Truly Yours Contemporary Collection December 2014

by Joyce Livingston, Gail Sattler, Joyce Livingston

  Phillip removed his bankcard from his wallet, tipped his head, and waved the card back and forth between them a few times. “That’s what these are for.”

  Grace shook her head. “You’re going to need a bank loan to pay for everything you’ve got here.”

  All Phillip could do was grin.

  By the time they had all the groceries packed into the car and he had Grace back home, it was late. Instead of figuring out exactly how they would construct the frame to support the angel while it dried, he merely carried her bag of groceries up the elevator and saw Grace safely inside her apartment.

  “I hate to keep bothering you. This has turned into so much more than I envisioned. Are you busy tomorrow? I have a feeling that what we have to build is going to take a long time.”

  Grace nodded. “Yes, I have a feeling you’re right. Neil and I were going to get together tomorrow because it’s Friday, but we don’t have specific plans. Maybe we can all stay here and build a framework together, since it’s Neil’s fault this happened in the first place.”

  Phillip didn’t want to go there. He had caught himself getting annoyed with Neil a few times in the course of the even-ing, since he was the one doing all the work and running around and Neil was at home enjoying the hockey game. Still, he was glad Grace said it and not him.

  “Great, I’ll see you tomorrow night. With Neil. By the way, I put a couple of those chocolate muffins in the bag with your bread. Enjoy.”

  three

  Grace set the grocery bag containing the cornstarch onto the kitchen table and glanced at the clock on the stove. Fortunately she had made it home before Neil and Phil’s arrival, but she didn’t have too much time before they were due.

  She couldn’t believe that she’d just been shopping the day before, the sole purpose being to buy the means with which to support the angel after they starched it, and had forgotten the starch.

  The only reason she could think of was that she had allowed herself to become distracted.

  Even though she’d talked to Phil countless times since she started dating Neil, she hadn’t paid much attention to him. Of course she thought Phil was nice. After all, he was Neil’s best friend. If Neil liked him, it seemed only natural that she would like him, too. However, she’d never before found him so distracting.

  Grace started a pot of coffee, then walked into the living room. As she reached for the book she had been reading the night before, she spotted the little stuffed bear Phil had given her. Instead of picking up the book, she picked up the bear.

  She patted the little bear on the head and smiled. When Phil said he had given it to her just to thank her for her help in restoring the angel’s shape, she couldn’t help but appreciate the gesture. While it wasn’t exactly for no reason, Grace certainly hadn’t expected, nor wanted, anything in return for helping him. Even without their mutual relationship with Neil, Grace would gladly have helped Phil, or anyone, if asked.

  Her smile widened as she thought of Phil actually buying the bear. If Phil had been embarrassed when she asked the clerk at the hardware store for water balloons, she couldn’t imagine him buying a purple bear, yet he obviously had. His effort made her appreciate his gift all the more. She found his small gift strangely touching, but forced herself to shrug it off, telling herself that she was only so fascinated by it because no one had ever given her such a silly little gift before.

  Rather than think too much about the bear, Grace replaced it to its position of honor on the mantel. Knowing Neil was always late, she sat on the couch and reached for her book, intending to finish the chapter she’d been interrupted from reading.

  She had no sooner picked up the book when the buzzer for the door sounded. As usual, once she pushed the button to open the main door, Grace waited in the hallway outside her door. Neil and Phil stepped out of the elevator at the same time, each holding a bag.

  “Hi,” both men chorused in unison, smiling as they approached.

  Grace felt herself blushing at receiving the attention of two men, something she was not used to.

  She cleared her throat. “We’d better get right to work. I’m still not sure what we’re doing. Three heads are definitely going to be better than one.”

  Once in the kitchen, both men emptied their respective bags onto the table. Phil’s bag contained the spool of wire mesh, a haphazard bundle of some kind of thin, plastic-coated wire, and the balloons. Neil’s bag contained an assortment of hand tools. Grace retrieved the angel, her hair, halo, and lining already removed, and they all sat.

