Dearest Dorothy, Who Would Have Ever Thought?!

by Charlene Baumbich

  “Watch out now. I don’t want you to go down before you’re done beautifying me! It was good to see Vera,” Dorothy said, ignoring the chance to gossip, which she didn’t much care for. Maggie and Dorothy were both on the move now, over to Maggie’s wash-and-set chair, the other chair reserved for colors and perms.

  “After what I heard tell about Jessie laying a patch of rubber on the square, I expected to feel more tension between those two Landers women. That’s a long time for company. But they seemed to be getting along just fine.”

  “A patch of rubber?” Dorothy asked, the words bumping out of her as Maggie rubbed the towel over her head.

  “You didn’t hear? When the two of them left the grill the other day, bunco day, I believe it was, Jessie laid a patch of rubber after she backed out of her parking spot. You can see it for yourself, if you go look when we’re done here. Why, I heard tell she even squealed the tires around her first leg of the square!”

  “No!”

  “Yes!”

  “That big old Buick must have just gotten away from her,” Dorothy said. “I hope she’s not the next one who has to think about giving up her driving. I tell you, Maggie, it’s one of the hardest things. . . .” She cut herself off, determined to quit whining about a circumstance that was not going to change. “I’m surprised nobody mentioned the incident at bunco. But then if they thought Jessie and Vera had been quarreling, I understand why they didn’t.”

  “Ben told me he saw Arthur and Herman tearing around town in Arthur’s truck the same afternoon. He said he figured those two old buzzards were reliving their youth.” Ben was Maggie’s husband, the two of them as crazy in love as the day they’d married more than fifty years ago. Maggie pumped Dorothy’s chair up a few notches and rearranged her drape. “Isn’t it something how when men do that, they’re just reliving their youth and when women do it, we think somebody must be mad or the car just got away from them?” Maggie gently combed through Dorothy’s wispy locks as they pondered the injustice of it all.

  “Josh mentioned Shelby when he e-mailed me,” Dorothy finally said, both women feeling the entire gender thing wasn’t worth getting fired up about, especially since they seemed to be feeding it. “Guess those two are still going strong?”

  “You betcha! My granddaughter said she’s not sure which was worse. Worrying her tomboy of a daughter might never have a date (although Shelby was Maggie’s great-grandaughter, Shelby had never called her anything but Grannie M), or knowing how crazy gaga she is over the first guy she’s ever dated for serious—especially since he’s got that big old SUV.”

  “Oh, I remember that fretting so well! If my Caroline Ann had done half the stuff I feared she might be doing when she was one minute late. . . .”

  Maggie spun Dorothy’s chair to look right into her eyes instead of talking to her in the mirror. “Who’s to say she wasn’t?” Maggie teased. She spun Dorothy back toward the mirror after they’d both laughed.

  “Well, only Caroline Ann and God know for sure now. If she was sitting right in that chair today,” Dorothy said, her finger peaking out from beneath her drape as she pointed, “we could have asked her. But sometimes cancer has its way. Then again, if I did have the chance to ask her, maybe I wouldn’t want to know! I can assure you Vinnie and Jacob spend far too much time tormenting me by telling me things they used to do, things I wished I’d never heard.” Maggie, small round brush in one hand, dryer in the other, turned the hair dryer on with her thumb, which put an end to their conversation. The minute Sheba, who always came to the shop with Dorothy since Maggie loved her to pieces, heard the loud whir of the motor, she scurried back to the laundry room and disappeared.

  “YOU’D THINK SHE’D BE USED TO THIS AFTER ALL THESE YEARS!” Maggie hollered, holding the dryer up in the air.

  After Dorothy’s finishing touch of spray, she paid Maggie, stuck a dollar in her hand and said to Sheba, “Come on, girl. Let’s go see for ourselves just how good a job Jessie did layin’ that patch, then we’ll stop by and see if we can’t do something for May Belle, poor thing. I imagine Earl’s worried to pieces, his mom being down this long.”

  Nellie Ruth was straightening the rows of cucumbers when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned, expecting to see either Wilbur, her boss, or Gladys, who she figured would be stopping by to check if she had all her reservation numbers tallied. Instead, Edward Showalter’s grinning face greeted her. He had his hands behind his back.

