by Becky Durfee
After a while Elanor looked optimistically at Jenny. “Did the voice say anything else?”
“No, ma’am. But that’s why I’m here. I feel like I’m supposed to be figuring something out, and I was hoping you could help me do it.”
“I would love to figure out what happened to Steve. I’ve led a full life—I really have—but as I lie here in this bed, my one regret is that I’ll never know for sure what happened that weekend. Or why. If I could get answers to those questions, I feel like I’ll be able to die peacefully.”
“Well, maybe we can find some answers,” Jenny replied, cheerfully patting Elanor’s bed rail. “And hopefully we’ll have a good, long time to do it.”
“Oh, honey, I appreciate your optimism, but I’m quite sure I don’t have too much time left.” Elanor spoke without an ounce of self-pity in her voice. “I was diagnosed with cancer a while ago. I decided to skip the chemo and radiation and all of that other life-lengthening crap. I’ve sold my business. I’m nobody’s grandma.” She held out her hands, gesturing to her room. “This is all I have now, and I didn’t really feel like it was worth prolonging, you know? Besides, chemo makes you feel like shit. The only thing worse than sitting in this bed all day would be sitting in this bed feeling like shit.”
Despite the chipper nature of Elanor’s tone, Jenny felt sympathy for the stranger in front of her. Eager to change the subject, Jenny proclaimed, “Well, then, why don’t you tell me a little bit about Steve O’dell, and we’ll see if we can figure this out for you?”
“Gosh,” Elanor sighed, dredging up memories she clearly hadn’t recalled in decades. “Where to begin? Steve was unlike any other man I’d ever met. He truly was. He was a drifter who essentially figured out his next destination by throwing a dart at a map. He ended up in Evansdale because that’s where the guy he hitched a ride with was going.” Elanor patted Jenny’s hand. “Now keep in mind, in the 1950s hitchhiking was a perfectly acceptable means of transportation.”
“Understood,” Jenny said smiling.
Elanor went back to her memories, looking somber. “Poor kid. He’d had a horrible upbringing. His dad was an alcoholic who used to beat up his mother and the kids. Steve was the youngest in his family, and he was much too eager to get out of that house to wait until he turned 18. He dropped out of school and hit the road at about fifteen, never looking back.” Elanor shook her head. “It’s a shame, too, because he was smart as a whip. If he’d have born into a family like mine, he could have been the damn president. Instead he found himself traveling from town to town, taking odd jobs to get by. Fortunately for him he was so smart, because he was able to pick up various trades quite quickly.
“But he never stayed in any one place too long. According to him, no place he visited ever quite scratched the itch like he would have wanted. No place ever felt like home. Having no obligations, he was able to pack up his meager belongings and move to the next town quite easily. Fortunately for me, one of those towns ended up being Evansdale.”
“So how did you meet?” Jenny asked.
“Steve showed up at our door one day when I was a teenager, out of the blue, looking for work. Our house was the obvious choice, being the most beautiful in the area. Remember, my father was okay with the idea of helping people, but he wasn’t one for handouts, so he offered Steve a job for a month. Steve was tasked with doing yard work, repairs around the house…stuff like that. If Steve proved himself to be a good worker in that first month, he could stay on board. Of course, Steve had an amazing work ethic, so he passed the test with flying colors. He stayed on as our jack-of-all-trades guy, and my father paid him enough for him to afford a room in a nearby house and get by.
“Although, looking back, I’m not really sure how much my father did pay him. The room he rented was just that…a room. It had its own separate entrance, so it was private, and it had a bathroom, but that was it. It didn’t have a kitchen or anything; Steve used to heat up his dinners in a pot over a camping stove. It wasn’t much of a life for a man who worked so hard.”
“But you guys ended up falling in love?”
“After a while, yes. At first I didn’t think too much of Steve. He was quite a bit older than me…he was probably 25 or 26 when he showed up at our door. He wasn’t incredibly good looking, either. I had no real reason to notice him. But my parents had always raised me to be polite, so I would bring him lemonade or watermelon when he was working outside on those hot days. It gets hot here in Evansdale in the summer.”
