by Lynne Hinton
She finished her cleaning and walked over to Charlotte, who had placed the coffeepot back in the maker and was standing in the door-way. Janice pinched her on the cheek. “And so now you can call your cute police officer we all saw you drooling over last night and tell him the coast is clear for a private visit.” She winked. “I’m sure Carla here won’t mind staying in her room for a couple of hours.”
Charlotte blushed and turned to Carla, who was sipping her milk shake and had been watching, but then had quickly looked away from the executive director. Charlotte wasn’t sure what Carla knew about the relationship Charlotte had with her ex-husband, but she was sure that the other women didn’t realize that Carla had once been married to the police officer they had seen at the shelter the previous night.
“Oooh,” Martha started in then. “Sister Charlotte has a boyfriend,” she sang. Her little girls giggled and joined their mother in the chorus, “Sister Charlotte has a boyfriend!”
Charlotte felt her face start to flush. “I think it’s time for you all to get going,” she said loudly, but she was still unable to stop the women from teasing.
“Give us the scoop and we’ll leave you alone,” Martha said, grinning.
“There is no scoop,” Charlotte answered, trying to hurry the women away from the table and out of the dining room, trying to put a halt to the awkward conversation. “We are making a bad impression on our newest resident.” She pleaded for them to stop.
“So, how did you meet Officer Tall, Dark, and Handsome?” Darlene wanted to know.
“How many times have you gone out?” Martha chimed in.
“Have you kissed him?” Hannah asked, laughing. She was the older of Martha’s two girls. Josie was six and Hannah was eight. The two girls became unglued with that question and fell out of their chairs laughing.
At that moment Denise walked into the room to model her new suit. “What did I miss?” she asked, suddenly aware that something important had been going on while she was not in the kitchen.
“Nothing, Denise, and you look wonderful. It fits you perfectly and you will make a fabulous court reporter.” Charlotte clapped her hands together like a teacher. “Now, Hannah and Josie, you both need to get ready for school,” she reported loudly, and quickly walked over to the two girls and helped them to the floor. “Let’s go get your teeth brushed while your mommy cleans up the dishes.” She shot a look over to Martha, and before any of the women could say anything else, she ushered the girls out of the room.
“I didn’t know Sister Charlotte was kissing a man,” Iris, the oldest of the residents, said quietly. And the women burst out laughing so that Charlotte could hear them even though she was down the hall.
Disappointed that there was going to be no more gossip, the women finished their breakfasts and their coffee and quickly cleaned up the dining room and kitchen, and within a few minutes were all dressed and out the door. All the previously made arrangements among the residents left Charlotte alone with Carla, who was still sitting at the table drinking her milk shake. Once the women were out of the house, however, Charlotte was embarrassed about the breakfast conversation and how the women had teased her about Donovan in front of his ex-wife. With all that information about Donovan and Charlotte being unloaded in front of Carla, Charlotte wasn’t sure how to start a dialogue with St. Mary’s newest resident. She wiped down the counter while Carla moved into the kitchen and sat at the small kitchen table.
“Was Darlene’s milk shake okay?” Charlotte finally broke the ice.
“It’s good,” Carla responded.
Charlotte placed the dishrag over the faucet and poured herself a cup of coffee. She walked over to the table and sat down across from Carla.
“It’s quiet when they all leave, isn’t it?” Charlotte asked.
Carla didn’t respond. She took a sip of her drink.
“Laurie told me that she gave you something for the pain. Did it help last night?” Charlotte had talked to the nurse after she had completed the examination. She had reported exactly what Carla had already suspected. More than likely, there were a couple of broken ribs. Everything else was probably just bruised or sprained. She suggested taking a few X-rays, just to make sure, but Carla had refused any further medical attention, and so Laurie had treated her with bandages, ice packs, a heating pad, and Percocet.
Carla nodded gently. It was easy to see that the slightest movement was still very painful.
The two women sat at the table. Neither of them appeared to be very comfortable in the situation.
“Donnie told me that he had been out with you,” Carla said. “When he was bringing me here, he told me how you had met.”
Charlotte nodded. “I don’t know what to say, Carla, I’m sorry.”
Carla looked up at Charlotte. “What do you have to be sorry about?” she asked.
Charlotte shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m sorry that you had to be here when the girls were giving me a hard time. I’m sorry that it feels so awkward this morning.”
Carla glanced back down at the table. She stuck the straw in her mouth and took another sip of her drink. “Donnie is a good guy. He deserves to have love,” she said, surprising Charlotte.
Charlotte nodded. She took a sip of her coffee. “You want to talk about it?” she asked. This was usually the way she began a conversation with a new client at St. Mary’s, and she was comfortable with that beginning. This one seemed a little different, but, she reminded herself, she had never been dating the ex-husband of one of her clients before.
“You mean about me and Donnie or me and Bo?” Carla asked.
Charlotte thought the response was fair. She would have asked the same thing. “Is Bo your husband’s name?” Charlotte responded. She hadn’t gotten very much personal information about the man who beat her from Donovan or from Carla the night before.
Carla nodded slowly. “We’ve been married six years,” she added, and Charlotte recalled Donovan telling her that much. “It’s never been this bad,” she said. “He was really mad last night.”
