“Neither have I—this week has gone by so fast.”
“It’s all right. Having you here is Christmas for us. You must know that by now?”
Dennis’s words brought Dottie close to tears which formed again as dusk gradually shaded daylight’s last nuggets. She rubbed her head against Al’s shoulder. She’d cried more the last month than ever before—but she’d laughed more, too.
He loved taking evening walks together but probably guessed how much her feet hurt tonight. And he’d grown used to the way she sometimes waited before answering his questions. She liked that—a sign of patience.
“You asked if I like it here.”
He cupped her chin in his hand.
“For the record, my answer is yes. In case you haven’t already figured that out.”
****
By six thirty when Dennis rattled out of the yard in his work truck, Al had lain awake for over an hour. He didn’t make a move lest he wake Dottie. Most days, she would have been over at the house half an hour ago. He tipped his head for a better glimpse of her profile.
She deserved every minute of sleep she could steal, but he knew she wouldn’t have things any other way. The train ride hadn’t been easy on her, but with the grandbabies, she lit up like the Christmas lights people put on their front porches to celebrate the holiday.
Electricity must be cheaper on the coast than back home. Or maybe folks looked at things differently. After lean war years and constant blackouts, maybe they decided if something brought a little sunshine into your life, you ought to do it. He grew up believing money was to be saved. That mindset tempered his actions as long as he could remember. When people came into the hardware and splurged on a gift for their wives or children, he always eyed them askance.
But his perspective shifted over the past few years. That’s why he bought the freezer that now sat in Dot’s back porch. Until then, he hadn’t splurged on Nan, by mutual agreement and necessity. But then, so soon, she passed from this world—all of a sudden, it was too late to give her anything or make her feel special.
Dottie wouldn’t be around forever, and neither would he. While they had each other, he wanted to bring her as much happiness as possible. What good did it do to hoard every penny, when spending a little money could make your loved one happy? She twitched in her sleep. The flow of her lips down to her chin entranced him. Full lips—how he loved their touch.
Thinking of kisses propelled his mind to Jeffy, who knew how to kiss. Al reached a finger to his jaw, recalling Jeffy’s frequent ministrations. He couldn’t get enough of those short bowed legs pummeling toward him, chubby arms wrapping around his neck, and that sweet voice calling him Gwamps.
“What were you thinking about just then?” Dottie called him from his reverie.
“Kissing. And Jeffy.”
“In that order?”
“Yep.”
She snuggled against him and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. Any minute, they’d hear a baby voice across the way, but he didn’t mind. Whatever this new day brought would be good.
Then he remembered—today was December twenty-eighth, Cora’s doctor’s appointment. He’d never chaperoned anyone to such a thing. Nan delivered Charlie at home with Mrs. Murdock in attendance. A couple of years later, she’d miscarried. Maybe seeing a doctor would have helped, but Nan refused and never conceived again.
He didn’t relish the idea of navigating traffic, but his hands itched to touch the Chevy’s steering wheel—that car that weighed more than his truck.
****
It wasn’t often Dottie spent time alone in their expansive room above the garage, but today, Al drove Cora to see her doctor. To give Jeffy a new place to explore, she took him to their apartment, along with Joy, plenty of milk and diapers, a dust rag, and a mop. She accomplished the move in fits and starts, bidding Jeffy to wait at the bottom of the stairs while she deposited Joy upstairs.
He took his mop-watching job seriously, but her heart thumped during the twenty seconds it took to deposit Joy in the middle of the bed and get the toddler in her sights again. At that age, they forgot instructions so quickly and moved like lightning. But he waited where she’d left him, and “helped Gamma” carry the pail, cheeks flushed with pride.
“You can dust the furniture, big boy, while Grandma cleans the floor.”
“Big boy. Hep Gamma.” His willing smile delighted her. She made a game of having him dust the chairs’ low rungs and the footboard’s far reaches. Joy, sated with oatmeal and goat’s milk, batted her arms and gurgled.
