Page 8 of The Wedding Gift
“I didn’t know at the time, and I damn sure didn’t care. He came in madder ’n a wet hen after a thunderstorm, tossed our marriage license on the kitchen table, and gathered up his fishing equipment. Without saying a word to me, he left the house. It was a good thing that it was Friday and he didn’t have to work that day or the whole weekend,” Roxie said.
“Weren’t you worried about him?” Darla could hardly believe what she was hearing. Granny was as protective ofGramps as an old bear with her cubs. Back five years ago, when he had had colon cancer, she had nearly worried herself into an early grave.
“Not in those days. I hoped he would fall in the Red River and drown. If I’d had the chance, I might have even tied rocks to his feet to help him out a little,” Roxie said. “I figured whatever had set him off had something to do with the marriage license, so I called my aunt Tildy, who worked at the courthouse in Paris. She told me what had happened that day.”
Roxie giggled, but it came out more like a snort. “Those Marshalls were good people, but some of them didn’t understand how things were. Seems Claud got it in his head that if you had to renew a fishing license, a driver’s license, and a hunting license, then, after a year or maybe two, you’d need to renew a marriage license. He had gone to the courthouse that day to tell them he didn’t want to renew the damned thing and wanted them to throw it in the trash.”
Darla had just taken a sip of tea, and she spewed it right through the screen. “Is this a joke?” she finally asked when she could stop laughing.
“It’s the God’s honest truth”—Roxie held up her hand toward heaven—“and I ain’t never told nobody this story before now. It would embarrass him too much, and after thatfirst year, I finally learned to love the old fart. He stayed gone all that weekend and didn’t come home until Sunday night. I had my suitcase packed and had already called my sister, your great-aunt Linda Jo, to come get me.
“Mama said that when I eloped with Claud, I’d made my bed, and no matter how hard it was, I would have to sleep in it. That meant I couldn’t go back home, no matter what, but Linda Jo knew all my secrets and how Claud and I couldn’t get along. She said I could come stay with her anytime I needed to, but I’d have to wait until she got off work from her waitress job at Miss Lou’s Café that Sunday night before she could drive up to Powderly to get me.”
“What happened then?” Darla was on the edge of her seat.
“Well, it just so happened that one of Claud’s buddies had parked his pickup on Main Street there right next to the furniture store. The old guy was selling bushels of peaches off the back of his truck, and the furniture store was open on Sunday because a truckload of television sets was being delivered. Your grandpa stopped with intentions of buying a bushel of peaches to bring home for me to can, but then he got to looking at that television set the furniture store owner had put in the window, andGunsmokewas showing on it. Claud bypassed the peaches and brought home one of those television sets,” Roxie said.
“You mean y’all didn’t have one before then? When was this?” Darla asked.
“I’m gettin’ to it,” Roxie scolded. “You got to understand the whole story to know how me and Claud saved our marriage.”
“I just can’t believe you and Gramps ever had that much trouble,” Darla said.
“There’s no such thing as a perfect marriage. You got to work together to get one that’s even passable, and you’ve got to want to make it work. During those days, I didn’t care if it worked or not,” Roxie told her. “But to go on with the story, here he come, bringing in a television. His mama was hard-core religious and called those things ‘an abomination unto the Lord,’ and she already didn’t like me.
“My mama wasn’t quite as bad, but there was no way she’d allow one in her house either. No, ma’am! She said that they were nothing but time-sucking machines and would be the ruination of the world, and folks had better things to do with their days, like shelling peas or crocheting doilies, than sit around in front of an idiot box and be entertained all day. I met Claud at the door and told him he couldn’t bring that thing inmyhouse.”
“Oh my!” Darla did the math in her head. “This was in 1961, right?”
Roxie nodded. “That’s right, darlin’, and we had us a big argument. I told him either it went or I would go. He said he wouldn’t miss me a whole lot, and that since I already had a suitcase by the front door, to just go ahead and leave. That made me so mad that I called Linda Jo and told her I was staying with Claud just to teach him that he couldn’t tell me what to do.”
“Now I understand why he said you’d always been sassy,” Darla said.
“I had a temper to go with my red hair.” Roxie grinned. “I mellowed a little when it all turned gray.”
“I guess you kept the television, right?” Darla asked.
“Oh, yes, and his mother wouldn’t even set foot inside our house. I guess she was afraid the devil would jump out of that thing and take her straight to hell. My mother made excuses not to come see me, and I blamed that on the television, but I reckon it was because she didn’t like Claud any more than she did the television. Anyway, I’ve never admitted it to anyone, but it was the best thing that ever happened, because we had to depend on each other, and neither of us could go runnin’ home to tattle on the other one.
“I hated that damned TV. Every evening after supper, your grandfather would turn it on to watch the news and whatever gun-totin’ western was on:Bonanza,Have Gun—WillTravel,Gunsmoke. I would take a book to the bedroom and read.” Roxie went on with the story. “I worried that he’d sit in front of the television all day on the weekend and might not even go to the church on Sunday. His mama would probably drown me in the Red River if we didn’t show up for church, so I sent up a prayer that the programs were only on in the evening.”
Darla was still having trouble understanding what all this had to do with her grandmother lying down for a nap every Sunday with her grandfather, but she kept quiet and let the whole story unfold.
“That’s when I foundAs the World Turns, my first soap opera. I watched that story right up until it went off about ten years ago. When I figured out that there were shows for us womenfolk in the daytime, I scheduled all my housework around them. I ironed many of your grandfather’s clothes while I watchedThe Edge of Nightand got my dusting done while I drooled overYoung Doctor Malone. Those shows are what saved my marriage, for sure,” Roxie said. “I saved money so that when a color television came out, we could get one, and I didn’t give a rat’s hind end what my mother or his mama thought of it.”
“How did a soap opera save your marriage?” Darla asked.
“The people on those shows had worse troubles thanI did, for sure. When I measured my problems up against theirs, things didn’t look so bad. The next year when we moved to Oklahoma so your grandfather could take the job at the wildlife refuge, I told him if he broke the television, I would break his legs and arms while he slept. He told me if I even scratched it, he would make me sleep in a tent out in the yard. It was during that move that one of the characters on the soap opera was having a hard time in her marriage, and her grandmother told her that every Sunday afternoon she and her husband should take a nap together.”
Aha!Darla thought.
Roxie took another sip of tea. “The next Sunday, we had our first nap together. Nine months later, we had Kevin, and things began to look up from that point on. We had a baby to raise, and I began to fall in real love with your grandfather after that.”
“Oh,thatkind of nap.” Darla smiled.
“Was in those days. Not so much since he had cancer.” Roxie held up her glass. “To Sunday afternoon naps. You and Will should always make time for one right from the first week of your marriage. Now, what’s got you all in a tizzy about your wedding? Oh, before you tell me, I saw Andy Miller at the party on Saturday. His mama, bless her heart”—Roxie dragged out the southernism and rolled hereyes toward the ceiling—“spoiled that boy so rotten that the garbageman wouldn’t have even hauled him off if they’d tossed him in the trash. Then she up and died when Andy was only ten years old, and his grandmother took over the boy’s raisin’ and made him even worse.”
Darla took a long breath and let it out slowly. “Granny, do you remember that he was my boyfriend in high school?”