Mt. Moriah's Wake

by Melissa Norton Carro

  I went to the hall bathroom and threw up.

  I’m not sure what I expected, but I felt as if I were standing naked in a crowd—as if the feelings I had tried to mask through alcohol and caffeine and work and the sooty streets of Chicago—had been exposed. And cast off. How dare I trust someone.

  I returned to my cubicle and sat doodling on the corner of copy that I was supposed to be editing. Tom was fourteen years older; he had a career and a talent that he was using. He had a house and the ability to sleep peacefully at night. I was pretending to be a writer in a city where I had no home. I was a silly girl, crying to the refrain of a song that made everyone else in the world smile.

  At lunch that day I bought the Tribune and decided to become serious about finding an apartment. And a life. All my paycheck was now going to the hotel off Wooster, and Lori and Megan had long moved on. I had been very frugal during my months in Chicago—counting the free “drywall dinners” Tom made me as investments in my savings account.

  Four days later, I stepped into the elevator where Tom and Rod were riding down.

  “So when’s it going to be finished?” Rod asked.

  “I’ve got a crew coming to finish up all the drywall first of next week. I just had to get it finished; it was driving me crazy. Then I can start painting—something I’m actually pretty good at.” He smiled in my direction. “Drywall is just no fun, is it Jo?”

  I thought of those Saturdays, the music blaring, the cold beers we drank on the front porch. The conversations and the ease with which I told Tom things—some things I had never told anyone. Even Grace.

  “Nope. No fun,” I said. He waved a goodbye as the elevator door closed behind them.

  Over the next few Saturdays, I went to see twelve different apartments. Each could be categorized in one of four ways: too many cockroaches, too far, too unsafe, or too blah.

  I didn’t know what I was looking for—just that I wanted it to be mine. To have character. Something with lots of windows and hardwood floors—a place where I could snuggle in an afghan and write. Riding back to the hotel on the el, I remembered the first and only time I had been to Chicago, as a twelve year old—the trip where Chicago cast a web over me and ensnared me with its lights, its activity, its buildings that told stories. Doro had taken Grace and me to celebrate our birthdays. We wore painted nails and small heels that gave us blisters. We dined in a revolving restaurant, and the view of the sparkling lights reinforced my commitment to live in a big city someday.

  As we passed through the grand front doorway of the Hancock Tower, smiling to the attendant, Grace whispered.

  “Are there only doormen? You never see a door woman.”

  “Dunno.”

  “When you move here, you need an apartment with a doorman,” said Grace. “Think of all the stories he could overhear and tell you about. Then you could write them down.”

  “Well, maybe I need to be the doorman.”

  Grace giggled, that infectious kind of high-pitched giggle that made you laugh with her.

  “No way. Then when I came to visit I’d have to just sit in a chair in the lobby all day, watching you.”

  “But you’d be the famous friend of the first door woman. Maybe we could drag you and your chair to the door to prop it open.”

  More giggles.

  Doro inserted herself between us, holding both our hands.

  “You girls are quite possibly the silliest little so and sos I’ve ever known. Why are you talking about doors?”

  We surrendered totally to the giggles then.

  Doro was right: We were twelve years old, foolish and silly. Is there any greater happiness than that?

  The fourth Saturday I went through the same routine. Again, there was nowhere I wanted to live. Nothing seemed as safely impersonal as the hotel. Perhaps I just wasn’t ready to go on with my life.

  Doro sounded a bit perturbed in our phone conversation the next day.

  “Is it about money, Jo? Do you not think you can afford an apartment?”

  It wasn’t. Before I left for Chicago, we had sat down at Doro’s kitchen table, pad and calculator in hand, and worked out a budget for my two thousand dollar per month salary. The studio apartments I was looking at were around twelve hundred dollars per month. I was managing fine, and told Doro so.

  “What about your slush fund? You still have it in savings—for furniture and deposits?”

  “Yes.”

  Silence on her end, then, “Jo, do you want to come home? Is that why you haven’t found a place? Is that what this is about?”

