Miss Julia Knows a Thing or Two

by Ann B. Ross

  My second thought was that here was a chance to practice my newly determined intention to hold my tongue since no one—regardless of what they claimed—really wanted to hear the truth as I saw it.

  “I appreciate that, Mildred,” I said, knowing I had to say something, “and I’ll do the best I can, but you might do better to discuss your feelings with your priest.”

  “Ha!” she said with a wave of dismissal. “All he’ll do is tell me to pray about it.”

  “That’s not bad advice, you know.”

  “Oh, I know, and I am. But I just feel that I’m going to explode if I don’t let off steam in some way. I am so full of resentment that I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried talking to Tonya about it, but she just waves me off and tells me not to be silly. And her careless attitude cuts me to the bone.”

  And, indeed, Mildred seemed deeply affected, even pulling a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbing at her eyes. I felt honored that she wanted to share her burden with me.

  “Then tell me,” I said, assuming a warmly comforting tone, “what exactly does she do?”

  “Well,” Mildred said, heaving a great sigh, “it’s more of what she doesn’t do. I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but Tonya’s visits have gotten shorter and shorter, and fewer and fewer. In fact, I have to beg her to come home, but she is so busy with first one thing then another that her father and I are way down on her list of things to do. I call her, but she has company or she has an appointment or someone is at the door, so she can’t talk. Then she forgets to return my call. I invite her home for something special, and she has a conflict. Why, Julia,” she said, leaning toward me, “she didn’t even come home when Horace was in intensive care. Oh, she called once to see how he was doing, but I could hear others talking in the background and ice tinkling in glasses, so she was entertaining. It’s as if her life is so full that there’s no room for us. And I don’t know whether to be hurt or angry about it.” She sighed again. “I think I’m both.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mildred, especially since you were once so close.”

  “And that’s another thing,” she went on, “Tony and I used to talk all the time. We’d pile up in my bed and watch reruns of Sex and the City, and talk and laugh and discuss everything and everybody under the sun, and just enjoy each other’s company. But not any longer. When Tonya comes now, you could cut the silence with a knife all because I don’t know what to talk about and, you know, Julia, I am never at a loss for words, particularly in a social situation.”

  I nodded, for it was true. Mildred could draw out the shiest of guests, ensure that everyone enjoyed themselves in her home, and send them off feeling honored for having been invited.

  “It’s as if,” Mildred went on, “her mind is still in New York even when she’s here and she can’t wait to get back. Her life there is so full that she can’t bear being away.”

  “Oh, Mildred,” I said, “I am so sorry you’re having to go through this. I always admired the close relationship the two of you had. You seemed to enjoy each other so much, discussing plays you’d seen, books you’d read, and so on. Maybe Tonya has so many interests that it’s hard to decide which one to tell you about. You might try to draw her out by asking about a particular one.” I mentally patted myself on the back for coming up with such an encouraging suggestion.

  “Maybe,” Mildred said, dabbing at her eyes. “Maybe so, who knows? But you’re right, Julia, Tonya is multitalented. But she can’t seem to settle on one thing. She’s bounced from one enthusiasm to another. You may recall that at one time she was so sure that her future was the stage, and off to New York she went to study acting. That lasted barely a year. The next thing was to express herself in art, although she couldn’t seem to find the right medium. So she tried one class after another, and none of them lasted. Except I give her credit for one thing—she threw pots for almost two years until she got tired of having clay splattered all over herself. And then I thought she’d finally found her métier in interior design, because she’s stuck with it for the past several years. At least, I thought she had, but who knows now?”

  It was certainly true that anything goes these days, and when it does, those of us who look on are supposed to smile and pretend that it’s not only natural, but physically and emotionally healthy, even if it’s jumping from one job or marital mate to another. If it feels good, then do it. Wellness seems to be the operative word and, I declare, I don’t know what that means, especially when I hear of running a marathon for wellness which would just about kill me, or doing wellness exercises, or, for goodness’ sakes, insuring financial wellness, or going to wellness clinics. If you’re well, why do you need a clinic?

