Leaves Of Hope

“You came home to graduate.”

“And to be with you again. I care about you. I love you—you know that. Now come with me to Sri Lanka. Just for the summer. If you hate it, fine. But you won’t.”

She turned and set her hands on her hips. “You got cholera over there!”

“Yeah, and then I got well. I’m fine, now.”

“They’re having a civil war!”

“Not up in the mountains where we’ll be. The country’s an independent republic. It’s mainly just a problem between these two groups, the Tamils and the Sinhalese. The Tamils want an independent homeland, because they’re Hindus. The Sinhalese are Buddhists, and they’re the huge majority, and they’ve got the power.”

“I don’t care!” she sang out. “Tamils, Sinhalese—”

“But the government isn’t going to let the Tamils do anything too bad. Americans aren’t even a target. And the people I worked with on the tea estate are all really nice. I never felt afraid.” He raked his fingers through his long, shaggy brown hair. “You’ll be there with me for the Kandy Esala Perahera in July. It’s this amazing pageant with ten days of torch-bearers, whip-crackers, dancers and drummers. They’ve got elephants all decorated and lit up. Everyone told me it’s spectacular. We’ll see so much other stuff, too. This ancient ruined city called Anuradhapura has a temple that supposedly contains the right collarbone of Buddha.”

“What? Buddha’s collarbone? Come on, Thomas! That’s ridiculous!” Frowning at the very idea of herself in a place where people worshipped things like that, Jan stepped away from Thomas again. She spoke over her shoulder as she walked toward her mother’s flower garden. “That’s stupid! I mean, it’s just not for me, you know? I’m from Texas, Thomas, and I don’t need Buddha’s dumb collarbone to make my life complete. I don’t want to see a temple, and I don’t want to visit a place with malaria and cholera and bullets flying around. Okay? Okay? Can you just drop it?”

He stood by the picket fence, thumbs in his pockets the way she loved, staring at the ground. This conflict had been building between them for weeks. The moment Thomas got back, he’d begun putting subtle pressure on her—dropping hints, talking nonstop about the wonderful island and the amazing tea estate and the fascinating people. She kept her mouth shut, hoping the whole thing would go away.

Finally he mentioned that he might be offered a full-time job in Sri Lanka. Then he actually got a letter from the company offering him a contract. He wavered, talking about it one way and then another every time they were together. She’d tried to change the subject or ignore him. But today, after Jan had spent the morning hanging over the toilet vomiting, he’d told her he wanted her to go with him.

Not married. Nothing permanent. Just a trip. A summer vacation. See the place. Have a look around. Do some touring. Then she could return to Tyler and start her junior year at UT. A wonderful plan.

Right.

“Are you telling me you don’t ever want to go to Sri Lanka?” Thomas asked. “You wouldn’t even be willing to visit me there?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“But I want to work with tea!”

“You majored in agriculture, Thomas. Your parents own a rose company. Why on earth can’t you just stay here in Tyler and grow roses like everybody else? Why does it have to be tea?”

“I told you. I don’t want to be like everybody else. I want to see the world. I want to live in different places. Tea can take me wherever I want to go. They grow it in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, India, China, all over the globe. It will be an adventure. Don’t you see? A great life.”

“Well, have fun on your big adventure, then.” She turned away, blinking back tears. “Go, Thomas. Just go home. I don’t even want to see you again. You’ve changed so much.”

“I have not, Jan! Why do you keep accusing me of that?” He caught up to her again, setting his hands on her shoulders. “Please, babe, don’t be this way. It’s me you’re talking to, okay? The same guy as ever. Only, I found out the world is a big place, and I want to experience it. I want you with me. I want it to be us…together.”

“What are you saying?” She looked into his brown eyes. Was this a marriage proposal? If so, he wasn’t doing a very good job of it. “You said you wanted me to go to Sri Lanka with you for the summer and then come back here.”

“Right. That makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, you’d have to leave so you can finish college.” He scratched the back of his neck. “You couldn’t stay there. You wouldn’t have a work visa. Besides, you’re not even twenty yet.”

“But I’m old enough to travel halfway around the world with you? Old enough to flout my parents’ belief system and throw it in their faces? And then what? Come sashaying back to Tyler like nothing happened? Is that what you’re asking me to do, Thomas?”

“Is this about us having sex? Because if you’re going to go into your major guilt trip again—”

“This is about you telling me to act like an adult by going to Sri Lanka with you, and then turning right around and telling me I’m too young to marry you.”

“Marry me? I’m not ready to get married! I’m only twenty-two.”

“Fine, then. I don’t want to marry you, either.”

“Who said anything about getting married?”

“Nobody, because it’s not happening. Ever! Go to your stupid island and see Buddha’s collarbone and grow tea and have a wonderful life. I’m staying here in Tyler where I belong.”