  I thought of my daily runs along Lake Michigan. I could almost taste the frosted mugs of beer in the Irish pub around the corner and feel the crowd huddled against the wind, waiting for the Michigan Avenue Bridge to lower.

  Chicago was now home. I didn’t want to go back. I couldn’t say that to Doro, but she knew.

  “Why don’t Maddy and I come help you apartment hunt?”

  The thought was tempting, Maddy surveying the caulking and the electrical and the very foundation of every apartment, and Doro planning for window treatments. But I didn’t want them to come. I knew they’d see at least twenty apartments that were appealing, and I’d have to explain why I didn’t want them. I’d have to find more excuses to stay in the hotel with the noisy corridors that kept me company on my sleepless nights.

  “It’ll just take some time, Doro. I can do it. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  The truth is that I was running out of excuses. How much longer could I keep running?

  On the sixth week of my apartment shopping, a small ad on the bulletin board in the lunch room of Sandalwood & Harris intrigued me:

  room for rent in (almost) renovated old house. use of kitchen. no smokers. quiet landlord: you won’t know i’m here. $700/month.

  A room in a house. Not unlike a room in a hotel. I could do this; I wouldn’t be completely alone. I dialed the number on the ad, fully expecting an old lady to answer.

  But it was a man’s voice—and not an unfamiliar one.

  “Tom?”

  “Yes. Who is this? JoAnna?”

  “I, uh, didn’t expect you to answer. I mean, I didn’t know this was you.”

  “But you called me. Who did you think would answer?”

  “No, I mean, I was just …”

  I heard a doorbell in the background.

  “Hey, Jo, I’d like to chat, but someone’s here. I’m renting out part of the house. Can I call you later?”

  “Only if you tell me if the person at the door looks like someone who likes to watch old movies and is super clean. Because if not, please wait to rent the room until I can get there.”

  And so it was that I called Doro the next day with my new address: 408 Hudson Street. She was delighted, although a bit skeptical about my sharing a house with a man. She asked if my space had a lock. I started to tell her Tom’s gay story but thought better.

  “He’s a nice man, Doro. Actually we work together.”

  “Oh! Is he handsome? Is he a writer too?”

  “He’s a photographer and kinda cute. We’ve gotten to be friends.”

  “Define friends, doll.” Doro always had to dig.

  I changed the subject. “You’d approve of the place, Doro. It has wonderful light.”

  “Hmph. I would hope it has light.” She paused for me to chastise her for her sarcasm. “Seriously, Jo, be careful.”

  Be careful of what? My safety? My virtue? My money?

  My heart?

  The space was perfect. In the months since I had helped Tom on the house, he had finished the room over the garage. There was, indeed, great light, from a large casement window. The only inaccurate part of the ad was that I surely knew Tom was there.

  He helped me place my daybed, dresser, and dinette set—my first purchases from my savings. Doro was delighted to hear about them as well. Real progress, she thought.

  But there was no progress on the romantic front, and I’d be kidding myself
to deny that I wanted it. I liked Tom’s quietness, his steady demeanor, the time he allowed himself before answering questions. I was drawn to his friendship and his utter kindness. And I shivered with the taps on the back as we passed in the kitchen, each of us leading different daily schedules.

  Miracle of miracles, once I moved in to Tom’s house, I slept. And in the dark. I would lie in bed and hear Tom’s footsteps pounding the hardwood floors downstairs. His drafty cottage creaked and settled around me, and I was reminded of my attic bedroom at the Inn. There I would lie beneath the sloped roof and hear Doro talking to guests in the parlor. Noises of the Inn—doors shutting, radios whirring, dishes clinking—lulled me to sleep with the promise that I was not alone.

  One morning, when I had been living there a month, Tom and I were headed out the front at the same time. With a swoop of his hand, he reached to open the door and beckoned me over the threshold.

  “Allow me to be your doorman, me lady!”

  Doorman. A gentle pang tugged at my stomach. Oh, Grace. Was I starting a life?

  Without you?

