The Salvation of Naomi Snow

By Martha Rose Warner

Naomi Snow and her husband join three couples lifelong friends
on a reunion cruise. The luxury liner is headed for exotic places
and along the way the adventurers learn a great deal about
themselves and their fellow travelers. Relationships between each
couple uncover secrets never before revealed. Naomi encounters
a mid-life crisis that will change her life forever. Watch how her
friends reactions give her the courage to confront the past and
the future forever, owning the present with a determination that
refuses to falter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493181858

Martha Rose Warner

Martha Warner studied literature and writing and received her Master’s Degree from West Virginia University and for eleven years was a college English and writing professor. For nearly a quarter of a century she was a trainer and consultant for the USDA Graduate School and was a highly respected trainer nationally. Martha’s passion was to write and at the time of her death in 2011 had three novels approaching completing and eventual publishing. Her family wanted to see the continuation of her work by publishing her novels.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

We made it, Naomi, Phillip said, as he sank into his deck chair. Phillip was the literal one of this pair, so he meant that after all the hustling around, they made it to the ship and their vacation.

Yes, we made it, Phillip. Naomi was thinking in figurative terms. They had made it here, still together after these 22 years of marriage.

Naomi looked at Phillip; he looked better at 46 than he did when she first met him back at Beecher College 26 years ago. What a short time ago, and yet what a long time that seemed!

A young couple strolled by cloaked in that honeymoon aura—eyes locked in each other’s, each acutely sensitive to the slightest fingertip touch of the other, exuding that sensual glow of new lovers. Naomi thought how transitory those moments of pure flame are!

Near Naomi’s chair, the couple paused at the rail, oblivious to even the ocean they seemed to stare at, resting against—almost into—each other.

Naomi studied the man, who projected virility: wide shoulders above muscled biceps and slender hips. Naomi grew up at a time when women did not admit to scrutinizing men; scrutiny of the other sex was considered a male privilege. If there was a resulting whistle or catcall, a woman was supposed to be indignant and act affronted as if her honor had been compromised.

Naomi never quite understood that; she had always been in awe of men and didn’t know why a woman wouldn’t want a man to think she was worth a whistle. One of the hard things for her to reconcile in her girlhood was that you had to appear on the outside to be something and feel some things that didn’t match how you really were on the inside.

As early as first grade, Naomi had noticed boys; even to this day, she could remember a boy in each school class who had attracted her, whose presence made her self-conscious, wanting to be noticed, but, at the same time, afraid that the attention might cause her to be embarrassed. About the homosexual phase pubescent girls are supposed to go through, Naomi could remember nothing. She focused on men; even men her father’s age had been infinitely more memorable than the women she met in her young life.

Born in 1945, the second daughter of a Baptist preacher, Naomi found her ideas of men and love shaped by old movie reruns on television. From them she learned that a waltz led to a kiss that seemed to be the consummate act of love. And, Will you marry me? was apparently life’s ultimate question. From these TV fictions, Naomi’s own highly dramatic and emotional Cinderella fantasies evolved: underneath grew a sensual, even sexual undercurrent she did not yet understand.

From earliest memory, Naomi was insecure about her self-image, seeing herself as a brown-oxford, knee-sock kid in a world of black-patent shoes and lace-edged snow-white anklets. Naomi remembered herself as a plain, even frumpy child.

Dr. Shrink Sawyer later pointed out that Naomi had used her childhood and adolescent plainness to protect herself from the fear that her sensual nature would sweep her into the maelstrom of a sinful, lustful life. Further, Dr. Sawyer speculated, Naomi’s multiple lover fantasies indicated that she was not getting the love and care she needed from those around her.

Naomi’s adolescent fantasies often involved being loved by more than one man, being loved, of course, for her goodness and purity. The climactic scene of the fantasy might occur in the hospital room, her dream self near death, but knowing she would pull through, having to tell Lover A (with some really masculine name like Cliff or Kirk or Steve) that for your own good and mine, I must reject you for Lover B (equally masculine name), for it is he whom I love. It is a far better thing I do… (A noble, even sacrificial act, trying to cushion the blow for Lover A, since he must spend the rest of his life bereft of her presence.) One day you’ll meet someone else… Naomi’s dream self was a prolific user of clichés.

