Yesterday

by Fern Michaels

17

  The past suddenly swirled about Bode, the memories threatening to engulf him. He backed out of the room and bolted outside, where he fumbled for a cigarette. He didn’t smoke much, only when he was under mind-boggling stress; like now. The cigarette was stale, the cylinder crumpled, the package itself tattered and torn. It was habit more than anything that made him transfer the cigarettes to his pocket on a daily basis. Sometimes he didn’t smoke for weeks, but on days like today he knew he was going to finish the pack and probably buy a second one.

  Bode puffed furiously as he tried to come to terms with what he’d just seen in Room 211. That wasn’t the Callie he knew. That thin skeletal form was someone else. Never Callie. He looked down at the bunch of camellias in his hands, their stems wet and wrapped in several layers of wax paper. They were beautiful, a deep crimson mixed with pearl white blooms. When Brie cut them she’d gathered an extra bouquet for Pearl’s room. There were some in the middle of the kitchen table, too. He remembered thinking that the bushes needed to be pruned and cultivated. Maybe he could do that on the weekend.

  He finished his cigarette, stomped on it, picked it up, and carried it to a trash container next to the rusty bus stop. He looked around. He hadn’t really paid attention to the nursing home when he first drove up. It was ugly, an end-of-the-line place. The words dumping ground skittered around inside his head.

  Back in the building, his eyes burned as he made his way past the small group of patients gathered in the central hall, their eyes glued to the front door, hoping that today one of the visitors would be for them. Bode did his best to smile, to pat them on their shoulders as he made his way down the A Wing to Callie’s room. He smelled coffee, disinfectant, urine, and death. He squared his shoulders, certain when he entered the room that Callie would be sitting up, and shouting, “Surprise!”

  How much did she weigh? Eighty pounds? She’d never topped the scales at more than a hundred. What surprised him more than anything was that her face looked the same, thinner perhaps, but the same. Her hair, though, had a dry and brittle appearance, the pale blue ribbon doing nothing to enhance the thin locks. She’d always been so vain about her hair. She would make them wait ages while she fussed and primped, putting in combs, then removing them, snapping barrettes on the side, taking them out. He itched to pull up her eyelids to see if her eyes were the glorious brown he remembered. When she was sixteen she’d demanded contact lenses, not because she needed to see better, but because she wanted cat green eyes. He couldn’t even remember now where and how he’d got the money for that. Suddenly it was important for him to know. He stood still in the middle of the room until he forced his memory to cooperate. He’d worked the night shift at the liquor store stocking shelves, getting by on only a few hours’ sleep until they were paid off. Then, because she was careless, he’d go back and work the shift again to pay for the insurance. Had she ever said thank you? How could she? She had no idea he was busting his butt so she could have whatever she wanted. He’d preferred it that way.

  Bode changed the water in the vase, discarded the old flowers, and did his best to arrange the ones he’d just brought. Then he sat down and stared at his childhood friend. Brie had said he was to talk, to reminisce. “Just talk, Bode—say anything. That’s what we’ve been doing. Don’t worry if it makes sense or not. And you know what else, Bode? It’s been very therapeutic for all of us.”

  But Bode wasn’t ready to talk. He needed to think about Mama Pearl and the awful promise he’d made.

  A long time later, when he couldn’t stand his thoughts and memories any longer, he leaped off the chair and jerked open the closet door. His eyes narrowed as he touched everything on the shelf. Soap bars and liquid containers. Toilet tissue—four rolls, tissues—three boxes. A container of industrial floor cleaner. Two cans of talcum powder and two bottles of body lotion. Next to them, a large Mason jar full of powder. Alongside it, a second jar full of pink cream. Dry shampoo. A box of ribbons. A plastic bag holding four pairs of pink bed socks. The flat black plastic bag with the zipper stared at him like a single eye. His hand was steady when he picked it up. He could see that it had been disturbed. It was hard to fold anything, much less plastic, into the original folds. He stared at it so long he thought his eyeballs were going to bounce out of their sockets.

