CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
For JJ and Tish, the six-and-a-half-hour drive was filled with self-reflection. They spoke very little. They didn’t try to come up with a plan for how she could get back in her parents’ good graces. Or even what he was going to say to her father. They kept their thoughts to themselves and remained silent.
They remained that way until they finally arrived in Coal, Alabama around three that afternoon. JJ drove his Bentley onto the Payton property, which was surrounded by at least four acres of mostly woodland, and continued down the long stretch that led to a well-maintained concrete block house at the end of the driveway.
Parked in that driveway, Tish could see her father’s same Ford F150 pick-up truck that he owned when she left over a decade ago. She could also see her mother’s beloved Ford Fairmont that she had all of Tish’s life. And even back then it seemed like an old, old car. It had to be over forty years old now. But that was her parents. Hard working, uncompromising people who did not splurge on anything or anybody. Not even themselves. Not even their children when Tish and her brother were little kids.
When JJ stopped the car, he could feel his heart begin to squeeze. This was going to be harder than he thought it would be.
Tish was about to open the car door, but she felt that heaviness that cloaked her as a child. That heaviness of trying to please her parents and never being able to. Or at least trying not to disappoint them when all she did seemed disappointing in their eyes. And now she was back here, and with a white man, when they’d already warned her to leave them out of her life. It was beginning to sound like a bad idea.
“They don’t want me,” she blurted out, causing JJ to look at her. And which caused her to add the word here to her sentence.
But he’d already heard her loud and clear. “They don’t have to want you here,” he said to her. “I’m here to do what I think folks like your parents would expect a man who wants to marry their daughter would have the decency to do. We’re going to get this right, whether they like it or not.”
“But what if he doesn’t give his blessing?” Tish asked him again.
“At least we would have tried to do the right thing, Tish. We can’t do more than that.”
Tish continued to stare at JJ. She’d never, not ever, met anybody like him before.
“Your days of flying solo, and struggling out here alone, are over,” he continued, looking at her as if he was scolding her. “You’ve got to be connected to people who love you and will look out for you should something happen to me. I’m much older than you.” He said that as an anguished look appeared on his face. “These are your people. I want this resolved for the sake of your future, and our future children. One way or another, it’s got to be resolved.”
He could tell she was still hesitant, but he also knew she didn’t have a choice. He was taking charge of this, and began getting out. When he realized she hadn’t hopped out already the way she usually did, he hurried around and opened the door for her. When she got out, too, they were within an inch of each other. “I don’t want you sitting in there worrying about how this is going to go. This is my deal. My burden. And I don’t need help carrying it. You understand me?”
She understood him, but she wasn’t sure if he understood her. “What makes you so sure they’ll let us even go inside, let alone sit inside?”
JJ at first was puzzled by what she was saying. Then he realized that he had just told her not to sit in there worrying. He studied her face. “It’s that bad?” he asked her.
“It’s not bad at all,” Tish said. “That’s what you’re not understanding. It’s how they are. They’ve always been that way. They aren’t gonna change for me, you, or any grandkids either. I just want you to understand that.”
JJ viewed Tish as the most loveable person alive. How could her parents look at her sincere, beautiful face and not be madly in love with her too? What was wrong with these people? “I understand,” he said to her, although she knew he didn’t.
He placed his hand on her lower back, and they walked to the front porch.
When they got up on the porch, he searched for a doorbell. Seeing none, he knocked on the door.
After several seconds the door finally opened, and Tish’s heart squeezed. It was her father, Earl Willie Payton, standing right in front of her. JJ stared at the handsome man at the door. He wanted to see the love this man should have for his daughter in his eyes. And at first, when he seemed shocked to see her, JJ thought he did see love. But it quickly evaporated just as Tish, who seemed to have been holding her breath, was about to speak to him. Her father, instead, slammed the door in her face.
That door slam rippled through Tish’s body like a gunshot blast. And she actually turned around to run. But JJ, who felt that slam to the core of his being, too, immediately turned her back around and placed his hands on her arms. “I got you. You hear me? I know it’s hard. I know it feels like you’re being forced to confront the ghosts of your past without any preparation. But we can’t let this linger. We’ve got to get this resolved,” he said, and started knocking again.
Within seconds the door opened again. And this time it was Viola Payton, Tish’s mother. Her very beautiful mother, JJ noticed. And when she saw her daughter, JJ saw that same shock her father had on his face, but he saw love on her face too. And it wasn’t fleeting like her father’s momentary look. But it was as if her mother had a sense of relief that her child was safe and well and back home again.
But there was trepidation too. She was not the head of that household: her husband was. And he wasn’t going along.
But all Tish saw was her mom. A mom she missed desperately. And all her mom saw was her daughter. A daughter she missed desperately. And when Viola held her arms wide open for her daughter, Tish didn’t hesitate. She left JJ’s side, stepped across the threshold of her parents’ home, and sobbed as she embraced her mother. It had been so long! She cried like a baby.
JJ was pleased that her mother at least welcomed her back, but he knew her father was on the other side of that door too. And he wasn’t interested in any reunion. JJ had his work cut out for him.
But when Tish and Viola stopped embracing, and her mother’s eyes turned toward JJ, there was that sternness again. “Who’s he?” she asked Tish.
JJ didn’t want to burden Tish with trying to explain their difficult-to-explain relationship, so he immediately reached out his hand. “JJ Brant,” he said. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”
Viola shook his hand, but she was suspicious of him too. Especially when she looked beyond him and saw that fancy Bentley in her driveway. What was he doing there? What was he playing at?
Tish could see her mother’s curiosity mixed with suspicion. She’d be curious, too, if the roles were reversed. “He drove me here from Florida,” she said, still wiping away tears. “He drove me all the way here.”
Viola didn’t respond to that. She just continued to stare at him as if he was another Shake.
And JJ suddenly felt as if maybe he was another Shake. He didn’t know how to take care of Tish either, he felt, or it wouldn’t have come to this. He would not have felt the need to validate her to the world - and to her own parents.
“May we come in?” he boldly asked Tish’s mother.
Viola at first hesitated. Why did he need to come in, was the expression on her face. But then she seemed to have realized it was a long journey they had undertaken. The least she could do was let them in, use the bathroom or at least rest a minute, before they were back on the road. Because no way would Earl allow anything more than that. But she was going to allow at least that. She stepped aside and they walked in.