His For Keeps: (50 Loving States, Tennessee)

by Theodora Taylor

  Working as a home health aide worker doesn’t require a college degree, but it also doesn’t pay much. Which is why I went with the cheapest data plan after my grandma used her entire Social Security check to buy us matching smartphones last Christmas. But that had been before I’d known what a data hog my grandmother would become, with her constant posting to social media sites, and her crack-like addiction to the Family Feud & Friends mobile game app. There’s never enough data left over at the end of the month to do simple stuff, like use the map app on my smartphone to figure out how to get to my new job. Not unless I want to pay some serious overage charges—which I don’t.

  I end up going into the gas station and poring over a hand-drawn map with a very helpful but hard to understand Pakistani gas station attendant for nearly fifteen more minutes.

  As it turns out, Rose Gaither, my newest client, lives in a recently constructed gated neighborhood with its own golf complex.

  “It is very nice place. Very nice,” the attendant tells me. “I do not know how to play the golf, but I hope to play it there maybe someday. This is my dream.”

  We all have dreams, I think as I leave the gas station. Plus, who am I to judge anybody else for having a crazy dream. I actually consider this job a dream come true. Working as Rose Gaither’s live-in aide will mean a steady paycheck and enough time to work on putting together some songs for a demo. Of course, I’ll have to save every extra penny in order to pay to record those songs to a demo, which I can then pass on to labels and producers looking for new songwriting talent. And before that, I’ll have to figure out how to get over my crippling fear of singing in front of people. But hey, one out of three ain’t bad. And at least I’ll finally be living in Nashville, the place where country music dreams come true.

  However those dreams soon start feeling like they’re slipping away when I finally make it into the gated community, filled with rolling hills, huge mansions, and as promised, an idyll golf course with lush green grass, sand pits, and even a sparkling lake. As pretty as the place is, it’s a total nightmare to navigate, and even with the little map the gas station attendant drew for me, I keep on getting turned around on roads that turn out to be unmarked cul-de-sacs or just don’t go through, because forget you, hapless home aide, we’re a gated community, we don’t have to make sense.

  I have to ask three different gardeners, in broken Spanish, how to get to Telescope Road before I finally pull up to the place I’m supposed to be living until further notice—over half an hour after I was supposed to arrive. I’m cursing that dang Family Feud & Friends game for real as I get out of the car.

  Compared to the rest of the neighborhood’s showy mega-mansions, Rose Gaither’s house is cute as a button. A large, blue Cape cod with a covered porch and neat brick steps. I run up them and push on the doorbell, my heart still beating erratically in my chest from the Dora the Explorer episode that just getting here put me through.

  I wait, but no answer. I look at my watch. Now it’s thirty-two minutes past when I was supposed to be here.

  I curse again and lean on the doorbell. Still no answer, though. And the scar that runs down the entire left side of my face feels like it’s pulsing under the heavy makeup I’ve put on to cover it up. A sure sign I’m more stressed than I need to be at a first meeting with a new client.

  Where’s the night nurse? I wonder. She was supposed to meet me and take me through my duties before I started my first shift.

  Not knowing what else to do, I try the doorbell a third time.

  But still no answer.

  Okay, obviously I’m going to have to call the agency. But first I decide to try the doorknob, just in case…

  The handle depresses easily and the door swings open with barely a creak.

  Weird, I think, wondering if I should look for the client or go get my bags out of my car. I decide to look for the client, because the last thing a multiple stroke victim needs is to be shocked to death by the presence of a stranger in her house.

  I check downstairs first. The house is a little grander on the inside. Gleaming hardwood floors and a sweeping staircase are the first things I see when I walk in through the door. But I pass the stairs and search for the downstairs bedroom first. I don’t care how fancy you are. Nobody’s going to want to climb a marble staircase after going through a stroke.

  Turns out I’m right, and I find a post-it note from the absent night nurse on one of the first closed doors I come to.

  “Sorry, family emergency. Will try to call you later in the day with instructions.”

  I give the note some serious stank face. Maybe the night nurse really did have a family emergency, or maybe she just didn’t feel like sticking around to train the new home aide who was putting her out of a job. Either way, it’s not the best way to start off with a new client.

  Shake it off, I think, stuffing the post-it into the front pocket of my scrubs. I take a deep breath and give a little knock before pushing through the door with a bright smile on my face—

  —only to find Rose Gaither prone on the bed. Her eyes wide. One hand at her chest, wrapped fist tight around something I can only assume is a cross.

  She’s in distress, I realize right away. Another stroke—no a heart attack, I quickly correct myself, running over to the bed.

  I pull out my phone and call 9-1-1. Calmly I tell the answering operator what’s going on, then I give her the address, hoping like hell the ambulance has an easier time finding this place than I did. But I try not to worry too much about that. Ms. Gaither lives in a rich neighborhood. Ambulances, I know from experience, have a way of finding their way extra quick to the homes of the rich.

  “I’m fixing to begin life saving procedures now,” I inform the operator.

