Tired out by the mass of strangers at that big gathering, their strangeness intensified by the racial mix of the guest list, Claudia chose to forego the visit to the convalescent center with her daughter afterward. She had worn out her ability to pretend to care about people she hoped never to see again.
Willow was glad to have a few hours alone with Gretchen, even if having more people around would seem a truer celebration of the day.
Wrapped in her long red wool coat, Willow shuffled from her car to the front door of the facility where Gretchen had lived these past three years. Damp air had come to rest on frozen pavement, making the footing uncertain. Willow regretted wearing her rugged winter boots to see Gretchen, but was thinking in terms of survival. The old lady recoiled at the sight of modern women dressed in “mannish” clothes. Willow determined that she would take her boots off outside Gretchen’s room. She had worn a long skirt to the party that day, keeping in mind that she would be visiting Gretchen later.
To Willow, the inside of the convalescent center felt like an ocean of loneliness dotted with little islands of holiday cheer. In one corner of the lounge that she passed after signing in, a couple bounced little blonde children on their knees, trying to keep them entertained as laconic grandparents eyed them impassively. She wasn’t certain if forced celebration was worse than no celebration, surrendering that judgment to each celebrant.
Gretchen was waiting in her room, her TV on, a classic holiday movie showing at high volume. Since she wore no hearing aids, Gretchen required elevated volume and strong voices. Willow had a voice that she used exclusively for Gretchen, an attempt at gentling an outdoor shout. As strange as that might seem, it was a familiar tone around the convalescent home. Willow prepared that senior-friend voice even as she removed her boots outside Gretchen’s door.
Gretchen smiled when she saw Willow enter the room. Willow could feel relief in the air, sweeping in with her, as if her friend had been stressing about whether Willow would come. Glancing at the red numbers on the digital alarm clock next to Gretchen’s bed, Willow realized that she was ten minutes later than she had promised.
“Sorry I’m late, Gretchen,” she said at full volume.
Gretchen was smiling and nodding even as she looked around her. Willow located the TV remote, which her friend was seeking. She handed it to Gretchen.
“Oh, yes, there it is. Oh, so good to see you, dear,” Gretchen said. Her voice rolled big and deep, though strained around the edges, like the rumble of children bouncing on a big bed with creaky old springs beneath. In contrast to that voice, Gretchen weighed less than a hundred pounds, and had shrunk to under five feet tall. She didn’t try to get up, as she used to when Willow visited.
“It’s good to see you, too,” Willow said. “Merry Christmas.” She bent down and kissed Gretchen on one papery cheek, her hand resting gently on her friend’s opposite shoulder.
Even as she reached a hand up to clutch Willow’s arm, Gretchen pointed the remote at the TV and lowered the volume, so that Willow could no longer hear all the dialog. Living alone for decades had prompted Gretchen to leave the TV or radio on most of the day, even if she wasn’t paying attention. This was one of the starkest differences between the two friends, perhaps even more than their respective ages. Willow loved quiet and never turned on an electronic device without some immediate purpose.
“So, how has your day been?” Willow said, a bit more moderately, now that the TV volume was down and she was sitting next to Gretchen, close enough for easy lip-reading.
“Pretty good,” Gretchen said.
Willow could tell that Gretchen was trying to remember exactly what she had done that Christmas day. The uniqueness of the holiday would help distinguish it among the clutter of lonesome days.
“We had a fine dinner, for the midday meal. Ham for the Christians,” she said, reporting that the world was as it should be.
“Good, I’m glad they put some effort into the meal, to make it special for you.”
Thus the conversation paced along, not so different from a regular weekly visit. Willow often had to call and apologize for missing a Saturday visit with Gretchen, but she managed to see her more weeks than not. During her incarceration, Willow asked a friend to call and explain that Willow was on an important mission for the church and wouldn’t be able to visit. She did call and talk to Gretchen on the phone once. The conversation had been a high-wire act of trying to keep in touch and yet not let her know the nature of Willow’s mission—ministering to prisoners from her own cell in the jail.
