Home? I was home.
chapter 3
Jerome’s bustled with its suit-and-tie crowd at the plaza across the street from the Conart Building. Lush green ferns hung from beamed ceilings. Tables were spread with white paper, a coffee mug of crayons inviting doodles. Enticing scents of garlic and pasta filled the glass-walled rooms, the noise level a low buzz. Carrie Wells had insisted that I forgo my habit of working through lunch and meet her at Jerome’s every other week. “You know what they say about all work and no play,” she said, raising a plucked eyebrow. After Mama’s phone call I’d almost canceled but knew Carrie wouldn’t hear of it.
Three years previously I’d literally bumped into Carrie as I hustled into the Conart lobby elevator one day. She was clad in a dark green suit that gracefully fit her slim figure, strawberry blond hair layered and falling in gentle waves to her shoulders. Her makeup was subtly perfect. The poise she exuded was intimidating. And then she’d grinned at me, showing straight white teeth. “Whoa,” she teased, “you’re supposed to take the stairs in case of fire!”
I managed a smile. “Sorry. I just met with one of our advertising firm’s new clients, and my mind’s already on logos.”
We chatted briefly on the way to the fifth floor, and she informed me she worked as a title officer for First United.
“Oh,” I responded, “your company handled the purchase of my home five years ago. Were you there then?”
“No.” Sadness flicked across her face. “I was mostly nursing my husband at that time. He died of cancer. I went back to work soon afterward.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” I felt a sudden urge to watch the elevator numbers glow red in sequence. Her loss, too similar to mine in depth, had left me tongue-tied.
At that moment Carrie apparently chose to take me on as her personal mission, recognizing the pain in my eyes that reflected her own. As we became friends, she eventually managed to draw out information about my past that no one else had. And she was always bold in speaking about the importance of Christ in her life, gently prodding me to return to the faith of my childhood. She just couldn’t understand that for me it was too late.
“Well,” she breathed after the waitress at Jerome’s had brought our salads, “I was all set to tell you my news, but you look like you’ve been hit by a truck. What happened?”
“Gee, thanks.” I smiled weakly. “But I’m not ready to talk about it yet. You go first.”
She looked at me askance. “You know I’m not going to let you wallow in whatever it is by yourself.”
“I know, I know.” Tiredness washed over me, and I leaned my head back against the booth cushion as a waitress refilled our water glasses. “I promise I’ll talk. But what’s going on with you?”
Her face lit up as she began to describe the new assistant pastor at her church. “Thirty-eight years old, dark hair, brown eyes, even a dimple in his cheek. And never married, can you believe that? His name is Andy. I’m so attracted to him, I hardly know how to act.” She paused for a bite of salad topped with nonfat dressing. “I mean, the instant I saw him, I felt this . . . pull. Isn’t that amazing? And guess what? He feels it, too!”
Since her husband died, Carrie had not been interested in any other man. She had wanted to be, believing that an attraction would be a sign that her grief had finally begun to ebb. For all her vivaciousness—and selfless concern about me—I knew Carrie still mourned her husband. It was that time-seasoned pain that allowed her to understand mine.
I smiled, very glad for her. “Carrie, that’s terrific.”
“We went out to dinner last Saturday, and I had a great time,” she babbled on, waving a red-nailed hand. “He’s a wonderful man, so interested in his ministry at the church. His values and goals are the same as mine, and we just have this sort of . . . chemistry.”
I speared a cherry tomato. “Like DuPont.”
“Huh?”
“You know, the big company. Years ago their slogan was ‘There’s a lot of good chemistry between us.’ Great play on words.”
She rolled her eyes. “Celia, I’m talking to you about this incredible thing that’s happened to me, and your mind’s still on advertising?”
“No, no. I really am happy for you! But if he’s so great, why hasn’t he ever been married?”
“Well,” she grinned, not thinking, “you’re great and you’ve never been married.”
Touché. I looked at my plate.
“Oh, Celia,” she said quickly, “I didn’t mean anything by that.”
“I know.”
