“Turn to a new page, would you please?”
Ivy complied, anticipating a new chapter, maybe more about Mr. Grissom and where he fit.
“Jot this down please, Ivy.” Anna cleared her throat. “ ‘My dear Drew. It’s time I told you a most amazing story about the life we’ve created and ask you to forgive me for not including you in the miracle before now.’ ”
Ivy’s pencil shook as it hovered over the paper. “I really need to get home. It’s getting dark earlier these days.”
Anna lowered her gaze. “Then write fast.”
21
Becky—2012
Becky’s best imitation of aerobic exercise was bending into some lesser-known yoga shape and holding her breath while she plugged the Christmas tree lights into the outlet buried behind the donated tree. Only four something in the afternoon, but the room needed the lights. It got dark so early these days.
The donated tree—thanks to a sympathetic tree farmer from church—wasn’t at all the kind she liked. She loved the smell of balsam fir and appreciated their softer needles. This one was as prickly and pale as a bleached-out cactus. But it was free. At the moment, free scored top points with her.
Becky vacuumed twice a day to keep the family room from acting like a minefield of prickles. With Jackson no longer an inanimate object, rolling off the play blanket and to interesting locations like under the coffee table, keeping the minefield effect to a minimum grew more important by the hour.
As he played now with a stuffed penguin that mere months ago had been Lauren’s, Becky studied the tree. The lights disguised a lot of imperfections . . . as long as she focused on the glow. When her eyes drifted to the bare spots on the branches or to the crooked top—Angela, the homemade angel, leaned a little left of center—Becky felt the bare spots as if they were crusty scabs on her skin.
Jackson giggled, apparently responding to the joke the penguin told, blissfully unaware of the family and financial dynamics swirling around him, unaware of the national debt, the health-care debate, the cost of education, the starving children in Africa, the melting polar ice caps, and the fact that the Korean War never really ended.
Oh, to be unaware.
Becky couldn’t picture their traditional Christmas tree resting anywhere other than that spot in front of the sliding doors to the patio. Couldn’t imagine leaving the room that once was Mark’s. Couldn’t imagine squeezing twenty-plus years of married life into half a house. Couldn’t imagine how Lauren would keep her half clean.
But after the shock waves subsided, she did see the wisdom of the plan. In theory. And in theory, even though it felt as if they’d given up so much in the aftermath of Lauren’s one-night stand, two-night stand—Oh, Lord, I don’t want to know how many nights’ stands there were!—and even though more sacrifices were on the way, the shining light covering the bald spots was Jackson.
Unto them a child was born. A precious, well-loved, happy child. Joy to their world.
Becky scooped Jackson sans penguin into her arms, snuggled him close in the valley where lies a grandmother’s heart, and thanked God for him in the shadow of an imperfect tree.
The phone interrupted the reverie. Didn’t phones always interrupt?
“Becky? It’s Monica.”
“Hi. I’ve been meaning to call you. How are you doing?”
“Better. Then not. Comes and goes.”
Becky hugged Jackson a little tighter. “What helps?”
“You always could read my mind.”
“What?” And no, not always.
“It helps to get out and do something for others.”
The tentative bridge they’d begun to repair made Becky double think every word. “Win-win, huh?” She should have thought three times on that one.
“I’m doing so much volunteering, between church, the library, and the women’s shelter, that it’s . . . it’s created a problem I . . . I wondered if you could help me solve.”
Becky set her grandson back on his play blanket. If Monica asked her to volunteer nonexistent time . . .
“I know you and Gil are going through some money struggles.”
And the gap widens. In a corner of her mind, Becky heard the whisper of a high-end dishwasher in someone else’s kitchen.
Monica drew a noisy breath. “And I wondered if you’d consider working part-time for me? Cleaning?”
Was four seconds considered dead air? Becky rushed to fill it. “Hey, Monica. Love to talk about that sometime, but there’s someone at the door. Can I call you back? Thanks. ’Bye.”
