The Sweet Spot

by Heather Heyford

  He was pouring himself a coffee when Jamie breezed into the kitchen. “What’s the latest on Miss Ellie?” she asked, setting down her guitar case.

  “She’s alert but still hasn’t spoken. You going someplace?”

  “Is it okay if I go into her room and get a few of her things, like her hairbrush and maybe a robe? I thought I’d pay her a quick visit this morning. And I also want to stop at the market and get some dinner things that are a little less . . . complicated.”

  “I don’t want you feeling obligated to cook me supper every night. Do I look like I’m wasting away?”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “I’m sure Ellie would appreciate having some of her things from home. I’ve been there twice this week, but it never occurred to me.”

  “Maybe it’s a woman thing. We like to be surrounded by our favorite personal belongings. Surprised the nurses didn’t mention it. No matter, I’ll do it. Now that you’ve put Joan and Theresa on the payroll, I don’t have to be here while the guests are eating breakfast. I can do the errands while I’m in town, too, if you want.”

  Hank thought for a moment. “I could go with you. But why don’t we spread out our visits? Give her more time with friendly faces that way. I talk to the docs every day, and the nurses hold the phone up to her ear for me. Tell you what. You go now; I’ll get some work done here. Tell her I’ll see her tomorrow. Oh, and would you mind making a bank deposit?”

  From behind a cupboard door, she said, “Do you know where Ellie keeps the vases?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Not a problem. A glass will do. I’ll bet a bouquet of her gerbera daisies will cheer her up. Be right back.”

  She dashed out the screen door, leaving Hank standing holding his coffee cup in the wake of her delicate scent. He sipped as he watched Jamie snip red and yellow blossoms from Ellie’s cutting garden. She had put on that white skirt, the only item of clothing she had with her that wasn’t jeans, for her visit to town. He couldn’t see that skirt without it dredging up memories of their dance after the wine fest.

  And she was good for his grandmother. His heart swelled with appreciation. As bad as this week was, without Jamie it would have been exponentially worse.

  * * *

  “Good morning, Miss Ellie! Look what I brought you—”

  The man at Ellie’s bedside holding her hand looked up. He had bushy eyebrows and a head of thick, black hair that sprouted from his scalp like a bed of nails.

  “—gerbera daisies . . . ” Jamie’s words faded away.

  Ingrained creases curved downward from the corners of his mouth, suggesting a perpetual frown. On the whole, he looked like he’d survived being electrocuted but wasn’t too happy about it.

  “Sorry. I’ll come back later.” She turned to go, considering filing a report of an intruder at the nurse’s station.

  “You’re Jamie.”

  She stopped in her tracks. Slowly, she turned back around. “How do you know?”

  “Ellie told me about you.”

  If that were true—and it must be—then this man couldn’t be as fearsome as she’d thought. She screwed up the courage to venture a step farther into the room.

  “You’ve been a blessing to her.”

  Now he was talking about blessings. Who is this guy?

  She shook her head. “I didn’t do anything special.”

  “When Ellie needed you, you were there.”

  “I’m the one who needed her.” Come to think of it, needed everything about the Sweet Spot, from the idyllic setting, to the steady work, to Ellie. And Hank.

  “You’re not from around here.”

  “No. But I’d like to be.” How is he getting me to say these things that a minute ago, I didn’t even realize I felt?

  Fear morphed into fascination with the scars and wrinkles, indistinguishable from one another, that snaked across the man’s face. She stepped closer. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Joe Bear. Friend of Ellie’s. How’s Hank doing?”

  “How come the blinds are drawn?” Jamie asked, adjusting the blinds to admit more light into the room. “It’s a beautiful day outside.”

  “I hear he’s got an offer to sell the vineyards and the winery.”

  How does he know that? Jamie just looked at him. “It’s happening all over the valley. Especially in Yamhill County. The market is buying up every drop of pinot noir as fast as it’s made.”

