“But, Anna, it’s also important to show them what godly husbands and wives are like, how a man and woman can build a relationship that knows His blessing. Don’t they also need to be taught what pure love looks like when it stumbles, when it grows?”
My inability to answer became a wedge between us. At least, that’s how I saw it. And felt it. I would have longed to tell him point-blank that his was not a new thought, that I’d heard the murmurings crescendo. But to admit so would have been to confess that I needed him. Josiah Grissom. Not a man or a husband. Those I felt no need for. It was Josiah with whom I longed to share life.
Was it fair of me to obligate his heart with my admission? And if he were merely speculating, merely proposing a theory rather than proposing, I couldn’t bear the humiliation. I knew I’d collapse from the inside, piece by piece, until the shell of my body lay shriveled on the ground, limp and lifeless and worthless as the too-far-gone windfall apples at our feet.
“I’m grateful,” I finally managed to respond, “for the Kinneys’ example. We would be hard-pressed to find a stronger testimony to the wonder of God-pleasing love.”
He lifted his chin, as if freeing an obstruction from his throat. How his countenance reacted after that point, I don’t know. The grass at our feet drew and held my attention.
“That is true, Anna. But they have only occasional contact with the young women. Sunday services. Afternoon visits to Morning Glory. Community activities. Hardly the realities of day-to-day living, the constant give-and-take of compromise, the tender moments between a husband and wife as they sit by the fire, the wrestling with crises . . .”
Memory fails me now, trying to recall if he spoke more than those words. I was lost in the dream of Josiah at my side, not for an evening near the fire, but for a lifetime. And then I woke with a start. He was not courting me. He was counseling me. With the wisdom of years beyond my own, he was undoubtedly taking the opportunity to advise me to look for a mate.
Perhaps he even hoped that if I succeeded in finding a man willing to care for me, Josiah himself would be relieved of many of the roles he played—listening ear, companion, problem-solver, heart-mender.
Tears stung my eyes. I’d grown to depend on Josiah’s presence, his attention, his strength. And now he was asking me to wean myself from him. I did not even pretend to be ready for that. But I respected him too much to ask more of him than he had already given.
“I will give your counsel consideration, Josiah.”
It must have been the response he was looking for. He smiled and reached over to squeeze my hand. He didn’t intend it, I’m sure, but his touch squeezed the life out of my heart.
Ivy—1951
“You couldn’t see that he was in love with you?”
Anna’s silver eyebrows arched. “Like others I have known”—she slowed her words and leaned toward Ivy—“it took me an excess of convincing to believe someone could love me that completely. A man like that.”
Ivy shook her head from side to side and made the tsking sound she’d heard Anna direct toward her in the past. “Oh, Anna. How could you have doubted—?”
“And you are so certain your Drew can’t love you enough to forgive your silence and embrace the child you share?”
“I would have heard from him by now.”
“Oh, my dear.” She scratched the top of her head with a gnarled hand. “And you criticize my naïveté with Josiah?”
“You did marry. Anna Morgan became Anna Grissom.”
“Yes. Not soon enough.”
Ivy’s heart fluttered. “What? Did you . . . did you and he . . . have to get married?”
“Ivy! After the misery I’d seen? After the remorse I’d felt in my own bones for the young women who paid such a high price for letting themselves be carried away by passion? Ivy, really!”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean that you didn’t marry soon enough.” Her baby kicked as a friend would sock someone in the arm.
“I mean simply that it took me too long to believe he loved me as much as he did. We had only ten years together as husband and wife before I was alone again.”
Ivy drank in the sobriety of her words. Took too long. Alone again. “I wonder if I could contact the army directly to ask about Drew. I wonder if I could write to his chaplain and ask him to intercede for me.”
Anna—1890s
In that weariness-drugged moment before sleep captured me, when feathers pillowed my head and invited me to release my hold on the day and its concerns, I often wondered just how far back my girls—or any of us—would have to trace to stop the flow of regrets.