  16

  DAUGHTERS

  I AWOKE ON DORO’S SOFA with a pattern on my cheek and an extra afghan tucked neatly around me. Maddy, I thought. My watch said 3:00 a.m. I got up and peeked in the door next to the kitchen. I saw Maddy’s shape on the tall spool bed and heard his dainty snores that had shocked Doro when they moved in together.

  “My new husband snores like a little princess,” snorted Doro one morning as she flung around biscuit dough. “Not what I had expected from such a big gruff man.”

  “And my new wife snores like a truck driver,” retorted Maddy.

  I closed the door and moved to the curved staircase that presided over the foyer. At the second floor, I passed the June, July, and August rooms and, at the end of the grand hallway, obscured in darkness, was the staircase up to my room. I could not go in. Instead, I retreated back down the stairs to sleep in April.

  The day after Grace’s funeral, I stepped into Doro’s room. “Can I move into April?”

  “But what about your room?”

  “I don’t want to be there. It reminds me of …”

  Doro touched my arm. “I know, doll.”

  Maddy stood up. He looked from Doro’s face to mine and back again.

  “When do you want to do this?”

  “Now. As soon as possible please.” I turned to Doro: “Can you spare the April room?”

  She nodded.

  “Well I’ll be your pack mule, little thing,” said Maddy.

  Doro held my gaze. “No, Maddy, Jo and I will do it.”

  It took an afternoon for us to move my clothes from upstairs. I pulled the door to without a backward glance. Shutting the door on my memories—my childhood, my grief. Doro surveyed the April room.

  “Feels awfully empty, Jo.”

  “It feels just right, Doro.”

  The room was as empty, as blank, as myself.

  Although Doro begged me to come home to get married, I instead wed in a courtyard overlooking Lake Michigan. Maddy officiated, and my in-laws, Doro, and a few friends looked on. My dress was short but white; the calla lilies were simple, and afterwards we dined on steak and shrimp. At one point I caught Doro turning the plate over to read the pattern, and when the salads were brought, she looked suspiciously at the arugula.

  “It’s wilted.”

  “I think it’s supposed to be that way, Doro dear. It’s supposed to be,” Maddy whispered a little too loudly.

  We invited Doro and Maddy to stay a few days, but they left the next morning. “I’ve got a boat coming this weekend, doll.”

  In its early days, when the Inn was booked, Doro called it a full house.

  “Why that would be a winning hand in poker, Miss Doro. We call that a boat,” teased George Russell. “Why don’t you play some hands with us? Rev. Maddy has played with us.”

  Maddy raised his hands in innocence. “Now don’t look at me that way, Doro. It was penny ante poker, and I put my profits in the collection plate.”

  Doro snapped the towel against his back and walked away humming. From then on, she referred to no vacancies as a boat.

  Now in the April room, I was surprised to see it looked just like I had left it years before. Without bothering to take off my clothes, I climbed under the covers. The moonlight bathed my bed and tree limbs scratched at the window. I imagined the twin beds two floors up and found myself talking out loud. To no one.

  “I can’t believe Doro is gone, Grace. It just seemed like she was going to live forever.”

  I closed my eyes and let the tears come. For Grace. For Doro. For my husband, so many miles away. For the little girl who used to lie in bed and dream of being a writer. Where was she?

  I must have fallen asleep, but was startled awake by a soft cry, a mewing. Sitting up in bed, I looked around. Rubbing my eyes, I expected to see my bedroom in Chicago. As my eyes began to focus, I remembered where I was. More mewing and then a low hissing.

  Swinging my legs around the side of the bed, I saw the cat. Perched on the green roof outside the windowsill, a large white fur ball glared at me with golden orbs so large that I felt a wave of nausea. I had never liked cats.

  Certain I would never be able to sleep as long as the cat was mewing, I banged on the window to scare him off. He simply stared and waited.

  I pushed against the window, thinking if only I could get him inside, he would quiet down. Odd, to see a cat at Doro’s. She famously despised cats, their fur, their eyes, and I suppose I had adopted her feelings.

