Dearest Dorothy, Help! I've Lost Myself!

by Charlene Baumbich

  After Dorothy and Josh had gluttoned themselves with chicken and mashed potatoes, they decided to bundle up and take a walk down by the creek to jostle their food “down the hatch and out of our gullets,” Dorothy had said. Although Dorothy at first seemed oddly distracted and worried about his mom—a little too worried about a mere headache, he thought—eventually he knew he had her full attention. He poured out another piece of his heart with each step, first about Alex (since Dorothy’d asked how his visit had gone), then Kevin, then Shelby. As usual, she’d delivered affirmations for his teenage self, assurance for his mended relationship with Alex, and the excellent double-dating idea, which would not only help him make amends with Kevin (Dorothy said, “You don’t get rid of friends just because they sometimes act like jerks—no matter which end of the jerk part you’re on,” then she’d winked), but also give him a chance to keep an eye on Shelby. “And I’ve heard Deborah Arnold is a right nice young woman,” she’d said. “I’m sure you’ll all have a swell evening.” By the time he’d taken Dorothy back to town, he’d felt renewed and ready to tackle life again.

  Now, though, after knocking Deb’s books to the floor, banging her head and then never even asking her to the dance the entire trip down the hall, he was suddenly back in Doofusville.

  Katie had been unable to speak after Dorothy’d revealed her Core Four self on the porch. Standing at the edge of knowing—whatever it was—and not being able to find out for another day was unbearable. Her emotions swung between fear for what she would learn, and anger with Dorothy for not volunteering this information sooner. Then again, maybe she would ultimately end up happier if Dorothy never told her the truth, if that’s what she was going to do.

  After she excused herself with Josh and Dorothy and climbed the stairs to her bedroom, she closed the door and locked it behind her. Walking softly, as though sneaking up on her closet—her own life—she pulled down the ski-boot box and set it on the bed. She removed the lid, then laid down on the bed next to it. Turning onto her side, she propped herself on her elbow and stared at the box for a few minutes, lightly stroking her fingertips across the top of the neat rows of letters, stopping at the notebook that also served as her marker. Part of her was anxious to begin delving into the letters and notes with this newfound piece of information about Dorothy. Maybe putting her in context would reveal something new. Another part of her wanted to fling open her window and toss the entire box to the wind, which had picked up as the day had gone on. Maybe the winds would carry these pieces of her life away, the same way they’d blown them to her toes to begin with.

  Katie looked at the clock. It was after two. Still lying on her side, having never touched a thing in the box other than to continue running her fingers back and forth across the tops of the letters, as though they might render soothing music if she strummed across the messages long enough, she finally reached for the lid and settled it back on the container. She scooted the box close to her abdomen, then curled her body and arms around it, cradling it to her as close as she could.

  Oh, Mom. What didn’t you tell me? As soon as she closed her eyes they began to burn.

  Oh, God. Whose child am I?

  There it was; she had uttered her growing and deepest fear.

  Unbridled tears began to pour forth. An hour passed before she silently cried herself to sleep. No amount of trying to imagine herself back on the massage table—warm hands, quieting fragrances and wafting notes—could heal the deep vulnerabilities that had been laid bare within her.

  Katie awakened at four-thirty. Her throat was dry, her eyelids were swollen and her arms were still wrapped around the box. She pushed it away from her and stared at it. Even though she’d faked a headache, she’d cried so long that she now actually had one. She sighed, rolled on her back and rubbed her temples and neck. Then she stretched her body, realizing how many kinks had reclaimed her in such a short period of time, her massage feeling like it had been months ago rather than yesterday. What’s the point of working on the puzzle now? I’ll just wait until tomorrow.

  Slipping out of bed, she tiptoed to her closet and set the box back on her shelf, leaving the closet door open so as to make no noise. She wasn’t sure if anyone was in the house or not, although it seemed quiet. She simply was not up to small talk, not even with Josh.

