“My sister and her late husband built this house over sixty years ago. He was an architect.” She speaks with apology.
“I like modern.”
“I don’t necessarily prefer it. But there’s no accounting for taste, is there? Liza’s always been the artistic type, or at least she found herself in that colorful kind of company. Even after Alva passed away, which was years and years ago, poor thing, she still found herself at all the gallery openings and exhibits and such.” She leans forward. “My sister’s very active, very bold. Of course she’s five years younger than I am, which might explain it.”
As if that matters by the time you’ve reached this age. This lady is so adorable.
“How’s that arm? Let me take a look at it now that the lighting’s better.”
She lifts my arm and presses spots here and there, asks me all the right questions. I try not to grimace.
“Well, it isn’t broken.”
“Are you a nurse?”
“Doctor.”
“Sorry to assume. My husband’s a doctor.”
“Cut my medical teeth in the Korean War.” She turns. “Liza, honey! Oh, I don’t know where she is. But let me run and get an old sheet for your arm. I’ll make up a quick sling, and then would you like something to drink? And you’ll need the phone.”
“I’m coming, Anna!” an elderly voice calls from somewhere down the hallway. “I’ll be there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail!”
“I’d love something to drink. Maybe a cup of tea?”
“Surely. And the phone is right over there.” She points to a bonecolored plastic phone attached to the wall. “I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
I still have to go to the bathroom, but I’d better call Jace. I lift up the receiver and dial Jace’s cell.
“Jace, it’s me.”
“Hey, babe,” he whispers. “Will and I decided to go to the movies. I kept trying to call you on your cell phone but wasn’t getting an answer.”
“You’re not going to believe this.” I tell him about the kangaroo.
“I’ll be right there.”
“Whenever you get here is fine. Finish the movie. I’m at someone’s house. I probably should have called the Three As, but I saw a light in the woods and walked here. The lady who lives here is a doctor. She said my arm isn’t broken, and she’s off to get an old sheet for a sling.”
“I’ll come pick you up.”
“Take your time, Jace, really. I’m fine. She’s making me a cup of tea, and I just need to sit for a minute. Can I give you a call as soon as I collect myself?”
“Absolutely. We’ll be on our way. Did you hit your head?”
“Yeah. It doesn’t hurt that much though. I need to wash up. I’ve got cake all over me.”
“Well, it sounds like you’re in good hands, but I don’t like the idea of that head, Hezz. Listen, we’ll be there in about forty minutes. We’re at the Senator. Some indie film Will wanted to see.”
“Okay.”
Gosh, I feel more frayed than a forty-year-old coat!
“What happened to the truck? Not that it really matters, but I thought I’d ask.”
“Well, there’s cake all over the interior.”
“That’s all right. They’ll be able to clean it up.”
“I hate that truck, Jace.”
“We’ll talk about that later.”
“I don’t know why I had to have it. It looked as big and stupid there in that ditch as it looked shiny and promising in the showroom. We only have one kid.”
“We’ll be there as quick as we can.”
“Do I sound that bad?”
“Just a little out of your head. Let me talk to the doctor.”
“Anna!”
She hurries in. “Yes, dear.”
I hand over the phone. “My husband wants to talk to you.”
“Of course.” She holds the phone up to her ear as if both are made of glass, the way old folks tend to do. For half a minute they speak in the medical jargon I’ve learned to tune out, then talk about getting the car towed, and apparently I’m all taken care of. She hands me the receiver and zips back down the hallway.
Jace says, “Good, hon. Sounds like you’re in good hands. Anna told me where you all are. I’ll call the wrecker to meet me.”
“All right.”
We hang up and I head into the powder room, thankfully, right by the phone.
* * *
Liza, I assume, clips into the kitchen where I stand, cake still overlaying my person. “So you’re Anna’s patient.”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“Now a cup of tea is what you need. And don’t ask for coffee. I ran out this morning and forgot to stop at the store.”
“Okay.”
“Right, then. First the kettle, and you need to go sit in the den there. The couch on the right is truthfully the most comfortable. Feel free to put your feet up on the coffee table. I’m sure the Eameses wouldn’t mind.”
The Eameses?
“Go on. Tea will be ready in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
I haul my wounded arm into the den. My goodness, what a gal! As spicy as her sister is sweet, she exudes that artsy confidence of, say, a gallery owner or a museum curator. Her hair, a shining silver, is pulled back into a tight, chic bun at the nape of her neck. I’ll bet she has worn it like that for years. And her skirt, black and slender, hugs her sapling frame. Only the flat silver house shoes attest to her age.
So she married her an architect. Seems fitting.
I can’t sit! I’ll ruin the couch with this cake.
Purposeful clankings sound from the kitchen as Anna returns holding a strip of snowy sheet with pink rosebuds scattered about its folds. “Let’s get that arm stabilized. And I’m sure you could use some painkiller. I’ll get you a glass of water too. Wait, you might like to clean up before I put this on. How did you get all that dirt all over you?”
“It’s cake.”