All the same, I felt a solemnity descend between us. Seven years ago Roger had wanted to marry me. More recently so had Michael. Their love for me had felt good at first, very good, and there’d been a time in both relationships when I thought it just might work. I’d even allowed the thought that maybe God had forgiven me—at least that much. But I was twice wrong. My past loomed too large, age-old desires and guilt drowning out what might have been.
“Hey.” Carrie tapped my plate. “Turtle. Your neck’s disappearing.” I put my fork down. “Sorry.”
“Okay, enough of me for now. Your turn.”
Sighing, I told her about Mama’s phone call. She listened, full of concern, her eyes never leaving my face.
“Your poor father. How sad,” she said when I was done. She took a thoughtful drink of water. “Maybe God’s giving you this chance, terrible as the situation is for your dad, to work on your relationship with your parents. When are you leaving?”
“Oh, Carrie, it’s not that simple.” I couldn’t help but sound defensive; this was my mother’s idea, not God’s. “Mama’s not asking me just to come for a few days. She’d probably expect me to stay three weeks, maybe more. I can’t imagine being back in that town, in that house. My throat almost closes at the thought of it. I can’t face her. I just can’t.”
“But how can you not help your father?”
“I don’t know. I can’t not help him.”
“You must help him,” she said gently, placing her hand on top of mine. “You can’t let the fear of facing your mother keep you away.”
The proximity of my half-eaten salad suddenly annoyed me, and I withdrew my hand from hers to push the plate away. I placed my clean knife across it, then my fork. Folded my napkin. Slid it beside the plate. “Celia, listen to me. You need to do this. You need to deal with both of them.”
I focused on the white paper between my elbows. “I am dealing with Mama. By staying away for seventeen years.”
Silence. I sensed she was waiting for me to admit the ridiculousness of my statement. Fine. She could wait all day.
“Seventeen years,” she said finally, “and emotionally you’ve just treaded water. Celia, please hear me. God wants to heal you. He can heal you. Remember that verse I like so much from Jeremiah? ‘I am the LORD, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?’ This is your chance. Take it. I know God can fix things between you and your mom. And that healing could in turn help break through the barrier of guilt you’ve built between yourself and God.”
Carrie was rarely this confrontational with me. I stared at her, struck by her statements. Emotionally you’ve just treaded water. She had me pegged well, but at that moment admitting it was the last thing I’d do. Sometimes I felt so fractured, as if I were three or four people. I’d worked hard to become the cool, competent professional, but mere thoughts of Mama could turn me back into the emotional teenager of Bradleyville. At Hillsdale Nursing Home I could be cheerful and even humorous with patients, for that was the demeanor they so needed, yet these traits were sorely missing in the rest of my life.
I swung my eyes away. Reaching for a crayon, I spun it against the table, listlessly watching the swirl of red on white. “Carrie,” I said, “if I can’t even find my way back to God, you can be sure I’ll never find it back to my mother’s heart.”
Carrie began to utter her disagreement, but I shook my head, silencing her. I’d had enough talk for the mome
nt. The crayon stopped. I flicked it into motion again. A third time. And a fourth. Gazing through the crayon as it spun, as if into the distance, I felt a familiar emptiness as memories of Mama began to etch my thoughts.
Red on white, white under red.
Jerome’s buzz of conversation, its clink of plates, began to fade. The crayon was smoothing into chalk, our table cover graining into cement. Walls and ferns melted into the enchantment of a certain spring day twenty-nine years ago, when the temperature so perfectly matched that of my own young body that I felt no separateness between myself and the air, both sun-washed and flowing with magic . . .
~ 1968 ~
chapter 4
The red chalk sputtered as I drew it over the concrete, outlining a large heart and filling it in. My hands bore the marks of a passionate artist in a fit of creativity, a pallet of pastel colors blended and sifting into the creases of my palm. My shoulders were tired from the scribbling, my knees pockmarked and scraped, but that didn’t matter to a six-year-old trembling with excitement. Melissa Westerdahl, my petite best friend who lived two doors up the street, was kneeling behind me. Hearing her grunts, I pictured her tongue lolling as she labored over our dazzling designs on the short sidewalk that led from my house to the street. We were nearly finished, but time could run out at any moment with the much anticipated arrival of my newborn brother, Kevin Thomas Matthews. He was named after his two granddads—Kevin after my dad’s father, who had died before my birth, and Thomas for my other granddad, who lived with us at 101 Minton.
