Katie had phoned Dorothy from the Lamp Post the night before and asked her if she wanted to come over to the little house on Vine Street the next morning to see if she might want to keep any of the furniture before they hauled it out to the farm for the sale. It occurred to Katie that most of Dorothy’s massive furniture would hardly fit in this house. Once she and Josh had finally cleared out all the extras and were now down to the bare bones, and they’d mopped up a bit, Katie thought it would be worth Dorothy’s time to come see the possibilities.
As Dorothy approached the front door, she once again tried to imagine her upcoming life in this place. What would it be like to get her mail out of the rusty box—first time she’d noticed it, and she made a mental note to replace it—mounted to the right of the front door rather than going down the lane with Sheba on their afternoon “constitutional stroll” to the gravel road to retrieve it, or pulling up to the mailbox in The Tank on their way home from here or there?
It did flash through her mind as a good thing that she’d no longer have to depend on, or wait for, Challie or Arthur and their tractors to plow her out in the winter. Everything she’d need would be within walking distance, although she never once thought about getting rid of her car. No, giving up driving this side of heaven was not in her plans, although she had to admit she was still troubled about nearly ramming into people she cared so much about. In fact, she’d had nightmares the last two nights about car wrecks. No amount of prayer could seem to move her past her sense of horror.
Katie, Josh and Alex had spent their entire second full day back in the house working from morning until night. Every time they thought they were about to find the end of the piles, they’d discover one more closet or crawl space, attic or missed drawer, and the sorting, tossing, setting-aside process would begin again. For such a tiny house, it seemed to have no end of places for “stuff” to be stuffed. Katie made a mental note that when she got home, she was going to clean out every “nook and cranny,” as her mother used to say. Even though she was definitely not a sentimental saver, she was sure there were some things that could go. And she vowed to Joshua never, ever to keep one single empty cottage cheese container. Aunt Tess had more than a hundred of them taking up one entire cabinet. In fact, she’d even stored them in her oven.
After Katie and the boys greeted Dorothy, before getting to the task at hand, Dorothy extended a meal invitation from May Belle for them all to join her and Earl for an early dinner. May Belle lived just around the corner, and everyone heartily accepted. In fact, Josh had been pouting because they hadn’t spent much time with Dorothy since they’d arrived, other than the short while they’d visited over sandwiches right after The Incident, as they’d come to refer to it. Other than a short run to show Alex the barn on their arrival evening, the boys hadn’t even gotten down to the creek yet, something Alex had heard a lot about. After all, there were crawdads to catch, and they sure had never seen them lurking around a Chicago brownstone! From the moment Dorothy’d taken Josh on his first crawdad hunt, he’d longed to go on another.
Formalities and invitations behind them, Dorothy took her first look around. She was blindsided by just how stark and sad the little home looked.
“How easily removed are traces of someone’s life after they’re gone,” she said solemnly, not even realizing she’d spoken aloud. “What we leave behind, Lord, surely needs to be of spiritual value, for my oh my, how quickly the rest of it can vanish.”
Katie stared at this woman, who just talked, out loud, to…God! Then again, Katie had a look on her face as though she might have been wondering if Dorothy was trying to send her some kind of message.
Dorothy put her hand over her heart, wishing once again she’d worked a little harder to break into Tess’s seclusion. She was somewhat haunted by the reminder before her that life was fleeting and that chances to help others were fleeting as well.
“You know, Katie,” she said, looking into the face of the woman whose mouth was hanging open, “we better be living the life we want to live and not wasting our numbered days on what doesn’t matter. Like my father used to say, ‘Life is for the living!’” With that, she sighed and took a good study of the room, then she asked Josh to move a somewhat rickety side chair from where it was sitting, against the back wall, over next to the window. Then she looked up at the ceiling.
“You know, it crossed my mind to paint the ceiling fire engine red. I think I just might actually do it.”
