Millicent Glenn's Last Wish: A Novel

by Tori Whitaker

  “It was past ten o’clock that night. After Reynolds had left that afternoon, I looked up the doctor’s address and went to his house.”

  I gasped. I pictured the Reynoldses’ lamppost aglow, the mullioned windows.

  “As I came close to his place, his Buick pulled out of the drive. He was alone. I followed him. I figured he was on the way to the hospital for a night shift, and I’d have it out with him in the parking lot. Wasn’t long after, as I trailed him west on US 50, that I realized he was going somewhere else. I held back but stayed on his tail.”

  “Dennis,” I said, taking his hand. “Honey, you don’t have to tell me this, you know.” I wasn’t sure I could bear to hear it. His head quivered left and right as if to say, I’ve got to get this out. I let him go on. I was too rattled to think what this might mean.

  “Soon, we were on old Grandin Road. His headlights. My headlights. We barely passed a car. He stopped at the bridge. I shut off my lights but let the car creep on a piece farther. There was a full moon. I saw him open the driver’s door, climb out. He looked around in a cursory way. And he headed on foot to the center of the bridge.

  “I parked my old Chevy off the side of the road. Climbed out. I was nervous as a whore in church. So many things were whizzing through my head. But one of them was—”

  What? What was whizzing through his head? He coughed. Coughed again.

  “The doctor climbed up the fencing that bordered the bridge, about four feet? One thing kept spiraling through my mind: Jump, you son of a bitch. Let me see you jump. Let me watch you smash to the ground down below. Let me see you rot in the ravine with the maggots and the snakes.” Dennis’s face had gone from sickly white to hell-bent red. He didn’t kill the doctor, did he? My husband was the man who contained his feelings, who never held a grudge, at least not against me. Yet I had a sinking feeling of trepidation.

  “I wanted to push him over,” he said.

  “Dennis—” What had my husband done? My teeth clamped together. I prepared myself for the answer, aware that I’d know this the rest of my life.

  “That’s when I waffled,” he said. “I thought of you and Janie, and Mother and Father. I’d been taught to do what was right. What if I landed myself in prison? What good would I be to you then? It was like a thunderbolt. I had my family to take care of. And so help me, I thought of the asshole doctor’s family, too. I started running. Reynolds had climbed over now. His feet were on the metal base, his hands still connected to a rail. He was leaning out . . .

  “I went into a full-on sprint, shouting, ‘Stop, don’t jump. Stop!’ I came within ten or so feet of him and yelled, ‘Stop.’”

  I pictured the scene in my mind’s eye. Had I not known how the story would end, my wicked, vengeful heart would be wishing the man would jump. Die. But I’d be worrying in this instant that he’d turn on my husband first and hurt him . . .

  “He looked over at me,” Dennis said. “I knew without a doubt Reynolds recognized who I was. ‘Don’t do it,’ I said.

  “He lifted a leg to swing it back over, as if he would save himself. I was relieved. I’d stopped him.” Dennis started to weep as he spoke. “Then his other foot slipped. Just like that. He fell. He dropped, all the way down to the ravine.”

  My stomach fell, too, a sensation of tumbling. I covered my mouth.

  Had Dennis not caused the doctor to pause, he might not have slipped. Who knew how differently things might have turned out?

  I looked away and saw the newspaper. The former Mrs. Reynolds.

  That doctor’s name infuriated me all over again. I couldn’t help it. But Dennis had witnessed his fall.

  “You lived these last few years believing a man, a father, might not have died had you taken different action?”

  All Dennis could do was nod and let his eyes shutter. Then: “I couldn’t face you that night. I took a room at a motel. Didn’t budge the next day. I came home that Friday as if I’d been at the conference all along.”

  I visualized him curled up on a musty motel bed, agonizing over what’d happened. Perhaps one day he’d explain to me how it had really felt.

  Hmm. Of that I had my doubts.

  I grabbed tissues from the box beside the bed, dabbed one to Dennis’s eyes, and another to his lips and his whiskered chin. Silver hairs had crept in over the years when I hadn’t been looking. Silent tears were streaming down my cheeks now, too. I felt their hotness slip from my face and watched them splash onto his, one tear at a time.

