Stash took Lydia’s hands in his own. He towered over her, his shoulders huge, his back ram-rod straight, and his face more serious than I had ever seen it.
“Lydia Jean Thornburgh, I have loved you since the moment I met you twenty years ago. And even though you are stubborn and have never thought it right to keep even a single opinion to yourself, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever met. And tonight you are more beautiful than you have ever been.”
“Oh, Stash, you old fool,” Lydia croaked, whacking him on the arm, then readjusting her hat.
“I am an old fool, Lydia, and I love you. We’ve walked through life together for twenty years, and they have been, by far, the happiest twenty years I have ever had. I cannot imagine life without you because it wouldn’t be worth nothing. I have asked you to marry me once a year since we met, and you have always turned me down because you are so damn feisty and independent. But I want to ask you one more time. Here. In front of all of our friends and your niece, Julia.”
So I’m crying, and all the women around me are crying, and even a few men look choked up, like Dave, and like Caleb Dirks, who spent thirty years in the army and looks like a grizzly bear, and Michael Sparks and Stewart Adams, who are marines just back from Iraq.
Stash, still holding Aunt Lydia’s hands, got down on one knee in front of her. “Lydia Jean Thornburgh, would you please, please, you stubborn woman, please marry me for once and for all, forever?”
And Lydia stood there, shaking her head, laughing and crying at the same time. “Well, a man who wants to marry a gal with no hair and a face like a skeleton must be one great man, indeed. So, yes, Stash, after twenty years, I will. I will marry you.”
And the cheer that went up from that crowd was so loud the kids put their hands over their ears, but we kept on cheering. Stash got out the ring box, and he put that ring with the gigantic diamond on Aunt Lydia’s finger, and she cried some more, and Stash cried, and the marines cried, and then he hugged her and twirled her around, and we danced the rest of the night away.
Sometimes, for a moment, life is truly beautiful.
23
The kids had long been asleep on hay bales when Stash, Aunt Lydia, Dean, and I finally left. Stash and Dean carried the kids to the cars and drove them back to Aunt Lydia’s.
There was one more gift left to unwrap. It had been delivered that day, and I had hid it in my back closet.
We settled the kids into bed, and I poured a little wine for all of us, then brought the large, flat present from Lara out and put it on the wicker coffee table in front of Lydia and Stash. I must say that she looked rather regal with that bald head. When she was done with chemo I was going to suggest she keep her head shaved.
“The diamond on this ring is too damn big, Stash,” Lydia said. She gave him a kiss. “Too damn big. I can barely lift my hand. How am I going to drive the tractor and shovel Melissa Lynn’s shit?”
“You’re not going to shovel shit or drive a tractor until I say you can, Lydia, so just hold your horses on that part. You’re also going to bed in five minutes, so unwrap that present from Lara damn quick. You can unwrap the other hundreds of presents another day.”
For once, Aunt Lydia didn’t yell at Stash to quit telling her what to do. She clapped her hands together with great glee. “It’s from Lara, my sweet Lara, the woman who is in search of her soul.” She ripped that paper right off, and then her hands stilled.
Stash leaned forward, as did Dean and I.
Lara had used every ounce of talent she had to paint a picture of Stash and Aunt Lydia sitting together on the porch outside Lydia’s front door. Stash’s arm was around Lydia, their faces smiling and relaxed and happy.
It was stunning. An exact likeness, the painting radiating the love, the memories, and the history that the two of them had together.
“Happy Birthday to the most courageous woman I have ever met,” Lara had written, right on the painting. “I love you. Lara.”
“It’s perfect,” Aunt Lydia said with great reverence. “She has captured my womanhood and your manly manner, Stash. The testosterone and the estrogen, the essence of the woman and the soul of the man.”
“Yes,” said Stash, patting her hand, his voice gruff. He took a swipe at his eyes. “She has done all that.”
Aunt Lydia cocked her head to look at the painting. She looked frail next to Stash. She had lost weight and lost her hair, and her body was fighting like hell to save itself, but I knew who was the stronger of them.
