The Dreeson Incident(203)

Missy frowned.



"Yes," Debbie continued. "I did just decide to ignore them. When Anne woke up, I took her out the front door and down to the run. I thought about letting her go out to the sandbox and bounce up and down on them. 'But that would be wrong,' to use a quote from that era. Funny as could be, but wrong."

"Did Nani and Pop catch them at it?"



"When Mother and Pop got back, the car made enough noise that by the time they drove around to the garage, they found the two of them sitting on opposite sides of the sleeping bag, their hands around their knees, looking thoughtful. Like those statues of monkeys contemplating a skull. Not that I expect our parents believed that they had spent the afternoon discussing Darwin."



"I can't believe that Nani and Pop just lived with this!" Missy exploded. "You and Dad wouldn't have. Ah. You still won't, really, even though I'm nineteen."



"I'm not my mother. Joe and Aura Lee got up, rolled up the sleeping bag, tossed it back in the closet on the back porch, and said that they were going to meet friends for pizza. Much to Mother's relief, I think. She sure didn't want to be put in a position where she almost had to invite Joe to stay for supper. She had been willing enough to see that Don and I were . . . very close. Not even really upset that I quit high school to marry him. She didn't want to see Joe. As long as she didn't acknowledge that she saw him, somehow he wasn't really there. So she didn't invite him to stay for supper. Any more than she would invite Ron to Easter dinner. Not even though, if she had, Aura Lee would have been right under her eyes all evening, instead of wherever they ended up. It went that way for his whole leave."



"Why?" Missy asked.



"I can't read your Nani's mind, Missy. As for Pop . . . He said once that there were worse possibilities in Grantville than Joe Stull, lots worse, even as rough around the edges as he was then."



Missy shook her head.



"So things kept going," Debbie continued. "Once, when we were at WVU, Chad came to pick me up one Friday evening. He came into our little hallway and asked, 'What's with the lifelike VE Day double statues in the corner?' I said, 'I'll tell you later.' Once we got out into the car, I explained that when Joe came in and dropped his duffel bag, they did that. Just stood there for a while with their arms around each other's waists, not moving. You could sort of multiply 'how long has it been since we saw each other' times 'how much of a hassle have things been since we saw each other' to get an answer as to whether this would last ten minutes or a half hour.



"Eventually, though, they would let loose and Aura Lee would say something on the lines of 'Pop sent ground venison and I'm making stroganoff' or 'I bought stuff for a cheese omelette with green peppers.' Food was always their next thought, once they were reassured that the other one was still really there. At least it was Aura Lee's next thought, and Joe's not one to refuse a meal.



"And the last thing they did before he left was go to the laundromat. On Sundays, when Chad dropped me off again, I'd come back to a big pile of clean towels and sheets, all folded with military precision.



"To be perfectly honest, I don't claim to understand Aura Lee and Joe. Like when she had that cancer diagnosed. Joe was like a rock for her and the kids, the whole time, but if she hadn't beaten it, I think he'd have gone under."



"What cancer?" Missy asked.



"She was diagnosed in the summer of '95. You were only ten, then. They operated at the university hospital in Morgantown. She was back and forth for radiation and chemo for a long time. She had to take leave from her job for nearly a year. Joe was still working out of Morgantown. He rented out the house in Fairmont and moved them all up there into an apartment so she wouldn't be faced with driving back and forth all the time, or finding someone to drive her if she was too nauseated. Got an older woman to live in so she didn't have to worry about constantly finding sitters for Juliann or where Billy Lee would be after school."



"How did I miss all that?"



Debbie sighed. "There were other things going on here at the time. And we didn't see them all that frequently anyway, so you may not really have noticed the difference. Aside from being sisters, Aura Lee and I didn't really have the same friends, the same acquaintances, by then. It had been over fifteen years since we shared that apartment while we were at the university. She was in Charleston for seven years and then had her own concerns the first few years after they got married. The doctors had to take both Billy Lee and Juliann by C-section and neither pregnancy was what they call uncomplicated."