Chapter 15 #3
He shrugs, grins. “Well, I’ll keep some, and we’ll give some to Grace, and take some over to Jo and Conrad.
I’m sure my cousins would take some. And Melva at the Last Chance would probably be happy to whip up some blackberry pie.
” Melva, I’ve learned, is the older lady I’ve seen there—she owns the café and does all the cooking.
“If we end up with extra beyond that, I’ll drive ’em to Jeb or drop ’em off to Mr. Freeman.
Point bein’, folks are never gonna turn down fresh blackberries. ”
“That’s really ... nice,” I say. “I mean, where I live, you maybe give your extras of something to your friend or your neighbor, but I wouldn’t think of ... getting extra just to give to everybody I know.”
He shrugs. “That’s just how people do down here. You think to help out your neighbor with extra blackberries, they’ll think of you when they end up with more corn or green beans than they can use. That’s just how it is.”
And so it’s decided that we’ll fill our buckets or pick until we get tired, whichever comes first.
As we work, I ask if he’s heard from his daughter lately, and he tells me about a phone call last night.
“She’s off to Disney World for a couple days tomorrow.
And she met a boy at the beach, which makes me nervous as hell, but guess I just have to hope that the grandma’s a decent chaperone.
And Sam’s a smart girl—I need to remember that. ”
Then he tells me he’s been working more overtime this week to cover for yet someone else’s vacation, which I guess might explain why I haven’t heard from him much. Not that I care, mind you, or am keeping track of such things. “How many deputies do you have?” I ask.
He hesitates only slightly before replying, “Two.”
He knows, of course, that I’m going to make fun of that a little. “So you’re head of a big police department of three,” I say, both to clarify and to tease.
“Yes ma’am,” he answers, still plucking berries nearby. “But three’s better than none.”
“True,” I agree, recalling what he explained about keeping the town from disappearing completely. And I get it. I guess I’m starting to understand that there’s plenty worth saving around here, things I wouldn’t have been able to see just a few short weeks ago.
“I never asked what you do for a living,” he says when I least expect it.
And it’s strange to me—I tend to forget that people here don’t know.
At home, people know me— strangers know me.
It’s not a question I have to answer often.
But here I’ve already told Grace and Jo, and now I tell Matt, too.
“I’m a TV news anchor. I deliver the evening news on Cincinnati’s Channel 11. ”
“Wow.” He’s clearly impressed. “I had no idea. I mean, maybe I should have—I know about Kevin’s job. But he called you a friend, so I didn’t realize you worked together, too.”
I explain about my past with Kevin, our twenty years together in the biz. And I share that Kevin suggested I come here for the summer to finish recovering, “even though I thought I already had and wanted to go back to work.”
I didn’t exactly mean to say that last part, however, and it makes him reply with, “Why didn’t you just tell him that?”
I weigh my options. Fluff it off with a lie about deciding to take more time away or .
.. tell him the truth? I told Grace and Jo with ease—I knew other women would understand.
And I didn’t bother to feel embarrassed about it because every woman has been treated like “less than” at some point in her life.
We all have times when we’re not the prettiest girl in the room, and it matters in a way it wouldn’t for a man.
And we all know there are ways in which women are pitted against one another—to be the prettiest or the sexiest, to get chosen by pageant judges, or the male boss, or the hot guy who can have his pick of girls. But telling Matt would be different.
And yet ... I do it anyway. I don’t know why.
Maybe I want him to know I’m not as weak as I seem here, that I’m simply out of my element, but that if it were up to me, I’d be totally back behind the news desk.
I even go so far as to give him a slightly watered-down version of the wig incident, explaining about the heat and the lights, and that wearing it just wasn’t feasible.
Then I add, “I didn’t even suggest doing it without the wig because I knew it wouldn’t fly with management.
And thus my summer fate was sealed—Tiffany’s in my chair and I’m out in the country waiting for my hair to grow. ”
“That’s tough,” he says when I’m done. “Guess I can understand a little better now why you seemed so ... unhappy when you first got here.” Then he stops picking berries and looks over at me. “Can I ask you somethin’, though?”
“Sure.”
“If you don’t even like bein’ around me, or Grace, or anyone else without a hat on your head, how would you have felt about bein’ on the news that way?”
The question smashes down on me like a sledgehammer. Oh God. He’s right. I’ve been so, so smug about the unfairness of not being accepted as I am right now. I’ve felt so horribly slighted and angry. I was so bold marching into Kevin’s office, ready to do whatever, be whatever, to get my life back.
And if he’d said okay and that I didn’t need the wig, I guess I would have figured that out, come to grips with it.
Or ... maybe I wouldn’t have. Maybe I wouldn’t have been able to deliver the news without my wig any more than I was able to do it with my wig.
I thought having a little bit of hair back would instantly make me feel normal again—and it hasn’t.
And maybe I’ve been a little in denial about the moment I flung my wig and Kev said I wasn’t quite ready.
I accepted that I wasn’t going to get my way, and that the wig was too hot—but maybe until right now I haven’t truly accepted that it was true: I wasn’t quite ready.
“It’s ... definitely a thing I’m still working on,” I tell Matt, though he already knows that.
So I step deeper into honesty. “I thought it would be easier to get used to how different I look. So I confess that ... maybe it’s not all bad that they didn’t want me back yet.
By fall, it will have grown some, and I’ll feel better about it.
I mean, I took my hat off with you, so that’s a step in the right direction, right? ”
When he smiles over at me, I’m actually glad I told him—I feel braver for having done it, and less weak than I did just five minutes ago.
“Hat or no hat,” he says, “that other newswoman’s got nothin’ on you.”
“Well, she’s got hair ,” I point out.
“Hair today, gone tomorrow,” he quips on a laugh, clearly amused with himself. “Things’ll work out, I’m sure.”
I nod. “Kevin said to just give it time, and I can see now that he’s right. But it’s still really horrible to devote yourself to a job for years only to find out you’re not valued for the quality of your work as much as what you look like.”
At this, his smile fades, and I notice again from a few feet away how blue his eyes are as he says, “Seriously, Jessie—Jessica, sorry—it sounds like a cruddy situation to know you’re bein’ judged that way.
But if they don’t think you’re pretty enough to deliver the news, then they’re not really lookin’. ”