by Janette Oke
“I never fed Sherman,” Bethan protested.
“Well,” Louise inspected the two girls. “Neither of you got all that wet. Mind the puddles and keep your feet dry. And be home in half an hour.”
“No dawdling,” Bethan agreed. “I already promised my mother.”
“All right.” Jodie’s mother managed a smile. “Now I really must be off. I can already feel a chill setting in.”
“Just put them on the bed there, that’s a dear.”
With a relieved sigh, Jodie set the packages on the foot of her parents’ big four-poster bed. Even though Easter was still two weeks away, already the days were sweltering. All of March had been unseasonably hot, especially coming as it had after such a cold winter. Up and down Main Street, Jodie and her mother had passed clusters of farmers and city merchants arguing over whether or not to go ahead and plant early, possibly risking it all to a late freeze. Being raised in a country town, Jodie did not need to be told that the earliest harvesters reaped the greatest profits.
Although Jodie really did not much care what she wore, shopping for clothes with her mother was not a chore but an adventure. Louise Harland was known and appreciated by all the store clerks in Harmony. Which meant that while her mother received the best possible service, Jodie was usually treated to a candy or sometimes even a soda.
Her mother never objected to these little gifts, nor did she tell Jodie to watch what she ate so it didn’t spoil her appetite, like Bethan’s mother did when the four went out together. Louise Harland would often chuckle at Moira and say, “Leave the child alone, Moira. We’re indulging ourselves; why shouldn’t they?” Moira would subside after that, but Jodie could tell that for Bethan a little of the joy was already taken from the treat. Jodie was very glad she had a mother who understood how to have a good time.
Jodie did not need to be told what to do after putting the purchases on the bed. It was part of their little shopping ritual. She began laying out all the various items. Her mother was going to be bridesmaid for a longtime friend whose first husband had died several years back, and who was now getting married again. Louise Harland had said it was pure silliness, a woman of her age playing bridesmaid—or was it bridesmatron—and marching down the aisle. But Jodie knew her mother was so excited she could hardly contain herself.
Her mother had insisted that they have matching dresses, since Jodie was to be the flower girl in the wedding. They were a deeper shade of the same color as the bridal gown, which Louise had repeatedly explained was not under any circumstances going to be white. Jodie had heard several people say it was only Louise’s good sense which was keeping the entire proceedings from being an utter shambles. She did not understand what they meant but was pleased to hear her mother being praised.
The dresses had come from Landon’s, which everyone said had goods as fine as any to be found in Raleigh. In spite of Jodie’s lack of interest in clothes, she did think they were beautiful. And Louise’s practical nature planned that they would do double-duty as Easter dresses. They were the loveliest shade of pink, with pale gray trim and mother-of-pearl buttons. Even though they had brought the dresses home once before to try them with shoes and hats and 55 handbags, and had worn them through a half-dozen fittings, this was different. The dresses were theirs now.
Jodie smoothed a crease, wondering if she would look as grown up as she felt, wearing the same dress as her mother. She went to the closet to fetch the shoes and hats and lay them alongside. She turned, smiling, to her mother for approval on her accomplishment, but what she saw made her heart skip a beat. “What’s wrong, Momma?”
“Just a little headache.” Louise rubbed her temples with two middle fingers. Her eyes were closed so tightly that lines ran all the way across her forehead. “I must have tired myself out more than I thought.” She slowly eased herself onto the nearest chair.
Jodie felt a faint cold fear tug at her chest. Her mother’s complexion had suddenly gone pale. “Do you want me to get your medicine?”
“Thank you, dear. Maybe that would be a good idea.” Louise tried for a smile, but the fact that she could not manage to open her eyes spoiled the effect. “Parker is always saying my shopping will be the death of me. Maybe he’s right after all.”
