Earlier, I’d read about the twelve spies that snuck their way into Canaan. So many giants in that land. Too many for them to overcome. And ten of them let the fear crush their spirits. My own spirit felt pretty well stomped, too.
“It’s all too much,” I prayed, letting the words steam into the cold air. “Too many giants in this land, Lord.”
The sound of tires crunching on pavement caught my attention. I wiped my face with a tissue I’d stowed in Clive’s jacket pocket. The car pulled all the way to the edge of the parking lot. On the door, stenciled in bright pink, Cleaning Crew had been painted. The woman in the driver’s seat smiled at me as she lowered her window.
“Can I help you?” I asked, pushing up from the bench.
“I’m looking for a lady named Gretchen.” The woman stuck her head out the window to see me. “Are you Gretchen?”
“No. That’s my daughter.” I pointed through the little strip of sidewalk that cut through the woods. “Her house is right through there.”
“Great. Thanks.” She pushed the button to put her window up.
“Wait.” I stooped to look in the car window. “Are you going over there to do work?”
“Yeah. Somebody paid for six months of cleaning,” she answered. “It’s a gift.”
“Do you happen to know who paid for that gift?” The biting wind whipped around me as I waited.
“Looks like two women,” she said, flipping through paperwork. “Rosetta and Beverly. You know them?”
“I sure do.” The way my face lifted worked to heal the pain in my heart.
I watched the housecleaner pull her car around toward Gretchen’s house. A cloud rolled itself over the sun. But in my heart, at least, I felt warm.
Chapter Forty-Three
Evelyn
My mom held me, her hands around the nape of my neck. Lifting her had gotten easier. Too easy. She’d lost so much weight. I tried to put the clinical part of my job out of my mind. But, really, I couldn’t deny what I knew. She inched closer and closer to the end.
Charlotte pushed a pillow behind our mom’s back. “There you go,” she said. “Do you think that gets you up high enough?”
Relaxing back, my mom smiled. “Just right.”
“If you need another one, let me know. Okay?”
“I will.” My mom formed a circle with her lips and blew out. “Thanks, girls.”
She’d spent most every day on the couch. At night, we’d help her to Cal’s old bedroom, right next to the bathroom. The stairs had become too much for her to get to her own room. By the end of each day, she was more exhausted than the day before. It was enough to get her to take the steps down the hallway as it was.
“Have you thought about getting a hospital bed?” I asked.
She scowled at me.
“Don’t give me that face, Mom.” I stood over her, my arms crossed. “It might make things easier for you.”
“I feel like it’s giving up.” She touched the newly grown hair that stuck up short on her head. “My hair’s coming in gray.”
“I think it looks good,” Char said. “If we put some gel in it, we could get it to spike. It would be so cute.”
“It’s wiry. I’ll never get it to look right.” She rubbed her hand over it. “It’s like a scrub brush.”
“No it isn’t,” I said.
“I thought I’d be happy to have hair again. But I wish it would have come in like it was. I miss my red hair.” She dropped the hand to her lap. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“Not really, Mom.” Charlotte touched the gray hair. “But it doesn’t look as bad as you think it does.”
“Thank you, sweetheart.”
“I bet we could get Grace to come over again. Cal could bring her. They’re together all the time anyway,” I said. “I never see him anymore.”
“Maybe because you’re busy with Will.” My mom winked at Char.
“Not as much as Cal’s with Grace. I’m telling you, his hair has never looked better.”
“He should marry that girl.” My mom grabbed the scarf off the back of the couch and tied it around her head. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a stylist in the family?”
“She’s too good for him,” I said.
“And that’s exactly why he should marry her.” My mom rested her head on the pillow behind her. Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply. I wondered if the pain had hit her. It had gotten difficult to tell.
“Girls, I thought we’d look through my jewelry today.” She lifted a finger, pointing at the simple, wood box on the coffee table.
“Mom…” Charlotte dropped into the easy chair.
“What?” My mom rolled her head and opened her eyes. “I want to see you enjoying things. So let’s do this together. When I’m dead, I won’t know what you took. I want to do this with you.”
“I’m just sick of thinking about it.”
“Charlotte, doing it now will make things a lot easier later.”
My sister slumped her shoulders and leaned as far back into the chair as she could. Like she wanted the cushions to pull her into themselves.
“What if you want to wear something again?”
“Then I’ll borrow it back.” Mom rubbed a spot behind her ear. “But if we want to be realistic, I’m not going to leave this house again. It’s not like Don’s going to take me out on a hot date or anything.”
“I don’t want to take anything.” Char crossed her arms. “I can’t do it.”
“Char,” I whispered. “Just do it. It’s what Mom wants.”
“It would feel like we can’t wait to get our hands on her stuff.”
“Honey, I don’t have anything that’s really nice. You know we never had money for really expensive things. But what I do have, I want you to enjoy.” My mom swallowed. “It would be nice for me to look through this old stuff and tell you stories and share parts of my life today. That’s what I want to do. Do you understand?”
