“My discharge!” Anna repeated, as if Ivy were hard of hearing. “I’m being discharged, of all things.”
“You’re not happy about that?”
Anna’s gaze traveled the perimeter of the room at ceiling height then returned to hold Ivy’s in its magnet-strong, pillow-soft grip. “Ivy, have you ever been homeless?”
Counting my senior year of high school, two years ago, and a few weeks from now, three times. “Why?”
“My insurance ran out. That’s what they tell me. I don’t remember having bucket insurance.”
Oh. Kick-the-bucket insurance. It unnerved Ivy a little that she’d started thinking with Anna’s logic. “Your insurance won’t let you stay here, Anna?”
“I’m too far from kicking the bucket, apparently. Not well enough to live alone. Not sick enough to live here.”
Who proposed that plan, I wonder?
“So—” she took a deep breath, “they’re kicking me out soon. I hoped we’d have more time with the stories. Can’t afford the luxury of a nap, my dear. Unless your baby needs one.”
“Anna!” Ivy shot to her feet from the vinyl chair. Her pencil clattered to the tile floor. She flew to the doorway and glanced in both directions down the hall, pushing aside how the fast movements reignited the nausea she still fought some days. All quiet on the western front and on the eastern front. The only people in the hall lived in wheelchairs, in other eras, and too seldom in their own minds. If they’d heard the word baby—unlikely—and remembered it to repeat it—unlikely—and connected it to her, would they be believed? Unlike—
Ivy, you’re no better than Jill. You judged those residents on the virtue of their memories, their hearing, and their mental function. The way others treated, or rather mistreated, Miss Anna.
She leaned her back against the door frame and drew in a few stabilizing breaths. Was Anna about to become homeless? Where would she go, at her age?
No relatives? Hard to believe.
If Ivy’s father kept his promise, Ivy would be on the streets right beside her. Maybe they could share a bunk bed down at the mission. Wouldn’t that be a sight? Ivy and Anna arguing over who got the top bunk. Right now, Ivy could still take her, but in a few months neither of the women would create a pretty picture climbing a ladder. How long had it been since Anna’s scarred legs had moved more than to scoot her closer to the edge of her bed or chair? Why had Ivy never taken the time to ask about the scars or about Anna’s life shortly before becoming a resident?
Because Anna cherished only one topic of conversation—a story sixty years old.
Anna—1890s
The furniture crowding the tack room found more than enough elbow room once transferred to the house. We had to burn several pieces, their “innards” shredded by families of overly busy, nest-building mice. A few other pieces were salvageable but in need of sanding or paint or wood glue. Puff’s department. I was in charge of reupholstering, as money allowed, and cleaning, endless cleaning.
The sun and breeze cooperated, blowing away stale and musty odors. Puff tied a stiff rope between mature maples. On it we hung two aged oriental carpets we found rolled up in a corner of the tack room. I beat them tentatively at first, unsure that their faded threads would endure the punishment, then more fiercely as great clouds of dust and airborne grit escaped from deep within their weft and warp.
Even as the Lord spread His grace-gift over the worn and tattered parts of my life, once the carpets were stretched over the floor, careful positioning of the furniture hid most of their scars, most of the broken places.
If I didn’t know about Puff’s kinship with his Maker, I would have wondered from what deep, secret, sweetly flowing spring he drew his patience. Not once—not once!—did he object or grumble or even sigh when I asked for his help moving a chair or table across a room or an inch to the left.
“This where you want it?”
“I . . . I don’t know, Puff. Maybe closer to the window.”
“Good idea.”
“No. No, that’s not right either.”
“Pick another spot, then.”
“You’re an angel, Puff, to be so tolerant.”
“If I ain’t working in here, I’m working out there in the hot sun. I ought to be grateful these things ain’t found their proper place yet. My other chores’ll wait for me. That’s the thing about work. It won’t disappear if you turn your back on it.”