It wasn’t a complete lie. Disappointment stood in the doorway, sticking out its tongue.
“Any responses to the résumés you sent out, Gil?” Becky turned down the covers on her side of the bed while Gil sat on his side, rubbing heel healer into his winter feet.
“You mean, in the six hours since you last asked that question? Nope. Nothing.” He switched to the other foot. “I imagine there’s a bidding war for my talents, lawyers constructing proposals I can’t walk away from. No phone calls yet. I wonder if I should see if there’s something wrong with our phones.” He rolled into bed like a clown might roll out of a basket. Ta-da!
Becky slipped between the sheets, regretting their decision to crank the furnace down so low at night. Did blanket sleepers like Jackson’s come in her size? She pulled the comforter under her chin and shivered for good measure. “I wasn’t trying to be a pest about it. Just hoping.”
“Yeah,” he said, no longer the clown. “Me, too.”
“It was snowing the night we looked at that duplex.”
“Right.”
“Was there a yard? I don’t remember.”
Gil turned on his side to face her. “Kind of a bad news/good news thing. Not much of a yard, but it will only take one pass with the lawn mower. Imagine the time we’ll save on weekends.”
“Captain Lame-o?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Can I have a little spot to plant morning glories?”
“Boom! We just cut the mowing time in half.”
“Oh, Gil!”
“Laugh or cry—our only two choices.”
Becky pulled the sides of her pillow over her ears as she lay on her back, focused on the textured ceiling. A bug smudge, likely from the summer, held her attention. “We have a third choice.”
“Go crazy?”
She dropped her grip on the pillow. “Okay, four choices.”
“What’s the fourth?”
“I can call Monica back and tell her I’d be honored to be her scullery maid.”
The call came at nine the next morning. Ron had an interested party who wanted to see the house.
“Christmas week? Gil, come on. Really?”
“The place looks . . . festive.”
“No, really. This is impossible. They want to see the house today?”
Gil jiggled Jackson on his hip while Becky brushed her teeth. “I’m going to go wake Lauren. She’ll have to help with the cleanup.”
Becky spit and rinsed. “I’m serious, Gil. This is worse than impossible. We can’t have this house ready for a viewing today. Have you seen Lauren’s room? The garage? The basement?”
“In this kind of market, I don’t think we have much of a choice.”
She had stooped as low as she thought she could go, an emotional limbo-dancing champion. The tropical music beat in her head even now as she bent over backward and slid under the ever-lowering bar of life challenges. “Seriously? Christmas week? Better idea. Let’s put an ‘as is’ sign on the front door and hop a flight to the Caribbean. Seems appropriate.”
A shadow crept over Gil’s let’s-make-the-best-of-it face. “I wish I could say, ‘Yeah, let’s escape for a while. Lie in the sun. Walk on the beach and let nothing knock us flat but the waves.’ ” The shadow deepened. “This isn’t where I thought we’d be at this stage of life.”
Ah, this “stage” of life. All ad-lib. No script. No teleprompter. All made up as th
ey went along. She could pull the shades lower or let in a little light. “If we have company coming, we’d better get busy. You grab the shovel. I’ll grab the garbage bags and the air freshener.”
22
Ivy—1951
Ivy stood in the doorway, one hand clutching a newly composed letter to Drew, the other waving good-bye to what would have been her last choice, but her best choice, of a friend. Anna waved back, her arthritic fingers splayed in odd directions but as gentle as they must have been when easing babies into the world.
“I’ll be back, Anna. As soon as I can.”
“I would hope so. You haven’t heard my love story yet.”
Ivy smiled in spite of the tightness in her throat.
“But, dear child . . . ?”
“Yes?”
She nodded and pointed toward the letter. “Don’t come back before you’ve done the repair work on your own love story. Deception breeds deceptive success. A false front. An imitation of a true answer.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She’d overacted the obedience gesture and bowing, but believed Anna’s every word.
