“Well, housekeeping ain’t one of my best attributes. Just ask Bill.”
“Ah, your husband.” Warnie sat again, settling into a slouched posture of comfort.
“If one can call him that at the moment.” And the fresh pain rose again in my belly.
“And why wouldn’t you call him that?” Warnie’s question was hesitant, wary.
“I’ve just received a letter,” I said and glanced between the two of them. “He is in love with my cousin and wants to marry her.”
Jack and Warnie exchanged a glance, both seeming to flinch as if I’d picked up the hot poker Warnie had just laid beside the fire with my bare hands.
Jack leaned forward, his hands set on his knees. “Perhaps you misinterpret his meaning. Letters can be waffling and misleading sometimes. I know that. Sometimes I’ll receive an argument against something I’ve written that I didn’t write at all.”
I stood slowly, my knees and hips aching from travel and the walk through the grounds. I limped to my purse on the side table across the room and took out the letter. “Here,” I said. “You tell me if there is anything at all to misinterpret.”
Jack was silent as he read, and Warnie sat quietly in his chair. The fireplace flames rose wildly, smoke wafting upward, fire licking the black walls.
“‘You will never be anything but a writer’？” Jack spoke Bill’s words aloud and glanced at me. “What a cruel thing to say.”
“That’s the least of it,” I told him. “Go on.”
Jack’s eyes fell to the page until finally he spoke. “‘I have never yet known determination and willpower to make a go of marriage,’” he quoted and then asked, “and you are returning home to this?”
“My ticket is booked,” I told him. “My children are there. They’re my family.” I leaned forward and pressed my fingers into the corners of my eyes.
“Bill has not given you a choice, Joy. You mustn’t stay there.”
I glanced up, ready to receive any advice he had. “But how can I desert them?”
“This is not your doing. These are his choices.” He gazed intently at me. “What did you answer in return?”
“I told him that we’d discuss the issue when I returned home.” I smiled and shrugged. “What else was there to say? I’ll be home in two weeks, and what good would another letter do? So many letters. So many words. What good?”
“Yes, what good?” Warnie mumbled.
“I try very hard to believe in God’s best for this,” I said. “It is a newly acquired habit that I sometimes forget to employ.” I laughed to alleviate the darkness I’d brought into the room.
Jack stared at me with gentleness. “Maybe you aren’t doubting that God will do the best for you, but wondering how painful the best might be.”
“You are very right, sir,” I said.
“But to return to abuse isn’t anything God would demand of you. Of any of us. His commandments aren’t meant for that. You know that as well as anyone.” He paused and the fire popped. “What you’ve tolerated at home isn’t about being a good wife or about obeying God. You must know that.”
I stood and walked to the fire, facing the flames. I rubbed my hands together. “I do know, but I forget. When I’m in the middle of all the chaos and arguing, I feel like such a failure, so demeaned, and then I blame myself for not being able to be someone else, someone better.”
“You blame yourself for not being who Bill wants you to be?” That was Warnie, blurting out the question with a frustrated voice.
I turned around to face them both again. “Yes.” The absurdity of it felt simple, a fact overlooked. “In your words it’s all so easily seen. You take a truth and boil it down to its essence.”
Jack eased to stand. “It’s easier to do when you aren’t in the middle of it. My heart isn’t blistered and mangled by his abuse. That privilege is yours, it would seem.”
I walked toward him then, wanting to reach across the space between us, to touch him, to wrap my arms around him, allow my head to rest on his shoulder the same way my heart was resting in his words. “How do I ever thank you for this kind friendship? It sustains me.”
He nodded, his cigarette ash falling to the carpet.
I exhaled and brushed my hands through the air. “But I’m here to celebrate the holidays, not to bring doom and gloom. Let’s play some Scrabble and forget this affair for now.” I pointed to a half-finished game on the table a few feet away.