  She assigned Neil to cut and mold the cone shape to support the body. Phil cut the flat pieces for the wings, then began the excruciating task of fashioning two wire-mesh tubes for the arms. Both men grumbled when she inserted a balloon into the angel’s head and blew it up, then announced that her part of the framework was done.

  Even though she had told Phil about her idea to insert the balloon, when he saw it done, he came up with the idea to insert two of the tube-shaped balloons into the arms and build wire-mesh tubes in the right size, then shape them to fit around the exterior of the arms. He insisted they would be easier to remove later. Of course, Grace agreed, making sure to compliment Phil for his good idea.

  As the men worked at their respective tasks, Grace mixed the cornstarch and water and proceeded to cook it, stirring carefully during the entire process.

  Once the liquid cleared and thickened, Grace removed the saucepan from the stove and continued to stir as the mixture cooled.

  While she stirred, she watched the two men, who were now nearly finished.

  When the ladies’ group from church gathered together to do crafts, laughter and endless chatter always accompanied their activities. Their craft sessions had become as much a social gathering as an opportunity to assemble the items that would be donated to the bazaars and fund-raisers. On the other hand, during the entire time she worked with Neil and Phil, she could count the number of sentences the men had exchanged on one hand.

  The men were silent for so long that Neil’s, “We’re done,” caused her to drop the spoon into the pot.

  She tried not to show her embarrassment as she fished out the slippery spoon with another spoon. Most of all, she hoped they wouldn’t laugh. “I think this is almost cool enough to work with. We just need to put everything in place, and we’re ready to starch her. Have you finished positioning the arms?”

  “Almost,” Phil mumbled.

  Grace continued to stir the mixture slowly, but instead of concentrating on the cooling starch mixture, she watched Phil. Since she already enjoyed working with crafts, Grace was well accustomed to the delicate handling required with such finely detailed projects. Nothing she had done had been a surprise, although the work had gone slowly. Now, watching Phil with his large hands working on the delicate components, she couldn’t tear her gaze away. She could see his obvious struggles to insert the balloons properly into the angel’s arms, which were smaller than his fingers, and around the angel’s body, which he had halfway inside out. Part of her wanted to relieve him and do it herself, yet something told her that more significant than his difficulties, he felt it important to do it himself.

  Once he blew up the balloons to round out the arms, he very gently returned the gown to the correct position. Then, he set to work covering the inflated arms with small mesh pieces using needle-nosed pliers, making sure the arms were properly bent at the elbows. Once the arms were covered, he gave the angel to Neil, who inserted the cone up into the angel’s gown until it was fitted snugly.

  Grace reached for the flat mesh sections that were to support the wings, then froze. “I just thought of something. We can’t put the frame over the wings because of the breadth of the span. We’re going to have to starch her first. Here goes.”

  Holding her breath, Grace mentally said a quick prayer for success and mumbled a quick “amen” not loud enough for Neil and Phil to hear. Before another doubt that she wasn’t doing it right plagued her, in one qu
ick motion, Grace submerged the angel into the lukewarm liquid starch mixture.

  “What are you doing!?” Phil called out at the same time as he jumped to his feet.

  Neil’s horrified expression mirrored Phil’s, only Neil re-mained seated.

  Her hands froze in the pot, up to her wrists in the lukewarm liquid. “I’m starching the angel.”

  “But you dunked it. You’ve got it all wet again.”

  “Of course I’ve gotten it all wet. What did you think I was going to do with that stuff I’ve been cooking?”

  Phil ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know. I thought you were going to paint it on or something.”

  Grace blinked and stared at Phil, whose face had gone very pale. “But I have to make sure every section is completely saturated. I don’t know any other way to do it. This is how I starch doilies.”

  His face regained a little color, but not much. “Sorry. I know you know what you’re doing. But a vision of how soggy and floppy the angel got after I washed it flashed through my mind. It wasn’t pretty.”

