That made Charlene smile. “No, he isn’t.”
Then here came Vella Blaine, her purse strap tight on her arm. She pressed Charlene’s hand, then sat herself in a chair. Another ten minutes and Dixie and Oralee showed up. Mary Lynn Macomb telephoned and said she had told Larry Joe she was there if he needed her. And then here came Lila Hicks, in full blue eye shadow, saying, “Pastor Weeks is at another hospital. He sent me over here to bring comfort, so I brought chicken salad sandwiches from the cafe.” Dixie and Oralee went out and returned with fountain soft drinks and ice tea and a sweater for Charlene. Oralee sat down to paint Charlene’s toenails. “Heaven knows you don’t need the distraction of half-painted toenails,” she said with perfect understanding.
Charlene looked around at all these people, and then clutched Mason’s hand tight. “Thank you for being here,” she said.
Mason drew her head down onto his shoulder, and she let herself go there, for just a few minutes.
“Hi, Daddy.” She laid a hand on his arm and fought down the panic that tried to choke her at the sight of him with tubes in his nose and in his arm and the beeping of the machine. She wished powerfully for Rainey, and then made herself straighten up.
He gazed at her with a bit of confusion, and then his pale eyes moved anxiously, and his mouth worked, noise but not words coming out, while his arms tried to move, too, as if to get up. Charlene pressed his shoulder.
“Just lie here, Daddy. You have to lie here right now. You know you’re in the hospital. The doctor talked to you.”
To her relief he settled, but his eyes were so filled with anguish she felt like crying.
“You’ve had a stroke, Daddy, but the doctor said it is going to be okay. That you will get better.” What did better mean here, anyway? “You will be out of here soon. You’re under medication, that’s all. You’re supposed to rest. Don’t worry about Mildred and Ruthanne. Doris Northrupt is over there with them. They are fine. There, that’s what you were worrying about, isn’t it. Well, you don’t need to. We’re goin’ to take care of them until you get out of here. Oh, Daddy, I love you.”
She laid her head down then, her cheek on his hand, and she felt him move his hand against her. Every bit of hurt from her childhood faded away.
At dawn, Everett Northrupt went out and put his new flag on his flagpole for the first time. He pulled the cord, raising up an enormous American Stars and Stripes, with a very small Confederate Stars and Bars below it that he had bought at the all-night Wal-Mart on his way home from the hospital.
He gave a sharp salute to the flags, and then he went across the street, got his neighbor’s flags and lifted them up on his neighbor’s flagpole. Standing at attention, he gave a sharp salute to the Confederate flag flying high, although he was squinting with one eye.
“Look after that old fruitcake, Lord.”
In honor of Winston Valentine, Perry Blaine went out and stuck a Confederate flag in his front yard, Jaydee May-hall took in his American flag and left the Confederate fluttering. Oralee stuck a Confederate flag on her car antenna, despite her brother having something like a seizure over it, and the secretary at the Valentine Voice, who had begun waving at Charlene through the window, stuck a small Confederate flag on her desk.
The sun was streaming in the kitchen windows. Charlene, bleary-eyed and sipping strong coffee, worked up enough energy to dial Rainey’s number.
“I’m comin’ down,” Rainey said at once.
“No, you aren’t. You know you can’t. Do you want to risk that baby?”
After a silent moment, Rainey said, “Oh, Charlene, you’re all alone.”
“No, I’m not. I have you on the phone, and I have the kids, and good friends and neighbors. And I have God with me, Rainey. There isn’t anything you can do for Daddy right now, honey. But take care of his grandbaby. Oh, and call Freddy for me, okay? We ought to tell him, even if he can’t be any help.”
Silence hummed between them on the line. And then Rainey said, “I’m sending Harry down there to make sure the doctors know what they’re doin’.”
Rainey had a tendency to send Harry here and there.
Larry Joe had to work, so Charlene was forced to rely on Mason to stay with Danny J. and Jojo and to take them around to where they wanted to go on Saturday, while Charlene checked on Ruthanne and Mildred, bought groceries for both houses, took Mildred to the hospital, leaving Vella to stay with Ruthanne, consulted with the doctor and visited with her father, who had some moments of wakefulness and was able to say a recognizable “Daughter.”
Harry did indeed show up, wearing new glasses that made him look more than ever like a stockbroker. With his customary tender but commanding manner, he looked over his father-in-law and then took himself off to talk to the doctor. He returned a half hour later to assure Charlene that her father was in good hands. Before leaving, he gave her his cellular phone. “You use this to call Rainey regularly from here, or she is going to have a hissy fit,” he said. He had from the beginning taken careful care of Rainey.
Charlene looked into her father’s room and saw Mildred sitting there, holding his hand. “Can I stay awhile?” Mildred asked, her face a mass of tears.
Struck to the core, Charlene said, “Of course you can, Mildred. You stay as long as you like.” As she drove home through the late afternoon golden sun, she kept picturing the older woman beside her father’s bed. It made her cry tears she did not understand, tears both happy and sad. She thought of her mother in a similar bed in a similar room, and her father sitting there beside her, his face awash with tears. Was that what life came down to—old hands holding on atop a white hospital sheet?
