Dearest Dorothy, If Not Now, When?

by Charlene Baumbich

  “Don’t you mean who won?”

  “No. I do mean which since Harold and Sharon are still the only two who have access to the master list that matches entries with names. After swearing us to secrecy about the results, they asked us if we wanted to know the who of it, but Katie, May Belle and I all said no, we’d wait to find out in the paper tomorrow, just like everyone else. All I know is none of my entries even made the final twenty-five, but that’s okay since the winner and runner-ups were all so much more creative anyway.”

  “Did Katie seem happy about the committee’s decision?”

  “She surely did! We all instantly agreed, too, which made it easy, and made her doubly happy since she said she had to get back to work on the mall, especially now that it had a name. It was the world’s shortest meeting, for something so important. The fact we all thought the same one was best seemed like a good omen for. . . . OHMY-GOSH! I almost SAID it!”

  “Don’t mind me. Just keep talking,” he quipped, egging her on to let it slip.

  “Hey, you! I promised! And wait a minute! I was so excited to call you before I head out again to band practice that it didn’t occur to me you’d probably be working, which you’re obviously not. Did you get this Saturday off?”

  “Nope. No such luck. But it’s amazing you caught me here. I just ran home during our break to pick up my lunch sack. I left it on the kitchen table this morning. The phone was ringing when I walked in.”

  “I’m so sorry for keeping you! Oh, I’m sorry, ES, I’ll let you go now. I don’t want to be the cause of trouble with Katie and I know she’s back there already.”

  “Don’t worry. I had to make me a new lunch anyway, which I’ve been doing while we talked. Seems Kornflake likes braunschweiger on rye with raw onion, which means I won’t be kissing him tonight!”

  “You are so funny,” she said chuckling, then realized she was blushing just having heard him say the word kiss.

  “Funny, I am, my dear Nellie Ruth. And now I need to get my funny self to the cammy-van and head back to the . . . mini mall, since that’s all I know to call it. At least until tomorrow after my papergirl arrives, which I surely hope she does before I head to church!”

  Dear Mom and Joshmeister,

  Tonight is a big night for me, and tomorrow, as I recall, is a big day in Partonville for Katie and the mall. But to tell you the truth, I’d rather be going to bed early there tonight than attend the party here. My friends are throwing me a “surprise” farewell party, although I already know about it—thank goodness—and to tell the truth, they love *any* excuse for a party and my leaving gave them one. But now that the majority of us are in our fifties, the fact we can still work out at the gym is probably enough reason to party. I understand better every day why you love to celebrate birthdays, Mom! “Still alive and kickin’!” Isn’t that how you say it?

  I have most of my household things packed for storage until I find a permanent residence there. The storage company comes on Monday, so at least I can sleep in my own bed until then—not that there’s anything wrong with the bed you offer me, Mom. It’s just that this is the one my back is most used to.

  I’m staying at Randy and Rita’s Monday night, then beginning my drive to Partonville on Tuesday. I’m taking my time, stopping to visit another friend on the way. Mom, I might even take some back roads, just in honor of your love for the ROAD TRIP! I know you said you didn’t want to fly out here and keep me company on the way back, but it’s not too late to change your mind.

  As I prepare to move, you came to mind, Josh. I know you haven’t heard from me much, but when I think about saying good-bye to my best friend Randy, I consider how hard it must have been for you to say good-bye to Alex when you left Chicago. It was easy to think only about how lucky you were to be moving out of the city and onto Crooked Creek. I know how I loved that place when I was growing up. But I didn’t give much thought to the fact that maybe you liked the city, and that you were leaving good friends behind. Just wanted you to know I’m aware of that now.

  Mom, I can already hear what you’re thinking! “He’s getting mellow in his old age.” Maybe I am.

  Time to leave for the party. I’ll see you both soon.

  Jacob

  P.S. How’s the truck running, Josh?

