When the Morning Glory Blooms (9781426770777)

by Ruchti, Cynthia

  Cry or laugh. It could go either way.

  “Good news, though,” he said, his normally rock-solid voice more like the loose skree on which they lost their footing while hiking on their honeymoon. “Ron has a tentative offer on our house. He called right after you left. It’s not a great offer, but we should probably take a look at it.”

  Cry. Definitely. Cry.

  28

  Ivy—1951

  It had all gone so wrong.

  No Christmas Eve service. No deviled ham. And no Christmas baby, either.

  The first wave of doubled-over pain hit with blinding fierceness a few minutes after Ivy finished the lunch dishes on the 24th. Intent on lowering herself into the tweed chair for a few minutes, instead Ivy skinned her knees on the hardwood floor in the living room as she fell. She stayed there, on all fours, an hour-long thirty seconds before the pain subsided. So different from the bands of tension she’d felt over the past week, this condensed education about the realities of labor stole her breath and her courage.

  Anna called out from her bedroom, “Ivy! Ivy what happened? Dear one, are you okay? Answer me, please!”

  “Oof. I’m okay.”

  “Is it the baby?” Her voice drew closer. How had she maneuvered out of bed into her wheelchair without assistance?

  By the time Anna wheeled into the room, Ivy was seated in the chair, dabbing at her raw knees with a handkerchief.

  “Oh honey, you’re bleeding.”

  “I didn’t expect my knees would take the worst beating during labor.” Ivy worked up a smile that she hoped would reassure her friend.

  “I’ll dampen a kitchen towel for them.”

  Ivy placed her hands on the arms of the chair to lift herself out. “I’ll get it.”

  Anna’s glare could sear meat. “You sit! I’ll get it. The way this is starting, you will need every ounce of strength you can spare. How soon before your father gets home?”

  Ivy leaned back in the chair, closed her eyes, and massaged her abdomen. “He went to the post office. To check. For me.”

  “Why are you crying? Have your pains started again?”

  She choked back a belly-deep sob. “Anna, I wanted this child to bear Drew’s name. We’ve run out of time.”

  Anna bent as well as she could and laid the cold compresses against Ivy’s knees. “Carrington is a fine name.”

  “It’s not his.”

  “I know. I know, dear.”

  “Oh! And my dad will be so upset.”

  “That you prefer Lambert to Carrington? He understands more than you think, Ivy.”

  “Not that. About the chair. My water broke.”

  Bright light. Too bright. Marrow-deep pain. Crushing. Bruising. Who is that tearing at me, pressing on me, smothering me?

  White and noise. Smells. So foreign. Alcohol. She smelled alcohol. And blood. Hers.

  Ether. Dark. Too dark. Pain breaking through the darkness.

  Whispers.

  Silence.

  Eight women in the ward. When the curtains were opened, Ivy counted eight women and ten beds—two empty, five on each side of the room—and feet facing a wide aisle for the medical staff. The crushing pain had fled, replaced by a stinging pain and a weariness that forced her to use both hands to grip the bed rail to pull herself onto her side.

  The woman in the bed to her left had babies suckling at both breasts. Twins. The woman to her right had given birth to her seventh child in seven years. Tired. She looked as tired as Ivy felt.

  A woman Ivy couldn’t see from where she lay complained that her husband—her husband—read magazines until midnight while she labored, then went home so he wouldn’t miss his mother’s Christmas morning brunch with his family. Her bitterness soured the ward. If Ivy had had the energy, she’d have shut her up. The mother of twins shushed the woman with a word that held the power of an industrial floor fan.

  The twins’ suckling sounds made her have to go to the bathroom and created an odd tightness in her breasts.

  “Miss Carrington?”

  Miss. Did she have to say it so loud? Women on the ward might have had to get married, but no one would know. Their names started with Mrs.

  She rolled to her back, her arms empty, a soup of darkness, whispers, and pain swirling in her mind. She hadn’t heard a tiny cry before the darkness engulfed her. Now some Nightingale had been sent to tell her.

