Good Heavens

by Margaret A. Graham

  © 2004 by Margaret A. Graham

  Published by Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  Ebook edition created 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owners. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  eISBN 978-1-4412-3915-0

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  Scripture is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  For

  Cindy VanSandt,

  a gifted pianist who gives me

  oceans of emotions.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Common sense is genius in homespun.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  1

  Taking a job at the Priscilla Home was the farthest thing from my mind when Dr. Elsie asked me to consider it. Well, actually, she hardly asked me to consider it; she just as much as told me I was going. When I realized she was serious, I knew I had to set her straight before she railroaded me right out of South Carolina to the regions beyond.

  “Dr. Elsie, have you forgot how old I am? The day has passed when I could say I’m pushing sixty from before or after the fact.”

  She just looked at me as much as to say, “So what?”

  Now, I respect Dr. Elsie. She’s done a lot for me personally as well as for the people in Live Oaks, and I’d do anything she asked of me—anything within reason, that is. This was out of the question. So I told her, “I’m retired, and right now I have got more on my plate than I can handle.”

  She sipped her ice tea and kept all her attention on the birds at the feeder, so I added, “You know I have only went through the eighth grade.”

  I wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know, so nothing I said fazed her. I tried another tact. “Sounds like your board is scraping the bottom of the barrel to find somebody.”

  “No,” she said. “There are other applicants.”

  “I can’t imagine anybody asking for a job that means living way up there in the woods. . . . You say it’s the job of resident manager? What kind of a job is that?”

  “Fancy name for housemother.”

  “Housemother? Housemother to a bunch of women addicts?” I laughed. “The women in the Willing Workers Sunday school class are more than I can handle, much less women of the world. Besides, I have got no heart for born losers.”

  I don’t think she was listening to a word I said. When she finished her tea, she got up to go, and I followed her out to the car. “It’s nice of you to ask me, Dr. Elsie, but you understand . . .”

  She started the engine and then looked back at me through them horned-rimmed glasses. “ Esmeralda,” she said, “you’re the woman for the job. It’s an opportunity you can’t pass up.” Before I could say a word, she let off the brake and was rolling down the driveway.

  Opportunity? I thought. Good heavens, it’s an opportunity all right—an opportunity for disaster!

  As I watched her make the turn onto the street, it crossed my mind that maybe Dr. Elsie was losing her marbles. You know, people retire and the next thing you hear they’re falling apart, and some of them wind up at the funny farm.

  I thought I had dismissed that “opportunity” from my mind, but at night I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it. Priscilla Home was in North Carolina, high up in the hills, far away from everything and everybody except one or two summer people who had cottages up there. Now that she was retired, Dr. Elsie was one who lived up there year round. Soon after Beatrice and Carl got married, she retired, left Live Oaks, and moved with all her books to live in a little place she’d bought. As long as I had known Dr. Elsie, she’d been on the Priscilla Home board—she and Mabel Elmwood’s husband. That stuffed shirt was on every board he could get his name on.

  Beatrice had supported Priscilla Home ever since we were girls, and I had too, off and on. Beatrice was the best friend I ever had. We grew up together in Live Oaks, and when she had to move away to find work, we wrote to each other and talked on the phone. She was lonesome and awfully dependent on me, but all that changed. When she met Carl she became a different person. Soon as he sold his business and his house, they got married and started traveling all over the country in that RV he bought. It was hard to keep in touch. I missed her a lot, but getting married was the best thing that ever happened to Beatrice. Carl was one fine Christian man, even though he was sometimes corny. I knew he’d say I should take that job at Priscilla Home but, like Dr. Elsie, he didn’t have a clue as to my responsibilities here.

  Trouble with Dr. Elsie was that she had not got much common sense. Here I was a widow woman with a house to look after, a garden to make, and church work up to my ears. As if that was not enough, there was my neighbor, Mrs. Purdy, blind as a bat and dependent on me to keep her house in shape, get her groceries, and see to it she got some cooked meals. And there was Elijah, that dear man, who was still doing odd jobs for me and everybody else in town. Sooner or later he was likely to get down, and I’d be the only one to look after him.

  No, there was no way I could pick up and leave Live Oaks, and that was that!

  Trying to put Priscilla Home out of my mind, I kept busy working like a house afire, but while I was doing a load of wash, a thought did come to me: What if this is something the Lord wants me to do? Well, I shook my head and told myself that could not be, but come nighttime, the possibility kept tumbling about in my head. Night after night I tumbled with it, tossing and turning until the wee hours.