  Jacob pushed the Send button. Funny how sitting down to write a quick chatty e-mail had raised some emotions. Although he’d have a quiet chance to say his real good-byes to Randy and Rita at their house Monday night, he decided it was time to give himself an attitude adjustment about the party this evening. His mom was right, as usual. “Life is uncertain,” she used to say when he grumbled about one gathering or another. “Party while you can!”

  Dear Outtamyway, (cc to Jacob)

  Jacob says he’s going to take some back roads on his way here. Has any oldster you might happen to know taught him about safe gravel riding?

  Sincerely,

  An inquiring mind

  Josh was laughing when he pushed the Send button. Dorothy would love that one. He could hear her laughing already, a thought which helped his tired, brooding self. Well, at least he hadn’t been grounded from the Internet. Time to send Shelby a note.

  But first, he decided to forward Jacob’s e-mail to his mom, without Jacob’s P.S. about the truck. He wanted her to have to think about how hard it had been for him to move. Even though he loved it on the farm and he had made new friends, he still missed his best friend Alex. Thank goodness for e-mail! As soon as he was done sending Shelby a note, he was going to get Alex caught up on all the gory details leading to his grounding. He’d also let him know how fast the truck could do 0 to 60—well, make that 0 to 85—since he’d finally had a chance to find out on his way to school the morning he missed the bus. Good thing Sergeant McKenzie hadn’t been on his tail then!

  18

  It turns out there’s nothing like the announcement of a new mall name to pour fuel on an election hotbed—at least in Partonville. By 9 A.M. Monday, Lester K. Biggs, solely responsible for everything at his grill, had hand-scrawled a sign on a piece of butcher paper and posted it on his entry door. The sign read: MANAGEMENT RESERVES THE RIGHT TO BOOT ANYONE OUT OF THIS ESTABLISHMENT WHO USES FOUL OR LOUD LANGUAGE. MANAGEMENT ALSO RESERVES THE RIGHT TO DECIDE WHAT LOUD IS!!! He felt like adding, “And don’t forget, I own several giant meat tenderizers and I know how to wield them,” but he stifled himself.

  Nobody could argue that the mall name wouldn’t do them proud, the way it summed up the whole venture into one tidy package. But that was assuming there was going to be a mall on the square, which half of the people had decided they were against, even if they liked the new name. Those people were, of course, backing Sam Vitner for mayor, and this, of course, was the cause of the volume in Harry’s Grill.

  The one grace in the situation was that Sam Vitner had gone to work this morning rather than come to the grill, which is what he was supposed to do, had to do, according to Acting Mayor Gladys McKern, who was holding court at the U. “I don’t know how he thinks he would find time to run a town when he’s got his hands full taking care of his business.”

  “As opposed ta you, who spends yer time tryin’ ta take care of everybody’s business,” Arthur said, followed by a loud slurpy sip of coffee. Challie Carter, who was not normally in the grill this time of day (he sometimes came in for a late supper, but almost never breakfast) tried not to chuckle out loud, but he couldn’t hold it back, which inflamed Gladys, which caused Lester to give her an eyeball since he’d already warned her once about her volume.

  Since Challie’s little heart-to-heathen chat with Colton around his kitchen table (although it was difficult to decipher who was really the “bad guy”), he found himself hanging around—all ears—in town whenever possible. Aside from his wife and his poker group, he wasn’t one to do much socializing, but he felt a need to evaluate the situation, maybe dr
op a subtle word for Sam if and when the opportunity arose. But since Katie was still the lease holder to one of his bigger pieces of crop land and in contention to buy him out, he’d have to be careful as to what, if anything, he said about her. And if he were honest with himself, he really wasn’t one hundred percent sure whether or not he was for Sam or against him—which circled him back to Katie. Sam was nothing more than an accidental and convenient connection right now, so Challie just wanted to listen and draw a few conclusions lest his lip slip and he play a card that caused him to lose all opportunities.

  “Well, Arthur,” Gladys said, yanking on the bottom of her blazer as though it was the ripcord to her mouth, “you should be thankful I do care enough about everyone who lives in Partonville to support our betterment. With the Number Nine in question, we need jobs, we need commerce, and whether you want to believe it or not—and to be honest, I can’t believe I’m even going to hear myself say this to you after you have just insulted me—we need each other!”