Elementary school fantasies gave way to more intricate dramas to inhabit her day dreams. Most often, though, these fantasies occupied the half hour Naomi needed to fall asleep, under the parsonage eaves, in the room she shared with her older sister Ruth. Their day-to-day lives seemed so gray and void of romance that Naomi often felt she lived in black and white, and only her fantasies glowed in Technicolor.

Walking to school, usually ½ block behind Ruth, who was slimmer with longer legs, Naomi would entertain the notion that somewhere in the world at that very moment, a boy was walking to school wondering where his beloved was, and that some enchanted evening, they would see each other across a crowded room, and know each other instantly as THE ONE. Never mind that boys her age really seemed more interested in football and baseball, and maybe in their burgeoning sexuality, but certainly, not in romance, the way Naomi was dreaming about it. In fact, right now, she would have been ecstatic at even a glance of mild interest from a boy across the algebra classroom, since real prospects seemed impossible.

As Naomi entered high school, in spite of how she viewed herself, she was not friendless. She became the stereotype of the all-around kid that parents hope for; excellent grades, drama club, band, class officer. But she was not quite all-around; something always set her apart—her plain wardrobe, the social restrictions imposed by Father Snow, (no movies, no dancing, no card playing, and no cosmetics), and the family’s modest financial and social status, living on the wrong side of Main Street in a tightly structured small town. And, of course, Naomi’s asexual life: she had no boyfriends.

She remembered sitting in 10th grade English class, looking at Herman Petrovski, three rows ahead. This farm boy, a football lineman, was much her intellectual inferior, but what attracted Naomi was his muscular torso underneath that plaid flannel shirt. She wondered what it would be like to touch him maybe to massage his shoulders, back and upper arms. Only very rarely was she courageous enough to think of those arms around her, and she would have to dismiss those thoughts immediately because they involved a real person and were just too incredible.

In retrospect, Naomi realized that none of her adolescent fantasies drifted below the belt; it was as though people were only viewed from the waist-up. Of course, she did not have a clear idea of what a nude male looked like. She had no brothers, and her father rushed out of sight if she or Ruth came into the hall and saw him in his modest pajamas. Naomi was even embarrassed to see her mother partially dressed, probably because it seemed to make her mother even more uncomfortable.

Naomi’s adolescence predated school sex education and Mother Snow never volunteered information on that crucial subject. In fact, into her teenage years, Naomi carried her TV-fostered concept that sex meant kissing only, fully dressed, and that love meant dancing or simply staring with the I’ll-love-you-till-I-die look into each other’s’ eyes.

So one day stood out dramatically in her memory. In her mind she could still hear Ruth’s panicked voice calling Mother Snow to the upstairs bathroom; Ruth, two years older than Naomi, had begun to menstruate without any proper knowledge that such an event would happen. A curious Naomi was banned from the hushed conversation behind the closed bathroom door. A pale and solemn Mother Snow emerged and told Naomi that they must talk.

Mother and apprehensive daughter crossed the lawn from the parsonage to the church and, to ensure privacy, went to the basement. Beside the clammy cement block wall, painted a pale sea foam green, seated on a hard and worn walnut pew, Mother gave Naomi, not the facts of life, but a brief explanation of menstruation. Phillip and Naomi had often joked later that if she had any sexual hang-ups (and Phillip often thought she did), they could be traced to that afternoon and that brief explanation of things in the church basement.

The final revelation of the real, not the TV version of the consummate act of love came by way of Ruth and a girlfriend, who were giggling on Ruth’s bed one humid, midwest summer afternoon. Naomi begged to be included, so the older girls decided to share what they knew about how babies are made.

Naomi was shocked, even repulsed, by their description and declared that it couldn’t be true. For several days she walked around in horrified disbelief, unable to think of little else. She looked at men and women driving by in cars, shopping in the local Montgomery Ward store, working in the fields, and said, They wouldn’t do THAT!

In church on Sunday, she sat beside her mother and stole glances at her, looked at her father in the pulpit and thought, I KNOW they wouldn’t do THAT. Ruth and I must be adopted.

