Chapter 63

I knew that Joyce hadn't really decided to let me try to put things back together according to my own preferred plan. She had her own take on what needed to be done, and the order it needed to be accomplished in. She had already concluded that decisive action needed to be taken immediately with Dale. I knew she spoke with Eddie several times a week, whereas I hadn't spoken to Eddie, except once, since she had gone back to Oklahoma to be with Dale and her mom.

In the morning, Joyce and I were sitting in the kitchen eating our bowls of cereal. I could tell that she wanted to begin a conversation with me, but she wasn't sure about how she should go about it. Several times, in the week leading up to our Alabama trip, when we had started talking about things together, I'd suddenly lost my temper and had ended up yelling at her, rather than remaining calm and talking things through. Afterwards, I always regretted not allowing her to finish whatever point she'd been trying to make.

"Joyce, maybe we should both take turns bringing things up to talk about. We'll set a time limit, and during that time, only one of us can speak. The other one can't interrupt or do anything to prevent the speaker from finishing with their thought."

"We could always just talk together before, Kenny. We didn't need to set up any special rules for talking together."

"That was before. Now, I think we need to set some up, if we're ever going to start making progress with our situation."

Joyce said nothing as she ate her cereal and thought about what I had said. I'm sure she started to realize that I had made my suggestion in order to allow her to have time to tell me what she needed to. If she did decide to talk to me about something I didn't want to listen to, I was determined that I would remain calm and listen anyway.

After I finished listening to her, I wasn't as sure about what I'd do then. I believed my dream had been telling me that I needed to listen more, to gain information that I could then sift through and evaluate at a later time. A time when I wasn't all charged up with my own fears and anger. My dream had seemed to be warning me that I couldn't always trust the way I processed the information I was being given. At first, I thought it meant that the information wasn't trustworthy, but then I started to realize it was not the information I was being warned against, but the conclusions I was drawing from that information.

"If you think it will help us. Can I go first?" Joyce had made her decision. She was going to try my suggestion.

"Sure. How much time will you need to say what you want to tell me?"

"Ten minutes?" I nodded to her, purposefully looking at my watch face as I did so. "Okay then, here goes. Kenny, the first thing I wanted to say to you is that I want all the same things you do. I want us back together again, just like we used to be. I was always happy then. We had a very good life, and I couldn't have asked for anything better than what all of us had.

"You've changed so much, Kenny. I know you're still you, but, in a way, you really aren't. You look pretty much the same, except when you get angry or upset, then you look different. You always used to listen to people. Even if what they were telling you wasn't what you wanted to hear. You don't do that now. Unless you like what people are telling you, you cut them off and stop them from continuing. Often, you attack them with those hurtful things you say. All the people around us talk about how these changes have made you harder to like, more difficult to work with. I love you so much, and right now, as much as I'd hate to do it, I'm thinking about how I might need to take the children and leave you."

I was fighting with myself to hold onto enough of my temper to allow her to finish. Inside though, I was already seething. I had allowed her to speak to me, but rather than try to produce something positive and cooperative with me, she was resorting to the one threat she knew would cut right through my heart. I might have broken my agreement right then, but something told me not to do that. I nodded for her to continue speaking instead.

"It isn't just me that feels this way, Kenny. Shirley left because she was afraid that Derek would start trying to be just like you. He loves you so much, and he's always trying to imitate you. Before, when you were the other way, all of us loved seeing him do that. We wanted all the boys to grow up to be just like their father. Now, that's more of a fear than a hope. You tell all of us how much having your children living with you would mean to you, but then you say and do things that make us all afraid of what you might do if you ever lost your temper around them."

"I'd never hurt any of them!" I had tried so hard to keep my end of the bargain. I couldn't let her accuse me of possibly injuring the children though. I hadn't meant to scream my denial at her, but it just came roaring out of me like that. Joyce had pushed back in her chair at the suddenness of my outburst, and had almost ended up tipping it over. I felt bad about my lack of self control. "I'm sorry. Go ahead, I'll be quiet and let you finish."

"Don't you see, Kenny? We all realize that you want to be a good husband and father again. That's what we want too, but wanting it isn't enough. We've tried waiting, but instead of getting better, more like your old self, you're getting worse. Most of us, we've stopped believing. I never said this to you before because I had made up my mind that I would stay with you no matter what happened. If it wasn't for the children, I'd still stay with you. It really hurts me to tell you this, because I do believe that my Kenny is still there inside you. What I'm most afraid of is that by staying with you I'm encouraging you to think you don't really have to change. You have your money again and you have the freedom to do almost anything you want to do. I know I can't really force you to do anything. If you really do want your family back together again, you have to change back to being more like our old Kenny. I don't mean pretending to be more like him either. You really would need to change."

