
of his parents sitting in the chairs at the edge of the yard, beneath the canopy of the centuries-old live oak. Moira remembered
how humid it was that late July afternoon because the waves in her hair were more prominent and sweat glistened on Jeffrey’s
brow.
At the center of the wall hung a large picture of the Allysons, dressed in their Sunday best. The photo was taken by a professional photographer at Chippewa Square on a spring afternoon five years earlier.
The boys faked their smiles because Brent still had braces at the time and Bradford hated his short haircut.
The smiles on Moira’s and Jeffrey’s faces, however, were genuine.
Moira pressed a button beside the hearth, and the gas fireplace roared to life. Erin, Nell, and Gemma settled into the white
high-back chairs arranged around the fireplace. CK soon walked into the room, carrying a wooden tray topped with mismatched
cups, along with two small containers of cream and sugar. She set the tray down on an oversized corduroy ottoman at the center
of the room, and each woman retrieved a mug and prepared it to her liking. CK then got cozy on the thick peach cushion at
the bay window, while Moira carefully took a seat in the last of the white high-back chairs, holding her full cup in hand.
One cat bathed herself at Moira’s feet while the other perched on the back of Moira’s chair.
Gemma, always the one to lighten the mood, said, “Moira, should we get you a bucket? Or get your cats a raincoat? You know,
in case there’s a round two?”
Nell and Erin lightly giggled as CK growled at Gemma from the bay window. Moira’s face flushed red with embarrassment, but
she wasn’t angry with Gemma. She’d known her friend long enough to know she reverted to humor in somber times. At Jeffrey’s
funeral, Gemma must have cracked more jokes than Richard Pryor.
Moira felt much more clearheaded with the warmth of the fire blanketing her and the strong coffee in her cup. Although she
was still humiliated about what had happened earlier, she was ready to talk about it.
“I want to apologize to you all for, well”—she glanced in the direction of the living room—“that debacle. I’m ready to admit that I drank too much tonight. And last night. And the night before you got here. And, well,
you get it. There’s no excuse for it.” She circled her fingertip around the top of the black and white mug as steam rose from
it. After a pause, she shook her head, and the waves of her hair spilled over the shoulder of her purple top. She declared,
“I’m too young to be a widow. Widows are old, gray-haired grandmothers who drive land yachts and sit in their rocking chairs
while knitting and watching Matlock. I shouldn’t be a widow. Not yet.”
“I like Matlock.” Gemma shrugged.
The other friends remained silent, sipping from their coffee cups and allowing Moira’s vulnerability to fill the room. Nell
knew this wasn’t alcohol talking for her. What they were witnessing, as Moira’s eyes glistened with unshed tears, was raw,
real, sober emotion that had been pent up for a long time.
“Sometimes,” Moira continued, her voice sorrowful as she stared at the steam, “I wake up in the middle of the night, and for
a split second, I forget that Jeffrey is dead. I reach across the bed to his side, only to feel the sheets are stark cold.
And a dark, foreboding heaviness suffocates me all over again.” She caught Gemma’s eyes first and noticed they were damp.
“I relive it. I relive the phone call telling me he was gone and I relive the blurry, hazy days before we put him in the ground.
All of it presses down on me.” She quickly wiped the corners of her eyes with her manicured fingers and tried to regain composure.
“And I wonder, will I ever stop waking up in the middle of the night and reaching for him? I don’t think I will.”
Nell wanted to speak to her grieving friend, in hopes of providing some comfort.
But she hesitated, realizing nothing she could say would ease Moira’s pain at that moment.
In her vulnerable state, Moira reminded Nell of Job, and she understood that they needed to be like Job’s friends, who sat quietly with him, simply being present in the face of his immense suffering.
“His brush is still on the vanity, right where he left it the morning he died. There are just a few salt-and-pepper hairs
in it, and I don’t dare touch that brush because I don’t want them to fall to the floor and get sucked up by the vacuum,”
she said, looking at Erin with sad eyes. “I often stand in the closet and wrap myself in his suit jackets. They still smell
like him—like his cologne somewhat, but also just him, that distinctive scent of his skin. I’ll be in the kitchen cooking or out in the garden, or in our chairs underneath our
favorite tree, and I think I catch a whiff of it, Jeffrey’s smell. I turn to look, but there’s nothing.” Moira wiped away
the tears that had finally begun to flow freely down her cheeks. “He’s not there.” She took a sip from her coffee cup while
her friends sighed in sadness, all of them with wet eyes of their own. The cat on the back of the chair decided to move and,
with one jump, joined the other on the rug in front of the flickering fire.
