A Mayhaw Christmas Read online

  “I want to paint them, you nitwit. What else?”

  Well, of course she did, he thought. Made complete sense to him.

  He gave her his most endearing look. “Would you like me to paint them for you?”

  She tucked her quivering bottom lip between her teeth and nodded like a little girl.

  “What color?”

  The woeful, tearful look came stampeding back. The bottom lip began to tremble in earnest. The waterworks began.

  “I don’t know,” she sobbed. “Something pretty. It’ll make me feel pretty. I wanna look pretty for you.”

  Dangerous territory here, he knew. If he suggested a color, she was liable to throw something at him regardless of her never having done so before. Bringing her a selection of nail polish bottles was the most logical course of action. Trouble with that was she had several dozen different colors of nail polish in her medicine cabinet.

  He turned around and walked over to her side of the vanity, opened her medicine chest. He had to clamp his tongue between his teeth to keep from groaning for there wasn’t a single bottle of nail polish to be seen. He opened drawers. Nothing. He went to the linen closet. Nothing. He looked in every conceivable place in the bathroom.

  Nothing.

  Straightening his shoulders, prepared to lose his manhood, he walked back into the bedroom.

  “Ah, sweetie?” he said in his best groveling voice. “Where did you move the bottles of polish?”

  Oops! There went the woeful, tearful face. Back was the Valkyrie stare.

  “I threw them out,” she snapped. “I told you that.”

  Well, no, he thought, she hadn’t but he wasn’t going to contradict her. He couldn’t imagine why she’d done that but he sure as hell wasn’t about to ask. There was only one thing left to do. He put on his most subservient smile.

  “Would you like me to go into town and get you a few bottles?”

  The bottom lip returned to reside between her teeth. Her little chin lowered and rose. Lowered and rose.

  “Then that’s what I’ll do.”

  With the speed of an out-of-control locomotive, he threw on his clothes, grabbed his sneakers, and all but sprinted out of the bedroom.

  “Make sure it’s mauve,” he heard as he snatched open the front door.

  *****

  September was almost at an end. Only two weeks to go before D-day, he thought. The nursery was outfitted. There were enough boxes of Pampers to last until the babies were about to graduate college. Two identical cribs sat side by side. Two rocking chairs were in front of the window. Two changing tables. Two strollers…

  Two of everything. The room looked like Mission Control in Houston. Gadgets from baby monitors to motion sensors to sound-activated lighting were stored on the two wicker shelf units. Bottle warmers. Bottles. Strange things that he had no idea what they were for glared back at him. If Allison could name it, he’d bought it.

  They were ready.

  And he was almost at the end of his rope. What little sanity he had left was slowly slipping down that slippery sisal. As he stood in the doorway of the nursery and stared at the array of stuff that was necessary to bring new life into the world, he felt overwhelmed and inadequate.

  “What you need is a baby daddy class,” Early had suggested. “I’d offer to teach you myself, but I’d rather watch you flounder your way through this like I had to. More fun that way.”

  There had been no Lamaze class.

  “I want drugs,” she’d insisted. “Lots and lots and lots of drugs.”

  She wasn’t sure if she was going to breast-feed or not. That would come after the first try. As sensitive as her nipples were, he was fairly sure they would be bottle-feeding the kiddos else why were there row upon row of bottles lining up like good little soldiers on the shelf unit?

  Whatever made her happy. That was all that mattered to him. He was even looking forward to the tandem two a.m. feedings.

  Or at least he thought he was.

  “Man, you have absolutely no fucking idea what you’re in for,” Early had said with a squeeze of his shoulder.

  He walked over to the crib with the frilly pink blanket folded at the foot. Tears pricked behind his eyes as he remembered buying four or five little ruffled red, white, and blue skirts he’d seen at Walmart. It would be a while before Bailey could wear one of the outfits but by next July 4th, his baby girl was going to be as patriotic as any other nine-month-old.

  And would most definitely be the prettiest, smartest, and happiest.

  “Hey.”