5
Dorothy sat at the head of May Belle’s dining room table and Katie at the foot. Josh and Alex were seated next to each other along one side. Although May Belle hadn’t plopped down yet, she would sit next to Earl, who was seated across from Josh. She would have preferred to flank Dorothy with the boys, but she knew Earl would be too uncomfortable sitting next to someone he didn’t really know, and she wanted him to have a chance to get more comfortable in their presence without becoming intimidated.
The seating took place according to the handmade place cards with which May Belle always graced her dinner tables, and her guests. She kept greeting cards people sent her, cut out the pretty pictures and punched holes in them to attach to the curly ribbon that secured one of her Saran-wrapped cookies or brownies. Of course, she always served one of her yummy desserts after the main course, but this way each guest had a little something sweet to take home. She meticulously wrote the names on the place tags in her best cursive. Handling them as reverently as if they were holy and sacred objects, she positioned them next to her Fostoria water goblets.
At last, after the chicken and homemade noodles, cooked baby carrots with a pinch of dried dill, lima beans canned from her last year’s garden, kidney bean salad made Southern style with mayonnaise, boiled eggs and pickle relish, and her pickled beets and famous slaw were settled on the table, May Belle seated herself.
“Dorothy, would you please give thanks?”
“Of course, dear.” Dorothy and May Belle each reached out a hand to take Earl’s, then extended their other hand toward the person seated next to them, May Belle taking Katie’s and Dorothy, Josh’s. The boys glanced at each other, then clasped their hands together as well. As close friends as they were, this would be a first!
“Lord, THANK YOU!” Dorothy shouted in her loudest voice, actually startling Earl a bit. “Thank You for this gathering of old and new friends. Thank You for the fine cooking talents You’ve given May Belle; for the sturdy and strong hands and heart of Earl, who takes such good care of his mother and me; for the Joshmeister, who has kept me such good company the last weeks with his lively e-mail; for his friend Alex, who looks to be as fine a friend to him as May Belle is to me; and for that dear Katie, who was Your vessel and answer to my prayers, and who I just know is going to become my good friend, too. And thank You, Lord, for creating me. For surrounding me with not only folks who matter a great deal to me, but new possibilities as well.
“Thank You again, Lord, for protecting us from my careless driving, for supplying us this great food and for the smell of cooked chicken and the song of the red-winged blackbirds I heard this morning and the circle of love I feel such a part of at this very moment. May we learn to notice and appreciate every blessing, Lord, and lead the lives that not only help others, but make us happy as well. Amen.”
Katie never closed her eyes throughout the entire prayer. As Dorothy mentioned each name, Katie looked from one bowed head to the other, noticing the smile that beamed across their faces as Dorothy spoke about them. Her own son, lively and thoughtful, spending time e-mailing someone so much older than himself. May Belle, Dorothy’s lifelong friend. What good friends did she have? Her heart ached at the void. And Earl, well, he was retarded, as far as she could figure, and here Dorothy was thanking God for his strength and care for them…
“… that dear Katie…vessel…answer to prayer…” Katie’s eyes welled up. She wondered if God could, would really use somebody who never talked to Him. Just about the time she felt brave eno
ugh to ask God that question, she heard the “Amen.”
La Feminique Hair Salon & Day Spa was bustling. The two-chair salon had both chairs in use at the same time only when someone was sitting with perm rods or color in her hair in one chair, and someone else was getting cut or styled in the other—since there was only one operator, and that was the owner, Maggie Malone. This was a two-chair moment. Gladys was sitting in the color chair, hair flattened to her head by a bottle of Brunette Brown hair dye, her color since 1963; Dorothy was being readied in the other to get “her pink scalp and few hairs rearranged,” as she was fond of saying.
