CHAPTER 19
Rebecca
Summer was thickening into a damp, heavy heat that kept the roses, dahlias, and hydrangea lush with life and the townspeople sluggish and lackadaisical.
“Hottest summer we’ve had in a decade,” she’d hear at the grocery store, or, “Gonna hit one-oh-four this afternoon, Mavis. Better keep that fan on high.”
She kept her own air conditioning on, her runs to dawn, and her water bottle filled. Summers in New York were always hot, but this was the South, and being so far inland, the heat seemed to gather and pool so it almost seemed Dahlia was coming to a slow simmer.
She even started to forego the light makeup she wore to diminish the faint lines on her face.
It all turned to sweat the moment she walked out the door, so why bother?
And yet this summer, for the first time in ages, she felt like the years were going backward instead of forward.
She felt younger and stronger and, if not a beauty, downright pretty.
She didn’t even need to streak her hair with the blond highlights; the sun did that job for her.
This morning she was almost tempted to chuck the bottle of Prozac, too. You don’t need it, her inner voice whispered. You’ve got this on your own.
But she did need it. Deep down, she knew it all too well. She still dreamed about the hospital sometimes, still woke up thinking it had all been a nightmare. Except it was reality.
At the paper, numbers were holding steady, for now.
People loved the “Voices from James Watkins” series, had even started writing letters to the editor in praise of it.
Complaint calls were down to maybe two a week instead of several per day.
People were saying hi to her in the grocery store like they meant it.
It almost felt like she’d achieved some sort of Dahlia grand prize of semi-acceptance: “We Are Getting Used to You.” Or, “You’re Not Messing Up the Paper So We’ll Tolerate You.” Or perhaps, “Not Bad, Rebecca.”
Skimming this week’s front page as she sipped coffee at her desk, the last one echoed: Not bad at all.
The lead story was on plans for a new recreation plex at the town square, with an indoor walking track, basketball court, and rooms they could rent out for meetings and parties.
Plans for a pool had been scrapped—too expensive—and Dahlia residents were decidedly unpleased.
Rebecca had a small wager going with Tiff about how long it would take for town council members to backpedal and figure out how to fund the pool after all.
Tiff’s piece on a local boy turned big-league baseball coach ran below the fold, and she’d done a good job with it.
Rebecca liked the quotes Tiff had gotten, and the lead was strong and creative without being hokey.
The headshot of the coach balanced nicely against the four-column lead photograph: four commissioners gathered with a shovel at the rec plex, the fifth waving a check from the state.
Grant money to fund the rec plex. All of them grinning like fools.
At three-thirty she was parked outside James Watkins Elementary, waiting to pick up Devon.
She saw him in her rearview, a little kid with big eyes and a bigger backpack walking toward her.
A few people stopped to say hi as he walked, and three girls—a pretty African-American girl in a tank top and denim shorts and two Latina girls, one tall and slim with long Pocahontas-style braids—stopped him and chatted a moment.
Devon was a nice kid, a lot nicer than she’d been at his age.
She clicked the locks as he got closer, and she thought he looked happier than usual, like there was a weight off his shoulders.
It must be tough in his shoes—only his elderly grandma to care for him, and she imagined he probably did as much caregiving for her as she did for him.
And there was the money situation, too, or lack thereof.
Her family hadn’t been super wealthy, but she’d never wanted for a thing in her life.
Maybe that was the problem. Everything had come too easy, and she’d expected that, never built the character needed to tackle things when the going got rough.
Here she’d been, sunk into a deep depression after a failed relationship to the point where she’d almost taken her life.
And yet all around her, kids were dealing with dead parents and hungry bellies and, somehow, they had the strength to carry on.
She could learn more than a thing or two from them, and from Devon, she realized. Already had, in fact.
“Hey, Miss Becca!” Devon climbed into the seat, a big grin on his face.
She’d missed him, she realized. “Hey, Devon! I hope you’re hungry.”
“Starved. So did you get a chance to talk with Tamika for the series yet?”
Twenty minutes later at the diner, the waitress appeared with their burgers, plus a huge chocolate shake for Devon and a coffee for Rebecca.
“Your usual,” the woman said, smiling kindly at them, blue eyes surprisingly bright in her well-lined face. She brushed her hands off on her waitress apron and leaned down with interest. “What are you two debating today? Last week it was the dinosaurs, right?”