“Lara has captured one more thing, Stash,” she said, a smile lighting her face and transforming it into lines of gentleness, a look that my Aunt Lydia rarely wore.
“What’s that?”
“The love we have. She captured the love.”
The blank letters kept coming. I took it upon myself to practice shooting my gun once a day. At least.
I knew there was nothing he could do, but I went anyhow.
I had always found Golden’s police chief, Carl Sandstrom, to be somewhat intimidating. People in town joked that if you jaywalked and he caught you, you could expect a ticket.
No one got off with Sandstrom. Not the fire chief’s son who drove drunk. Not Allison Baker, who worked at the supermarket and who slugged her husband on a regular basis. When Sandstrom found out, he locked her up. “She’s gotta be locked up,” he told Lydia later, who then told me. “We gotta lock that woman up until her husband comes to his senses and leaves her. No one deserves to be pummeled, especially not little Clark Baker. Man wouldn’t hurt a spider.”
It was even reputed that he wrote his wife a ticket for staying too long in a city parking space one time, but no one seemed to know if that was true or not.
Yes, the law was the law with Chief Sandstrom, and everyone had to follow it. Everyone.
At Aunt Lydia’s party, though, I saw a less intimidating man. All four of his children still lived in Golden. As the economy worsened and one after another of his boys lost their jobs, the rest of the family rallied around them. All four boys were now commuting long distances to work so the family core wouldn’t break up. There were fourteen grandchildren.
Watching that big man dance with his wife, Julie, and their children and grandchildren had been heartwarming for me; I thought that any man who loved his wife and granddaughters that much might be sympathetic to an increasingly paranoid and very panicked woman like me.
So I called to make an appointment. Margaret Zimball, the longtime secretary, put me on hold—I assumed to look at the chief’s calendar.
“Come on in now, sugar,” she told me. “He’d be happy to see you.”
So I came on in, and there I sat in front of Chief Sandstrom, who had spent twenty years in the navy and had had a short career as an amateur boxer. He was perfectly groomed, his black and white hair brushed right down, his uniform flawlessly ironed.
And I told him.
I told him about running out on my wedding day. I expected to see judgment in his eyes, but he just nodded. I told him why I’d run, that I’d been hit one too many times. “Wise idea,” he said, his voice like a bass drum. “Late, but still wise for you to take action. No innocent being deserves to be pummeled unless they’re a boxer.”
I told him about the blank letters, the dead cat, the dead chicken. The letter that said “Missing you.” I told him that I knew Robert was on his way.
And I told him that I didn’t think he could do a thing to stop Robert.
“Young lady, if there is even the smallest thing I can do for you, you are to consider it done. I don’t take to wife beaters, or husband beaters. Now, I don’t suppose you have a photograph of him.”
I did not, but I referred him to the website of the family business.
“Is that him?” the chief asked when he had pulled it up.
I didn’t want to look, but I did, and instantly felt vomit rising in my throat. I sank into a chair, nodding.
“He’s one pretty-looking boy, isn’t he?” The chief eyed me
. “You just relax now. Margaret, would you bring our friend Julia some coffee and a doughut?”
Margaret came in with the coffee and doughut, giving me a little hug.
“Have you told Dean about this?”
I shook my head.
“Why not?”
I felt my face heat up but decided on the truth. “I’m embarrassed. I don’t want to involve him.”
He nodded. “You need to tell him.”
“I can’t.”
“Here’s why you should, Julia. Dean Garrett is a big-time attorney in Portland. He’ll know what legal steps you can take. I’m going to handle the criminal end of this, which means I’m going to call his hometown police station, I’m going to get someone to talk to him at his office or at home, and I’m going to report back to you. But Dean can write some nasty legal letters, too, that hopefully will get this creep off your back.”
No, no legal letters of any kind from anyone would get Robert off my back, but it was a nice thought. “I would tell Dean but…”
“But what?” The chief prodded. Margaret patted my shoulder.
