Change a Memory
The next morning, Beebe left a group of seniors at Crossroads filling out surveys. She thought she’d walk over to the health department and, hopefully, receive some good news about her mother’s death certificate. She desperately wanted something to raise Cliff’s spirit.
She spent part of her morning searching for grief counseling services in Larkspur. She contacted the funeral home, completed an internet search, and finally called Ned McMitchell. The pastor actually recommended his wife once the baby came.
That was something to consider. Beebe thought back on the conversation and sighed as she mounted the steps outside the Holmes Building. Her father could not wait for Willa to recover from childbirth. In the interim, it would not be appropriate to counsel Cliff herself. With the door handle in her grasp, she paused. A stray thought prodded. There just might be a benefit to attending whatever out-of-town classes she located with her father. Surely, he would perceive this as a supportive measure on her part. Then, from the place where his wounds began to heal, they could move forward together. Giving herself tacit approval, she vowed to give the idea continued consideration. With that, she yanked the door open and stepped through.
Beebe’s passage into the second floor office caught Heidi Cranston’s eye. She broke off her discussion with a small man who had sandy hair and wore wire-rimmed glasses. She waved Beebe over. “Here’s luck for you. Dr. Jeffers, this is Beebe Walker. You remember, she—”
“Why, yes. Of course. Pleased to meet you.” Dr. Samuel Jeffers smiled. He and Beebe shook hands over the counter. A ringing phone took Heidi away from their conversation.
Beebe started to speak, but an anticipatory Jeffers eased in front of her question.
“I’m afraid I’ve only given your request a cursory review. Time has been short recently,” he said apologetically. For proof, he showed her a handful of paperwork. ”Give me a day or two to study things in depth.”
“Should I stop back?”
“Heidi will call. Or I will.”
To Beebe, his words meant the doctor might be explaining why the certificate would not change. Her mind instantly jumped to the affidavits she would gather from Vincent and Yates in order to appeal his decision. If necessary, Ron Smith would become involved. Her voiced comment, though, tracked a positive vein. “I’d rather pick up the new copy over having it mailed.”
“Understood. Of course.”
Nothing in his words or manner were a clue as to which direction he leaned. She forced a smile and thanked him for his time before she made her way toward the old wooden door beneath a transom.
“Miss Walker,” Jeffers said.
She turned. He rounded the end of the counter and closed the gap between them.
“Part of the delay is—and I hope you’ll forgive me—but your request raises some issues, some broader issues.” He spoke in a confidential tone. “I can’t explain them now, but I want to devote the time needed to study policy. I’m talking about policy in my office. I know you’re not interested in the inner workings of the coroner’s office, but the subject matter is important. Just a few more days, please.”
She read his pale blue eyes and thought he wanted to say more, but he swallowed whatever words were there and excused himself. She watched his back until he disappeared through the doorway into the small conference room. Her gaze drifted to Heidi, obviously interested, but too far away to hear the muted conversation. Heidi shrugged. Beebe’s nod conveyed a positive result, although she was left confused by the turn of events
Back out on the street and heading toward the community center, Beebe either received or imagined she received a lot of attentive looks from her fellow Larkspurians. The obituary, of course, was the culprit. It seemed to lift the veil of anonymity that accompanied her throughout her first week back in her hometown. Looking around, she was surprised to recognize Donald Thorndyke, Crossroads’ board president, in the crosswalk. Donald was ten years older than Beebe. They attended the same church as children. He appeared to look right at her, then avert his eyes. She decided it wasn’t an obvious snub. He was deep in conversation with a woman whose hair was a mass of dark curls that shielded her features.
Beebe closed Crossroads’ door behind her and went straight to the comment box where she instructed the seniors to deposit their completed questionnaires. Inside were an even dozen. She read and walked toward the kitchen for a drink of water. She liked the idea described in the first survey she unfolded. It suggested a warm weather/cold weather exercise class. The participants would exercise outside when possible, even form a bicycle club, then come inside to avoid the chill with fun-packed muscle-stretching aerobics. The last questionnaire held a phenomenal idea: an introduction to social media. This suggestion went so far as to propose that a high school kid teach the class. What fun, Beebe thought. Who knew social media better? It would be a joy to work with a teenager—the right teenager—to prepare a class syllabus. Not a social media wizard, she would take the class herself.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a noise overhead. She raised her nose to the ceiling. From somewhere, a draft ruffled her papers. Turning, she found a set of double doors in the short hall to the kitchen stood open. She hadn’t noticed them before. Stepping forward, she looked in at a decently wide staircase that angled back on itself.
She climbed the stairs and began looking around as soon as her line of vision cleared the top step. At the back end of the floor, she saw Vincent sliding storage boxes around. The boxes left skid marks in the patina of dust on the floor. She walked his way. “Wow, look at this,” she said, startling him.
The air was musty and humid. Her eyes arched over the high ceilings and wide-open area of the former department store’s second floor.
