Spare Change

by Bette Lee Crosby

  Ethan saw it all. He heard the screams and cries. He tasted blood trickling down his own throat, the same as his daddy. He felt a stream of urine run down his leg; yet through it all, he stood there too petrified to move. Ethan wanted to make himself small, so small he could burrow into the ground like an ant or a beetle bug, small enough that Scooter Cobb would forget he ever existed. He curled himself into a ball, rolled under the wisteria and stayed there for hours after the white Cadillac’s headlights had faded from view.

  Olivia Doyle

  Some people think superstitions are pure nonsense, but I say they give a person fair warning; if you choose to pay them no heed, then stand back because all hell is likely to break loose. I know in my heart, if I’d taken that opal necklace and thrown it into the ocean the very second Charlie gave it to me, he’d still be alive today.

  I suppose happiness can make you blind to reality. That’s what happened to me. I was so busy focusing on my blessings that I glossed right over the significance of our being in Miami for eleven days; me—a woman who has lifelong knowledge of the tragedies hovering around the eleventh of anything. I still remember when I turned eleven—in that one year I had whooping cough, measles, mumps and chicken pox. Then I was left back to spend another year in the sixth grade, which resulted in my being the tallest, gangliest girl in Miss Munroe’s class. Being called Wall-Tall-Westerly leaves its mark on you! It makes you have a keen eye for avoiding any sort of eleven. Why, I’d no more eat eleven jelly beans than take off flying, yet, I wasn’t all that watchful of poor Charlie on the eleventh day of our Miami Beach honeymoon.

  Letting down my guard as I did, I suppose I could say I deserve what I got—but, the thing is it happened to Charlie, not me. I’d have been better off if it had happened to me—being dead all over is far better than walking around with just a dead heart inside of you.

  Spare Change

  Olivia, a blushing bride just twenty-two days ago, was now a widow. Not just a widow, but a widow stranded over a thousand miles from home. And as if that weren’t bad enough, there was also the problem of transporting the powder blue convertible and Charlie’s body back to Virginia. Olivia did the only thing she could think of at the moment—she had Charlie cremated so that he’d be a somewhat smaller package and she locked herself in the room at the Fontainebleau and cried for five days straight. She cried till her heart was as hollowed out as jack-o-lantern and her arms too heavy to lift, and still she kept right on sobbing. She’d close her eyes to sleep but there, on the inside of her eyelids, was the picture of Charlie, face down in the lobster bisque— dead before he landed, according to a doctor who’d left his wife on the dance floor and rushed over. No matter what she tried to concentrate on, she couldn’t erase that image.

  Olivia felt certain Charlie’s untimely death was her fault. She had a number of jinxes that followed her around, attached themselves like fleas to a dog; then when it was least expected, jumped over to take a chomp out of someone close by. It wasn’t just the number eleven that was unlucky, it was any multiple or divisor of eleven. She’d been on the lookout for trouble on the eleventh day of their marriage, but she’d slacked off on her watchfulness when they’d been in Miami for eleven days. Then, there was the matter of the opal—Lord knows she should have expected the worst from a thing such as that!

  The hotel manager who’d told Olivia there’d be no charge for her room and she could stay for long as need be, began to show concern when day after day went by and she didn’t so much as stick her nose out into the hallway. He sent pots of tea and platters of croissants to her room, but the trays remained outside her door, untouched. On the third day, Olivia’s sobbing became so loud that a couple at the far end of the hall asked to be moved to another floor. When on the fifth day Charlie’s ashes arrived from the crematorium, the manager feared the worst, and justifiably so. That night Olivia’s sobbing was louder than it had ever been before. She held his remains in her arms and howled like the wind of a hurricane. Throughout the night she remained in front of the window watching a black and stormy ocean; when morning came, she packed her bags and left. “This is no place for us,” she said, “we’re going home.” She placed the silver urn alongside of her in the front seat of the convertible and drove off. On the first day of her trip home she had to stop thirty-seven times to wipe the blur of tears from her eyes because every time she thought of Charlie bottled up as he was, she’d start crying all over again.