“If we hadn’t let our guard down . . . ,” one might confess. But history no doubt contained many pages before that moment. Leaving thoughts unchecked. Challenging the edges of danger, not recognizing that the cliff edge is not solid granite but crumbling sandstone. Entertaining, if only for a flash, risk’s possibility. Opening the door to opportunity. Not looking away when sin’s bribe was offered, as if the agreement held no consequences.
How far back would we have to go to find the blink of time in which a wiser choice—a different choice—would have changed everything?
I learned and taught that a person doesn’t burn to death by falling on the fire, but by staying there. I learned, too, that grace heals scars, massages the stiffness out of losses, creates purpose out of pain. And that the deeper the mine of shame, the richer the vein of gratitude.
Ivy—1951
The white aluminum tree—bare except for clumps of tinsel, per her dad’s request—crowded the corner of the petite living room. But the way it sparkled as the sun hit it in the morning, or as the rotating red, green, and blue spotlight illuminated it at night, made it mesmerizing, if untraditional. Anna appreciated the aluminum more than Ivy did and asked that her wheelchair be positioned to face the tree as she told her stories on the days she felt up to sitting. It gave her an unobstructed view of the cardboard nativity set at its base.
“Did you find purpose in the pain of losing Josiah?”
Anna fingered the locket at her throat, as she so often did. It rested lower on her chest than it must have when she weighed more than a flyswatter. “Some distress”—she drew a breath—“has no end point this side of eternity.”
“I don’t know that I can live without Drew.”
“And if you have no choice?”
A band of tightness radiated across Ivy’s abdomen and around to the small of her back. “I’m not ready.”
“We never are, dear.”
“For any of this. I’m not ready for metal Christmas trees. For giving birth. For raising this child without his father. For living indefinitely with mine. For getting to the end of your story.”
Anna closed her eyes and didn’t open them.
“Anna?”
“I want so badly to meet your Drew. It makes an ache inside of me that I think will crush me. It’s as if I feel in my own body a hint of what you must feel in yours. That’s what love does.” She opened her eyes then, glassy, glistening, tired-looking. “Time’s running out for both of us, Ivy.”
“I think I have my answer already.”
“Which one?”
“I think the only glimpse I’ll ever have of Drew is in the face of this child.” She caressed the mound that held her baby, soothing it as she would if rubbing the little one’s back while she or he slept in the waiting crib in the other room. The lullaby of the circles she traced were as much for her as for the baby she cradled. Another wave of tightness stretched across her muscles. She rubbed it away.
“Ivy?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Are you now willing to talk to Drew’s family?”
She curled the corner of the notebook paper. “I wrote to them.”
Anna leaned forward in her chair. “You did? I’m proud of you. You told them everything?”
“I asked if they’d heard from Drew. I said that I was concerned about him and needed to get in contac
t with him.”
“Skirting the truth.”
“It didn’t seem fair for them to know about the baby before Drew does. And yes, it’s another twisted consequence of not being honest from the beginning.”
Anna tilted her head to the side. “Did they write back?”
“Just one word.”
“One word?”
A sour taste flavored the saliva that pooled between her tongue and teeth. “It starts with a w and rhymes with more.” She swallowed hard. “They already know.”
“Rhymes with—? Oh. Oh, dear.”
What was it about Anna that made it so easy for Ivy to spill her soul? “I can only think of two ways they might have found out. Someone from here in Clairmont told them. Or . . . ”
“Or . . . ?”
“Or Drew told them after he found out.” Gripped by a pain that flashed through her like lightning, she paused to let its intensity fade before finishing her thought. “And that would explain why I haven’t heard from him.”
Morning dawned with new snow and no new contractions. They’d passed in the night, unlike other kinds of pain.
