Most Anything You Please

by Trudy Morgan-Cole

  “Oh, it was—he left everything to me. That’s what we always planned. But I need to make out a will, now that the house and the shop is all mine—what to do when I pass away.”

  “I can’t be thinking about that now, Mom. Dad’s only just under the ground, barely two weeks. How are we supposed to make any decisions about what happens when you go too? That’ll be a good many years from now, I hope.”

  “We can all hope, but we don’t know.” Ellen was chopping onions to go with the corned-beef hash she was making for supper. Handy thing, onions: a good excuse for a good cry. “Nobody knows the day nor the hour, like the Good Book says. Your father certainly didn’t think when he went down to lay tile that night that he’d never come back up these stairs. If something happened to me suddenly—where would you be? Who’d own the house and the shop? The bank, most likely—we owes them enough. No, it all got to be down on paper, good and legal.”

  “So what’s it going to say, this good and legal paper we’re going to sign? Who are you leaving everything to?”

  “Oh. Well, I’m going to ask the lawyer for advice, I suppose. I mean, by rights the eldest son should inherit the business, but Alf got no interest in it. You been working here all these years, helping me keep it going, and this house is your home. I can’t see leaving it to anyone but you. I’m sure Alf will agree to that.”

  “You’d better ask him about it and make sure he does, before we gets into a conversation about family business in the lawyer’s office.”

  “What are lawyers for, if not to take your family business to?”

  “I still think, talk to Alf first.”

  “Alf will be fine with it. Your father talked to him about it all.” Ellen ladled mashed potatoes into the frying pan with corned beef and onions.

  “Did he? I’m sure Dad had the best intentions. I think he meant to talk to Alf about it, but did he actually do it? And what about Frank and June and Marilyn? Do they get any say in this?”

  “Oh, leave me be, Audrey. We’ll talk it all out in the lawyer’s office.”

  Audrey considered phoning Alf herself, or going over to talk to him. But awkward as it might have been for her father to bring up the question of what would happen after he died, it was going to be much harder for her to say, “Alf, Mom’s making a will and she’s going to leave the house and store to me. That all right with you?” There was no way to bring up the subject without sounding greedy and grasping. It just would be nice to have a bit more time to think about it all.

  Audrey was by no means sure she even wanted to own Holloway’s Grocery and Confectionary. It would be a ball and chain tying her to home for the rest of her life. But if she didn’t own it, she might well be not only out of a job, but homeless. So she did nothing. And she had a good day and a half to think that might be the best way to go about it, until she and her mother and Alf were sat in the lawyer’s office and it became clear to everyone that leaving this to discuss in front of the lawyer had been a very, very bad idea.

  Ellen sat with her gloved hands clutching her purse, still wearing a black dress and coat though Audrey told her nobody went around anymore wearing mourning, even after their husband died. “Wesley left me the house and the business, of course, being his widow, and…when I’m gone…I been back and forth in my mind over what to do. But when all’s said and done, I think it’s best to leave the house and the business to my daughter Audrey. She’s the one lives there and she does more of the work than I do, these days, running the shop. It’s really her business as well as her home, and it only seems like the right thing to do.”

  The lawyer picked up his pen. “Well, Mrs. Holloway, if you’ve thought it over and—”

  “Just a moment, now.” Alf spoke softly—he was a big man but not a loud or blustery one. Like their father, in that way, though there was a toughness to him that Audrey never saw in Wes. “Mom, are you sure you’ve given this enough thought?”

  “I been back and forth over it, like I said, and this is the best conclusion I can come to.”

  “Well, I have to say I don’t think too much of it.” Alf leaned forward, hands clasped in front of him. “You do know you’re leaving everything to Audrey—to one child out of five, not even the eldest—and cutting the rest of us off without a cent?”