  The nurse’s crisp white hat, banded with a thin black velvet ribbon and held to her Lucille Ball curls with white bobby pins, loomed large in her vision as she stood beside Ivy’s hospital bed. Her face was as kind as Anna’s had ever been.

  “Miss Carrington? Are you with us? You had a pretty rough time of it.”

  “I’m here.” Her voice scratched across a dust-dry throat.

  Someone’s baby mewed. The sound was so close. In the nurse’s arms.

  “Ready to meet your daughter?”

  It had all gone so wrong. And so right. No Christmas Eve service. No deviled ham. And no Christmas baby, either.

  Joy Elizabeth Anna was born a Carrington, not a Lambert, eight minutes into December 26th.

  Joy to the world.

  How could something so tiny and beautiful have caused so much distress?

  Joy of my heart, welcome to the world.

  Ivy stroked the downy skin of her daughter’s forehead; miniature ears; full, flushed cheeks; and perfect chin. She ran her finger along the now-closed eyelids. So soft. While the noise of the ward swirled around her, Ivy remained in a cocoon of Joy. The ache of Drew’s absence pulsed strong. But hope lay content in her arms. Hope grabbed her finger and held tight in its small but tenacious grip. My strong girl. Do you know how much I love you? You will.

  “Eighth Army?” The voice came from somewhere above the cocoon. The Nightingale.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Daddy’s in Korea?”

  “How did you know?”

  Nightingale held a stethoscope to Ivy’s heart, put two fingers on her wrist, and pushed rudely on Ivy’s shrinking abdomen as she talked. “You said a few unkind things about Korea during labor.”

  “I did? I’m sorry.”

  “Not unexpected. We OB nurses have heard a few choice words on a few dozen subjects over the years. Joy’s daddy will be proud to hear how valiantly you fought when he gets home.”

  The bundle of warmth in her arms pushed back against the cramp of longing.

  “Now, I think it’s time for you to take a nap and for me to get this little one back to the nursery. Your father’s been waiting at the viewing window for an hour.”

  “My father?”

  “I think he may have rubbed the brim off his hat by now, twirling it in his hands while he waits.”

  Ivy buried her face between the receiving blanket and Joy’s ear.

  “Are you okay, dear? Your emotions may be in upheaval for a few days. That’s normal.”

  Ornell’s first grandchild. No. That wasn’t true. The first he’d get to hold.

  Her arms shook as she lifted the bundle toward the nurse, but she couldn’t help smiling when her eyes focused on the name tag—Gale, the Nightingale.

  “I’ll bring her back.”

  “When?”

  A laugh punctuated Gale’s final sentence. “When she’s hungry!”

  From now on, never a day without Joy.

  Ivy lowered herself into the passenger seat of the Oldsmobile, grateful her father had left the motor running so that a wave of heat waited for her and the baby so carefully shielded from the New Year’s wind and laid into her arms.

  She noticed every pothole in the road, every train track on the way from the hospital to the bungalow. The patches of ice on the road—patches she would have ignored before Joy was born—flashed danger.

  So quickly she’d changed from woman to mother.

  Anna must have stretched out her arms the minute she saw the car turning into the driveway. She sat just far enough inside the door to allow them to enter, a pillow on
her lap to help support and cradle little Joy. Both were mesmerized—the older staring down into the angelic face, the younger staring up into no less of an angel. Ivy steadied herself with the back of a kitchen chair and enjoyed the moment.

  “Let me get your coat.” Her dad slipped it from her shoulders as if she were the breakable one, which too many times she had been.

  “Thank you.”

  “I made soup,” he said.

  “You did?”

  Anna looked up. “With a little backseat-driving help from me.” She winked. “You might want to keep the salt shaker handy.”

  “I think I’d like to sit for just a minute before lunch, if that’s all right with you two.”

  Anna winked in her father’s direction this time. “You do that, dear. Go on into the living room. Ornell will wheel us in to join you.”