  His feet moved him swiftly out of Callie’s room and into the vacant room next door. Inside the closet there he saw a duplicate of what he was holding in his hand. Did this place buy them by the gross? Or did they order them one at a time when a new patient was admitted? When he finally made his way back to Callie’s room he decided they bought them by the hundreds, maybe by the thousands. They probably got a discount, too.

  He was still holding the shroud in his hands when he walked over to Callie’s bed. In a voice he’d often used with her in the past—a stern, don’t-give-me-any-crap—voice he said, “Well, Callie, I don’t know if this is for you or not, but I think you need to know it’s here in your closet waiting for you. Somehow, I don’t think you’ll look very good in it. Your hair is going to get mussed and no one will get to see those green eyes. I want you to think about that, Callie. I’m leaving now because I need to be with Mama Pearl. I might come back, and I might not. It’s going to depend on you. If you aren’t going to-crawl out of that place you’re in, then what’s the point in me coming here to just sit? You know what the Judge always said: ‘Time is money.’ I was never good at talking just to hear myself. I’m going to put this . . . shroud that has your name on it and I bet you didn’t know it had your name on it, well it does, back in the closet where it’s going to sit until it’s time to put it on you. You’re gonna look real ugly in it, Callie. It’s black, and we both know black isn’t your color. You said it washed out your features. I suppose I could put in an order for one that’s electric blue or maybe bright orange, but the people who make these things would just laugh at me. Guess you’re stuck with black. Come on, Callie, I know you can hear me. Crawl out of that place you’re in and make us all happy. You can do it if you want to. Do you hear me, Callie?”

  Winded by this speech, Bode replaced the shroud where he’d found it and left the room.

  In the parking area he sat and stared out of the dirty car window. How had the girls and Mama Pearl come here to this place every day and talked for hours on end and then left, only to return to do it all over again? No wonder they looked like they’d been ridden hard and hung up wet. He wasn’t at all sure he could do what they’d been doing these past months.

  Did all of this go beyond friendship? Was it the sense of family? Of belonging to someone and not wanting that someone to step out of that family circle? He thought about all the sacrifices they’d made for Callie. At the time he’d never begrudged a single one of them. Mama Pearl would do it over again in the time it took her heart to beat just once. In all honesty he didn’t think Brie begrudged it either. Sela was another story. The most important question of all was, if it was Brie or Sela or himself dying in that bed, would Callie do for them what they’d done for her? Would she do it for Pearl? The answer that smacked him in the face was no. Maybe she’d put forth some effort for Pearl, but he wasn’t even a hundred percent sure of that. He wasn’t sure about anything anymore.

  He felt like a child again, vulnerable and scared, uncertain what was ahead of him. He gritted his teeth the way he had back then, and prayed, “Help me, Lord. Take my hand and show me the way.” How many times he’d heard Mama Pearl say the same words! She was the one who’d taught them to him. “He’s always there watching over you, chile. Don’t ever be making the Lord shamed of you. You’re His chile the same way you’re my chile. And when you’re doing good, there’s no need to talk about it. The Lord, He knows what you’ve done.” He’d obeyed because it made sense, and he’d lived his life the way Mama Pearl had taught him to.

  A lone tear escaped his eye. He swiped at it with the sleeve of his jacket.

  “Big boys don’t cry.” “Well, Mama Pearl, for the first
time in your life, and my life, too, you told me something that was a fib. I forgive you for the fib. So many times I wanted to cry, to bellow, to wail, but I remembered what you said, and I swallowed my hurts because you said it would get better. I think I need to cry sometimes to cleanse myself, but I’m going to mind you. Maybe I’ll cry sometimes when you . . . when you’re up there . . . but you’ll still see me, won’t you, Mama Pearl?”

  His heart heavy, Bode headed back to the only place that was ever home, to the only mother he’d ever known, to the only true friends in his life.

  Home to his family.

  The days crawled by, one by one until it was spring in Summerville again. It was the first of April, the beginning of the Azalea Festival that none of them were going to attend.

  They had a routine now, that Brie had instituted. Everyone had his or her job. Bode was in charge of the finances they’d pooled together. Sela worked only part-time so that she could take her turn with Pearl, having forgiven the old woman the words that ate at her soul. Bode, with his kind common sense, had made her see that things weren’t as dark as they seemed.

