Be Mine, Valentine

by Jennifer Johnson

  He was sure glad they’d put the money in the bank instead of blowing it on a new house or fancy stuff. There was plenty to keep Ellie here at the Village, the best place for miles for folks with her problems.

  The busybody nurse was at the station where the pastel-painted hallways met. She stopped as he started down the yellow corridor toward Ellie’s room.

  “I thought we agreed that it was best if you only came once a week,” she said in a tone just short of scolding.

  Al looked her square in the eye and said, “I’ve never missed a Valentine’s Day with my wife and I don’t intend to this year.”

  The nurse sighed.

  “Mr. Mason, she won’t even know you’re here. Her lucid moments are extremely rare, and she had a restless night. She’s napping now.”

  That was another thing that bothered Al. He’d been coming to the Village all this time, and everyone else called him Al. They weren’t snooty like this one.

  “Then it won’t hurt if I sit by her for a while,” he said, walking away before she could come back with some other objection.

  He quietly opened Elllie’s door with its wreath of yellow flowers and butterflies. The room was cool; he wondered if she was warm enough under the single blanket covering her. He’d spent enough nights with her warming her feet against him to know that she got cold easy.

  Taking care not to scrape the wooden floor, he moved the wing chair from its place beside the window to next to Ellie’s bed. Placing the box on the bedside table, he sat down and took her hand in his.

  Watching her sleep made him marvel at how lucky he was. Sure, sometimes she thought he was her father or her brother Teddy, who died in Africa during the war. But when she looked at him with those blue eyes that were still as bright as the day she offered him pie for the first time, he didn’t see the wrinkles or her confusion. He saw the woman he’d promised to love until he died.

  Lacing his fingers with hers, he closed his eyes and let the memories roll in.

  Their first real date had been at the lakeside amusement park. It hadn’t been much compared to those places today with their monster rides and miles of entertainment, but back in his day, Shoreland had been the place to go. He’d been nervous as a cat going to her house to pick her up. Her father had quizzed him about his employment and his future; her mother had insisted she take a sweater along although it had been into the eighties by afternoon.

  The trolley car to Shoreland had been crowded, as it usually was on a Saturday. His Ellie had found a seat and he’d stood beside her, so no one would bump into her. When he took her hand to help her down, she let him keep on holding it as they walked through the fancy gates and into the park.

  It had been quite a day, starting with her beating him at duck pin bowling and the way she seemed perfect in his arms as they finished their date at the dance house, rushing to catch the last trolley home.

  What he’d enjoyed the most was Ellie’s delight at riding the carousel. He would have been content sitting in one of the seats, but she was determined to ride one of the brightly-colored horses. He’d put his arm around her waist to keep her from falling as she sat sideways on her mount as it went up and down.

  The tinny tune seemed like fine orchestra music that day, and the pleasure on her face at such a simple treat was like sunshine. He started to fall in love with her right there, as she grabbed for the brass ring and laughed every time she failed.

  He opened his eyes and picked up the gift box. That darn nurse would be in here pretty soon, chasing him out. She didn’t wear a wedding ring; he wondered if she’d ever been in love. Ever had a beau, even. He suspected she was one of those women who grow bitter as Cupid passes them by and don’t understand what caring for someone more than yourself is like.

  She sure wasn’t like Ellie, who had a giving soul. Being an only child, Eileen had taken for granted the undivided affection of her parents. She never knew the sacrifices Ellie made to make sure Eileen had the best of everything, from piano lessons to fancy dresses. While other mothers were getting their hair done every week or going out with the girls, Ellie had tucked away money for the unexpected expenses that always seemed to crop up with Eileen.

  Their girl wouldn’t be happy to know he’d come today, either. She kept talking about The Plan she’d cooked up with the social worker here, one that was supposed to keep him from getting depressed. Spending time with his Ellie didn’t make him feel sad, even if she didn’t know him most of the time. It’s what a man did when he had as fine a wife as his.

  He saw a faint movement on the bed beside him.