“I’m so embarrassed.” How to say it? I didn’t want to put Dean in the position of rescuing me. I didn’t want to have to be the type of woman who needed rescuing. Our relationship was too new. I didn’t want to involve him in my messy, messy past. It was too much to ask of anyone, anyhow. Robert’s family was rich and powerful.
“Tell Dean. I’ll call back east and get things moving on this end. This is a crime. It’s a crime of harassment and intimidation, and it’s a crime against the cat that was killed, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in this business it’s that hurting animals enrages the public like nothing else. Robert’s family is not going to like the publicity that this generates.”
I thanked him, held out my hand. He gave me a hug. Margaret gave me a hug.
“I’m sending Doug over to your house today. You give him the letters, show him where you buried the cat. We’ll need all that when we go after this guy’s ass.”
It was only later that Chief Sandstrom told me that as soon as I left he immediately got on the phone to talk to an acquaintance of his in Boston. His acquaintance found that Robert, unbeknownst to me, had been kicked out of no fewer than three elite prep schools, had spent some time as a teen in juvenile hall, and had been headed for jail on assault charges against two women when both of them mysteriously moved out of state and refused to talk to investigators.
“The women were beat to shit,” his police buddy said. “Both landed in the hospital for a week. Broken ribs, broken bones in the face, internal bleeding. That they didn’t die was a miracle. One managed to pull out her cell phone and call nine-one-one after he dumped her under a bridge. The other was found by a bum.”
“A bum?” the chief asked.
“Yep, a bum. Stanfield dumped her body in a trash heap—probably thought she was dead—and a bum looking for food found her. He was hysterical, apparently it triggered something from his experience in ’Nam, but he still managed to get the police and ambulance there.”
“And then that was that?”
“Apparently. That family has money and power. Has almost single-handedly put every Republican candidate in office in their area. Without their backing and support, the candidates didn’t have a chance. So Stanfield got off. Twice. Money exchanged hands, the girls were paid off, dirty chapter closed.”
“That isn’t how it works out here.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Bottom line, that guy’s on the loose, and if you’ve got a woman out there he’s gunnin’ for, you better get some protection. This guy’s a true psychopath.”
After a follow-up call, Chief Sandstrom’s anxiety rose another ten notches. The chief’s acquaintance had begun his preliminary investigation and found that Robert Stanfield III had taken an abrupt vacation from work ten days ago. No one had seen or heard from him since.
Chief Sandstrom later told me his whole body went cold and clammy when he heard this news. He made more calls.
“She isn’t planning on coming back, is she?” Jerry Keene, Lara’s husband asked, his face bleak. The lights in Aunt Lydia’s dining room were dimmed, a few candles in the center of the table offering a soft, flickering glow that revealed the hard, harsh angles of Jerry’s face. He had lost weight in the weeks since Lara had left, and a hopeless look had set up camp in his eyes.
Stash, Aunt Lydia, and I had all read the article in the magazine that Jerry brought us. A week had passed since the barn party, and when Jerry dropped by and saw the painting Lara had given Stash and Aunt Lydia, he had had to look away, his jaw tight.
A two-page spread in some art/literary magazine in New York City had a feature article on Lara. Her paintings were showcased, there was a biography, in which it was mentioned she was married to a minister and was the daughter of a minister, and then the writer of the article had darn near swooned in admiration—which, of course, he should. I had seen the talent oozing out of Lara’s work myself.
Brilliant. The most up-and-coming, artist in New York City. Burst on the scene…paintings all sold out before opening night….”
I recognized the paintings as ones from the attic.
Jerry explained, “After she left, a shipping company contacted me and came and got all the paintings. They even wrapped them all up. They were very nice. They had no idea they were ripping my insides out.” He brushed a hand through his hair. “I take that back. I think when I leaned against the wall and cried, they might have had a clue. One of them offered me a cigarette. I actually smoked it.” He sighed.
I covered Jerry’s hand with my own. I had heard that he was working all the time. Even the parishioners in his church were becoming alarmed. He looked ill, positively ill. Shave all that brown curly hair off his head and you’d think he was going through chemo along with Lydia.
