by Donna Ball
Bridget sighed elaborately. “I’d hate to think our cruising days are over.”
“Not over.” Cici slipped her arm through Bridget’s. “Just temporarily postponed.”
A film of anxiety clouded Lindsay’s eyes. “Do you think it’s too soon to call Carrie?”
Cici slipped her other arm through Lindsay’s. “She’ll let us know something as soon as she knows.”
Bridget said, “I guess I’d better get Lori to help me to undress the sheep. The forecast calls for fifties this afternoon.”
“And burn those coats,” Cici advised.
Lindsay smiled wryly. “Like the girl said: back to real life.”
“There are worse things,” Cici pointed out.
The other two couldn’t help agree as they turned, arm in arm, to go inside.
11
In Another Time
Marilee, 1944
“Always observe the amenities,” her Grandma Addie had told her. “No matter how low life knocks you, you can hold your head up high if you observe the amenities.”
As a child, Marilee had thought the amenities might be a flower, or a bird, that had something special to teach, which was why she was supposed to observe it. After all, Jesus had said, “Consider the lilies of the field . . .” and “His eye is on the sparrow . . .” Later, she reckoned it might be something you studied in Earth Science class, like those beautifully colored plants that lived beneath the sea. Now, as a mature young bride and mother-to-be, she understood exactly what the amenities were, and how important it was to observe them. The amenities were gestures of civility performed in this big, often very uncivilized world, small acts of kindness to let others know that their lives were noticed, and their presence valued.
That was why, as her last act before leaving Mrs. Blackwell’s Home for the Wives of Our Heroes Serving Abroad, Marilee sat down at the small, elegantly crafted writing table in her room to pen a note of thanks to her landlord of the past two years, and to attach it to a gift-wrapped box of rose-scented talcum that she had purchased on her last trip into town a week ago Saturday.
Emily Blackwell had sent two sons to fight in Europe. One would not be coming home. On the day that Mitch Crane—whom the girls in the house had nicknamed “the Grim Reaper” both because of his long, dour face, and because of the dreadful news he so often brought—stepped out of his black Hudson with the telegram in hand, Emily Blackwell had locked herself in her room and refused to come down to read it. She stayed there for two days. When she emerged, Mitch was still there, and he sat with her in comforting silence, until the pastor arrived. Observing the amenities.
It was then that Emily had decided to open her home to the military wives, many of whom had come from other parts of the state, who worked at the nearby textile mill while they waited for their husbands. The textile mill made the cloth that was used for uniforms. They worked to keep their husbands warm, and they liked to think they worked to bring them home sooner.
When Marilee first arrived at Blackwell House, there had been fifteen young women swarming through the upstairs rooms in their housecoats and slippers, their hair done up in papers, tossing laughter and shouts back and forth. Someone had broken a heel. Someone else had lost a button. Someone needed a bobby pin. And everyone stopped and turned with big welcoming smiles when Mrs. Blackwell brought Marilee up the stairs and introduced her as the “wife of Sergeant Jefferson T. Hodge,” and the newest member of their household.
There were three beds in most rooms, four in some, but there were six bathrooms and they never felt cramped. They took all their meals at the big noisy table downstairs and climbed onto the rattletrap old bus that the mill sent for them every morning. After work they all helped in the creamery, making butter and cheeses and buttermilk and thick cream, because what they didn’t need for their own table could be sold to help buy household necessities. In the evenings they would leave their doors open upstairs so that they could talk back and forth, sometimes passing around a bottle of nail polish or reading aloud from a magazine article, writing letters to the ones they loved or sharing the letters they had received, until Mrs. Blackwell called lights-out. Sunday afternoons they gathered around the radio in the big front parlor and rolled bandages for the Red Cross.
Suzie Todd had been the first to leave them, when her husband was wounded in a firefight in the French countryside. He was flown to the naval hospital in Norfolk, where Suzie would join him. The other women rushed to her aid, making travel arrangements, helping her pack, loaning or giving her little items they thought would be of use on her journey. Though their words and their faces were full of sympathy, inside they were secretly torn with jealousy, and ashamed of it. Her husband was coming home. For her, the war was over.
