Millicent Glenn's Last Wish: A Novel

by Tori Whitaker

  As I heard the women laughing, I escaped to the bathroom and scrounged in my pocket for another pill.

  I stumbled my way back to the kitchen. Abbie cornered me. She wiggled one index finger at me. We stood near her pantry while the Glenn women chatted and the dishes rattled and metal pans jangled in the porcelain sink. “Millie, I’ve been so busy today,” Abbie said in a whisper, a sympathetic expression on her face. “I just want to tell you I’m sorry about everything.”

  Abbie actually empathized. It surprised and warmed me. “Yes, this is a hard day on us. We miss Kathleen.”

  Abbie’s face wrinkled with confusion. Had I spoken indistinctly? Slurred my words?

  “No, no, dear,” she said. “I mean about how you can’t have more children. Poor Janie will never have siblings.”

  Now I was confused—and outraged. My body went rigid. How had Abbie known? I was 100 percent certain that Dennis had told no one.

  “What’s going on over there?” said one of Dennis’s sisters. “Are we missing some juicy gossip?”

  I wanted to drag Abbie by her hair to the bathroom and have it out in private. I waved my other sister-in-law off.

  “Did you hear me?” Abbie said, eyes sorrowful and boring into mine. “I said it’s a pity that Janie won’t have any brothers or sisters.”

  “I heard you,” I said, not moderating my tone. “Did Dr. Welch’s nurse, your friend, tell you?”

  Abbie nodded. The women had all gone quiet and were staring at us now.

  “What’s wrong?” Mother Glenn said, her face registering concern.

  Abbie said, “I believe I’ve just stuck my foot in my mouth. I think I’ve upset Millie.”

  Mother Glenn’s arm was around my shoulders by now. “Abbie, what did you say?”

  “I merely offered my concern,” Abbie said to the curious faces gathering around as if I were an animal in the circus.

  I wiggled out of Mother Glenn’s arm. “Abbie, why do you insist on being such a busybody?” I said, with every word becoming more pointed, louder. “Why do you insist on sticking your nose in my private affairs?”

  Someone said, “Millie dear, calm down.”

  “Don’t ask me to calm down,” I said. “I have every right to be anything but calm.” It was a shout. “Hear ye, hear ye, you Glenns one and all,” I yelled. “I am sterile. Janie is doomed to be an only child just as I was. The doctor—no, no, not good old Dr. Welch—but the new doctor I’d handpicked, just so you know, pawned me off on another OB. An SOB. Yes, it was that doctor who had severed my tubes like a Nazi. I can’t have more babies,” I screamed.

  I resisted Mother’s Glenn’s attempts at comfort. I pushed back. “Please don’t,” I said. I looked to her and to our horror-stricken hostess and the rest of the stunned faces, and I yelled, “No one. No one.” I thrust my finger into Abbie’s face, so she’d know that meant her, too. “No one will ever speak of my loss again. Not to my face, not behind my back. From this point forward, as far as the world knows, the two tragedies Dennis and I suffered didn’t happen.”

  “Millie.”

  I turned to the voice. It was Dennis.

  He stood in the corner of the kitchen near the basement door, beside his brother. They’d returned from their talk of bomb shelters. Every head in the room craned from me to my husband.

  Dennis was still across the room, but he said for all to hear: “I stand by my wife. What Millie wants, I want.” He stared directly at Abbie. “Millie has asked that no one repeat the fact that she can no longer conceive. And that no one speaks of the baby we lost. That shouldn’t be so difficult, should it? Given that not one of you offered a word of sympathy as she and I quietly suffered through this day.”

  He stood by me, and I felt important. I recalled him plunking a cheese cube in his mouth eons ago at a party where husbands taunted me. This time Dennis put me first.

  His gaze scanned the room. “Promise us,” Dennis said as the last of the day’s sunshine streamed through the window over the sink. He looked to each of the women in his family, and to Nathan, too.

  “We promise,” they said, each and every one. Including Abbie.

  And if I could read the lines on Mother Glenn’s face, they said she’d do everything in her power to ensure no one broke that promise.