Anna begged for another hour’s sleep, commenting that the heavy crop of pinecones and the amount of black on each end of the wooly worms portended a harsh winter ahead and misery for her ar-thur-itis. So Ivy and her father shared the breakfast table alone. The newspaper headlines drilled the ongoing dangers in Korea, despite the peace talks. Celery on sale at the Piggly Wiggly. Holiday bazaars at several local churches. More MacArthur hubbub.
Ornell folded the paper and set it beside his glass of tomato juice on the yellow Formica table. “You have plans for Christmas Eve?”
A ready-to-be-born baby kept Ivy from sitting close enough to the aluminum edge of the table. She held her breath, waiting for the cramping to start again. Maybe today. Maybe next week. Maybe Christmas Eve. “I don’t know, Dad. Do you have plans?”
“Could we maybe have deviled ham?”
“Okay.”
He pointed to the folded paper. “Candlelight service at Trinity Church that night. Thought about going.”
Oh, Anna. You’ve gotten through to him, too!
Ivy took a deep breath to slow her heart rate. “Anna would say I’ve more than approached my time of confinement.”
“What?”
“That’s what they used to call it when a woman was ready to give birth.”
“Now?”
“No, not now, Dad. Soon.”
His gaze darted around the room, as if searching for a safe place to land. “Well, then.”
27
Becky—2013
There was no joy in Mudville . . . but there was neither joy nor mud at all in Monica’s household. Becky’s once-a-week cleaning job still felt like a mercy hiring, and the discomfort about what they both knew about each other’s daughters—a link that should have drawn them together—stood between them like a thick acrylic barrier. See-through, but impenetrable.
Becky suspected Monica intentionally timed leaving the house before Becky showed up with her knee pads and cleaning supplies. She often saw Monica’s SUV rounding the corner toward downtown when pulling her own car into Monica’s drive. Too coincidental to be coincidence.
This day, though, Monica sat at the kitchen island, worrying a cup of tea into dizziness when Becky entered the rear-of-the-house kitchen.
“Oh, you’re home! Sorry, I would have knocked.”
Monica looked up, a tight smile fighting for legitimacy. “Yes, I wanted to talk to you.”
“Great,” she said, depositing her coat, boots, and bucket of preferred cleaning supplies near the door. Ooo. New hall tree for coats. Antique. Nice. Fits the place.
Monica pushed a cup of tea toward her.
“Thanks. Is that the ginger peach I like so much? Smells like it.”
“Comforting.”
“Soothing.”
“Smooth.” Monica’s line of sight seemed somewhere beyond where Becky stood.
Becky turned to look. Nothing. Windows. A well-maintained but now snow-covered backyard. A handful of apple trees on the rise at the far edge of the property, their branches clothed in individual late-winter snowy sweaters with sequins sewn in for sparkle. She pivoted to face her friend. “I’m glad we’ll have a chance to talk. I’ve missed you. How’s Brianne?”
“Better. Her counselor is helping us both.”
“Good. Good.” She sipped the fragrant tea. How many cups of tea or coffee had they shared over the ye—
“Becky, I can’t afford to have you clean anymore.”
Funny. Becky’s first thought wasn’t the cost to her own budget, but sympathy for whatever financial crisis threatened Monica’s. “Honestly, your house is always immaculate. I’ve felt guilty for taking your money. You know that. If your finances can’t afford it anymore, that’s probably the Lord’s way of—”
“It’s not the money. I can’t afford it emotionally.” Monica stared into her teacup.
Wasn’t Becky the one who should have been embarrassed? Scrubbing toilets for her best friend to make gas money for her husband’s job interviews?
“I can’t afford the . . . the friendship.”
“What?” A nerve ending in her brain twitched. Then another. She pressed two fingers against her right temple. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“I love you, but every time I see you all I can think about is that moment. The day Brianne—You were here for her when I should have been.”