“Don’t even joke like that,” Jodie tossed over her shoulder as she raced into the bathroom, climbed on the little stool, and opened the heavy mirrored door. The brown bottle with the oddly shaped glass stopper was there on the top shelf. Jodie knew the label from memory, as she did many of the medicines in her father’s store. It read, “Doctor Pitt’s Laudanum Mixture and Headache Relief.” Beside it was a clear flask which read, “Witch Hazel Liniment.” Her mother sometimes took a half-spoonful of the liniment in juice, saying it did not confuse her head quite as much as the other. Jodie pulled down both bottles and scurried back. “Which do you want, Momma?”
“I think perhaps I will have to…” The pinched lines across her forehead suddenly reached out to etch themselves down around her eyes and her mouth. Louise stiffened up in a spasm of pain. “Oh, dear Lord, help me.”
“Momma!” Jodie tried to reach for her mother with both hands full and dropped the laudanum bottle on the hardwood floor. It broke, releasing a treacly sweet odor. Jodie did not even notice. She managed to set the other bottle down as her mother eased forward and into her arms. “What’s the matter, Momma?”
“Help me to the bed.” Louise’s voice had suddenly gone faint. She tried to rise but could not manage it. “Help me, child.”
“I’m trying.” The extra weight threatened to buckle Jodie’s legs as her mother gripped her shoulders and pulled herself upright, only to bend over so far she was draped across Jodie’s shoulders. Louise’s ribcage pressed hard upon Jodie’s head. She could hear her mother’s labored breathing and the little gasping moans she gave with each faltering step.
Jodie managed to half carry, half drag her mother to the bed. But once there, Louise seemed to lose the ability to move any farther on her own. Jodie tried to settle her on the high-framed bed, but Louise nearly slid to the floor. Again the girl’s legs trembled with the strain of trying to keep her mother upright. Jodie turned her head toward the open window and screamed with all her might, “Help me, someone, please help!”
The scream seemed to bring Louise back from the verge of unconsciousness. With another low-pitched groan she found the strength to ease up and onto the bed. She fell back, the new dresses crumpling beneath her, and wrapped both hands around her temples. Jodie lifted her mother’s legs one at a time to the bed, pulling off her shoes. She whimpered as she looked at the utterly inert form before her on the bed. Then she raced for the stairs, screaming for her father.
“Bethan Keane! You’ll be coming in here this instant if you know what’s good for you!”
Hastily, Bethan set aside the pail holding the chicken feed and scampered for the back porch. When her mother’s voice took on the sharp Welsh lilt it was time to fly. “What’s the matter?”
“Just you look at the sight of you. How on earth do you ever expect to grow into a proper young lady, mussed up as you are?”
“But, Momma, I was out doing the chores and you always say—”
“Never you mind what I’m always saying and not saying. Get yourself upstairs and have a good wash, behind the ears and your neck as well, mind. And put on your good Sunday dress.”
Bethan hesitated. “But it’s only Tuesday.”
“Up the stairs with you, before I give you something to send you on your way.”
Bethan did as she was told. There was no place for questions when her mother was in such a state. Bethan could not help but feel a smidgen of relief, though, as she raced for her room. At least Moira was not angry with her. She could tell from years of hearing her mother cover her true feelings by striking out at whoever was handy. But Bethan had no idea what had set her mother off this time.
She was back downstairs in record time. “I’m ready, Momma.”
“Let’s be having a look at you, then.” Moira turned from the stove, where three pots were sending up great wafts of fragrant steam. “Did you wash like I told you?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Bethan glanced at the simmering pots. “Are we having company?”
“That food’s not for us.” Moira straightened Bethan’s fine lace collar she had crocheted herself, pulled her sleeves down straight, ran one hand through her daughter’s hair. “You’re sprouting up faster than summer corn. This time next year I’ll not be looking down to you any longer.”
There was a strangeness to her mother’s tone now, an urgency which caught at Bethan’s own heart. “Tell me what’s the matter— please, Momma.”
“Your friend needs you,” Moira finally replied simply, sadness deepening her gaze.
“Jodie? Something’s happened to Jodie?”