Usually these two weren’t there at the same time. Gladys had been waiting outside the door when Maggie opened, saying she had a “very important meeting” to attend tomorrow, and it “just won’t do to have myself looking like this,” she said as she parted her hair so Maggie could get a close look at her inch-long, snow-white roots. Of course, everyone knew her “very important meeting” was probably just the monthly gathering of the Happy Hookers, Partonville’s decades-old group of ladies who used to meet to hook rugs together but had long ago quit rugs and turned to playing bunco. In fact, the gathering was at Maggie’s house, but she kept herself from asking if that was the meeting Gladys was talking about. If it was in the realm of possibility, it was usually easier simply to accommodate Gladys rather than to antagonize her and then have to listen to the fallout. And so Maggie had sighed and gotten her started and situated with the color before Dorothy arrived.
Maggie washed Dorothy’s fine hair, blew it dry—which only took a few seconds on low—and was preparing to give it a couple of crimps with the curling iron when Gladys finally acknowledged Dorothy. Until Sheba had barked at the blow-dryer, Gladys had acted as if she hadn’t even realized Dorothy was there, keeping her head buried in a magazine. Then it occurred to Gladys that Dorothy might have some information she wanted.
“Getting your hair done for the ball game this evening, Dorothy?” Gladys asked as soon as Maggie turned off the blow-dryer.
“Nope. I’m getting it done while I still can. At the rate my hair is disappearing, I figure it won’t be long before I can just do my entire head with a washcloth!”
“How’s Miss Durbin doing, getting that Walker estate cleared out? Do you think I’ll need to get the health inspector out there before she leaves town? And do you know when that might be, exactly? I’d like to have a few words with her before she disappears again.”
Maggie crimped the curling iron around a row of Dorothy’s hair and held it there with one hand while she patted Dorothy on the shoulder with the other, as though to calm her.
“Which question do you want answered first, Gladys?” Dorothy asked, looking at Gladys in the mirror.
“There is no need to use that tone of voice, Dorothy. After what I heard the paramedics describe as squalor when they removed Tess’s body from her house, I just want to make sure I’m not allowing a health risk of any kind to go unattended.”
“I was in that home yesterday, Gladys, and I can assure you there is no squalor.”
Gladys raised an eyebrow upon learning Dorothy really had been hanging around with that Durbin woman again. Evidently, Cora was telling the truth.
“There never was squalor, Gladys. There was plenty of chaos and piles of stuff everywhere, like one might imagine accumulates when a poor soul is kind of lost in her own world, but there was never garbage or anything unhealthy in the piles. In fact, her kitchen was probably every bit as neat and tidy as yours. Besides, about all that’s left now is furniture. Katie Durbin and her son have worked very hard to clear out that place quicker than I imagine most folks could get the job done, as well as to ready it for me, in case you’ve forgotten. They’re even going to redo the wiring and repair a few things. Don’t worry, we’ll have a proper building inspection before the closing.
“And as for her ‘disappearing,’” Dorothy went on, using her fingers to draw quotation marks in the air around the word disappearing, and talking so fast that Gladys didn’t have a chance to respond, “she has never disappeared. She simply returned to her home in Chicago to get her son back in school. She has returned to Partonville to finish what she started. She will go back home when she wants to—and I’m sure you have your ways of finding out exactly where that is anyway.”
“Time to get you shampooed,” Maggie said, spinning Gladys’s chair around and stepping on the hydraulic bar, lowering Gladys in one swift and surprising move.
Dorothy sprang out of her chair, Maggie having finished up her “do” while Dorothy was speaking, and announced to Maggie that she’d left her money by the brushes and assured her she’d be back at the same time next week. Before Gladys could respond, even though her mouth had been open to do so for some time now, Dorothy had bustled out the door, Sheba at her heels, leaving a grinning Maggie. It didn’t escape either Dorothy or Maggie that someone had actually beat Gladys to a dramatic exit.
The Tank backfired once upon startup, as though to put an exclamation point on the entire event.
6
Jessie Landers stood on the pitcher’s mound, arms down in front of her, hands clasped around the softball. She glanced at the first baseman, who was staring at the runner for the Palmer Pirates, who was acting as if he was going to try to steal second. What Jessie knew was that he couldn’t run fast enough to make it to second by Tuesday, so she didn’t give him another thought. Instead, she stared an evil eye at the batter, winked at her young, blonde catcher, then gave her windup and lobbed the ball home. Even though Jessie could still “zing ’em into the breadbasket,” this was relatively slow-pitch ball since most of the players were over sixty and that’s just how they’d unofficially decided to go about things.