Eventually, I stopped worrying about not being able to pay him. He seemed to derive such intense pleasure from serving that I feared robbing him of the joy! And I determined to be like him, because he was so obviously like Jesus.
Unashamedly, and without making a dent in the supply, I saturated the house with wildflowers. Promising myself that I would one day give them homes in worthy vases, I used whatever I could find—old food tins and broken-lipped glass jars salvaged from the dump area behind the barn, hollowed-out chunks of wood, dented buckets . . .
The flowers—humble as they were—lent dignity to their even more humble containers, and filled the house with the beauty my soul craved.
I felt like the queen of England herself the first night I had a real bed beneath me, although I doubt that Queen Victoria was ever so grateful for such a simple pleasure. I let my tired body sink luxuriously into the mattress as if it were filled with pure goose down rather than stiff straw. It would have taken the feathers of almost a dozen good-sized geese to stuff a tick. Puff had two geese now on the property. They were a start.
Loss and lack are efficient, skilled teachers. At their knee, we learn to appreciate the smallest favors, the briefest joys, the crudest provisions, the simplest blessings. The wildflowers. A bed underneath me. A breeze on wash day. Stillness at sunset. A table in the kitchen. A chair by the window. A dead chicken on my back stoop. A friend . . . one friend.
Ivy—1951
While Anna took the nap she said they couldn’t afford, Ivy vowed to enter the apartment that night with a new appreciation for its doors, though scarred; its walls, though peeling; its floors, though scraped raw.
Moving to Clairmont had been easier than explaining to Ivy’s friends in Westbrook that she was in a family way with no family. Moving in with her dad almost guaranteed the absence of new friends.
Could Ivy envision someone like Jill seated beside her on a red vinyl and chrome stool at Butler’s Soda Fountain? In the next blue velveteen theater seat, watching Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor’s Father of the Bride at the Grand? Challenging the waitress at the diner to earn her dime tip? Throwing Ivy a baby shower in the basement of the Methodist church?
Who was she kidding? People like Ivy didn’t get baby showers. They got stares and whispers wrapped in yards of shame, tied with a loose bow. The divorced woman in one of the ground-floor apartments would soon have competition in the glares and stares department. Except Ivy would soon be gone from the building.
And Jill as a friend? No. Friends make you stronger, happier. Jill made her itch.
She’d found a friend in Drew. Where was he right now? Bouncing down a dirt road in the back of a jeep? Hiding in a ditch, motionless, while so-called stalemated North Korean boots stirred dust as they marched past where he lay? Dodging enemy fire? Burying a friend?
Her stomach roiled. She swallowed excess saliva and closed her eyes against the swirling striped wallpaper in Anna’s congested room.
“Ivy?”
Short nap.
“Will you read back to me where I left off?”
She looked at the page. The crowded lines of writing blurred. “I need . . . to take . . . a break.”
“Well, certainly, dear. You go on home. I’ve only gotten halfway around the world praying today. I have some catching up to do. Will you come back tomorrow?”
Ivy knew without Anna saying it that she was part of Anna’s “halfway around the world.” So was Drew. Back tomorrow? How could she not? Addled as she might seem to others, Anna was the closest thing Ivy had to a real friend.
Ornell Carrington waited for her in the worn chair he called his, although it came with the apartment. A six-inch-tall John Cameron Swayze delivered the news from the curved screen of the television her father owned. Or did it own him? Its gray screen of shadow images and static held him. They fascinated him. They would have caught Ivy’s attention too, if they hadn’t commanded so much of his.
A fraction of a glance from him told her he was hungry and not pleased that supper hadn’t been on the table when he’d walked through the door an hour or more ago.
“I had extra work at the home tonight, Dad. Helping an old lady.” The term caught in her teeth like a celery string. Old lady. What a crude way to describe Anna Grissom.
“They pay you more?”
Would he believe she didn’t hear him? “I’ll get supper started.” She reached for the apron hanging on a hook near the archway between the kitchen and living room.
