Abide with Me

by Delia Parr

  “Well, sure, but—”

  “I think it would be easier if I take the girls inside for their snack and away from the beach. Are there any towels left in the outside shower?”

  “I hope so. Here, babies. Take a little treat before you go,” she insisted. She tugged a grape from one of the bunches and broke a piece of watermelon in half. The girls opened their mouths like baby birds, and Madge plopped their treat inside. “Aunt Madge has lots more in the refrigerator, and if you take a good nap, I’ll show you how to dig for sand crabs when you get up.”

  The girls clapped their hands, spraying sand on their daddy, but Madge was quick enough to turn and protect the fruit from a sand shower.

  “Dig for sand crabs? I don’t think so,” Michael replied sternly, but his eyes were twinkling. “I think we should find some pretty seashells to paint, especially since we’re going to stay at Aunt Madge’s for a few more days,” he murmured as he carried his girls away. “Aunt Madge loves seashells, especially purple ones.”

  “And I love you,” she called, and waved to the girls.

  “I love you, too, but I’ll love you more if you give me some fruit,” Jenny teased.

  Madge turned and smiled at her baby sister. “You’re awake?”

  Jenny tugged on the arms of her beach chair until the back was in an upright position. “I’m awake, and I’m starving, as usual.” She yawned and patted her tummy. “A growing baby makes for a hungry mama.”

  Madge offered Jenny some fruit first. “Here, princess. Take some for you and some for the baby.”

  Andrea set aside her knitting for a moment and raised the brim of her sun visor. “Princess? You called Jenny a princess? What about me?”

  Jenny snagged a bunch of grapes and popped a plump green one into her mouth. “Sorry, big sister. Now that you’ve ditched your crutches and you’re walking on your own two feet again, Madge gave the crown to me.”

  Madge laughed. “Besides, you’re the oldest. You really shouldn’t be a princess anyway, but if you insist on a title, would you settle for queen?”

  “A queen without a country or a crown, that’s what I am,” Andrea grumbled. She picked up her knitting, ripped out the last few stitches and started again.

  “The queen’s a little cranky,” Madge whispered as she sat down in between her sisters and put the tray on her lap.

  “I’m not cranky,” Andrea countered. “I’m frustrated.” She tossed her knitting needles into the sand, along with her sorry attempt at creating an even row of stitches. “So much for that brilliant idea. It looks like the Shawl Ministry will have to manage without me, and Miss Jane Huxbaugh will just have to find someone else to drive her home.” She reached over and grabbed a slice of honeydew melon. After she polished it off, she looked from one sister to the other. “Okay, so I’m cranky, but I’m frustrated, too,” she admitted, stretching out her left leg and rotating her ankle.

  “How long before your physical therapy ends?” Madge asked, avoiding the entire topic of her sister’s mood.

  “I had my last session last week.”

  Jenny frowned. “You stopped physical therapy or it ended?”

  Andrea shrugged and munched on a pineapple stick.

  Madge shook her head. She knew Andrea well enough to be able to read through her words to the truth. “You just stopped going, didn’t you?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did. Somehow, between the weekly chemo treatments and physical therapy three times a week, I’m supposed to be running a business.” She snorted. “Something had to go. It’s not like I can’t continue the exercises on my own at home,” she added defensively.

  “Your weekly treatments ended three weeks ago,” Jenny reminded her sister in a gentle voice. “You only have to go every month now.”

  Andrea hugged her knees to her chest. Her eyes glistened with tears, a sight so rare Madge’s heart trembled. When Andrea began to speak, her voice was just above a whisper. “That’s true. That leash I’ve been wearing isn’t quite so short anymore, but it’s still there, tugging me back to reality when I can forget, for one very short moment, that I have cancer. Unless I’m scheduled for a cysto. They’re joyful. I can’t tell you how much fun I have, lying there on the table and holding my breath during the examination, wondering if the doctor isn’t saying anything during the exam because she doesn’t see any new growths or because she sees them and wants to wait until she’s finished before she tells me the chemo isn’t working.”