“Roomy, isn’t it? The grant money includes dollars for rent or refurbishing.”
“You want to refurbish this area?”
“Yeah, you’ll need an office, perhaps a waiting area, maybe even a small library. I’m just thinking ahead. I thought we’d turn this into a game room. Move the pool table up here, then put up some walls for your office downstairs. We’ll close off what isn’t needed up here.”
“Why move the pool table to the back of the floor when the stairs leave you off up front?”
“There’s an old freight elevator back here.” He pointed into a dark corner, and she looked. “It’ll need some work. Not all seniors can handle the stairs. What have you got there?” He nodded to the survey sheets she carried.
“There were a dozen questionnaires in the suggestion box.”
“Any good ones?”
“Yeah, two. I guess there’s a bike and walking trail nearby.”
“Out on Old Mill Road by the lake.”
“A suggestion was made to form a bicycle club for the warm months and bring the exercise inside for the cold ones.”
“Sounds fine.”
“The other suggestion got me thinking. The seniors want to understand social media. Facebook and Twitter were mentioned. What do you think about finding a high school student to teach?”
“A teenager and seniors. Wild! And if I know you, you’re thinking that same integration might be woven into other programs.”
Vincent’s use of the word wild dislodged Beebe from the discussion and transported her back through time.
“Earth to Beebe.” Vincent waved his hands.
Ticking back, she returned his smile.
“Where’d you go?”
“Actually,” she said, taking a breath, “to a place you’ll remember.”
The way he tipped his head said, “Tell me.”
“Do you remember the song, Your Wildest Dreams?” This memory hai
led from the college days they shared at Michigan State. The song had been out for a while, but that day, she heard the words in a new context.
He snapped his fingers. “The Moody Blues.”
“You remember.”
“Of course.”
“Your VW.”
“A bucket of junk, but the radio was great.”
“Spring day. Windows down.”
“The two of us.”
“And our wildest dreams.”
“I thought we were on our way to something. But you had other plans.”
His words caused something to clog in her heart. She walked over to the windows and looked down to the street. The song’s lyrics strummed through her mind. How did it go? Once upon a time, once when you were mine, in your wildest dreams.
She heard his footsteps and imagined the petite swirl of disturbed dust. “That evening,” he said, “you told me you were going on to seminary, you weren’t coming back to Larkspur.”
“I almost changed my mind that afternoon after hearing that song. We had such a good time.”
Vincent looked at her like he saw directly into her soul. The day of her seminary announcement, she hid behind the words, once upon a time. The announcement surprised and crushed him.
That day, she worried he would try to change her mind. He could be very convincing. Witness the fact she was back in Larkspur at his beckoning. But while they tooled around in the Volkswagen, he didn’t try, and she anointed him on that occasion with a certain quality of wisdom.
Thinking about his powers to convince, though, led her to raise a question and store another one for some other time. She might have asked him about seeing and being ignored by Donald Thorndyke, but she decided to list Donald’s actions as unintentional, and her reaction as overly sensitive. His concentration was simply given over the woman with him, and so completely so that nothing else came into focus.
And besides, Beebe, Vincent, and the ghosts of this old building were firmly lodged in the past, not the present. Wisely, she let Donald Thorndyke fade. Was it possible wisdom rubs off with close contact?
“Vincent,” Beebe began her question timidly, “how did you get Daddy to let go of Mother’s clothes for the quilt?”
Vincent’s reaction wasn’t what Beebe expected. For a long moment, he drew in on himself. When he spoke, his words carried an inner peace.
“I talked about myself,” he said, “about being a widower. I told him a story about a little German girl.”
She was intrigued, but the counselor knew better than to interrupt for clarifications. She just let him go at his own pace.
“But maybe it wasn’t that. Maybe Cliff just knew the time was right. He was ready. You were coming home, and someone thought enough of you to ask for this small concession for a larger gain. Cliff did it for you.” He stood close enough to nudge up against her arm with his. “Not for him. Not for Abigail.”
Beebe pursued one word from Vincent’s explanation that seemed caught by the cobwebs hanging all around. “This is the first time I’ve heard you refer to yourself as a widower,” Beebe said tenderly.
“Yeah.” He raised his glasses to nearly be lost in his thick curls.
She waited.
“I was a raving mad lunatic.” When she smiled, he said, “What?”
“Those are three words that all mean the same thing.”
“Oh, you’re a great counselor,” he teased, “criticizing my choice of words the first time I decide to talk about Carolyn.”
“You’ve never talked about her since her death?”
“I closed up that part of my life, like this second floor.” He lifted his hands palms up. His eyes raked the ceiling. “I shut myself down into a small room and coped. That’s the best I could do for a long time. Cope. I closed the house we lived in and called an auctioneer over in Butler. He took care of everything. I had the few things I wanted.”
“They must be precious keepsakes. All totaled, it couldn’t be much.”