  “How many cents do you think I got to leave, Alf?” Ellen turned to him, still clutching her purse. “Your father wasn’t a wealthy man; he didn’t have anything to speak of in the way of savings. The store brings in a little bit of income, but you know yourself it’s no gold mine and we’re always borrowing from the bank. That shop won’t make nobody rich; all it’ll do is give Audrey a steady job and a place to live. And of course you know if any of your family ever wants a job there, they can have it, same as Judy did these last few years.”

  “That’s not the point, Mother. The point is there’s no fairness to it. You said yourself there’s no savings, no money put away, so the house and shop is all you’ll ever have to leave. To leave it all to one child when you got five don’t seem right to me.” He appealed over the heads of the women to the other man in the room, the lawyer. “Mr. Power, you see a lot of this kind of dealings, I’m sure—where there’s a family business and not much else to leave. You can see my point, can’t you?”

  The lawyer coughed. “In cases where there’s not a very big estate and a large family, it’s not always practical—”

  Ellen interrupted. “If I divided the business five ways, there’d be nothing left, and you know it, Alf! What am I supposed to do? If I leaves it between all five of ye, and I dies tomorrow, you’ll have to sell the house and the shop to some stranger. The little bit you’d get for it you’d have to divide that between five of you, and it wouldn’t be enough to do anyone any good. The rest of you would all still have your houses and your jobs, and there Audrey would be with no job and no home, and not enough money to put a decent roof over her head. Isn’t that right, Mr. Power?”

  “Mom, you make it sound like I’m a charity case!” Audrey protested, just as Alf said, “Is that what it’s all about, making sure Audrey is looked after? Because you knows I don’t wish you no harm, Audrey, but it don’t seem fair Mom’s will should be all about you.”

  The lawyer opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Ellen turned on Alf. “The reason Audrey got no home of her own and no other job is not that she’s not capable, it’s that she’s the one who stayed by us all these years. She’s kept the shop going, helped out your father and me now that we’re getting up in years. I’m sure she’ll go on doing the same for me if I last another ten years.”

  “Yes, but it’s not like you done nothing for her all that time!” Alf shot back. “She lives there rent-free, you helped her rear up Henry and now Rachel, you and Dad did everything for Audrey and now you’re telling me that the rest of us, who’ve all had to make our own way in the world, we get nothing out of it!”

  “Now, now.” The lawyer raised his hands like a teacher trying to quiet a bunch of unruly youngsters, and had just about as much luck.

  “If you think this has all been a free ride for me, you got some nerve, Alf!” Audrey snapped. She could feel her temper stretching to the breaking point. In an hour she would regret the fact that they were that family, the ones who yelled at each other about their mother’s will in the lawyer’s office. But the way Alf was putting it, as if she had just had everything handed to her—well, she wouldn’t stand for that.

  “It’s not unusual,” said the lawyer, finally getting a word in, “for parents who own a family business to leave it all to the child, or children, who have had the biggest part in working in it alongside the others. Otherwise, in order to give everyone an equal share, the business would have to be sold and the profits divided.”

  “And there won’t be no profits, only debts to pay off—it’s only the house itself that would bring in any money!” Audrey said. At almost the same m
oment Ellen challenged Alf, “Is that what you want? The business I worked my whole life for to be sold off to strangers?”

  “No! Of course I don’t want that.” Alf paused, drew a heavy sigh. “But I still don’t see it fair for Audrey to get all and the rest of us to get nothing. If she’s going to be the sole owner I think she should have to buy the rest of us out. Divide it five ways, give us all a share. Then when you pass away, Mother, Audrey can buy out the other four of us if she wants to go on running the shop on her own.”

  “Buy you out? Out of what, all the gold I got stashed away in the deep freeze?”

  Again, the lawyer held up his hands. This time they actually paused and looked at him, probably less because of any authority he wielded than because they had run out of words for the moment.