  She stood slightly back from her window and peaked through the curtains. Dorothy and Josh were slowly making their way up the incline to the barn, their elbows locked. Dorothy stood alone while Josh opened the large barn door. She looked older from a distance, Katie thought, when you couldn’t see the sparkle in her eyes. Frail almost, even though she was a fairly sturdy woman. Katie waffled between intense gratitude for this feisty friend who had helped mend fences between her and her son, and the desire to run out and tackle her to the ground, yelling, “TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW! WHAT’S BEEN HIDDEN ABOUT ME FOR ALL OF THESE YEARS?”

  After Josh and Dorothy disappeared into the barn, Katie scurried to the bathroom, then down the stairs. Even though her stomach was in a knot, she thought it would do her good to eat a little something. Maybe nourishment to her body would help quiet her mind. Once more, she found herself peaking through a window to make sure they weren’t coming. Nothing like hiding in your own house. She raced around grabbing a paper napkin and plucking two chicken wings—Wish I could use these to fly away!—from the bottom of the bucket, leaving only a thigh behind. She grabbed a container of bottled water out of the fridge and raced back upstairs. Back to her room. Back to her wondering. Back to her waiting.

  Josh said he’d start the SUV while Dorothy gathered her things from inside; it was time for him to take her home. As she gathered her backpack from the chair in the familiar kitchen—which, even when relaxing in the joy of her happy new kitchen, she sorely missed—she noticed the wings were gone from the bottom of the chicken bucket she and Josh had left on the table. In Katie’s haste to grab something to eat while they were gone, she must have accidentally strewn the few napkins Dorothy noticed lying on the floor. Good. You need your sustenance, child. Lord, bless her special. Massage her heart and give her a good night’s rest for tomorrow.

  Since Eugene’s wife was out of town until Tuesday, and nobody had died in the night—thankfully giving all of his friends at least one more day on this earth—he’d had nothing to do since church yesterday but watch football and think about his committee duties. Sometimes being an undertaker had its happy advantages, in an odd sort of way. Of course, the more folks who died, the better his income. But Eugene never allowed himself to think that way lest people read his mind and take their business, which of course was their bodies, elsewhere. He was the only undertaker in Partonville, but he figured if they were mad enough, they’d sure enough make other arrangements, especially since the funeral home in Yorkville was getting a lot of attention for its new management, since the old owner had—and there was no other way to put it, Eugene thought—become his own client. And Hethrow, well, now they had nearly a dozen funeral parlors the last time Eugene had looked in the Yellow Pages. One had even been running an advertisement in the Partonville Press (“Does Harold Crab have no shame for what he allows in his paper?”) promoting a do-it-yourself service, aside from the embalming or cremation, of course. “What will they think of next?” he’d asked his wife in a huff after reading her the advertisement aloud. “DIE for ya?”

  He’d scribbled a short list of interview possibilities on a pad of paper Sunday during football commercials, then, after some reconsiderations, replaced two of them over a bowl of cold cereal Monday morning, right after he’d worked the crossword puzzle, which he finally quit on since he didn’t have his wife there to answer his questions about seven down and sixteen across.

  Eugene missed his wife. Their marriage had been, compared to some couples in Partonville—say Arthur and Jessie—a quiet and comfortable one. No career changes (housewife and funeral director, they were). No cruises or trips to Hawaii, but they did love taking a week every year to g
o camping, even now. They’d raised three children, never got behind on their bills and, for the most part, saw eye-to-eye on finances and politics. Even when they weren’t saying anything to each other, he realized he was just more comfortable knowing she was in the house, or playing, as she called it, out in her flower garden, or sitting beside him in church. Yes, he thought, life was just more . . . interesting when she was around.

  By 8:00 A.M. he’d come up with his list of five names that were sure to be town pleasers. He phoned Doc’s home number and got his machine, then he tried his office, but he wasn’t there either. Apparently Doc was in transit.