  They sat in shifts with Pearl, who was now needle-thin and hooked up to IVs. They washed and did laundry three, sometimes four times a day. They took turns cleaning and cooking. Bode worked in the yard when he had time. They spent every available hour they had at the nursing home talking to Callie. Harry now refused to leave Pearl’s side.

  This life was taking its toll on all of them. “We need to get away from here, from everything, even if it’s just for a few hours. I say we splurge and hire someone to come in and sit with Pearl, and someone else to go in and sit with Callie,” Brie suggested one day. “Harry will watch over Pearl. Let’s pack a picnic lunch and go to Folly Beach or Isle of Palms. I need to talk to you guys,” she told them. “My section chief told me I have one more month, and if I don’t go back then, I don’t have a job. No more extensions. The last of my money has run out. What do you say?” She looked at them.

  “It sounds good to me,” Sela said wearily. “I think Arquette and Coletta would come and sit, if we asked. We really don’t have the money to pay sitters, Bode?”

  “I’ll go over and ask. Will tomorrow be soon enough?”

  “Yes, oh yes,” Brie said. “I’ll make everything Pearl used to make for us. Pickled eggs, fried chicken, potato salad, those little rolls, the ones we used to call one-biters. There’s some pickles in the storehouse. Sela makes real good brownies out of a box that taste just as good as Pearl’s. Well, almost. We can take some beer or wine or root beer. Remember the time Pearl let us help her make root beer and the bottles kept exploding all winter long? Gee, that was good root beer.” She grinned.

  “Pearl knew me this morning,” Bode said.

  “What did she say?” Brie demanded.

  “She wanted to know how Callie was. She asked me if I made her wake up yet. Then she asked me to get her a frizzly chicken.”

  “Oh,” Brie said.

  “She calls me Callie,” Sela whimpered.

  “Me too,” Brie echoed sadly.

  “What’s the schedule for today, Brie?” Bode asked, clearing his throat.

  “It’s my turn to take care of Pearl this morning. Sela is cooking. Your turn to visit Callie. Stop at the Bi-Lo and get some daisies. Ask them to put some fern in the bouquet and some baby’s breath. When you come back after lunch I’ll go, and you sit with Pearl. Sela sits with her this evening. I’ll shop after I visit with Callie. We’re low on everything. I’m going to need some money, Bode.” She hated to hold out her hand for the cash, but she’d given up on her pride two months before.

  “I have a closing tomorrow,” Sela told them. “It will take three days for my check to clear. Do we have enough till then?”

  “We have enough,” Bode said. “The money is my problem, so don’t worry about it. I’m going to leave now before the humidity sets in. Callie’s room is like an oven when the sun hits it around noon.”

  “I don’t think it matters, Bode,” Sela said.

  “I guess it doesn’t. I’ll see you all later.”

  “Sela, let’s have a fifth cup of coffee.” Brie yawned. “I’ll make it.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired, Brie.”

  “Me too. Pearl always said dying was harder on the people left behind, and she was right. Look at us, we look like grunge people. I haven’t fixed my hair for weeks. I have on my last clean pair of underwear. The washer is always going and when it finally stops I’m too tired to wash my own things.”

  “Bring them out, Brie. I have to wash some of my own stuff today. I’ll do yours with mine. I heard Bode washing at two-thirty this morning. How much weight have you lost, Brie?”

  “Nine, maybe ten pounds. How about you?”

  “Twelve. In all the wrong places, too.”

  They sat in silence listening to the coffee perk.

  “Brie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wyn said he had a discussion with Callie’s doctor about taking her off the IVs. With the nutrients and glucose she could stay like that for years. It’s up to Judge Parker.”

  “Did you tell that to Bode?” Brie asked wearily.

  “Not yet.”

  “Pearl is failing rapidly, Sela.”

  “I know.”

  “When she’s gone, are you going to come back to Atlanta with me or are you going to stay here?”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “I’m glad. Do you think God will punish us if we leave Callie?” Brie asked.

  “Probably. It will be interesting to see if Bode stays or if he goes back to Santa Fe. What do you think?”

  “I think he’s dumb enough to stay,” Brie said.