  “Ellie?”

  He called her name softly, coaxing her awake.

  “Sweetheart?” he said as her eyes fluttered open. He held his breath as she fixed her gaze on his face, ready to be someone else for her again but hoping for a miracle today.

  “I brought you something.”

  He took off the lid and lifted the small tin carousel from inside. Its paint was faded, and the canopy covering the four horses was dented. But when he turned the key on the bottom, “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” tinkled from the hidden music box.

  Ellie’s arm came up and she touched the black horse with a trembling finger.

  “I rode on one just like this,” she said.

  Al nodded.

  “On our very first date.”

  His heart caught. She remembered!

  “And we went dancing. The band wasn’t very good, but we didn’t care.”

  “That’s right, sweetheart. Because we were together.”

  Ellie sighed. “I’ve missed you, Al. Why don’t you come see me more often?”

  “Sometimes I do and you don’t remember.” He spoke gently, not wanting her to think he was scolding. “I had to visit today, because it’s Valentine’s Day.”

  A smile broke on her face and she struggled to sit up. Al set the carousel on the stand and piled the pillows behind her back.

  “You got down on your knee and asked me to marry you last Valentine’s Day,” she said. “I was afraid to tell my daddy, because I thought he’d say sixteen was too young to get married. I should have known you’d ask him first.”

  Al took her hands in his, as if his grasp could keep her from slipping away. Her moments of lucidity came farther and farther apart, and were shorter every time. His greatest fear was that one day, she wouldn’t remember him at all. That it would be as if their years together had never existed.

  Ellie closed her eyes and shook her head. Al waited for her to beg him to take her to the store for some penny candies.

  But when she looked at him again, it was with affection. And when she spoke, his spirit soared.

  “I love you, Albert Mason, and I always will. You’ve been a good husband all these years, and a good man, too.”

  She pulled her hands from his and placed them on his cheeks, bringing his face down to her. Her lips were dry when they touched his in the first kiss they’d shared in months, her fingers shaking against his skin, but he didn’t notice. He was twenty-one again, in love with the most beautiful woman in the world, who’d just agreed to be his bride.

  When their kiss ended, Ellie’s fingers brushed his cheek and she said in a surprised voice, “Al, you’re crying. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said, finding the carousel, winding it up again and handing it to her. “Just being a silly old man.”

  A smile creased her face before she yawned and slid back down in the bed.

  “I’m tired, Teddy,” she said, tucking the carousel beneath the blankets with her.

  “Then go to sleep.” Al kissed her forehead, adjusted the sheet beneath her chin and left the room.

  He was nearly to the front door when the nurse Al liked came running up to stop him.

  “I had to show you something.” Her cheeks were pink; he couldn’t decide if it was from exertion or something more. She handed him a little card, the kind that come with red roses.

  He read the note and smiled.r />
  “Say yes,” he advised again. “Valentine proposals bring the best of luck.”

  As he walked back into the cold wind and to his car, the little rhyme from the note echoed in his head:

  Roses are red, violets are blue, I have something special to ask you.

  Life was good, even with a bum knee and a couple of stents for his ticker. It was Valentine’s Day and he was in love. And who could ask for more than that?

  The Letter

  Suzanne Barrett

  Mary Maureen Brennan looked up from her mending to see Old Joe Tynan, the Northbrook postal carrier shuffle up the walk, his white hair lifted by April gusts coming off Wren Lake. Overhead, a puffy cumulus cloud scudded across the Minnesota sky and momentarily dimmed the sun’s rays. The grandfather clock down the hall sonorously chimed the noon hour. Mary smiled, then folded the partially-patched denims over the back of a chair. You could set your watch by Joe, he was that punctual. She rose, and made her way to the door.

  The old man raised his hand in greeting. “A letter for you, Mary Maureen. Looks as if it’s from that pen pal fellow of yours in Ireland.” He pushed the tan envelope into her hand.

