Millicent Glenn's Last Wish: A Novel

by Tori Whitaker

  My lips were too numb to respond right away. Then: “Jane, I was going to tell you about this. Today.”

  Kelsey’s head craned from her red-faced mother to me. “You were going to tell Mom what?”

  “I’ve tried to tell you many times,” I said, still unclear about how much Jane knew.

  Kelsey said, “Guys, what did I miss?”

  I lifted my chin, and somehow, though my legs were wobbly from exertion and fear, I managed to stride across the concrete without my cane to the braided cord rug. I lowered myself into the recliner.

  “Who is Kathleen?” Jane asked at last. Goose bumps swarmed the backs of my arms. Abbie hadn’t told her after all.

  “Oh, it’s a baby book,” Kelsey said. “Let me look?”

  “Who is Kathleen?” Jane repeated.

  “She’s your baby sister.” My throat ached from the strain of these foreign words on my voice box.

  Jane and Kelsey gaped. This wasn’t how my daughter was supposed to find out. I was to have lovingly told her my story and led her by the hand to the truth.

  “I’m totally confused,” Kelsey said.

  Jane just sat there, in shock, I supposed. I got up and joined them on the couch, Kelsey scooting to one end, giving me the middle.

  Jane had turned no further than to the album’s first page. It read “My Name Is,” and the name filled in the blank was Kathleen Sylvia Glenn. The middle name she would recognize as my mother’s first. Dennis’s and my names and the baby’s birthdate were just as I’d handwritten them in ink, wobbly, more than sixty years before. My mind was frantic with what to say next.

  “Mom?” Kelsey said, straining to see Jane, concern creeping into her face.

  Jane closed the album. She ran her fingertips over the padded cover of satin in baby-girl pink with whimsical letters in baby-boy blue and pictures of frolicking little white lambs. The corners of the cover were frayed, and the underlying cardboard poked out at their tips. The book’s title was embossed: The Story of Our Baby. She opened the cover back up, and the book spread to the center pages, which emitted scents of another age. Old, weathered paper from the early 1950s.

  “But, Grandma, I don’t get it. You gave birth to two babies?”

  “Yes. Another daughter, sixteen months younger than Jane. She only lived about three hours.” There. I’d told them one of the hardest parts, and my heart tapped a beat in awaiting a response.

  Kelsey’s hand came to her neck. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. And to poor Papaw.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Jane said. Her lips were dry and gray.

  “Why don’t you believe it?” Kelsey said.

  Jane was eyeing me as she spoke about me in third person. “I just don’t believe Mom and Daddy never told me.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. Kelsey was speechless, too, and that was unheard of.

  “Is this why you hated my clay baby in a basket?” Jane said.

  “Oh, Jane, honey. I didn’t hate it. I, I—”

  “This is the last thing I expected to learn today,” Jane said with a mirthless laugh and threw up her hands. “Huh. First of all, this week I learn I may have cancer. And now, I learn my parents kept something so fundamental from me? I had a sister. I mean, I’m . . . well, I’m . . .” She struggled to find the right word. “I’m flabbergasted. And to think, all the way back from Georgia in the car, driving for eleven hours, the things primary in my mind were how I was going to be a grandmother—and how I would first try to reconcile with you.”

  She had hugged me on the sidewalk in front of my house on the day she’d returned, awkward but long. She’d brought me oranges. We’d come so close . . .

  “Why on earth did you not tell me I had a sister?”

  Jane’s face was red. Mine felt hot, too. My fear was coming to fruition. My secrets were coming out. They’d soon know what I’d done. Kelsey got up and went over to put her arms around her mom. I felt cruel. Abandoned.

  I couldn’t lose Jane over this; if I did, I’d lose them both.

  “I hate that you had to learn about your sister this way,” I said. “I was going to tell you today, I promise I was.” I clasped my ancient hands together. “I’m sorry. In the past I was always too weak to go through with telling you. Losing a child was the worst thing that ever happened to me. The longer time went on, the harder it was to bring it up to you.”

  Kelsey said, “More babies died back then. It wasn’t unusual for families never to speak of great loss.”