Aunt Lydia was wearing a pink cotton scarf over her head that Old Agnes and her sister Thelba had knitted for her, but only because, she told me, it was “so cold it could freeze a pig’s tail right off his pig butt.”
I glanced down at Lara’s photo in the magazine. Her blond hair flowed over one of her shoulders like liquid gold. She wore a black shiny tank top, a pink crocheted poncho, black leather pants, and knee-high black boots. She looked like Lara, and yet she didn’t. She wasn’t smiling and didn’t look particularly happy, which would, of course, make her even more appealing to New Yorkers. They like angst and despair and misery to drive their artists. Lara looked sexy, but not warm.
I must say I was darn proud of Lara. She had broken out of the tight, jail-like, constrictive cell she had been brought up in, then she had left a situation that she could no longer bear. I must say I related to the woman.
And yet, Jerry was a hell of a catch. Even Lara had told me that he was always kind and loving and thoughtful. She had told me he was great in bed, and her only complaint was that he wanted sex all the time. “He’ll do anything to get it, too,” she said once, laughing. “He makes dinner with three courses, gives me a massage beforehand, brings me coffee and omelets stuffed with every sautéed vegetable under the sun…. Oh, yes, the man really knows how to get laid.”
I couldn’t imagine a woman ever letting someone like Jerry go. Watching him sink day by day further into a black pit of depression made me feel like I was getting hit with a sledgehammer in the head every day.
“Her father keeps calling me. Lara won’t return his calls. He just rants and raves. He swears it’s her brother’s gay influence that has done this to Lara. He thinks her brother has seduced her into ‘his lifestyle.’” Jerry shook his head in disbelief. “Her mother calls me and cries.”
I thought of the horrible things Lara had said about her father, how he had raised her with the Bible in one hand and a belt in the other, how her mother had stood by and let that domineering man control her daughter as if she were a cow and he the rancher. The mother’s cowardice was revolting.
“Two weeks ago he called me and scre
amed that Lara would go straight to hell unless I exercised my husbandly rights and dragged her back here to the church. ‘She needs to submit to you, her husband, submit, submit,’ he kept yelling. Then he started quoting the Bible and saying that Lara had always been rebellious despite the hours he had made her pray for forgiveness on her knees as a child. The way he has always treated Lara made me sick, and I couldn’t take it anymore.”
“So what did you do, son?” Stash asked, pushing a straight shot of Scotch Jerry’s way. Jerry nodded politely, but I knew he wouldn’t drink it.
“I told him to shut the fuck up.”
Shocked silence greeted his announcement.
Jerry laughed, but it was a bitter, dry laugh, like lemon mixed with dead leaves “That man is a tyrant, her mother a weak, sniffling ghost of a woman, and I swear, I swear, I will not let those two near Lara again if she ever comes back. I moved her away from her father’s constant criticisms and her mother’s subservient attitude because I didn’t want those two screwed-up, hypocritical people to be able to hurt Lara anymore.”
I didn’t know what to say. Jerry had tried to protect Lara from her parents. I wonder if Lara even knew.
“I don’t know how Lara even turned out how she did. Kind and caring and loving and smart and open-minded. Not judgmental and sanctimonious like both her parents. Her father has probably turned more people off of Christianity than on with his constant ravings about hell and sin and wrath. He is the epitome of what we don’t need in back of a pulpit.”
“Son, you didn’t say that to him, did you?”
“Yes, I damn well did, Stash. He needed to hear it. He needed to know that he cannot think of his daughter as his own personal emotional slave, that his parenting was both abusive and controlling, which is why neither his sons nor his daughter wants anything to do with him. He needed to know that God does not want us to try to bring people to His Son through fear and manipulation and anger. He needs to preach of a kind and loving God, a God full of forgiveness. He needs to help people to live more Christ-like lives, with generosity and love, not talk about how we’re all headed to hell unless our thoughts align exactly with his.”