Chapter 19

I didn’t have to be psychic to read Jo’s mind. The touch of her hand in mine was usually a delicate thing. This time she was tugging.

I couldn’t understand, so I did the one thing that husbands have been doing since the beginning of time. I said, “Yes, dear.”

“Don’t be condescending, Randall Jackson,” she said. “We need to talk.”

Less than twenty-four hours since she and I stood in front of friends and family and God and pledged marriage to each other. Now I was wondering exactly what I’d gotten into. We walked right through the lobby to the elevator. When the door closed, I said, “Baby...”

“In the room, Stoney,” she said.

That was an improvement. At least I wasn’t ‘Randall’ again. I let her into the room, flipped the privacy lock, followed her to the bed.

“Sit.” Her lips were a straight line. My doll. My life. The girl with the perpetual smile. Not smiling. I sat. She turned to face me.

“One more time, Mister Jackson,” she said. “I am not a delicate little flower. I married you, for God’s sake. I know you’re not perfect. Neither am I. I know there are probably things in your history that I don’t know about, that might be, shall we say, interesting. But this is me and you and right now, today. I want to KNOW. I didn’t run tonight because I wasn’t going to leave your side. You’re my stupid HUSBAND! I was going to DEFEND you! And then you hit the ground. I thought I missed ‘em shooting you! STONEY YOU SCARED THE CRAP OUT OF ME!!!!”

“Johanna Elise, love of my life, I am sorry. I will never hold back anything from you again.” I didn’t have to ACT contrite. I WAS contrite. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“Oooohhhh, my Stoney ... Baby, I love you. This is us. Me and you. Married! Really! Got the papers and everything. You’re not going to lose me. But don’t surprise me like that.” And she kissed me. And another.

“I love you too, little one,” I said. “That’s...”

“That’s what I mean, guy. You defended me. Again. But this time, the guy pulled that knife, and there were two of them and I thought we were had. My heart was going ninety to nothing. And then you went down.” Kiss. “Why didn’t you have a different holster? And I didn’t even see you put that one on. You were hiding things from me. That’s what made me mad. On top of everything...” And the dam burst. She was in tears in my arms, shaking.

“Johanna,” I said softly, “I love you dearly.”

“I know,” she sobbed. “You. You defended me. You could’ve been ... I thought you were...”

“We’re okay.” I paused. Kissed her softly. “Aren’t we?” We were having a moment. It ended when her cellphone rang. Irish tune. Her mom.

“Hello, Mom.” Pause. “No, this sort of overrides the honeymoon thing.” Pause. “Yes, he’s here with me.” Pause. She passed me her phone.

“Hello, Bridgette,” I said.

“Stoney, are you okay?” her voice had a quiver to it.

“Yes, we’re both fine, really.”

“You protected my daughter again, Stoney. You don’t have to keep doing that to show me you love her, you know.”

“I’ll keep protecting her as long as I have a breath in my body, Bridgette.”

“As her mother, I thank you, Stoney.” She paused. “Anders wishes to speak with you.”

“Okay,” I said. Jo’s head was sharing the earpiece with me, so she kept track.

“Hello, Stoney,” Anders said. “You gave us quite a fright. When Johanna called...”

“Thank God you have an intelligent daughter,” I said. “I’d still be at the station without your help.”

“And we would be at the hospital. Or worse. Without yours,” he said. “Son,” he said, “thank you for taking care of my daughter.”

“She’s my wife and I am responsible for protecting her. And thank you and Bridgette for rearing a spectacular person.”

“May I speak with her?” he asked.

“Certainly. Good evening, Anders,” I said. “Here’s Jo.”

“Dad,” Jo said. “We’re okay. Thanks for sending that lawyer.”

“He owes me,” Anders said. “Now you, young lady, have a real man. See that you treat him well.”

“Yes, Daddy,” she said. Her voice had changed in that one moment from Jo, master of her world, to a little girl talking to her daddy. “This isn’t how I planned my wedding day.”

“Yes, life often intrudes on our plans. I am glad you’re okay. I’m glad that Stoney is okay. And I am glad you two are together. Jo, be good to your husband. We love you.”

“Thank you, Daddy,” she said. “We love you and Mom.”

“Good night, Johanna, my daughter.”

“G’nite, Dad.” And she was back.

“Mom and Dad said both said that I should treat you well.” She started to get the smile back. “Stoney, are you okay? I mean, you just...”

“I’m okay, dearest one,” I said.

“You killed a guy.”

“Uh, he wanted to rape you. Pulled a knife on me. I killed a mad dog. No, wait. Mad dogs don’t know what they’re doing. Those guys made a choice.”

“You’re okay then.”

“I’m okay. I got my Jo-baby.”

“Shower then?”

“Together?”

She smiled. “No other way, is there?”

“Maybe some day in the future. Not tonight.” I stood up. She stood right into my arms. “You still love me, Jo?”

“Forever, Stoney.” She started to unbutton her blouse.

“No, let me,” I said. Our lips met while I worked down the line of buttons. I slid the blouse off her shoulders, relieved her of her bra.