“I’ve noticed,” Jenny added.
“I’m sure you have,” Elanor laughed. “Anyway, there I was, a typical teenager, looking for constant entertainment. If nothing else was going on I’d stay outside and chat with Steve as he did his work. It didn’t take too long before he started to fascinate me. Keep in mind I was a very sheltered girl who had never left Evansdale. Here was this well-traveled guy who had seen so much—done so much. The stories that man could tell were mindboggling to me, and he was just talking about his everyday life.
“Hearing him tell his stories changed the way I thought about the world. It occurred to me that he had worked so hard for everything he owned—which was very little. I, on the other hand, hadn’t worked a day in my life, yet I lived in a huge house and had the fanciest of things. It didn’t seem right. He should have had the big house. He should have had the best of everything. I should have been the one heating up my dinner on a camping stove.” Elanor shook her head in disgust. “It’s just not right.”
Jenny leaned back in the recliner and crossed her legs. “So how did you guys round that corner from a work relationship to love? I imagine it must have taken a pretty bold move on his part to hit on the boss’s daughter.”
“It would have been a bold move if he was the one that did it,” Elanor said bluntly. “I’m actually the one who made the first move.”
“Oh really?” Jenny had to smile.
“If I’d waited for him to do it, I’d probably still be waiting. I swear I flirted as much as humanly possible, and I could tell by the way he looked at me that he was smitten, but he never did take that leap. I guess there was that whole I could lose my job and my livelihood thing to worry about.” Elanor playfully rolled her eyes. “I didn’t really have anything at stake.”
“So how did you do it?” Jenny asked eagerly.
“Well, it was a day when he was doing some inside work. An upstairs pipe had leaked and messed up the ceiling downstairs, and Steve was fixing the ceiling. My parents were out for the afternoon, so I hung around him while he worked. Normally we talked about his adventures, or politics, or how horrible segregation was, but this day I asked him point blank about women. I asked if he ever had a girlfriend, and he said he never stayed in one place long enough to get one. At that point I figured he’d be receptive, so I walked over to him and just planted a kiss on him. And boy, did he ever kiss me back.” Elanor looked distant for a moment and smiled, clearly reliving the moment. Snapping back into reality, she looked at Jenny and said, “That’s when he confessed that I was the reason he’d stayed in Evansdale as long as he did. He said he’d never felt about a woman the way he’d felt about me. He said I scratched that itch he’d had his whole life.” Elanor smiled, but then she looked down at her lap and the smile faded.
“So you guys became a couple?”
“In secret, yes. My parents would have been furious if they knew, so we didn’t tell a soul. Not any of my friends…not anybody. We devised that good day, ma’am code so we could express our love freely in public. But other than that we were extremely careful. We knew it could have been disastrous if anyone found out.
“As a result, I became an expert at lying,” Elanor proclaimed. “I don’t know how many times I told my parents I was going out with my friends when I actually went over to Steve’s place. My parents had a pretty active social life, too, so there were plenty of times I was home alone and Steve came over. If ever they came home earlier than expected, it wasn’t any big
deal to see Steve there. They just figured he was doing some extra work, and they liked that. Once my dad even gave him a tip for working extra hours. How’s that for a little irony? My dad paid a guy to come over and fool around with his daughter.” Elanor thought for a moment. “Does that make me a prostitute?” After more deliberation she added, “No, it doesn’t work that way.”
Jenny laughed out loud, almost forgetting Elanor was sixty years her senior. “How long did you manage to keep the relationship a secret?”
“For about a year, I think. It actually wasn’t that hard to keep it from my parents,” Elanor continued. “They didn’t suspect anything because they never imagined in a million years that I’d be attracted to Steve. I was a blond-haired, blue-eyed, extremely wealthy teenager, and Steve was an average looking handyman in his mid-twenties. On paper we had no reason to be a couple. But he was the most amazing person I’d ever met.”