  Jane shook her head. “Thank you for that historical footnote. But I just can’t believe I had a sister. I had a sister who died.” She looked utterly forlorn—the slump of her shoulders, the large blackness of her pupils, the limpness of her lips. “I’m sad for you and Daddy,” she said. “I’m sad for me.”

  “I’m sad for you, too, honey,” I said in barely more than a whisper, for my throat ached so badly. “More than anything.”

  I couldn’t decipher what else was swimming through my daughter’s head. How had I thought for one stupid second that this revelation would bring us closer?

  Jane tossed the album on the couch and stood up. “I have to go. I can’t deal with this now.”

  “Mom?” Kelsey stood, too. “I can see how hard this is for you. Can you begin to imagine how hard the loss was for Grandma? Can’t you stay, just a bit longer?” She held Jane’s arm tenderly.

  Jane sighed with the full weight of her world. “I have to go. We’ll talk later.”

  “There’s more to this, Jane,” I said abruptly, and I caught a pleading lilt in my voice. “Much more. Please let me explain.”

  She looked at me as if considering, her gaze as intense as that of an executioner assessing a convict strapped in an electric chair. Then her eyes shifted. Jane kissed her daughter, crossed the room, and ascended the stairs without as much as a backward glance my way.

  There was no taking back what I’d said today. She’d already found the album.

  “Grandma,” Kelsey said softly. I’d forgotten she was still there. “You know Mom. She’ll work this out. She’ll be back.”

  Sweet, sweet Kelsey. She’d said the precise words she knew I craved to hear. Too bad I doubted the truth of them.

  “There’s more,” I told her. “If only Jane would listen to me.”

  “I’ll go to her,” Kelsey said.

  I’d have to tell them both the rest. I’d have to tell them what came next.

  If I could.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  May 1951

  It was a lovely spring morning, the finest kind with sunshine and birdsong and air thick with lilac. The “good ol’ Kentucky bluegrass,” as Dennis called it, lay like wall-to-wall carpeting on the ground between our house and a small copse of oaks in our backyard. He liked to mow the grass on the diagonal. The roots of the sod had taken to the soil, and its seams were no longer visible.

  The Glenns thought we’d made progress. In the two months since our baby died, Dennis had put up more houses, sold more lots. We visited the farm. But the family must’ve overlooked the bags beneath my eyes. I often slept with fitful dreams. I’d managed to get dressed, do most chores, though. Dennis would kiss my cheek when he came home each night to a warm meal. We would talk about the news . . . the Rosenbergs’ sentencing, President Truman, or the Lassie movie that we hadn’t seen. I cried less. And I continued caring for Janie—the bright spot in my life. That and knowing Dennis and I would try again for another baby once my body healed enough to be intimate again.

  But today was my first Mother’s Day since losing my daughter. I could hardly savor the glorious springtime.

  Dennis handed me a card as we sat in the backyard. He smiled. I slipped my thumbnail under the envelope’s sealed flap and removed a pretty pink card laced with purple butterflies and white doves. “For My Beloved Wife . . .”

  I kissed him. He smiled again. He was so considerate. “Thank you,” I said. I was grateful he was trying.

  Then h
e got Janie to hand me a second envelope. Her card read, “For the Best Mommy in the World,” and my eyes welled up. I didn’t think I deserved that. Not after what I’d done or hadn’t done in carrying Kathleen. Dennis had held Janie’s hand while she traced in blue crayon inside, “I love you.”

  The two cooked me breakfast—oatmeal and eggs sunny-side up. “Delicious,” I mumbled, nibbling on a bite of toast with blackberry jam. Though I tried to hide it from Dennis, because he’d been so thoughtful, it was one of the hardest meals I’d ever eaten. Thank goodness, at a year and a half old, Janie was too young to understand what this day meant or my reaction to it.

  Neither Dennis nor I mentioned Kathleen the entire day. I wished he would have. Until now he would settle into dark, quiet periods, but he’d never even said her name.