  She forced herself to smile, not willing to admit that while she had done this procedure often with doilies, she’d never done it with a shaped object. Grace told herself that even if what she was now doing didn’t work, all she had to do was wash the starch out, and the condition of the angel would be no different than when she first laid hands on it. “If it would make you feel better, you can do it yourself. It’s not difficult, and it’s just cornstarch and water. There’s nothing here that could possibly cause any damage.”

  Phil shook his head and sank into his chair. “That’s okay. I’ll just watch. Sorry.”

  Grace kept the angel submersed as she spoke. “How about if I tell you what I’m doing as I’m doing it?” When neither Phil nor Neil responded, Grace continued anyway. “I’m now going to make sure the starch mixture is soaked into every part.” Using her index finger, she poked and prodded the angel to encourage the cotton threads to absorb the starch mixture. She tried not to look at Phil, who cringed with every poke to his precious angel.

  “And now I’m making sure the wings have a good dose of starch, because they have to be very stiff to maintain that straight shape out to the sides. This is what I do for doilies. They end up flat, just like the wings will be.” Using both hands, she wrung the wings as if they were a dishcloth, then gently tugged on them while still submerged to make sure they soaked in as much starch mixture as possible. When she squeezed the wings a second time, she didn’t dare look at Phil.

  “Done.” After lifting the angel out of the starch mixture, Grace once more wrung out the wings. She then ran her fingers over every surface of the angel akin to a windshield-wiper blade, pressing out the excess visible starch. With every swipe, gooey blobs dripped into the sauce-pan, landing with a solid plop rather than a splash, as the mixture had already become quite thick.

  “That’s disgusting,” Neil mumbled.

  Grace forced herself to smile. “It’s a little slimy, but it’s not bad once you get used to it. Kind of like finger paint. Now if it were raw egg, that would be disgusting.”

  Phil smiled, big and wide. Momentarily, Grace’s hands froze. Apparently all Phil’s worries were forgotten, at least for the moment, which was more than she could say for herself.

  “You’re right,” he said, not losing his smile. “That stuff does look awful slimy, though. I really appreciate you doing this for me.”

  “Yeah, Grace. Me, too,” added Neil. “Especially since this is all my fault.”

  When she first committed herself to restoring the angel, Grace had compared the project to a scaled-down craft session with the ladies from church. However, the project had turned into nothing like an outing with the ladies. Being constantly watched and her actions scrutinized when she wasn’t entirely sure of what she was doing only made her self-conscious of every possible mistake she could make. All she could think of to justify herself was to keep repeating in her head that she was doing the best she could with the available resources.

  “Accidents happen,” she mumbled. “Pretty soon it will be as good as new, maybe better, because we don’t know the last time she’s been washed since this is such an involved process. Let’s get the wings flattened, and then all we have to do is let her dry.”

  They worked together in silence. Neil held the flat piece of mesh in place while Grace flattened and stretched out one wet wing on top of the piece Neil held flat. Then, while she held the wing outstretched over the top of the mesh, Phil pressed the second piece of mesh over the top, sandwiching the wing between the two pieces. After repeating the procedure for the second wing, the two men lifted the angel to stand upright, holding everything in place while Grace used the plastic-coated wire to bind the mesh together tightly so the wings would stay upright in position and firmly supported while they dried. Neil made sure the mesh would remain stretched out by fastening pieces of wood to the back of the sections of mesh.

  Next, Grace inserted plastic straws through the bottom, up through the mesh cone, to support the head and keep it from tipping to one side while it was wet.

  Very carefully, they supported the angel trapped within all the pieces of the frame with chopsticks and piles of books, repositioning every part of the angel and support network until everything was perfect.

  With crossed arms, all three of them stood back to admire their finished project.

  Phil spoke first. “If I didn’t know what Granny’s angel looked like before all this happened, I wouldn’t be able to tell now. You can hardly see it through all this stuff.”

