Dearest Dorothy, Slow Down, You're Wearing Us Out!

by Charlene Ann Baumbich

“I didn’t think my mom did that at all,” Josh said, revealing his obvious shock that his own mother would actually engage in a childish game like this to begin with.

  “She who plays the game can make up her own rules,” Katie said with a mock tone of defiance in her voice. “All of life’s major decisions do not have to involve MEN!”

  “Okay, Miss D,” Alex said, using the name he often used to address her. “We get it. You pluck the petals, you call the rules.” It was a rare moment of silliness between Katie and anyone, and Alex was totally into it.

  “Yeah, Mom,” Josh said with sarcasm and a hint of anger in his voice, “we get it now. You don’t need men.” Brusquely he pushed back from the table. “I’ll walk to the motel,” he said, and stormed out the door. Alex shrugged at Katie, then raced to follow his best buddy—into the street, into the night, into whatever had suddenly grabbed hold of him.

  Katie sat at the kitchen table for an hour, mulling over the sudden and odd turn of events after what had been a productive, positive day—even including the fiasco at Harry’s. For the life of her, she could not figure out what had so riled her son. At 9:00 P.M., she decided just to head back to the Lamp Post, draw a bath and deal with…whatever tomorrow. She recalled Dorothy once saying, “Whatever. Isn’t that a good word? You can end nearly every sentence with it.” Yes. “Whatever,” she said aloud before turning off the light in the kitchen, locking the place up and getting into her SUV. She’d just leave the boys alone, since they thankfully had their own room, and soak in a steaming-hot tub until she turned into a raisin. While she had once questioned the business head of someone who, hoping to drum up repeat business, would leave Avon samples in a motel room, she now simply felt appreciation and anticipation of the pleasure.

  She drove the few blocks to the Lamp Post and turned into the parking lot, her headlights flashing across a slender figure sitting in one of the white wicker rocking chairs on the front porch. The NO VACANCY sign was lit, which was odd, since the lot was not even half full; the front porch light was off; and Jessica sat in the darkness, a small, blanket-wrapped bundle nestled to her chest. Katie parked in front of her room, which was the farthest from the front porch. When she went to put her key in the keyhole, a near desperate sense of loneliness struck her, and she sighed. She suddenly dreaded entering her empty room. Although she could hear muffled voices coming from her son’s room next door, their recent episode of whatever kept her from knocking. Quite to her own surprise, she found herself walking toward the front porch.

  When she reached the end of the building, before making the turn onto the porch, she stopped, wondering if Jessica would even want company. Besides that, she wondered what on earth the two of them might even have to talk about. They barely knew each other.

  Just then she heard someone opening a motel door and realized she didn’t want to be caught looking like a lurker, so around the corner and onto the porch she went. It was just dark enough that she couldn’t see Jessica’s face.

  “Hello,” Katie said, her own voice sounding strange to her as she stared hard toward the shadowy figure.

  “Katie? Is that you?”

  “Yes. How could you tell in this blackness?”

  “I recognized your vehicle when you pulled in. Then I heard the door close and your footsteps coming up the sidewalk.”

  “Oh.” A long silence followed.

  “Did you need something?” Jessica asked.

  “Oh, no. I was just…I mean I…” Katie couldn’t believe this was her behaving like some backward, bashful or guilty person. “I mean, I thought you might like some company,” she finally got out.

  “I would love some company,” Jessica said. “Please, sit down. Can you see the chair right there by you? I can turn on the porch light if you like.”

  “NO!” Katie hollered, realizing she sounded harsher than she meant. Lowering her voice to a near whisper, she said, “Please, just stay put. This is much more relaxing.” She welcomed the dark of night as a respite from Partonville’s magnifying glass, which seemed to be constantly over them.

  “Honestly,” Jessica said, “you are like an answer to prayer. Although I am enjoying the feel of this finally sleeping baby in my arms, I was just thinking how lonesome I am for the company of…another mother.”

  “I’m not sure I would qualify this evening.” The words escaped Katie’s mouth before she’d thought them through. She was still nearly dumbfounded by the second person in Partonville who had told her she was an answer to a prayer! “I mean…I don’t feel like a very good mother tonight,” she continued, shocked at her own confession, words just tumbling out of her mouth.