Twice Mitch Crane had come to their house in the big black Hudson and stood in their front parlor with a telegram in his hand and a grim look upon his face. All activity stopped upstairs. Silence fell like a caught breath. The girls clung to each other, feeling the sweat that prickled on each other’s skin, heartbeats pounding in their ears, straining to make out the words that were murmured in the parlor below. And then listening to Mrs. Blackwell’s slow, heavy steps coming up the stairs to the steady frantic inner prayer of Not me, please don’t let it be for me, not me, please . . . And then she was there, a tall, dignified figure in her spectral black dress, and she gently spoke a name and extended a hand, and there was a sob, a cry, a scream of denial, and everyone else breathed again. Their numbers were diminished by one.
Then Amy McClellan had flown to Guam to join her husband on leave, and had returned home pregnant. That was much the way it had happened for Marilee, only for her and Jeff it had been four glorious weeks in Hawaii, the best time of her life. Neither woman had pretended her pregnancy was an accident. Even though they knew it would mean leaving Blackwell House before their babies were born, they were among the rare and lucky ones who had had the opportunity to seize new life from the hovering shadow of death. They did not waste it.
Amy had gone home to her parents in Indiana to await the birth of her child, and had later written to gush about her baby girl. Her husband was still serving in Europe. But Marilee, who was due in a mere ten weeks, was going to San Diego, where Jeff would be permanently stationed at the end of the month. She was the luckiest woman in the world.
“You’re the luckiest woman in the world. You know that, don’t you?”
Marilee grinned to hear her own thoughts echoed out loud, and she turned to see Penny standing at the door of the room, her arms and white cotton sock-clad ankles crossed, leaning against the jamb. Penny, so called because of her bright copper hair, was one of the three women with whom Marilee had shared this room for the past year, and it hadn’t taken long for them to become fast friends. Penny’s husband Bill was fighting in the South Pacific, too, just like Jeff. But Penny hadn’t seen her husband in eighteen months.
“First you get to go gallivanting off to Hawaii on an all-expenses-paid honeymoon courtesy of the United States government,” Penny went on, feigning annoyance, “and you stay there just long enough to make sure there’s a bun in the oven, mind you, then you come traipsing back here and expect us to welcome you home like nothing ever happened. And if that wasn’t bad enough, we barely get used to your snoring again before you’re off to San Diego.” She sighed elaborately. “Baby. Husband. White picket fence. What did you ever do to deserve all that?”
Marilee pinched off a wilting blossom from the bouquet of black-eyed Susans on the desk and playfully tossed it at Penny. “Comes from clean living and hard praying,” she returned. “Besides”—she sealed the envelope on her thank-you note, and tucked it carefully beneath the grosgrain ribbon with which she had wrapped the gift to Mrs. Blackwell—“I don’t think there are many picket fences in military housing.”
“That makes me feel ever so much better.” Penny picked up the tossed blossom and crossed the room to drop it into the wastebasket. “All packed? You didn’t forget the
stationery, did you?”
The night before, the girls had given her a going-away party, using up almost all the sugar rations for the cake they’d baked, and even opening a purloined bottle of scuppernong wine. Mrs. Blackwell had pretended not to notice. Their going-away gift to her had been a box of scented writing paper delicately decorated with pansies in each corner, and they had made her promise to use it to write to them. Marilee had cried and hugged their necks, one by one, and told them she would never forget them, not ever. And it was true.
“I just wrote my first letter on it.” Marilee smiled as she carefully closed the box of stationery and rearranged the lavender ribbon with which it had been wrapped. “A thank-you note to Mrs. Blackwell.”
Penny gave her an indulgent look. “You are just the sweetest thing. I don’t know what we’re going to do around here without you.”
Marilee braced herself against the seat of the chair and pushed herself up. She really wasn’t all that big yet—in fact, she had worked up until three weeks ago and her employer hadn’t even known she was expecting—but she still found her increased girth awkward and hard to get used to. She brushed down the hem of her flower-print maternity jacket as she crossed the room to tuck the stationery atop her open suitcase.