  “It seems to me, Mrs. Holloway, that you brought this proposal to me today without thinking it through very thoroughly—or at least consulting with the whole family. Might I suggest that you go home and take a little more time to think and talk about it—giving everyone some time to cool down, and consulting with your other children, the ones who live on the mainland? I know your intentions are good—you want to make sure that the business stays in the family and that your daughter is provided for—but it’s not wise to make this decision in the heat of emotion. I know ladies often find themselves carried away with sentimental feelings, especially at a difficult time like this. I don’t think any harm will be done by waiting a few weeks to make your will, after you’ve had more time to reflect, more time to discuss it with your sons—and your other daughters, of course.”

  He had as good as said that an important decision like this really should be left to the men, Audrey thought, despite the fact that she and her mother had run that shop for years and neither Wes nor Alf had had anything to do with the business. If anything, Wes had put years of his life into building up a construction business that Alf now owned, but Audrey noticed there was no talk of that business being divided among the whole family, of it belonging to anyone other than Alf. Of course Alf had had the good sense to get his name on the side of the truck—and, she supposed, on some legal papers—while Dad was still alive. That was only what people expected, a son to fall in his father’s line of work and build it up into something bigger. More fool me, Audrey thought, to trust that Alf would think the same about a daughter, when it came to the store.

  “We’ll get a taxi home,” Audrey said to her mother in the receptionist’s office outside the lawyer’s chambers. “Miss, could you call us a cab?”

  “Don’t be so foolish,” said Alf, already striding towards the door. “I drove you down, I’ll drive you back up.”

  “I don’t want to put you out.”

  “Glory be, Audrey, don’t go making me out to be the bad guy in this, or turning it into some kind of family feud. I don’t hold no ill-will against you, you know that. I only wants to see everything done fair, everyone get an even share. Come on down to the car, I’ll give you a ride home. Then, like the lawyer said, we’ll take some time to think it through and talk it all over.”

  ELLEN

  She knelt by her bed at night—arthritic old knees, varicose veins and all. She might have given up kneeling down to scrub the floors—thank the Lord for Audrey, taking over those heavy chores—but the last thing Ellen Holloway would give up was the few minutes she spent every night kneeling by her bed. Out of lifelong habit she began with the prayer she had prayed with each of her children: Now I lay me down to sleep…. Her usual routine was to continue through the little litany of her own petitions, laying the names of her loved ones and anyone she knew who was sick or in trouble before the Lord, and then end with the Lord’s Prayer. She had been doing this since childhood and until the night came when she needed to call on Audrey to haul her back up off the floor, she intended to keep doing it.

  Tonight, though, her voice—Ellen always prayed aloud—snagged on If I should die before I wake. Not because it reminded her of how suddenly Wes was taken from her; she was always thinking about that, how he was hard at work one minute laying the new floor and keeled off on it the next. No, what made the prayer hard to say now was that when she mouthed the words she felt such an ache of desire for them to be true. What a gift it would be, to go to sleep and wake no more in this empty bed alone. I pray the Lord my soul to take.

  She trusted Jesus as she had always trusted Him, and believed that with her many sins forgiven she would wake up in heaven, somewhere near Wes and John (would Johnny be a baby still, or middle-aged like her other children?). She wanted it so much, and the irony was that wanting it made it untrue, for to desire her own death was, Ellen knew, a terrible sin.

  She didn’t linger too much on this thought; the God to whom Ellen prayed had never been overly harsh or judgemental. He was the gentle Jesus who blessed the children, and she assured herself He would understand why a lonely widow would dream of heaven. Still it was best not to dwell too much on the thought; if thinking about the peaceful sleep of death wouldn’t cancel her ticket to heaven, it might unfit her for life on this earth. And this earth required a great deal of Ellen’s attention right now.

  The bedtime rhyme finished, she began her usual litany: Dear Lord Jesus, please bless my children. Bless Alf and Treese, Doug, Randy, Nancy, and Judy. Bless Audrey, Henry—thank You for bringing Henry home to us—and Rachel. Before she could get on to Marilyn’s crowd she added a petition, And blessed Jesus, prince of peace, make peace between Alf and Audrey, Lord, you know the one thing I’ve always prayed is that my children would never quarrel, that they would always get along.