When she walked into her kitchen, there stood Mason wearing a dish towel apron. “I made you tomato pudding,” he said, showing her the bowl. “It may be a little burnt.”
She instantly told him she liked it that way, and she ate a big helping.
Mason drove her back to the hospital to see her father and to get Mildred, who had begun to show amazing strength. On the drive home, Mildred said, “Oh, yes, I should tell you about the women from the state. They want to take Ruthanne away and put her in some nursing home.”
Charlene let Mason ask the questions. She was not up to it. She was still seeing hands holding on atop the white sheets.
During the following days Charlene ran a course from her house to her father’s to the hospital. Her mind filled with worries of the days and weeks ahead, she ceased to worry about running over things when she turned into drives. She was trying to hold up the world, and with such a responsibility, she began to drive as if everything and everyone had better get out of her way.
Vella amazed Charlene by working with Lila Hicks and organizing a squad of ladies from the church to take turns staying with Ruthanne and Mildred. Charlene juggled Danny J. and Jojo around between letting them stay by themselves for short periods, or with Larry Joe or, when she absolutely had to, with Mason, who seemed to spend way too much of his time at Charlene’s, watching Danny J. and Jojo and cooking and cleaning.
Monday evening, Charlene came in from the hospital to the most surprising sight of Iris MacCoy, an apron over her formfitting little mini-dress, in Charlene’s kitchen helping both Danny J. and Jojo at the table with their homework, while Larry Joe did the dishes.
“Mason asked me to come over. He has some problem down at the feed store.” She pushed hair out of her face and looked shy and sexy at the same time. “I told him I’d see what I could do with supper and homework.”
“She can sure do algebra, Mom,” Danny J. said.
“I always helped my daughter, Ellie, when she was in school,” Iris said shyly, again pushing at her hair. Then, “Oh, here…” and she pulled a plate of food out of the oven. “Come on and have some supper, Charlene. Mason cooked this before he left. I can’t cook worth beans. Y’all move your books now and give your mama some room. There.”
Charlene slowly sat at the table. Iris brought her silverware and coffee, and
Charlene ate, running her gaze from the amazing sight of her son at the sink doing the dishes to the equally amazing sight of the sexy woman in platform heels, patiently and expertly helping her younger children with their homework, while her eldest kept giving her glances from behind. Charlene thought that people never were quite what they seemed, and it didn’t pay to make hasty judgments.
She thought this again as she sipped the coffee and discovered it was the best coffee she had ever had in her life.
They were propped up on pillows in Charlene’s bed, and Charlene was reading Misty of Chincoteague to Jojo, when the telephone rang. It was Mason.
“What are you doing?” he said.
Charlene found the question vaguely silly for almost ten o’clock at night. “Jojo and I are reading in bed,” she told him, feeling annoyed at the interruption, then guilty for feeling annoyed, so she added quickly, “Thank you for sending Iris over. She got the children fed and helped them with their homework.”
“Despite appearances, she’s really smart. She was going to be a teacher once,” he said.
For some reason that made Charlene feel dumb. She didn’t say anything.
He said, “I asked her to come over when I got the call about the feed mixer. We have to get out a pretty big order tomorrow. She was glad to do it. She loves kids.”
“Yes. She seems to.” Charlene thought of Larry Joe. She felt a stab of inadequacy in caring for her own children.
“How’s your father?”
“He’s okay.” She suddenly felt very overwhelmed. “I’m really tired, Mason, and Jojo’s waiting for me to read. I’ll have to talk to you tomorrow.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. Good night.”
“Good night.”
She was too tired and pulled in too many directions, she thought, picking up reading where she had left off. She automatically read the words on the page, while thinking that she had no energy left for a relationship with a man.
Mason telephoned her at the shop the following morning. She laid her customer’s hand on the cloth and excused herself a moment.
“I thought maybe I could take you to lunch,” he said.
His chipper voice annoyed her.
“I don’t have time for lunch,” she said. “I have to go over to get Mildred and Ruthanne and take them to the Senior Center for lunch.” She didn’t know what she was going to do about the two older women. Every time she thought of them, she felt a growing panic. “Odessa Collier will bring them home, but I have to take them.”
“Want me to drive them for you?”
“No. I can do it. I have to check the house, anyway, get whatever groceries they need. Vella has a list.”
“I can do that for you.”
“No, I have to do it, to get the right brands and stuff.” She did not understand why she felt so annoyed with him. “Thank you anyway. I have to get back to my customer now.”
“Okay. I’ll come by tonight.”
“Well, we won’t be home. I’m takin’ the kids up to the hospital with me, and then we can go by the Wal-Mart and get some school supplies they need.”
“When can I see you?” he asked, his voice serious.
“I don’t know, Mason. Right now I just don’t have time to know anything.”
And she sure thought he should know that.
From down the hall, she saw the doctor coming out of her father’s room. She hurried to catch him and get a report. He assured her that although it didn’t seem like it, in another day or so she would see definite improvement in her father’s condition. He was calling in a therapist to begin with her father tomorrow.