  So many secrets.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  The secrets Dennis and I’d kept were as much to protect each other as to shield ourselves. That’s what love and loss had done to us. We’d gone through something horrible together that had almost torn us apart. For as long as we would live, there would be things that would dredge up a memory or invoke our rage or grief. But now I knew, we had each gone through something horrible apart, too, and that had bound us back together today, stronger than before.

  “Dennis, I’m going to say something I should have said a long time ago.”

  I lay down next to him. I lowered my head onto his shoulder, brushed my wet hand across his rough cheek, and then wove my fingers through his like the branches of our sugar maple.

  “You did nothing wrong,” I whispered.

  I remembered the story of the boy who’d gone to fight the war, but Uncle Sam had turned him away. I remembered the husband who had hidden the birth and death certificates to shield me from more pain. I remembered the man who had stood by me in front of his family. And I would not forget my beloved who’d stuck by my side, even after I’d made decisions out of pettiness and pride.

  “Even if you had done something wrong,” I said to him now, “I would forgive you.”

  EPILOGUE

  April 2016

  The girls—all three of them: Jane, Kelsey, and the baby—came for a Saturday visit. Joy Millicent Glenn-Goldberg was now two months old. I’d added new photos to the shelves Dennis had built. The first was of Kelsey and Aaron and Joy in the private, soft-sided tub where Joy had been born. A water birth. The couple had decided on a birthing center instead of home or a hospital. To them it was a happy medium. Kelsey was still immersed to her waist, wearing her tank top and resting back against the new daddy, who sat behind her wearing his swim trunks. Their sweet baby, photographed at only two minutes old, had looked right up at her mama and reached her tiny, wet fingertips up to Kelsey’s chin.

  And there was the shot of Aaron giving Kelsey a sterling-silver charm bracelet, a bangle engraved with the words Family Forever and a silver heart closure. “It’s a push present,” he’d said, all bashful-like, “for everything you’ve done in delivering our baby.”

  I’d never heard of a push present before, of course, but Kelsey had nearly swooned. On the bracelet hung one silver charm, a tiny ring with three dangling letters: M.O.M.

  In the birthing room that day, after Aaron held Joy, he’d lifted her out of the water and presented her to the midwife, who wrapped her in a pink-and-white-striped receiving blanket. Soon the midwife brought the baby to Jane. My daughter’s face was filled with such wonderment, such extraordinary gratitude, and a kind of delight filtered down through the hearts and tears of many generations who’d come before her.

  Yet without taking Joy from the midwife, Jane said, “No, let Great-Grandmama hold her first.”

  Tears stung my eyes as I looked to Kelsey, who nodded. It was as if these two had it planned all along.

  I hadn’t gotten to hold my second daughter all those years ago. I hadn’t gotten to hold my Kelsey as a newborn either. Now, I reached out to receive this precious child. I was honored that they all trusted me with these old, decrepit hands of mine.

  I took her into my arms and brought her snug to my chest.

  In that moment—a moment I cherished beyond all the moments of my days—I was holding Joy, the weight of her a precious gift in my arms. And I had my daughter with one arm around me
, and my granddaughter smiling at me with a lustrous shimmer on her dewy, young skin.

  How had I come to be so blessed?

  I touched my lips to the damp, satiny top of Joy Millicent’s head, closed my eyes, and thanked the Lord for her safe passage. I knew she’d grow up to face challenges—of that there could be no doubt. But she could make a difference. And more than anything, she’d grow up loved.

  Kelsey’s doula, the birth advocate who’d helped the midwife, took my picture using Jane’s iPhone. And so on my shelves that Dennis had built, there now was a picture of me with Joy—but there was also another new picture of me. Well, not a new one, but an old one that I’d pulled out of Kathy’s old album. I was eight months pregnant with Kathy in the photo and had fifteen-month-old Janie on my lap. Mother Glenn had snapped that pose of us in the parlor at the farm—with Dennis leaning over my shoulder, and he and Janie and me all radiant.

  Kathy was part of our family story at last, never to be forgotten.