  2015

  Sunlight shone through the church’s stained glass, casting colorful prisms on Jane’s face. My daughter said: “I got the all-clear sign from the doctor. I’m going to live.”

  “Praise the Lord!” I said. Janie was fine. She was fine. My little girl was fine.

  Kelsey said, “I’m so, so, so relieved.”

  We were joyous. We hugged and we cried and we gave thanks. Together.

  “I gotta go find a bathroom,” Kelsey said. “Be right back.”

  Once Jane and I were alone in the pew, I told her about the fateful winter day at the farm, of her sledding with her father, of Linda Jo’s first birthday party. Of the family confrontation.

  Jane said, “Now I finally understand why Kathleen was a secret. You had forbidden anyone to speak of her—or to speak of what else the doctor had done to you. You felt it was your personal right to keep it private. I love how Daddy extracted the family promise. But—” She stopped midsentence and looked at her lap.

  “But?”

  “But. But I wish I’d known everything much sooner.” She pulled some breath mints from her purse, and we each took one. They were like little strips of tape that tasted as if I’d swallowed sprigs of mint. “I might have understood where you and Daddy were coming from while I was growing up. Like I might have appreciated why you were overprotective or distant in turns.”

  It was clear she had more to say to me. I let Jane keep talking. She had listened to me these last couple of days whether she’d liked what I had to say or not.

  “Do you know, I remember how sad you got every Mother’s Day? I get it now. But back then, I thought it was my fault. The breakfasts Daddy and I cooked didn’t measure up to yours. The gift I made or bought wasn’t something you wanted. The card we gave you was not ‘whatever’ enough. You were the only mom I knew who was sad on Mother’s Day.”

  “Jane, that’s terrible,” I said, pressing my fingers to my forehead. How could I have hurt her that way? I’d not realized the extent to which she’d internalized my actions. “I’m so sorry. You and your father did everything to make Mother’s Days special for me. Everything. I mean, I wouldn’t have survived that holiday without you.” How had I not conveyed that?

  People at times describe their experience as “an emotional roller coaster.” That’s what this day was for me. The low of confessing my fault in Kathy’s tragedy. The high of all highs in learning that my eldest was out of harm’s way. Followed by the careening low of hearing how I, myself, had caused Jane so much pain. When would we get to the coaster’s flat track, to the smooth-coasting part where it slowed to a stop?

  Kelsey returned from the restroom. “I feel better.” Then she stared at us, sensing the tension between her mother and me. “You guys. I need you two to be good. You do realize that, don’t you?” Her voice cracked. “I mean, what can possibly dampen the great news we got?”

  “Ladies,” a voice called, and we all startled. The church secretary. “Sorry to disturb your private worship and fellowship, but I’m afraid we’ll soon be locking up for the afternoon.”

  “No problem,” said Kelsey, eager to leave.

  We thanked the woman and scooted out of the pew, and Kelsey opened the heavy doors of the church. I prayed again silently, thanking the Lord for giving me more time with Jane. We stepped out into the bright, pretty day of God’s green earth. Even the chilly air smelled better, somehow, now that my girl was safe. The breeze carried a spark of hope for us.

  Then Jane rubbed at the scar at her brow, and I slid down, down into another rabbit hole of memory.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  August 1952

  Janie. She was shouting, crying, “Mommy
, Mommy.” Was I dreaming? I forced my eyes open and listened. Daylight. It was the middle of the day. I’d drifted off to sleep while Janie was napping. But she wasn’t sleeping now. Her shrill screams were getting louder. I shot out of my bed.

  She wasn’t in her crib. She wasn’t in her room at all.

  I found her in the bathroom, her face covered in blood. Her hands covered in blood. She had climbed out of her bed—and climbed atop the toilet seat.

  My heart was in my throat. I’d never felt such thumping panic. She was bleeding from her forehead. “What happened?”

  “Have, have,” she said, but it rhymed with behave. Have, have. I didn’t understand what she meant. I felt groggy. I wanted to call Pauline to help, but I couldn’t let go of Janie long enough to get to the kitchen phone.

