Chapter 20
I’m up from a long nap and out on the porch and it’s evening time, the light not quite drained from the sky.
Dusk, I guess it’s called, but I always did prefer evening time.
Dusk is too short and choppy a word for such a languid time of day.
It’s a Northern word when you need a Southern one.
But whenever this time of day comes, I turn on my porch light.
It’s not for safety, whoever did believe some puny porch light would scare off anything?
No, I turn it on to offer a beacon against the darkness.
And I guess I turn it on for Terrence, same as I used to when he was alive and out working, and long about this time I would miss him so, and I would turn on the light to welcome him back to me.
Still do miss him, as I must have made clear.
Still do. I turn on the porch light most nights and it gives me a bit of hope, unreasonable though it may be.
And whenever I flick the switch, I always think of the lyrics in that beautiful song, “Jesse”: And I’m leaving the light on the stairs, No I’m not scared, I wait for you.
But if you will permit one last thing.
I was raised Catholic, and I had to go to confession every Saturday.
It used to nearly wear me out trying to remember my sins, so when I was about nine years old, I came up with a list of initials to help me remember my sins: PGFJC.
Forgot my morning or evening prayers, gossiped about people, fought with my best friend, got jealous of others, didn’t always pay attention in church.
Those were my sins, I still remember. It seemed bad enough to me, but when I think about what people might confess these days!
Some of those people, if they told their sins, the priest might fall right out of the booth.
There’s so much violence and hatred in the world and if I didn’t have the inconvenience of dying coming up, I might just try to do something about it.
On a grassroots level. Why, I’d put a kindness booth on the sidewalk in front of my house if I thought I could get away with it.
A kindness stopping off point, you come down the street and stop in front of my booth and I tell you something to make you feel good.
Or give you a donut or a flower, your choice.
I wish I could do that, Ruthie, just thinking about it makes me feel better.
I never saw an angry person didn’t respond at least a little to kindness.
It reminds me of this one dog I used to pass on my walks, every time I went by he’d yank at his big old metal chain and bark and bark and snarl nasty.
I used to hustle up to get by him but then one day I stopped and stood before him and I said real soft, Are you a good boy?
He stopped barking and just looked at me.
Are you? I said. I’ll bet you’re a good boy on the inside.
He cocked his head like dogs do. You can’t hardly not like a dog when they do that.
So I ventured a step closer, and he watched me with danger and fear in his eyes, and the fear is what surprised me.
You’re a good boy, I told him, and every day from now on I’m going to stop and talk to you and maybe you’ll let me pet you someday.
I tried taking one more step closer but he commenced his usual barking and growling and pulling hard on his chain so I walked away.
But when I was some distance down the sidewalk, I chanced to look back at him, and he was looking after me and I figured he was thinking, We’ll see, old lady.
We’ll see. And I figured he might lie on the rug in his living room when he went in, and put his chin on his paws and just think things over.
Well, once again I have gone on and on about something that is not the thing I want to talk about. I want to end this letter (FINALLY, I’ll bet you’re saying!) by telling you a very important thing I’ve kept from you. And that is what I was burying in the backyard all those years ago.
Let me see how best to proceed. From the beginning, I guess.
And the beginning is that I once came upon Terrence’s open jewelry box.
I was surprised to see it open. He was careful about always keeping it locked to guard against theft.
I once teased him about that, saying that all the thief would have to do is lift up the jewelry box and stick it in his gunny sack.
Terrence said, Well at least he’d have a hard time getting it open after he got it home.
We’d been out to a kind of fancy party the night before, and Terrence had been digging in his jewelry box, trying out cufflinks.
He was not a vain man, but he did like a nice set of cufflinks and whenever he wore them, they would have to be the right ones.
So I was standing in the bedroom with my coat on telling Terrence to hurry up, we going to be really late, and he kept coming out with this pair of cufflinks or that to ask me about and finally I grabbed him by the arm and said, Let’s GO, the ones you have on are FINE.
We got home very late and Terrence got up early in the dark and went to work.
Later, when I went into the closet to hang up the shirts I’d ironed, I saw the open jewelry box.
I was scared at first, thinking, Oh Lord, a thief came when we were sleeping.
But all the cufflinks were there, there didn’t seem to be anything missing.
Then I saw something sticking out from between the liner and the side of the box.
I thought, What is this, a note? It wasn’t a note.
It was half a dollar bill. And you know, I got a prickle run up my spine and I knew this thing had some import.
That night at dinner, I showed it to him.
I said, What’s this? He hesitated just for a second and then he said where did you find that?
In your jewelry box, I said. You forgot to lock it last night.
He reached for it and I held it back. There was a deadly silence and then he said, That is from a long time ago.
It is something a friend of mine gave me.
And I still want to keep it, so give it back.
I gave it back but Why? I asked. Why do you want to keep it?
Don’t you have some old things you kept that are not my business?
Terrence said. I did have some old love letters but they were no secret.
He knew I kept them tied up in a blue ribbon in a cigar box that I kept on the closet shelf.
He could have read them, but he didn’t, and I guess I was glad.
But this secret that he had kept from me made me uncomfortable.
I felt like a cold wind was blowing through me. Still, I decided to forget about it.
And I did, until one day years later when a letter came to the house addressed to Terrence from Paris, France.
It wasn’t securely sealed and that was too much temptation for me and I opened it.
Inside was half of a dollar bill. The other half.
And there was a note that said, “For so many years I have waited for nothing. Au revoir.”
Well, I made an apple pie for dinner and after we’d eaten it for dessert, I told Terrence, Let’s go in the living room.
Not the porch? he said. We were in the habit of sitting on the porch after dinner which you well know because you used to join us sometimes to show us your drawings or a new toy you’d gotten or your scabs.
I never did see a child so interested in showing off scabs.
Anyway, me and Terrence in the living room.
I straightened my housedress beneath me.
I cleared my throat. Uh-oh, Terrence said.
And I said Yes, uh-oh, and my heart was torn between love and rage.
I held up the half of a dollar bill that had been in the letter.
He sighed and said, This is about that half of a dollar bill again?
I nodded and then I held up the envelope and said, But it’s about this half of the dollar bill, and I handed him the envelope.
He looked at it and read the note inside and got quiet and clasped his hands and hung them between his knees.
His head was lowered and his shoulders sunk down.
Then he looked up and he said, I’m going to tell you everything.
I don’t really believe that you need to or should share every cotton-picking thing in a marriage but I have shared every cotton-picking thing with you but this.
And maybe it’s time, it’s been over thirty years.
He sat back in his chair and breathed and breathed.
And then he asked me, Could we go out on the porch to talk?
He wanted to change the channel to be more normal.
I said I thought that what we were about to talk about was too private for that.
I’ll talk low, he said, and I said well I might not.
He looked over at me and smiled but it was such a weary smile, so careful and sad, and never mind that I was so mad at him, it made me feel sorry for him.
We can go out on the porch after, I said. Just tell me. And tell it all.