  “Pick a hand,” he said playfully.

  Nellie Ruth bit on her bottom lip and said, “That one!” She pointed to his left arm. He whipped his hand in front of him, empty, then quickly swung it behind his back.

  “Pick again.” He jostled his arms as though he might be switching things around.

  “That one again!” she said, pointing to her last selection.

  “HA!” he said, once again revealing his empty left hand, then zinging it behind him. “Pick again!”

  She stood staring at him, trying to telepathically read his mind, but mostly getting lost in the arch of his eyebrows, the bold curve of his nose, the way his ears stuck out—but just right.

  “Hey! You gonna pick?”

  “Oh! Sorry. Yes. I pick . . . um . . . LEFT AGAIN!”

  This time he carefully brought his left hand forward, a little package in it. She could tell he’d wrapped it himself, the electrical wire “ribbon” being a dead giveaway. “I know the wrapping is kind of . . .”

  She cut him off. “The wrapping is perfect for you! What’s inside?” She grabbed the package and gave it a squeeze.

  “How about you open it?”

  She unwound the wire and for lack of anything else to do with it, she wrapped it around her wrist, then she slid the tissue off her gift. It was a scented candle. “VANILLA! Oh, ES!” Two ladies standing by the tomatoes craned their necks to see what she’d been squealing about. Seeing the candle, they smiled first at Nellie Ruth, then at Edward Showalter. Then they put their heads together and whispered to one another as they took off down the aisle, one of them pushing the cart, the other looking back over her shoulder to get another gander at giddiness in the produce aisle.

  Suddenly Nellie Ruth maneuvered the candle and paper into her left hand, picked up a cantaloupe with her right and set the candle and paper in its place. Then she quickly built a pile of cantaloupes around it until not a sign of her gift could be detected. Edward Showalter appeared to be shrinking on the spot. I thought she liked it! “Hello, Gladys!” she said over his shoulder. “Good to see you. Gladys, I’m sure you know . . . Edward Showalter.”

  “Yes. Of course I do,” she said as though Nellie Ruth was daft. “He installed the new square building clock for me, remember? I hate to interrupt you while you’re working,” she said, shifting her eyes to Edward Showalter.

  “I was just leaving, ma’am. I just dropped by to”—his eyes veered to the pile of cantaloupes, then back at Gladys—“say hello and to assure Nellie Ruth here that I’m looking forward to helping her on Monday with the food deliveries for Thanksgiving. I’m glad I have a chance to express that to you myself.”

  Gladys looked from one of them to the other. Something felt suspicious but she didn’t have time to figure it out. She needed to collect reservation numbers from everyone (she decided she’d talk to Nellie Ruth later when Edward Showalter wasn’t hanging around to interrupt) and check in on May Belle to make sure she was going to be up for her end of the workload. “Well,” she said, yanking down on the bottom of her blazer, “I have to be going.” She started to walk between Edward Showalter and Nellie Ruth, her eye set on a cantaloupe. Quickly Nellie Ruth closed the gap, pressing her side up against Edward Showalter’s. Her face turned bright red when Gladys’s eyes flew, yet she didn’t move. She was stuck to Edward Showalter like cling wrap, not an air bubble between them.

  “The cantaloupes aren’t that ripe yet, Gladys,” she said in a rush. “You’d be better off waiting a couple of days.” As soon as the words—w
hich weren’t exactly untrue but which did stretch the fact a hair—were out of her mouth, Nellie Ruth silently apologized to God, her entire face now turning every shade of the red peppers in the display bins across from her.

  Gladys shook her head and chugged her cart down the aisle. Over her shoulder she said, “I’ll call you tonight, Nellie Ruth, and you can give me your tally of reservations. And Nellie Ruth,” she said, stopping her cart and turning around to speak, “I must say your jewelry leaves something to be desired.”

  Nellie Ruth had no idea what Gladys was talking about. She grabbed her ears. No earrings. She put her hand to her neck. No necklace. Then she looked at her wrists. The electrical wire said it all. “Poor Gladys,” Nellie Ruth said with a grin, “she doesn’t know a new fashion trend when she sees one.”