  She ran water into the glass she’d brought from home and began arranging the flowers where they would easily be seen from Ellie’s bed.

  “I see what Ellie meant by you being there for her.”

  While Joe Bear stood back and watched with his arms folded, Jamie gently washed Ellie’s face and hands. Then she unbraided her hair, brushed it, and rebraided it. The whole time, she kept up a running monolog of amusing anecdotes of the past week.

  “Would you mind stepping out for a minute while I change her gown?”

  When he left, she followed him into the hall. “Ellie wasn’t supposed to find out about the offer.”

  “She knows.”

  Jamie and Joe Bear shared a long look, communicating without words.

  “Well, once she’s better she’ll be glad to know that he turned it down. Though I don’t know why Hank would even consider selling. Why can’t he see that his inheritance is worth more than any amount of money?”

  Joe Bear thought for a minute. “Often it takes losing something for a man to realize what it was that he had.”

  Jamie sighed. “Come back in a minute? I still want to dress her in the gown I brought her from home.”

  “I’ll go now. She’s in good hands.” His mouth turned up at the edges.

  They clasped hands. Then he left without saying good-bye.

  Jamie went back into the hospital room. “There,” she said to Ellie. “Feel better? Well, you look better, I can tell you that. That hospital gown did nothing for your complexion.”

  She looked into Ellie’s vacant blue eyes for a sign that she understood, but they only stared straight ahead without moving.

  Then she pulled up a chair and tuned her guitar.

  At the sound of her singing, a nurse popped in from the hallway. “I put this pen and pad of sticky notes on the blanket within easy reach,” she said. “Maybe Miss Ellie can show you her writing progress.”

  At that, Ellie’s eyes shifted Jamie’s way.

  “She looked at me!” exclaimed Jamie. She sprang to her feet and set her guitar aside.

  The nurse helped Ellie wrap her fingers around the pen to scribble what was allegedly a wobbly version of her name.

  Jamie followed the nurse into the hall on her way out. “How much does she understand?”

  The nurse hesitated. “Are you family? Sorry. Have to ask.”

  “No. I’m living at the Sweet Spot this summer, as an employee. But Ellie and I have developed a special bond in a short amount of time. I care about what happens to her.”

  The nurse made a sympathetic face and a decision. “We think she’s in there. There’s nothing wrong with her hearing. You can probably assume she gets most, if not all, of what we’re saying. That’s why it’s important to communicate with her, not talk over her as if she weren’t there. Keep talking about home and she’ll be motivated to get there sooner.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Jamie left the hospital with the most optimism she’d had since Ellie had gotten sick. Flying down the country road in the topless Jeep, the sun shone warm on her shoulders and the breeze whipped her hair. The ripening vineyards rippled out from both sides of the road to hills dotted with pines.

  Back in Newberry, the sweet bungalows with their distinctive windows, the colonials with their colorful front doors, and the ornate Victorians came into view. She got the bank deposit out of the way, then headed down Main Street on foot. When she spotted a new romance novel in the window of the bookstore, she went in and splurged on it to curl up with in her sitting room. She wou
ld miss that cozy nook when she went back East.

  When she came to Walker’s Wild Western Wear, she slowed down and peered in the window. The clerk who had sold her her Noconas spotted her and waved to her through the glass.

  It struck her that if she ever came back to Newberry, it would probably look much the same, no matter how much time had gone by. The town had a sense of permanence about it. This was a forever kind of place.

  Last stop, the grocery store. Along with some prepackaged dinner fixings, she picked up the perishables that couldn’t wait until the next delivery truck came, and a new bottle of shampoo. Hard to believe she’d already gone through both the travel-size bottles she’d packed in her suitcase when she thought she was only going on a two-week vacation, plus another full-size bottle. And, of course, more bubble bath.

  Juggling her bags on the way to the car, she paid no attention to the tavern sign hanging over the sidewalk, though she had to walk right under it.