  I snatched a dry washrag from the towel bar and gently patted the area over her eye, blood soaking it. She was cut—a nick of skin dug out and half of her left eyebrow gone. I pressed the cloth to try to stop the bleeding. I lifted the rag. The brilliant scarlet blood kept seeping out. I switched the rag to a clean part and pressed it in again. I glanced down. Her father’s razor was in the sink, not standing in its usual cup.

  I understood now: Janie had tried to shave herself. “Shave, shave,” she’d said.

  I swept her into my left arm, keeping the pressure on her eye with my right hand, and I ran with her to the kitchen phone. I was heartsick. Dennis shouldn’t have left the razor lying out. He had to be careful now that Janie was mobile. But he had trusted me—and Janie had depended on me—to keep her safe while in my care.

  I’d failed her. Just as I’d failed her sister.

  Frantic, I held the telephone receiver between my jaw and shoulder. In one arm I held my Janie, too, and with my free hand I let go of her wound just long enough to dial.

  Pauline’s phone rang. One ring. Two rings. Three rings. “Answer, please answer.” Five rings.

  “Hello,” she said after the fifth ring.

  “Janie’s hurt,” I said, and Janie wailed. “I need help.”

  “Oh my gosh,” Pauline said, and I heard my panic echoing back through my friend’s voice. “Coming.”

  She and Tommy soon charged through the kitchen door. Janie and I were both bawling by now. Pauline saw that the rag pressed against my precious girl’s face was soaked red with blood.

  “What happened?” she asked. Her face expressed how scared she was—but her voice was soothing as she set her son on the floor with his yellow metal dump truck.

  “Janie got Dennis’s razor,” I said. “I only had one pill, and I’d lain down when she was napping.”

  “Oh dear God,” Pauline said. “His razor?” She gently took my fingers and lifted them and the rag up a tiny bit.

  “What should I do?” I said, feeling more and more jittery.

  “We may have to take her to the hospital. For stitches,” Pauline said. In a whirlwind, she yanked open three kitchen drawers, one at a time—silverware, potholders, towels—hunting for dish rags. She pulled out a clean one and replaced the one in my hand. Pauline spoke steadily, having let her alarm turn to complete composure for me. “I remember when my brother fell off his bike,” she said, “and he scraped his forehead near his temple. My mother said it took longer for facial wounds to clot. So let’s take Janie and we’ll all sit down on the couch and we’ll keep the pressure on her brow for a little while longer.” Her soft rhythmic voice brought me hope. She was one sharp cookie.

  Pauline switched out the rags over the next half an hour, so we could gauge the amount of fresh blood. The stream was slowing. Janie was calm. “Should we call Dennis?” Pauline said.

  “No,” I said too quickly. I was jumpy. “Not yet.”

  I needed to see how this all ended, to know Janie was okay first. I was ashamed to think that I wanted more pills even as we sat there. But I did. Dennis and I had been in a good place since the party at the farm. He had proved that day what I meant to him, and it’d anchored me. He knew I used medications still, too. Just because we had moved forward together and were content didn’t mean I didn’t still grieve. I took the pills daily to keep ahead of things. And I was doing my job with our home and family.

  Until today.

  I was itchy. I craved a pill, maybe a whole handful right then so I might not feel the shame. But I had emptied a bottle that morning.

  “I’ll be back,” I said to Pauline. She kept the pressure of the rag on Janie’s eye.

  I dashed to the bathroom and threw open the medical chest. I scavenged for a new bottle. I searched behind the aspirin and ointments and rubbing alcohol. Nothing. Frantic, I turned to the cabinet beneath the sink, batting away boxes of Kotex and Kleenex. Desperation pulsed through me.

  I’d run out of pills.

  What was I going to do? I couldn’t believe how strong my desire was. I felt it everywhere from my throat to my toes.

  Maybe, I thought for the first time, I couldn’t stop. Maybe I needed pills the way flowers needed sun.

  I returned to Janie and Pauline, wringing my hands.

  Pauline said, “I think Janie’s going to be okay.”

  Relief cascaded over me like warm rainwater, and in that instant the pills suddenly meant nothing. Janie was going to be fine. She was fine.

  “Will the tip of her little brow grow back?” I asked, my finger trembling as I pointed.

