The Best Husband In Texas

They sat apart.

Each looked out a different side window.

In the back seat, in a low voice, Austin asked Iris, “You okay?”

She slowly blinked, then turned her head to look at him. He had to repeat his question. Then she nodded.

Austin was struck by that. How unlike a woman to neglect an opportunity to expound on such a question. To think of all the nothing replies she could have given him. She could have said, As compared to what? Or, Under what condition? Or even just, Why? Or she could explain to him why she was in such doldrums. He would like to know.

Dead in the water, she was.

Austin again looked at Iris. He moved his mouth in thought. Dead in the water described Iris very well. No response. No animation. No flirting. No laughter.

She moved, but it wasn’t animation. It was by rote in response to the need to shift or walk or eat. With her, it wasn’t ever choice. It was response. Austin wondered, was there enough life left in that luscious body? How could he reach in to rouse her enough to see him as a man she was interested in. One she could want.

She sat looking out the car window and was silent. He considered that she, too, was dead. Just about as dead as those three ex-husbands of hers. What good was her life now? She was as removed from life as if she now actually shared their graves.

So then Austin wondered which of the three graves she’d choose to share?

Austin was appalled to find he would wish to be one of the three with that claim on her. Each of those dead men had loved her enough to marry her. To be with her. To listen to her. They’d made love with her. Had she ever laughed with them?

Compassion for the three men licked through Austin, but he didn’t back off. Instead, he took Iris’s hand and held it in his. Their hands were linked between them, her cold little hand lying in his big hot one on the back seat as they sat apart.

His hand holding hers was very comforting to the freshly stirred grief that her conscience had awakened in Iris.

Would she ever be free of the guilt she suffered because her husbands were all dead, and she was still alive? All three had been especially good men.

Austin moved his hand as his warm, briefly tightening fingers assured her he was there.

He had the good, square, warm, rough hand of a man who worked physically. It was emotional for Iris to be given that comfort, right then. Her eyes teared.

Austin saw her tears in the glow of the passing streetlamps. Tears? Why...tears? He considered her particular situation and the teaching of the play.

Austin knew that Iris had understood the play, but instead of looking ahead to life, he realized that she was looking back at her abandonment. Was she alone? She could hardly be alone in her noisy, busy family. If she noticed who all was actually there with her.

Was she thinking of the loss of her husbands? The waste of their lives. How could anyone tell her that what had happened, had happened, and it was all past?

The play gave him the courage to open a discussion. “It was a good play.”

After a pause, she replied, “Yes.”

“Live for the day.”

She did not respond. But she didn’t move her cold little hand from the shelter of his hot one.

Austin wasn’t sure if he could say anything else. It might be too emotional for her. It was the first time they’d been out together—with Bud and Violet, of course—and this might not be the time to start her talking.

He could wait. He needed her to get used to him, to be comfortable with him. Then they could talk. He was older than she, and he was more worldly.

Worldly? She’d had three husbands!

Well, they’d all been kids. They’d been young and raw. And she hadn’t had any of them long enough to really be tested. She needed permanence and maturity.

She needed...him.

He again looked over at her. Her cold little hand was warming in his big hot hand. Hers was lax and...trustful? Did she trust him? She was looking at the passing suburbs of San Antonio as they drove through town toward the highway that went to Fuquay.

In the front seat, Bud was regaling Violet with all the old jokes that had obviously been stacked up inside him. Violet never once said, “Not that old one.” She either had a compassionate heart or no one had ever subjected her to all those old, stale jokes. Actually—and it was a surprise—Bud was a pretty good jokester. His timing was good. And here and there even Austin had to smile.

Iris did not. She simply gazed out the car window and was silent.

Austin just sat holding her hand and he, too, was silent.

It was rather late when Iris got home. Her mother heard Iris’s light step on the porch followed more slowly by the reverberation of Austin’s shoes on the porch.

The screen opened and closed almost immediately. On the porch the male steps were silent. Then Austin turned slowly and finally went off down the steps as he left.

When Iris went upstairs to her room in her parents’ house, her mind was not in charge. It was off somewhere. She moved by rote. She undressed and crawled into bed without brushing her teeth.

Emotionally exhausted, she slept. She dreamed of looking for her husbands. She searched for them. She was the only stronger in all the places she searched. But she couldn’t contact them at all.

Where were they?

Her dead husbands were good, young men. Would they be together? Jake and Tom were friends, and Peter had known Tom. Would they have met? Would they have talked about her with each other? When she died, would they all greet her? Or would they be...in the beyond?

Iris wakened, and found her eyes wet with tears. She still grieved for those husbands.

Her life was over. How long would she have to wait to get past this life and find them again?

The play had chided the audience to use their lives while they had them. Ah, but what if the use was gone? What if there was no reason to go on?

She had married three men. None was now with her. And none had left her with a child. They had all left her...alone.

Iris went about the morning as usual. She was drained. She looked at the day with disinterested, cold eyes. It was just another day to get through.

At breakfast, as she sipped tea, Iris’s mother came into the kitchen and said her usual, “Good morning, darling.”

Iris asked, “Which am I?”

Her mother poured some tea into a cup before she replied, “The wounded one.”

Iris considered that response. “Yeah. I suppose that covers it I have three deep slashes in my heart.”

Tears in her eyes, her mother replied, “That describes it well.”

“Austin took me to see You Can’t Take it with You last night.”

“Yes.”