“My turn,” she said. “That kiss thing works nice, don’t you think?”

It does.

Johanna’s turn:

Wedding Day. You do realize how many little girls have been dreaming of their wedding day for their whole lives. After watching Disney movies and Britain’s royalty getting married, wedding day has pretty much turned into the pivotal moment in the life of many an American girl.

I think, to use one of Dad’s words, that’s bullshit. I know families that have taken out second mortgages on homes to give Little Princess a wedding that picks the tackiest and most ostentatious bits of a royal wedding and applies it to suburban America and the daughter of schoolteacher Linda and her husband Ralph, the used car king, because their daughter deserves the BEST and this is the first of twenty-six guys she’s fallen in love with and slept with and he’s actually hung around long enough to plan the wedding.

Six months later the son in law is history, daughter’s bedding a new stud with interesting tattoos and the bills from the wedding are still there.

That’s the fear that Dad lived under. He didn’t know I was paying attention. I am Johanna Elise Jackson nee’ Solheim, daughter of Bridgette, embassy clerk at the Irish Embassy in Norway, and Anders Solheim, first generation native-born American Army Colonel, former assistant military attache’ to the American Embassy in, you guessed it, Norway.

I have lived with my mom, who adored my dad, and my dad, who worshipped my mom, all my life until college. I am the quintessential military brat. I know what it’s like to live in a place for three years, pack up my entire life, and move someplace else, meet a whole new set of friends, new school, the works. And I watched. Some of my counterparts took advantage of that ‘three years and then a whole new life’ lifestyle to get into some pretty destructive behaviors with promiscuity, drugs and alcohol, rebellion, petty crime, whatever. Of course, they had moms and dads who did the same thing. ‘Peyton Place’ is an archaic term for a community where promiscuity and sex was rampant, but military housing areas made that novel look like a Disney fairy tale. I watched. I learned.

When I went off to college, Mom and Dad sat me down and talked to me. “We cannot shelter you all your life, Johanna,” Dad had said. “You are eighteen.”

“We have done our best, Jo,” Mom said. “Now you are going to live away from us. You now make your own choices away from our eyes. We can love you, and we will. We can pray for you. And we will.”

I went off to college, living in the dorms first, and ultimately in a shared apartment off campus. I took the talent for music, flute, actually, and kept it as a passion.

I had played flute from the time I was nine. Everywhere we went while Dad was in the Army, he and Mom saw that I had the best instructors they could find and afford. Indulged? I was an only child, so in some ways I was indulged.

In high school, one of those high schools near Army bases that has a student body consisting of half locals, half army brats like me, I was in the band. I never liked high school bands because a lot of time was wasted with that ‘marching band’ thing. I mean, music is music and walking is walking and the two should not mix, at least not the way American high schools do it. But I was in the band and I had friends and we ended up taking a couple of buses to an ‘away’ game and after the game while we were waiting to go home, I and a bunch of other band geeks were playing around cutting up with some of the football players. One of my ‘friends’ was an absolute slut. She’d done half the football team already, her goal apparently being to do ‘em all.

I failed to notice that the crowd’s composition had changed. The bunch of band geeks I usually hung out with had moved on, leaving me and Kayson between the buses with about six of the football players. A couple of them were playing with Kayson. I could hear her giggling encouragement. I figured she was lining up two more notches on her coup stick. That left me with four others who thought they were being rewarded for their Friday night’s efforts on the field of play. And they thought I was playing coy and hard to get.

By the time my screams brought some adults to rescue me, they had torn and peeled most of my clothes off and one actually had his pants down.

Mom and Dad had to retrieve me from the hospital. No, I didn’t get raped, not in the strictest sense. I was not penetrated. I was violated. Mom and Dad stood by me. It took some standing, too. Four of the football team were suspended, two, one of them the guy with his pants down, ended up in juvenile prison. I endured the ‘she teased ‘em and then wouldn’t put out’ tales at school. Lost a few ‘friends’ who weren’t really friends anyway. Refused to play in the band except inside the school or at a concert. Underwent ‘counseling’ which was of little use.

I changed my idea of the whole male-female relationship thing. Guys weren’t ‘cute’ nor were they attractive in anything past conversation. I didn’t do dates unless you want to count a crowd of five or six where there were no official couple type relationships. I still got asked. Actually I got asked out more after the incident. I think it was because some guys thought they might succeed where four football players failed. But no dates.

You can imagine how that looked in college. Nobody saw me out with any guy. Meant I must be a lesbian. But nobody saw me out with any girl, either. Made me an enigma. As a musician, I blossomed. I think that a lot of the passion that normally would be spent on the dating and mating ritual went into my flute. Double major: Music and business administration.

This year I shared an apartment with Key. She’s an oboist who happens to be black. We had a third girl at the beginning of the semester but she made two weeks before moving off to join her boyfriend. That’s about the same time that I finally relented and decided to try a date.

Big mistake. David might be intelligent and a brilliant trumpet player. I thought his arrogance and sarcasm was a front. Somebody who could play like that just had to have a beautiful soul. I was wrong.