Dearest Dorothy, Help! I've Lost Myself!

by Charlene Baumbich

  “Are you there?” Katie asked. “Hel-lo?”

  “Oh, Katie, you embarrass me.”

  “Why on earth would I do that? I’m just speaking the truth.” A short silence followed her statement.

  “I know, how about you and I and Sarah Sue go to Hethrow and get a frozen yogurt this evening. I’ll pick you up in about fifteen minutes, okay? Then if we eat them slowly enough, by the time I drop you two off and get back to the farm, it will be too late to have to go through those boxes tonight, and in the meantime, I can have a chance to snuggle Sarah Sue.”

  “Wish I could, Katie, but we’ve already had five check-ins—praise God for the income!—and we’re still waiting for two more to arrive. Besides, it seems like Paul and I have hardly had time lately to touch bases with one another, let alone get some of our own cuddling time in, what with him at the mines all day and me cleaning rooms, tidying up fading flower gardens, not to mention bookkeeping and nursing Miss Cranky, who I think is beginning to get a tooth already. I seriously doubt you’d find her very obliging this evening anyway. How can you tell for sure when they’re getting a tooth, Katie?”

  Katie opened her mouth to answer, but suddenly Jessica blurted, “Oh! Gotta go! A car just pulled up in front of the office. Talk to you later, okay? Have a great evening. And have a few licks of yogurt for me if you go get one, okay? That way somebody can enjoy the calories and they won’t end up on my new-mom hips!”

  Jessica hung up before Katie could say a proper goodbye, which left her . . . alone . . . again. Staring at the phone in her hand after pushing the disconnect button, she started to dial Dorothy just to check in and see how she was doing, but then recalled it was band practice night. Josh had gone to Hethrow to shoot baskets at the YMCA with some of his new friends.

  She was alone. Nobody else to call, really, to go for . . . anything, let alone yogurt. No husband. Nobody to share her evening with . . . no cuddling. I am alone . . . and lonesome. No rehearsals. No more city excitement or neighborhood bistros to visit. No . . . life. So lonesome.

  But rather than allow herself to slip into a pity party (she was, after all, proudly a woman of great self control), she concluded she might as well tackle the boxes. She sighed, turned and caught the reflection of her backside in the large kitchen window. “Why did you have to mention hips, Jessica?” Since their move—since the treadmill and weights were stored in the barn until she could figure out where to put them—she’d been lax in her otherwise militant dedication to her usual rotation of workouts, including treadmill, yoga, kickboxing, Pilates, weights. . . . “Oy!” she said aloud when she studied what she perceived to be a bigger backside than she’d last noticed, even though it was still tiny for her trim five-foot five-inch stature.

  “Katie Durbin, you get yourself up those stairs—and maybe you should run up and down them three times first, just to wake up your cardiovascular system—and put that chaos to rest so you can set up your workout area and office. And I mean it. Do you hear me? And you have got to stop talking to yourself out loud!” Although she only ascended the stairs once, she stomped up them—each step uttering a unique creak as she went—punching the air, alternating her right and left fists like a boxer, just to maximize the workout.

  3

  According to the long-established rotation schedule, it was Jessie Landers’s turn to host the September meeting of the Happy Hookers, a group that eons ago had gathered monthly to hook rugs but that quite some time ago put down their hooks and started playing bunco. However, since Dorothy had not hosted a housewarming party after moving into her little house on Vine Street, she was anxious to have her new home’s first official gathering—at least that’s what Dorothy told Jessie when she talked her into giving her the September slot. Jessie had eagerly obliged since she wasn’t fond of cleaning anyway, and this gave her an excuse to wait another good while before having to dig into the corners, what with the way Gladys loved inspecting every little nook and cranny. Actually, if whoever was to host the Hookers in November would now trade their slot with her, Jessie figured she could shoot down two entertainment birds with only one scrub bucket since a couple of Arthur’s cousins were coming from Indiana for the Thanksgiving holiday. Yes! One cleaning would knock off the Hookers and the relatives. Ba-ding-ba-dang.