Monday morning she could bear it no longer and decided to confront Mother Snow with Ruth’s lie. The scene that followed was a memory that as an adult Naomi still found laughable and painful, all at once. The parsonage they occupied then had been built before indoor plumbing, so one of the bedrooms had been converted into an oversized bathroom. Because of limited space elsewhere in the house, Mother Snow used the bath as a sewing room, too.

Naomi, finding her mother at the sewing machine that morning, sat on the edge of the tub, and with words tumbling out quickly in her excited need to know, repeated what Ruth had told her. Mother Snow did not look up; she blushed and said that everything Ruth had said was true, except that you don’t have to kiss afterwards.

Now Naomi knew the secret, but still she kept those fantasies waist up. From her ideas of love, she banned any notion of what was not purely romance. Any thought of physical contact was still limited to hugging and dancing and kissing; she was not able to accept the idea that the facts Ruth had given her were relevant or necessary to love everlasting.

Naomi may have been dateless in high school, acutely aware that she was different, but she did have boys who were her friends. She carefully maintained a nonchalance that said friendship was all she wanted, and she didn’t care if none of them would declare undying, romantic love for her in spite of her social differences from other girls. She was one of those safe girls a guy could confide in, a buddy, a pal.

Andy, class president, when Naomi was secretary their junior and senior years, always expressed interest in her life and openly admired her abilities, but he was, after all, from the west side of town, a doctor’s son, a baseball star, and number one on the list of boys the girls wanted to date. He was always booked with a west-side girl, most likely of the cheerleader variety, a lawyer’s daughter: the kind of girl who was usually friendly to Naomi in a condescending way; a girl Naomi secretly considered vapid and brainless, but, nevertheless, enviable. After all, that girl had dates, and more importantly, that girl fit in

There was one person her high school memories always resurrected: Charles Andrew Markham, III. Chuck took Spanish, was in the drama club and on the track team. His parents were rather free-spirited Episcopalians (Naomi’s family always sorted people into religious categories as the first order of business). Chuck was one of those unusual teenagers who resist being pigeonholed into any particular peer group. He associated exclusively with none of the groups around school, not the jocks, or the preps, or the greasers, but seemed to have individual friends from all categories, while maintaining his unique character.

Chuck often walked Naomi home from school, raided the Snow’s refrigerator, sat beside her on the piano bench and taught her to play something besides hymns—even some rock-and-roll music. One song she always remembered was Last Date.

At the Snows’, classical music and hymns were preferred fare, and on Sundays all else was verboten. While Naomi was in Sunday night church services, her peers were watching the Ed Sullivan Show featuring the Beatles or with that new star, Elvis Presley, gyrating his way to fame. She hated to have to go to school on Monday morning and hear about these events second-hand. She relied on Chuck to bridge these gaps for her.

Beyond that, Chuck provided glimpses of a world foreign and exotic to Naomi. There were rumors that Chuck’s mother occasionally greeted the milkman in the nude, that Chuck’s father was having an affair with his best friend’s wife. Sometimes in photos and home movies Chuck showed her, Naomi would look with wonder at the Markham’s partying with other couples, sometimes four or six of them fully dressed but in bed together raising a champagne toast to the camera.

Naomi remembers vividly attending Christmas Eve services with Chuck and his family. She experienced for the first time the pageantry and formality of the Episcopalian service. Naomi felt herself drawn into the rhythms of the chants and litanies so foreign to her own religion. The service was romantic and timeless; participating in historic patterns of worship used by participants for centuries without change fascinated Naomi.

Perhaps another attraction was that the Snows’ religion had an immediacy about it, a daily concern for the salvation of one’s soul. And in a physical sense, the Snows had moved about so often in Naomi’s early years—not because Father Snow was an Elmer Gantry type, getting ridden out of town on a rail. Rather, the type of Baptist denomination the Snows belonged to operated democratically—no bishops, not hierarchy of power, other than among the elders, an annual rotating presidency to handle the affairs of the national denomination.