Anna sighed. Every line of her face filled with compassion. “That baby’s name is not Remorse.”
Ivy stood before the post-office building, its tan bricks lined up, not staggered, speaking of order and neatness—two things patently missing from her relationships, especially the one represented by the letter in her hand. Written. Stamped. Risky.
Oh, so risky.
She’d prayed every day for Drew’s safety, not confident of her skill in prayer or of any obligation on God’s part to listen to her who’d given Him so little thought. And yes, it lent an undertone of guilt to her prayers. But Anna’s persuasive history pushed Ivy to venture into new prayer territory—making a request for herself.
She pressed the envelope to her heart and asked God, who seemed to care far more than she knew, to prepare Drew for the news it held.
Was He listening?
She asked for one thing more. A miracle. That Drew would still love her.
A stirring in her belly changed her prayer. That Drew would love the child.
She kissed the envelope and slid it into the after-hours mail slot. The truth was long overdue.
The four-block walk from the post office to the dry cleaners felt uphill, though Ivy knew it was flat as the prairies that drew Anna’s ancestors to the area. Her last day at work. Maybe the beginning of her last hope of a future with Drew Lambert.
The storefronts held little notice, except for how her reflected profile in the plate-glass windows had changed. Tomorrow she’d take a few dollars to the secondhand store and look for a couple of maternity blouses and a skirt with an elastic panel. The rash of babies born nine months after the Second World War ended a handful of years ago might mean the racks of no-longer-needed maternity wear would hold an ample supply for her choosing.
Before long, she’d have to concern herself with baby clothes, too. The “Help Wanted” sign in the front window of the dry cleaners could not be a sign from heaven. No. Please, no.
She stood at the base of the stairs to the apartments above, exhausted by life’s uncertainty. She gripped the handrail and pulled herself from step to step, hesitating on the landing. Their apartment door swung open. The shock of it slammed her against the wall of the landing. In the oppressive heat from the cleaners, flakes of plaster stuck to the backs of her arms.
“Ivy! You’re home. Come on.”
Her dad shot past her down the stairs before she could explain how badly she needed to collapse on her bed and cry out the remains of the day.
She followed him. Her apron waited behind the apartment door. Whatever her father had in mind automatically held more appeal than making—what day was it?—pork chops and applesauce, maybe cabbage slaw for a change.
“We’ll stop at the diner for supper,” her dad called over his shoulder, his traditionally emotionless voice bearing a faint hint of excitement.
The echo of her footsteps stopped.
He turned back to her. “Now don’t get yourself used to that. It’s a special occasion.”
“Yes, sir.”
At the base of the stairs, he paused until she caught up, then wordlessly walked out into the deepening dusk and climbed behind the wheel of a raven-black and chrome Oldsmobile with faint fringes of rust.
Ivy took in the scene. Her dad behind the wheel, beckoning through the open window for her to get in. The Andrews Sisters and Bing Crosby harmonizing on the car radio—“Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?”—a song that had never meant as much to her as it did at the moment. Ivy grabbed the chrome handle of the passenger door and pulled. The interior—two-toned black-and-white vinyl—showed surprisingly little wear compared to the exterior rust. From a home with no garage? The victim of many Midwestern winters? She wanted to capture all of it, every detail, to tell Drew and Anna.
Her dad’s driving technique was smooth, as if it hadn’t been years since he owned an automobile. The town looked different at driving speed than it did at walking speed. Less intimidating. Friendlier. Normal people rode in cars with their dads.
But a second heartbeat pulsed a few inches lower than hers, and it partially belonged to a soldier who didn’t yet know, but who would soon know, it existed. She’d slipped her fate into a mail slot, said good-bye to her truest friend, been evicted from her source of income, and now rode beside a man who had fathered her but who barely talked to her and couldn’t even point to the radio when it sang, “Have I told you lately that I love you?”
Life was far from normal.