  He turned at the sound of a woman’s voice and smiled. “Hey yourself.”

  “Didn’t you hear me hollering at you?” Corinne Wexler—the woman to whom he’d lost his virginity decades ago—inquired.

  “I guess not,” he said. “Must have been lost in thought.”

  “Everything looks ready,” Rini said. She had become close friends with Allison despite the fact Rini had once plied her trade on her back. They both loved him dearly and had bonded over that fact.

  “If you’re looking for Allison, she’s over at Bea’s,” he told her.

  “Nope,” Rini said. She stuck her hands into the pockets of her ultra-tight worn jeans. “I was looking for you.”

  “I is here,” he said with a laugh. “Whatcha need?”

  “What do you need?” she countered.

  He knew her well enough to know her question wasn’t a come-on. She might flirt outrageously with him—always had—but it meant nothing. Not after Allison became the light in his dark world.

  “Are you women conspiring again?” he asked on a tired breath.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. “I’m just asking if there’s anything you need.” She glanced around the room. “If you need to talk, you know I’ll listen.”

  “Talk about what?” he asked. “I’ve never been happier, Rini.”

  “Yes, I know that but Allison and Bea both think something is bothering you. You won’t tell them so they’re hoping you’ll tell me.”

  Her gaze came back to him. She was a pretty woman. Always had been. She was fiery passionate, fiercely loyal, and brutally protective of those she loved, yet she was one of the sweetest women he’d ever known.

  “So give, Dunne,” she said. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”

  He put his hands on his hips, lowered his head and chewed on his lip. He knew she’d wait until he was ready to talk. She wouldn’t press nor would she comment unless asked to do so. He moved his attention over and over the carpet under his bare feet then drew in a long breath. When he released it, he closed his eyes.

  “What if something happens during the delivery?” he questioned.

  She didn’t say anything so he opened his eyes, lifted his head, and looked at her.

  “I figured that was what you were worried about,” she said. She cocked her chin toward the rockers. “Let’s sit down, okay?”

  They moved to the chairs. He perched on the seat as though ready to run at the slightest provocation, and she leaned back in hers to make herself comfortable—waiting for him to speak.

  For the longest time he didn’t say anything. He sat there with his fingers laced together, hands dangling between his spread knees. He kept his head down and his eyes on the carpet.

  “I keep having this dream,” he told her. “I’m walking down this long white-tiled corridor. Overhead, the fluorescent lights are so bright I have to squint. The floor is white tile like the walls. Everything around me is pristine. There are no doors along the corridor and it stretches for as far as I can see. When I turn around, all I see is the same white vastness behind me. There’s no sound and my footsteps are silent—being absorbed by the tile. I walk and walk and walk until I’m so tired I can barely lift one foot after the other. Finally, I am forced to sit down to rest. I know I’m alone—completely alone—but that someone is watching me. I can feel them watching me.”

  “So what do you think it means?” she
asked.

  “How should I know, Rini?” he demanded. “I’m not into dream interpretation.”

  “Did you Google it?”

  He pursed his lips. “Hell, no, I didn’t Google it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Maybe because I don’t want to know what it means!”

  “Justin would know,” she said of her friend—and sometime lover—in Dothan. “He’s into that kind of shit.” She paused then gave him a steady look. “Want me to call him and ask him?”

  He did and he didn’t but he just shrugged. Let her take that non-answer however she chose.

  “I’ll call him,” she said and dug into her back pocket for her phone. She scrolled through the numbers, chose one then thumbed it.

  He sat back and listened as she connected with Justin then told him the dream. He watched her face as she sat there absorbing what Justin was telling her. At one point, she lowered the phone.

  “He wants to know if you ever find a door and, if so, what color is it and if you open it,” she told him.

  “I never find a door. The corridor just goes on and on,” he replied, and she related his words to Justin.

  “Uh huh,” she said, listening. “Yeah. Yeah. Oh right. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, yeah, I’ll tell him. Thanks.” She terminated the call.

  “What did he say?”