“Shush now, and listen good. It’s her mother that’s ailing, and the daughter who’s needing. You’re young still, but the dear Lord has chosen this time for you to learn what it really means to be a friend.” The hand traced across her forehead once more. “Don’t speak unless she asks you to, mind. Jodie won’t be wanting your words just now. She’ll be needing your strength.”
“But what—”
Two hands spun her about. “Go and be a friend. And if it’s answers you’re needing, or help, or strength of your own, reach out to the One who’s always there.”
The first thing Bethan saw when she hurried up the walk to Jodie’s house was Parker Harland, hand on old Doc Franklin’s arm. “Tell me it’s not the influenza, John.”
“Let’s hope not,” he hedged, turning to go down the porch steps. “But I won’t lie to you, Parker. I don’t like the looks of it. Not one bit.”
Age and hardship and observing life’s pain and sickness over the years had turned Doc Franklin into all corners and hollows. He had birthed most of the town, and he treated them with the gruffness of a favorite grandfather, rarely surprised by what they managed to get themselves into. He had the experience and ability to turn the worst of wounds into a scratch needing little more than bed rest and a bandage. Ailments were scoffed at, fevers something to be cowed with a severe lecture and aspirin. There were few within the city who did not quake before the stern old man. To have John Franklin refuse to make light of Louise’s ailment turned Bethan’s stomach to ice.
Doc Franklin ineffectively smoothed the unkempt thatch of graying hair with his free hand. “It’s a right corker,” he mused to himself, then turned back to ask Jodie’s father, “Has Louise been pushing herself overhard?”
“No harder than usual.” Parker Harland’s eyes held the doctor as firmly as the hand on his arm. “But she got caught in the storm the other day. Had a bad chill by the time she got home. I put her to bed with a toddy and a hot water bottle.”
“A chill, did you say?” For some reason the news turned old Doc Franklin even more grave. “Well, we’ll know soon enough.” He turned again to the steps. “Keep the child away from her, Parker.
And best you not spend any more time in the room than need be.
Certainly not more than every hour or so.”
“Why not?” Parker Harland refused to let the doctor go. “It’s just a bad chill, maybe a chest cold. Isn’t that right?”
Doc Franklin paused to look again at Jodie’s father. “We’ve been friends and colleagues too long for lies to come between us now. What we’ve got in there is a lady suffering from the worst headache of her life, along with a gradually rising fever, a blistering sore throat, and severe nausea. Not to mention she can’t remain in one position for more than ten seconds at a time.” Doc Franklin stared deep into the eyes of Harmony’s only pharmacist and asked quietly, “Now does that sound like a chill to you?”
Parker Harland dropped the doctor’s sleeve as if his hand was suddenly unable to keep a grip. His mouth tried to work, but no sound came out.
Doc Franklin reached over and clasped his friend’s shoulder. “Let me go deliver this baby, then I’ll come back and see how she’s holding.” He shambled down the stairs and down the sidewalk. As he passed Bethan, his frosty green eyes focused upon her. He gave a single nod, patted her head and said, “You’re a good friend, young Miss Keane. And your mother is an angel in disguise. Tell her I said so.” Then he was gone.
Bethan forced leadened legs to carry her up the steps. She stopped in front of Jodie’s father and tried to think of something to say. But no words came. There was the sound of the gate opening; she glanced at two neighbors coming up the walk. She turned and entered the house. Maybe an adult would be able to find words for the stricken man.
Bethan passed through the downstairs, calling Jodie’s name as she entered each room. Then she spotted her friend at the top of the stairs. Jodie was scrunched up smaller than Bethan thought possible. Knees up to her chin, her arms wrapped about her stiffly, she was holding her legs and her body in a tight ball. Her eyes remained fastened on the closed door to her parents’ bedroom.
Softly Bethan climbed the stairs, eased herself down, waited a long moment, then reached over and put one arm around Jodie’s shoulders. Sounds drifted up from downstairs, deeper voices and adult-sounding words, but it was as though they came from another world.