  Every time Lester heard the grill door open, he snapped his head to see who was coming in, afraid it would be Arthur. For a guy who’d decided to make a plan, after two whole days of trying to come up with one, he’d failed. I am who I am. At first he’d fretted that Arthur might be spouting his accusations to others, but although he’d heard a few folks laughing about the patch of rubber out front and Cora had tried to shake the grapevine bushes a few times to glean the status of things with the Landerses’ company, Lester hadn’t heard a peep about anything unusual, so Arthur must have been keeping his business between the two of them, which would be in keeping with the Arthur he knew—at least the one he knew up until a couple of days ago. He tried to convince himself no news must be good news since surely if all-out war had broken out between Arthur and Jessie, he would have heard about it by now.

  BANG!

  Lester ducked. When he heard no screams and saw no blood trickling at his feet, he turned around. “OH!” Earl was standing right there not one foot from his face. “Earl! You liked to scare the breath out of me!” Earl reared back. He looked like he might bolt. “I’m sorry, Earl,” Lester said, forcing a soft kindness into his voice. He knew Earl wouldn’t hurt a flea. “I just . . . I just wasn’t expecting you to be standing there. The sound of the door slamming surprised me, buddy. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you.” Earl blinked a few times. The warming sound of Lester’s voice was making more sense to him than the words. Earl didn’t understand why he should frighten Lester when Monday through Friday he came in at lunchtime to deliver phone-in meals.

  “Do you have any deliveries for me yet, Mister Lester?” Earl asked almost in a whisper, not wanting to frighten Lester again. Lester looked at his little pile of call-in orders, then at the clock. “If you don’t mind waiting, Earl, I’ll have them ready in a jiffy. How about you sit down at the counter and I’ll get you a soda.”

  “No, thank you. I’ll just wait.” Earl continued standing in Lester’s grill area, a place nobody else was allowed to roam, but like the slamming screen door, some behaviors Earl just wasn’t going to change.

  Lester went to work on the sandwiches: one ham sandwich with the works for Rick Lawson (Partonville’s only attorney at law), and another, lettuce only, for his secretary in his law office; one burger basket for T.J. Winslow at Richard-son’s Rexall Drugs. “Only got two stops today, Earl, at least so far.” For more than twenty years, Lester had “hired” Earl to deliver food. His pay was per delivery, not time, as occasionally Earl had a way of getting sidetracked. Lester paid Earl fifty cents per delivery and the people on the receiving end usually slipped him a quarter or so. Nearly all deliveries were to store owners on the square, although sometimes he’d walk as far as By George’s or the doughnut shop a few blocks off the square. “Earl, you need to close the inside door, please. It’s chilly out there today.” Earl did as he was told, then came right back behind the counter to wait.

  “How’s your mom’s back?” Lester asked, having heard about May Belle’s condition from Gladys.

  “Fine.”

  “Oh, is she better then? Up and around and baking again?”

  “No.”

  Lester stopped spreading mayo and looked at Earl. “Is your mom in bed or laying on the couch, Earl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is she, Earl? Where is your mom? On the couch or in bed?”

  “In bed.”

  “Has Doc been out to see her?”

  “No.”

  “Has anyone been by to see her?” Lester sounded concerned.

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “Dearest Dorothy. She was visiting when I left.” Earl called everyone by Mister or Missus plus their first names, aside from his Dearest Dorothy. He’d called her Dearest Dorothy since he could speak.

  “Good,” Lester said with relief. “That’s good that Dorothy’s there. And make that three deliveries today, Earl. I’m going to whip up Dorothy and your mom a couple sandwiches. One for you, too.”

  “Oh, Dorothy,” May Belle said to her dear friend who was seated in a chair next to her bed, “I’m so glad you convinced Earl to get busy with his job. Honestly, if you hadn’t stopped by, I didn’t know how I was ever going to get that son of mine out the door. He’s been so nervous since I’ve been down. I keep telling him and telling him I’m fine, that I just need to rest a few days, but he paces around here until I feel so bad for him. It’s dug up all my worries about what will ever happen to him when I. . . . I mean just when I think he’ll be okay on his own, I see how nearly paralyzed he becomes when I’m down. You’re just what he needed—what we both needed.”

