by Delia Parr
“Yes, thank you,” Ellie murmured, and nodded to her neighbors, George Pullman and Elliot Welsh, who lived with their families in adjoining houses across the street. After being assured by both men that they were just a call away if she or her mother needed help, and as the crowd began to disperse, Ellie offered her arm to her mother.
“Please tell me what happened,” she implored, and tried to prepare herself, because whatever it was, it was bound to be her fault, at least from her mother’s perspective. Still, she wanted to hear her mother’s side of it before she had to face the police officer, who was just coming around the side of her house carrying the two shopping bags she had dropped. “What happened?” she asked again.
Her mother’s eyes flashed with irritation. “When I woke up, my room was stuffy. I guess it’s just because the den is so small, and I’m used to a large bedroom. All I wanted to do was open the window for a little fresh air. Instead, I almost had a heart attack when the alarm started blasting. You could have warned me about the alarm on the windows, so all these poor people wouldn’t have wasted their time coming out here making such a big commotion,” she snapped as they crossed the street.
Ellie groaned. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I guess I just assumed you knew the windows were included in the security system that I showed you yesterday,” she apologized, although she was fairly certain she had specifically mentioned the windows. “Why didn’t you just tell the alarm company what happened when they called the house?”
Her mother tilted her chin up. “I tried, but I couldn’t remember the password, so they sent out the cavalry like I was some kind of an intruder who was stupid enough to answer the telephone, or simply an old woman who was too demented to understand what was happening to her.”
Ellie frowned. “The alarm company should have called me,” she said, reaching into her pocket and realizing it was empty. “I’m sorry. I was helping Charlene Butler in her store and accidentally left my cell phone there,” she admitted.
When she saw the officer approaching, she held up her hand, motioning for him to wait a moment, and helped her mother back into the house. “I’m sorry about forgetting my phone, and I’m really sorry about the trouble you had with the password. I thought changing it to Daddy’s name would make it easy for you to remember.”
“As if I could rely on your father to do anything in an emergency.” Her mother sniffed, slipped off her coat and handed it to Ellie. “I’m going to the kitchen to make a cup of that dreadful decaffeinated tea and try to forget this ever happened. You handle the police officer on your own. I’ve been embarrassed enough,” she murmured, and walked away.
Embarrassed herself by the criticism, Ellie laid her mother’s coat across the back of a chair and returned outside. Her morning went from bad to awful when she recognized the police officer: Bob Johnson, a former student. In his late thirties, he was a lot stockier now than he had been in tenth grade, but he had not been able to tame the cowlick that still stuck out from the top of his head.
“Thanks, Bob. I’m really sorry you had to come out here so unnecessarily this morning,” she said as he handed her both shopping bags.
“No problem. I brushed off as much dirt from the bags as I could.”
Ellie glanced at the bags for a moment and then smiled at him. “Good job. Thanks. Is there anything I have to do? Fill out a paper or a waiver or something?”
He grinned and patted his chest pocket. “All done. Got it right here. Spelled everything right, too,” he added with a wink.
“I should expect you would,” she replied. Spelling was never a problem for him. Turning in homework or projects on time had been his weakness. “How are Amy and the boys?”
He pulled out his cell phone, flipped it open and pulled up the picture gallery. “Amy’s always great, but you know that,” he said as he turned the cell phone so Ellie could see his wife’s picture.
“I sure do,” she murmured. Amy had graduated as valedictorian, earned her teaching degree in just three years, and now taught at a charter school in Philadelphia. She still wore her hair long and straight and looked nearly the same as she had in high school.
“The boys are catching up to me faster than I thought they would,” Bob told her proudly, and clicked the viewer to enlarge the picture of them.
Ellie’s eyes widened. “Those boys look like you put yourself through a copy machine three times!”
He laughed. “They’re all in middle school now. The twins are in seventh grade. John’s in sixth. They’ll be heading up to the high school in a couple of years, so get ready. Unless you’re planning to retire soon,” he said as he stored the cell phone away.