“Stee-rike three!” the umpire bellowed, nearly before the ball thunked into Shelby’s hands. The batter had gone down looking, just as Jessie’d known he would.
“Nice catch,” Alex shouted from the stands behind the backstop, hands cupped around his mouth. He was hoping Shelby would glance in their direction on her way to the bench so he could appropriately embarrass Josh. Like Arthur and Lester, Alex and Josh enjoyed teasing each other, given the opportunity. Josh poked him a good one in the ribs with his elbow, which was all the action Alex got out of his antics. Shelby didn’t pay a bit of attention to anyone other than her Partonville Musketeers teammates, who were engaged in a flurry of high-fiving Jessie. Although Josh was hoping to make eye contact with Shelby—or at the very least he hoped she’d noticed he’d arrived—he was also watching to see if Dorothy was going to give a cheer.
Since he and Alex and his mom had arrived five minutes late, they’d missed the Welcome Cheer, as Dorothy referred to it. Of course, there hadn’t been a soul on the field or in the bleachers who had missed the tardy and awkward arrival of the city slickers.
Dorothy had walked over, waving her pom-poms, to greet them after they’d gotten seated in the stands, apologizing for having to give her Welcome Cheer before they arrived. She’d explained she probably wouldn’t have the wind to do another cheer for a couple of innings. But now Jessie’s last strikeout had put them into the bottom of the third, and they usually only played five innings. It was time to give it another go. She waited just a moment until May Belle and Earl got done selling little ribboned and Saran-wrapped packages of three cookies for a quarter. They did this every week as a fund-raiser for the Musketeers, who occasionally needed to buy a new softball and always gave the umpire a couple of bucks.
Dorothy stood in front of the bleachers, where fans of both teams sat intermingled. Most knew one another after all the years they’d played, and they enjoyed the weekly gab sessions, often joking about being Bleacher Bun Buddies. Although the rivalry could occasionally be felt, no one was too serious about it, other than Jessie. Having traveled around the country playing semi-pro fast-pitch softball in her heyday, she found it impossible to enjoy losing. Although she’d been a golden glove catcher in her prime and had the deadliest pickof
f arm in the tri-state area, several years ago it became too difficult for her to get up out of the squat. She was a natural for a pitcher, though, and she loved the fact that Shelby—the only one under fifty-five on either team—was the catcher, because unlike most of the other players, Shelby could actually catch the ball.
Dorothy signaled the fans by raising her pom-poms above her head. They all immediately stood up—aside from the city slicker group, who drew attention to themselves once again by the omission of their behavior—for even the opposing team’s fans stood when Dorothy cheered. Dorothy gave Katie and her crew a moment to catch on, then as soon as they, too, were standing, she began. The cheer was given in the cadence of a drill sergeant who was marching his troops. To the beat, she alternated thrusting her red and black pom-poms out in front of her. Having been a band director all her working days, of course the beat was of utmost importance. Sheba barked and ran around her in circles all the while.
Howdy, folks, let’s do some cheers
for the hometown Musketeers.
Hit and run and catch the ball.
Huff and puff, try not to fall.
Sound off.
“One, Two!” yelled the crowd.
“Sound off.”
“Three, Four!”
Then they all finished in unison: “One, two, three, four—LET’S GO!”
Dorothy held her pom-poms high above her head, jiggling them and grinning. The people in the stands laughed, applauded and whooped it up, all at the same time.
Dorothy ended her cheering session by abruptly spinning around and sitting down on the front bleacher, nearly plopping herself onto Arthur’s lap. Although she didn’t let on, once again she felt a light pain in her chest.
Dearest Dorothy, Slow Down, You're Wearing Us Out! Page 5