  “Is this an emergency, Eugene?” Ellie, Doc’s receptionist asked. She was always on top of protocol and readied for crisis.

  “Nope. It certainly is not. I feel as healthy as a horse.” He sniffed, just to make sure that statement was still true. “Just a piece of business on which we need to touch bases.”

  “He’s got a pretty full boat this morning, Eugene, so it might be lunchtime before you hear from him. He’ll be done today at one, though, since Doctor Nielsen will be seeing patients this afternoon. But come to think of it, Doc probably won’t take a lunch break since, as we all know, he is usually running behind. So . . . you might not hear back from him until mid afternoon.”

  “And I suppose you’re going to tell me the young Doctor (he’d said the word as though he didn’t believe it for a minute) Nielsen never runs behind?”

  “I suppose I am going to tell you that, Eugene Casey. Seems punctuality is something they must be stressing in medical school. The first clinic Doctor (and she said that word in a way that would affirm the validity) Nielsen worked at only allowed him fifteen minutes to see a patient, and not a minute more. He pretty much sticks to that here, too, and gets the job done just fine, so that’s how I schedule him.”

  “Who can figure out what ails a body in fifteen minutes? I’m not sure I’d trust a fella who gives as much attention to watching the clock as he does to my cranky gallbladder!”

  “Now, Eugene, we both know Doc likes to visit as much as he likes to doctor.”

  “Last I heard, talking with patients is how you learned what ailed them.”

  “Eugene . . .” There was a long pause. Just about the time Eugene thought she’d hung up on him, the terse tone in her voice having revealed her response to his comments, she began again, this time in a kinder, yet still cordially professional voice. “Eugene, Doctor Nielsen is a wonderful doctor. He graduated the top of his class and his recommendations from his previous employer were glowing. He is intelligent, careful and kind. You are not going to do this town, or Doc, for that matter—who, may I remind you, is trying to scale back to retire—any good if you assume otherwise. Do you think Doc would have hired Doctor Nielsen if he hadn’t believed he would learn to care for us as much as Doc does?”

  After a short pause, Eugene spoke. “You’ve got that right, Ellie. If there is one person in this town I have trusted enough to care for my health, it’s Doc. I’ve always taken him to be as fine and noble a judge of character as anyone. Now is not the time to shortchange Doc’s judgment, or his retirement. Just tell him I phoned, okay? I’ll talk to him when I talk to him.”

  When Ellie hung up the phone, she wrote out a note for Doc asking him to give Eugene a call when he had a chance. She printed “No emergency” at the very top and underlined it twice. Although Eugene hadn’t gone so far as to in any way approve of Doctor Nielsen, he had acquiesced when reminded about Doc’s good judgment. As tired as she was of trying to talk the town into accepting Partonville’s new physician by booking with him, she was at least happy to learn she’d accidentally struck on her most convincing argument yet to support him: the good Doc himself.

  15

  Gladys stood on the sidewalk in front of her mayoral office located in the small, one-story, dark-red brick building in the center of the Partonville square. She watched traffic passing by, more convinced than ever before that her plan to get Partonville folks traveling in the direction of the future was a must, no two ways—and especially no one wrong way—about it. For the life of her, she could not understand why everyone else seemed so blind to the symbolism and simplicity. From the continued banter that had surrounded her at the grill this morning—which had escalated since yesterday’s Partonville Press’s reporting of the first committee meeting and her plans to change traffic on the square—it seemed momentum was gathering against her, at least if she listened to Cora Davis who had become a virtual flame thrower of negative comments. Three steps forward and two steps back, she thought as she reviewed the up-and-down emotional roller-coaster-of-a-ride this was becoming.