  Something Splurgeon wrote in that book I have got kept needling me. He said, “A clear conscience is a good pillow.” I had to figure it might be my conscience bothering me; that, or else I was coming down with something. The bad part of it was that this was something I couldn’t talk to anybody about, not even Pastor Osborne, for fear somebody would get me more confused than I was already. In our Willing Workers Sunday school class, the women can solve any and everybody’s problem except their own, and they’d love to stick their nose in this business. Clara for sure; she’s the president, and once she gets wind of a thing like this, she makes up her mind about it, gets the class to back her up, and wades right in to tell a body what they should do.

  I did pray about this thing, but I told the Lord how ridiculous it was, a woman my age being asked to pull up stakes and take over a job she knew nothing about. I tell you the truth, for days I felt like I was walking around in a daze. The longer this went on, the more it got to be a live-in nightmare!

  Then it happened. I looked out my window to see the Willing Workers arriving. At first I thought it might be Thelma,
the Yankee from Chicago, behind the wheel, but it wasn’t. It was Clara and Mabel Elmwood; before they even got out of the car, my blood pressure had shot up. Since I had not told a soul about this proposition, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know how they found out—Mabel’s husband, Roger, is on the Priscilla Home board. Well, I’ll tell you, I was ready for them. Before this was over I would put them in their place and tell them in no uncertain terms to keep their noses out of my business.

  I brought them in the living room and set them on the divan. I was so mad I didn’t offer them a drink or anything. “Well,” I said, “I know you didn’t come here to kill time. What’s on your mind?”

  Mabel looked at Clara, and Clara looked at Mabel. I don’t like to be critical, but neither one of them was anything to look at. Clara always claimed she had an hourglass figure. Well, if she did, all the sand had sunk to the bottom. With her long neck, she put me in mind of an ostrich. And she had got just about as much sense as one of them silly birds. Mabel, on the other hand, would fit right in a carnival sideshow. Trying to fake the bloom of youth, she wore enough rouge to paint a barn and had taken to wearing eye makeup, which didn’t do nothing but make people wonder if she was sick. And twice a week she went to the beauty parlor expecting miracles. One week she came out wearing false eyelashes! I could take her press-on nails, but false eyelashes on a woman with cataracts ripe for surgery was about the tackiest thing ever seen in Live Oaks.

  “Well, speak up,” I told them.

  “You tell her,” Clara said.

  Mabel was holding my red velvet cushion up against her chest for comfort—or protection. “I’d rather you tell her, Clara.”

  Over the years I’d had to deal with these women, and all I have to say is, they have always been and always will be like Job’s friends, miserable comforters, and I do mean miserable. They didn’t know enough to come in out of the rain, but they thought wisdom would die with them.

  Clara sat up straight, twisting her mouth the way she did when she was busting to let you know she knew something that was none of her business. “Esmeralda, first let me say this is a private meeting, and before we say anything, I want you to give me your word that this conversation will go no further.”

  “We haven’t had it yet.”

  She didn’t say anything right away, as she was having trouble with her upper plate. Well, if she’d pay the price for decent teeth, they wouldn’t get loose like that. With her thumb she kept pressing until she got the plate in place and then waited to see if it was going to stay there. Satisfied that at least it would hold temporarily, she commenced again. “Do I have your word that you’ll not let anyone know that Mabel and me have been here?”

  “Why don’t you want nobody to know?”

  She looked to Mabel, but Mabel only hugged the pillow and gazed up at the ceiling.

  “Well,” Clara explained, “Mabel’s husband is on the Priscilla Home board of directors—in fact, he’s the president, and this is about that offer they made you.”

  “So that’s it, is it? Well, let me tell you a thing or two—whatever it is you have to say here today will go right in one ear and out the other, so there’s not a chance in the world anybody will hear it unless the devil has give them some kinda psychic power. Now, say what you have to say. I got work to do.”

  Clara stretched her neck about a yard long and lit in. “Esmeralda, I hope you are not considering that job at Priscilla Home.”

  They both leaned forward, peering at me, expecting me to up and tell them my thoughts on the subject. When they realized I wasn’t going to give them that satisfaction, Clara lit in again. “Esmeralda, it would be the worst mistake of your life to go up there in those hills to work with those loose-living women who are at best sots! All you will hear up there is foul language and four letter words. Women like them are born losers, freeloaders, and—” she lowered her voice to a whisper, “some of them have got herpes and the like! You don’t want to waste what time you have got left playing nursemaid to that trash, now do you? Don’t the Bible say we should not cast our pearls before swine?”

  I know I’d had a low opinion of women who couldn’t hack it in this life, but I resented the way Clara was talking about them. I don’t know what I expected her to say about me taking the job, but in a way she was saying what I wanted to hear. It was just the principle of the thing, them taking it upon themselves to advise me. I was a independent woman, and I had always made my own decisions without any help from the likes of them two.

  “We love you, Esmeralda,” Mabel was saying in that syrupy way she has got. “What would Willing Workers be like if you weren’t here to help us?”