  “Probably. She’s going to be a great beauty just like her mama,” Pauline said, but serious concern still riddled her face.

  We didn’t talk as we adhered two bandages above Janie’s eye in crisscrossed fashion. “Let Mommy kiss your boo-boo,” I said. “It will make it feel better.” And then I lifted her into my arms and got her into bed. She was tuckered out and slipped quickly to sleep.

  Tommy had fallen asleep, too, in the middle of the floor. Maybe Pauline would run out to get me more pills. My jitters were returning.

  “I’ll fix us some coffee,” Pauline said. “We need to talk.” Her serious gaze eyed me again. I looked the other way.

  “Honey,” she said from across the kitchen table as we sat. It had begun to pour down rain outside, and my kitchen was dark for an afternoon. “You can’t go on like this.”

  “Like what?” I was on edge. “Can’t go on still mourning the needless death of my baby?”

  “Of course you’re still grieving. I don’t know if that’ll ever stop.” She stood and flipped on a light. “I do think, though, that you need to stop depending on pills. You need your full faculties to care for Janie.”

  I slumped. Pauline’s words weren’t words I wanted to hear. I doubted she wanted to say them either. I had wanted to think I could recover from the tragedies and get back to living a halfway normal life—that I only needed a little boost to tide me over.

  “Janie didn’t end up needing hospital care,” Pauline continued. “But you may have to go to the hospital yourself.”

  What was she talking about? “Absolutely not. I’m not going back there, Pauline.” I stood. She had crossed a line. I could smell the shiny hospital floors now, hear the rattling of the instruments. “So what if I’ve taken a few pills, for Pete’s sake? It’s not like I’m doing anything illegal.”

  But I knew that I’d taken a risk. With Janie. I gnawed on a hangnail at my thumb. Had I not taken a pill, maybe I wouldn’t have slept as soundly while Janie napped. I would’ve heard her rousing, getting up, and messing about. I would’ve heard Raggsie wanting to play, which he no doubt did.

  “Can you stop on your own accord then?” Pauline asked. She wasn’t going to let this drop. “For good?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m going to help you,” Pauline said. She insisted on telephoning Dennis, and I didn’t balk.

  “Millicent needs you to come home.”

  I could just imagine how he responded. “In the middle of the day? Is everything okay?”

  “Not an emergency,” she said. “Just come home soon.”

  I was surpr
ised at how quickly she hung up. It was the first time Dennis had ever had such a request, and given the pitch of my friend’s voice, Dennis apparently didn’t debate it. He’d told her it would be half an hour, and Pauline promised she wouldn’t leave until he came.

  I scrubbed myself in the shower and shampooed my hair with force, needing to rid my skin of my guilt and my filth. I slinked into our bed after making sure my daughter was still fast asleep. Pauline was there, and Dennis would be home soon. I couldn’t face him. He had never blamed me for what happened to our second daughter. But he would blame me for this. Rightfully so. My actions, or inactions as they were, were indisputable. Without pardon. He should blame me.

  I blamed me.

  I may stay in this bed forever, I thought, and never get up again. As I lay there twitching and yearning for the pill I didn’t have, I concluded that here was where I had arrived in my life: if shame were a sauce, I’d be spaghetti—I’d be the hot, tangled mess piled in a mound and smothered in homemade shame the color of red that stained everything it touched.

  “I need to be left alone,” I mumbled to my husband when he came into the room with Pauline not far behind. Bafflement showed clear on both of their faces.

  Then I hid my own face in the sheet while Pauline explained what had happened with the razor—speaking in journalistic terms, objective. Not laying blame at his feet. Not laying blame at mine. Dennis was disturbed by the negligence on both of our parts. But he said he’d grown up on a farm. He’d seen blood and broken bones and people needing stitches, slings, and casts. He didn’t overreact. He said it was no one’s fault. “That Janie, she’s a climber now. It’s gonna serve her well one day.”

  On Opa’s good-bad-evil scale, Dennis scored high. One would think I’d have been happy with his reaction today. Relieved. Yet his lack of pointing fingers made me feel all the more defective.