  The Thursday following, Pauline and I had planned a quiet day. Raggsie was chasing squirrels, and Janie and Pauline’s Tommy were cackling as they watched. The toddlers were best friends like Pauline and me. The four of us whiled away the morning in the peacefulness of our quarter-acre lots. The Irvings had bought the lot beside ours and built a larger Gunnison model.

  “Neighbors forever, whether you like it or not.” That was Pauline. I did like it.

  The children set to playing in Janie’s sandbox, the one with two benches her daddy had built. A gate with a metal latch connected the parklike setting of our backyard, which Raggsie thought was doggie paradise, and the Irving backyard, which would soon become a resort. Bob had drawn up plans for a pool—the only pool I’d heard of to belong to real people, not movie stars. We Glenns were adding a bonfire pit. Pauline had it all planned out. I’d bring the suntan lotion in the summer. She’d bring the marshmallows come fall.

  “Janie, no, no, be careful,” I said, popping up from my lounge chair as if I’d never had surgery and sloshing iced tea on my lap.

  “Tommy, slow down, sweetie,” Pauline said. “Janie can’t go as fast as you.”

  At eighteen months old, my tomboy daughter had ridden her first pony at the farm with her grandpa hanging on. She’d performed crooked somersaults with her cousins. And whatever Tommy Irving did, she tried it, too. But he was two months older. Now he was walking the bench of the sandbox as if it were a tightrope. Janie tried to stand on the bench, perilously.

  “Be careful,” I yelled, and Janie tumbled to the ground six inches below. I ran to her side and lifted her to her feet. “Are you okay, are you okay?” My mind raced, and I imagined how, if she were injured, there would be an ambulance with lights and sirens to come steal her away to a hospital. My heart was pounding, pounding. “You could’ve broken your leg.” But Janie wasn’t even crying. She was laughing. She was squirming to get loose and play with her friend again.

  “She’s fine, Millie. She’s fine.” Pauline’s soothing voice was reassuring, but her face showed concern at my reaction.

  The children were soon playing again as if nothing were amiss. My primal instinct to save Janie was undeniable. But I had overreacted as usual. Who could blame me after what I’d been through?

  My pulse was still in high gear when Pauline said, “You just wait. By the time these kids are twelve, Janie will shoot up and be taller than Tommy. She’ll kick his hind end and never look back.”

  This was her attempt to make me smile. I couldn’t get through a day without smiling if Pauline had anything to do with it. The day before, she’d said, “Just think, our two kids can get married one day, and you and I will be in-laws. I won’t even hold it against you for being mother of the bride and getting your pick of dress color first.” The day before that, she related the latest antics of Abbott and Costello, since I hadn’t made it to the theater in months. Years before, I hadn’t foreseen what a wonder Pauline was beneath all her pizzazz. Or until two months ago I hadn’t looked. If she cooked a pot of stew, she made enough to share with my family. If she ran to the grocery, she picked up Prell shampoo for me. And the best thing she did was listen—whether it was to my bemoaning how my stretch marks and scar itched or how I would wake up at three in the morning thinking I’d heard an infant crying but it had not been Janie. Venting to Pauline meant Dennis got less of an earful.

  “Bob’s coming home early,” Pauline said now. “Gonna meet with the pool guy.”

  I was still shaken over Janie’s tumble but had to act as if all were well. “That means you serve dinner early?”

  “That means I go out for a while, sans my son. Want to come? Bob can watch over them both.”

  Allow Janie out of my sight for an hour, two? In the care of cowboy Bob Irving? No way.

  “You need a break,” Pauline said. “We’ll tucker the kids out before we go. They’ll camp out on a blanket on the floor.”

  “But—”

  “You pick the destination. Shillito’s for dresses? Selby Grao’s for shoes?” She fingered her hair, strawberry blonde from the beauty parlor—unlike mine, which had a cold wave perm but no added color.

  “No, I couldn’t.” I would worry too much about Janie’s safety while I was out being frivolous. I couldn’t let her out of my sight.

  “Millicent,” Pauline said, taking on her drill sergeant manner. “I’m a firm believer that if you do what’s best for yourself, you’ll be better able to care for your daughter.”

  She was a smart cookie. If we went, I’d become a better mother. Truth was, for days I’d been pining inside to go somewhere particular. I hadn’t told anyone, not even Dennis.