  Well, that was a bit of a white lie there: she had also prayed that they would be healthy, that none of them would have cancer, that their children would do well in school and stay out of trouble, that their marriages would be happy, that they would have jobs, or husbands with jobs, and never want for anything. So it wasn’t really true that peace between her children was the only thing she had ever asked of the Lord, but it had certainly been on the list. It was at the front of her mind now, after another big argument between Audrey and Alf down in the shop tonight, while Alf was putting in the new shelving unit. They were supposed to have the renovations finished and the place opened up again in two days. Ellen was upstairs getting Rachel ready for bed and heard the raised voices; she finally had to go down and tell them the shop was no place for that. Reprimanding the two of them like they were still in school.

  “I was ashamed to have to do it, tell you the truth,” she said, the words blending seamlessly into her prayer. “But you know what they’re like, the both of them so stubborn. Was I wrong about leaving the shop to Audrey? I know we talked about it often enough.”

  She realized that she was no longer talking to Jesus but to Wes, but she couldn’t stop herself; the old habit of unravelling everything with him at the end of the day, when they were alone in the bedroom, was too deeply ingrained to give up now. Wes had had little to say during the day as the business of the family swirled around him, and even when it was the two of them alone he was quieter than Ellen herself, but he would give his opinion and they’d talk things over. Without those talks at the end of the day she was like a boat drifting without anchor.

  “I don’t know what I should do about it, and that’s the truth. And I know none of it’s going to happen till I die, and it could be years, but it could be tomorrow—I could be gone as sudden as you were….”

  Tears, then, and also a resolution to stop this foolishness of talking to Wes when she should be praying. What could be more of a papist superstition than that, praying to the dead? Wes was in heaven; she was even more sure of his salvation than her own, but it wasn’t the kind of heaven where the dead were hovering over their loved ones, taking on God’s own job of answering prayers. Wes was at peace in a place where there was no more worry and fret, which meant he couldn’t be watching what was going on down here. He’d be full of worry and fret if he cou
ld see Audrey and Alf going at each other like two crackies in a dogfight. No, God must protect the dead from all that, keep them in perfect peace as the Scripture said.

  Adjusting her tone to the one she used for Jesus, she finished, Give me guidance, Lord, and show me the right path. Make peace between my children. Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name….

  Prayers done and theology back in order, Ellen eased herself painfully back up off her knees to sit and then lie down on the bed, little suspecting that the habit of talking out loud to her late husband before she slept was one that would stay with her for the rest of her days.

  There was a tap and the door cracked open, a band of hallway light cutting across the floor. “Mom? You gone to bed already?”

  “I’m in bed but I’m awake,” Ellen said. Audrey took that as an invitation, came in and sat in the rocker in the corner. She wondered if Audrey would apologize for the racket with Alf down in the shop tonight.

  “Is Henry home yet?”

  “What, that one? He’ll be out till one or two in the morning. He says he’s hooked up with a bunch of fellows in a band and they’re playing music somewhere. So you knows that’ll be in a bar and he won’t be home till all hours.”

  “And he’ll have been drinking,” Ellen said. “I don’t like that, it’s not good for Rachel and we’ve never had that kind of thing going on under this roof.”

  “What can I do? He’s over twenty-one, a grown man,” Audrey said. “I s’pose he’ll move out and get his own place if he intends to stay around here.”

  “Would he take Rachel with him, do you think?” The thought of the child gone out of the house made Ellen feel even more bleak than she already did.

  “I doubt it. I can’t see him handling it all, getting her dressed and off to school every day if he’s out playing guitar every night and coming home three sheets to the wind. Anyway, I never came in to talk to you about Henry and Rachel. I been on the phone to Marilyn this last hour or more.”