After a few more of the opening niceties, Willow pulled a small package out of her big purse. Shiny metallic green paper, with a gold carnation-shaped bow half as big as the box, caught Gretchen’s attention. Past the thousand lines that added up to a smile on Gretchen’s face, Willow could see a girlish joy at the prospect of a gift. That girl immediately noticed that there were two rectangular objects inside the paper, a combination gift.
Again Willow said, “Merry Christmas. I hope you enjoy this.”
Willow had debated for quite a while, even during her time in jail, whether this gift would be useful to Gretchen. She felt that she had received assurance from an inner voice that it would be good, along with some ideas for making it better.
Knowing who would be opening it, Willow had spared the tape and resisted creasing the folds tightly against the boxes. Still, shaky little hands fumbled and struggled with the paper for a few seconds before Gretchen found the flap that would deliver the gift from its wrapping. Willow leaned forward, holding back her hands but ready to explain as soon as Gretchen uncovered the two bright, white boxes.
It was a small music player and a set of headphones. Willow had heard about conflicts in the convalescent home over volume when Gretchen tried to listen to her favorite hymns. Her neighbor on one side was a former jazz musician, a man with little tolerance for old white church music. His hearing was much better than Gretchen’s, thus leading to the conflict.
As Willow expected, Gretchen looked uncertainly at the two alien objects.
“Want me to help you with these?” Willow said, though she knew the answer.
“Yes, please. I don’t think I know what to do with those,” Gretchen said.
Willow opened each little box in turn, depositing useful pieces on her blue and tan plaid skirt, where she held her knees tightly together. She unfolded the head phones, which sprung open to form a bright pink arc that would fit over Gretchen’s thin cotton fluff of hair. Willow hoped they wouldn’t hurt the old woman but would be tight enough to stay in place.
Before wrapping the gift, Willow had loaded the little digital music player with over a hundred hymns, many of them from old, discontinued CDs she had picked up in the bargain bin at Christian book stores over the course of the year. This gift had been a long time in preparation.
Reaching gently with the headphones, once she had plugged in the audio cable, Willow set the miniscule speakers in place over each of Gretchen’s ears. Gretchen looked like a girl at the doctor’s office, submitting to some procedure which was doubtful at best. Willow flipped on the play button and leaned close to check the volume as the first song began.
That doctor’s-office look on Gretchen’s face vanished in favor of a surprise-birthday-party look at the first notes of her favorite hymn, In the Garden. And, from that wide-eyed smile, Gretchen’s face transformed again, as her ears filled with that beautiful tune and those intimate words. Her watery gray eyes drifted toward a faraway place to which Willow was content not to follow.
Gretchen grew self-conscious as tears broke loose from the corners of both eyes. Willow reached a long arm for a tissue and placed it in an open hand, which turned from worshipping to receiving cover for escaped emotions.
As usual, Willow had invested little in any particular outcome for her gift, especially once she concluded that her father in Heaven had endorsed the idea. She had even pictured Gretchen swept off her feet to dance with him as Willow did,
but knew that this was her own projection of what she would want, not Gretchen’s native wish.
After the tissue had served its purpose, it fell to the floor in Gretchen’s effort to find the volume and power buttons. Willow obliged by demonstrating each in turn. As close as they had become over the years, Gretchen still turned to fiddling and fussing whenever her feelings became too visible. But Willow didn’t mind. She knew her friend and expected nothing from her other than to continue being herself.
They discussed the music on the device and how to skip through the songs while watching the little lighted LCD screen which displayed her progress. Willow encouraged Gretchen to think about ways she would like the music organized, offering to facilitate that for her. And the intensity of the emotions stirred by the magical gift settled down into more normal tones and touches.