“Monica, you couldn’t have known. None of us suspected the depth of her pain. Neither of us knew she’d skipped school.” Becky drew closer and gave Monica a sideways hug. “Does it matter which of us was here that day? We’re just grateful she—”
Monica shrugged off her embrace. “Don’t. I can’t . . . can’t be around you. It’s too hard.”
“You don’t really mean that.” She hadn’t felt this nauseous since her last confrontation with her own daughter.
Stiff as a posture expert, Monica planted her palms on her thighs and resumed staring into the barren backyard.
Words, Lord. I need words!
“Your pay for today is there in the envelope. But I don’t want you to . . . ”
“I understand. Well, I don’t understand. I think we need each other now more than ever. But I won’t try to tell you how to feel.” Wish I could, but I won’t.
“Thank you.”
Becky picked up her teacup and brought it to her lips. She hadn’t noticed earlier how tepid it was.
As Monica drew circles with her fingertip on the spotless granite countertop, Becky angled for the door. “I guess I’ll go home, then.”
“Thank you.”
What? You’re grateful I’m going home? Oh, Monica! I’d better step up my prayers for your counselor. And get the phone number. I may need it, too.
Gil had rigged a bouncy-swing in the archway between the kitchen and the family room. It looked like something from the 1950s. But Jackson didn’t seem to care about style. He was happy bouncing, no matter the apparatus.
Gil pointed to the cell phone in his hand when Becky walked in. “Yes, sir. Certainly. I understand.” He shook his head side to side for her sake. He had no idea how well she understood that yes-with-my-lips, no-with-my-heart concept. “I’d appreciate that. Thank you.”
“Tenneson?”
“Second interview scored high, he said. But they went with someone else.”
She dropped her coat and kicked off her boots—hadn’t she just done that in another home?—and kissed Jackson’s head on her way past him to where Gil sat in his couch cockpit. “I’m sorry, Gil. What’s still out there?”
“I hear the cleaning business is good, my dusting queen.”
She’d let him think that wasn’t the dumbest thing he’d ever said to her until she got control of the tears that threatened.
“No?” His face showed some of the puzzle pieces slipping into place. “What are you doing home this early?”
/> She sat beside him and slid her hand into his. “The last time I asked you that question, you’d been let go.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, but best friends don’t fire—”
“Not so much fired as divorced.”
“What?”
“The ultimate pink slip. Not only am I not welcome to clean her mirrors, she also let me go as her friend.”
“Come on. That’s nuts. You saved her daughter’s life.”
“Part of the problem, apparently. Do we have any of those brownies left?”
“Beck, it’s nine-thirty in the morning.”
She patted him on the thigh and stood to go look. “It’s been that kind of day.”
“Hon. They’re gone. I ate the last one for breakfast.”
Sympathetic as she was to his futile job hunt, she might never forgive him for eating the last brownie.
Gil joined her in the kitchen, Jackson still drooling and bouncing as the scene unfolded. “I don’t understand, Becky.”
“Chocolate is comforting. And chocolate in the form of a brownie is—”
“That, I totally get,” he said. “I don’t understand what happened at Monica’s.”
Becky gripped the counter, then snatched a paper towel from the holder, dampened it, and swiped at the sticky spot she’d found while looking for stability. “I’m an anathema to her.”
“You give her asthma?”
“Oh, Gil! Sometimes humor is . . . is . . . an anathema!”
He wrapped his arms around her. “Sorry. I’m not a hundred percent sure I know what that word means, but if it’s any comfort, sometimes you make it hard for me to breathe, too, but not in a bad way. You know?”
“Gil. Not only is the baby watching, but also if there were ever a time I was not in the mood . . . ”
He loosened his grip. “Bad timing. I know. I have a Sidam touch.”
She pressed her hands against his chest and looked up into his scruffy face. “Sidam?”
“It’s the opposite of Midas. Nothing I touch turns to gold. Or dollar bills, either. Or electronic deposits.”
When the Morning Glory Blooms (9781426770777) Page 25