  The doorbell rang at my house, and Jane went to answer. The disarmed door tinkled its friendly hello. “Welcome,” Jane said to our guest—and Jane’s seven-week-old pug yapped in her arms. The pup was all black, and she’d named him Blackie.

  “Hi, I’m Kelsey,” I heard my granddaughter say. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

  The woman with the beauty mark above her top lip followed the girls into my den, carrying a bag stuffed with tissue in white and baby-girl pink.

  “Millie.”

  “Carolyn,” I said, grinning—no more calling her Nurse Breck.

  We’d reunited at the ice cream parlor a couple of weeks before. I would’ve known that woman anywhere, no matter her having a few years on me and despite the ravages of age. Kelsey had found Carolyn on the internet.

  Now my friend took a turn holding my precious great-granddaughter, whose hair was as dark and thick as her grandmother’s had been, with some curls from her daddy, too.

  Carolyn said, “This little girl is my dream come true for you.”

  “Mine, too.”

  When we had met recently, we had talked of the time in the maternity ward and of how neither of us was ever the same. And though she knew nothing of my opa—of what he’d called me when I was small nor of lessons he’d taught me—she said, “You’re a good person, Millicent Glenn. You’re strong.”

  Our eyes held each other’s gaze, and a realization dawned in my mind. I was good. I was strong. It was as if two enormous cymbals came crashing together, each one gripped by the gloved hand of a musician in a marching band, the arched metal discs letting out a loud and musical clang that reverberated in sound wave after sound wave around us.

  It’s time that you forgave yourself, I thought. And when the imagined echoes of sound waves had subsided, I realized I was free.

  If I were to be granted my life’s last wish, it would be that my daughter—and her daughter, and her daughter, and the daughters who come after—would not wait until they were ninety-one years old to accept this truth: the whole of one’s life need not be defined on the grounds of one decision. While good may come when others support you and affirm you and even forgive you, you will never be complete unless these things you provide for yourself.

  Yes, I had forgiven myself. Though I would never forget.

  Who knew how long I had left to live . . . a day, a month, a year? Or more? The date of my death wouldn’t be carved on the headstone near the perfumed honeysuckles anytime soon—not if I had my say. For I had a new purpose in life to enrich the lives of the women in my line. To teach them all I’d learned. And each time I was handed that special baby girl, and each time my eyes drifted across a room and caught Jane’s gaze, and each time my phone chimed with a text from my lovely granddaughter, I was also given a new chance at happiness.

  And I took it.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This story and its characters are fictional, though the maternity ward scene draws from a long-ago tragedy in my family. Among the many sources I researched, the following stand out most in my mind: The Fifties: A Women’s Oral History by Brett Harvey; an interview with Randy Shipp, an expert on the prefab homes industry and author of the white paper “Gunnison Homes: A Brief History”; a tour of the Gorman Heritage Farm, which is open to the public outside of Cincinnati; an interview with Anne Delano Steinert, director of the board for the Over-the-Rhine Museum in Cincinnati; a walking tour of OTR and its brewery heritage led by John Funcheon of American Legacy Tours; an interview with Debbie Schutz, nurse practitioner, on testing for breast cancer; an interview with Jacqueline H. Wolf, PhD, author of Cesarean Section: An American History of Risk, Technology, and Consequence; a pregnancy manual from 1940, Expectant Motherhood by Nicholson J. Eastman; and the Ladies’ Home Journal magazine, May 1958 cover story: “Cruelty in Maternity Wards.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am so appreciative for my editor, Chris Werner, and agent, Katie Shea-Boutillier, for falling in love with Millicent’s story and giving me a chance—and to Tiffany Yates Martin for helping me dig into the story’s emotional layers. I’ve been blown away by the process and amazing support from the whole Lake Union Publishing team. Thank you all for making my book better, and for making it available to readers!

  My heartfelt thanks go to gifted writers Betsy Crosby, Joy Kniskern, and Kay Heath, who form my historical fiction critique group (and who are also my friends and psychiatrists and confidantes and devil’s advocates and cheerleaders). What would I do without you girls? Many thanks to our novel-writing classmates, too—and to our wonderful instructor, author Joshilyn Jackson, who first brought us together and shared her time and writerly wisdom.