  “What we need,” Arthur said, laying the money for his breakfast on the counter, “is a place ta sit and digest our food where thay’s peace and quiet.” He twirled around on his stool, slowly stood upright, walked over to the collection jar that had PAUL JOY’S BROKEN LEG FUND printed on the paper wrapped around it, dropped in a dollar bill and opened the door to take his leave.

  “Well I know just the place for you to sit and digest,” Gladys said to his backside, although he never so much as slowed down. The door was about to close behind him, so in order to make sure he could hear her (and everyone noticed they occasionally had to repeat things to Arthur now and again anyway), she yelled, “ONE OF SAM’S OUTDOOR TOILETS!”

  “That is IT for you today!” Lester yelped, snapping his dishcloth down on the counter precisely on the word “IT.” Gladys reared back so fast she nearly slid off her stool. Lester didn’t realize how loudly his voice had resonated throughout when he threw down the gauntlet causing a hush throughout the room. “I’ll thank you,” he said while gritting his back teeth, “to pay up and take your LOUD voice O-U-T of here for this morning.” Gladys’s gasp seemed to suck the air out of everyone as they held their breath preparing for this showdown.

  “Lester K. Biggs, you know very well Arthur Landers cannot hear worth a twit and he was . . .”

  “I mean it, Gladys,” he said, back-flipping his thumb toward the door. “You are welcome back tomorrow, but nobody—nobody—is above the rules of this establishment, and you’ve had more than your fair share of warnings today.”

  Gladys blinked several times, then caught a glimpse of Harold down at the end of the U, his steno open in front of him. She pasted on a smile, picked up her napkin and patted her lips. She folded the napkin precisely back into its original shape and set it down on top of her plate. “Oh, but you are not dismissing me, Mr. Biggs. I was about to leave anyway,” she said, her voice not much louder than a whisper, which everyone heard anyway since the airwaves crackled with attentiveness. Gladys tossed her money on the counter and for the first time in her life left a decent tip. In a dramatic gesture, she dropped—one dollar at a time to make sure nobody missed the true size of her caring heart—two dollars into the collection jar and walked, not stomped, out the door and down the sidewalk, head held high all the way back to her office. It took a couple of minutes for the buzz to begin again, no one daring to raise a voice above a murmur.

  Challie asked Lester for one more coffee refill. He needed to sit for a spell in the back draft of Gladys’s mastery under fire. He wondered if Sam would or could do as well under the same type of circumstances, or perhaps even defending himself against that viper of a Colton Craig. Challie stayed just long enough to overhear growing talk about the call for a mayoral debate and a possible picket line in front of the mall. With the election just four weeks away, this was all very interesting indeed.

  In the meantime, mall renovation progressed at whiz-bang speed. As far as Katie could figure (and she had spent a good two hours last night figuring, even e-mailing Jacob one short perfunctory question since he was more familiar with the small-town dramatics of her situation than her Chicago attorney), no matter who won the election, to the best of her knowledge there wasn’t a single legal way anyone could shut her down, which left nothing to do but move forward. Most of the ten stores (four on the first floor, five on the second and one on the lower level) were nearly framed to size and nine of them were rented. UPS had already delivered two boxes to the mall for Alotta Chocolotta this very morning, causing Edward Showalter to scratch his head as he tried to figure out what to do with them so they didn’t get lost in the construction shuffle. Their arrival caused Katie to spend a good portion of her morning phoning everyone on her rental roster to remind them to reread their lease agreement: there would be absolutely no deliveries until April 1. None. Period. That would, she reminded them, still give them nearly two whole weeks to set up shop before the target grand-opening date, which had—and who would have believed it?—now escalated to April 12. Under the chaotic circumstances, the sooner she opened, the better. Sometimes people just needed to see a thing in action before they could get used to it—as they had with her when she first arrived.

