Lee stared at the tabletop, wiping the end of her nose with the back of her sleeve. “Thought I'd fix up the house to sell.”
“I hate to see it go out of your family, but I'll do what I can to help.”
“You've done enough, dealing with my mother all those years.”
“I've known your family for what feels like all my life. Your grandmother Rose and I were twenty years old when our husbands built these houses. We were twenty-one when we had our babies. Your grandmother was the best friend I ever had.” Mrs. White's eyes reddened. She put her cup in the sink and it clinked against a fork. “I held your mother the day she was born.”
“Did she have vodka in her baby bottle?” Lee looked out the screen door. The sun poked through the gray rain clouds, illuminating the multiple shades of greens in the yard and forest.
Mrs. White's eyes were sad. “She was the prettiest, smartest baby you ever saw. Her life just went in the wrong direction. It was too much, being alone with a baby and so young.”
“You did it.”
Mrs. White blinked and nodded her head. “So I did, but I'm a different sort than most. Shoot but your mother caused me fits half the time but now she's gone, I miss having someone to look after. My son died when he was eighteen, but once a mother, always a mother.”
Lee put her hand over Mrs. White's and shivers went up her spine. “Mrs. White, I never knew that. I'm so sorry.”
She looked at her, and Lee read surprise in her stoic face. “He died in the car accident with your grandparents.”
Lee stared at her. “I had no idea. My mother would never talk about them, so I don't even know how they died exactly.”
“They went to pick up Chris from the County fair. He was showing his FFA pig,” said Mrs. White. “It was a way to make college money, raising an animal for market at the fair. The kids used to stay the whole week, get their animals judged and then auctioned off. Matter of fact, your mother had the flu that night or she would have been with them too. Your granddaddy offered to get him for me so I wouldn't have to drive the thirty minutes by myself. A car drifted into their lane on the mountain pass.” She ran her hand across the table again, like there might be a stray crumb. “None of them suffered. I was always grateful for that.” Mrs. White touched the top of her bun and then held up a hand. “Shoot, I don't know why I'm talking about all this morbid history. I've got to go and let you get some rest.” She headed towards the door. “I sure would like it if you'd call me Ellen. I spent too many years as Mrs. White teaching school.”
Lee agreed, and walked her to the door. She touched the woman's wiry arm as she stepped from the kitchen to the top step of the small back patio. “Thanks for the pie. And for everything all these years with my mom, and the mattress. I can't repay your kindness.”
“Why, you're welcome. I don't have much else to do these days, especially now. I'll be glad to see a light from your window on a dark night, for however long you stay. Now you call me tomorrow and I'll help you come up with a plan to get this old place fixed up.”
Chapter Six
Lee watched the woman's purposeful stride as she disappeared out the creaky gate and down the dirt road. So much loss in one lifetime, Lee thought. Was life only a series of griefs? The fortitude it must have taken Ellen White to keep moving, to continue fighting was humbling. Was it the measure of character?
Hungry now, she remembered the pie on the counter. She'd allow herself one piece before she went upstairs and rested. Not bothering to cut into it she scooped some onto a fork, juice dripping onto the tabletop. The blackberry filling was fragrant and fresh, with a hint of tartness. Perhaps some lemon juice had been added, she thought. It was the perfect combination, not overly sweet like pies from the grocery store. The crust was flaky and light, tasting of butter on her tongue. She ate two more bites, enjoying. And then she thought of Dan. His mother made a pie every year for his birthday. He'd loved pie. The reality of the last several weeks came to her in a rush, the anxious hollow feeling returning to the pit of her stomach. She pushed away the pie and stared out the window, fighting the sobs that came anyway. She'd not known grief would come in waves, brought on by the smallest of things. Nor had she realized that ordinary acts of living would continue even after the loss of a love and that it would remain possible to get caught up in the moment of a simple pleasure before remembering.
And it washed down upon her in an inescapable truth, this bath of grief. Her husband was never coming back. He was gone and nothing she did would bring him back.