“Well,” she said, snapping the locks on the suitcase, “I guess that’s it.”
“Oh, honey! You’re not forgetting this, are you?”
Penny picked up the quilt that was folded neatly at the foot of Marilee’s bed, and Marilee laughed as she hugged it to her. “Grandma’s quilt? Not a chance. I just didn’t have room for it in my suitcase. I’ll have to carry it on the bus. Did I ever tell you the story behind this quilt?”
“Only about a dozen times,” Penny assured her affectionately, and slipped her arm through Marilee’s. “Earl Crowder is going to be here any minute to drive you to the station. Let’s get your things downstairs. Maybe we’ll have time for a glass of lemonade.”
Marilee looked around the room with something close to regret. “I’m glad everyone else went on to church today. I don’t think I could stand saying good-bye again. I sure am going to miss this place.”
Penny squeezed her arm. “And we’re going to miss you, too. Now, let’s get you out of here before we both start bawling again.”
They both turned toward the window at the sound of tires crunching on the hard-packed dirt below. “That’s probably Earl now.” Holding the quilt over one arm, Marilee turned to get her suitcase.
“Honey, don’t try to carry that heavy thing. I’ll holler down for Earl to come up and get it.”
Penny went to the open window and leaned out, but she did not call down. She didn’t do anything. In fact, for a long moment, she didn’t even move.
Then she straightened up slowly and turned around. The flesh at the corners of her eyes seemed tight, and her bright red-painted lips a garish contrast to a face that had suddenly gone very white. “It’s not Earl,” she said. “It’s Mitch. He’s got a telegram.”
Marilee felt the baby inside her belly turn over once, slowly, and then was very still. Instinctively she drew her arm over her abdomen, shielding the little one inside with the quilt she still held. She could feel her heart beating.
They listened to the knock on the door, the clop-clop-clop of Mrs. Blackwell’s sturdy black heels as they crossed the polished pine floors. The door opening. A murmur of voices.
“The girls are at church,” Marilee said on an exhaled breath, for of course it had to be for one of them. As much as she loved them, it had to be for one of them. It couldn’t be for Penny, her dearest friend, who had stayed behind today to see her off; not Penny, please God, not Penny.
Penny’s hand slipped into hers. It felt hot, feverish, even. “It doesn’t have to mean . . .” Her voice sounded as though it was filled with dust, cracking and strained. “It could be something else. Telegrams come all the time. It could be something else.”
The door closed. Steps crossed the floor again. Make him go away, it’s no one here, please make him go away.
And then the steps started up the stairs.
Marilee looked at Penny, stricken. She felt small fingers tighten on hers. Penny’s blue eyes had turned dark, and she seemed to shrink within her skin.
Heavy black heels on the landing. Fingernails dug into Marilee’s palm. And then Mrs. Blackwell was at the door to their room; her stern, reserved features unrevealing, her shoulders straight in black broadcloth, her eyes still.
“Mrs. Hodge,” she said gently, “will you come with me, please? There is a telegram for you.”
The quilt slipped from Marilee’s clutches and pooled around her feet. She heard Penny stifle a sob at her side. Her hand left Penny’s and somehow found its way into the cool, dry grip of Emily Blackwell’s.
Marilee walked down the stairs, and took the telegram. Then she sat on the sofa between Mitch Crane and Emily Blackwell, and, with eyes that were dry and a heart that was bleeding, observed the amenities.
12
The Art of Parenting
Spring returned to Ladybug Farm. Baby lettuces formed straight green rows behind the garden fence, punctuated by the feathery tops of carrots and radishes. Spring peas sprang up overnight and began to climb the rope trellises that Bridget and Noah had built for them, their dainty white flowers promising an abundant harvest to come. Bridget set pots of herbs on the stone patio to soak up the sun, and Lindsay worked bonemeal into the soil of the rose garden, underplanting the beds with fragrant thyme and pale gray lamb’s ear.