“And I know. I know, Nell,” she continued, looking specifically at her auburn-haired friend.
“I know I’ll see him again one day. I believe there’s more than just this temporary place.
I truly do. But still, I want him here. For me .
. . and for my boys . . .” Her voice trailed off while Nell nodded sympathetically.
Moira rested her coffee cup on her knee that was covered in purple pajama pants.
Each word she spoke and each tear that streamed down her cheek felt a little like a release from the feelings she’d kept stuffed down for so long, numbed by alcohol.
“Bradford didn’t call me this weekend. I lied,” she shamefully admitted. “I asked Erin to cover for me so you, Nell, wouldn’t
know I was sick from drinking.” Her eyes caught Nell’s again, and she noticed Nell wore a look of forgiveness instead of anger.
“The truth is that my boys rarely call me anymore. They text sometimes because they don’t want to hear me slur my words over
the phone. They think I’ve spiraled out of control. I know Bradford and Brent love me, and they worry about me. I mean, they
tell me as much when they do speak to me. But that worry makes them resent me. I’m afraid I’m losing them. I’m losing all
that I have left of Jeffrey.”
Gemma started to crack a joke to ease the tension, but Celia Kate shook her head. This kind of vulnerability felt uncomfortable
for Gemma; it was too raw and too serious. Even during the marriage counseling sessions she had attended with Tyler and Dr.
Emison, Gemma managed to inject humor into the situation. She joked about the animal-print decor in the office, asking how
many cheetahs had lost their lives for the rug. Upon walking into that cheetah-printed office for the first time, she even
poked fun at herself for not being able to fit on the couch with Tyler, which made him chuckle in agreement. That was the
moment Dr. Emison started writing notes on her notepad.
Her voice still cracking with vulnerability, Moira said, “I am heartbroken, and I’m lonely. I drink because I’m lonely and
I’m lonely because I drink. Sounds like a country song, doesn’t it?” She shook her head and wiped her damp face with her palm.
“I’m sorry,” she said before taking a deep drink of her coffee.
“Don’t apologize,” Nell murmured quietly as she leaned forward in the tall white chair. She reached out and placed a reassuring hand on her friend’s arm. “You needed to let all of that out. You have to bring the darkness to light.”
“I know . . .” Moira bit her bottom lip and wiped her damp face again. “I just want to be happy again.”
Nell placed her half-empty blue cup on the wooden tray on top of the square ottoman. “I know it might seem like I bring my
faith into everything we discuss, and maybe I do. I can’t apologize for that because it’s incredibly important to me, and
it applies to every aspect of my life—and all of our lives. The big things, the little things, the serious and the mundane.”
“I don’t mind it at all,” CK said, and the others agreed.
“Hearing you talk, Mo, I just keep thinking how the biblical concept of joy is quite different from what we usually refer to as happiness. Happiness is a fleeting emotion tied to temporary situations, while joy is not just a momentary feeling. Joy remains constant and does not depend on everything being perfect. Instead, joy is a deep sense of peace grounded in who God is and his unchanging promises.” Nell scanned the room, noticing everyone was listening intently.
“Even after losing everything that he held dear, Job never lost his faith in God. He openly acknowledged that his situation was difficult and didn’t shy away from expressing his pain—just like you did tonight, Mo, and like we all have.
Job’s conversations with God were open and sincere; he even questioned why so much trouble had come on him, and yet he always remembered who God is: the sovereign Creator of the universe, the one in control and the one who holds us close.
Despite all the tragedy in his life, Job understood that joy comes from recognizing God’s nature.
Our God is fair, compassionate, and all-knowing, and his ways, his thoughts and plans, are profoundly different from ours.
Job was wise enough to grasp God’s character and keep his strong faith, which allowed him to avoid seeing himself as a victim.
He didn’t wallow in despair; instead, he trusted, and in that trust there was joy. ”
CK mulled over Nell’s words and then added with a nod, “So while this may not be a season of happiness, it can still be a
season of joy.”
Moira looked around at her friends gathered in her home and smiled. It had been too long since she’d felt this kind of connection.
The weight of isolation began to lift, and she longed for the joy Nell was describing.
Moira said, “My mother’s favorite scripture was ‘Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of
your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.’”
“‘Consider it all joy,’” Nell said. “Each one of us should consider it all joy.”