A thousand “what ifs” came to her, as they had for days and weeks now, all useless to the outcome but unavoidable. The biggest of which was, what if she'd been in the marriage with open eyes instead of simply getting through the day, the week, the month. If only she'd been awake to really see him, perhaps she could have saved him.
Her thoughts jumped to this new knowledge that she was pregnant. It settled into her mind for the first time. She'd put it aside for the miles between Seattle and now. Hard as the pregnancy was to fathom, it was time to think it through, to figure out what must be done.
They hadn't touched in months. They'd been to a party that night and he'd been almost like his old self, joking and laughing with friends in the kitchen. He'd had several drinks so she'd driven them home. He'd been quiet in the car but strangely attentive, twisted in the seat, watching her with soft eyes like he'd done when they were first together. At home he ran his fingers up the sides of her arms. He spoke softly, earnestly, “No matter what happens, remember I've loved you since the moment I met you.” She choked up and put her arms around his neck, holding him close.
It was the last time. And now there was a pregnancy.
She rummaged in her bag for the test, needing proof suddenly that she hadn't imagined the pink lines. The test was there at the bottom of her bag, evidence of a new life that she could see and hold in her hand, while the evidence of her husband's death seemed somehow without substantiation. She understood the ritual of the funeral was supposed to give her this symbol of closure but she remembered so little of it that it seemed almost like someone else's dim nightmare.
They'd had the memorial service at an old Seattle church, all dark wood and ornate carvings on the beams and benches. It smelled of incense and burning candles and the powdery florist shop smell of the roses in oversized vases in front of the pastor's pulpit. His mother looked shrunken slumped against his father. His sister's tears soaking through the paper program in her hands, the husband next to her.
She remembered that the pastor prattled from his script the facts of Dan's life from the obituary. “Dan Johnson was born in 1974, raised by Ralph and Betty Johnson in Seattle, Washington. He graduated in 1996 from Stanford University with a degree in computer science and went on to get his MBA in Finance from Wharton in 2000. He co-founded, with his wife, Lee, Existence Games, Inc.” He said something about the arms of Jesus and she looked left to the stained glass depiction of Mary holding her baby. And Jesus couldn't have felt further away than in that moment.
It was then that Linus walked to the pulpit to speak. The crowd was silent. The microphone squeaked as he adjusted it up to his height. He explained that he was in the restaurant business and that he'd thrown their wedding reception. He cleared his throat and wiped the corner of his eye with a lime green handkerchief before continuing. “When I met Dan I remember thinking he was the ultimate golden boy, what with his crown of blond curls, his movie star smile, his pedigree of Stanford and Wharton, his athletic prowess. And yet I was skeptical of this man that wanted to marry my Lee, wondered if he was good enough for her, wanting to be sure this man deserved her. What happened next I will never forget. Dan could not dance. Not a move without stepping all over his partner's toes. Two months before the wedding he asked me if I'd teach him to waltz. He wanted to surprise Lee at their wedding reception.” He made a frame with his hands. “Picture straighter than straight, masculine Dan, and little ol’ me waltzing around his living room.”
He choked up, breathing heavily into the microphone. “Dan learned how to dance to please Lee, and as many of you may have observed, he was beautiful that night, dancing with his bride. No matter what, we all have that memory of him and I have to believe he was happy in that moment. I hope that might give us all some peace in the days and months to come.”
Now, sitting in her mother's kitchen, she closed her eyes, recalling the night of their reception. “Dance with me,” he asked. Surprised, she'd looked at Linus and he'd nodded, yes. She put her hand in Dan's and he walked to her the middle of the dance floor. He nodded to the band and they began to play, “waltz.” He guided her in perfect time, his silk tuxedo against her bare arms. Dan looked into her eyes and she whispered tearfully, “Thank you.” And she thought to herself, this is the beginning of my real life, the one I was meant to have. Everything was right.
Now, at her mother's old kitchen table, she wiped her eyes, wondering if anything would ever feel right again.