“Don’t bother,” he said, pushing himself out of his chair. He snapped the knob on the television to the left, silencing Swayze’s commentary. “I’ll eat at the bowling alley.”
Bowling league. She’d forgotten what mattered more to him than the television.
“I can make something quick. Warm up last night’s chicken à la King.”
“It wasn’t that good.” He shot a one-eyed look her way, as if testing to see if he’d sufficiently shamed her for getting home late, for neglecting her responsibilities.
Nice shot, Dad. Strike. Right down the middle.
She woke when the apartment door scraped open. What time was it? The luminescent face of the Big Ben alarm clock on her nightstand let her know it was a little after ten. Her face and arms bore the imprint of a thousand chenille tufts. She’d fallen asleep in her slip, sprawled diagonally across her single bed, her stockingless ankles and feet dangling over the edge. She rolled over and stared through the shadows formed by the light that stole under the closed door of her bedroom.
The pace of her father’s footsteps indicated he’d had a good night. Bettered his 240 average? One strike after another? Maybe he should eat at the bowl-a-drome more often.
“Ivy?”
She should be grateful he never came home drunk. Never. His voice through the door was no threat. “What, Dad?”
“You left a light on out here.”
No threat at all. I love you, too, Dad. Sleep well.
She listened as he went through his bedtime routine. Brushing his teeth. Gargling. Flushing. Clicking his bedroom door shut. The slice of light under the door eclipsed by the darkness, Ivy reached to turn the toggle on the milk-glass lamp at her bedside. She pulled her sweat-soaked slip over her head. She’d have to rinse it and her stockings in the sink and pray the humidity didn’t prevent them from drying within the next few hours, when she’d need them again.
The oscillating fan made an annoying clicking noise when it changed directions to turn left. But if she hung her undergarments in front of its weak breeze, maybe . . .
She draped the rinsed items over the back of a kitchen chair she’d carried into her bedroom. After two tries, she succeeded in positioning the fan to rotate far enough toward them to aid in their drying and yet catch her in its return trip to stir the summer humidity into tolerance. The cigar box inside the orange crate she used as a nightstand held a growing stack of Drew’s letters. But rather than read through them all, she left the box closed tonight, flipped her pillow to the cool side, pushed the chenille bedspread to the foot of her iron bed, and draped just the top sheet over her tired body.
A bubble rippled through her lower abdomen at the spot where she’d long felt a hard knot forming. Then another ripple. Was that it? Is that what movement felt like? It’s the kind of thing an expectant mom should ask her mother, if her mother were still around.
Another day. Another round of routines and practicals. No room and no resident mattered as much to her as Anna.
“Anna?”
“Oh, don’t worry. I didn’t follow through with my threat.”
“What threat?”
“I thought that’s why you came in here so soon after that Jill person left.”
Ivy opened the blinds and exposed Anna’s view of the blank space where a pair of elms once stood. She used a tissue to wipe the windowsill of dead flies. “Want me to open the window, Miss Anna?”
“You wouldn’t ask that if you knew what I did.”
Ivy turned her full attention to the slight woman sitting on the edge of her bed, slippered feet swinging. “What did you do this time, Anna?”
Despite the heat, Anna tugged her nightgown down to cover her legs to the ankles, a habit Ivy couldn’t understand. Who would care if her bare legs showed in this environment?
“I threatened to make a break for it.”
“What?”
“To scram. Skedaddle. Skip town.”
Ivy chuckled at the thought. At Anna’s speed, a turtle on morphine could outdistance her.
“What brought that on?”
Anna pursed her lips and cocked her head to the side.
“Silly question,” Ivy added. “What happened today to bring that to mind?”
Anna stopped swinging her legs. She rubbed her hands over her knees, as if her knees ached, which they probably did. “My heart isn’t strong.”
Ivy drew closer to the bed. “I know, Miss Anna.”
“But my mind is full, not feeble.”
“I know.”
Anna smiled at that. “Want to join me?”
“Join you?”
“Dig a tunnel to freedom?”