  But holding myself in, I said none of that to Mildred, determining instead to let her vent without adding my own views on the subject.

  “And,” Mildred said with a roll of her eyes, “you know what else she’s done, or not done? Birthdays have always been important to us. You know, there’s just the three of us so we’ve always made those days special among ourselves. We try to surprise each other and celebrate in unique ways. In fact, that little red Boxster car was my birthday gift to Horace this year. But do you know what Tonya did for him? Of course you don’t, so I’ll tell you even though it shames me to say it. Nothing, she did absolutely nothing—no gift, no phone call, not even a Hallmark card!”

  “Oh, my,” I said, imagining how hurtful that would’ve been. “That’s really thoughtless of her, especially with Horace having been so ill.”

  “Yes, except he didn’t notice. I declare, Julia, he is getting so forgetful and it’s just one more thing to worry me to death.”

  And, indeed, tears were welling up in her eyes, and my heart went out to her. Sharper than a serpent’s tooth came to mind, although I didn’t know where it had come from.

  “Well, Mildred,” I began, although hesitantly since I was treading ground on which friends rarely ventured, “it takes a lot of money to flit from one enthusiasm to another. I, of course, don’t know Tonya’s financial situation, but if you control the purse strings you can also control her.”

  “Oh, I wish it was that simple. Believe me, I would’ve already done it. But Tonya has a trust fund set up by my father, and she’s long come of age to use it as she pleases. Although,” Mildred said as a light seemed to dawn, “the way she’s been spending could mean that she’ll be scraping the bottom of the barrel real soon. Thank you for reminding me, Julia, because all I have to do is wait her out. I’ll suddenly become important to her then.”

  “Oh, Mildred,” I said, “that’s not what you want! Surely Tonya wouldn’t do that.”

  “Oh,” Mildred said as her eyes began to fill, “I don’t doubt it at all. All I can say is that I must’ve been a terrible mother to have raised such a thoughtless child.”

  “But, listen,” I said, “she’s always had your approval of whatever she wanted to do. Maybe she assumes she’ll always have it. And,” I quickly added, “that’s a good thing. Think of all the children who grow up feeling they can never please their parents. They go through life thinking that they don’t measure up. You, on the other hand, have always expressed delight in—”

  “Maybe too much so,” Mildred cut in mournfully. “Maybe I should’ve put my foot down on occasion. Tonya doesn’t have time, or she refuses to make time, for her mother, and I just resent it from the depths of my soul.”

  “You mustn’t give up on her, Mildred,” I said. “One of these days Tonya will need you, and at that point she’ll realize how important you are to her.”

  “Ha!” Mildred said in a stronger voice. “Probably when she needs money! Well, she may also realize that I’m not always at her beck and call, either. What goes around usually comes around. Right, Julia?”

  Recalling that somebody once said that home is where, when you go there, they have to take you in, I could do nothing but nod half-heartedly.<
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  “But I will tell you this,” Mildred said with a determined note in her voice, “Tonya has to have made a dent in her trust fund. Thank you for reminding me of that, Julia. The way she’s been living is not inexpensive, so,” she went on, “if she thinks she can come to me, she’ll have to think again.” She grasped the arms of her chair and began to rise. “I am going to change my will.”

  Chapter 4

  Suggesting that she sleep on it before making any drastic changes, I soon took my leave of Mildred and went home. Who knew, though, what she would do. In her current state of mind, she could easily make a change that she’d live to regret.

  Well, that wasn’t quite right because if she changed her will to indicate her anger, she might not live long enough to rectify it if she changed her mind again, and if that happened, she also wouldn’t have time to regret anything. Or something like that.