“What made him so amazing?” Jenny asked with a smile.
“Oh, goodness. So many things,” Elanor replied. After giving the subject a little thought, she finally said, “He was just so grateful. For a man who had so little, he was surely appreciative. I guess his value system was different than most people. He didn’t get much happiness out of material things—what he valued was his freedom. He had the ability to go anywhere or do anything. Through his travels, he saw so many people dredging through life as if it was pre-programmed. You grow up, get married, the man works, the woman doesn’t, you have kids, you retire, you die. A lot of those people weren’t happy, even though society had deemed them a success. Steve, on the other hand, was a failure from a societal standpoint, but he had traveled the country. He did work he enjoyed. If he stopped enjoying it, he’d move somewhere else and get a job doing something different.” A smile appeared on her face. “He was happy.”
Jenny looked shamefully at her lap.
“But I was also attracted to his progressive attitude,” Elanor added. “I know it doesn’t seem like a big deal now, but Steve felt very strongly that people shouldn’t be judged by the color of their skin. Keep in mind that back then there were separate restaurants, separate water fountains, separate schools…It was amazing how differently people got treated based solely on what they looked like. But Steve knew better. He had the wherewithal to get to know someone before drawing any conclusions about them. He liked--and disliked--people of every race, but he based that decision entirely on character.”
“He seems like a really great guy,” Jenny concluded.
“He was.” Elanor let out a snort. “And we were going to change the world, him and me.”
“Oh really?” Jenny asked. “How so?”
“We were going to get the message out. We were going to crusade for equality and advocate for free will.” Elanor raised her finger in the air like a superhero. After a quick laugh she lowered her hand, adding in a more serious tone, “With his street smarts and my money and connections, we figured we had a decent shot at having a real impact.” She lowered her eyes. Reducing her voice to a barely-audible whisper, she concluded, “I guess it wasn’t meant to be.”
Jenny responded almost as quietly as Elanor. “So what ended up happening?”
“My father caught us. He wasn’t supposed to come home until after dinner one night, but he came home early because he didn’t feel well. Steve and I were in my bedroom, and we didn’t hear him come in.” Elanor shook her head. “He caught us together. It was an ugly, ugly scene. I don’t think I’d ever seen my father so angry. He fired Steve on the spot and forbade me from ever seeing him again.
“I begged my father to understand. My father had always raved about what a good worker Steve was; in fact, my father had adored him until he found out about us. I reminded him of all the wonderful things he had said about Steve, and assured him they were all true. Steve was a good, honest, hard-working man. I tried to get my father to see that he should have been pleased with my choice, but he wouldn’t listen. Steve was a manual laborer. A drifter. He was poor. There was no way my father was going to allow me to be with any man who wasn’t from our social circle. My father wanted me to be with a rich boy. Period. Money and social status were apparently more important than character to my father.
“I was beside myself when Steve got fired, but you have to realize my father’s stubborn streak ran in the family. As stubborn as he was, I was more so. Steve got a job with a local house builder, and we continued to secretly see each other despite my father’s wishes. Steve obviously didn’t come to my house anymore, but I did go visit him. It may seem strange, but I was so much happier in that shitty little room Steve rented than I was in my big, beautiful house. Steve’s place felt like home. Whenever I was with Steve, it felt like home.” She raised her bright blue eyes to Jenny. “That’s how I knew it was love.”
Jenny smiled in return.
“Anyway,” Elanor went on, “we continued to see each other that way for quite some time. Then, when I was twenty, my mother and I went up to Lynchburg, Virginia for a weekend for my cousin’s bridal shower. When I came back, Steve was nowhere to be found. I went to his room, but it was completely empty. Everything—gone. I was stunned. I knew where his latest construction site had been, so I went there, asking the guys on the crew if they’d seen him. The foreman told me that Steve had come by and announced he was leaving town. He was in such a hurry to leave that he didn’t even want his last paycheck.”
“Oh my God,” Jenny replied.