  Again a silence hung in the air. Then Katie heard Jessica sniffling. “Are you all right, Jessica?”

  “I am just so glad to hear another mother say they didn’t feel like a good one! You cannot know how that blesses me!” Her voice sounded as forlorn as it was appreciative. Katie found herself swallowing hard. Then she, too, began to sniffle. “Are you all right?” Jessica asked, grabbing the corner of Sarah Sue’s blanket and wiping her own nose.

  “Yes. I mean, no. I mean…whatever!” Instantly, the two women began to chuckle at each other and themselves. Sarah Sue wriggled at the noise, causing Jessica’s breath to catch. She just did not think she could take one more bout of crying or nursing. She already felt like a wrung-out dairy cow. Thankfully, Sarah Sue melted back into the soundness of sleep.

  “You know,” Jessica said softly, “wouldn’t it be wonderful if a mom could just turn on her personal NO VACANCY sign when she needed simply to go off duty for a spell?”

  “Just wait until Sarah Sue gets to be a teenager,” Katie said. “Teenagers have the ability to make you feel like all you have in your entire head is vacancy!” Jessica actually snorted through her nose while trying to stifle a possibly awakening burst of laughter.

  “Oh, Katie! I had no idea you were so funny!”

  “Neither does my son,” she said somberly. This time they both burst into uncontrollable laughter; there was just no holding it back. The two ladies laughed so hard in the darkness that Sarah Sue finally started squawking—which only made them laugh all the more.

  8

  Dorothy had continued to fret about the condition of The Tank as well as The Incident at the end of Arthur’s lane. As many times as she’d tried to turn it over to God, her feeling of unsettledness just wouldn’t go away. She had begun to wonder if, with every cough and buck of The Tank, God wasn’t trying to send her some kind of sign about her driving, her health…her life. She’d spent a restless several hours, from 2:00 A.M. to nearly 5:00, praying on and off, then listening. Praising God, yet again, for keeping her from having done harm to anyone. Pleading with God to give her good sense. She just couldn’t move past the niggling feeling that there was something she was supposed to “get.”

  “Lord,” she finally said at 4:45, after having crawled out of bed to sit in her prayer chair by the window, “You know I can be a pigheaded old coot when I set my mind to it. You know what The Tank means to me. You know…everything.

  “So many changes, Jesus. Things to think about. Moving, for one. Lord, I have just got to get busy sorting through all these pieces of my life stored here in this house. The longer I hesitate to begin the process, the more difficult it will be. I mean, You and I both know it isn’t going to get easier! Help me set the course and stick to it. And while You’re at it, give me the strength to do what I need to do before I can no longer do it. I mean, doesn’t that just seem obvious?

  “Okay, now, that’s enough whining. I have got to get some sleep. Please give it to me, now. Please.

  “Your child, Dorothy. Amen.” She crawled into bed, and the next thing she knew, it was 9:00 A.M. Josh and Alex would be knocking at her door within twenty minutes.

  Alex stood in the chilly, foot-deep water of the briskly running creek. Clouds of dark swirls oozed from around his feet and wildly raced downstream toward the unknown as he squished his bare toes
deeper into the mud. He reached into the water and tilted a football-sized, slippery, moss-covered rock, fighting to hang on to it, hoping one of the thus-far elusive crawdads would squirt its way from underneath. When it didn’t, he lifted the rock completely from the water, the moss coating it like hair on a head when one quickly surfaces from the bottom of a swimming pool. He stood inspecting the silky green strands in the warming beams of sunlight, mining for any organisms that might be lurking there. Alex loved anything to do with science. While others groaned and complained about dissections, lab experiments and chemistry terms, Alex took to them like a mosquito takes to skin: ready to drink. Of course, languages—even his own—were another matter. But biology, now that was fascinating.

  Finally squirting through his hands, the rock plunked back into the creek, splashing him clean up to his nose. He deemed this cause suddenly to kick water at his friend. Soon both boys were kicking and scooping handfuls of water and launching mud, simply wallowing in the freedom to act like children and explore what interested them, rather than having facts and factoids, as Alex referred to them, crammed down their throats around every corner. Josh most often felt as if his private school were choking him rather than educating him. He had yet to find his niche, his passion or an ounce of enthusiasm for the stuffy place. He never stopped wishing his mom would let him attend the public school that Alex attended.