  Jessica was floating on cloud nine for twenty-four straight hours. Paul said the pain of breaking his leg was worth it just to see the happy light dancing in her eyes and to hear her joyful screech when she opened the Press Sunday morning and saw the headline: PARTONVILLE PLEASANTRIES COMES TO TOWN—OR DOES IT? ELECTION RESULTS MIGHT TELL THE STORY, the subhead read, although never once did Jessica even entertain the idea that there would be no mall. And she didn’t have to see the name of the winner; she knew it was none other than her very own last-minute entry. The best part was sharing the news with Paul. They’d verbally replayed yesterday’s excitement many times, especially when she called Katie at nearly the crack of dawn and she and Paul held the phone receiver between them as they yammered, thanked Katie and celebrated.

  “A hundred dollars!” Jessica said to Sarah Sue for the umpteenth time Sunday morning. Sarah Sue sat in her high chair munching on dry Cheerios and a few tidbits of scrambled eggs. She seemed to think her mother’s exuberance was funny. “We won a hundred-dollar gift certificate to Partonville Pleasantries!” She twirled around like Cinderella, the growing child within her obviously happy about the news, too, since he or she (the Joys told the doctor they didn’t want to know) took to doing a few of what felt like acrobatics. Sarah Sue giggled again, bits of scrambled egg sliding down the strings of drool escaping her mouth.

  “Honey, just think,” Paul said between bites of home fried potatoes with bits of mushrooms stirred into them from last night’s dinner, mushrooms one of his favorite things to taste in any dish. “The hundred bucks is nice, but what I’m proudest of is that every time anyone circles the square and sets eyes on the mall banner, or plaque, or whatever Katie’s going to hang out in front, they’ll see another slice of your creativity. I am just so proud of you, so very proud, hon. Your grandmother must be beaming up there in heaven.”

  Jessica’s eyes teared at the mention of her grandmother, which also gave her goose bumps. One of her grandmother’s favorite things to say about Partonville was how pleasant it had been to live there all of her life. When the idea for Partonville Pleasantries first struck Jessica that fateful evening, it was as though her grandmother had whispered it into her ear. In fact, Jessica felt her grandmother’s spirit swirl into the room right now, as though she was letting her know that she, too, still felt their connection, even from the great beyond. Before Paul, Jessica’s grandmother was the closest person to her heart. Grandma took to Paul as if he, too, were her own.

  “We both know how much she loved this town,” Paul said, finishing his last bite of breakfast. “Yup. No doubt her buttons are surely popping over you today!”

  Jessica set Sarah Sue’s spoon down and stood behind Paul’s kitchen chair where he’d hobbled and perched h
imself to eat, his leg extended under the table like a burdensome cane. She put her arms around his neck and kissed the top of his head. “My hero,” she said. What she wanted to do was to plop in his lap where he could cradle her while she rested her head against his shoulder, but that familiar luxury would have to wait until the pain in his leg dissolved.

  He reached up and took hold of her arms, which she’d clasped against his chest. “Thank you, babe. Thank you for loving me, even when I’m a fallen hero.” They remained like that until Sarah Sue fussed. It was time to get ready for church anyway. Paul hadn’t intended on wrestling himself around to go to church this morning, but that was before the paper arrived. He didn’t want to miss a second of what was sure to be his wife’s shining moment in her first public appearance as The Winner.

  Neither of them was disappointed. Although congregants seemed divided on whether to mall or not to mall, Jessica and Paul Joy were loved by everyone. Pastor Delbert called both of them, plus Sarah Sue, of course, who was perched on Jessica’s hip, up front with him during announcements, just so people could applaud Jessica’s winning entry and Paul’s heroic endeavor. Then he offered a prayer of thanksgiving for “this bright and promising couple—and their wee one and the one in the hopper.” The special blessing helped set the tone for his sermon which was on the peace of the Lord, which, he said, is “surely and sorely needed in the streets of our little community today.”

  Too bad Pastor didn’t include the sidewalks and the grill along with his prayers for our peaceful streets, Dorothy thought Monday afternoon when she stopped by Harry’s for one of Lester’s good old hamburgers and fries. Calls for debates and picket lines? What on earth were they coming to?