  The next nine days went along pretty much the same way. When Olivia finally crossed the border into Georgia, she figured it to be a milestone and decided at two o’clock in the afternoon to stop for the night.

  Welcome to Hopeful, Georgia—Pop. 387 the sign at the edge of town read. After she’d driven past numerous peanut farms, Olivia came upon the town. She was hoping for something such as a Howard Johnson Motel—a place with air conditioning and room service, a place where she could throw herself onto an overstuffed mattress and cry for as long as she wished. Of course, there was nothing of the sort in Hopeful. The town was barely two blocks long; there were no restaurants, no movie theatre, and most certainly no Howard Johnson’s. The only place to offer a person an overnight accommodation was the Main Street Motel. Given the state of her weariness, Olivia parked the convertible in front of the weathered building, slipped the bottled up Charlie into her overnight tote and walked inside.

  There was no one behind the counter, so Olivia rang the bell and waited. She stood there a good five minutes and still no one came, she then tapped the bell a second time. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” a voice hollered out. Minutes later a woman, bent from the waist and leaning heavily on a walking stick, poked her head out from behind a calico curtain. “Sorry,” she said, “I was tending to business in the johnny.”

  Olivia had expected a young man wearing a uniform, or at the very least a badge with his name spelled out in bold letters. This woman was wearing a flowered housecoat; she was little more than a skeleton with a top knot of snow white hair and a coverlet of loose skin—how, Olivia wondered, could they expect a person such as this to carry bags in?

  “Need a room, Sugar?” the woman said.

  Olivia nodded.

  “Just you?”

  “I’ve got my husband…”

  “Oh. Then you’ll be wanting a double bed; all I’ve got is three singles.”

  “A single’s okay.”

  “Sweetie,” the woman who’d introduced herself as Canasta Jones, said apologetically, “much as I need your business, there’s no possible way two full grown people could squeeze into one of them beds; why, they’re narrow as a cat’s whisker.” She gave a wink that made her seem far younger than her years, “Honeymooners maybe could, nobody else.”

  Olivia was going to mention that she was indeed a honeymooner, but the thought of being a honeymooner without a husband brought tears to her eyes. She’d planned on waiting until she could throw herself onto a mattress and weep the night away, but all of a sudden there she was, squatted down on a bench, sobbing hysterically.

  “I say something wrong?” Canasta asked.

  Olivia took the hem of her skirt and swiped the droplet hanging from her nose. “Not you,” she snuffled, “Charlie.”

  “Charlie?”

  “He was a man who was truly in love with me,” Olivia sobbed, “we could’ve been happy for a thousand years.”

  The old woman scooted down alongside Olivia and leaned in closer. “Your husband run him off?” she asked.

  “He was my husband.”

  “Was?”

  “I killed him. Oh, the opal pendant may have been partly to blame, but I think it was mostly the jinx. He died twenty-one days after we were married; so on the twenty-second day I became a widow.” Olivia saw the puzzlement on the old woman’s face and explained; “Twenty-two—that’s two elevens!”

  “What’s eleven got to do with anything?”

  Olivia gave an exasperated sigh. “It’s only the unluckiest number in the univer
se,” she said. “If anything horrible is going to happen, guaranteed it will happen on the eleventh of something!”

  Canasta scrunched her face, adding a few more wrinkles, “Who told you such hogwash?” she asked.

  “Nobody told me. I learned from experience. I’m a person who’s jinxed!”

  “Hogwash!” the old woman repeated. “Nobody’s jinxed. Specially not by no number eleven.”

  “A lot you know,” Olivia growled. “I could name dozens of bad things tied in to some sort of eleven.”

  “Yeah, well I could name some good things!” Canasta shot back.

  “Such as?”

  “Me. I was brought into this world on November eleventh and year after year I get a slew of presents on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. I’m ninety-nine years old—and that’s nine elevens! I got me eleven grandkids, and Lord knows how many great grandbabies, every one of them, sweet as pie.”