“So far it’s whether life exists beyond earth,” Rebecca said, eyes twinkling. “Louanne, what do you think. Do you believe in aliens?”
“Aliens!” Louanne cocked her head and folded her arms, the movement causing her pouf of well-hairsprayed bangs to sway.
“Could be. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did exist. Hard to think of God going through the trouble of designing this great big world with all its people and animals and stopping there. I bet he kept at it.”
“That’s what I said.” Devon grinned. “He’s God—he can do anything!”
Rebecca dunked a fry. “I was coming at it from the perspective of life generally and the odds of this planet being the only one of all the billions out there. I think the odds are slim we’re the only planet with life.
But whether those other life forms travel the universe, land on our planet? Who knows?”
Louanne laughed. “You two. You crack me up.”
“Solving the problems of the universe one week at a time.” Rebecca winked at Devon. “That’s what we say, right, Devon?”
“Right, Miss Becca.” Devon took a huge bite of burger as Louanne wandered off to check on her other tables.
The room was close to empty this time of day—one man at the counter, a few other booths occupied with pairs like them. Outside the sun shone fiercely, but inside, Harold’s Diner was cool and comfortable. Rebecca could already feel the tension of the day melting from her shoulders.
“So how have you been doing? Anything new with the camp?”
Devon nodded, swallowed. “Everything’s good.
The kids like it. Oh, and they really like your stories in the paper.
Miz Peters reads them to us. Neesa, the one with the sister with all that stuff going on?
She likes you. She said she never gets to talk about it with people, and she was embarrassed at first, but it was really easy to talk to you.
I mean, we have a school counselor, but they deal with the regular stuff.
You know, bullying and being too loud in class and all that. ”
Rebecca chewed her lip. “That’s a good point. When I talk to people, even my friends back north, you can say only so much without feeling like you’re dumping all your troubles on them. I bet it does feel good to just unload.”
He shrugged. “Guess that’s why I spend so much time with God. I just give it all to him.”
She peered at him. “What does that mean, exactly? Give it all to him. People say it all the time.”
“I don’t know, I go sit with my Bible, shut my eyes, and tell him about my day. What’s bugging me. You know.”
“Like a regular conversation?”
“Yeah, real natural. Like, ‘Hey God, some kids were bugging me at school today, what do I do?’ That sort of thing.”
“Hm.” She took a small bite of her burger and drained her coffee, marveled at how easy Devon made it sound. She’d tried once or twice to talk to God like that, but it felt weird. Stuffy and stiff and ultimately like she was speaking to a blank wall. Which she actually was.
“Mama taught me.” Devon’s voice was quiet, and she looked at him, searched for grief or anger or anything. But there was only that little wistful acceptance. Her coffee suddenly seemed too hot for her throat.
He cleared his voice. “Well, really she showed me, at first. She was always doing that stuff—you know, praying out loud with me in the car, or like one time the power company was going to turn off the lights and she just took the power bill and she sat at the kitchen table and said, ‘Jesus, I’m giving this mess to you.’”
He slurped his milkshake, the wooooooshst loud in the small diner.
Rebecca fell silent, picturing this mom who prayed in front of her son, this son who watched and followed her example.
“So you started doing the same thing?”
“Yeah. Before she passed, she said, ‘Baby, your friends and your family are gonna let you down, but God and Jesus are always there for you.’ She said if I don’t learn to give them my bad stuff in prayer, I’m gonna be looking for the answers in all the wrong places.
You should try it.” He looked at her. “It’s pretty easy. ”
Rebecca wondered what it was like to have a mom with such faith.
Her own mom liked to solve problems on the tennis court or out for a little shopping therapy.
Work it away, she used to say. Rebecca had forgotten that.
She wondered what it would feel like to not deal with all your troubles alone, to do that simple mystery, that thing she couldn’t actually ever figure out how to do: Give it all to God. It sounded way too easy.
“So … would you like to come with me tomorrow night?”
She cocked her head. “Come with you where?”
“I help out with something every week at my church called the Friday Night Giveaway. For people who don’t have a lot. It’s getting pretty big, and Rev said we need more volunteers.”
“What do you do?”