  The tweedy chair gone, in its place stood a chintz-covered padded rocker. The pink and rose peonies in the fabric matched nothing else in the room, but the sight of the chair and its meaning to the situation brought her again to the edge of an emotional downpour. “Oh, Dad! It’s wonderful!”

  “You can’t tell anything until you sit in it.” His eyes gleamed.

  The arms were the perfect height and width for resting her elbow when nursing Joy. Her head nestled comfortably against the upholstered back. And the rocking motion, smooth as her daughter’s breath, spoke of future naps and storytelling.

  “Ornell, get her a drink of water,” Anna commanded. “She needs to drink plenty. The way this little one is squirming, I’d say she’ll be hungry before her mother is. The soup can wait.”

  Her mother. Two simple words made Ivy’s tear ducts fill.

  Her dad would have looked more comfortable holding a bowling-ball bag in the crook of his arm than he did transporting his granddaughter from Anna to Ivy. But he lingered a moment at Ivy’s side, as if drinking in the wonder of life in a small package.

  “She’s a beauty, Ivy.”

  “Thanks, Dad. For everything.”

  He leaned down and kissed Joy’s forehead, as if blessing her. The tears Ivy had held back flowed unhindered when she felt the same kiss on her own forehead.

  For all the agony that child had caused her during labor, Joy made up for it by keeping her fussing to a minimum. She woke at night with a sweet call for attention and returned to sleep quickly after nursing and a diaper change. Ivy lost more sleep listening to her daughter breathe, grateful for the sound, than she did with the feedings.

  When Ivy slept, her dreams reflected her physical and emotional exhaustion. Ether mixed with the odor of gunfire. Drew cradling a Korean child, then their child, then a fallen soldier, helmet askew, with a face too much like Drew’s.

  She woke shivering, her bedcovers thrown to the floor as she wrestled with the darkness. Weariness soon claimed her again—a few minutes, it seemed, before the little one realized her tummy was as empty as her mother’s hopes.

  It was time to let Drew go.

  Joy Elizabeth Anna Carrington deserved her full attention and a happy mother—stable, forward-looking, strong. Their life together would confront enough challenges—a fatherless child and an unwed mother. They couldn’t live with Ivy’s dad forever. Anna slipped closer to eternity every day.

  Somehow, they’d muddle through. But not if Ivy dragged an anvil of impossibility behind them.

  The early days of 1952. Time to let Drew go.

  29

  Becky—2013

  Gil, I can’t help plan a wedding, take care of a near-toddler, pack this entire house, and move!”

  Gil took a bite from his apple and mumbled, “I’m here to help.”

  “I can’t help plan a wedding, take care of a—”

  He bumped her in the ribs. “Becky, we don’t dare ignore this offer.”

  “It’s thousands less than the house is worth.”

  “But it still leaves us enough for a down payment on the duplex.”

  She wondered how a simple six-letter word could feel so heavy. “We won’t need the duplex if those two get married, will we?” Things were happening too fast. Where was the time to process?

  “Seriously? Nice thinking, but exactly where will they find an apartment that takes cheese doodles for rent money? Or Purse Suedes?”

  “New plan.”

  “What?”

  “Lauren has a new plan. She’s talking about opening a daycare center.”

  Jackson protested the idea with a string of screeches, no longer content to bounce. Becky started toward him, but Gil reached him first, freeing the baby from the fun that had become an “unbearable” constraint.

  “Hey, little buddy. What’s up? Ooo. What’s down? That is one heavy diaper you’ve got there, bud.” He shot a look Becky’s way.

  “ ‘I’m here to help,’ you said.”

  “I did, didn’t I?”

  She followed as the boys headed toward the changing table. “There are too many changes.”

  “Tell me about it,” he said, holding the squirming boy with his forearm while he tugged at the diaper’s tape tabs.

  “Not diaper changes, you goof. All these”—she gestured with her hand as if including the world—”insane choices. I don’t want to leave here. I don’t want to live in the duplex. I want to be a normal grandma, not half grandmother, half mother. I want you to find a job that makes you feel fulfilled and makes our mortgage. I want to—” Her thought spontaneously aborted.

  “To what?”