  “You’re lucky; you missed out on the jinx.”

  “There is no jinx!” Canasta said with an air of impatience. “You’re just reasoning a way to feel sorry for yourself.”

  “What about Charlie—a perfectly healthy man one day and dead the next! That’s not jinxed? That’s not a true misfortune?”

  “It’s a true enough tragedy, but not a jinx,” Canasta answered wistfully. “Nobody knows better than me, the pain of losing a husband; I buried four and cried a bucket of tears for each and every one.”

  “Four?” Olivia repeated, she stopped sobbing and turned to the old woman.

  Canasta nodded. “The last one was Elmer; he died a month ago.”

  “I’d no idea,” Olivia stuttered, “you seem to be getting along just fine.”

  “What’s a body to do? Caskets ain’t sized for two people.”

  “Huh?”

  Canasta slowly shook her head side to side, “No matter how much feeling you got for your man, there’s no way to keep him on earth when the Lord decides it’s his time to go. Once they close that casket lid, he’s gone. You can’t go with him. Only thing you can do is keep on with living.”

  “What’s left to live for?” Olivia moaned tearfully.

  “Sugar,” Canasta sighed, “There’s always something to live for.” She reached across and placed her bony hand on Olivia’s knee. “Why, a young woman like you…”

  “Young? I’m fifty eight!”

  “Prime of life!” Canasta snapped back. “You got years of loving yet to do.”

  “A woman my age?”

  “Yes, indeed. I married up with my dear sweet Elmer when I was eighty-two.”

  “Fine for you; but, me…” Olivia looked down at the floor and shook her head side to side, “Uh-uh,” she sighed pitifully, “Without Charlie, there’s nothing.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Canasta turned and fixed her eyes square on Olivia’s face, “you’re wanting sympathy. You’re looking for somebody to say how bad off you are—well, it ain’t gonna be me! Everybody gets to feeling low at times, but…”

  “Of course, you, a woman who’s had four husbands, wouldn’t understand what it feels like to be lonely!”

  “I understand aplenty. Lord knows I’ve done my share of grieving and crying. But, no matter how you love somebody, there comes a time when you got to let them go. See, sugar,” Canasta took Olivia’s hand in hers, “…having a man crazy in love with you is like having your pocket full of money—when you got it, you feel like a rich woman, but when you ain’t got it, you start feeling poor as a church mouse. ”

  “That’s surely true,” Olivia nodded.

  “Thing is, you ain’t.”

  “I’m not?”

  “Shoot, no. Making people think they can’t scrape up enough to buy a dime’s worth of happiness, is the Devil’s doing; that’s his way of handing out heartaches. The Good Lord don’t do things that way—when he sees a person’s flat out of hope and feeling dead broke, He slips a bit of spare change into the bottom of their pocket; not a lot maybe, but enough for them to get by.”

  Olivia, leaning into the words, crooked her neck to the same angle as Canasta’s.

  “Well now,” the old woman said with a smile, “the same thing’s true of the feelings inside a body’s heart—the Devil wants you to believe you’re emptied out; but trust in the Lord, sugar, He’ll see a fair share of love comes your way.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” Olivia replied, “I’m not one who’s lucky in love.”

  “Maybe you ain’t been trusting in the Lord.”

  “I go to church.”

  “Regular?”

  Olivia had to admit, more often than not, there was some other matter that held her back from attending services—a brunch with friends, a book that had to be read, laundry that needed washing.

  “Seems you ain’t on real close terms with the Lord;” Canasta said, “in which case, you ought to seek out an ear willing to listen.”

  “Listen to what?”

  “Your troubles.”

  “Oh, I don’t need…”

  Canasta spread her mouth in a wide open grin, “Course you do,” she said, “ain’t a soul on earth who don’t.” She linked her arm through Olivia’s and led the way into a tiny apartment situated behind the calico curtain.