  Nonetheless, I went home in an agitated state of mind. I felt for Mildred and sympathized with her. Having no children myself, I could only imagine the pain of being cut out of a child’s life. But then, thinking of Lloyd, maybe I could. If he went out into the world on his own, then behaved as if Sam and I didn’t exist, I would be devastated. Just because someone grows up shouldn’t mean that the people who helped him get that way no longer counted.

  “Lillian,” I said as soon as I entered the kitchen, “the Lord knew what He was doing when He didn’t give me any children. I don’t think I could put up with them.”

  “What you talkin’ about?” she asked, whacking a spoon against a pot on the stove.

  “Tonya Allen,” I said and plopped down in a chair by the table, realizing how sapped I was from listening to Mildred’s tale of woe. “That’s who I’m talking about. I declare, Lillian, it seems we’ve raised a generation of ungrateful children, although I thank goodness that I had nothing to do with it.”

  “You’re not countin’ Lloyd?” Lillian asked with one eyebrow cocked. “Look like to me you had a lot to do with raisin’ him.”

  “Well, yes,” I said, smiling at the thought of my deceased husband’s illegitimate son who had been thrust along with his mother upon me. “We’ve done pretty well with him, haven’t we? But see, Lillian, what if he goes off to college and gets indoctrinated with all kinds of stuff and decides that he’s too busy or too important to bother with us?”

  “Well then, that jus’ mean something was wrong before he went.”

  “Hm-m, you may be right. Mildred put up no boundaries, that’s for sure. But it’s still hard to fathom how Tonya can treat her parents as if they’re of no concern to her. What does it take to pick up a phone now and then?”

  “Well, here’s the thing, Miss Julia. You an’ me don’t have to say yea or nay to anything anybody else do, ’less it be against the law. So if it don’t mess with me an’ mine, I always say, live and let live.”

  “Yes,” I said, nodding in agreement, “I do, too. But it really distresses me to see what it’s doing to Mildred and Horace. They’re having a hard time coming to terms with the way Tonya treats them. At least, Mildred is. Who knows about Horace? He’s in a world of his own these days, anyway.”

  “Yes’m, I hear he’s havin’ a hard time knowin’ what day it is. Somebody said he went to the grocery store the other day and stood in line at the checkout, then handed over a prescription to be filled. An’ got real upset when they wouldn’t fill it.”

  “My word,” I said, straightening up upon hearing something else to worry Mildred. “I hadn’t heard that. He must be in a worse way than anybody realizes. Mildred didn’t say a word about it.”

  “She may not notice,” Lillian said with the assurance of knowing of what she spoke, “’cause they usu’lly all right at home where they know where everything’s at.”

  “Who’s this they you’re talking about?”

  “People losin’ their mem’ry. You know, ole people gettin’ so they can’t take care of theirselves.”

  I sat up straight, my eyes widening. “You’re not talking about Alzheimer’s, are you? Horace could just be a little absentminded. I hope that’s all it is. Mildred has enough to deal with without adding anything else.”

  “I hope so, too, Miss Julia,” Lillian said, but not very hopefully. “But Ida Lee tole me how he keep askin’ if she his sister, and that don’t sound too good to me.”

  “Oh, my, I thought his memory problems were just an aberration from having been so sick.” I drummed my fingers on the table, thinking. “Do you think I should mention the grocery store thing to Mildred? I hate giving her something else to worry about, but if he’s doing strange things like that, she should know about it. What do you think?”

  “I think she gonna know sooner or later ’cause folks like that don’t get any better.”

  “You know,” I said in a musing sort of way, “Mildred is suddenly having to face all kinds of changes. If you’re right about Horace, that is. If he’s getting so that he’s not himself, and Tonya, well, who knows about her, I just don’t know how she’ll handle it all. Mildred is used to waving her checkbook and having problems disappear. What she may be facing now aren’t the kind that can be paid off.”

  “No’m, but a checkbook helps.”