  On the other side of town, just visible through the trees, was the tall flagpole that marked the school that served the town and its surrounds.

  NEWBERRY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL—HAVE A SAFE SUMMER said the sign sitting perpendicular to the road in the center of a neatly trimmed patch of lawn.

  Beneath the school’s name was a line of text that hadn’t been there on her other trips into town. But before she could read what it said, a quick glimpse of a familiar scene of chaos on the playground brought a wistful smile to her face.

  Was it only a few weeks ago that she couldn’t wait for the school year to end? Back in early June, she’d had it up to here with antsy kids with spring fever craning their necks to peer out the classroom window when she was trying to conduct the sopranos and the altos into some faint semblance of harmony for the spring concert. As for recess? Recess duty was the bane of a teacher’s existence, ranking only above cafeteria duty. There wasn’t a teacher alive who didn’t complain bitterly about it behind the closed doors of the lounge.

  At the last possible minute she made a decision to swerve into the school’s semicircular drive, and stared out through the windshield of the Jeep.

  Never again would she have to shove her hands in her coat pockets and stamp her feet on the cold macadam for twenty minutes watching kids run and climb and scream when she would rather be prepping for the next class. Something in the dear awkwardness of these children brought Jamie to the startling revelation that—she was going to miss it.

  A boy in a white T-shirt took a swing at his friend for tipping his hat off. With an arch of his pliable spine that would be the envy of any Cirque du Soleil performer, the offender dodged the swat and dashed away, resulting in an impromptu game of tag that had them tearing up, down, and under the slide and making Jamie catch her breath when the boy who was it leapt over a swing and sent it sailing, nearly catching his foot in the process.

  Instead of children, from now on her days would be filled with endless meetings and curriculum planning and making sure her school was in compliance with all the latest legislation.

  Sighing, she turned her head away, glimpsing the sign.

  NOW HIRING: MUSIC TEACHER, MATH TEACHER, TEACHING ASSISTANTS. APPLY IN PERSON.

  Apply in person? How quaint.

  Jamie stared at it while she thought of the courage it had taken to move from the small farming community where she’d been raised to a metropolis where she didn’t know anyone. But after sending out a dozen applications, that was where she had been hired. She still recalled how frightened she’d been those first few nights as she lay in bed behind her triple-locked door, unable to sleep because of the sounds that wafted up from the streets.

  Every first teaching assignment was tough, but it was even tougher in a culture that you weren’t used to. Philly might as well have been a foreign country. And gifted kids presented yet another challenge.

  Back over on the playground, one girl braided the hair of another while a deceptively scrawny boy swung easily from rung to rung across the horizontal ladder. A couple more alternated up and down on the seesaw.

  Not only had she adjusted to her new job, she’d succeeded beyond her expectations—and in record time. She’d been singled out for the quality of her work. Who in their right mind would turn down this promotion? Many teachers took endless continuing ed courses and worked for years based on the slim hope that one day, if they were lucky, they might be promoted out of the classroom.

  And now she was considering asking to go backward. Not merely asking, but plowing through page upon page of forms . . . maybe even facing recertification if Oregon didn’t accept her out-of-state credentials.

  She grabbed her phone and typed in a query, then sat there staring at the answer.

  The following states have reciprocity with Oregon: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas . . . Impatiently she skimmed down the list till she came to the Ps. Pennsylvania.

  Well. She dropped her phone onto the passenger seat and put her hands back on the wheel at nine and three. She didn’t have to decide right now.

  But why not now? She was here. Maybe it was a sign.

  I must be crazy, she thought, getting out of the car and walking up to the school’s tall double doors.

  The universal school smells of crayons, musty library books, and newly waxed and buffed floors drove home to her what it was she was about to do.

  Behind the glass sat a receptionist, and behind her stood a middle-aged woman with a friendly face in a loose white tank top.