  Then after Jessie and Dorothy had all the dates worked out, wouldn’t you know two of the members were suddenly otherwise engaged on the Hookers’ usual third-week-of-the-month September time slot (how was it, they wondered, that retirement seemed to usher in more to-do things than when they’d been raising babies?). So Dorothy had, with disappointment, but nonetheless an accommodating spirit, moved the meeting back to the first Tuesday in October because the original change in dates had run smack into a few other appointments for that first Wednesday, which was the first of the month, a popular date for other doings. Whew. Although between the wheres and whens of it all the Hookers’ calendars looked like scribbled messes, at last it was settled.

  There was more to Dorothy’s trade than met the eye, however. Yes, Dorothy was eager to have an official gathering, but it was another gathering that, because of her move, she knew she couldn’t be hosting this year that was grieving her heart. For decades the Hookers’ Christmas party, at which they didn’t play bunco, but sang carols, played board games and shared pieces of their lives, had been held out at Crooked Creek Farm. Not only had Hooker members been invited, but so had spouses, families and friends. Nearly sixty people, young, old and in between, typically filled the old farmhouse with merriment and love.

  But this year things would be different: not only did Dorothy no longer live on the farm, but she was, at this moment, having trouble fitting two card tables for eight bunco players into her new living room; no way would the masses be able to convene, not even throughout her entire “doll-house of a house,” as May Belle had once referred to it. As for the Christmas party, who knew what would happen this year; perhaps it was a ritual that had come to an end—although Dorothy was hoping for the right opportunity to suggest an alternative plan that wouldn’t be too disruptive to the gang, and might actually mend a few ongoing gaping fences between the townsfolk and the city slickers. After all, since joining as a new Hooker member, Katie hadn’t had a chance to host yet. . . .

  Dorothy checked her sacred Register clock—the time-beat of her life since her childhood—and gasped. The Hookers would be gathering at her home in less than thirty minutes. “Oh, May Belle! I hope we all fit in this living room and don’t find ourselves locked in once we get seated, that is if we can even find enough acrobatic ways to get ourselves seated,” she said as May Belle helped her move, for the third time, the angle at which the card tables were set up. Sheba watched their every move with bored eyes, occasionally having to be shooed out of the way because every time they adjusted a table, she curled herself up under it—at least until they moved it again a few seconds later.

  “Dorothy, I have an idea. Let’s take down one of these tables and just use your kitchen table for the head table. Who’s gonna care if the tables are in the same room anyway, and they’ll only be a few steps apart from each other.”

  Dorothy stepped back to survey the situation. “May Belle, you are not only a true friend, but you are a nervous-breakdown-saver to boot. Honestly, I have been fretting over this for two days, and within five minutes of your arrival, you’ve saved my sanity.” Immediately the two of them began folding down the card table chairs and moving them back into the guest room. May Belle noticed Dorothy huffing a bit. In order to ward off her need for a nitroglycerin tablet, but without mentioning that, she suggested Dorothy go check on things in the kitchen while she broke down the card table and tucked it away. While Dorothy was out of the room, May Belle also lifted the remaining card table and positioned it toward the front window where there was more floor space, moving it this way and that until she was satisfied with the amount of room there would be for eight ladies to navigate all the moves they’d have to make throughout t
he evening as new rounds started and losers and winners swapped from one chair, one table, one room, to the next.

  “Okay, now we can set out the bridge mix, score cards and dice,” May Belle said as she entered the kitchen.

  “Perfect timing,” Dorothy said as the last chocolate-covered raisin slid from the box into a bowl. Dorothy snatched it up and popped it into her mouth. “Better make sure they’re good enough for the ladies.” She swallowed, then winking at May Belle added, “I’d say I need to check one more; you better test one too.” Within a few minutes, everything was in place and Dorothy and May Belle sat down at the kitchen table to catch their chocolated breath before the evening began.

  Dingdong! “Well, I do declare!” Dorothy said. “I believe my backside hitting the chair triggered my doorbell!”

  “Oh, Dorothy, you tickle me!”