  I hated it when Mabel whined.

  Clara nudged her. “Tell Esmeralda what Roger said.”

  I thought Mabel was going to ruin my cushion, twisting it the way she was, so I gave her a frown that said “Knock it off.” She lightened up on the cushion, patting it back into shape.

  “Well,” she said, “Roger says this job of resident manager would not be in your best interest, Esmeralda, and Roger ought to know, he’s been on that board for years.”

  I couldn’t have cared less what Roger Elmwood thought, and I must of showed it because Mabel started backing off. “Mind you, Esmeralda, it was not easy for us to come to you this way. It’s just that we love you to pieces, and we don’t want you to make a mistake we would all regret the rest of your life.”

  Clara was fooling with that upper plate again, but she was so anxious to say her piece that she took a chance and started in again. “Esmeralda, you can’t pay any attention to Dr. Elsie. To hear her tell it, Priscilla Home is the only place in the world a female addict should go. But I tell you, there are plenty of places like AA where women caught up in the bondage of drugs can find a support group. That’s what they need, a support group. Somebody from mental health was on TV the other day talking about addicts, and he said the country has plenty of rehab places where they can find the help they need if they want it, and their insurance pays for the treatment. The people who work in them places have training and experience. Now don’t get touchy with me, Esmeralda, but I ask you, what training and experience have you got that fits you for that job?”

  “Would you all like a glass of ice tea?” I asked.

  I went in the kitchen, and while I was making the tea, I mulled over what they had said. Even though I didn’t want to admit it, Clara had a point. I didn’t have any training for that job. Of course, I already knew that and had no reason to give Clara credit for bringing it to my attention.

  I served them the tea with oatmeal cookies and said I’d rather not talk any more about going to Priscilla Home. I asked Mabel how she was feeling, because I knew that would change the subject. You ask Mabel how she feels, and you get an organ recital.

  After they left, I went outside to feed the birds. I guess my mind was made up; I was ready to call Dr. Elsie and tell her I couldn’t take the job. But I didn’t want to do it right away and give them two Willing Workers the satisfaction of thinking they’d influenced my decision. I’ll wait a day or two, I thought.

  I didn’t really feel good about giving up what Dr. Elsie called an “opportunity.” But it was true; I didn’t have any experience with alcohol and drugs, much less training in how to deal with people who did. Now if the job didn’t involve contact with the women, just running the house, I could handle that. But, no, if you live in the same house with them, you can’t get around having to deal with them. I hated to disappoint Dr. Elsie, but one of those other applicants were bound to be better qualified for the job than me.

  I don’t know why, but the whole thing made me feel blue.

  I wished I knew how to call Beatrice, just for old times’ sake, but I had no idea where she and Carl were—still out west somewhere. I wished I could just go back to living the way it was before Beatrice got married. With her gone, I really didn’t have a close friend except Elijah. And Elijah was a friend for other kinds of problems, not thi
s kind. Besides, he was too busy doing odd jobs for all the white people in town.

  Well, I couldn’t wait any longer to get this thing settled. I went to the phone to call Dr. Elsie and was just about to lift the receiver when the phone rang. Speak of the devil, and he will appear—it was Beatrice! She was just bubbling over, excited about seeing Carlsbad Caverns and telling me all about the bats flying out of the caverns at night to catch insects.

  She had not run down when I interrupted her to tell her about them offering me the job at Priscilla Home. Upon my word, she got as sober as a judge. After hearing me out, I heard her say, “Carl, I want you to hear this.”

  “No, Beatrice, don’t bother him,” I said. “I think I’ve made up my mind. I don’t have the training or the experience to be housemother up there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I said.”

  “Wait just one minute, Esmeralda,” she said with that edge in her voice, which meant she absolutely disagreed. “Have you prayed about it?”

  “Well, sure.”

  “I mean, have you prayed it through? Do you know positively what the Lord’s will is?”

  “Well, I—”

  “You really don’t know what his will is, do you?”

  “Now listen here, Beatrice, the Lord don’t send us a bolt out of the blue to tell us what to do. He gives us common sense—circumstances—things like that to keep us on track. Don’t you think he has give me sound judgment?”

  “Sometimes, yes, but this is too important for you to pass up without knowing for sure what he wants to do with you.”

  “That’s easy for you to say.”

  “Esmeralda, I’ve got to get off the line. Carl says tell you . . . What’s that, Carl? . . . He says tell you don’t take no wooden nickels. Now, I’ll tell Carl what’s going on, and you know we’ll be praying for you.”

  Wooden nickels—I couldn’t remember when last I’d heard that expression. Carl needs to move his self out of the twentieth century and into this millennium. And I’d just as soon Beatrice not tell him my business, but how can I tell her not to?