  This isn’t my first rodeo, and I’ve become good at attending to clients while talking on the phone with 9-1-1 at the same time. It’s one of those skills you wish you didn’t have, but of course get before too long as a home health aide. And I’ve been doing this job in some way or another ever since high school.

  But when I go to put my hands on her chest, the little old lady knocks them away with her bent arm, still clinging to her necklace. At first I think it’s involuntary, but then she frantically shakes her head at me and I remember…

  The short history file I’d received a few days ago on her. And the five words I’d been a little surprised to see. “Has a DNR on file.”

  I raise my hands and whisper, “I forgot you have a DNR.”

  Rose nods, her milky blue eyes somewhat terrified… but more determined than fearful, even as her heart gives out.

  “Did you say she has a DNR?” the operator asks over the line.

  My hands hover over her frail body, not sure what to do.

  I’ll admit most of my patients have been God-fearing black folks—not a crowd that has a lot of truck with DNRs. I’ve always known this could happen, but did I ever believe it would?

  No, I guess I didn’t. I think about ignoring the order. I could always say later that I didn’t notice the sentence in her case letter, blame the night nurse who hadn’t stuck around to train me. I am my mama’s daughter after all, and I know how to lie.

  But then I look down at Rose. She’s still shaking her head, her lips kissed into a silent “Noooo!” She doesn’t want this. This life in this big fancy house of hers. It’s not enough. Not enough to make her want to stay here in her broken body…

  “Hello? Are you still there?” the operator asks on the other side of my phone.

  I sit back on my knees and release the breath I’d been holding.

  “Yeah, I’m still here,” I answer. “I can’t begin life saving procedures. She has a DNR on file.”

  “Oh,” the operator says.

  We share a tiny moment of quiet over that piece of information, then she goes right back into efficiency mode. Telling me to stay with Rose, and try to make her comfortable. An ambulance is still on the way.

  “Okay,” I say to the oper
ator, but I’m looking at Rose. I’m holding her limp hand, the one that doesn’t work anymore because of the strokes.

  “I’m here with you,” I tell her. “You’re not alone. I’m here with you until the end.”

  It’s stupid, because I’m not her family. I’m not even anybody she’s ever met before. In fact, from what I recall of her paperwork, we only have one thing in common, her and me. We’re both from Alabama, and somehow we both ended up in Tennessee.

  But that’s all. She’s white. I’m black. A few minutes ago, I was feeling like my life was finally getting started. But hers… it’s coming to an end.

  I hold her hand anyway. I hold her hand and watch the last light of life leave her eyes as the ambulance sirens sound in the distance. Eventually, her right hand unclenches and I see I was right. It was an old, silver cross necklace she’d been clinging to, until the very end.

  SO… NO, NOT THE BEST FIRST DAY I’ve ever had on a job. But better than some last days, I suppose, as I sit on the sweeping staircase, strumming my guitar.

  At least it hadn’t involved a client with dementia, accusing me of stealing the jewelry that had obviously been taken by her junkie son. There was no asshole male family member who’d come to visit his ailing mother, or aunt, or grandmother, but somehow decided it’d be a great idea to corner her home aide with a pick up line like, “Hey redbone, you wanna come out with me or what?”—then have the nerve to get upset and convince his relative to fire you when you say no.

  No, not as bad as being accused of stealing or getting sexually harassed while you’ve got a bedpan in your hands. But way up there on that list, for sure.

  It took a while to get everything sorted out. The paramedics called in more people, including a medical examiner to make pronouncements and fill out paperwork. More calls had been made, and I’d been told to stay with the body until the funeral home arrived, which they did. In record time, I thought.

  My only experience with an in-home death happened a long time ago. My grandfather died in his sleep while I was still in my training program to become a home aide. All I really remember about that sad morning was sitting with my grandmother, waiting for the church’s funeral home to come get him. It felt like it took them forever.

  But I guess I’ve been lucky up until now. None of my other clients ever died while I was on the job. But Rose had died, had silently commanded me to let her go on. And now I was stuck here in the place where she’d done it, waiting here for her son who’d been out of town, but is flying back from wherever. I’m supposed to give him the agency’s condolences, and the keys, and some paperwork, but you know, don’t talk to him too much about what happened.

  “If he asks you about it, have him call me directly,” the director at the agency told me. “I’ve been on the phone with his assistant all morning, but this is a VIP client, so I want him sent straight to the top if he has any questions.”

  The top being the director, who hadn’t even been there. I had a feeling if the agency’s headquarters weren’t all the way over in Memphis, she would have come out here to handle things herself.

  Actually it’s more like a wish than a feeling, because talking to your dead client’s only son is not exactly a job I would have necessarily signed up for. But it is what it is, I guess. So I sit on the staircase with my guitar and wait.

  Then wait some more.

  The sun sets and eventually the lights click off as the house grows cold—it’s probably on one of those timers, designed to turn off all the lights and stop cranking the heat so hard when everybody is under the covers. Real good for the environment, but my old peacoat isn’t doing much to keep me warm.