Chapter Seven
Lee slept the rest of that first day and through the night, awakening to birds chirping outside her window. She reached over to Dan's side of the bed with her foot but there was nothing but a cold fold of bed sheet. In that instant between sweet insensible sleep and consciousness, it was as if the previous month hadn't happened. Once fully awake the sick ache roared through her. She got out of bed and looked out the window, still nervous that somehow Von followed her. But there was nothing in the driveway but her minivan. She shivered, yawned, and rubbing her eyes shuffled to the bathroom. She glanced in the mirror and gasped, shocked by the greasy hair and dark circles under her eyes. She tugged at the rusty faucets in the shower until they trickled russet colored water into the yellow stained tub. She sat with her arms around her ankles, head resting on her knees and rocked until the water cleared.
She went to the hall closet for a towel. It smelled of old neglected wood. There were two ratty towels, the material so thin she could see through it, folded in squares on the second shelf that Ellen must have washed and put away for her. Steam drifted into the hallway from the bathroom.
She stood under the warm spray with her eyes closed. Compared to the shower at home, the water was a trickle on the back of her neck. But it was hot and comforting to her skin that felt beat up from the strain of the last weeks. She moved her hand over her stomach, taut and bloated. It was hard to comprehend there was anything inside her except longing and despair instead of a multiplying mass of cells that would turn into a human baby.
She scrubbed her body with soap and as the suds washed her clean she began to sort through and organize her thoughts, as she had with all new ventures, devising a plan that she would execute step by step. She saw it unfold in five phases: fix up the house, sell it, pay DeAngelo, move to a new city and get her career back on track.
She washed her hair, holding her breath because the smell of the shampoo brought nausea in waves, and tried to focus on breaking down the first step of the plan. This morning she would conduct a full assessment of what it would take to get the house ready to sell. If the house foundation and construction were as strong as Ellen White indicated, she might be able to sell it for more than she owed DeAngelo. After the assessment, she would gather any items she could sell to get started on the repairs.
She stared at her image in the mirror on the bureau. Her tender breasts strained against her blouse, enlarged from their usual modest size to the size of large apples, and made her feel like a porn star. She popped a cracker in her mouth, slipped on a long cardigan sweater, and surveyed the master bedroom. There were two bedside tables, the bureau and the bed, all brought with her grandmother from the east when she married in 1943. They might be considered antiques. She swept her hand on the smooth wood of the headboard, calculating its worth. She jotted that amount in a small notebook under the category, “to sell,” “Grandmother's furniture” with a circle bullet, in her precise angular printing.
She wandered down the hallway. The wallpaper, once a light brown with small blue flowers, was now faded to tan. The hallway's hardwood floor showed burns from dropped cigarettes most notably between her mother's bedroom and the bathroom. She wrote in her notebook under “repairs”, the estimated cost for the floor to be refinished and what it would cost to have the wallpaper replaced.
At the end of the hallway, Lee opened the door to her childhood bedroom six or so inches before it pushed against something. She poked her head in the crack and saw piles of newspapers, Ladies Home Journals, Reader's Digests, and romance and mystery paperbacks, stacked on the bed and floor. She felt a tightness in her chest and her right eyelid twitched. She closed the door with a slam. Her mother's bedroom was also stacked with worthless junk. She wrote in her notebook under “to do”, “burn contents of bedrooms”, along with estimated costs for repairs.
She walked to the ground floor, the hardwood stairs creaking with her footsteps and the stair railing swaying in her hand. From the foyer at the bottom of the stairs, Lee moved into the curved archway of the living room, felt for the light switch along the left wall and flipped it but the bulb was burned out. In the dim light she saw stacks and stacks of papers with a path to a stained and sunken couch. She walked through the path to the window and pulled back the worn burgundy velvet draperies. There was a small rickety end table next to the couch, damaged with rings from her mother's drink glasses, a small television on an apple box and piles of magazines, newspapers and paperbacks. In the rare places where the wall showed, paper hung in strips. The smell of cigarette smoke permeated everything. She jotted in her notebook, “burn or dump all contents of living room.”
