The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues by Edward Kelsey Moore

Author:Edward Kelsey Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

CHAPTER 20

I knew something was wrong when I arrived home from work and found James standing beside his car in the garage. Even when I worked full-time, instead of the limited summer schedule I was on, James never beat me home on a weekday. He was always out the door before I was in the mornings and came back an hour or so later than I did in the evenings. If something major was going on at the station, he dragged himself in late at night and slid into bed next to me as I pretended to sleep. But there he stood, home two hours early, hands on his hips, looking around the garage as if it were an uncharted planet he’d just landed on.

I pulled my car in alongside his. When I stepped out, I asked, “What are you doing home?”

He tried to make a joke out of my question. “You sound like you’re disappointed to see me,” he said.

I asked again, “What are you doing home?”

James’s eyes wandered to the floor, then to the ceiling. His gaze fixed at a point high on the wall behind me. Then he said, “I’m taking the week off. I’ve got some sick days coming, and there’s a lot of stuff I’ve been meaning to do around the house. I’d like to organize the basement so the grandkids’ll have someplace inside to play when they come. Maybe I’ll get the Ping-Pong table set up and hang the dartboard. And that retaining wall in the backyard could use some patching. This would be a good time to start.”

He rattled off a long list of the household tasks he had in mind to accomplish over the coming days. All the while, I thought, This man is talking horseshit.

James loved being a state trooper. He never wanted to miss a day of work. In a week and a half, he and I were planning to meet our children and their families in Chicago for Clarice’s concert. Then we would all come back to Plainview to spend a few noisy, hectic days together here at the house. It had taken countless hours of manipulating, cajoling, and threatening just to persuade James to take time off for a few days of sightseeing in Chicago and for the family visit afterward.

Dozens of his half-done projects, some dating back to the early days of our marriage, leaned against our garage walls or were lashed to the dusty brown pegboard that hung above the work table. His inability to finish them was a running joke between us. There were bookshelves he’d never gotten beyond sawing the wood for, a bunk-bed frame he’d started building for our sons when the boys were twenty-five years younger and two feet shorter. We were inches away from a rocking chair he’d begun making for me so that I could soothe grandbabies who were now far too big to fit on my lap. Today, this man who never wanted to miss a day of work

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