Char’s bottom lip pushed out, wrinkling her chin. “It’s just, all the time, there are these reminders that you’re going. And this is another one of them,” she said. “I wish I could forget for half a minute without something reminding me.”
“I know, honey.” She waited, eyes watching Charlotte. “Listen, let’s just look through the box. If you like something, you can just borrow it for now. How’s that?”
Kneeling on the floor, I lifted the top of the jewelry box. A thin layer of dust rubbed off under my fingers.
That jewelry box had been on my mom’s dresser for as long as I could remember. As a little girl, I’d climb up, sitting in front of the mirror, and try on all the different necklaces and bracelets. If a tube of lipstick had been left nearby, I’d smear it across my mouth.
My mom never got mad at me for playing dress up with her jewelry. She’d just reach around me and grab a bunch of necklaces to pull over her own head. She’d let me kiss the mirror, leaving my lip marks there for weeks.
I reached into the top, letting the velvet smooth against my fingers. I pulled out a silver chain with a single pearl dangling from it. My mom angled her head, looking at the necklace. Reaching out her hand, she took it.
“Oh my goodness.” She held the tiny pearl so it sunk into the hollow of her palm. “I didn’t know I’d kept this. Shows you how much I looked in that old jewelry box.”
“What is it?” Charlotte leaned forward to see.
“I wore this on my wedding day. When I married your father.” She cringed at the memory. “I thought I’d sold this a long time ago. It probably wouldn’t be worth anything anyway. Probably just glass or plastic.”
Charlotte slid out of the chair and onto the couch next to our mom’s side. She couldn’t have been comfortable with only a tiny bit of seat under her. But then again, I didn’t think she cared.
“You know, I was in the nursery over at First Church, getting into my wedding dress. I’d managed to find the laciest dress at the bridal shop. And the train trailed almost all the way
to the end of the aisle.” She laughed. “It was a little much, really, when I think about it.”
I leaned against the coffee table, listening to her. Since my father left, she’d never talked about him or their life together. I realized, in that moment, that at one point, they’d been happy.
“When I looked in the full-length mirror, I realized that I’d forgotten to pack a necklace to wear. I was so young, I hadn’t really thought things through. But I was devastated.” She closed her hand over the pearl. “You remember Mrs. Allen, right? Well, she took this off her own neck and clasped it around mine. She told me to keep it. She said a bride should always have a pearl to wear on her wedding day.”
Opening her fist, she reached out to hand it back to me. “It’s nothing special.”
“It’s the most special,” Char whispered. “And I think Ev should have it.”
Warmth from my mom’s hand lingered on the pearl.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “I mean, if you want it, take it.”
“You’re the oldest.”
“But I want you to have it.” Pushing myself up on my knees, I slipped it into her hand. “It will make me happy to see you wear it.”
I hadn’t talked to my father in so long. Just thinking about him left a pit in my stomach. I remembered all the fights when he called my mom nasty names. The girlfriends he kept on the side. When he walked out, a bag full of his clothes, and drove away, leaving us in that little apartment with no car.
Char, though, had been so little when he left, she’d made up fantasies of how much he loved her. How some great and evil power had kept him from coming to see her.
I figured that necklace would, somehow, become part of that mythology.
Charlotte circled the chain around her neck, clasping it at the back. The dainty pearl hanging between her collarbones looked as perfect as anything could. “Now, pick something for yourself, Ev,” she said.
“There’s a sapphire ring in there.” Mom pushed her eyes closed harder than before, a puff of air forced out her nose. “It has little diamonds all the way around it.”
I pulled open a few drawers before I found the one that held rings. The sapphire one had been placed right in the front. I pinched the white gold ring, lifting it against the light from the window.
“Don forgot our first anniversary when we were dating,” she said. “I should have reminded him, I guess. But back then, I thought he shouldn’t have needed me to.”
“Seriously?” Char asked.
“Girls, this is my best relationship advice.” She opened her eyes. “Sometimes men need a thousand reminders about something. And, when they still forget, it isn’t because they don’t love you. Not even close. They just have different brains.”
“But the first anniversary is a big deal, right?” Charlotte touched the pearl on her neck.
“I guess so. But we were only dating.” She shrugged. “I hadn’t expected much, really. Maybe a nice dinner out. But he hadn’t even called. Your father, as hard as it was being married to him, was always good about remembering important days. Probably to make up for other shortcomings. But I guess that made me expect the same from Don.”
Charlotte moved to the floor, taking our mom’s hand in her own.
“Not that I’m complaining about Don. I’m glad for all the ways he’s different from your father.” She smiled. “Anyway, the day after, he brought that little ring to me. He said that any chump could do something great on the anniversary. But only a special guy does it up the day after.”
“Why don’t you wear it?” I asked.
“It only fit my left ring finger. After he proposed, I just wore the engagement ring.” The muscles along her jaw tensed. “That was the day Don told me that he loved me for the first time.”
She kept her eyes on the ring, letting them narrow as she held her bottom lip between her teeth.
“He’s been so good to me.” Her eyes filled. “Evelyn, I know that it would mean a lot to Don if you’d wear it.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, still holding the ring between my index finger and thumb.
“It will mean the world to him.”