An hour earlier I’d been bouncing anxiously around the worn carpet in front of our brand-new color TV, pestering Granddad with “How much longer? How much longer?” Daddy had left for the hospital to bring Kevin and Mama home, and even Saturday morning cartoons with the Pink Panther in his true pigment could barely hold my attention. “Jus’ lookit how pink he is!” Granddad exclaimed numerous times in an effort to distract me. He was almost as proud of owning the first color television in Bradleyville as he was of his first grandson, since both helped fortify his place as town patriarch. Granddad cared not a whit that Mama had been beside herself with rage at his purchase, railing that too much television was “the Devil’s tool.” “Oh, cats-in the-cornbread, daughter!” he’d retorted as the delivery men scurried out the door to escape Mama’s wrath. “Our black-and-white one a in’t done us no harm yet, so I don’t see what a little color’ll do!”
As The Pink Panther ended, with Granddad still humming the theme song and chasing me around the coffee table on his hands and knees, Melissa had called through our screen door. Melissa and I spent so much time together, Mama sometimes called us the Twins even though we looked nothing alike. My hair was blond and wavy, and hers was brown and straight as a stick. My eyes were blue; hers were brown. Melissa would bounce with energy, throwing her light frame into cartwheels, often bubbling with giggles. Sometimes she even made me tired.
Melissa and I both were dancing with anticipation. Granddad gave up trying to distract us, falling into the sofa to fan his face.
“Oh, I know,” I cried, eyes widening. “Let’s get some chalk and color the whole sidewalk for Mama and Kevin! It’ll be a great present, and Mama will have a pretty carpet to walk on!”
“Yeah!” agreed Melissa.
We finished our masterpiece with only a moment to spare, the entire sidewalk covered with glorious pictures. God himself couldn’t have made it any finer. No matter that my legs had fallen asleep and felt as if they were covered with biting ants.
As I was cleaning my hands against the grass, Daddy pulled up to the curb. You would have thought he was driving a chariot of gold for the care he took in stopping so Mama’s door was perfectly aligned with the sidewalk. My sidewalk.
“They’re here! They’re here!” I yelled, jumping up and down. Melissa jumped too as I ran to our steps to call Granddad, who was already easing out the door, whistling the Pink Panther theme song through his teeth. “Be careful of the sidewalk, Granddad,” I sang. “Don’t scuff it!”
He stopped dead still, a veined hand on his chest as he admired our artistry. “That’s so pretty, girls,” he exclaimed. “The prettiest thing I ever did see!”
Daddy was opening Mama’s car door with a mixture of grandiosity and awe. Mama rotated her legs slowly until her feet hit pavement, then rose with his help. The naturally smooth skin on her face was lined with fatigue, and she moved with the languidness of a hard day’s housework. In her arms lay a yellow-blanketed bundle.
“Look, Mama!” I burst. “We colored the sidewalk for you!”
My cry tumbled over the pavement between us, ricocheting off the oak trees in our front yard to careen around their breeze-ruffled leaves. The moment grew heavy with import as I sensed the jockeying of positions in our family now that I had a little brother. I needed Mama’s breathless response, her embracing of me and my desperate desire to please. Silently I pleaded to God that she would still want me.
Granddad had not yet moved from the porch. I was still on the bottom step, Melissa frozen on the grass. Daddy’s arms were steadying Mama; the yellow blanket was silent. I lifted my eyes to Mama’s face and the afternoon stood still.
Her expression was one of utter dismay. It reminded me of the time I spilled a bottle of vegetable oil on her newly cleaned kitchen floor, or when a neighbor’s dog left a steaming pile among her rosebushes. She stared at the sidewalk, then at Melissa and me. Daddy remained anxiously at her side, his face shuttered, awaiting her pronouncement. Time spun itself out and I held my breath.