“Not that soon,” Ellie replied. In fact, she hoped she might spend the rest of her career as an administrator. It was a good possibility, as long as her current supervisor, Nate Pepperidge, finally retired this year, as rumors suggested he would. If she landed the job she had been dreaming about for most of her career, she would miss all three of Bob’s sons in the classroom, but she wasn’t ready to mention that possibility now.
Instead, she wrinkled her nose. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance the false alarm didn’t go over the police scanner, is there?”
“Not even. My guess is that the students who don’t find out about it over the weekend will know by the end of homeroom on Monday.”
“You’re right. They will.”
“And they’ll have a good time teasing you about it, too, unless what I’ve heard about you lately is wrong.”
It was her turn to grin. “If you heard that I’m still a tough, no-nonsense teacher, you heard correctly. Unfortunately, I had to relinquish my title as the Cranky Queen of Corridor Duty to Mrs. Josephs and Mrs. Snyder when I became head of the department.”
His eyes twinkled. “I heard those two are so tough you might have put yourself through a copy machine twice when you trained them, too.”
She laughed. “The Welleswood pipeline is alive and well, I see. Thanks again, Bob. I’ll make sure there won’t be another false alarm here.”
Back in the house, she locked the front door but didn’t rearm the security system. She hung her mother’s coat up in the closet and carried the two shopping bags into the kitchen. Almost immediately, her tension melted away. She had repainted the kitchen last year, and the warm yellow walls made her feel as though she had her very own piece of the sun inside her home.
Her mother looked up for a moment from her seat at the round oak table, and used the palm of her hand to smooth the yellow-and-blue striped place mat under her mug of tea. “I never did understand the reason some people prefer these place mats. A properly ironed tablecloth looks so much nicer.”
“Maybe it’s because washing and ironing tablecloths takes too much work. Besides, a tablecloth would cover the top of the table, and the grain is really pretty,” she pointed out, admiring the round table she had bought shortly after Joe died because she could not bear to eat a meal, especially breakfast, longing for him to be sitting at the head of the table.
“That may be true,” her mother countered, “but you’ll never be able to convince me that a home is ever as well cared for when a woman spends more time working outside of it than inside.” She paused to take a sip of her tea. “Women seem to justify taking all sorts of shortcuts these days, and that’s only one reason the divorce rate is so high.”
Rather than provoke an argument by defending women who worked, Ellie pulled the gift basket from the shopping bag and set it on the table. “This is for you from Charlene Butler,” she said, and tugged the lavender bow into place. After sliding the basket across the table to her mother, she put her own shopping bag on the table and sat down. “She sends her get-well wishes, too.”
Eyes wide, her mother briefly fumbled with the bow before pulling the cellophane free. The moment she lifted out the tan cotton-tailed bunny that stood some twelve inches high, she brought the stuffed animal to her shoulder. “What a soft little sweetie,” she murmured, strokin
g the fur with her fingers as if trying to calm a fussy baby. “I’m not going to be able to eat anything from Sweet Stuff. Not on my new diet. But this little bunny is just too dear.”
Ellie removed the rest of the cellophane from her mother’s basket. “Everything in here is quite suitable for your diet. Charlene’s been stocking healthy items, including sugar-free candy, for a while now,” she said, and then went on to share the news she had gotten about Miss Gibbs, as well as Charlene’s temporary move to Welleswood to care for her aunt.
Her mother let out a sigh and tilted her head toward the bunny. “Poor Dorothy. I’d heard something about her being ill. She was about four years behind me in school, but I’ve known her for a good seventy-five years. What a sad life she’s had.”
“What makes you think her life has been sad?” Ellie asked.
“Back in our day, very few women chose to remain spinsters, but that’s what Dorothy did. She never married and never had children. And she had her chances, too.”