“Oh my, yes. I forgot already.” The aquamarine eyes sink deeper in the smiling flesh. “It seems when I turned ninety it all started going downhill. Liza! Could you get a pair of Maria’s lounge pants? And a shirt? This woman has cake all over her!”
“That’s not dirt?”
“Apparently not.”
“It’s devil’s food!” I yell.
“What’s your name, honey?” Anna asks.
“Heather Curridge.”
“I’m Anna, and that’s my sister, Liza, in there. Let me show you to the bathroom, where you can take a shower. Your husband is delightful.”
“Who’s Maria?”
“Our great-niece who comes to visit occasionally.” She turns the faucet inside a built-in tile shower and then faces me with an impish smile. “She only comes around because Liza’s loaded!”
So a bit of cayenne mixes with that sugar.
“The water will be warm in a jiffy. Yell if you need me.”
* * *
Liza sets a cup of tea on the kitchen table. “Right, then. Here you go. You must feel much improved sans all that cake.”
“Definitely.”
Anna bustles in. “The guest room is ready. My, this is a bit of excitement for us two biddies, isn’t it, Liza?”
“Speak for yourself. I refuse to be a biddy.”
Their eyes meet. Sisters.
Liza picks up my teacup. “Let’s take this to the guest room and you can rest there in comfort until your husband comes. You’ve been through enough already without having to listen to our inane conversation.”
“Speak for yourself, Liza. I refuse to be inane.” Anna scrunches up her nose.
Maria’s sweatpants are as soft and broken in as crushed rose petals, and as Anna ushers me into the velvety beige guest room, the down counterpane pulled down, exposing cocoa sheets, nothing but this arm impedes a comfortable rest. I won’t complain about the Percocet either.
“Just rest.”
I love being taken care of like this. I feel cozy, a scuffed fairy-tale princess finding refuge at a hidden cottage.
“Thanks for taking me in.”
“Oh, honey, it’s a pleasure. Would you like me to turn off the light?”
“No thanks. I’ll drink my tea and maybe just read.” I pick up a book on the nightstand.
She smirks. “That one will put anybody to sleep. But it’s one of my favorites.”
And she shuts the door quietly. Pacificism and Biblical Non-Resistance. Also on the nightstand, Cyrus Pringle’s Diary.
What? She’s right. This looks drier than my skin in February.
And I’m tired.
SIXTEEN
Upon opening my eyes, I know the morning settled in awhile ago. What happened to Jace? The warmed air has burned away the night. The sunlight, welcomed by the wall of windows, gilds the room. Everyone should have a wall of windows, I’ve decided lying here.
Peace has come upon this place, and I’d love to know why. And how. And can I take some home with me?
I roll onto my side to sit up. Pain darts through my arm. “Ow!” I can’t help but cry out.
A quick bunny knock vibrates the flat door. “Heather, honey, are you all right?” Anna.
“I just forgot about my arm and rolled onto it. Come on in!”
She enters without hesitation. “Let me look.”
“Actually, it feels a lot better than it did last night.” I lift it up by the shoulder, bend it at the elbow, then the wrist. “It’s stiff, but that’s all.”
“You’ll still want to keep it in that sling today, and an X-ray would be a good idea.” She sits down on the bed. “So your husband came by last night. I told him just to meet the wrecker and check on you while you slept. We both agreed it was best to let you go on sleeping. Jace. Is that his real name?”
“Yes.”
“I like it. Very different. Very ‘cool,’ as the younger set would say.”
I smile at her. She’s dressed in a pair of khaki serge pants and a short-sleeve pullover top in heather gray. Small pearl drops weigh down her delicate earlobes.
“He’s a good guy.”
“Yes. Used to work on a hospital ship, he said. I have a thing for men who care about others.”
“Did you have glasses on last night, Anna?” Mildly hip rimless spectacles rest on the bridge of her nose.
“I still had my contacts in.”
It’s all I can do not to giggle. She’s so old, so cute. And yet she’s a doctor. Talk about un-cliché! Nothing like us Curridges.
She pats my leg. “I’m going to bring you in a nice pot of tea and a roll. Liza’s helping me get ready for a meeting for clearness out in the den, so if you want to stay in here and rest, that’s fine. Jace called early and said he’d be by, but I told him you were still asleep. He’ll be here around one because of Will’s swim meet, which he was going to ‘blow off,’ as they say, but I told him to go on ahead.” She stands to her feet. “So you still have a few hours to rest.”
“What’s a meeting for clearness, Anna?”
“Oh, I belong to the Society of Friends. Quakers. A meeting for clearness is when an individual has a decision to make and seeks counsel from his fellow Friends. In this case, it’s Adam, who’s wondering which college he should attend this fall. He’s been accepted to two, but he just can’t seem to make up his mind. Nice young man.”
“Is Liza a Quaker?”
“Not really.” She laughs. “Depends on what day you ask. Liza could never be a wholehearted anything when it comes to organized religion. She takes Christ by the hand and hits the ground running each day. She dabbles in all sorts of denominations and ways to serve, and she certainly wouldn’t get herself arrested for peace or anything like that, but she does the work of the cross.”