  She swiped at a tear that had escaped. “Look at me. I’m a mess. My energy level isn’t half of what it used to be, and my hair feels like a steel-wool scouring pad.” She leaned toward Madge. “Go ahead. Touch it. Be careful not to disturb any of the hairs that prefer to stick out straight so I look like a porcupine having a bad-hair day. I can hardly wait to see how I look by the end of the treatments.”

  Madge swallowed hard. She pressed a kiss to Andrea’s head and tried to smooth a few errant gray hairs back into place. “Stubborn little wisdom hairs, aren’t they? At least you still have them. Kathleen and Sandra lost every hair on their heads, remember?” she murmured. “I thought you were going to see Judy at the salon and ask her to recommend something.”

  Andrea sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. “I haven’t had time,” she whispered. Her voice cracked as she visibly struggled for control. “I’ve been a little busy trying to help clients who seem so happy dealing with Doris they’re not the least bit interested in talking to me. Maybe it’s the chain of keys I have to wear around my neck. The clients aren’t sure if I’m a real estate agent or a warden. Of course, Doris doesn’t have to miss as much floor time as I do, and she doesn’t have to reschedule clients to keep outside appointments for herself, either. I would have let her go weeks ago when my ankle was finally healed, even though I’m not up to running the agency completely on my own, but she’s endeared herself to the clients and the community to the point that I can’t let her go, not without looking like an ogre.”

  “I have an appointment with Judy on Thursday. I’ll get her to recommend some hair-care product, and I’ll bring it with me on Friday. Your chemo is at ten, right?” Madge offered, trying to do something that might make Andrea feel better.

  Andrea barely nodded, and when Madge opened her mouth to speak again, Jenny stopped her by laying her hand on Madge’s arm. Jenny’s gaze, however, reflected the same troubled emotions that tugged so hard on Madge’s heartstrings. In all honesty, she had never seen Andrea so despondent. Of the three of them, Andrea was the rock, steady and solid against every challenge life had thrown at her, steady and solid when life dared to threaten either of her sisters.

  Andrea could be their mother, their friend, their confidante and their confessor, but most of all, she was their big sister, and Madge could not bear to see her so sad and so shaken. She took Jenny’s hand and gave it a squeeze before she spoke to Andrea again. “You’re right, you know.”

  Andrea opened one eye. “Right about what?”

  “You’re frustrated.”

  “And a teeny, weenie bit cranky,” Jenny teased.

  Andrea opened her other eye. “Great. This is just great. I pour out my troubles for the first time in decades, I lay my soul bare so you can see what an ungrateful wretch I’ve become, and I let you see that my faith is about as steady as…as that piece of seaweed blowing across the sand, and the only thing my sisters, the only family or real friends I have near me, can say to me is that I’m frustrated and cranky?”

  “Just a teeny bit,” Jenny repeated.

  Andrea huffed. “You’re sick! Both of you! Sicker than I am, too.”

  “But there’s a cure,” Madge argued.

  Andrea looked at her as if she had grown a third eye on the tip of her nose.

  “There is,” Madge insisted. “Isn’t there, Jenny?”

  “Um. Sure. If you say there is, then I believe you.” She leaned around Madge and looked at Andrea. “You should believe her, too.”

  Andrea
did not smile, but her face relaxed. “The last time I trusted Madge to cure something, we both ended up in trouble. I think I’ll pass. I’m actually getting used to being frustrated and a little cranky. It’s a refreshing change.”

  Jenny scooted forward in her chair and looked from one big sister to the other, clearly ready to hear the story.

  Madge pursed her lips and tilted her chin.

  Andrea actually produced a lopsided grin.

  Madge held up her foot and watched the sunlight sparkle on her anklet. “Andrea was the one who climbed over the fence to steal our neighbor’s peaches and wound up with poison ivy.”

  “Which spread to every pore of my skin. I even had blisters on my ears, thanks to your so-called cure, Madge.”

  “You begged me to help so Mother wouldn’t find out what you’d done.” Madge defended herself.

