Chin Up, Honey. Curtiss Matlock Ann
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had John Cole get in with them. He was always reluctant to have his picture taken. He liked to be cajoled, and Emma did so. After this, she had her mother join in. Her mother then took a picture of Emma and John Cole with Johnny and Gracie. It was all so much like old times, when Johnny had lived at home.
Finally Johnny called a halt. He hugged and kissed Emma, and hugged his father and grandmother, and Gracie was hugged by everyone, too. Then the two young people roared away in the Mustang, down the lane, and it was as if they took a lot of the air with them when they went.
Emma’s mother followed, driving away much more slowly in her aging and faded Impala, going to her garden apartment over at MacCoy Senior Living Center.
Watching her mother’s car until it was out of sight, Emma was struck with a wave of melancholy. Her mother had moved out to live near them in Oklahoma two years ago, because most all of her immediate family—the Macombs—had died. The exceptions were a couple of aunts who were mentally out of this world and one sister with whom Emma’s mother had never gotten along. Even most of the Macomb cousins had died or gone off out of sight. Somehow the Macombs tended to lose members of the family. They seemed to go off to the grocery store or away on vacation and never return. They had not been especially close people, yet they had been Emma’s people. She barely knew her father’s family and didn’t count them at all.
Now, here were Emma and her mother, the end of that branch of the Macomb family tree. Emma thought about how someday her mother would be gone, and she, Emma, would move up into her place as the last matriarch. It appeared Gracie would be the one to move into Emma’s place. She felt sad and grateful at the same time. She had prayed for years for a daughter. It appeared that Gracie was the answer to that prayer. Thank You, God.
With high emotion filling her heart for the second time that day, she walked back into the house, which seemed starkly empty and silent, as it always did when Johnny left. Except, of course, for the television that John Cole was once more watching.
She finished tidying the kitchen, then sat at the kitchen table with a yellow tablet to compose the engagement announcement for the newspaper. She went through five pages before she got it exactly how she wanted it. She ended with the line: A September wedding is planned in Valentine, where the two plan to make their home.
She imagined it. The voices and laughter of grandchildren would fill the house. She would have children around her again, to cook for and kiss boo-boos, sing lullabyes, read books. They would need to get another calm riding horse to join Old Bob, and the children would ride in the afternoons. They would have to get a permanent dog, and not just the stray hound who passed by on occasion to be fed out the back door. And build a tree house. She could still do something like build a tree house. On rainy days she would bake cookies and make blanket forts in the living room.
She was in the midst of imagining all of these wonderful things when John Cole came in to get a Coke and bag of corn chips, and asked her what she was doing.
“Writing the engagement announcement,” she told him happily, and then read it to him.
His response when she finished was, “Have they said they are makin’ their home in Valentine?”
“Well…not straight out. But a house down here in Valentine will be much less expensive than one up there in Lawton. Where do you think they will live?” She did not know why John Cole always had to make comments that just threw cold water all around.
“I don’t know. I just asked.”
“I’m lookin’ forward to them livin’ nearby and to havin’ grandchildren to enjoy. Aren’t you?”
“I haven’t thought about it. I guess so.”
She found that answer unsatisfactory. “Don’t you want grandchildren?”
“That isn’t what I said, Emma. I haven’t even thought about it. We only found out a few days ago that Johnny was gettin’ married.”
“Well, it certainly isn’t like a big surprise. He’s a grown man…lots older than you and I when we married. It has been a fair assumption since he was a baby that one day he would be grown and havin’ babies of his own. That is what people do. I’ve imagined it.”
“That is not somethin’ I have done, okay? I’m not like you, Emma. I don’t go imaginin’ all sorts of things.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I don’t sit around and think like you do, that’s all.”
“What is wrong with thinkin’?” She did not appreciate him criticizing her, which she knew he was doing, no matter how innocent he tried to make it out to be. He had always accused her of imagining things.
“Nothing. I just am not like you, Emma. I don’t spend a lot of time thinkin’ everything six ways from Sunday.”
“I don’t see anything wrong with thinkin’ about the future and plannin’ for it. You can’t have anything if you don’t plan for it. Everything that is here was planned first.” She gestured, indicating the surrounding kitchen.
“I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it, and I didn’t say I don’t plan. I just don’t think about the same things that you do.” He was edging out the door.
“Obviously,” she said, annoyed and a little embarrassed, because the entire argument was stupid. She couldn’t even figure out how they’d gotten into it.
Later that night, she got all excited about an idea that came to her. She went to the family room to tell John Cole, which likely was a mistake, since he was watching the replay of a NASCAR race.
“Why don’t we have a pool put in for the barbeque? The younger people would really like that, and then we’ll already have it for when we get grandchildren.”
John Cole looked startled. “That’s a big project. I don’t know if you could get a pool and the yard all finished in time for the barbeque.”
“Oh, sure we can,” Emma said, delighted to have a rebuttal for that excuse. “Charlene MacCoy got one put in last summer. She said it was amazing how quickly it all got done. I think she said it only took about a month.”
John Cole’s response was to throw around a lot more cold water by pointing out the expense of a pool in addition to the expenses of the wedding and the gift of the honeymoon, and all sorts of things that could come up, such as having to go to Baltimore for the wedding.
Emma, who had also been thinking all day about having the inside of the house painted, said, “Well, a pool will be an investment. We’ve talked about one before, and I want one for when we have grandkids. I’ll just look into it. It won’t hurt to see.”
She really wished John Cole would have confidence in her good sense. She had not once in all their married years gone overboard with spending. She had pinched pennies as much as he had for many years, and as a result he now enjoyed a comfortable home. He just could not seem to see that they did not have to pinch pennies anymore. Of course, when he wanted something, he darn well got it. It all just made her so mad that she had to go clean the kitchen sink, then move on to scrubbing the floor.
As she was getting ready for bed, she went to the window and looked out into the dark expanse of the yard, imagining a pool sparkling beneath the moon.
The thought came: she and John Cole might like to sit out beside the pool at night, or even go skinny-dipping. Maybe that would get him away from the television.
Then she suddenly realized that in the background of all her fantasies of their growing family was John Cole. He was there in her images—supervising the building of the pool—and a new patio, of course—the purchase of a horse for the grandchildren, sawing the wood for the tree house, dragging blankets from high shelves and putting together tricycles.
Sitting with her and talking, holding her hand, kissing her…making love.
She