Joyce stopped talking. I waited for half a minute to be sure she was finished.

"Are you through speaking?" She nodded that she was. I took my time, trying to think of some way to respond to her. I was angry, but I was also happy to find that I honestly believed Joyce's words again. I'd observed her closely as she was speaking, and I knew she had meant what she said. "I listened to what you told me. I didn't like most of it, naturally. I'm going to take some time and think about it before I try to give you any answers or ask you some questions. The biggest problem I see with what you've just told me is that I'm already trying my hardest to be as nice as I can be, to all of you. I think I'm stuck with being who I am right now. I had hoped that was going to be enough, that I was going to still be enough like I used to be, and all of you would still love me and want to be with me. Inside me right now, I'm thinking that if you decide to leave me too, that must really mean I've failed in trying to become as much like my old self as I wanted to. I didn't get to pick and choose how this was going to work out. I think it would be better for all of us if you went back to Ridgeline today. I need some time to consider all my options."

"I think you're right. I need to speak with everyone up there, and I should talk to Eddie and Dale, to let them know what has been happening. Don't you think you could go back to the clinic for awhile and let Doctor Fellows try to make some adjustments? It isn't like you need to change completely back from where you are now. Mostly, it's the temper, and the things you say to us when you get upset. That's the biggest difference, and it's what has all of us a little bit afraid of you."

"It wouldn't help to go back there. Dr. Fellows already said she can't find anything else to do. My identity is merged and formed up like it should be. It's like being left handed or right handed, or having blue eyes or brown ones. This is my personality now. The saddest part of this to me is that I was very pleased that I came through this merger thing feeling like I'd kept so much of my old self. I really thought it was going to be enough. I guess I first started knowing that it wasn't enough, when you and I kept bumping heads. People do learn to control their tempers, Joyce. I controlled it better this morning than I even thought I could."

Whatever Joyce was thinking or feeling when I told her that, she suddenly stood up and left the kitchen. I knew, watching her leave, that my life was entering a new phase. An unwelcome phase. Nothing had changed about what I wanted. Well, one thing had changed, and that was that I'd end up having to do it all by myself. Losing Joyce like that, having her tell me that enough of me hadn't survived with the identity merge, really troubled me. She knew me better than anyone. Putting aside my recent feelings that she wasn't to be fully trusted, her assessment of me carried quite a bit of weight.

It took three hours before we could get a plane down to Birmingham to fly Joyce back home. We had driven to the office, with Joyce's luggage in the car. At ten o'clock, Joyce came into my office to tell me that Cindy was driving her out to the airport.

I had planned on driving her myself, and it was a disappointment to me that she had elected to ask Cindy instead. I nodded to her to indicate that I'd understood what she was telling me. It became an awkward moment because I didn't get up to go to her. I didn't want to hug her or tell her goodbye. Seeing that I wasn't going to get up and come to her, Joyce came around the side of my desk and kissed me softly on my cheek.

"Goodbye, Kenny. I love you."

I didn't say anything. If I had said anything, it wouldn't have helped my cause in the least. I watched her leave, thinking that her leaving marked the end of the very best part of my life. I felt sure that significant personality change was extremely unlikely for me. More than that, I believed I was much closer to being like my old self had been than any of them were giving me credit for. Even if what I'd become had turned out to be unsatisfactory to all my wives, I still believed it was enough for me to remain close to my parents, and to my children.

I knew one thing, and that was that I had to keep working at the business, performing well enough so that they would realize that, whether I was changed too much or not, I was still a valuable resource for the family.

One positive thing I now hoped for, was that my separation from the family would result in all the children returning to our home. All it needed for that was for Shirley to come back. If she really had left because she was afraid for Derek, then there was no reason for her to stay away now.

I spent the rest of the summer in Alabama, working long hours, six or seven days a week. My main focus was on the Quick Snack sales roll out, but I was also beginning to alter the product mix produced at all of our Consolidated production facilities. I wanted production engines to fuel the expansion I was planning to undertake.

In Tupelo, the vote to unionize the plant had failed by a slim margin of only six votes. I drove over to Mississippi the next day, with a company attorney, and we met with both victims and their families. I listened to both men telling me what had happened, occasionally interrupting and asking them questions to pinpoint exactly how the accident had occurred. The attorney and I both quickly concluded, me from my own knowledge of how quickly things could change for the worse, and he from his knowledge of industrial liability, that both men had acted in what they had believed was their best chance to effect as good a possible outcome as could reasonably be hoped for. It hadn't turned out well for either of them, but the accident hadn't been their fault. You might question some of their decisions, but I believed both of them when they told me they'd been trying to stop the leak of the scalding hot water from becoming worse.