“Well, William,” Mama uttered finally, “I guess we won’t spank her, since she was tryin’ to give me a present.”
Relief spilled from Daddy. “I think you did a right fine job, girls,” he ventured, smiling at me with reassurance.
“They worked a long time on it, Estelle.” Granddad’s voice behind me held more than a tinge of disapproval. Mama shot him a look.
Mama and I had volleyed our share of heated words in the past. But for once I had no retort. Mouth gaping, throat tight, I let my eyes fall to the sidewalk, sweeping them over its glory-filled length, searching its decorations for a clue to her reproach. Not to save my own right hand, not for the life of me, could I understand how she could view this heartfelt gift as a mess. How could she even think of spanking me; how could she not grasp that I had lovingly prepared this for her, that I’d worked hard on it, that I was so proud?
The magic of the afternoon melted away, and I shivered as a chilling realization washed over me, coating me with desolation. It was a knowledge that I’d somehow sensed from my earliest memories but had not quite grasped hold of, like a deep, festering splinter that finally works its way to the surface.
For all her Christian charity, my mama could not love me.
~ 1997 ~
chapter 5
After my lunch with Carrie, the rest of the day saw a whirlwind of meetings. Our campaign for Cellway Phone Systems was gearing up, and three assistants were reporting to me as they drafted and redrafted the script for a local TV commercial and copy for supporting newspaper ads. The Southern Bank account had just landed unexpectedly in our laps after four years of pursuit by Quentin Sammons. Southern Bank was redefining its stodgy image into one with which high-tech, younger entrepreneurs would identify. This involved devising a campaign from the ground up—new colors, new logo and slogan—to be incorporated into everything from brochures, radio spots, a series of television commercials, and full-page newspaper ads to the large signs on the sides of metro buses. Quentin Sammons would personally oversee the account but looked to me to lead the creative process and organize logistics.
On the other end of our new client spectrum was a young company that managed the personal finances of entrepreneurs who were bootstrapping their high-potential, high-risk business ventures while still needing to make mortgage payments. The principal of Partners Corporation, Gary Stelt, was driving my poor coworker Matt crazy, rejecting one creative idea after anoth
er. At 3:00 p.m. a rumpled-looking Matt stuck his head in my office and pleaded for help. He was meeting with Stelt—again—and getting nowhere. He was afraid he’d lose the account.
“Sure. Okay.” I pushed aside my scribbling for Southern Bank and followed him into the conference room, wishing I could as easily cast aside my tumultuous emotions over Mama’s phone call. In light of my father’s needs, I was amazed at my own selfishness and fear. How ironic that I, who had helped many a stroke victim while volunteering at the nursing home, would think twice about caring for my own daddy. Lunch with Carrie hadn’t helped one bit. I was still smarting over her response.
“Look, we want something catchy,” Gary Stelt declared after brief introductions. He was leaning back in his chair with a make-my-day expression, his suit coat unbuttoned to reveal a middle-aged paunch. His face was round, the corners of his mouth turned down. As he spoke, he hit pudgy knuckles together for emphasis.
I smiled indulgently. Catchy. How many times had I heard that term? What did our clients think, that Sammons prided itself on being dull? The catch was, catchy meant different things to different people. Over the years I had honed my observation skills until I was adroit at discerning what clients would and would not like. I listened to Gary Stelt’s lengthy explanation of how efficiently his company managed its clients’ money, putting them on a budget, paying bills, helping them save. “We take care of their personal business so they can concentrate on building their new companies,” he continued. “Without us a lot of them would go under.”
Unobtrusively I glanced at my watch. My Cellway meeting was scheduled for 3:45. For the next ten minutes I spoke softly but decisively to Gary Stelt, soothing his frustrated feathers, complimenting him on adhering to his vision for his company’s image, assuring him that Matt and I would come up with the right words to summarize the essence of his business—a catchy, memorable phrase. He was, for the moment, placated as Matt ushered him out. Feeling drained, I returned to my office to gather the Cellway files, my mind on Daddy.
Color the Sidewalk for Me Page 2