  “Okay, a corridor in this case constitutes the birth canal. It’s a birth dream. It being a white corridor, he believes it definitely signifies a hospital and your worry about Allison. The white light would be the afterlife but it is above you, not ahead of you so it is illuminating you, not drawing you—or anyone else—into heaven or whatever waits beyond. The long corridor—how tired you are—expresses your frustration, your desire for the babies to make an appearance. There being no doors is a sign you are feeling trapped, excluded. Allison is experiencing the birth process but you are just a bystander, an observer and unable to have any say in what happens to her or the babies. Oh, and the feeling of being watched? You are being held in the palm of God’s hand. He’s not going to let anything happen to you, Allison, or the babies. Justin says it’s a typical birth dream and nothing for you to worry about.”

  “Then why doesn’t it make me feel any better?” he queried.

  “Because you’re a worrywart and if you don’t have anything to worry about, you’ll find something,” she replied.

  *****

  October came in on a cold snap two days before Allison was due. The air was crisp with the smell of burning leaves. Drew and Early were cutting down dead wood on the other side of the pond as the rain clouds began building in the west. Allison and Bea were in the cabin sitting in front of the fieldstone fireplace. The sound of wood being chopped, splintered, and falling echoed across the backyard.

  “He’s not sleeping that well,” Allison told Bea as they sat warming their toes in front of the fireplace. “He frets about the silliest things.”

  “First baby will do that to a man,” Bea said. “Poor man is scared poopless.”

  “I think he worries something will happen to me,” Allison lamented.

  “Of course he does. He’s imagined all kinds of disasters by now. If I know Drew Dunne, he’s worn out the Google search engine looking for things that could go wrong during delivery. The man loves you like crazy, Allison, so naturally he’s concerned for your safety. All that worrying has him acting like a bear with a sore paw. Why do you think Early insisted on Drew helping him cut down those old dead trees? Gives him something to do to keep his mind off your due date and it’s guaranteed to wear his ass out.”

  “By the time my labor starts, he’ll be a nervous wreck and have made me one, too,” Allison replied.

  “Not to worry, sugar. When you get around to having that third child, he’ll be an old hand at this.”

  *****

  Drew hiked the ax onto his shoulder to take a breather. His palms were blistered and he had a wicked headache behind his right eye. The burnt orange quilted vest he had put on over the old flannel shirt smelled of kerosene—the stench making him nauseous. He ran the sleeve of the tattered black and orange checked shirt under his nose. “Is it your plan to deforest the entire acreage out here?” he asked his cousin.

  “Bitch, bitch, bitch. That’s all you know how to do,” Early grumbled. He hawked up a wad of phlegm and spit it out.

  “Delightful,” Drew said, feeling his stomach roil at the sight.

  “Stop your complaining, asswipe. We’re gonna have enough wood for the winter,” Early said. He pointed to a stand of scrub oaks. “Kindling, too, if we take out those half-dead saplings over there.” He cleared his throat and spat again.

  “Will you stop that? You’re making me sick,” Drew complained.

  “How you gonna handle havin’ a kid puke up all over you, Dunne, or—better yet—piss in your mouth when you’re trying to diaper him?” Early questioned.

  “I’ve got the headache from hell beating at my temples so excuse me if I don’t answer your fucking stupid question,” Drew threw at him.

  “Baby puke is like clabbered milk—all pebbly and slick,” Early stated. “Stinks but not as bad as green baby shit. Green baby shit is the absolute pits. Now that is some godawful stink. All runny and oozy and…”

  “Shut up before I spew all over you, Rawls,” Drew warned. He turned his back on his cousin and started walking back toward the cabin with the ax clutched in his fist.

  “Not my fault you got a weak-ass stomach,” Early yelled after him.

  With every step he took, the pain got worse in Drew’s head. He was fairly sure it was more a tension headache than one of his migraines, but either way it hurt like hell. Between not sleeping, barely eating, and worrying himself sick over the impending births, he had made himself good and sick. When he opened the front door, the sound of Allison’s laughter was like a balm. He followed it into the den and found her sitting at one end of the sofa while Bea was puttering in the kitchen.