  It was Gladys, who had arrived ten minutes early. She had been chomping at the bit to get inside this house ever since they’d discovered Tess Walker’s body in it, way back in April. Each time she’d heard yet one more person talking about Dorothy’s newly painted fire-engine red kitchen ceiling, she’d feared she might be the last person in all of Partonville to get a gander, not that she hadn’t tried to. She’d even, immediately following an indignant moment when Arthur, who had been sitting across from her at the U counter at Harry’s Grill, had asked her what she thought about the red ceiling—knowing full well, by the curl of his lip, that she had not seen it yet—made a misguided, uninvited attempt. She paid her bill and with determined and official mayoral steps, had walked directly to Dorothy’s house, bustled up the sidewalk, stood before the door for a moment and straightened her ever-present, bronze name tag etched in black stating “Gladys McKern, Acting Mayor.” She yanked down the bottom of her blazer, which had ridden up on her massive bosom, then banged—and it could be called nothing short of that—on Dorothy’s door. When the door swung open, Dorothy exclaimed, “Goodness, Gladys! What on earth is it?” Surely this type of banging meant an emergency. When Gladys realized she had nothing to say that would justify her racket, she simply stood in silence, casting her eyes about, trying to see around, over and through Dorothy to at last observe the famous red ceiling.

  In an instant, Dorothy had sized up Gladys’s wandering eyes, gathered her mission, swallowed down a devilish grin and said, “I’d invite you in, Gladys, but I was just on my way out.” She moved toward Gladys so quickly that Gladys had nearly stumbled shifting herself into reverse, out of the doorway, out of Dorothy’s way. Dorothy closed the door behind her and trudged down her front sidewalk, leaving Gladys in her wake, standing on the porch with her mouth hanging open. “I won’t be back for quite some time, Gladys,” Dorothy said over her shoulder as she made the turn onto the curbside sidewalk, smirking, thinking she should probably feel guilty, but . . . not.

  Gladys kicked her bustle into gear and breathlessly caught up with Dorothy. “I’ll walk you to the square,” she said. When the women arrived on Main Street, having journeyed in silence, Gladys huffing and puffing all the way, they each realized they had no destination in mind but without either of them admitting so or slowing a hitch in their get-alongs, they said their good-byes and turned in different directions. Dorothy ended up circling the block and heading straight back toward her home; Gladys, nearly plum out of breath, decided she might as well go to her mayoral office where she could take control of something.

  Truth be known, Gladys was the last of the Hookers to view the red ceiling, but she figured if she got to bunco first, none of them would be the wiser. “Good evening, Dorothy,” Gladys said, this time maneuvering right past her. Boldly, Gladys surveyed the living room: the massive mahogany desk from the farm that Gladys thought swallowed the room, but which Dorothy knew stood like a strong, familiar guardian and reminder of her father, whose life’s business had been contained in the very same wood; the new halogen lamp that brightened the space; an ancient pocket watch displayed under a glass dome; Tess Walker’s lamp with a purple fringed lampshade that sat on the end table.

  Gladys finished her slow 360-degree turn, then settled her eyes on the card table next to her. “Only four players this evening?”

  “Goodness me, no. All eight of us will be rolling the dice!”

  May Belle appeared out of the kitchen and welcomed Gladys, making a comment about how happy she was to be playing with eight again after all their years of making do with six.

  “Are we going to be playing in shifts?” Gladys asked, shuffling herself toward the hall, still in search of the famous red kitchen ceiling.

  “Of course not,” Dorothy responded. She didn’t offer an explanation, forcing Gladys to ask the obvious.

  “Well, for goodness sake, Dorothy, where on earth are the rest of the ladies going to play? On the floor? You know, I knew this house was small, but I had no earthly idea just how small.” Without being led, Gladys rounded the corner into the kitchen, where she dropped her jaw nearly three full inches, as Dorothy would later tell Katie. “Well, I do declare! If this isn’t . . . well, I have never . . .”

  “Gladys McKern, even if I didn’t love my red ceiling—which I do—it would have been worth the cost of paint just to see the Grand Canyon down your gullet!” Dorothy’s eyes were twinkling with mischief as she glanced at May Belle who had sidled up next to her. “And just because you are the acting mayor, I’m going to let you be seated right here and right now at the head table,” she said, pulling out a kitchen chair, “so you can take a load off while studying the rest of my kitchen. After you’ve had a chance to get your fill in here, I’ll give you an official tour of the remainder of the place, as brief as it will undoubtedly be, what with all the smallness.” May Belle’s hand flew over her mouth. Honestly, sometimes Dorothy Jean Wetstra astounded even her, even after eighty-plus years of friendship.