“This is it.” Her dad pulled to the curb in front of a squat, pale yellow bungalow. It wasn’t the best light to get a good look, and her dad made no move to turn off the motor or get out of the car. Ivy did what she could to assess the property from that distance.
Set back from the street. A long, broken, weed-choked sidewalk led to the front door, centered between two twelve-paned windows. A living room and dining room? The lawn, unlike that of its neighbors, hadn’t been mowed, perhaps all summer. Wildflowers and what looked like prairie grasses towered over the crisp lawns on either side. The smallest of the homes on the street, it gave the sense of having shrunk with age, as had so many of the patients at Maple Grove Nursing Home. Anna.
She kept her gaze directed out the window. “How many . . . how many bedrooms?”
“Three. They’re small. The largest has an alcove. Might work for the crib. Room for both of you in there. Might want to paint.”
Her dad made allowance for the baby. Everything above her neck pinched to staunch the tears that threatened. He’d used a baby word—crib. The child had a home.
Dad tilted his head and leaned her way, as if getting a better view of the house. “We’ll have to buy one more bed. But I think I have a lead on one from a guy at work. His mother-in-law lived with them the last few months until she died.”
Where were all these words coming from? They didn’t flow naturally. It was as though he squeezed them out through a corroded pipe. Flat and emotionless, they told the facts, just the facts. But hidden behind the statements lay hope of a change Ivy didn’t see coming, a change that glowed like the anemic streetlight on the corner of the block, a light that eased to life as the Olds pulled away from the curb.
She felt the trees arching over the street as if snugging the neighborhood. As the breeze rushed through the open window, she took a deep breath. Not a hint of dry-cleaner fluid or steamed wool. She smelled freshly mowed lawns, night-blooming jasmine, and an outdoor grill’s contribution to a family’s supper.
A bedroom she could share with her child. A place at the table.
She turned toward her dad, his face now reflecting the odd greenish light of the dash instruments. “Buy one more bed?”
He cleared his throat of years’ worth of congestion. “For that Anna.”
Ivy tried but couldn’t suppress the one-beat sob or the tears that blurred her vision.
; “Make sure you know I’m not responsible for taking care of that woman. You’ll have your hands full with”—he nodded toward her belly—“those two. But they’re not my responsibility. Got that?”
“Got it.”
“They can have a room and food. Anything else, you’re all on your own.”
“I got it, Dad. Thank you.”
“I don’t know how you’re going to work and manage taking care of—”
“Dad. I got it. I don’t know, either. But I’m pretty sure God does. And I’m . . . going . . . to have to . . . trust Him.”
As if agreeing, the baby leapt in Ivy’s womb.
Plowing through the paperwork to get Anna Grissom released to Ivy and her father’s custody took as long as wading through the legal details for the purchase of the house. Anna had outlived Josiah’s children, which both complicated and uncomplicated the matter of legal custody.
The remains of late summer took down the last of its decorations to allow room for autumn’s before Ivy and her father closed the door to the apartment and moved their possessions to the bungalow. Ivy had done all she could to clean and patch, emptying box after box and canister after canister of various cleansers, painting all the bedrooms, scrubbing the hardwood floors—wishing for the luxury of carpeting but knowing Anna’s wheelchair would fare much better on the hardwood—sewing curtains for the kitchen window, and finding drapes for the front windows at the secondhand store.
The alcove in Ivy’s bedroom remained empty, but there was time. A little time.
Anna’s room overlooked the side yard on the east. Ivy positioned the bed, made a space for the wheelchair, and added a small table for a view out the window. After two days of unpacking Carrington boxes and moving furniture, which went slower because of the restrictions the baby placed on her involvement in heavy lifting, they transported Anna from room 117 to 329 Cottonwood Drive. It took some fussing to get her settled in and to convince her that her excessive gratitude made Ivy’s dad claustrophobic. He spent most of that evening raking leaves in the backyard, as if there wouldn’t be a far larger collection before the season ended.
When the Morning Glory Blooms (9781426770777) Page 19