  Grace nodded. “I know what you mean. She looks rather strange with all the wire and mesh everywhere, especially with all the chopsticks sticking all over the place. Not only that, I’m sure she’ll look much better and more like normal when we put her hair and the halo back on. She looks rather ugly bald, doesn’t she?”

  Phil turned to her. “Since when did you start referring to Granny’s angel as a she? I don’t know why angels are always portrayed as women, especially at Christmastime. In every instance in the Bible where an angel came down to pay mankind a visit and deliver a message, angels were always seen as men.”

  Grace knit her brows as she stared intently at the obviously female, albeit hairless, angel propped up on her kitchen table. “They were? Are you sure?”

  “Yup. I’ve always felt strange about the female angels that are shown everywhere at Christmas, but when I start seeing the baby cherub kind of angels, I start to get annoyed. That’s plain old wrong.”

  Grace blinked and stared at him. “So what if every instance of an angel appearing before mankind in the Bible was male? That doesn’t mean that showing angels as anything else is necessarily wrong.”

  “If it’s not right, then it’s wrong, Grace. Could it be any other way?”

  “But sometimes there are gray areas. In fact, in most cases in life, there isn’t necessarily a right or wrong answer.”

  Phil crossed his arms. “I disagree. There’s always a bottom line, just most of the time, people aren’t willing to go there. It’s like being pregnant. You are or you aren’t, and when it comes down to the final answer, there is nothing in between.”

  Grace’s cheeks burned at his choice of examples. “Well. . . ,” she sputtered and let her voice trail off as she realized that arguing with Phil was pointless, at least on this issue. Or, at least until she did some research on the matter. “Let’s change the subject. The angel,” she emphasized the gender-neutral description, “should be dry in a couple of days, which brings us to Sunday. I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to deliver it to you at church because then your granny will be wondering why I had it in the first place. Why don’t the two of you come over after church, and I’ll make lunch?” She glanced back and forth between the two men.

  Neil’s face lit up. “Yeah! That sounds great.” He turned to Phil. “Grace makes a great ham-and-cheese omelet. You’re going to love it. It’s to die for.”
/>
  Instead of the smile she expected from Phil, he stiffened from head to foot and crossed his arms over his chest. The happy-go-lucky gray-green of his eyes she had so admired only the day before turned to a steel, icy blue-gray as Phil stared at Neil. “I have a better idea,” he said, his voice rather low-pitched and perfectly even. “Since Grace is going through all this work and taking all this time to help us, I think we should take her to Farley’s Cafe after church, and we’ll buy her a ham-and-cheese omelet. Or better yet, you can pay.”

  A heavy silence hung in the air.

  “Uh. . .I guess. . . ,” Neil muttered, then stood. “I think we’d better be going. Remember, Phil, we have to get up early tomorrow to be at your granny’s because she’s giving us—uh, I mean, you—that couch.”

  Grace opened her mouth, about to comment on Neil willingly being early for something, but snapped it shut before she said anything. If they were alone, she would have teased him, but it wasn’t right to do so in front of Phil. Besides, Phil and Neil had been living together for a number of years. If anyone knew how Neil was consistently late, it would be Phil. They didn’t need to gang up on Neil. Even though his constant disregard for the importance of being on time continually grated on her nerves, Grace had decided to learn to live with it. She doubted she would ever change him. Any attempts to do so would be a waste of energy.

  As well, the possibility existed that Phil was equally as bad, making it doubly pointless to challenge Neil about habitual tardiness. Although, the more Grace thought about it, Phil had been early the evening they ended up going shopping, and the two of them had arrived in plenty of time to get the angel done tonight.

  She saw them to the door, then stood in the hall until the elevator door closed behind them.

  Grace quietly walked back into her apartment, wondering what Sunday would bring.

  ❧

  “Bye, Granny! Thanks again for everything!” Phillip called out the passenger-side window.

  Neil leaned out the driver’s window at the same time. “Yeah. Thanks, Mrs. McLean.”