“You let me worry about Joyce. Me and you been doing all right since we met and that’s because we don’t go to certain places. There is more than enough places in Hartville and other towns where we can go and not worry about running into nobody I know.”
“What would you do if we ever run into somebody you know?”
“I ain’t sure. I never think about it.”
“How come?”
“I ain’t thought about that on account of if ain’t going to happen. Now let’s go get the boys so we can be on our way. After we have our picnic, we’ll take a nice long drive. If anybody is still hungry after that, we’ll stop off at Po’ Sister’s Kitchen for supper.”
Just as I expected, after our picnic and a long drive to Mobile and back, everybody was hungry again. As usual, there was a long line of hungry people in front of Po’ Sister’s Kitchen when we got there.
Like Betty Jean always did whenever we ate at this restaurant, she approached the counter and told somebody to send her sister out so we wouldn’t have to wait in line. Alline was too busy this time, but she sent a waitress to take care of us. She seated us at a table in the middle of the floor.
“Daddy, I don’t like them itty-bitty hush puppies they always give us,” Jesse whined before he even sat down.
“And I don’t like them chicken feet y’all ordered for us the last time,” Daniel complained, pulling out a chair next to me.
“I’m ordering burgers for y’all this time,” Betty Jean said, fanning her face with the menu. She and I ordered the buttermilk catfish with fries and a pitcher of grape Kool-Aid. “Odell, this place is really busy today. You sure you want to stay here? We still might have to wait awhile for them to bring us our food.”
“I don’t mind staying at all. I can’t think of no other place I’d rather be.”
Right after I said that, Joyce’s face flashed in my mind. Everything I did and said now was so routine, I didn’t feel as guilty as I used to.
After we put in our orders, the boys got restless. “Jesse, if you don’t stop kicking your brother, I’m going to go outside and get a switch,” I warned. I lowered my voice when I noticed the people at some of the tables close to ours looking at us. “Leon, stop trying to catch that fly and be still before I get a switch for you, too!” Despite my sons’ unruly behavior, I was in my element. I squeezed Betty Jean’s hand and stared into her eyes. “Baby, this is one of the best days we ever had. It don’t get no better than this.”
“I wish you didn’t have to leave tomorrow,” she said in a low voice with a pout.
“I wish I didn’t have to neither. But, you know how it is.” I leaned over and kissed her so long, it seemed like every other customer in the place was gawking at us when I pulled away.
Chapter 40
Joyce
SATURDAY EVENING I GOT BORED AND DECIDED TO VISIT MAMA and Daddy. I had visited them twice in the last two days and each time I had to listen to complaints about everything in their lives from the greasy food they had eaten at the retreat they’d attended a few days ago to their warnings about me and Odell getting too involved with “them bootleggers” next door.
Within seconds after I entered my parents’ living room, I regretted it. “You look like hell,” Daddy boomed from the easy chair he occupied facing the couch where Mama sat with her knitting items in her lap.
“Sure enough,” she agreed. “What’s the matter?”
I let out an exasperated breath. I didn’t sit down because I knew this was going to be a very short visit. I stood in front of the door with my hands on my hips. “Nothing is the matter with me,” I snapped.
“If your face was any longer, it’d be dragging this floor. Is you and Odell having problems?” Daddy asked with a snort, looking at me from the corner of his suspicious eye.
“Odell and I are doing just fine. The way people keep hinting at us having problems is getting on my nerves.”
“Why do they think y’all having problems?” Mama asked, giving me a weary look. “I hope you ain’t been mistreating that man after all the fuss you made to marry him. And who is it that’s doing the hinting?”
“That’s not important. But one woman had the nerve to ask me one night if Odell had left me. My husband is never going to leave me!” I insisted. “We haven’t had one single argument since we got married. He promised that we’d stay together until we died.”
“Whatever you doing, you better keep doing it so Odell won’t have no reason to take off,” Mama advised, wagging a finger in my direction.
“Amen to that,” Daddy added. “I hope you coming to church with us tomorrow. You and Odell ain’t been in a while, and Reverend Jessup done asked several times why come that is. I’m sure that if I asked him to, he’d be happy to drop by your house for supper one evening to give you and Odell some spiritual guidance.”
I agreed to go to church with Mama and Daddy tomorrow. Not because I wanted to go, but because I didn’t want Reverend Jessup to pay us a visit. We already had enough on our plate, so a meddlesome preacher was the last thing we needed.
When I got back home, I did a few chores, listened to the radio for about an hour, and finished reading the book that I had started reading three days ago. The days seemed so much longer when Odell was gone. I couldn’t wait for him to come home from his daddy’s house. I thought