  They sat together at a small wooden table and drank black tea; tea so strong that it loosened Olivia’s tongue and prompted her to tell of things that for forty years had been picking at her mind. She told of beaus who had knocked on her door and been turned away; she told of how the sorry sight of Francine Burnam weighted down by five children had dissuaded her from following along on such a pathway. “Many a night, I was so lonely, I’d cry myself to sleep,” Olivia said, “but then I’d remember the look of Francine and figure being lonely was better than being chained to a flock of kids that weigh a woman down worse than a sack of stones.”

  “Most every woman’s got stones of some sort or another,” Canasta replied, “some troubles are way heavier than babies.”

  Olivia conceded, in certain instances such a thing was true. “Christine Flannigan,” she said, “Now, there’s a case in point.” She then went on to tell of the poor unfortunate telephone operator who’d suffered a nervous breakdown while she was sitting at the tandem board and ultimately had to be institutionalized. But, the moment Olivia finished the story, she jumped back to how she’d met Charlie and fallen in love. “Head over heels,” she sighed, “The very first time he kissed me, I knew he was the one I’d been waiting for!”

  Long about dark, Canasta set a pot of okra soup on to warm; then she served up steaming bowls of it and continued to listen.

  After Olivia had finished telling most every story that came to mind, she gave a breathy sigh and said, “My Charlie, he was sure a wonderful man.”

  “No doubt,” Canasta answered, “He don’t sound like a body who’d want you weeping and wailing over spilt milk.”

  “Charlie? No indeed.” Olivia swallowed the last of her soup and asked if she might have another bowl. Without any realization of what was happening, a strange feeling settled on Olivia as she sat there and gulped down bowl after bowl of okra soup. First, she began to feel lighter. Then her feet seemed to be rising up from her shoes and wiggling around like they were wanting to dance; then it was her arms and hands, and before she toddled off to bed her brain was floaty as a feather.

  When she got to her room, Olivia set Charlie atop the dresser and climbed into bed. “Goodnight, sweetheart,” she whispered; then she switched off the light and closed her eyes. For the first time in two weeks she didn’t picture Charlie lying face down in a bowl of lobster bisque. Instead, she dreamt of him as he was on their wedding day; she could picture him laughing, chucking her beneath the chin, and teasing her for being the worrisome person she’d turned into. When she woke the next morning, Olivia realized she could hear the trill of a bird and catch the scent of jasmine—both things she’d been unable to do since Charlie’s death. It must be due to some sort of flavoring in the soup she thought, then
in the shower she caught herself singing—something that was totally out of character. She pulled on a pair of pedal pushers and hurried over to Canasta’s door. “You suppose I could have a bit more soup for breakfast?” she asked.

  The old woman, who on several other occasions had seen her okra soup have the very same effect, smiled. “You most certainly can,” she said and opened wide the door.

  For the next five days, Olivia had okra soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner. “There’s something in the soup,” she insisted, “something that causes a person to taste happiness.” Such a possibility certainly appeared to be the case, for day by day she grew a bit brighter. It began with the hearing of song and the smelling of fragrance, then she started feeling the warmth of sunshine and the softness of a down comforter, after that it was the sight of flowers abloom with color such as she had never before seen. When she discovered the right side of her mouth curling into a smile of its own volition, Olivia went to Canasta and begged to have the recipe. “Please,” she said, “tell me the secret ingredient.”

  “It’s the having of a friend to listen,” the old woman insisted, but still Olivia continued to harangue her for the secret of the soup. Finally, when Canasta’s ears had grown sore from the sound of the pleas, she told Olivia her secret was the seed of a vine that grew deep in the woods.

  “Take me to it,” Olivia begged.

  “Impossible,” Canasta claimed, saying she was far too old to go tromping through a thicket of briars. “Anyway,” she said, “no seed is gonna help a person who ain’t regular about visiting with the Lord.” Of course, Olivia swore she’d seen the light and would be attending church every Sunday from now on.