When a minister felt the call of God to leave a church and move on, he let it be known that he was looking for a new ministry. Somewhere a Baptist church would be looking for a pastor and would contact an available man to come and preach a trial sermon. The family would wait through tension-filled days to see if Father Snow would be chosen. At one pastorate, the congregation voted every New Year’s Day to decide if they wanted to keep Father Snow for another year. Instead of New Year’s football, there would be New Year’s anxiety for the Snow family. Fortunately, Father Snow was an able and caring pastor and was never rejected; he left each pastorate of his own accord, spurred by the conviction from God that his usefulness to that congregation had run its course. However, the anxiety remained.

At one time, Naomi attended four different schools in four years, and by adolescence, she yearned for a personal history, a heritage for her own. She recalled this as her Daphne de Murier phase. She used her spare time to read mystery and romance novels; she especially liked stories involving a house with a family history of ownership handed down from generation to generation without interruption. Naomi longed for a permanent home, an anchor, a tradition of her own.

Father would have explained, had Naomi asked, that this world is not my home. I’m just a passin’ through, and that Naomi was just longing for her heavenly home, that God was the anchor and an eternal home for the people in His grace. From earliest memory, Naomi had doubted these aphorisms, so she did not often share her thoughts with her father. She feared that the affairs of her secret heart would cause her father anger and grief.

Chuck’s family did have a history; in fact, part of Chuck’s appeal to Naomi and his uniqueness among her peers was his attachment to that family history. He spent weekends at an old abandoned house on his family’s farm. Chuck single-handedly furnished the house with period pieces to complement the wood stove in the kitchen and the 1880’s character of the place. He added a square pedestal table, cane chairs, oil cloths, and stocked the glass-front cupboards with remnants of blue willow dishes and antique utensils.

In the living room, he arranged a velvet couch and rocker, and upstairs under the eaves, a four-poster bed. In the attic, the former residents had left trunks full of nostalgia. Among the cobwebs and dust, Chuck and Naomi spent lazy summer afternoons reliving someone else’s adventures by reading letters, postcards, and diaries from the family past. From these scraps of remembrance, Chuck and Naomi conjured up in their imaginations the lives of the former occupants of the old farm house.

All this time, Naomi believed her feelings for Church were hidden; she was, as usual, being the buddy, the pal. Oh, they traded class rings once, neither certain if it was just a joke, but Naomi adored Chuck, not just because he didn’t mind being different from other young people or curse his fate about the difference the way she did. But she adored him especially because he was male and because he spent time with her and obviously cared about her even if he never said so. She knew that his accidental touch—and she was pretty sure it was always accidental—left her breathless.

One day, driving home in the dusk from an afternoon at the farmhouse, Chuck abruptly stopped the car, jumped out and picked a bunch of wildflowers from the roadside. When he handed her the flowers with a smile, the gesture brought tears to her eyes. She was too afraid to reach out for him, and he made no move toward her. Yet, she would see that scene in her mind’s eye forever—the sunset glow on Chuck’s black hair, the laugh wrinkles at the corners of his deep brown eyes, his crooked grin.

Chuck and Naomi had other friends. In fact, a group of ten non-dating friends had even all gone to the prom together but didn’t stay long. Naomi was determined to go, because as a class officer she had been on the prom committee and helped plan the whole thing. Father Snow had forbidden her to dance, of course, and she had to do a lot of coaxing, but he had relented and even agreed to buy the formal she needed. It was a dress she would always remember—yards of baby-blue chiffon.

As prom time approached, she realized Father did understand how important the night was for her. He allowed her to plan an after-prom party for her gang at the parsonage. But the party ended early, when the food and punch ran out and when Father told one of the boys to put away a deck of cards he had pulled out of his pocket to do a magic trick.

After graduation, most of the group went off to colleges in separate directions, making promises always to remember the fun times, and predictably, they all forgot; however, Naomi never forgot Chuck.

Phillip, who had been dozing; stirred and checked his watch. It’s about time for us to cast off.

He stood up reluctantly and stretched. He reached for Naomi’s hand to help her up. They stood at the rail and looked down at the heads of the dock workers, who worked stories below on the concrete pier. After standing idly about waiting or pacing in anticipation, the workers hurried to cast off the huge ropes for winching into the hold of the ship. The immense liner began to ease away from the dock as the sun was setting off the stern. As they headed for open sea, the wind buffeted Naomi and Phillip’s faces and blew back their hair.