  “He loves you, May Belle. You’re so rarely ill he just doesn’t know what to think about it when you’re not in the kitchen. As for the other, God’s got His eye on Earl, so don’t you worry about it—although I know that’s much easier to say than to do.”

  “I know God’s watching. I know. And I thank God every day for my health and Earl’s, too. But you can bet I’m having a few chats with Him about my back! Of all the bad timing!”

  “You’re undoubtedly right; you probably about wore it out with all those oven calisthenics for the Pumpkin Festival. No way should you now start hefting turkeys in and out of your oven and baking batches of bars. Not even if you’re feeling better in a week.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’ll be fine,” May Belle said as she struggled to turn on her side to better face Dorothy, then realized the pain was too bad so she settled back into her original position.

  “Oh, I can see that plain as day! You’re about ready to launch out of that bed like a spring chicken!” Dorothy teased. Then her expression turned serious. “Have you phoned Doc yet?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think I smell Vicks VapoRub and I imagine you’ve already gone through a truckload of it by now and you’re still in bed. How have you even managed to get it rubbed into your back when it’s as clear as a bell you can’t even turn over?”

  “Earl tried to do his best, bless his heart. I’d packed it in my handbag to bring to the Hookers’ meeting Wednesday hoping to get you aside in Jessie’s bedroom to give me a good dose. But then I realized I just couldn’t sit through bunco. You know how many times we have to get up and down.”

  Dorothy scanned the nightstand for the jar. “Where is it now?”

  “I left it in the bathroom on the sink. I tried to reach my hand back there last time I made it to the bathroom.”

  “I’ll be right back.” Within a moment Dorothy appeared with the little blue jar. “Now then, how are we going to get you on your side?”

  May Belle fidgeted and winced, then finally said, “You push me, okay? That is if you can get me turned over far enough without ending up having to give yourself a nitroglycerin tablet! Aren’t we a fine pair? I’ll help as much as I can.” Although May Belle moaned a few times during the process and ended up doing more work than Dorothy, between the two of them, they got her turned and her nighty pulled up for the application.

  Dorothy dipped two fingers into what remained of the contents in the jar. “This all you got?”

  “No. I’ve got another bottle or two in the m
edicine cabinet.”

  “Good. I’ll probably need it.” She began gently rubbing the Vicks into May Belle’s back. “Tell me exactly where, okay?”

  “There! Right there.”

  “I hope I’m not hurting you. Is this pressure okay?”

  “Just right, dear.” Dorothy swiped her fingers around the bottom of the jar a couple of times to collect what remained, then began to focus her rubbing on the zone. “Why does it hurt so good when you push on a sore muscle?” May Belle asked.

  “May Belle Justice, if you’re not up and around by day after tomorrow, which will be Sunday, I am going to send Doc straight to your house after church, and I don’t care what you say!”

  “I bet this’ll do the trick.”

  “I’m not convinced.”

  May Belle hated talking to the wall, but it’s what she was facing. “How about you call in the Big Guns with one of your bazooka prayers, okay?” Dorothy didn’t need to see May Belle’s mouth or eyes to understand her request. She laid both her hands flat on May Belle’s back and began.

  “JUST DO SOMETHING, GOD! Right here’s where she needs it,” she said, spreading her fingers and gently pressing them into May Belle’s back. “Amen.”

  Just then there was a knock at the door.

  “Do you think God has shown up just like that?” May Belle asked.

  Dorothy could hear by the tone in her voice that May Belle was smiling and that was a good sign. She peaked through May Belle’s curtains. “Oh, no. I see Gladys’s car out there. You stay put. I’ll send her away.”

  “What day is this? Friday? Oh,” May Belle said with a fretful tone in her voice, “she’s here to see how many reservations I have! I’ve let the phone ring a half dozen times in the last two days.”

  “Don’t worry. Folks wanting to come will have called the next person on the list. Some of them probably already called me; I’ve received several reservations the last two days. How many did you have before you got down with your back? I’ll give her your report.”