  “You ate the peaches, too.”

  “But I didn’t steal them!” Madge cried.

  “You dared me to steal them!” Andrea retorted.

  Jenny played referee and held up her hands. “Let’s skip to the cure, shall we?”

  Andrea smirked.

  Madge huffed. “I told her to scratch at the blisters so they’d go away.”

  “So I did,” Andrea added. “I scratched like crazy.”

  Jenny laughed out loud.

  “It worked for bug bites. Sometimes,” Madge said defensively.

  Jenny held her hands up in mock surrender. “You’re right, Andrea. I’m switching sides. I don’t think Madge has a good record when it comes to cures.”

  “Traitor! You’ll wish you hadn’t,” Madge warned. “You’ll both wish you had listened to me.” She set the tray aside, stood up and brushed the sand from her legs.

  “Where are you going,” Jenny asked.

  “With both of you siding against me, I’m feeling a little frustrated and a little bit cranky, so I’m going to get a cure for myself. Not that you should care.” She picked up the tray and started back to the house.

  Andrea’s voice rang out first. “Wait! Aren’t you at least going to tell us what the cure is?”

  Madge smiled to herself, but kept walking until Jenny called out, “There’s no cure. You’re just teasing us.”

  That did it.

  Madge turned around and faced her sisters, now some twenty feet away. “My cure, ladies, is not a joke. Definitely not. A Monsoon Sundae at French’s is no joke. It’s a cure. It’s also healthy. There’s a lot of calcium in five scoops of ice cream. Then there’s the hot-fudge sauce, toasted walnuts, crushed cherries, sliced bananas and homemade whipped cream that’s so stiff you can stick a spoon into it and the spoon will stand up straight. And if a Monsoon Sundae doesn’t cure whatever ails you, then you’ve got one foot inside the Pearly Gates and you don’t want to be cured!”

  Jenny scrambled out of her chair first. She took two steps, then rocked still. “Wait a minute. French’s isn’t open after Labor Day, is it?”

  “Only on weekends from Labor Day through the end of October.”

  Madge smiled when Jenny started racing forward again, but her smile stretched straight to her heart the moment Andrea got out of her chair and started running, as well as she could, to catch up to her sisters with a grin on her face and her eyes sparkling with joy instead of sadness.

  “God’s love and your sisters’ love. That’s the real cure,” Madge whispered. “Come on, Andrea. We’ll help you through this…if you’ll let us.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The following Thursday arrived with heavy winds and rain and a forecast of yet another day before the northeaster would pass.

  Humming softly, Madge left the master bedroom just as the hall clock in the little alcove at the top of the stairs chimed the last of eight bells. For once she was early, and she had time for a nice breakfast before she was due to pick up Andrea at nine-thirty. She’d wakened feeling nostalgic this morning, and as she approached the top of the stairs, memories surfaced. In her mind’s eye, instead of the clock in the alcove, she saw the huge toy garage that had once stood there, housing the boys’ amazing collection of miniature cars. Instead of the cream carpet runner bordered by a gleaming hardwood floor, she saw the scars left from those little cars as the boys raced them, hour after hour, over the wooden hallway floor.

  She started down the stairs and held on to the railing—the same railing Drew had ridden straight to the emergency room. He’d gotten six stitches in his head that time. Or had it been Brett? Before her two sons had left for college, Madge had probably logged enough hours in the emergency room at Tipton Medical Center to qualify for a volunteer pin. She chuckled to herself now, although she had not thought it was very humorous at the time. Wasn’t it funny what a difference a few years and a new perspective could make?

  She paused at the bottom of the stairs and held on to the banister as the present merged with the past. While the boys were growing up, she had been so busy playing mother and father while Russell’s job kept him traveling the surrounding states that she had never had time to just enjoy the boys. At least, that’s how she had felt at the time. With the passing of years, she realized she could have made the time. She could have let them have a pet, too.