  “Wait a minute.” Joe sifted through the contents of his bulging leather bag. “Here’s them seeds you ordered from that fancy California catalog.”

  Mary’s fingers closed over the sturdy white envelope. “Thanks for bringing them, Joe.” She watched his bent form retreat down the winding brick path. At the end of the walk, he climbed into his small blue and white mail truck and rolled down the drive toward the main road.

  God bless Joe. He was such a dear to bring the mail to her door. Ever since she’d come home to keep house for her brother Mike after their father died, Old Joe delivered their mail to the door instead of leaving it in the roadside box.

  “No bother at all,” he’d said, hardly glancing at the harsh steel brace that encased her left leg.

  Mary brushed an escaping tendril of hair from her face and secured it with a clip. Always in disarray, her shining brown curls were, she felt, her best feature. Not that her features were good, mind you. No amount of fixing seemed to matter; the reflection in her mirror still showed a plain woman with a too-sharp nose, well beyond the bloom of youth, her wide-set hazel eyes framed by a fringe of brown lashes.

  “I wish I was more...interesting,” she had mused aloud yesterday evening while drying the dinner dishes.

  Her brother had given her the smile he reserved for his favorite spaniel. “Geez, Mary, don’t get on that tack again. Fact is, you have a kind face and a wonderful sense of humor, when you’re not running yourself down. Anybody’d be a fool not to see that.”

  “I haven’t noticed any admirers lining up at the door,” she retorted, waspishness overriding her usual good humor.

  Stung by her tone, Mike eyed her in puzzlement.

  She raised her gaze to him. They might have been taken for twins. On Mike it looked good, handsome face, robust build. On her it looked, well...awkward. “Mike, I’m sorry.”

  And so it went, the banter between them. For the past three years Mary had cooked and cleaned for Mike, and tended a small vegetable patch behind the farmhouse, leaving her library job, and any aspirations about penning the Great American Novel or travel to Ireland, behind.

  Now she reflected on the peaceful calm of the countryside she would soon be leaving. In three months, Mike would marry and bring his bride to this house that had belonged to their parents and grandparents before them. They’d asked her to stay, but she wouldn’t, she couldn’t. Watching Mike and Sally together increased her own loneliness. Sometimes the nights intruded and the empty, unfulfilled yearning for a family of her own was more than she could bear. No, she couldn’t stay.

  Mary closed the screen door and sped into the kitchen, stepping out with her right foot, dipping slightly as she dragged the stiff left leg.

  In the tidy blue and white kitchen, Mary whisked the singing kettle off the stove and poured boiling water over a tea bag in a nearby cup. It would never have done when her mother was alive. Her Irish-born mother, a stickler for tradition, always insisted on a proper pot of tea.

  Mary pulled out a chair, settled onto the braided rag cushion, and sat at the maple butcher’s block table. She poured milk into the mug and took a soothing sip.

  Now, she was ready to enjoy her letter. She slit the envelope neatly with the open edge of her sewing scissors. Mike said she did everything “neatly,” often chiding her about her meticulous ways.

  For the last two years, she’d eagerly anticipated Dan Kennedy’s letters. His pen had written its way into her heart.

  She thought back to the advertisement in Ireland’s Own: “Wicklow man, considered good-looking, own house and car, likes literature, music, seeks Irish-American girl, similar interests, for correspondence, friendship.”

  An avid reader of the magazine her mother had subscribed to for the last decade, she had responded, listing some of the books she’d recently read. He answered, enclosing a photo. He’d been thirty-nine then, just two years older than she.

  Dan Kennedy’s picture, encased in a silver frame, stood on her dresser. He was more than good looking, with dark waving hair and arresting blue eyes. But mostly she was drawn to his personality and the humor that bubbled up from the neatly penned lines.

  His letters came with increasing frequency, and often, during her chores, Mary found Dan Kennedy filling her thoughts. He was her very own special friend and admirer. More and more she longed to see for herself the mystical, romantic places he wrote about. If only she could meet him face to face, hear his voice. If only...but that wasn’t possible. Her gaze traveled down to the blue steel of the brace. He’d be repelled by her handicap, as had been the boys of her youth. Some things were not meant to be.