Joy Marie…after her middle name and Cora’s. Of course, Marie had been her mother’s name. She remembered so little about her mother, but Mildred told her bits and pieces. Marie Colwell liked babies and little children. She had a way with them, Mildred said.
Dennis had built a closet in the wide area between two dormer windows on the east side of the room. On the opposite wall, a desk and chair centered two matching windows. Such a nice breeze came from the west, and so far, Dottie hadn’t noticed one mosquito or fly, even without screens.
“Can you dust the windowsills, Jeffy?” The petite workman stretched, to accomplish the feat and trundled across the room for another rag.
“Gamma—cwean yo house. Cwean yo house!”
“Yes, honey. Won’t Grandpa be surprised?”
Extra wide floorboards collected some dust, but not the swirls she fought in Iowa. The width of the boards made the area seem even larger, and so did pale yellow walls and slanting ceilings. Dottie remembered little from their arrival, but she did recall her delight with the color as Dennis guided them to their quarters once she tucked Cora into bed.
“Oh, I’m glad you chose yellow!”
“Cora insisted it’s your favorite.” Dennis installed a bathroom in the unused fourth of the attic. Everything from shiny chrome fixtures to yellow towels and washcloths was brand spanking new. Cora even hung a perky picture of Shasta daisies, forget-me-nots, and geraniums on the wall.
The space fit Dottie and Al perfectly, down to an extra-long bed to accommodate Al’s height. The openness, so different from the cramped, dark rooms back at home, gave a sense of spaciousness and freedom.
Jeffy ran by as Dottie mopped a corner, and she held him close for a few moments before he wriggled away. Joy fell asleep and after a while, Jeffy toddled toward the bed.
“My big boy getting sleepy? So is Grandma. Shall I tell you a story?”
“Stowy.” Jeffy situated himself in the curve of Dottie’s arm.
“Once, a grandma came all the way from Iowa to see a little boy named Jeffy and his baby sister. She brought Grandpa along, too. Grandpa took that little boy to see the goats, they pounded nails together…”
“Poun,’ poun’.” Jeffy’s hands made fists and hit the pillow.
“They all worked and played together, until one day, Grandma had to…”
Worn out from helping, Jeffy gave in to the weight of heavy eyelids. An involuntary shudder grazed Dottie’s shoulders, though the temperature rose to the high seventies.
She was about to say, “Grandma had to go back home.”
Twelve days gone by, and originally, they’d talked of staying three weeks. But she couldn’t even think of leaving. She smoothed her fingers along the bedspread as Jeffy’s long, shuddery breath signaled sleep.
She’d asked Cora how Dennis managed the extra-long bed. “He can take care of anything, Mom. His senior officer offered him a job with his construction company even before they shipped home. Captain Kenny, we call him. He called Dennis the best worker he’d every find. He and his wife stood up with us when we got married, and took us out to eat at a real nice place afterward.”
The curtain rose and fell with another small gust. Dottie’s sigh matched its movement. Sternville seemed like a dream—she must’ve lived here forever. Being with Al seemed the same way—as if it had always been her reality.
How could they go home? This Captain and his wife, such wonderful p
eople, did so much for Cora and Dennis, but they couldn’t be here to help out until the baby came. Cora hadn’t gotten her strength back yet. She probably wouldn’t until after the baby arrived. And then, there would be double the diapers.
The faint chatter of Oriental women drifted from the road. Such gentle, tender-eyed people. She couldn’t think of one thing she would change about this place…not one. Suddenly, from the recesses of her mind, she supposed from one of her morning devotional readings, words wafted to her.
“I will lead thee and guide thee with mine eye.”
She formed a quilt into a semicircle around the children to make sure they didn’t roll off the bed, closed her eyes, and sank into the promise. After all, hadn’t God guided Al and her out here, so far from all she’d ever known?