“Maybe she never met the right man,” Ellie suggested, defending the elderly woman, since she was not here to defend herself.
“Maybe she was too fussy,” her mother responded.
Ellie changed the subject to avoid an argument. “I’ll let you sort through the goodies Charlene put into the basket for you while I unpack the other bag,” she said.
Her mother tugged Ellie’s bag down far enough to peek inside, and rolled her eyes. “Really, Ellie, one of these days you’re going to regret fueling that sweet tooth of yours.”
“If I haven’t regretted it for sixty years, I think I might be safe,” Ellie said, sliding the bag closer.
“That’s what I thought when the doctor told me fifteen years ago to stop eating the way I did. Just look where that’s put me.” Her mother glanced around the room, frowning, as if being in Ellie’s home was the worst place she could be.
Ellie swallowed hard, blinked back tears and left the kitchen to stash away her candy and to tuck this new hurt next to all the old ones before she walked back to Sweet Stuff to get her cell phone.
Chapter Eight
Charlene rose early again on Sunday to get a head start on the day. She showered quickly, as quietly as she could, and decided blow-drying her hair would be too noisy. Instead, she towel-dried her hair and pulled it back into a traditional ponytail, the way she had worn it since opening her store.
En route to the kitchen, in what was becoming a daily ritual, she stopped in the living room, picked yesterday’s newspaper up off the floor and refolded it. She stuck it into the old mahogany magazine rack Aunt Dorothy used for her paper recyclables and remembered the days when she used to pick up after her little ones. Then, like now, walkways throughout the house had to be kept clear to minimize the risk of tripping and falling.
She continued through to the dining room, stopping in front of the small breakfront to retrieve the glass loaf pan that held all her aunt’s medications, with the exception of the insulin that needed to be refrigerated. In the same way she had kept all medications out of her children’s reach, Charlene had stored these pills out of sight to prevent her aunt from taking an accidental overdose.
She carried the pan with her into the kitchen. Fifteen minutes later, she had her aunt’s morning pills organized in a little glass dish at her place at the table, and her lunchtime and dinner dosages labeled and stored in plastic baggies. Charlene made a mental note to stop at the drugstore tomorrow to look at by-the-week pill organizers, although Aunt Dorothy had already insisted she had no need for one.
Aunt Dorothy’s needs also required regular mealtimes, which meant Charlene could not eat on the run anymore. The meals had to be nutritious, well-balanced and consistent with the guidelines for her aunt’s multiple medical problems. Hence, no more grabbing a handful of chocolates for herself and offering them to her aunt for dinner, too.
Surrounded by the hushed silence of early morning, broken only by the song of the birds outside, Charlene remembered how much she had enjoyed the solitude of the early morning when her children were little. As she peeled and diced vegetables for chicken stew in the Crock-Pot, she was convinced that in many ways, living with a sick, elderly person was not a whole lot different from living with a couple of toddlers.
There were great differences, though, she realized. A playpen could keep little ones from danger, but there was nothing to ensure a sick eighty-one-year-old woman would be safe if left unattended. And putting a toddler down for a nap was one thing; convincing a woman who had been independent and self-supporting for decades that she needed to rest in the middle of the day was quite another.
After living with her aunt for only two days, Charlene had learned that there was a thin line separating the need to respect an elderly adult’s autonomy and the need to recognize when that adult needed to be told what to do and compelled to do it, if necessary.
To complicate matters, Aunt Dorothy had seemed to change since her stay in the hospital. Although she still had her marvelous sense of humor and still liked to flirt with men of any age, she seemed very content to have Charlene take care of her now, easily accepting dependency as she prepared to make the transition from this life to the next. Nonetheless, Charlene was determined to help her aunt make the most of what time she had left.
She placed the chicken in the Crock-Pot on top of the vegetables, added water, a dash of herbs and set the lid on top. Satisfied she had only to fix dumplings later this afternoon to complete the meal, she plugged in the Crock-Pot and turned the dial to Slow Cook.