  Like the shoemaker’s children who had no shoes, Russell’s sons had never had any pets. Not a dog, a cat, a lizard, a snake, a hamster or a fish. Russell was the top salesman for a pet-food company, yet he had never permitted his own sons to have a pet—a paradox Madge had never solved.

  If she were raising her sons now, she’d let them have a pet. And she’d have more time for her boys and the wisdom to know how to use it better. Unfortunately, the boys had not waited for her. They had grown up. “That’s what grandchildren are for. To do it better the second time around,” she told herself. She said a quick prayer that both of her boys would find a special someone, marry and start a family, preferably in that order. Given the declining moral standards so evident in popular culture, she was more than relieved that she had made the time to raise the boys with a strong faith in God, a faith they still claimed and followed as young men.

  She gave the banister a pat and put her memories aside. When she got to the kitchen, she popped a frozen sesame bagel into the microwave for twenty seconds and poured a cup of coffee. Thank goodness for modern technology, especially the coffeemaker with a timer. When the microwave bell rang, she removed the bagel, split it open and layered each side with cheddar cheese and bacon pieces before setting both halves into the toaster oven. She set the temperature to 400 degrees and carried her mug of coffee with her to look out the window over the kitchen sink to see how her back gardens were faring in the storm.

  Or she tried to look. The rain was so heavy and the wind was so strong, she would need windshield wipers to be able to see anything beyond the sheets of water trailing down the window. Poor little flowers. They were probably already beaten to the ground, creating purple puddles everywhere. Even though she had already ordered the fall mums, she had been hoping to enjoy another week or two of her summer blooms.

  “Not this year,” she muttered. She shivered and took a sip of coffee. Today was definitely a great day to curl up on the couch with a good book or to clean out the attic. To venture outside, she would need her ankle-length raincoat, the one with the hood. An umbrella would be useless today. The wind would blow it inside out before she even got to the car, which she had left in the driveway and forgotten to pull into the garage.

  She flinched when thunder cracked overhead and the storm intensified. It really did not matter what she wore today. She would still get soaked to the skin, and she wanted very badly to stay home. Guilt tugged at her heart. Andrea had no choice. She had to go out today. She had a chemo treatment, and all Madge could do was worry about getting wet?

  She shook her head, retrieved her breakfast from the toaster oven, and let it cool a bit on a plate. As she turned off the toaster oven, she suddenly remembered she had promised to bring Andrea the hair conditioner Judy had given to
her. The conditioner was upstairs. “Next to my purse,” she grumbled.

  She tried a bite of bagel. The cheese stuck to the roof of her mouth and burned her tongue. She gritted her teeth. “Swell. This day’s already getting worse, and I haven’t left the house yet.”

  She tossed the bagel back onto the plate and went back upstairs. She grabbed the conditioner and her purse, then went into the spare room and got two fold-up umbrellas, just in case the wind died down. She sorted through her four raincoats, chose the longest one with a hood and folded it over her arm.

  She was halfway down the hall before she turned around and went back into the spare room. She took a second raincoat out, just in case Andrea needed it. She folded that one over her arm, too. She straightened her shoulders. Having two raincoats on one arm and holding her purse, the conditioner and the two umbrellas in the opposite hand, she was fairly well-balanced, but she took her time going back down the stairs.

  She had almost reached the bottom step when the doorbell rang.

  Startled, she leaned against the banister for support and managed to get safely down the final step. “Who on earth…?” She struggled with the raincoats until she had them draped over the back of a chair in the living room.

  The doorbell rang again.

  “Coming!” She tossed her purse and the conditioner onto the seat of the chair and went to the front door. She checked the door chain to make sure it was secure, unlocked the door and opened it a crack—just enough to see the face of the man at her door. She sighed. “Russell? Why on earth are you standing outside ringing the bell? Did you forget your key?” She reclosed the door without waiting for him to answer, released the chain and swung the door open.

  Russell did not rush into the house. He just stood under the porch roof. He was soaking wet. His hair was plastered against his scalp. Rivulets of water flowed over his features, and the wind blew rain past him into the house.