But Willow wasn’t finished. She had been cultivating a new habit between them, something the spirit had prompted her to do for her friend within the last year. Willow would listen internally for a moment or two and then would remind Gretchen of something that had happened earlier in her life. This would come to Willow as a sort of prompt, a phrase or image that meant nothing special to her. But when she told Gretchen what she was seeing or hearing, Gretchen almost always linked quickly to an important memory from some stage in the distant, or even more distant, past.
This, too, Willow thought of as a gift for her friend. For, in resuscitating these memories, Gretchen often found relief from some old resentment or fear. As a person who came to this sort of experience very late in her life, Gretchen proved a brave adventurer, a Magellan of her own soul.
Before that, Willow had walked down the hall and collected tea for the two of them, along with some sugar cookies provided by the home. For Willow, this was an unusual indulgence, but she knew Gretchen still fed a sweet tooth and looked forward to the old memories that the brightly frosted cookies would inspire.
Once they had sipped their tea to the bottom of the little white holiday-decorated cups and disappeared four of the cookies, Willow was getting an idea of where they would go that night.
“Gretchen, I think I’m getting an impression for one of your memories,” she said, introducing her transition. “I see you as a little girl running down a path, under tall trees, in an old forest. And, though I can’t see anyone else, I have the feeling that someone is following you, enjoying your bouncy, girlish strides.”
Willow often felt like a storyteller, though all she needed to tell was the “once upon a time,” and Gretchen’s memory would fill in the rest of the story.
Gretchen was nodding, her eyes half closed, a secret smile awakening.
“That was my cousin Millie’s house. They had those big trees out back of their house, what used to be a farmhouse. But developers had started building a town along a new state highway and bought the better part of the acreage.” She paused to slip completely into that memory.
“Millie was much older than me, practically a grown woman. But she loved to spend time with me, to walk and talk, to show me things in the woods—a bird’s nest or a stand of wild flowers. She was so good to me.” Gretchen’s voice had softened to nearly a whisper.
She looked at Willow, and spoke in a more intimately confidential tone than ever before. “You always reminded me of her. I don’t think I ever told you that.” She stopped, drawn to tears for the second time in just minutes. But Gretchen had learned that Willow didn’t mind, and decided this time not to mind either.
“She died of the flu when I was just seven years... ” Gretchen’s voice narrowed to nothing, sadness choking off one last word.
Willow gripped Gretchen’s hand. She leaned in close to her ear and began to pray for peace, for healing and for blessings on all of her catalogue of memories with Millie. She could feel Gretchen’s feeble grip strengthen and then relax as a healing spirit covered and then penetrated that long and deep wound.
That Christmas, Willow gave Gretchen the gift of Willow’s presence, the gift of beloved music, and the gift of another piece of freedom from the sapping pain of loss. It was a good visit.
Annetta Retires
The last day of the year would be the last day of Annetta’s career as head librarian. She had started at the Palos Heights Main Branch twenty-eight years ago. When the new branch was built, amidst the townhouses and McMansions, she beat out four other people for the position of head librarian. That was twenty-one years ago. Not coincidentally, that was how long Willow had been working there as well.
Willow was one of the new hires brought in to staff the edgy new library, with its river rock walls and extensive array of natural wood in the doors, floors and stairs. Some of the bookshelves were even stained hardwood. To Willow, Annetta was as much a part of the personality of the North Branch of the city library as the maple stairs and oak handrails.
Working half a day on December thirty-first, Willow inhaled and released a purging breath, adjusting her soul to a new work experience ahead. She had met her new boss, a woman ten years her junior, a sparkling and enthusiastic librarian and administrator. Starting to work for Cassy Stillwater, the new head librarian, would be completely different from starting with Annetta over two decades ago. Willow had been still recovering, still discovering her adult self, in those days. She didn’t fear the future now, but she prepared herself for the differences.
That last day of the year, preparations for a retirement party floated to the top of everyone’s agenda. Willow was setting up the drinks—wine, coffee and tea—a small variety of each. Just for this special event, the staff had received permission to serve wine on library premises. Annetta said to blame the stretch of the rules on her. “What can they do? Fire me?”