“And you’d get arrested?” I couldn’t imagine this sweet old lady being taken away in handcuffs.
“I’ve been arrested more times than I can count!” She waves a hand. “I know! Surely it’s the last thing you’d expect. Why don’t you sit outside? I’ll bring your tea there and you can look at the water. I so love looking at the water.”
I throw back the covers and pad to the adjoining bathroom. Over a simple dresser hangs a saying in calligraphy.
The Friends Peace Testimony
“We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end or under any pretence whatsoever. And this is our testimony to the whole world.”
From “A Declaration to Charles II,” 1660
So she really believes all this? Wow. I don’t know anybody, not one single person, who would get arrested for their beliefs, including me. I’ve never even written my legislators.
On the dresser, my clothes are laundered and folded.
* * *
Five minutes later I’m sitting out on the slate veranda that anchors the back of the house and extends around to the side I didn’t see last night. I believe there’s a pool around there because I smell chlorine, and a wringing wet Oatmeal just came running from that direction. A wooden deck peeks from behind the other side of the house.
The dog plops down next to me on the warmed stone as I sip my tea in the morning sunlight. The lake lies placid this morning, so deep, so calm and mysterious.
And so devoid of underwater church bells.
I’m still disappointed.
Ah, but what perfect tea, rounded and smooth with a large dollop of honey and a smidgen of milk that removes any rough edges whatsoever, if there were any to begin with, which I doubt. These women seem to hide all the secrets of life inside deep magical pockets that hold things much too large for their dimensions. Living ancient like this never appealed to me, but if I resemble these sisters, may my trunk grow thick and my roots grow deep.
The open sliders usher the morning breeze into the den; screen doors banish the bugs. The group speaks every so often, asking questions, I presume. Mostly they sit in silence. I suppose they are praying. I heard someone mutter something about discerning the will of God and the leading of the Spirit.
“I only desire the will of God. But I can’t discern God’s from mine.” The young man’s voice sounds so earnest. And he begins to summarize before the small group of what, I surmise, are very trusted people who’ve invested in him his entire life.
I shouldn’t be listening.
Cradling my arm, I heft myself off the lounger and head down the steps toward the lake. Oatmeal follows me, prancing in the grass like a dancing wet mop.
The group stops speaking as I pass by. They appear normal enough. Nothing like the Quaker Oats guy.
Oatmeal!
I get it.
I lean down and touch the dog’s wet head, and she wags her stump of a tail. I have no idea what breed she is, but maybe some Lhasa Apso loiters somewhere in her assemblage. My grandmother had a Lhasa.
So I sit cross-legged on the grass and stare at the water, longing for the bells and wondering if just maybe one of them escaped the wrecking ball.
* * *
“We’ve got cake!” Anna laughs. She’s found me.
“I don’t think I could possibly eat a bite of cake, having worn so much of it.”
“Do come in, dear. Liza made it.” She looks over her shoulder and whispers, “It looks horrible. But it’s got more chocolate than Willy Wonka inside of it.” She waves a hand, proud of her own joke. “Come.”
“I really don’t want to disrupt what’s going on. It sounds rather serious.”
“Well, then. I’ll sit here for a while if you don’t mind. Clearness committees are always exhausting.”
She bends down, slowly lowering herself beside me. “I may need a committee to tell me how I’m supposed to get back up.”
“I’ll help you.”
“With that arm?”
We laugh. “You’re good for my soul, Anna.”
“Thank you. I surely appreciate the compliment.” She looks out over the lake.
/> “It’s beautiful here.”
“Jace told me you live on the lake too. Not many of us, are there?”
“No. We’re quite the club.”
“Oh, goodness, yes.” She smiles, suddenly far away.
Her face lifts to the sunshine, gravity pulling away some of the creases atop her features. She was an interesting-looking woman in her day, I’ll bet.
And why do I always try to find the young woman buried beneath the aging landscape? Aren’t Anna, and Peggy McCall at the Andrews’s house, and Sister Jerusha beautiful enough all on their own?
* * *
I don’t know how much later, Anna opens her eyes. “I’ll bet they’re gone now. How about that cake?”
“All right.”
“How about that hand?”
I help her to her feet. She chuckles at her own creakings and groanings. “Oh, goodness, I don’t know if a body’s supposed to go on this long.” And she tucks her arm through mine. “I’m glad you’ve come, Heather.”
She didn’t say it, but I felt her next thought. You are a troubled soul, dear, and maybe somehow, here at our house, you will find a measure of peace and light.
* * *
Liza crosses her arms and looks at me as I take my first bite, and I know the feeling.
“Fabulous!” I pronounce.
“Right, then.” She turns on her heel. “Anna, I’m going now!” she calls, grabbing her purse off a hook near the phone. “You be careful, Heather. I’m glad that husband of yours is coming to get you. Truthfully, I’m still not sure if you’re all right.”
“He’ll give me a good once-over.”
“Yes, Anna told me he’s a physician too.”
“Yes.”
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