  “I think so too. I’m making meat loaf.”

  “Meat loaf again.” Suddenly Brie laughed.

  Sela giggled. “I can switch up and make meatballs—same stuff goes in it. Or, I could fry it up loose, cook up some grits, fix some string beans.”

  “Do whatever is easiest. You haven’t heard me or Bode complain. We’ll eat anything as long as it’s cooked.”

  “Loose it is, then. I wish it would rain. For some damn reason I always feel clean and refreshed when it rains. Do you feel like that?”

  “Yep. Sela, why didn’t we ever teach Pearl to read and write? She can a little, or else she pretends.”

  “She didn’t want to learn. She said she wanted her children to be smarter than she was.”

  “I thought so, but I wasn’t sure. I’ll fetch my laundry. Thanks for offering to do it.”

  “Sure.”

  Later on, Brie was dozing in the chair by Pearl’s bed, her hand in the sick woman’s hot grasp, when Pearl jerked her forward and woke her up. “Miz Brie, I jest seen Lazarus,” she said agitatedly. “He said I cain’t meet him till I make things right. Pearl needs to clear her soul.” Harry’s head reared backward. Little as he was, he let loose with a heart-rending howl.

  “Selaaaaaa!” Brie cried. “You were just dreaming, Pearl,” she comforted her.

  “No, no, Pearl wasn’t dreaming. I seen him clear as I’m seeing you and Miz Sela. Do you listen to Pearl?”

  “We always listen to you, Pearl,” Brie choked out the words.

  “It’s about my sweet baby love.”

  “Now, why did I know she was going to say that?” Sela whispered.

  “Miz Parker, she was a fine lady, but sickly. Her mama told me she was barren. Mistah Parker, he didn’t know that when he married her. When he found out, he took up with a fine lady in town, Miz Genevieve Harrold. Yes, she was a real fine lady, and Mistah Parker, he would sing when he walked through Pearl’s kitchen. Lazarus told me all this so I knowed it was gospel. Miz Genevieve found herself in the family way. Her mama took her out of Summerville.” Pearl paused, and immediately fell asleep, her eyes shut, her breathing deep and regular.

  “She fell asleep!” Brie hissed. “Oh God, Sela, I don’t think I’m going to like this.” They w
aited at Pearl’s bedside, hardly daring to breathe. When she awoke fifteen minutes later, she continued to talk as though there had been no interruption.

  “Miz Genevieve died when she gave birth to her baby. Her mammy took the child and placed it with a black family to be cared for. Later, Bode was given to the preacher when them people had too many children of their own to keep and feed. They never did tell Mistah Parker, Lazarus say. He didn’t find out until the boy was six years old. Then he fetched him home. That child is Bode, you hear me? I have his paper in my string bag. Lazarus give it to me to keep safe. Mistah Parker made me promise not to tell. If I did, he said, Miz Parker would surely die of shame. Bode’s real name is Michael Clemson Harrold Parker. Lazarus say that’s the name on Bode’s paper. He be Mistah Parker’s son. Bode is a white boy.”

  “Oh Pearl,” Brie cried. “Why didn’t you ever tell him?”

  “The devil would have cut out my tongue. Pearl made a promise. Lazarus say I should tell when the time is right. He say the time is right now.”

  “Pearl, why are you telling us? You should be telling Bode.”

  “Cain’t. I shamed my boy. Cain’t bear to see him look at me with shame. When I’m gone you is to tell him. There be more things to tell . . .” Her voice trailed away, and she was deeply asleep again. Harry howled again before he threw himself across Pearl’s chest.

  “My God,” Sela said, covering her face with her hands. “Oh my God!”

  “She said there was more. What else could there be?” Brie asked shakily.

  “I bet it’ll be even worse,” Sela decided, sitting down on the chest at the foot of Pearl’s bed. “Why do you suppose she’s so lucid this morning?” she added. “Do you think she really did see Lazarus? Does that mean her . . . time is almost here?”

  “I don’t know what to think. What I do know is I wish she hadn’t told us,” Brie said. She blew her nose lustily. “I always hated other people’s secrets.”

  They waited for an hour before Pearl woke again. As before, she picked up where she’d left off.