  I’m grateful to have my guitar. The nice thing about music is if you’re playing it right, it can distract you from a lot of life’s problems. Like cold houses. And promising jobs that end the morning they start. And the memory of life’s light fading from milky blue eyes.

  Thinking about Rose, I start playing a song that’s been bugging me off and on for the last few months. A hook and some chords, always slipping away when I tried to chase down the full song. But this time when I start playing it, the song doesn’t turn tail and run. Instead it unfurls, slow and sad, until I get to the last verse, when I know it’s okay. It’s not happy, but it’s okay. Because she’s finally at peace. She’s okay to leave and… become my country song.

  I stop when I finish. Barely able to believe what just happened. A song. A full song unfolded in its entirety in less than five minutes. I fumble for the journal I keep inside my guitar case with a pen tucked inside, and I write it down. Every single word. I write it down, even though it’s not the kind of song a soul would or could ever forget.

  Then just in case I misunderstood what just happened, I play it again in its entirety. This time with a little more passion, taking what I’ve inherited, the drama from my mama and the grit from my grandma, and pouring all of it into my performance in the empty room, until I find myself once again arriving at the last three words, “…my country song.”

  “That your song?” a voice asks after the last guitar note fades.

  I nearly drop my guitar out of my lap. A man is standing in the foyer. I hadn’t heard him come in, but obviously he must have arrived sometime while I was singing, because the front door is still open, the streetlight casting him in shadows.

  I squint, trying to get a better read on him. Sensing who he is, even though I can’t quite see his face.

  He’s tall, and covered from head to toe in casual clothes, so perfectly suited to him that I’m sure someone spent a grip of his money picking them out. A white Stetson sits on top his head, like a crown.

  He doesn’t look the same. He doesn’t even sound the same. But I recognize him immediately, even before he steps into the light and reveals his crystal blue gaze.

  It’s Colin. Colin Fairgood.

  And now I’m the housekeeper’s kid, sitting on the stairs, my mind locked in the past. My body once again tingling with the memory of his kiss, as if it had just happened moments, not years ago.

  “That your song?” he asks me again.

  2

  “You don’t have the same name as your mama.”

  The words sound dumb, even to my own ears. Slow and awkward, with a side of “duh” thrown in.

  “No, I don’t,” Colin answers. He tilts his head and regards me. But this time his assessing blue gaze makes me feel like I’m taking steps backwards in his estimation. Like a complicated math problem that might be way more simple than he originally thought.

  “What’s your name?” he asks me.

  I blink, a little surprised that he doesn’t remember me.

  But it has been a long time. A really long time. And though that kiss permanently seared itself across my memory, there’s a good chance Colin forgot all about it. He probably has women throwing themselves at him on the daily now. There’s no reason he’d remember me after all of this time.

  Also, he wasn’t the only one who’d gone through some changes since that night.

  He no longer looked like a skinny stork, and I no longer looked like a hot-to-trot teenager. I imagine what I must look like to him now: a home health aide with brassy, obviously dyed, blond hair, pulled back into a ponytail. The make up I put on this morning before leaving West Tennessee is a distance memory, and I can feel my scar pulsing hot and obvious on my face.

  “What’s your name?” he asks me again. Probably wondering now what kind of incompetent the agency sent to see to his mother.

  “Kyra,” I answer. “Kyra Goode. I was the one who found your—”

  “I know who you are,” he says.

  I freeze inside my body, wondering if that means…

  “Ginny, my assistant, told me somebody would be here to meet me. She didn’t tell me you’d be singing about it, though.”

  Nothing. His “I know who you are” meant absolutely nothing. Except that his mother had just died and he’d found me strumming on my guitar, like all I cared
about was using her memory to write my next song.

  I don’t ever play in front of people. Ever. Not even my grandma. If I gotta play at home, I go down to our little creek, deep in the woods, where nobody but the rabbits and birds can hear me. To not only be caught playing by Colin Fairgood, of all people, but to also have it be a song about his mother’s recent death—my whole body goes hot with embarrassment.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. “Sorry for your loss. Sorry for… everything.”

  I drop the guitar into its case and pick up the white envelope I put together for him earlier.

  “I got all the house keys right here, and the agency’s business card. I wrote the director’s number there on the back for you, just in case you have any questions. You can call her direct.”

  He barely glances at the envelope and doesn’t make any kind of move to take it out of my hand.

  “How about if I have questions I want to ask you?” he says.

  “My number’s all over your paperwork,” I tell him. “If you’ve got questions, you can call me, too, but my boss wants you to talk to her. I mean—she’d be a better person for explaining what happened with your mama.”

  “So I’m assuming that was your song and you don’t want to talk about it with me,” he says.

  My scar is straight up throbbing now. Like it’s the only thing happening on my entire face. And another new song called, “Inquisition” starts forming in my head.

  “You really should take this,” I say, thrusting the envelope at him. “I’ve still got to drive back to West Tennessee tonight, so I should be probably be getting on the road.”