  Gladys yanked down the bottom of her blazer before seating herself. Since their school days, Dorothy and Gladys had engaged in a social dance all of their own. No matter what rank Gladys perceived herself to have over Dorothy—and certainly acting mayor should have been worth something—Dorothy continued to be the respected dear in everyone’s eyes, while Gladys continued to be plagued by the memories of old schoolyard “Gladys the Gladiator” taunts. After all their years of sparring, Dorothy, being one of the few in Partonville, aside from Arthur Landers, to openly go head to head with Gladys, had, with God’s help, learned to genuinely love Gladys for exactly who she was: a cantankerous, power-hungry, bossy woman, but also a Child of God, who, Dorothy had long ago determined, surely must behave the way she did to cover up some deep-rooted insecurity. “Lord,” Dorothy had prayed on more than one occasion after encounters with her, “help me see You in her hard-set eyes. And if I don’t, help me know it’s not You I’m seeing because surely You are not that stubborn!” Even though sometimes all Dorothy seemed to see when squaring off with Gladys was a red as bright as her ceiling, it never stopped her from knowing without a doubt how much she’d miss Gladys if she were gone. Although they usually danced a bumpy tango, together they had, in spite of themselves, become used to each other.

  Within a few minutes, the rest of the Happy Hookers had arrived: Jessie, who was glad to be away from Arthur for the evening; Nellie Ruth, who was feeling lucky; Maggie Malone, owner of, and sole stylist at, La Feminique Hair Salon & Day Spa, who arrived sporting Halloween pumpkin decals on her fingernails; Katie and Jessica, the two youngest and newest Happy Hooker members, whether Gladys liked it or not—and she did not—but the rest of the members had, as usual, sided with Dorothy and voted them in.

  “Most buncos goes to Nellie Ruth!” Dorothy said as she handed her the wrapped prize at the end of the evening, just before dessert. They’d all gathered in the living room for the closing festivities, some remaining at the card table and the rest seating themselves on the couch and side chairs that cozily surrounded the card table.

  “I just KNEW I was going to be lucky tonight!” Nellie Ruth gushed, accepting
the package and ripping off the paper like a child on Christmas morning. “Oh, a CANDLE!” She opened the glass lid, put it straight to her nose and drew a big whiff. “Mmmm. Vanilla. It couldn’t be more perfect! I was just thinking the other day I needed to get fragrant candles for my apartment before winter sets in. I even tried to talk Wilbur into letting us carry a few at Your Store along with the utilitarian candles we sell for emergencies. He just sighed and stared at me like I was daft rather than the assistant manager. ‘Nellie Ruth McGregor,’ he said, all but shaking his finger at me, ‘those types of things do not belong in a grocery store.’” She tilted her head forward, pretending she was looking over the top of a pair of glasses, just the way Wilbur always did when he was making a point. “‘Groceries belong in a grocery store,’” she said, dropping her voice a half octave, trying to match his intonation. She shifted her weight and cocked her other hip while planting her hand on it, another Wilbur gesture. “‘Next thing I suppose you’ll want me to be adding onto the store to accommodate your hankering for fancy bath oils, then just a few earrings. Next thing you know, we won’t even have room for food anymore, and Nellie Ruth, may I remind you that we are a grocery store!’”

  “Why, Nellie Ruth, I had no idea you were so good at impersonations!” Dorothy said as she rubbed a round, affirming circle on Nellie Ruth’s back with the tips of her fingers. Everyone was roaring, aside from Gladys, who just shook her head and chalked this dramatic rendering right up there along with the past summer’s saxophone incident. When the laughter died down, Nellie Ruth continued, exaggerating her own self after Dorothy’s encouragement.

  “‘No,’ I told him. ‘But it would be nice to offer more herbal teas and a few imported spices. That’s what I’d really like for us to carry, Wilbur.’ Well, you would have thought I suggested we carry baboons and aardvarks in aisle three, the way he looked at me.” She held the candle to her nose again and continued talking between inhales and exhales, drawing the fragrance of vanilla clear down to the bottom of her lungs.