Before the official festivities began, Annetta worked in her office, acquainting Cassy with some of the finer points of the finances and related software. Willow knew Annetta was dreading facing the emotion of her final day. This is why Annetta stayed haltered to her work as long as possible, to limit the pain and awkwardness. But Cassy finally insisted that Annetta wrap things up. It was also a holiday, after all, not just her retirement day.
Willow finished with the drinks, cups and napkins just as Annetta was banished from her office. Sensing her friend’s fragile state, Willow sidled up for a hug by the magazine racks. That contact released the first downpour of tears, Annetta wiping Willow’s shoulder dry and apologizing in husky tones, accompanied by prodigious sniffles.
When she had begun to recover, Annetta dove into a memory that she shared with Willow.
“You remember when you came over to my new house to pray for it and shut down those nightmares I was having?” she said, wiping her nose with a balled-up tissue.
Willow nodded. “I do remember that.”
“You were still a bit wet behind the ears, in those days,” Annetta said, looking into the corner of her eyes for a moment.
Again Willow nodded, snickering this time. “You remember that too?”
“Umhmm,” Annetta said, resoundingly. Her constricted breathing tripped that growly affirmation into a brief coughing fit.
Willow patted Annetta’s back as she remembered that day in May, over ten years ago, when she led a small group of people over to Annetta’s house to cleanse it of some unwanted leftovers from previous occupants. Willow had been quite sure it was a sort of demonic spirit, but a guy at church insisted that it could be a human spirit, a ghost. She had yielded to his insistence, even though she doubted he was right.
Looking at the budding smile on Willow’s face, Annetta said, “What was that guy’s name?”
There had been two men and another woman with her for that little mission, but she knew exactly to whom Annetta was referring. Jamie Whitaker was a couple of years younger than Willow, both in their thirties back then. His curly, dark hair reminded Willow of classic Greek statues. His powder blue eyes would have seemed at home on a movie star. At least, Annetta had said something like that to Willow at the time. She was constantly try
ing to match Willow up with somebody in those days.
“Jamie,” Willow said, “Jamie Whitaker.”
“Uh-huh, Jamie, that’s right. Sure glad he didn’t really wet himself that night, seemed like he was gonna.” Annetta giggled, assuming a seventy-year-old woman can giggle. It seemed to Willow that this seventy-year-old woman could.
“He was so certain,” Willow said. “I thought he knew what he was doing. But it turned out he was just like me: he could see into things but didn’t know exactly what to call them or what to do about all of ‘em.”
“Thought he was gonna scream like a girl. Think he nearly busted something stoppin’ hisself from it,” Annetta said, a shake of her head and chagrined smile replacing her giggles. “I thought he was so attractive before that part.”
“You were pretty well scared like the rest of us,” Willow said, looking down her nose in correction of Annetta’s preoccupation with Jamie’s looks now that time had filtered and recolored her memory.
“And what did we decide that thing was?”
“Some dark angel, a fallen spirit, attached to a curse on your house. The woman that lived there before you must’ve been into some kind of spells and curses.” Willow shook her head now, but with no hint of a smile. “She must’ve fed that thing for years. It was strong, and determined to stay.”
“I wonder why it didn’t go with the woman when she moved out?”
“Jamie was saying he wondered if the woman died.”
“Uh-huh, Jamie, the expert, squealin’ like a five-year-old when that thing showed itself. At least showed itself to you two.”
“That was the value of havin’ him there. I knew I was seeing something, and his reaction to it let me know I was right about where it came from.”
“Yeah, well, that didn’t keep it from takin’ us ‘til after midnight to convince it to get gone.”
“I was glad for cell phones back then,” Willow said, leaning back against a long table in the magazine section. “We got some good advice, finally.”
The Words I Speak (Anyone Who Believes Book 2) Page 16