I slipped it on my finger.
“It looks so pretty on you,” she said. “I think there were a few bracelets in the big part of the box.”
She tried to sit up straight. Something about how she pushed herself sent a shudder through her body. Gasping, she grabbed a fold of blanket, her knuckles tensing around it. Her breathing changed. Became shallow and ragged. Her teeth grated so hard, I could hear them grinding. Her face strained against the pain.
“Please,” she groaned. “Help me.”
My legs tingled under my weight. I’d been kneeling so long. I stumbled, knocking my knee against a dining room chair. The pain pills were in the junk drawer. Gran had told me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have found them.
I heard Char behind me, talking to someone on the phone. She gave the address to the house. Her voice moved out of her mouth in calm, even tones.
Reaching the junk drawer, I pulled the handle so hard, it came all the way out, dumping everything on the floor. With a roll and a rattle, the bottle of pills lodged in the space between the cupboards and the floor. Charlotte reached past me, the phone to her ear, grabbing the bottle. She filled a glass with water and carried them both into the living room.
Chapter Forty-Four
Olga
All I could think to do was bake. I just didn’t know what else to do with myself. I mixed flour and sugar and butter and didn’t let my mind wander to what had happened earlier that day. Keeping my hands busy forced my mind to slow down.
That evening, I could only allow myself to remember that it all ended okay. And, with the cold night shut out of my kitchen window, we’d have a new day with the dawn.
Cookies covered my whole dinette tabletop, cooling on waxed paper. Who’d eat them? I didn’t know. It didn’t much matter, though.
I’d started on a batch of pumpkin bread. Only a week before Thanksgiving, I thought I might enjoy the scent of spice in my oven.
Looking over the tops of my glasses, I strained to read the spice jars, trying to find the ground cloves. Why whoever put the writing on those silly containers didn’t use bigger type, I’d never figure out. I would have done better to take off all the lids and sniff my way to the right jar. Squinting my eyes so tight, I just knew I’d get one powerful headache, going along like that.
Glass jars clinked against one another, then clanked as I nearly jumped up out of my skin. I let out a yelp and dropped the little bottle of whatever kind of spice I had in my hand.
“Sorry, darling,” Clive said, his mouth close to my ear. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Clive Daniel Eliot, you know better than to sneak up on me like that,” I scolded him. “I’m an old lady. You’re liable to give me a heart attack.”
His soft lips and smooth face pressed against my neck. My heart kept beating fast as he wrapped his arms around me. He didn’t laugh at my expense for scaring me. But he stayed quiet and held me so gently and close. I could feel his deep breaths.
“You just come from Gretchen’s house?” I asked, taking the edge off my voice. I got myself loose enough in his arms that I turned around and faced him.
“Yes, dear.” His whole, wide chest rose and fell with a full sigh.
“How is she?”
“Drowsy. I left so she could get some rest,” he answered. “They got the hospice nurse coming tomorrow, I guess.”
“I know.” I touched his cheek. “She needs help. We need a little, too.”
“This is killing me, Olga.” His voice shook so, I nearly lost myself to the heartbreak.
I took the towel that hung over my shoulder and wiped his tears, smearing a dusting of flour across his cheeks.
“We don’t want her pain getting out of control like it did today,” I said.
“I know. I know. It’s just all so upsetting.”
My hands itched to get
into that bread dough. To stir and whisk and measure and make all my thoughts quiet, even for a little while. I wanted to escape. Because when I left my mind to wander, I just saw Gretchen’s face scrunched up when the waves of pain crashed into her. A mama can’t take watching such things and come away in one piece.
“She doesn’t think she can make it until Christmas.” Clive’s voice dropped. “She told me that, Olga. Gretchen did.”
“I know it, honey.” I used the smallest voice I could find. “It’s happening fast.”
“It makes me tired.” Clive closed his eyes, wrinkling up his forehead. “I need to get into bed.”
“Go ahead, Clive. You could use the rest.”
“I don’t want to go alone.” The blue of his eyes peeked out from under their lids as he opened them. “I want you to go with me. I need to feel you close to me.”
Dozens of cookies on waxed paper. Half-mixed bread dough on the counter, full of eggs and butter that would go bad overnight. But all that could wait. It could all take a hop into the trash bin, for all I cared.
Reaching my hand up, I touched his cheek again, feeling the wet of sadness that fell from his eyes. His big hand covered mine, and he bent down to kiss me.
“Will you go with me?” he asked. “I can’t think about being all by my lonesome right now.”
I let him curl his fingers around mine and lead me to our room. He reached out and switched off the living room lights.
“I want to be with you,” I said, stopping in the hallway.
All those years with Clive, and I’d learned the way to comfort him. He needed to be close as only a husband and wife could be. Only I could give him that kind of comfort. In our marriage, the intimacy had changed a number of times. Only one thing never did, though. The way we both felt stronger for that closeness. It had the power to make me fall in love with him all over again.
We both needed a good dose of togetherness that night.
Clive turned to me, a drop of grief falling down his face. Without a word, he walked with me into our bedroom. We took to our sacred bed.
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