Ivy clutched at the fabric of her uniform skirt. She inhaled until it hurt, then exhaled until her lungs emptied completely. A stuttered new breath gave her air enough to say, “There’s no place I could run that would give me what I really need, Anna.”
“One place. There’s one place.” Her gaze drifted toward the head of the bed. Or was it the bedside table? The Bible lying open on the table?
“You threatened to escape, Anna?”
“Not a wise move, huh?”
“Well . . .”
“I know. How far could I get before someone turned me in?”
Ivy lifted Anna’s legs at the ankles, startled as she always was by the feel of the ruffled, ridged skin. She swung Anna’s legs onto the bed and watched as the older woman relaxed them nearly flat against the sheet.
“You act as if I’m staying a while, Ivy.”
Ivy’s hands worked to position the pillow comfortably under Anna’s neck. “You don’t really want to escape this place, do you? What would I do for entertainment?”
“Come with me.” Quicksilver eyes held longing and hope. “I have to leave anyway. I suppose it’s pure bullheadedness that would make me want it to happen under my own terms. Ought to know better by now. Making my own choices never works as well as letting God do the choosing.”
“Tell you what. If you take a good rest and let that heart medicine settle, I’ll let you choose whether you want yesterday’s lime JELL-O with pineapple in it or today’s red JELL-O with pastel marshmallows. Oh, let’s get crazy. You can have both, if you want. How’s that for choices?”
Anna laid her twisted hand against Ivy’s cheek. It felt cool, despite the heat in the room. Anna’s eyes searched Ivy’s for a long moment. “Is your life missing good choices, too, Miss Ivy?”
I had a few, a couple of months ago, that would have left me some options. Now I can’t even choose a flavor of JELL-O. Today’s Friday. Dad will expect ring bologna and fried potatoes. Creamed corn. Chocolate pudding. He probably thinks it’s too much to hope for an obedient daughter who stops making his life miserable.
Missing all the good choices.
Ivy tucked Anna’s hands and arms under the bleached top sheet. “Let’s pretend we have all the choices in the world, but we’ll save them all for lunch, okay?”
Anna closed her eyes. “I see more than you think I do, Ivy. I know more than what comes out of your mouth. And you may
not believe it yet,” she opened one eye to peer at her, “but both God and I care a lot more than you realize, too. And we’re both telling you it’s going to be okay. Not today. Not tomorrow. But someday.”
The woman nestled into her Anna-shaped depression in the mattress and smiled as she faked the early stages of a nap.
9
Becky—2012
Gil stuffed a pair of socks into an empty space in his luggage and sealed it shut with an unsmooth zip-zip-ziiiip motion.
Why couldn’t he for once zip it with one tug? Why couldn’t he for once not leave?
He set his luggage on its wheeled feet and draped his jacket over the extended handle. Then he turned his full attention to Becky. First, his hand on her arm. Then, his upper body completely engulfed hers. “Are you going to call Monica?”
Becky pressed her pain deep into Gil’s stronger-than-hers chest. She felt his arms grip tighter, holding her so firmly that she couldn’t be sure her legs offered her any real support. She took a supersized breath, but the words she hoped would accompany her exhale died convulsively in her throat—a noisy, spastic convulsion.
“It doesn’t have to be today,” he said.
“I’ll . . . call her.”
“It won’t be easy.” Gil’s open palm on her back, swirling like a too-light massage, spoke a wordless comfort she’d known for more than twenty years. It had sustained her, maybe Gil too, when Mark announced he’d enlisted, when he announced he was being deployed, when news of a clumsy but deadly improvised explosive device shot through them like shrapnel.
That open palm on her back. It rarely changed anything, except her courage.
“Do you have to go?”
“No,” he said. His thick fingers moved aside the bangs that would forever frustrate her with their obstinance. Too long before a scheduled haircut. Too short after. As Gil stroked them, they seemed the perfect length for once. “No, I don’t have to go . . . unless we want to keep paying the mortgage. Not a big deal.”
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