  I nodded and began to rise. “You’re right about that. It helps but it won’t solve everything, and I’m afraid that Mildred is about to learn how limited it can be. Well,” I said, pushing my chair under the table, “let me go see what Sam’s doing. He still upstairs?”

  Lillian stopped stirring, looked up at the ceiling, and said, “He’s comin’ down now.”

  I laughed. “You know everything that goes on in this house. I haven’t heard a thing, yet you know when anybody moves. How do you do that?”

  “Well,” she said, smiling at the compliment, “this ole house creaks when anybody stirs around, an’ he’s been workin’ in the sunroom all afternoon, an’ he’s the onliest one up there, so . . . ,” she shrugged her shoulders, “it’s easy.”

  * * *

  —

  After supper, Sam and I retired as we usually did to the library, which is what we called the former downstairs bedroom now that it had built-in bookcases around the walls. Lillian had left to pick up Latisha, her eleven-year-old feisty great-granddaughter, from an after-school program. Latisha occasionally ate supper with us, but on this day she’d announced that she had a project she was working on and didn’t want to be interrupted.

  The television was on, but neither Sam nor I were paying much attention to it. We’d heard all the news we wanted to hear, and none of it had been very edifying. Sam was reading the newspaper as he waited for time to go to bed, and I was going over in my mind some of the things that I could’ve said to Mildred. I had told Sam about my afternoon as Mildred’s confidant, and we’d agreed that there were no easy answers in the situation in which she and Horace found themselves.

  “Just be available,” Sam advised me, “as I know you will be. Having someone to listen will be helpful, and, I’ll tell you this, she doesn’t have Horace to lean on. I saw him for a few minutes the other afternoon and he asked me three times if I had any children. I don’t think he’s doing so well.”

  I agreed and told him of Horace’s attempt to fill a prescription in a grocery store. “Which,” I continued, “makes me wonder how he came to have a prescription in the first place. Ida Lee usually does those kinds of errands for them. I guess I should mention it to Mildred, although she surely has the Lord’s plenty on her plate already.”

  “Hm-m, yes, maybe you should,” Sam said, turning over a page of the newspaper. “I’m really not sure that Horace knew who I was, but he was friendly and talkative at the time. It was only later that I wondered about it.

  “By the way,” Sam said, lowering the newspaper, “have you heard anything about the business that Etta Mae Wiggins works for?”

  “The Handy Home Helpers? What abo
ut it?”

  “I hear it’s going under, closing shop, selling out, or something. None of it may be true, but it was mentioned at the Bluebird the other day.” Sam often ate breakfast, or sometimes lunch, at the Bluebird café with a few friends with nothing else to do now that they were retired. It was the way they kept each other abreast of what was going on in Abbotsville.

  “I hope that’s not true,” I said, immediately concerned for the young woman who had been so helpful to me at various times in the past. “What in the world would Etta Mae do? She’s worked for Lurline Somebody for years.”

  “I expect she’ll be fine,” Sam said, his attention turning back to the paper. “The caregiving business is thriving these days with so many of us living longer.”

  “That may be just you and me, Sam.”

  “Could be,” he said, with a wry smile. “But look around at all the retirees who’ve moved here. There’ll be an increasing need for hospices, assisted living facilities, and the like to take care of them.”

  I nodded and let the conversation lapse while I continued to think of Etta Mae and what effect the loss of her job would mean for her. I started to tell Sam that I would call her the next day, but he seemed absorbed in some article in the newspaper, so my attention wandered to the television.

  “Sam!” I said, sitting up straight as a sentence flashed across the screen. “Did you see that?”

  “No,” he said, looking up over his reading glasses. “What was it?”

  “It said there’re sixty-three million Americans suffering from constipation.” I patted my chest in consternation. “That makes me afraid to leave the house.”

  “Julia,” he said with a bark of laughter. “Honey, that’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.” He dropped the newspaper and gave himself up to full-blown laughter.

  “Well, it’s not so funny if you stop and think about it. We could all be in danger.”