Shall we go below and get organized and rested before dinner? Phillip had to raise his voice above the wind. Naomi nodded assent, and they left the Promenade Deck to go to their cabin on the Main Deck below.

CHAPTER 2

The plan had been not to meet until dinner, which just heightened the anticipation about the reunion. John Drake preceded his petite Tricia down the corridor to their cabin; her eyes sparkled as she peeked eagerly around John’s familiar solid shoulders and upper arms.

John had refused to relinquish their cosmetic bags to the dock stewards who would have done all the carrying for them. When the other bags arrived, John become very businesslike about settling in. He rested on his berth while he directed Tricia about the best locations for stowing things. He assigned Tricia the berth in the corner behind the bath, with the dresser at the foot of John’s berth. He wanted to have the bed in line with the door; John always considered how to put himself in the protector position when they traveled.

John took care to organize the cosmetics and shaving gear himself in the miniscule bathroom, so that everything would be precisely where he wanted it for his daily grooming routine. He congratulated himself that there was no bottle of Valium in the cosmetic case anymore. That used to be a staple in his travel kit and at home in the medicine cabinet.

He and Phillip had both found Valium very useful at a time in their lives back on Sycamore Street in Western Springs. John had teenagers then and Phillip had little ones. Their careers were hitting rough spots that especially difficult winter.

John remembered a night when he had come home tense, almost distraught. A black man with fewer years’ experience, less savvy and know-how than John had been promoted above John because of some minority quotas imposed on the company. To John’s dismay, that night of all nights, the Valium bottle had been empty. Thank God for Phillip next door; a quick call, a dash across the driveways, and Phillip let John in and produced some Valium.

Phillip sat down to listen sympathetically to John’s tale of woe. Certainly, they agreed, they were not the least bit prejudiced, but it really wasn’t fair. Promotions should be determined by merit alone. They lamented the need to deal with politics in the work place.

Since John had discovered jogging, though, and found how that exhilarated him and relieved his stress, He didn’t need Valium anymore and now felt younger than his years. Hard to believe he and Tricia would soon be grandparents. Hard to believe baby Ken was finally getting married—finally because he was already 27 years old. If Tricia hadn’t babied Ken so much, John wouldn’t have had to panic in the corners of his very male soul for fear that Ken might not even like girls at all. Well, anyway, now their first born Maureen would be having a baby, and as a 47-year-old grandfather, John would not have one gray hair on his head.

John looked at Tricia, thinking she had hardly aged at all since she became, of necessity, his teenage bride her senior year in high school. But much thanks for Tricia’s preservation was due to his watchful efforts—no good having a wife who ages faster than you do! John had always taken care of Tricia so that she didn’t have to worry. He’d always helped her, like when he enrolled her in nutrition courses so she could cook more healthful meals for him—well, for the whole family, of course. Hadn’t he bought her the rototiller so she could more easily plant the garden with fresh vegetables, and he’d kept her supplies with all the canning paraphernalia she could possible need. And he had got her jogging, too, although her enthusiasm didn’t always seem high enough. Yes, they could really be proud of themselves and their lives.

Tricia was a terrific wife, all right, having baby Maureen that summer after graduation and Ken only 18 months later. And Tricia fit so well with the Drake family, who had taken her in immediately as one of their own. And while those other wives around him, like Wanda and Riva, and now even Naomi, had wanted, even demanded their own careers, Tricia had been content to be his Mrs. John Drake.

John sometimes had trouble keeping his mouth shut around Charlie and Larry because of their wives. Well, Wanda’s Charlie never did seem to have much masculine drive that John could see, not like he and Phillip had. And Larry—well, no wonder Larry ran around and had affairs, with Riva off doing her own thing all the time.

Tricia, meanwhile, was luxuriating on the berth, thinking about the week ahead. Such a great idea for a reunion—no garden, no housework, no cooking, no volunteer meetings—just leisure. Maybe she’d give up jogging just for this one week.