“Come on, Jan. Don’t make such a big deal out of everything. I’m just talking about summer vacation. The two of us together. And maybe in the future…maybe if you like Sri Lanka…and after you get your degree…and I’m more settled…and older—”

“No, Thomas.” She brushed the tears from her cheeks. “No, no, no. If you want us to be together, you’d better stay here in Tyler. Because this is where I live. This is my home, and that’s my family in that house, and I’m going to get a degree and teach school, and have a baby and—” She hiccuped. “I’m going to marry someone who wants the same things I do, and we’ll have babies. Children, lots of them. And I won’t have to worry about my kids being blown up with land mines, or mosquitoes giving them all malaria, or any of that stupid stuff!”

“I love you, Jan! How can you tell me just to walk away from you like this?”

“I have my priorities.” She folded her hands over her stomach. “I know what’s most important in my life. And it’s not Sri Lanka.”

“It’s not me, you mean.”

“I didn’t say that.” She was crying so hard now that her nose had begun to run, and she felt like she might throw up again. “I love you, too, Thomas. I do. But I want the guy I met at Wood’s Nursery and Greenhouse. Not this foreigner you’ve turned into.”

“Jan, please. Try to understand. Try harder.”

“I can’t. No matter how hard I try, I don’t understand where you’re coming from. I want security. Stability. I need it. Nothing’s going to change that about me. You can’t change who I am into someone you want me to be.”

“And you can’t change me, either.”

They stared at each other. He was crying now, too, his eyes red and tears hanging on the fringes of his lower lashes. He swallowed and jammed his hands into his back pockets.

“Okay, then,” he said. “I guess this is it. It’s over between us.”

She nodded as bitter bile began to back up into her throat. “Bye.”

Before he could see her completely lose it, she ran across the yard, flung open the back door, made it to a bathroom and retched in the toilet.

Jan pressed her pillow against her face, blotting her tears. Dumb, dumb, dumb to be crying about Thomas Wood after all these years! She had done the right thing. To protect herself and her baby, she had cut him out of her life. Everything about him. She had thrown away the letters he had written her from Sri Lanka. She had packed the little gifts he had given her over their two years together—a pretty candle, a picture of the Rocky Mountains, a couple of science fiction novels she had forced herself to read, photos of the two of them together. Before he was scheduled to leave town, she had taken the box over to his house and dumped it on the front porch.

Three days later, she had discovered a box on her own front porch. Even now, the memory of Thomas’s handwriting on that brown cardboard made her heart hammer so hard, her pulse rang in her ears. She had knelt on the painted boards and pulled apart the flaps of the box. Expecting to find things she had given him, she was shocked to see a tea set sitting inside a nest of white foam peanuts.

It was beautiful. Covered with pink roses, her favorite flower, the teapot was rimmed in shining gold. Jan had lifted the pot in both hands, holding it to the afternoon sunlight, marveling at the glow of the glaze on the ivory china. Delicate bluebells, green leaves and yellow daisies mingled with the rose blossoms. The pot itself was a strange shape, squared into four corners with four small feet, yet somehow still soft and undulant. She had lifted the lid and peered inside to find a tiny white envelope wedged at the bottom of the pot.

Even now, lying in bed, a forty-five-year-old widow with three grown kids and a whole other life, she could see the words Thomas had written to her in blue ballpoint ink. “I bought this tea set for you at an antiques shop in London on my way back to Texas. I knew you would like it. The pattern is Summertime, and I had hoped that would be our time. I will always love you. Thomas.”

Setting the lid on the porch floor, Jan had turned over the teapot. Grimwade, it read. Royal Winton. Summertime.

She had taken out the creamer, a funny little squared-off thing with four feet that matched the teapot. And then she had studied the rectangular sugar bowl and the matched pair of gold lines that rimmed it on the inside. The set looked so pretty…too pretty…on the old, creaky porch.

Crying all over again—it seemed she was either crying or vomiting in those warm days of early summer—Jan had settled the china pieces back into their foam nest and carried the box upstairs to her bedroom. Briefly she had considered putting the tea set on her bedside table. But the thought of Thomas holding that delicate china in his big, wonderful hands…walking into an antiques store just for her…writing her the note…loving her…

“Oh, rats!” she breathed out. Jan threw back her covers and swung her feet out of bed. Plodding to the bathroom, she thought of how slender and long-legged she once had been. And how pudgy and ancient she felt these days. Thanks to her daughter’s snooping, she wasn’t going to get a wink of sleep. Tomorrow she would have swollen eyelids and a fat nose from crying all night. She would be irritable, and Beth would start bugging her about the tea set and Thomas and all the things Jan had worked so very hard to put away.