“I believe he will regain sufficient speech capability and will eventually get around quite well using only a cane. Right now it looks like he’ll be transferring to the nursing home at the first of next week, so he’ll be closer to home.”
“The nursing home?” she said, tightening her hands in the pockets of her smock that she had not removed.
He nodded. “Yes. He can get the necessary therapy there. If all goes well, he will be home again within two months.” He touched her arm and then hurried away to other patients and life and death.
Charlene turned and walked down the hall and out the doors into the sunshine, the doctor’s words, “…two months,” echoing in her mind.
Two months of trying to take care of Ruthanne and Mildred and see to her father, too. Two months of splitting herself in a half-dozen ways. Two months of being a daughter and caretaker, a mother and provider. What would happen to the woman she had begun to find inside? The woman who had just begun to grow? There did not seem to be any time or space or energy left for her.
She had slipped behind the wheel of the Suburban before she realized that she had not visited her father. She laid her head down on the steering wheel and cried. After a full ten minutes of tears, she blew her nose, jerked the mirror around and repaired her face, then went back in to smile at her father and tell him that the doctor was positive that he would recover and that she was so glad to have him. She held his hand as she told him this, and she sat there a few minutes, wondering just who was holding on to whom.
Thirty-Seven
When did everyone get so all-fired set on coming to MacCoy’s to get grain and seed and cattle feed and pet food? Mason couldn’t get a break from filling orders to call Charlene until just before lunch. He paced as he dialed on the warehouse wall phone.
He didn’t want to think it, but had it begun to appear as if Charlene wouldn’t return his phone calls.
Dang, he’d called her house by mistake and gotten her answering machine. Of course she wouldn’t be home. He hung up and dialed the beauty shop. At least there he did not get an answering machine.
“Umm…I’m sorry, Mason,” Dixie said, “but you’ve just missed her. She’s on her way to see her father. Just gone out the door.”
“Well, please tell her that I called…and to call me back. I’ll be at the warehouse until five today.”
“I will, Mason,” Dixie assured him in her calm, graceful voice.
He hung up and stood there a minute with his hand on the receiver, while disappointment washed over him.
Hearing footsteps and catching sight of his brother coming through the side door, he let go of the phone and moved to his desk, getting ready for whatever concern his brother was fixing to throw at him.
“I want to talk to you about your part of Grandpap’s place,” Adam said.
Mason raised an eyebrow.
“Look, that fella that was out there the other week, he’s makin’ a huge offer, but he wants the entire section, not just my part of it. He wants the creek. It’s a good deal, Mace. It’ll set you up for life.”
“I am set for life,” Mason said.
“Aw, geez, there is no talkin’ to you,” Adam said and turned to storm off.
“Wait,” Mason said.
Frowning, Adam looked over his shoulder. “Wait for what? For you to send me to the poorhouse?”
“Look.” Mason considered with a great deal of hesitancy, knowing how he and Adam had never gotten along. “I have an idea about the land, if you want to hear it.”
Adam looked skeptical, but then curiosity edged in. “So?” He came slowly toward Mason.
“If I throw in with you, we could sell all but twenty acres to your big developer. Would he go for that? We could give him control of the creek and keep the front part where my house sits next to your pasture at the road.”
Adam folded his arms. “Why keep that? I know he isn’t gonna want to build his fancy houses and have your dump sittin’ there at the front.”
“We’ll take the money we get from the sale of the land and build a senior living complex up front.”
“You want to build a nursin’ home?” Adam looked disgusted. “Valentine already has one of those.”
“Not a nursing home. A real nice living complex, duplexes, with places for gardens, and pets allowed. Walking pathways…one of those arboretums, maybe. There can be a
section for assisted living and a section for those people who are really active. Swimming pool and hot tubs…fancy, but not so fancy it can’t be affordable.” He stopped, watching his brother’s face.
“You know why those cost so much? Because a place like that costs a lot to build.”
“We could do it. We could plan it affordable, not luxurious. We’d still make money,” he added, although Adam’s expression was not one to give hope.
“Why do you always have to make things so difficult?” Adam said and walked away.
“It’s an idea that could make money long-term,” Mason called after him in a voice so tight with anger that it surprised him.
It surprised Adam, too, because he stopped and looked at Mason for a long minute, before continuing on back to the store.
Mason thought with frustration that this was the first idea he had ever shared with his brother, and it went to show why he had never shared before.
His afternoon was as busy as his morning, but he kept glancing at the phone, hoping for Charlene to call. When she did not, he called one of the boys from back at the elevator to come stand in for him, and he went over to the Cut and Curl. He wouldn’t give her a chance to avoid him.
But the manicurist table was empty.
“Charlene and Oralee went over to the nursing home to do some ladies,” Dixie told him.
He had Neville pull over to the pay phone at the IGA for his third call to her house that evening. He got only her answering machine. He opened the door of the pay phone, shutting off the glaring light above, and stood for a minute looking at the last pale light of a golden setting sun. He thought of having Neville drive him over there and leave him to wait on her front porch, but he couldn’t do it. He thought, If she doesn’t want to talk to me, I’m not going to push it. I’m not being stubborn, Lord. She is.
Driving Lessons Page 36