  “Come on stupid window!” But despite my pushing and tugging, the window was firmly painted shut. The haunting feline eyes followed my every move.

  “Shut up, cat!” I lowered the roman shade which I usually kept up, loving the way the moonlight came in. Yet even with the shade drawn, the mewing continued, and the cat’s silhouette in the pre-dawn light made my heart race.

  “I’m scared of a damned cat, Grace.” I turned on my side away from the window and pulled a pillow over my ear.

  For the rest of that night, far away from the house on Hudson Street, I was also distanced from sleep. Dreams of hissing cats haunted me, chased me in and out of sleep, until around 6:00 a.m. I awoke covered in sweat.

  The cat was gone.

  After a quiet breakfast, punctuated by a few pats on the back or hand, Maddy and I cleaned up the few dishes and got ready for the funeral. Thirty minutes later we were on the way to First Methodist. Maddy looked more tired than I had ever seen him.

  “You okay, Maddy?” I reached over to wipe away a dab of shaving cream hiding under his ear.

  “Reckon I’ll have to be, little thing.” He turned and smiled. “It sure is good to have you here.”

  “Tell me what happened, Maddy. I know it was a stroke, but did she …” I couldn’t ask what I wanted to know. Didn’t know that I wanted to know.

  Maddy read my mind. “She didn’t linger. It was massive and sudden.”

  Doro. Dead. It didn’t seem real. “I had just talked to her last Sunday night. We had an argument, you know, one of our friendly arguments.”

  “Over a book,” Maddy chuckled.

  I smiled. “Yep, how did you know?”

  Once I had moved to Chicago and the first Thanksgiving passed without my coming home, Doro’s phone calls began to have a frantic edge to them.

  “I want you to come home, doll.”

  “It’s not home anymore, Doro.” I knew I was hurting her. But Mt. Moriah held nothing for me except bitter, horrible memories of loss. Coming home meant accepting the reality of Mt. Moriah without Grace.

  The silence at the other end of the phone finally effected feelings of guilt.

  “I do love you and Maddy, Doro. I just can’t come home. It’s not for me anymore. You and Maddy can visit.”

  And they did. They drove ten hours on Christmas Day, and we stayed in the Radisson Plaza until New Year’s. I could tell they were itching to le
ave.

  “I’m not a big city kind of fella, I guess,” Maddy said.

  For Doro, and for me, the visit only seemed to accentuate the abyss between us, the pain of losing Grace that neither of us could articulate. My guilt at running away to Chicago. Our collective inability to find anything to say to each other that didn’t mention Grace.

  One day in the spring after I had moved to Chicago, Doro called me at work.

  “I’m sorry to bother you. Can you talk?”

  Alarmed at the mid-day telephone call, I asked if anything was wrong.

  “It’s just that I needed to call before four o’clock. That’s when the library closes and I need a book.”

  “What book?”

  “That’s why I’m calling you. I’m taking up reading, and I need a suggestion on what to read.”

  “You don’t like to read.”

  “I’m taking it up.”

  “Seriously, Doro, I am at work. Can we talk another time?”

  “Please, Jo. I was thinking about starting a book club.”

  “You?” I would have been less surprised to hear Doro was starting a fly fishing club.

  “Yes, I have some ladies at the church interested, and I thought you could join us.”

  “From Chicago?”

  “Yes. I was hoping you could make some suggestions and help lead the discussion.” A pause. “That’s what book clubs do—discuss?”

  Candace was nearby, waiting to talk to me.

  “Sure, Doro, I’ll call you later. I’ve got to go now.”

  And that was the beginning of our book club. By the end of three months, we were down to a club of two. Nancy Griffiths was diagnosed with kidney cancer and began chemotherapy. Pregnant with her third child, Wanda Gibbons’ daughter was put on bed rest, and Wanda had to help care for the toddlers. Savannah Wiley moved with her husband to Texas. Marjorie Simpson’s husband left her so she had to take a second job. Eliza Staples was too busy hosting her husband’s clients to read, and, as for Lorna Jenkins, she didn’t like the books I chose.