It took less than an afternoon for all of us to agree to what both victims thought of as a fair settlement. I asked both of them to come back and continue working at the plant. The next day, after all the paperwork was finalized and the settlement checks had been mailed out, I called my father and told him to find us the best attorneys and file suit against our insurer, to recover the settlement costs. When I told him what I'd learned from both victims, he didn't think our settlement was excessive, or that I'd been too hasty in making my own decision about us awarding it. I told him, after we had finished talking about Tupelo, that Joyce and I had both agreed we needed some time apart. I also volunteered that I still had hope that we could salvage our marriage.

"Kenny, you'll never find another woman like Joyce. You need to heed what she tells you. She loves you, and that should count for a lot with you."

"It does. I've always tried to treat Joyce special. Lately, I've had a lot of doubt that doing that was a good thing. Joyce seems to always need to get her own way now, kind of like Mama. Sometimes, she gets pretty absolute about how things have to be. In my case, right now, she wants me to be someone I can't be anymore. I think she has been doing and saying things to try to force me to see things her way. Maybe she's always done things that way, but now, I can't let her operate like that with me. She claims I'm too changed from how I was before. I think it has more to do with me not allowing her to continue as the boss. The old Kenny would have allowed that. I can't do that, not when her leadership has left things as screwed up as they are now. Maybe, with us being split up for awhile, we'll be able to reach a compromise that we can both live with."

"That's a dangerous game you've chosen to play, Kenny. I'm not sure I can support that decision."

"I understand, Dad. I wasn't asking you to support it. I was explaining what I've decided. I expect you to support my business decisions though, and I'm planning on shaking things up down here quite a bit. How many new dollars in sales volume would you need to borrow another two hundred million dollars to pay for our expansion down here?"

"It isn't that simple, Kenny. If you started showing dramatic increases in sales that wouldn't be enough by itself. Show me increasing repeat orders, something that points to sustainable growth, and I can get you all the money you'll need within three months time."

"I'm loaning the company five million to cover our costs down here for the build out of the Quick Snacks program. If anything happens to me, you don't have to pay me back. I just didn't want to wait to get approval for the changes I'm going to be making to get this thing moving much quicker. I want to have at least one hundred teams out in the field by years end. That should bring us ten thousand new accounts a week until we begin to saturate the market. You need to find us a fleet deal on a thousand new delivery vans. I'll have Kyle fax you up all the specs and the interior design he came up with."

"What you're planning for seems far too optimistic, Kenny. Even with two week training classes, you're talking about a hundred new recruits for every single class. I'm not sure its wise to try to be so hasty."

"I've lost three years, Dad. I'm not saying we won't fall short of that goal, but that's what I'm shooting for. Don't worry about the cost of it. I'm going to be trading every day too. I've been doing very well trading my new programs. I can fund the vehicle and the training costs from that if I have to."

"That's money for your family, Kenny. You might need that money someday."

"Dad, I know you get printouts of all my trading accounts weekly. I'm the one who told Frank it was all right to send them to you and to Joyce. You know how much I've been making already, so you know I can afford to do this. There will always be plenty of money for everyone from all the other accounts I've had set up. We might never have another opportunity to blanket a whole national market like this one again. We need to act while it's still available to us. I don't think its risky at all. If we can't open tons of new accounts with the first hundred people out in the field, we can always cut back our plans to what you believe would be a reasonable rate of growth."

"Would you listen to me if I told you I thought we needed to do that?"

"I'd listen, but only as long as you listened to why I thought we should keep pounding as hard as we can. It won't be that hard to see which one of us is right, Dad. The sales numbers will either start climbing like crazy, or they won't. Everything we'll be selling will be at a terrific mark up. How many times have you told me that nothing speaks louder than fresh new profits?"

Dad laughed. He knew I was right. Most of the time, when he got excited about something, he'd make me keep selling the idea to him, just because he enjoyed being sold.

"All right, Kenny. We'll try it your way. Do me a favor though, call your mother and talk to her. She will take Joyce's side in this, and you really can't blame her for that. Just tell her that you still hope to get everything worked out soon. When you calm her down, tell her some of the sales numbers you're shooting for with this new program. You know your mother. Nothing convinces her that you're okay more than knowing you are out there making lots of money. That's a carryover from Senior's time. His answer for everything was to look at the bottom line. Bertie learned that from him. If I hadn't been able to turn a consistently high profit yield over the years, our marriage would have never survived."