  Since she’d learned that the Crooked Creek park would “by no means be ready until at least next spring,” according to Dorothy, she was bound and determined, by hook, crook or bulldozer, to make this traffic switch happen. To her, it was simple: Throw up a few one-way signs in the opposite direction, and there you have it! With a beam of determination on her face and a simple plan in her head, Gladys turned toward her office to start making things happen. As she did so, her eye caught the age-old analog clock that hung from the corner of the building. Since she could remember, the hands to the clock had been stopped at one-fourteen and six seconds. I wonder why neither Jake nor the mayors before him ever had that fixed? Then again, why haven’t I? Her curiosity was piqued as to what might have been happening in Partonville at the exact moment the clock ticked no more. A thunderstorm? A birth? The holidays? A death? I wonder if anyone even recollects what year it stopped?

  Gladys decided she’d ask around at Harry’s tomorrow morning. After all, folks at Harry’s, especially Cora Davis, looked right toward the building, day after day. Maybe this would give Cora something else to be thinking and talking about other than opinions about her! Or maybe Harold would know, or could scan the archives at the paper to see if there’d ever been a mention of either the clock’s stopping or its disrepair. Didn’t people want to check the clock as they circled the square, hustling from here to there, wondering if they were going to make it to . . . whatever on time? Why hadn’t there been a public outcry? Or have we all been too busy traveling backwards in time to follow through with things that matter? Maybe our lack of attention to time is why this town is on the edge of peril!

  She yanked down the bottom of her blazer, which had ridden up on her hips—Better lose a couple of pounds before photo opportunities—straightened her mayoral name tag and, with a heavy tromp that was distinctly Gladys’s, headed for her office to make a few calls. There were not only traffic signs to order, but now signs of the TIME to correct.

  Katie’s phone rang at 10:30 A.M. Even though she’d been waiting for Dorothy’s call, the sound startled her. “Hello.”

  “Katie, it’s Dorothy. If you can come to my house in about an hour, that would be good.” Katie said nothing, although Dorothy could hear her breathing. “There’s no way around it, Katie; this is going to be hard. I’m praying for us, and especially for you. Our God is a sovereign God. Even if it feels like others have let you down, just know that God never will.” More silence.

  “You can come in an hour then?”

  “Yes.” Katie hung up without saying good-bye.

  Dorothy replayed a part of her conversation with Pastor Delbert.

  Do you believe, she’d asked him, we humans, we children of God Almighty, can and are readied and able to forgive that which we can’t even fathom? That which would seem unthinkable ... unforgivable?”

  “I believe,” he’d responded, “that if we cannot, we need to trust the Almighty to work that work in us.”

  Speaking out loud, she said, “God Almighty, I am trusting you for this.”

  Josh’s teacher was still talking when the bell rang. He’d scooted his book and his body to the edge of his desk, ready to beat it to the room next door in order to catch Deb on her way out. When they were finally dismissed, he all but butted his way through kids in the door, just in time to
see the back of Deb’s head mixing in with the sea of heads in front of him. “Deb! Wait up!”

  As he sidestepped through and around people, he caught Shelby out of the corner of his eye. “Hi!” he said. As much as he wanted to talk to her, he needed to catch up with Deb to get this invitation in place before somebody else beat him to it, if that hadn’t happened already. His ultimate goal was to protect Shelby, and he didn’t want anything to get in his way—including Shelby herself at the moment. When he looked back ahead of him, he could barely get a beat on the former queen.

  “DEB! WAIT UP!”

  Shelby had opened her mouth to say hi back, but before she could form a sound, Josh had called ahead to Deb. Shelby now officially detested the . . . the. . . . There were just no polite words to even think about him.

  Deb stopped after Josh’s last bellow, which had been impossible for anyone in the hall to ignore. “Hey! I thought I was going to miss you.”

  “You’d have seen me later at my locker, no doubt. What’s up?”

  “So, did you read about Partonville’s Centennial Plus Thirty celebrations?” What a stupid thing to talk about! Pull yourself together, man!

  “No. Can’t say as I have. What’s a centennial plus . . . what did you say?”

  “Never mind. Not important. Are you looking forward to the Pumpkin Festival dance?”

  “Should I be? I live in Hethrow, not Partonville. But maybe you didn’t know that.”