She caught John studying her and thought how lucky she was that this had all worked out for her. In spite of all those dire statistics about the fatality rate of teenage marriages, especially when the bride is pregnant, here they were almost grandparents, and probably still younger looking than all the others in their group. Well, Charlie and Wanda were older and always looked that way, but Phillip and Naomi, Larry and Riva had all ages more than she and John had.

Imagine any of the others taking up jogging after 35. Well, all right, she hadn’t really wanted to jog, but she had to admit that John had been right, as he usually was about everything they decided to do—except about Ken, of course.

Taking pride in her female ability to bear children, Tricia had hoped to fill the house to overflowing with little ones and was devastated to hear Ken would be her last. But she hadn’t really babied him, overprotected him. Ken had been naturally afraid of things, some things his father insisted little men must do. Ken flinched when the baseball came his way or when his father tried to teach him fundamentals of boxing. Ken cried easily, something John could not bear in his only little man. Later he hated going hunting with his father and refused to pull the trigger when he had that buck centered dead in his scoop.

No, she had not spoiled him or made him a sissy. Now, at 27, he had found a woman he loved who loved him, and Ken was going to get married after all. It had all worked out. So, if that was the only thing John was ever wrong about, that was a pretty good record, don’t you think?

John stepped out of the bathroom with a sigh of relief. Tricia could tell he felt he could relax now that everything was organized the way he wanted it. She felt the old surge of desire for him, and when he bent down to kiss her cheek; she put her around his neck and held on. John firmly detached himself.

Not now, Tricia. This has been a long and tiring day already, with hours to go. We want to be rested and at our best later for dinner. What we need now is a couple hours of rest. I’ll set the alarm for 7 p.m.; that will give us over and hour to get ready for our late dinner seating at 8:30.

Yes, Tricia was thinking, sex is for night, for dark, for missionary position, but then he really is right, isn’t he? Right, as usual. He is such a good man—doesn’t drink or smoke, doesn’t run around like Larry does, thank God, and yes, John Drake is almost always right.

Wanda Bradford gave the impression that she had taken charge of this ship for the duration of the voyage. She was hauling a briefcase and a huge purse down the corridor with Charlie, empty handed, trailing behind. Actually, though, Wanda was a little nervous inside; she and Charlie had chosen this cruise for the reunion, and she wanted everything to be just right.

Wanda had chosen the Norwegian Queen for several fundamental reasons. First of all, the Queen sailed to places the reunion couples wanted to go, and this was a week they could all schedule a cruise. Wanda didn’t relate to things like gross tonnage, but she did want a ship large enough to provide variety in entertainment possibilities as well as in accommodations. The Norwegian Queen, with its1500 passenger capacity and its crew of over 600 seemed to fit the bill. There were nine passenger decks and probably at least one crew deck which didn’t show on the brochure. After all, those 600 crew members had to sleep somewhere.

The two huge dining rooms occupied only about half of the Main Deck; two entertainment lounges, a casino, and two or three smaller piano bars and the hotel desks and purser’s office sprawled out to cover the entire International Deck. Besides that, the brochure showed at least six other watering holes tucked here and there on the upper decks. That should be enough sources of alcohol, even for the Houston’s Wanda thought dryly.

Before final booking, Wanda had deliberated at length about one more question; should the four couples have adjoining rooms or should they be separated on different decks? She had decided on the latter plan, explaining that she wanted critiques of all sorts of rooms, but really because she believed that even among old friends, there could be such a thing as too much togetherness.

She had reserved the Houstons, a cabin on the Boat Deck, so named because that was where the life boats hang. From there it was only one deck up to the Pool Deck and only two decks up to the Sun Deck, both of which she knew the Houstons would enjoy for sun and water and beverage access.

The Drakes had wanted the Promenade Deck because, of all things, John wanted a place to jog early in the morning, and the Promenade Deck was the only one offering a clear course all around the ship.

Between the Houstons and the Drakes, she had chosen a cabin for the Atwoods on the Star Deck, and, since it gave her a sense of being near the hub of the ship’s activity, she booked Charlie and herself on the Main Deck toward the bow of the ship, on the same level as the dining rooms toward the stern.

Charlie followed