She trudged up the stairs, sat on the bed and added the estimates for kitchen upgrades and repairs to the list. All together the costs of cleaning and repairs were shy of fifteen thousand dollars. She had five hundred dollars cash in her wallet that Linus insisted she take, several thousand in the bank, no idea how to do any repairs, and no money to pay anyone. The only answer was to find a job in town, scrimp, and use every spare dollar for the restoration.
She heaved herself off the bed to unpack the few belongings she had left. She'd kept the bare essentials, only what would fit in one suitcase. Her intent was to hang her clothes in the closet by type, with color coded hangers she brought from her closet in Seattle. But each item she unpacked evoked thoughts of Dan and her former life. The light blue cashmere sweater Dan chose for her at the Nordstrom sale last autumn, the white cotton panties he called her granny underwear, the cocktail dress she wore to their last business event. She stopped unpacking and stared at the pine floor boards.
Later that morning she sat on the steps off the kitchen. The yard was a grassy area and outside the fence was untouched forest, heavy with Douglas firs, pines, madronas, and low growing ferns. It was chilly and the air smelled of damp earth and the unique freshness of early spring. The crab apple and cherry trees hinted of their summer bounty with white and pink flowers, while the lilac and hydrangea bushes sprouted green buds. Only the daffodils and tulips opened to their full glory. There was the sound of a truck changing gears on the highway and birds chirping. She looked up into the tall trees outside the fence and beyond to the vast blue sky. As a child, in the summer months, the backyard was a place of solace. After her mother slept, she crept out to the yard, lay in the grass and listened to the deep croaks of the bullfrogs with the high-pitched song of the crickets. She would gaze at the stars until the night's vast sky enveloped her and she became a star herself and was at peace in that moment of connection to the largeness of the universe. But today it did not comfort her. Today, it amplified her feelings of isolation from the world, even from herself, as if mocking her with its beauty.
Chapter Eight
Lee was thirsty. She rummaged through the cupboards for a glass. They were bare except for a few cracked plates, a cereal bowl, and four faded salad plates, chipped on the edges, and one lone teacup, cracked but still intact. This was all that was left of the original set. Lee had gi
ven it to her mother for a Christmas gift when she was young.
This old kitchen was cold and full of memories, she thought.
The year she was seven Lee's mother lost her job at one of the grocery stores in town. Neither of them knew then it would be her last job. Lee shopped for the groceries each Saturday morning at the other store, the one on the other side of town. Eleanor sat in the car; a floating head amidst the smoke from her cigarettes, a hand flicking the ashes out of a small slit in the window. Lee filled their basket with the same items every week: coffee, milk, peanut-butter, cheese, bread and ground meat. She paid with the Food Stamps her mother picked up every Monday afternoon. The autumn Lee was eleven, the store put up a display of dishes you could purchase with Green Stamps. The first time she saw them, Lee stopped to look at the display, wanting more than anything to give them to her mother for Christmas. She touched the light brown ceramic plates and ran her fingers over the white flower pattern etched on the edges. She held one of dainty tea cups and pretended to drink from it, until she heard her mother beep the horn and motion for her to pay for the groceries and come to the car.
The entire dish set, which included four place-settings, cost one-thousand green stamps. Each week the ladies at the check stand gave her fifty stamps, more than she should have earned for the amount of food she bought, not to mention that technically you weren't eligible unless you paid with real money. But, at age eleven, Lee didn't know, and accepted the stamps, bliss in her heart each time. She couldn't help but notice that the checkers glanced out at the smoke filled car with a disapproving look when they put the stamps in her hand.
One week before Christmas she counted out one-thousand stamps to the lady with the blond beehive named Bridget. Bridget called the rest of the ladies over. “Lee's got enough, girls. She's got enough for the whole set.” They all cheered for her and the lady name Sue with the long brown hair and looked like Jacqueline Smith on the show “Charlie's Angels” offered to bring it to her house the next day. “Can you bring it at night,” Lee asked her, glancing at the car. “My mother goes to bed early.” The ladies exchanged looks and Sue, said, “No problem. I get off at 8:00.” That's perfect, Lee thought, because Mom will be asleep on the couch by then.
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