  “Did you guys chop enough wood to build our ark?” Bea asked.

  Rain was already starting to ping on the roof as he removed his vest and carried it into the laundry room where he stuffed it in the washing machine. He came out of the cheerful little room and headed for the sofa.

  “Bea, would you do me a favor and wash that vest?” he asked. “It smells like kerosene.”

  Bea opened her mouth to say something, took one look at his tired face then nodded. “Sure thing. You got a migraine, sweetie?”

  “Tension, I think,” he said. He went over to the sofa, lay down, and put his head in Allison’s lap.

  “Poor baby,” his wife said, smoothing his hair back from his forehead. “There’s some Excedrin Migraine in the top left cupboard by the fridge, Bea. Would you snag it and a bottle of water on the way to the laundry room?”

  “I’m on it,” Bea responded. After a trip into the kitchen, she brought the medicine and water to the sofa, opened the bottle, shook out two caplets then gave them to Drew. After she twisted the cap off the water bottle, she handed it to him.

  “Thanks, darlin’,” he muttered.

  “You let that work then get up and take you a shower,” Bea advised. “Get yourself to bed. I’ve volunteered to make chicken and dumplings for our supper.”

  “The kids coming over?” he asked. He didn’t want to be rude but he knew he couldn’t handle Bea’s rambunctious brood. The noise alone would be sheer torture.

  “Nah. My sister’s watching them tonight. God love her. I’ll have to take her up to Milledgeville tomorrow to the state nuthouse after she deals with them all night long,” she quipped as she went into the laundry room.

  “They never give me a minute’s worth of trouble,” Allison reminded her.

  “That’s because they adore you,” Drew mumbled. “Like everyone else does.” He turned to his side so the back of his head was against the ripe mound of Allison’s belly. Drawing his knees up, he wedged his clasped hands between them.

  Allis
on stroked his forehead as he closed his eyes.

  “Think a cold washrag would help?” Bea asked.

  “Wouldn’t hurt,” Allison replied.

  “Be right back.”

  When his wife laid the cold cloth across his forehead, he groaned. It was his way of thanking her.

  Within minutes he was sound asleep and dreaming…

  *****

  Her fingers were cool as they trailed along his brow. They lay beneath the spreading canopy of an old oak tree from which dangled beards of Spanish moss. The grass smelled of early spring. The breeze wafting over them fanned the tendrils of hair that had escaped the loose braid hanging over her shoulder—a shoulder bared by the dip of the white peasant blouse she wore. Beneath his head, the vibrant multicolored bands of her long skirt caught the sun threading its way through the oak’s gnarled branches. Cute little bare toes peeked out from the ruffled hem of the skirt and she wiggled them as she stared across the meadow.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” he told her.

  She looked down. Her smile was like an angel’s. Her eyes were filled with love as she gazed at him.

  “I was thinking you should make love to me, Highwayman.”

  Her nickname for him never failed to warm his heart.

  “Here?” he asked.

  “We’re all but hidden,” she reminded him. “Who would see us?”

  “Early?” he countered. “Bea? One of their nosy little brats?”

  “Early is at work. Bea went to Macon with her sister. The brats are in school,” she replied. She tweaked his nose. “I ask again. Who would see us?”

  “Well, since you put it that way…”

  He sat up, turned, hooked his arm around her waist, and pulled her down to lie beside him.

  His hands went to his shirt. He pulled it over his head and tossed it aside. As he unhooked the button at the top of his jeans, she curled her tongue over her bottom lip and his cock pulsed with fullness. He dipped his gaze to the pulse beating rapidly in her pale throat and his body ached with love and need.

  Her flesh was as silky as the petals of a gardenia. The feel of her skin against the pads of his fingers was more intoxicating than the most potent whiskey and it set his juices to flowing. He lifted the tip of her thick braid to his nose and inhaled the perfume clinging to the strands, then placed it to his lips and kissed it.