Dad surprised me by understanding how important his business success had been to the continuation of his marriage. It made me wonder what else he already knew or suspected. He was a very different person from either Mama or me. I was seldom able to anticipate these little insights he occasionally showed.

I did call Mama though, and we had ourselves a good conversation. Good that is, after we had gotten finished with our discussion about me being separated from all of my wives.

When I told her that I was hoping to create a billion dollars in new annual sales over the next three years though, she was immediately firing questions at me, trying to see if all my internal numbers matched up with the big number I'd used to start off the topic.

When she found out that each sales team only needed to open one hundred new accounts per week to achieve my goal, she got positively giddy. Mama loved creating something new, as long as that something resulted in a profit. She preferred to have some or even all that profit accrue to her own account, but, any profit, hers or someone else's, was an exciting subject for her.

Right before we finished our conversation, Mama asked me if there was anything she could do to help me with Joyce and the rest of my family.

"I can't say right now, Mama. I think Joyce might be right about me having changed too much. She thinks I can just snap my fingers and be back to being the same way I used to be. I can't do that, and sometimes, I don't think I'd do it even if I could. There are things I can do now that I like. I don't see it all being bad, all these changes in me that people keep telling me about. I'm not talking about most of the changes, just some of them. I think Joyce is frustrated now because I won't automatically defer to her in all things. It used to be if she said something, I would just believe it. I found out that was a mistake. Joyce could have done a lot more to keep my family all together for me. She could have talked Shirley out of leaving, but she didn't do it. I think Cindy's another good example of what I mean. Ever since I've been down here, Cindy's shown a lot of interest in me. Joyce told me that Cindy didn't do anything with her for the whole time I was over in that clinic. As soon as I get out and come down here, Joyce and Cindy get back together again. I didn't do anything to cause that. It was all Joyce and Cindy. There are many things like that happening around me now. Things that make no sense to me. When I ask Joyce about them, she denies them, and starts accusing me of being different, and of scaring everyone away from me. Cindy doesn't act scared, and neither did Brenda, back when I was spending so much time with her."

"Speaking of Brenda, she was over here to see me last night, Kenny. She told me what she said to you, and then she also confessed to not behaving well during a short period of time when you were incapacitated. I was very stern with her about her behavior. I can tell you that this isn't anything that is still ongoing. She's very worried now that you'll choose to send her packing. In her mind, by telling you of her indiscretion, she was performing an act of love. She sees it as a sacrifice she chose to make for you. She said she didn't want you loving her anymore when you were under the false assumption that she had behaved better than some of the others. I don't condone what she did, but it isn't necessarily a reason for you to want to terminate such a long standing relationship with her. Brenda needs constant reassurance that her beauty is remarkable. In that way she takes after her mother. Her body may have been involved in those acts, but her heart never was. It wasn't anything approaching a love affair. She has asked me to try to intercede on her behalf. She also promises that something like that will never occur again."

"Brenda's promised the same thing before. It always lasts for just as long as her promise is convenient. I'm not even that concerned with what Brenda's done right now, Mama. Joyce is the key to all of this. She'll be the one I need to convince. If I do, she'll tell all the rest of them what they should decide. They listen to her, and that's a big part of the problem I've been having with her. In order for me to believe what Joyce has been telling me, I'd have to believe she had suddenly lost all her power to control all my other wives. We both know that isn't what happened. Joyce has tried to turn all this back on me. Now, she's complaining that this happened because of me being so different, both in the clinic, and even now."

"You are different, sweetheart. For Joyce, in particular, that difference is very unsettling. In the past, you always paid her your very special kind of attention. This attention was much more than what you showed to any of the others. To Joyce, it was as if she were your one most special favorite. She took pride and comfort in knowing that none of the others measured up quite like she did in your eyes. Since your recovery from your illness though, you no longer treat her like you did. You judge her just as though she were the same as any one of the others. She always knew she couldn't compete based on her looks alone.

"One of the changes in you now is that you seem much more confident and forceful whenever you're proposing one of your own ideas. You no longer collaborate with Joyce beforehand like you used to. She's gone three years without that collaboration, Kenny, and in that time, some of her weaknesses have been exposed. She was never that decisive, even when you were around. You would bolster her confidence by the way you treated her, and this support would allow her to appear to be acting decisively. To other people, it appeared like she was initiating plans on her own. Without you there to do that for her, to prop her up like you had, she became far more tentative. Of all the girls, Joyce had the most to hope for with your return. She needed you to regain her self confidence, dear, and you didn't provide that for her."