Free Miss Julia's Gift: A Penguin Special from Viking by Ann B. Ross
Authors: Ann B. Ross
I still cringe when I think back to that first year—I’m talking about my
second
first year—the one with Sam Murdoch, not the one with Wesley Lloyd Springer. The less said about that marriage the better, although I’m likely to mention it now and then.
All through that first year with Sam, I simply hadn’t known what to do with him. It had about driven me crazy. I look back now and wonder how he’d put up with me. Oh, I had my excuses and plenty of them, but the main one concerned my other husband, Wesley Lloyd—long dead by then, though briefly mourned. Even so, a twice-married woman can hardly avoid comparing husbands, can she?
I mean, how else can she tell if she’s made a better choice the second time around? I’ve heard of women who keep marrying the same kind of man over and over, and if there was one thing I hadn’t wanted to do, it was to marry another Wesley Lloyd Springer. That was why I’d kept putting Sam off every time he brought up the subject of marriage, delaying and equivocating, afraid that under that warm, sweet, easygoing, live-and-let-live personality of his there lurked a harsh and rigid taskmaster like the one I’d just buried.
Far better, it seemed to me, to live alone in peace than to risk another forty or so years of marital misery if I lived that long. But some women think it’s not living at all unless they have a husband. That hadn’t been my problem. After I got over the shock of finding Wesley Lloyd draped, lifeless, over the steering wheel of his new Buick Park Avenue, I’d felt so liberated as a widow—especially after learning the extent of his estate—that I was not eager to hitch my star to another man, regardless of how well thought of he was by the town and, I admit, by me. Because I’d been tempted, believe me, long before I actually slipped out of town with him to be married in one of those roadside chapels in Gatlinburg.
“Lillian,” I said to my longtime cook, housekeeper, friend, and confidante as I followed her into the kitchen as I’d done many times before and since. This was some few months into that first year of my second marriage. “I declare, I don’t know what to do with Sam. You’ve known him as long as I have, why is he acting this way?”
“He don’t act no different to me,” she said, her eyebrows raised. “What’s he doin’ you don’t like?”
“It’s not that I don’t like it, exactly, it’s just that I keep waiting for the other shoe to fall.”
“Huh,” she said, turning back to the sink. “Too late to be worryin’ about fallin’ shoes now.”
“I can’t help it. I keep waiting for him to turn into another Wesley Lloyd Springer. In fact, I was so fearful of it happening that the only way I could bring myself to marry him in the first place was to do it on the spur of the moment.”
“Yessum, an’ I guess that’s why you didn’t have no church weddin’ like everybody ’spected you to. Ladies all over town was decidin’ what to wear to such a big do, an’ you didn’t give ’em a chance to wear anything.”
I sighed. That had been all I’d heard for weeks after we returned from Gatlinburg. Hazel Marie, Little Lloyd, and, above all, Lillian had done nothing but complain because we’d not had an engagement party, two or three bridal showers (and at my age too!), and a big to-do in church with a reception afterward at the country club. Lillian was most insistent when it came to doing the proper and decent thing, socially speaking, so I had scandalized her by forgoing a church ceremony with a big write-up in the
Abbotsville News
that she could cut out and put in her scrapbook.
“No,” I told her, “the reason we didn’t have a church wedding was because of Pastor Ledbetter. After the grief he gave me over Wesley Lloyd’s estate, which he was convinced should’ve gone to the church with me going to the poorhouse, I didn’t want him marrying us. And it would’ve been a public slap in the face if we’d
second
first year—the one with Sam Murdoch, not the one with Wesley Lloyd Springer. The less said about that marriage the better, although I’m likely to mention it now and then.
All through that first year with Sam, I simply hadn’t known what to do with him. It had about driven me crazy. I look back now and wonder how he’d put up with me. Oh, I had my excuses and plenty of them, but the main one concerned my other husband, Wesley Lloyd—long dead by then, though briefly mourned. Even so, a twice-married woman can hardly avoid comparing husbands, can she?
I mean, how else can she tell if she’s made a better choice the second time around? I’ve heard of women who keep marrying the same kind of man over and over, and if there was one thing I hadn’t wanted to do, it was to marry another Wesley Lloyd Springer. That was why I’d kept putting Sam off every time he brought up the subject of marriage, delaying and equivocating, afraid that under that warm, sweet, easygoing, live-and-let-live personality of his there lurked a harsh and rigid taskmaster like the one I’d just buried.
Far better, it seemed to me, to live alone in peace than to risk another forty or so years of marital misery if I lived that long. But some women think it’s not living at all unless they have a husband. That hadn’t been my problem. After I got over the shock of finding Wesley Lloyd draped, lifeless, over the steering wheel of his new Buick Park Avenue, I’d felt so liberated as a widow—especially after learning the extent of his estate—that I was not eager to hitch my star to another man, regardless of how well thought of he was by the town and, I admit, by me. Because I’d been tempted, believe me, long before I actually slipped out of town with him to be married in one of those roadside chapels in Gatlinburg.
“Lillian,” I said to my longtime cook, housekeeper, friend, and confidante as I followed her into the kitchen as I’d done many times before and since. This was some few months into that first year of my second marriage. “I declare, I don’t know what to do with Sam. You’ve known him as long as I have, why is he acting this way?”
“He don’t act no different to me,” she said, her eyebrows raised. “What’s he doin’ you don’t like?”
“It’s not that I don’t like it, exactly, it’s just that I keep waiting for the other shoe to fall.”
“Huh,” she said, turning back to the sink. “Too late to be worryin’ about fallin’ shoes now.”
“I can’t help it. I keep waiting for him to turn into another Wesley Lloyd Springer. In fact, I was so fearful of it happening that the only way I could bring myself to marry him in the first place was to do it on the spur of the moment.”
“Yessum, an’ I guess that’s why you didn’t have no church weddin’ like everybody ’spected you to. Ladies all over town was decidin’ what to wear to such a big do, an’ you didn’t give ’em a chance to wear anything.”
I sighed. That had been all I’d heard for weeks after we returned from Gatlinburg. Hazel Marie, Little Lloyd, and, above all, Lillian had done nothing but complain because we’d not had an engagement party, two or three bridal showers (and at my age too!), and a big to-do in church with a reception afterward at the country club. Lillian was most insistent when it came to doing the proper and decent thing, socially speaking, so I had scandalized her by forgoing a church ceremony with a big write-up in the
Abbotsville News
that she could cut out and put in her scrapbook.
“No,” I told her, “the reason we didn’t have a church wedding was because of Pastor Ledbetter. After the grief he gave me over Wesley Lloyd’s estate, which he was convinced should’ve gone to the church with me going to the poorhouse, I didn’t want him marrying us. And it would’ve been a public slap in the face if we’d