He’d given Al love for her and courage to ask for her hand, changed her heart toward Bonnie Mae, and shown her all of Al’s admirable qualities. He’d kept him safe fighting the fires and provided for all their needs to make the trip.
Like the Pacific breeze, a love as big as that massive ocean—bigger, even—surrounded these precious children and enveloped Dottie like the ratty afghan in her armchair back home. Back home. Back home seemed a lifetime ago, an ocean away. Had her boarding house life truly existed?
She’d come to a new place, a lovely place, and she liked it more than she ever dreamed.
Chapter Thirty
“Thank you so much for bringing me, Al. And knowing Jeffy and Joy are safe with Mom—that takes a load off my shoulders.”
“It goes both ways. I think your mother worried more about you back in Iowa than she let on.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
Al maneuvered the car around the parking lot outside the doctor’s office and turned down a one-way street. “You’re doing all right?”
He eased to a stop at a stop sign and waited for a delivery truck to round the corner. Back in traffic, he waited some more. Not far from their turn-off, Cora sniffled.
Dottie would initiate a conversation if she needed to talk, but Nan always wanted him to ask what troubled her. With Cora, maybe things worked differently.
Before their turn, he guided the Chevy to the roadside. When he twisted toward her, she fell into his arms.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do! I have to be ever so careful or I might…” Her voice disappeared in sobs. The clean smell of her hair inundated Al’s senses. “But I just can’t let that happen.”
She’d told him everything except the facts, but clearly, they scared the daylights out of her. Maybe the doctor thought she might lose the baby.
He handed her his handkerchief, and Cora blew her nose. “Wow. I guess I really needed to fall apart. Sorry.”
“It’s not like I haven’t seen you cry before—I often wondered what it’d be like raising girls. You and Millie gave me some idea.”
She chuckled. “You remember me as a pigtailed brat, fighting the older kids.”
“Nope—I recall a cute blond girl who loved chocolate almost as much as she loved her mother.”
“You must’ve brought me hundreds of those little square candies, one at a time.”
“And your mother scolded me for spoiling your dinner. But you turned out just fine, Cora Joy.”
Another stream poised to cascade from her eyes. At one time, that would have upset him, but not anymore. Sometimes in the night, when bad memories rose up like phantoms, he wished he could force them away with tears.
“I have to stay still until the birth—that’s another month and a half.”
“The middle of February? I thought you weren’t going to have the baby until March.”
“I’m farther along than he thought.”
“That’s good, right? As I recall, Nan didn’t mind her waiting time ending one bit.”
“Yes. But…” Cora pressed her hand to her forehead. “To have another baby in the house so soon…I don’t know if I can keep up. Maybe…oh, I don’t know what we’ll do.”
Al turned the key in the ignition. “It’ll work out, Cora. I’m sure it’ll all work out.”
****
Dottie and Al sat on the front porch while Dennis gave Jeffy and Joy their baths and put them to bed. Al waved a new railroad timetable in one hand.
“We’d have sleeping car service direct from San Diego starting on March twenty-seventh, Dot. That might be about the time you’d want to go back—the little one would be six weeks old, if it comes on the doc’s schedule.”
Dottie shook down a tide of emotion. Al’s earnestness only strengthened her aversion to the idea of leaving. “You would go home now and travel back out for me?”
“I’d do anything to help Cora.” A breeze blew the living room curtains out behind them, making the faintest swishing sound. “When Del’s children were young, I worked such long hours—missed out on them being babies.” He clicked his tongue. “You women are smarter than us. We don’t see our chances passing us by.
“After Nan died, I should have made more of an effort to drive to Charlie’s, but I fell into a rut. So now, I have a third chance—I love every minute with these little ones. In fact…”
His foot jiggled, sending a vibration along the chair arm. “I’ve been doing some thinking. Seems as though you really like the Golden State, and so do I. What if…” His voice took on a deeper tenor. “What if we moved out here?”