She glanced at the red plastic clock over the stove and smiled. It was only seven-fifteen. She had plenty of time to tackle the preparations for the other two meals of the day before Ellie Waters picked her up for church at nine-thirty. By concentrating on her work, Charlene kept herself from wondering why Daniel had not called her—or if he had even missed her at all this weekend. She kept her stomach from growling with a mug of hot chocolate, without the whipped cream or chocolate shavings she had added when she had been with Ellie yesterday.
Within half an hour, she had a bowl of tuna salad with low-fat dressing and sugar-free, fat-free butterscotch pudding in the refrigerator, ready for lunch. She had just opened a package of English muffins when she heard the shuffle of her aunt’s slippered footsteps. She looked up and smiled. “Good morning. You’re up early today.”
Aunt Dorothy waved in response. “Smells good! Chicken stew?” she asked as she slowly made her way to her seat at the chrome table. Her red plaid flannel robe was too big, making her look small and fragile, but her color was good, her curls were brushed and tamed, her eyes twinkled a bit and she was wearing perfume again.
“With dumplings,” Charlene replied.
“My favorite!”
“Mine, too,” Charlene said, but she didn’t add that it was Daniel’s favorite as well. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen those red elephant earrings before, but I like them,” she offered, changing the focus of her thoughts.
Aunt Dorothy blushed and tapped one of the dangling elephants with her fingertips. “I got these in 1965 at the World’s Fair in New York.”
Charlene chuckled as she carried the box with the glucose machine and testing strips over to her aunt. “You remember that?”
“Actually, I remember a whole lot more than that,” she replied as she opened the box and started to lay out everything to test her blood sugar level. “Billy Martin, bless his soul, bought the earrings for me, and they weren’t cheap, neither. They cost sixteen dollars, which was a respectable amount of money in those days. Not that I’d let a pair of earrings sway me, even ones as pretty as these.”
She stopped talking to struggle with the small container of testing strips, and eventually got one out and laid it on the table.
“Sway you how?” Charlene asked, putting a cup of instant decaffeinated coffee into the microwave. She had found the appliance in its original box in the spare bedroom, just as she’d found the Crock-Pot.
Aunt
Dorothy pricked her finger, caught a drop of blood with the test strip and slid it into the machine. “Billy and I had been keeping company for a couple of months by then.” She smiled and shook her head. “Silly man. Like most of the other men I kept company with over the years, he wanted something he couldn’t have and thought he could tempt me to give it to him.”
“Aunt Dorothy!” Charlene clapped her hand to her mouth, shocked that her aunt would discuss such an intimate detail so openly.
“Don’t be a prude, Charlene, and don’t jump to conclusions. I’m from a whole different generation than the foolish young women today who break the Commandments, sleep with men and then act surprised when they move on to another fool. God didn’t create women so they could have sex outside of marriage, and a man doesn’t buy the cow if he gets the milk for free,” she quipped, and paused to read the green numbers on the screen in front of her. “Write down one-eighty-seven in that book for me, will you please?”
Charlene recorded the number in the appropriate slot. Although it was a bit high, it was still within an acceptable range. “We need your weight, too,” she reminded her aunt. She reached into a bottom cabinet and pulled out the new scale she had bought at the pharmacy. She set it on the floor near her aunt’s chair, hoping her weight was also stable. Because her aunt’s heart was not pumping blood properly, any sudden weight gain would be a warning that fluids were accumulating in her body, which could lead to a whole host of problems, including pneumonia.
Aunt Dorothy stood up and held on to Charlene’s arm as she stepped on the scale. “One hundred and one, just like yesterday. I do like having a scale that just flashes the number, especially digits so large,” she said with a grin.
Charlene helped her to sit back down before storing the scale away again. “So let me see if I have the story right. Billy Martin bought you earrings because he thought you’d sleep with him?”