  With a sigh she withdrew the sheets of paper from the envelope. As always, she skimmed through rapidly, then re-read the letter a second time to make sure that she’d missed nothing.

  Halfway down the first sheet, her eyes stopped in mid-sentence. Her hands shook; the sheets fluttered to the table. Merciful God, he was coming to see her. Dan Kennedy was coming here! What was she to do now? The photo she’d sent was one Mike had taken by the gate one day after Mass. Her billowing skirt covered the hated brace, and in the picture she’d appeared smiling and sun-bronzed...and normal. She retrieved the pages and continued reading.

  ****

  Mary laid the letter on top of Mike’s shirts in her mending basket, poured out the remainder of her tea, now gone cold, and walked outside.

  In the vegetable garden, she weeded around fresh rows of spinach and baby lettuce. The garden was her special place. Each row was straight and tidy, the earth rich and brown-black. Her parents had worked this land, coaxing a living from the soil. Seventy years earlier, they’d arrived as newlyweds with her dad’s parents, disembarking at Ellis Island. They’d lingered in Boston, but eventually sought the fertile Minnesota plains, not unlike the green fields of County Tipperary. Here they’d raised a daughter and a son, passing onto them a love for the land.

  Mary looked up from the spinach to the wheat fields beyond. Mike would raise his sons here, and life would continue. But for her? What was she to do after she left the farm?

  She rose and moved toward the house, a frown creasing her forehead. Fading afternoon sunlight outlined a windbreak of slender poplars. The noisy grok-grok of a raven sounded in the distance.

  That evening she pushed her plate away from her and folded her hands on the table’s edge. “I have a problem, Mike. I need to talk.”

  Her brother looked up from his second helping of stew. “What kind of problem?”

  “I received a letter from Dan Kennedy today.”

  “That’s a problem? Most days you can’t wait for the mail.” Mike’s expression showed disbelief.

  “He’s coming here, Mike. I...never told him about...”

  Michael Brennan froze. “For God sake, Mary, why not? He won’t care. He�
��s been writing for two years now. You’re friends. Don’t you think that matters?”

  She went on as though she didn’t hear. “I have no way to contact him. He’s already left. He’ll be here Thursday—that’s only six days away…” She scrutinized a worn place in the tablecloth. “I don’t want him to see me.”

  For the next few days Mary cleaned and polished, mended and gardened with a desperate intensity. Monday evening she asked Mike to drive her to the bus station early Thursday morning.

  “I’ve decided to visit Katy Collins,” she told him at dinner. “I haven’t seen her since the library. It’ll do me good to get out. I’ll leave in the morning and come back on the evening bus.”

  Clouds gathered Tuesday, and during the night a soft rain fell, gently washing the grass and leaves. In the morning, diamond-like droplets clung to pink and violet-hued lupines drying in the mid-morning sun. Purple martins swooped high above the box elders, darting for insects, their cheerful chirps heralding summer. The sweet-sour aroma of freshly baked rhubarb crumble, cooling in the safety of their screened porch, drifted on the air.

  Mary slowly pegged laundry on the line strung between house and garage and considered her future. Perhaps a vacation to see Aunt Brid and Uncle Paddy in Menominee Falls. They’d always wanted her to visit. A sigh escaped, and she closed her eyes as a breeze stirred, providing momentary relief from the sun’s heat. With the back of her hand, she wiped the sheen of moisture from her forehead. Yes, she’d think about it, maybe write them when she returned from Katy’s. It wouldn’t be a proper substitute for seeing Dan, but it would have to do. If only she could see him. If only she were normal.

  The sun reached its apex and moved westward. Mary bent, setting tender young basil plants out among the clumps of summer savory, chives and thyme.

  A twig snapped on the path and she started. Mike returning from town. He is early. She continued working as the footsteps drew near.