  When the boys tired of frolicking, they once again resumed the business of hunting. Josh removed his sopping-wet T-shirt and tied it around his head, wearing the knot to the right side, and declared that this was the CC Tribe’s official tribesman uniform, CC being short for Crooked Creek. Alex followed suit. Even though they were soon chilled nearly to the bone, neither would be the first to admit it.

  “GOT ONE!” Josh yelped as he held the wriggling brown crawdad in the air. He walked it closer to Alex for an official inspection, passing off the critter while trying to make sure its snappers didn’t get to his fingers—even though they would hardly do any damage. “Dorothy would be proud at the size of this conquest,” Josh said. Although he’d been really disappointed when Dorothy opted not to come on the hunt, stating she believed Josh had been fully enough trained during his last visit to be officially a chief hunting trainer himself now, Josh wondered if she wasn’t just tired. She looked like she hadn’t slept much, and that worried him. She was the closest thing to a real grandmother he’d ever had, at least that he could remember. She’d said she was going to fix them up some lunch for whenever they returned, as no doubt crawdad hunts made one hungry. She’d also said she needed to start making a plan to tackle sorting through all the things in her house. He hoped that was really all there was to it.

  Katie opted just to ignore Josh’s peculiar behavior last night and follow his lead today. Although he still acted a bit cool toward her this morning, he was otherwise civil and openly eager to get to the farm. She’d already eaten her yogurt, read two magazines, watched forty minutes of CNN, browsed through the Partonville Press and studied the Daily Courier, Hethrow’s paper—which she was surprised to find at the gas station just off Partonville’s square—by the time the boys finally knocked on her door at 9:00 A.M. On the way out to Crooked Creek, she’d stopped at Your Store and picked up some doughnuts for the boys, grabbing a couple of extras for Dorothy.

  Jessica was weeding flowers when Katie returned to the Lamp Post after having dropped off Alex and Josh and said a quick hello to Dorothy. Katie noticed that Jessica looked relaxed and happy in her labor. How anyone could seem actually to enjoy getting his or her fingernails clogged with dirt was beyond her, but…whatever…“Yes, it is a good word,” she mumbled aloud to no one in the car.

  Jessica stood up, a handful of weeds grasped in each hand. “Good morning, Katie!” she said when Katie exited her vehicle.

  “Good morning to you, too.”

  “I’m feeling much better this morning,” Jessica chirped. “Again, thank you so much for last night. It made all the difference in the world. Helped give me a little perspective, you know? Sometimes we think we’re the only one with struggles. How’s things on your front this morning?”

  “Acceptable,” Katie replied without hesitating. “Let me upgrade that to better, I guess. I just dropped the boys off at Dorothy’s. They were so excited about crab…crawl…looking for slimy things in the creek that it seemed to overshadow last night’s bump in the road.”

  “Were the boys going crawdad hunting?”

  “Yes! That’s it! Crawdads! I do not know why I cannot seem to retain that bit of information.”

  “I imagine a strong, independent, single-mom businesswoman such as yourself has enough information to retain. Honestly, I just don’t think I could handle it. How do you do it? And now the loss of your aunt and all the responsibility involved with clearing out her place. I couldn’t make it without Paul to lean on and comfort me. He’s just the best thing that has ever happened in my life. And now Sarah Sue…I thank God every day for my family and friends…their support and putting up with me!”

  Just like Dorothy’s prayer at May Belle’s, Jessica’s words had quickened something in Katie. It seemed as if ever since she’d returned to Partonville a quiet ache brewed within. For what, she wasn’t exactly sure, but the words blessed and friends and family swirled around her. Tugged, prodded, beckoned.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Jessica said, noticing the look that settled on Katie’s face. “I’m afraid I’ve offended you, and that is the last thing I would want to do. Please forgive me for whatever I might have said that was inappropriate or crossed a line! Certainly I didn’t mean to be intrusive…Oh! Sometimes I just talk too much!”