  “To see my daughter happy. Is that not . . . not possible anymore? And if you use the term ‘new normal,’ you’ll have more than a diaper to clean up.”

  She retreated to the master bedroom. Where else did she have to go? She sat at the foot of the bed, her hands propping her upright, her head bowed. Oh, God. How did it all go so wrong?

  The pain in her soles originated in the lining around her heart. She rubbed her feet back and forth on the aging carpet until the static electricity stopped her. Winter, glorious winter. The air so dry that she could spark a fire with her socks.

  “May I come in?” Gil stood in the doorway. He held Jackson on his hip who was drinking from a bottle Gil held like one would for a calf.

  “It’s your room, too. Until the new owner takes over.”

  “Come here.” He took her hand and moved her to the head of the bed. They propped Jackson between them on the center pillow and lay on either side of him, leaning on their elbows, facing the baby as he drank, one chubby, dimpled hand wrapped around Gil’s bottle-holding thumb, the other clutching the collar of Becky’s denim shirt.

  It would have been peaceful if not for the chaos.

  “Move the clock back two dozen years,” Gil whispered, “and this was us with our son between us.”

  The memory clamped its hand around her throat. It’s too much, Lord. Too much.

  “We’ve been through utter misery before, Becky.”

  She smelled hints of the baby lotion left over from Jackson’s bath. His toes wiggled as he drank, just like his uncle’s had when he was a boy, not a Marine.

  Yes, they’d known utter misery. A flag folded in a thick triangle. A precision guard bearing a military casket. Death and life and death and life.

  Jackson’s eyelids fluttered then closed, his lips still moving. His suction-hold on the nipple released with a gurgle. Mouth pursed, he sucked as if eating, but only in his dreams.

  “Gil?” She barely breathed. “Gil, are you sleeping?”

  Her husband didn’t open his eyes but breathed back, “Praying, hon. Praying.”

  It had been years since Becky fell asleep in the middle of the day. She woke to a puddle of drool on her pillow, unsure if it were hers or Jackson’s. Where Gil should have been was his pillow laid sideways, like a bolster to keep the baby from rolling toward a grandfather who was no longer in the room.

  She eased off the bed and made a similar bolster on her side.

  Where had Gil gone? Captain Optimism snuck off. Out ridding
the world of negativity, no doubt.

  No, he was making himself a sandwich.

  “Your grandpa would have called that a Dagwood.”

  “Too much?” he said, peeling off a layer of ham and a layer of cheese.

  “Oh, go for it,” she said. “We’re about to sell our house. That calls for a . . . celebration.” A word reserved for birthdays and weddings, graduations and baby showers, sounded rough and coarse.

  “Even with the sale of the house, we won’t be able to get a loan for the duplex if I don’t have a job. One of us, at least, needs to have a job.”

  “Do you want me to call the magazine and see if they have an opening now?”

  Gil sliced his sandwich on a slant. He must have watched a little of the cooking channel before they canceled their cable. “They would have called you, wouldn’t they? If they’d had the funding, they would have taken you back in a heartbeat.”

  She jerked open the fridge and pulled out the plastic container of leftover spaghetti. “Maybe they heard I was fired from my last job. Oh, was that just this morning?”

  “I love you, my sarcasmalicious one.”

  “Love you, too.”

  “We’re in this together.”

  “Knee-deep.”

  He took a bite of his sandwich, his eyebrows colliding as he chewed. Sour pickle or deep thought?

  “I have an idea,” he said when his mouth was almost empty.

  “I hope it’s brilliant.”

  “Maybe we could get the duplex on a rent-to-own basis.”

  “Still have to have a job to pay rent.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Brilliant.

  He chewed another thought. “So, tell me honestly, would it be so bad if we moved in with my mother?”

  “Here. Eat this spoonful of peanut butter. Eat, Becky. It’ll stop the hiccups.”

  “How (hic) do you (hic) know these things?”

  Gil put the spoon in her hand and wrapped her fingers around the handle. “I don’t have a job. I watch more morning TV than I should.”