  This novel would not have been published without the sage developmental advice I received from author and teacher Jenna Blum, and editors Liv Radue and Laura Chasen. I also learned so much through the Yale Writers’ Workshop. A shout-out goes especially to Terra Elan McVoy.

  I am also incredibly grateful to the writing community at large—to the gracious, supportive authors who’ve inspired me with their work and who have endorsed mine. Thank you, thank you. And hats off to the excellent Atlanta Writers Conference and my friends at FoxTale Book Shoppe.

  Thank you to this novel’s brave early readers: Carla Gunnin, Amy Anderson, Linda Berthold, Renee Bissell-Cole, Katie Woodruff, and Kathy Schroeder—and also to beta readers Carole Jay (who answered questions about Cincinnati) and therapist April Mojica Whitaker (who advised on my character’s addiction). I am indebted to you all for your years of support.

  Throughout my long writing journey, several people offered encouraging words, often when I needed them most: Andrea Bailey Powers, Sylvia and John Smith, Ken Isaacson, Ranen Abdallah, Pansy Whitaker, Shelley Vallier, Mary Sutton, Robin Gauthey, Anne Glenn, Melodee Hand, Kim Lister, Leandra Lederman, Susan Daugherty, Michelle Gilliam, Evey Gaither, Wynette Stewart, Jane Ashmore, Hollie Whitaker, Mary Beth Chappell Lyles, and my Facebook friends everywhere. I also wish to thank Kian Cheng, Rebecca Pugh, and countless other Constangy colleagues for their insights and kindnesses. I haven’t forgotten.

  I feel blessed that my mother, Sheila Cole, has been by my side over the course of my writing endeavors, having pored over the manuscript for this book alone at least three times. Thank you for having dreamed the dream where you’d seen my book be published, and for writing “hooked!” or “tears!” in the margins of my pages. I’ve kept those pages. And while my father, Ron, is now sadly gone, I also cherish him telling me when I was sixteen that I could write.

  Thank you to my beloved sons, Justin and Brolin, for unwavering support as I’ve worked toward my goal of holding this book in my hands. I’m honored that you’ve believed in me and thrilled beyond words to have you celebrate this moment with me. And to John, my dear husband of more than forty years: Thank you for all the vacations you’ve spent in museums instead of at the beach, for never minding that my clothes pile up on the floor at home, and for always being okay with watching movies like Road House
(again) while I write past midnight on weekends. Most of all, thank you for reminding me that I’d only fail if I didn’t try.

  And finally, thank you to my grandchildren, Lane and Evie—and to my own grandparents who came before them—for the joy you’ve brought into my life. I hope you see that a hint of that grandparent kind of love seeped into the pages of this novel.

  BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS

  Millie is ninety years old when the book opens, and readers soon learn that she carries a long-held secret. Do you believe that most people who’ve lived that long have a buried secret or regret? Has anyone in your family (or other families you know of) harbored secrets that eventually came out?

  Which character did you relate to the most?

  In what ways was Millie’s life shaped by her mother? By her mother-in-law, Mother Glenn?

  How do you assess America in the 1950s—that slice of time between the victory of World War II in the 1940s and the era of protest and the civil rights movement of the 1960s? Was the baby boom era generally a time of happy, carefree days? How has your opinion of the era been reinforced or changed after reading this novel?

  Millie believed that her own pride led to her family’s tragedy. Do you agree? At one point Kelsey says, “Grandma, did you ever think that maybe pride had gotten in Papaw’s way first?” Discuss the nature of pride in this story, including Millie’s and Dennis’s—and that of Millie’s mother. Are other characters prideful?

  Millie never knew her father. Kelsey never knew her own father either. Discuss the extent to which Jane, who had a close relationship with her father (Dennis), really knew him. How well can any child truly know a parent?

  Opa taught Millie that sometimes good people make mistakes, and sometimes bad people get something right. In your opinion, is Dennis a “good guy”? Did your views of Dennis change over the course of the novel? Why or why not? What about Abbie? Is she a good person?