  Forgive me. Another two words that continued to haunt Katie since Dorothy’d spoken them after The Incident. Katie finally spoke to Jessica, whose fretting yet sincere face loomed before her. “You’ve done nothing wrong, Jessica. I’ve been so busy with life, I just never really thought about myself in all those terms, and to tell you the truth, it kind of stopped me for a moment. I don’t recall ever once, with intention, thinking about myself as strong, or as a single mother”—and she spoke the phrase single mother as if it was genuinely startling to her—“and whatever else you said. I just know that after Bruce left me for another woman, I’ve had to survive. Oh, not that I haven’t always been a headstrong and relatively self-sufficient person, but that day I had to learn how to lean on nobody but me. Period.” As much as Katie was shocked to find herself sharing these pieces of her life with Jessica, she found it a relief to let them out…take them in.

  Jessica tossed the weeds down, brushed off her hands and moved toward Katie with open arms. Rather than back away or stiffen, which would be her normal instinct, Katie stood and received this gentle woman’s hug. Before she knew it, she was soon hugging her back, tears once again welling in her eyes.

  Jessica stepped back from Katie, her soft hazel eyes pooling, revealing her emotions. “Katie, I am no expert, Lord knows. But I do know life is always better with friends, whether they’re husbands, relatives, kids or others God brings to us. And if I had forgotten that fact, I would certainly be remembering it right now, because I just know you are already my friend. My new friend. And that feels very good.”

  My new friend. The words played in Katie’s ears. In Dorothy’s prayer, she had referred to Katie as a new friend, too. In this sun-brightened instant, a burst of joy erupted in her heart.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Dorothy said to Katie through the receiver, “give Arthur a call. I reckon he knows everybody who can fix everything and fix it right proper. I’ve just had no use for an electrician for a good long spell now. The last person who did any electrical work for me was buried about fifteen years ago. There was a man…oh, just ask Arthur.”

  Katie hung up and dialed Arthur’s number.

  “Yup,” Arthur said when he picked up the phone.

  “Is this Arthur Landers?”

  “What other man do ya reckon might be a-pickin’ up the phon
e in my house?”

  “Arthur, this is Katie Durbin. Dorothy said you might be able to recommend an electrician. I need someone to completely rewire my aunt’s home. Someone who can bring the place to strict code.”

  “Strict code, ya say? Is there any other kind of code? I reckon I wouldn’t wanna be livin’ in a house that followed it, if there was!”

  “Right,” Katie said, ignoring his supposed wit. “So do you know anyone who might be available?”

  “Edward Showalter. Lives in Yorkville. You’d have to look up his number in the tel-eee-phone book,” Arthur said, seemingly exaggerating his dialect just for her. “Edward Showalter might be available. Last I heard tell some few years back, Edward Showalter got religion and got sober for good. He was always the best with wires, when he was sober.”

  “Might you know anyone else, since Mr. Showalter sounds like he could be a bit unreliable?”

  “I might. But I wouldn’t recommend ’em none. No, I’d say Edward Showalter’s the man for the job.”

  “And you think he’s sober?”

  “Miss Durbin,” Arthur said, sucking through his teeth, “what I said was that I heard tell he got sober for good, g-o-o-d. That means for good, not for o-ccasionally.”

  “Thank you, Arthur.”

  “Let me know if you git ahold of him. I’d like to git ahold of him myself, since he still owes me for a lube job I gave his Chevy about twenty years ago—nah, never mind,” he said, interrupting himself. “Be more trouble than it’s worth, and he probably wouldn’t remember it anyways, since he was on a three-day bender when he finally came back to git it. Slept in my barn one night and in his car the next. I found two empty bottles of…Never mind all that. Just tell him I said hello and that I’m the one who passed along his name. Tell him Arthur Landers said hello.” He said it as though Katie had forgotten whom she’d called.

  It just so happened that, like Arthur, Edward Showalter was retired, but he was also available for a look-see, as he called it, and he sounded sober. He would meet her at the house on Vine Street at 10:30 A.M. “I know just where that is, and,” he said with emphasis, “I know just what you look like. You’ll know it’s me when I get there,” he said, and he hung up before she could ask how either of those could be possible.