“I didn’t get it. He had shown no indication of wanting to leave. Nothing seemed unusual between us before I left. We were just as happy as ever. That’s when it hit me…maybe he didn’t decide to leave…maybe my father found out about us and forced him to.”
“You mean paid him off?” Jenny asked.
“I don’t think so; Steve didn’t care enough about money for that. But I think my father must have dug up some dirt on him. My dad had connections—lots of them—and I think he was able discover something Steve had done along the way that would get him in trouble. Big trouble. I think he blackmailed Steve into leaving while I was away. I can’t imagine any other reason Steve would have left.” Elanor shook her head and looked back at her lap. “I never forgave my father for that.”
Jenny asked delicately, “And that was the last time you ever saw Steve?”
“Yes,” Elanor confessed. “I waited for him, though. For a long time. I put my romantic life on hold, just sure that Steve would come back. I didn’t think anyone could walk away from a love like that and not return. But maybe I was just a fool. A young, love struck fool.” Elanor glanced at Jenny. “I’ve come to learn in my old age that leopards don’t change their spots. I realize in hindsight that I fell in love with a drifter and then felt devastated when he left town. But that’s what drifters do. In a way, my heartbreak was my own fault.” She looked down at her lap again. “Although, he did make promises. I don’t blame myself entirely for the heartbreak. He shouldn’t have made promises he wouldn’t honor.”
“So what happened after he left?” Jenny asked.
“Oh, lots.” Elanor said, regaining her composure. “I was so mad at my father that I moved out immediately. I moved into Steve’s old room, as a matter of fact. He had paid for it in advance, so the landlord let me stay there in his place for a couple of months until I had enough of my own money to start paying for it myself. I left with only the shirt on my back, so I went out and got a cashiering job. I also babysat as often as I could. I had nothing to my name, but I was bound and determined to make it on my own. I didn’t want any of my father’s money. That money was dirty, as far as I was concerned. It was the reason I couldn’t be with Steve.”
Elanor let out a laugh. “I think I went an entire month eating nothing but peanut butter sandwiches. I had one outfit that I washed in the sink. I went from being rich as hell to being as poor as anybody could be. But I was angry, and that anger fueled me. I never, not once, considered moving back into my father’s house. I would have preferre
d to starve than live under that roof.”
“What about your mother?” Jenny asked. “Did you still have a relationship with her?”
“Yes, but it was strained. I refused to be anywhere my father was, so if she wanted to spend time with me, she had to come to my place. Oh, she begged me to come home, but there was no way I would have agreed to that. No way in hell.”
Elanor smiled genuinely, her blue eyes shining. “But you know what happened? I worked every possible minute I could, and I was able to buy myself some silverware, and a plate, and a pot, and eventually my own camping stove, thank you very much. I bought some new clothes. And you know, I had never been prouder in my life. Granted, I was wearing clothes from the clearance rack and second-hand stores, but they were my clothes. That plate I was eating on? It was my plate. I bought it with my own money that I earned myself. Nobody gave it to me. It was rightfully mine. And it was the best feeling in the world.
“In a strange kind of way, being penniless was the best thing that ever could have happened to me. I learned the value of a dollar and the satisfaction of a hard day’s work. My whole life prior to that, my responsibilities were just to look pretty and be gracious. And be a Whitby. If I did those things, I got everything handed to me for free. I’m so glad I didn’t continue to be that person. I hate that person.
“Anyway, I still had the desire to change the world, even if Steve wasn’t around to do it with me. I was actually doubly inspired because of my anger toward my father. I wanted to let people know that they didn’t have to do what was expected of them. Sometimes, in order to be true to yourself, you have to piss some people off. And you have to write some people off. And you have to step on some toes. And sometimes, you have to take some giant steps backward to go forward. Every once in a while you need to go back and make that right turn you missed somewhere along the line. It’s what I had just done, and it was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I wanted other people to know that so they wouldn’t stay on the straight path simply out of fear. Fear is not a reason.”