“They won’t let me go in to her,” Jodie finally whispered. “I don’t understand. I was the one who got her into bed. Why can’t I be with her now? What if she needs me?”
Bethan did not know what to say, so she said nothing. She just sat there, holding her friend, sharing her heartache.
There was a long silence between them, then Jodie turned to face her friend. In a voice soft but filled with anguish, she said, “I don’t remember how to pray.”
“Of course you do,” Bethan replied softly.
Jodie gave her head a tiny shake, barely a shiver. “I’ve tried and I’ve tried. But I can’t find any words inside me.”
Bethan reached out her other hand, took both of Jodie’s. They felt like ice. “Then I’ll say the words for you,” she whispered.
FIVE
JODIE’S WORLD BECAME ANCHORED on Bethan, the only reality that kept her from flying apart in a million tiny pieces. She knew her friend would be there just after dawn, and stay with her through each day of endless sameness.
Jodie was not allowed in the sickroom, which was an agony beyond belief. She followed the course of the illness through Doc Franklin’s terse reports. She came to know two more new words, but this time she would have given her very life itself never to have heard them.
Bulbar poliomyelitis.
When the afternoon sun slanted around to the back of the house, Jodie and Bethan climbed onto the second-story gable, settled themselves into the angle of the roof, and gazed in through the white veil curtains. The soft light bathed her mother’s bed and turned the waxed oak floor into a golden pond, upon which Louise drifted in and out of dreams. With each passing day her eyes seemed to grow larger. And darker. As though pain and sorrow were pooling in her gaze, along with her helplessness and her awareness of what was soon to come.
Louise seldom spoke. Her breathing was harsh and labored. Whenever she was awake and alert, she would turn her head and simply lie there, watching her daughter. It hurt Jodie’s heart to hear her mother struggle to breathe. But she would not leave her perch until the sun’s shadows lengthened, and her mother’s wan face was no longer visible. Bethan stayed with her throughout each long vigil, silent and still.
Her father, distraught, had never felt so helpless. “All my life I’ve spent mixing potions and helping people,” he repeated over and over to each new visitor, often more than once. “Then what happens, my own wife gets ill and I can’t do a thing for her. Not a thing! I feel like my whole life has been a waste!”
By the third day, Doc Franklin no longer had the heart to keep Parker away from his wife. Instead, he quarantined off the upstairs. Moira set up a camp bed for Jodie downstairs in the back parlor and came over twice a day to take a tray to the to
p of the steps, then return to stand over Jodie and make sure she ate her own food.
The evening of the ninth day Jodie did not come down from her perch at all. In the way of country folk, the neighbors also knew it was time, and gathered outside on the front lawn. The pastor was among them. Jodie sat on the gabled porch eaves, not aware she was holding Bethan’s hand, much less squeezing it so hard the fingertips were turning blue. She watched through the curtains as Doc Franklin entered the sickroom and set the lantern down by the bedside. Jodie looked at her mother lying there. It truly was her mother, though her face was changed beyond all recognition. Illness had reshaped her mother in just nine short days. No, not short. Jodie felt that the rest of her life would not be as long as those nine days.
Doc Franklin fed Louise another spoonful of medicine, then took her pulse. He listened to her chest, then straightened with a long, low sigh. Parker watched his movements in numbed silence.
“The Lord be with you, Louise Harland,” the doctor said quietly and shuffled from the room.
Louise accepted a drink from her husband, then turned toward the open window. In a hoarse whisper, she called, “Jodie?”
It took the girl a moment to find her own voice. “I’m here, Momma.”
“You are my heart’s delight,” her mother said, the laboring breath making every word an effort. “My love will always be with you. Always.”
Jodie forced her voice to make the words. “I love you too, Momma.”
Her mother was silent for a long while. When she spoke again, her voice was clearer and calmer than it had been in days. “I’m tired now, Parker. I have to sleep.”
The matter-of-fact tone broke him to pieces. “Don’t go, Louise. I beg you.”
“I must.” Simple, direct, clear. “It is time.”