  “I was driving by and I saw the sign out front,” said Jamie. “I’d like to talk to someone about the music teacher position.”

  “Er—” The receptionist glanced over her shoulder at her coworker and then back at Jamie. “You’ll have to make an appointment.”

  Relief flowed through Jamie. Now she could simply go through the motions of setting up an interview and then call and cancel it.

  The woman in white paused and looked at Jamie. A smile came over her face. Then she said something to the receptionist and disappeared.

  “Actually, Dr. Keller happens to have time right now, if that works for you.”

  “Oh. Well, as you can see,” Jamie said, humiliated to have been caught completely unprepared, “I don’t have my résumé or anything.”

  At least she didn’t have to worry about coming back. Her fate was sealed. Now all she wanted was to get out of there as fast as she could.

  Jamie heard a door open.

  “I’m Dr. Keller,” said the woman in white. “Would you like to come back to my office?”

  “Well, I, ah . . . It was just a spur-of-the-moment idea . . . obviously I didn’t give it much thought or I would have called first and come prepared.”

  “C’mon back,” she said lightly. “We’ll just chat. If it comes to it, you can send me your stuff later.”

  Chatting with Michelle Keller was like picking up the thread of a conversation with an old friend she hadn’t seen for a while. She told Jamie more about the job opening and then invited Jamie to tell her about herself.

  First Jamie talked about her teaching experience. Then she explained what she was doing in the Willamette Valley.

  “You came out here for a vacation, and you ended up going to work for the winery you’re staying at?”

  Jamie nodded.

  “Which one? I probably know of it.”

  “The Sweet Spot.”

  “I see. I guess it’s fair to say we’ve established that you’re a little impulsive—”

  “On the contrary. That’s the funny thing about this whole summer. Normally, I weigh all the options before I make a move.”

  “And yet . . . here we are.”

  Jamie shook her head slowly. “I was just driving by and I saw the kids.”

  “You mean, the sign.”

  “No,” said Jamie, realization dawning on her only as the words left her mouth. “The kids, playing on the swings.”

  Dr. Keller waited patiently.

  “I was drawn to them. It was like th
e car was pulled over by a magnet.”

  “It sounds to me like you may be having second thoughts about your new position.”

  Hearing someone else say that was like turning on a faucet. “I don’t know if it’s just my kids or any kids that I’m going to miss. After all, I do happen to have the best students anywhere. I know gifted kids get a bad rap in some quarters for daydreaming and questioning the purpose of assignments that seem arbitrary to them at first, but when it comes right down to it, they’re just like other kids, only more creative. All they need is a little understanding and for someone to point the way so they can find their own path, not make them march lockstep.”

  “They sound very special.”

  “They are.”

  “What about the kids on the playground today? Without seeing them, I don’t know their names, but I can tell you that only ten percent of our student body at Newberry is made up of exceptional kids. So, given that, what was your impression of them?”

  She took a deep breath. If this were any other interview she would have endeavored to come up with the best answer to guarantee her the job.

  But Dr. Keller had been forthright with her. She deserved honesty in return.

  “I have to think about that.”

  The superintendent smiled. “Yes. You do.”

  As she drove back to the Sweet Spot, she wondered what Hank would think about her moving to Newberry. She again heard his voice when she was struggling to find a handhold on Raven’s Rock. Sometimes what looks like the obvious solution won’t be. You have to stretch. Use new muscles you’re not used to using.

  * * *

  When Jamie got back to the inn, she found Hank at Ellie’s computer. She tossed her jean jacket across a chair and hung the keys to the Jeep on the keyboard.

  Hank turned around. “How’s Ellie doing?”

  “Still not speaking. But she seemed to enjoy my playing. She wrote her name. I admit she had a lot of help from the nurse. See?” she asked, handing him the note.

  “That’s progress,” he said, looking up at her with hope in his eyes that struck a chord in her.

  “I told her you’d be in to see her tomorrow.”