The sheep gradually began to lose their pinkness to a soft thatch of baby white wool, and the pear trees, recovering from the late freeze, unfurled their snowy blossoms like lace parasols. Baby leaves of yellow green and emerald, gray green and lime green, ruby and pink, erupted on near and distant branches, and bluebirds, chickadees, and a magnificent display of yellow finches hopped hungrily back and forth between the nearest trees and Bridget’s feeders.
Once again the fireplaces were cleaned, the woodboxes emptied, the hearths swept. They touched up the winter-worn paint on the porches and scrubbed down the outdoor furniture. They raked up the last of winter’s debris and planted yellow and purple pansies in the flower beds. And the day before Easter Sunday, Lori donned hip boots borrowed from Farley, elbow-length rubber gloves borrowed from her mother’s workshop, and, armed with a shovel and a rake, waded into the murky black depths of the pool in the back garden.
“Bless her heart,” Bridget said, watching from the back porch. “She’s been at it all morning. You couldn’t pay me in gold to do that job.”
“Don’t you dare feel sorry for her,” Cici warned, peeling the striped cover off a wicker love seat. “And don’t take her any cookies either.”
“Gee, I’m glad you’re not my mom.”
“Let’s keep our eye on the prize,” Cici reminded Bridget. “Lori wants to work on a farm, so she’s going to get to work on a farm.”
Bridget grimaced as Lori dug her rake deep into the murk and brought up a glob of dripping black weed, some of which splattered onto her hair and face as she tossed it into a waiting wheelbarrow. She had already carted a half dozen similarly loaded wheelbarrows to the compost pile.
“Well, I can’t watch anymore.” Bridget turned toward the door. “I’m going to check the mail. Did you—”
The back door opened and Lindsay stood there, looking unsettled. “I just talked to Carrie,” she said, and both women immediately stopped what they were doing and turned to her. “I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I broke down and called her. She said that Noah’s case has been marked ‘pending further investigation. ’ ” A worried frown creased her brow. “What do you think that means?”
Cici tried to sound confident. “It sounds like a bureaucratic stamp to me. I’m sure it just means they haven’t gotten around to it.”
“Sure,” Bridget added reassuringly. They probably just haven’t finished the paperwork.”
“They might have to d
o some more interviews,” Cici suggested. “You know, talk to people around town, and don’t forget the Reverend and Mrs. Holland. They’re the ones vouching for this living arrangement, so what they say will carry a lot of weight.”
“Which is exactly why Noah will be sitting in the front row on Easter Sunday wearing a coat and a tie and scrubbed to within an inch of his life,” Lindsay assured them. “And,” she added, “it’s also why I just invited the illustrious pastor and his wife to Easter dinner tomorrow.”
Bridget’s eyebrows shot up. “I’d better tell Ida Mae. She’ll want to polish the silver.”
“Like there’s any silver left she hasn’t polished?” Cici quipped. “But you’d better remind her to drape a tablecloth over the liquor cabinet. Baptists don’t approve of drinking.”
“I doubt they approve of three single women having two gay men as overnight guests in their home, either,” Bridget ventured uncertainly.
“I thought we wouldn’t mention that,” said Lindsay, but she, too, sounded uneasy.
“The Hollands like us, though. And why shouldn’t they? We’re nice people.”
“And we never miss a service,” Bridget added.
“Or turn down a committee,” said Lindsay.
“Which reminds me. I promised to bring cinnamon rolls to the sunrise breakfast in the morning,” Bridget said, turning toward the house. “And I know Ida Mae is going to want to use the good damask tablecloth if the preacher is coming. Now I’ve got to find it.”
“I think it has a wine stain on it from Christmas,” Lindsay called after her.
“We’ll tell them it’s cranberry sauce!”
As the screen door closed behind her, Cici said seriously, “What you really need to do is have a talk with Noah. You know how he is about authority figures, and he’s not all that wild about the Hollands in the first place.”
“Don’t worry, that’s number one on my agenda.” She glanced at her watch. “Where is he, anyway? His placement tests are coming up soon and we have a study session scheduled this morning.”