Charlotte waited for more of the story. She never liked to push the women to tell more than they were comfortable telling, especially just after arriving at the shelter. Charlotte understood that by the time most of these women had gotten to St. Mary’s they had been forced to tell a lot of information to a lot of people, including the perpetrator, who often beat the victim because he thought she was keeping something from him.
“He got mad because he heard I had called Donnie last week,” she confessed. “Bo hates Donnie even though I don’t think they’ve ever even met,” she added.
Charlotte took another sip of coffee.
“Bo hates all police officers, and when we first met and he found out I had been married to one, he’s hated them even more.”
“Why did you call Donnie last week?” Charlotte asked, and then wished she hadn’t. It sounded more like the question from a jealous girlfriend than from a concerned professional.
Carla didn’t seem to mind the question or to think much about it. “I was scared,” she said. “Bo was getting more and more violent, and I thought I needed to talk to Donnie to find out where I could go.”
Charlotte nodded. She wondered what day of the previous week Donovan had talked to his ex-wife, wondered if it had coincided with the night they had gone out. She tried to shake those thoughts from her mind.
“How did Bo find out?” Charlotte asked.
Carla shook her head. She placed her bandaged arm on the table and then, grimacing, put it back in her lap. “I don’t know. I don’t know how he finds out anything. He has spies, he tells me.” Having finished her milk shake, she sat back in her chair. She looked up at Charlotte. “Do you think they got him last night?” she asked, sounding a bit nervous.
Charlotte answered confidently, “Donovan called this morning. Your husband was arrested and charged. He’s in jail. They booked him after they woke him up,” she added, alluding to the fact that he was passed out when they got to their
residence.
Carla smiled slightly, understanding what she meant. “I hit him with a skillet,” she confessed.
Charlotte drank the last of her coffee. “And pretty good, I heard,” she responded.
The two women waited for a minute before continuing their conversation.
“Will he come after me here?” Carla asked.
Charlotte waited before answering. She knew this was the fear of every woman who stayed at St. Mary’s. She knew the risks the battered women took in leaving their abusive relationships. She knew the efforts she and Maria and Laurie and all the other volunteers, all of the board members, took to keep the location of St. Mary’s private. She spoke to the workers and residents more about the need for privacy and keeping the location of the shelter secret than about anything else.
She knew the fear she felt when some of the women left and went back to their abusive partners and how she was always worried that they would tell the violent men the address of the shelter. Charlotte loved her work, was passionate in dealing with the issue of domestic violence, would do anything for any of those women she housed; but Charlotte was also always a little afraid herself that one of these men, who could beat and kill their wives and girlfriends and family members, would come to St. Mary’s and do violence to her or to those entrusted to her care.
“He’ll never find us,” Charlotte finally answered, sounding as confident as she could. “I’ve been here a long time, and none of the men have ever come here,” she added, glad to remind herself of these statistics. “He’ll be in jail awhile, and when he gets out, we’ll have found you a new place to live.”
Carla seemed comforted by this news.
“Do you have family or anybody we could call?” Charlotte asked, going back to her standard questions asked during an intake of a new resident.
“Donnie called my sister in Farmington,” she replied. “I guess my mother knows too.”
Charlotte got up from the table, taking her mug and Carla’s glass. She washed and dried them both and put them in the cabinet. “I brought you some clothes. I figured you were a size four petite. Is that about right?” she asked.
Carla smiled and nodded. “You’re pretty good at this,” she said.
“We’re going to take good care of you, Carla,” Charlotte promised.
“Donnie hasn’t dated anybody seriously since me,” Carla said.
Charlotte nodded, helping Carla up from the table. She was surprised to hear Carla mention this.
“I hope you’ll give him a chance even though it’s …” She hesitated. “… complicated,” she finished.
Charlotte smiled and walked with Carla down the hall and toward her office to get the bag of clothes. She didn’t respond to the remark made by the newest resident at St. Mary’s. She simply wasn’t sure what to say.
Spinach Surprise
1 package frozen chopped spinach
4 slices bacon
¼ stick margarine
1 pound sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
1 small onion, minced
½ cup flour
½ cup whole milk
½ teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs, beaten
½ teaspoon salt
pepper to taste
After cooking and draining the spinach, cook bacon until crisp, crumble it, and set the bacon aside. Melt the margarine in a 9-inch pan. Mix all the ingredients, except the bacon crumbles, and pour into pan. Sprinkle the bacon over the top. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes and let cool before serving.
—From Roxie Cannon’s recipes
Chapter Eleven
Louise could not make up her mind about getting married, and she was angry with herself that she couldn’t just tell George no. He had called her every day in the last week from Baltimore, trying not to sound desperate and plead, but certainly working to persuade Louise to give him an answer. His condition was worsening more quickly than originally expected. He was eager to start his new life, this new life that would soon be death. He needed her to marry him, and he needed her to do it soon.
Louise heard the phone ring and she didn’t move from the swing on her back deck. She was sure that it was George since he had promised last week to call again, giving her a few more days to decide. She knew he had waited as long as he could and then dialed her number again. Four times the phone signaled a call, and finally the voice mail picked up. She would check it later even though she was sure she knew who it was.