“Memories. I have memories, and they keep me going. I make myself remember. Every night before I go to sleep, I run down a half dozen memories. The best ones. I make myself relive those moments. Others crop up when I least expect them.”
“Have you written down any of them? That’s good therapy.”
“No. I want to hold it all inside. That’s where my memories of Carolyn belong. Inside. Not out in the open. Not on a cold flat page with regular lines. She was none of those things.”
Beebe thought about that. Holding things inside can cause certain people to explode or implode. She didn’t know which was more accurate. For Vincent, it brought comfort. Grief wasn’t fighting to get out.
“Vincent, why do you live here?”
“Because I couldn’t live where Carolyn and I lived together. I never understood Cliff keeping Abigail’s things all those years. I would have curled up and died if I stayed at home.”
“Do you think you would have benefited from counseling?”
“Probably. It’s easier now to look back, but I probably wouldn’t have agreed if counseling were available. I did better not talking about Carolyn.” Barely audible, he said, “And her death.”
Beebe thought it was true. People handle grief differently. Vincent and her father occupied opposite ends of the grief spectrum. Vincent navigated through his recovery following his own course. Softly, she said, “I think you did better, too.”
* * *
Yates’s days of detox with Rev. Mosie Razzell were broken up by the occasional visits from Ned and Willa McMitchell and Vincent Bostick. Beebe Walker stayed connected. She stopped by, but only after calling first, to determine if Razzell was not then in the front part of the house. Everyone agreed Beebe’s interaction with the reverend might cause a setback so she made notes from a distance, which Yates assumed were related to the senior life programming Crossroads would soon undertake in full force.
Only once did Yates call for help. His panic set in just after midnight, making it Thursday morning. Razzell was shaky and incoherent. Following Dr. Gabriel’s earlier lead, Yates told Razzell he had a bad case of the flu. He tried to push herbal tea, toast, and saltines off on the minister, but a mumbling Razzell declined them all. Yates was afraid to leave him even for the length of time it would take to let Barleycorn make a quick pit stop out back.
Vincent answered Yates’s call and rushed over at one in the morning. When Vincent arrived, Razzell was wrapped in a blanket on the couch, his knees pulled up to his chin. For all intents and purposes, he adopted a sitting fetal position. A worried look crossed Vincent’s beard-stubbled face. Yates couldn’t imagine Vincent was as anxious about Razzell’s socked feet peeking out from beneath the coverlet as he was about the glazed look in the old man’s eyes.
Razzell shook. By way of greeting to Vincent, he said he ached. It was a pitifully feeble comment, full of pain and something unknown.
Barleycorn, sensing his new friend’s misery, spared no time for doggie pleasures. He ran to the closest bush, lifted a leg, and when the job was done, raced back inside. From the back door, he trotted directly to Razzell. So very gently, he climbed onto the couch to warm and comfort the suffering senior. Over the next six hours, whenever Razzell moaned, Barleycorn snuggled closer. The message was clear: Barleycorn would never forsake Razzell.
At sunrise, just like a fever breaking, Razzell rallied. He had not reached full recovery, but the residual effects of the narcotics broke their hold on his system. More clashes were expected, but victory was closer.
The worst, Yates prayed, was behind them.
Dr. Gabriel arrived Friday afternoon on Razzell’s third day of
detox. Razzell was bathed and dressed in fresh pajamas.
The doctor’s daily visits surprised Yates. He found him personable and dedicated, but he misconstrued Yates’s connection with Crossroads. Yates set him straight. The doctor thought the hospice hired him, not that the young man was homeless and in need of shelter until, hopefully, he gained employment with the local hospital—employment that included a much-needed paycheck.
“My interview is next Tuesday,” Yates said. “Ned and Willa will stay here with Mosie while I’m gone.” They talked on the front stoop, out of earshot of Razzell.
“Mosie may not need an aide by then. He’s doing great. This is better progress than I expected. You’re a fine nurse, Yates. I enjoy working with you.”
Yates was pleased beyond words with the compliment from the doctor who, days earlier, he began to truly admire.
* * *
“Hi, Daddy.”
Cliff turned from slicing open a carton with his box cutter. His shift at McKinley’s was nearly over. Beebe, to his surprise, wore a business suit. He couldn’t imagine why. “What’s up?”
“I just wanted to let you know I stopped by the Health Department again to ask about Mother’s death certificate. I got a few minutes of Dr. Jeffers’ time. He said another day, maybe two.” Beebe’s tone was matter-of-fact.
“Christ, it’s been since last Thursday.” This was Monday. How much time would the coroner take? He slammed the metal case of the box cutter against one of the metal shelves in the aisle where he worked.
While the reverberating echo died down, Beebe’s nervous eyes darted from the shelf back to Cliff. “I know, but we’re almost there, Daddy. Tomorrow or the next day. Heidi will give us a call. She has our number. I told you it’s Heidi Wells from school. She married Bud Cranston.”
Proper Goodbye Page 28