  “Well. My pick?” I sucked in a big breath. “The cemetery.”

  The look that crossed Pauline’s face was sad, but she consented. Anything I needed, anything at all, she was there for me.

  In the hospital after the tragedy, no one but immediate family had been allowed to visit, but I’d insisted Pauline could come. My recovery room—a room at the end of a long hall, far away from new mothers having their infants brought to them every four hours for feedings—was filled with vases of flowers, all white roses. Mother Glenn had told me the meaning of those: purity, innocence, sympathy. After Janie’s birth, by contrast, the bouquets had burst with pink carnations. Pauline had come into my room after my loss and gently lowered herself onto the bed beside me. She’d brought a box of Brach’s chocolate-covered cherries. She’d smelled of spring rain and lavender soap, and she’d held my hand. A tear trailed down her cheek as she said, “If I were going to live only one day, I would thank God if you were my mother.” This was the unforgettable loyalty of a true friend.

  Today Pauline would drive me to the gravesite. She would know to stay in the car so I could be alone.

  I needed to tell my younger daughter goodbye—without Dennis present. He’d had his turn, his solitude. He’d found the plot. He’d selected the tiny casket. He’d presided over the family memorial while I lay in a bed with plastic sheets beneath the linens and tubes pumping morphine through holes in my arms. He’d overseen the burial, too, with the steadfast determination of a man who knew his contractors, knew his soil, and knew his tools. He’d done what he must; he’d had no choice. But he’d gotten to say goodbye.

  He had saved something for me, though, and for that I loved him dearly. I’d had the honor of choosing Kathleen’s headstone.

  A week after my discharge—the week after I’d forced Dennis to remove the red womb chair—I selected granite at the Schott Monument Company. The stone was sparkly gray, a tiny slab with flush-pink undertones. I’d wrestled with the final wording. How could I express on so small a stone our enduring love for this child? The child I’d never had the privilege of seeing, let alone holding? Today would be the first time I steeled myself enough to view the stone in its forever place.

  I climbed out of Pauline’s car, and rays of light warmed my face, a blessing from the skies. I was glad I’d taken a pill to calm my nerves. It was a comfort to me to have them handy; I took one pill just a day or two a week. The trees and the grass and the sky were pretty here today.

  One thing was true, what they say: the sun
does rise every day.

  Pauline said, “Just wave if you need me.”

  I took small steps at first, slowly through the grass, afraid to look too far ahead. I walked between large stones and modest ones that marked where women had lost loved ones since long before I was born. A dog barked in the distance. The tires of another car crunched over gravel in the lane behind me. As I came nearer to the knoll where I knew Kathleen to rest—in the section of the cemetery where children were buried—my pace grew more determined.

  Her marker appeared smaller in the ground than it had in the mason’s shop, so tiny compared to adult headstones—flat and flush on the ground, a fringe of green grass framing it. The sun had gone behind a cloud, and when it peeped back out, the pink undertones of the stone I had picked sparkled even more than I’d hoped they would. I smiled. Then a wail escaped my throat so swiftly and with such force I hadn’t felt it coming.

  I fell to my knees before my daughter’s grave and brushed my fingers across the granite, smooth but for where each letter was etched:

  KATHLEEN SYLVIA GLENN

  B. MARCH 23, 1951 D.

  OUR PRECIOUS BABY

  Was it all my doing that this child was buried? That her condition, the one that started with an E, had taken root in my womb while I carried her? Was it that I’d selfishly insisted on spreading myself too thin, as my sister-in-law warned? “This is a wonderful time in a woman’s life,” Abbie had said during one of my pregnancies. “Children and homemaking should be your only priorities.”

  Whatever I’d done or not done in carrying my baby to term, one thing was certain: I would never forgive myself for the outcome.

  As I treaded back to Pauline’s car, a wind blew and the high tops of the oak trees rustled. I climbed into the sedan, beaten.

  “You mustn’t take responsibility for losing her,” Pauline said quietly before starting the engine. “You told me once how when you were young, your opa explained that in German, your name Millicent means strength. He was right, you know.”