It was a cool April day and Louise was enjoying being outside. She closed her eyes and pushed herself back and forth with her feet. She loved her old porch swing. She loved the back deck and the way the sun danced between branches of trees and the way breezes stirred while she rested there. Even when she had been advised to cut some of the trees closest to her house, she had kept all of them in the backyard. She was often nervous during ice storms when the trunks would splinter and the limbs break, but then spring and summer would soon take the place of winter and she would laugh at her worries and enjoy the ample shade, knowing that even on the hottest days it would be cool out there. She loved her backyard.
It had been Roxie’s favorite spot on the property as well. Even when she was agitated, the Alzheimer’s yanking her further and further away from reality, shifting her thoughts from long ago to even longer ago, Louise could bring Roxie outside, ease her into the swing, push her just a little, and the agitation would lessen. Roxie would smile and cluck her tongue against the roof of her mouth, mimicking the sound of the woodpecker they could hear working on one of the hardwood trees at the edge of the backyard. The light breeze would blow through her hair and she would lay her head back and cluck.
Louise smiled, wrapping the light blanket around herself, recalling those last months she spent with Roxie. They were splendid and horrible, both at the same time. It was a constant battle, trying to convince Roxie who she was, trying to convince Roxie that she wasn’t in a stranger’s house, that she wouldn’t be harmed. Every day was a struggle with Roxie’s sense of loss, her unexplainable grief in having everything taken from her, her capability to reason, her family, the ability to recognize people she was told she should know. And yet even in the struggles, the day-to-day battles, the cajoling and the arguing and the convincing, there had been the most amazing moments of tenderness, of sweet, intimate communion for Louise and Roxie. There had been these quick but satisfying moments when Roxie would look right into Louise’s eyes and tell her thank you or that she loved her, and even though they were as fast as lightning, gone in a blink of an eye, they were there, and those were the moments that made for most of Louise’s memories.
When Roxie died, Louise was glad her friend didn’t have to suffer any longer, but if it had been up to her and she was allowed to be completely selfish about things, she would have kept Roxie alive for as long as she could, just to have one more of those clear and beautiful moments.
“So, what do you think of this arrangement, Miss Roxie Ann?” Louise asked the question out loud, imagining her friend sitting next to her in the swing.
“Your husband asking me to marry him, it’s ridiculous, isn’t it? And I am crazy for even considering such a thing, right?” She draped her arm across the back of the swing the way she used to do when Roxie was beside her. Back and forth she pushed the swing, thinking of her best friend and all the days they had together.
Louise drifted back in her memories and thought about Roxie when she was young, how simply she saw the world, how matter-of-fact she could be. Louise let the morning breeze move her back and forward in the swing and suddenly remembered a time when the two women lived together in a boardinghouse while they worked at the mill, a time when Louise asked her friend for advice regarding her relationship with her mother.
Louise had never been close to her family and she was particularly distant from her mother, a harsh woman who openly displayed her disapproval of Louise and her sisters. All her childhood, Louise had felt as if she had never been quite good enough for
her mother, never been able to measure up to her mother’s standards. Her mother had often told her daughter that because she was so stupid and ugly, she would never amount to anything more than a dirt farmer’s wife. Louise’s mother had refused to buy her children new clothes or spend any money on them at all, so Louise and her sisters learned at a very early age how to sew their own dresses and blouses, and they shared what they had with one another and accepted hand-me-downs from cousins and friends. By the time Louise was a teenager, out of school, and had moved out of town to work on her own, she and her mother barely spoke.
One day she received a letter from her mother asking Louise to send home more money. Louise already sent a large portion of what she made to her parents, leaving her with very little to make ends meet. She had left home to get away from her mother and to join her sisters at the mill, and even though she had no tenderness toward her parents, she still felt a responsibility to help support them, to send them money.
Louise knew things on the farm were difficult; her father had suffered a back injury a year before she left and was not able to do the work of planting and harvesting, and her mother had never been one to work outside. She spoke in the same harsh way to her husband as she did to her children, always belittling him, always reminding him how she hated him for being a farmer, and she refused to help him in any way. In the earlier years, Louise and her siblings had been the ones to milk the cow or feed the hogs, hoe the rows of beans and cucumbers, and drive the tractor through the fields. The children had managed all the outdoor chores, including planting and growing the gardens and taking care of the livestock. Louise’s mother would cook meals and clean the house, but she would never venture outside beyond a small flower garden she kept near the back door to the kitchen.
When her father was injured and most of the children were gone, the farmland became barren, and the yard and the vegetable gardens were unattended to and unproductive. Louise, like her sisters, left the farm and the unhappy surroundings, but they still supported their parents by sending money from their paychecks. All of them hated to leave their father, worried about him, but in the end only one brother, the oldest son, could stand to live close by. He did as much as he could, growing tobacco and cotton, but he too depended on his sisters’ assistance. None of them discussed how much each one of them was sending, and Louise, unaware at the time that she was sending more than any of the others, was seeking advice from her friend after receiving the letter from home demanding more money.