Dust particles floated in the last shards of sunshine. Down the road, a goat bleated and Mrs. Shoko’s rooster, mixed up about day and night, crowed. Did he just propose what Dottie thought he did?
“You mean, for good?”
“What do we have to go back for, really? These little tykes need a grandma and grandpa so much.”
Two cherub faces danced through her mind, young lives that mattered more than anything in the world—three. Al put her own feelings into words. Yet she hadn’t considered the idea seriously—you couldn’t take everything that came into your head as a possibility, could you?
Inside the house, Jeffy’s squeals and splashes accompanied his daddy’s laughter.
From the bedroom corner, Joy giggled with Cora.
“What if I went back this spring at the end of March, when things settle into a routine and Cora gets her strength back? Del can handle things till then.”
His sincere eyes shone blue as the ocean. She could tell he’d analyzed this ten ways till Tuesday, since he continued. He must believe his plan would work.
“We could sell your place—already got a couple of farmers in mind—Verne and Vera Brannigan want to move into town when Eric takes over the farm.”
Vera Brannigan—they’d been close at one time, but Vera only came into town on Saturday nights for groceries.
“I’d buy a car, maybe one of those wooden station wagons like Merv Planter’s 1941 model—remember that?”
Dottie paid little attention to vehicles, but Merv’s—as big as Dennis and Cora’s reliable Chevy—flashed through her mind. She nodded, but her mind could move only so fast.
“Then, when you can get away for a week or so, we could bring out as much as you’d like, or even ship some by train.”
Al drummed his fingertips on his knee. “By then, it would be full springtime in Iowa, maybe summer. Who knows—maybe Del’s oldest boy could help us move. Or Millie and Ren might have a hankering to see the new baby, and the country, too.”
Scenes from the train window buzzed before Dottie like tempting sprites. “Like those people we saw on the way, when the railroad came close to Route Sixty-six?”
“Exactly.” Al took her by the shoulders, the lines above his nose deep but his eyes animated with light. “We’re not too old to make a change, Dot—we could take a full two weeks, if Millie would stay here with Cora.”
The ideas made homes in Dottie’s head, but Al plunged ahead. “Those people from Chicago we met on our last night, remember them? You know, the guy who left his plumbing business?”
“Yes—they were tire
d of the city and sold out. The war scattered their family from coast to coast, he realized this was their time, so they pulled up stakes. I didn’t know if they were courageous or foolish.”
But now, she pictured what a job it would be to clean out her possessions—more than thirty years’ worth. She and Al climbed the stairs to their apartment.
Then, another idea occurred to her—what if she asked Millie and Alice to tend to all of that? What if she stayed put, and waited for Al to return with their things? Millie would understand.
But what if her house didn’t sell? Would they still move? Al pulled her to the top stair to watch the stars come out.
“So, you think it’s our time?”
His heart beat against hers. “If it’s what you want to do, Dot, then it’s our time.”
****
“Have more baby milk?”
“No—that is, yes. We need more.” Al got out his wallet to illustrate his explanation. “Mrs. Shoko, you remember my wife, Dot?”
“Wifedot.” She held out her hand. “Me Shoko. You Wifedot?”
“Yes. Me Dot.”
“Dot?” Her forehead scrunched together.
“Call me Dottie. That would be fine.”
“Dot—tie. Ah.” Wrinkles curved into a smile. “You like some tea?” She gestured toward the back of the house.
“I would. I love tea.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.” Dottie made an “mmm” sound and circled her palm on her stomach.
As if by magic, the younger woman who walked with Mrs. Shoko the day they stopped by Cora’s house, tiptoed into the room with a tray of steaming cups. She gave a mysterious smile and set the tray on a low table. Taking a sip gave Dottie time to adjust to the shadowy interior. Only a few pieces of straight-lined, low furniture and a straw mat divided one side of the room from the area where they sat on a simple wooden bench.
The younger woman knelt on a pillow near her mother, who waved a hand her way. “This Miyako.”
In This Together Page 26