Love Me Forever

by Muriel Jensen

Sandy attempted to translate. “Live life?”

  “Long live life. It reminds us that death will never win.”

  Okay. Sandy liked that and returned the toast.

  Celia pointed to a cardboard box in a corner of the kitchen. “That has the coats and jackets I have fixed. We will come and help to prepare to open the Closet.”

  “Thank you, Celia. We have lots of stuff to put out.”

  “I am happy to help you.” She stared into her glass, then looked up, her dark eyes troubled. “Where is your man? The cazador?”

  “You mean, Hunter? He isn’t my man, Celia. He doesn’t want to be.” Her friend’s sympathetic gaze encouraged her to add, “He keeps pushing me away.”

  “Ah. Si.” She nodded thoughtfully. “When Mando was in jail, he wanted me to divorce. He did not want me to be hurt by what he had done. He tried to push me away. But I did not let him.”

  “Yes, but Hunter isn’t in jail.”

  “He is in deuda. In English—ah—money owed?”

  “Debt.”

  “Yes, debt. It is jail of another kind, no?”

  It certainly seemed to be.

  She patted her friend’s hand. “What time is Mando coming?”

  Celia glanced at the clock over the stove. “Oh, no. Now! And I am not finished.” On time, a horn sounded in front of the house.

  “Just go,” Sandy said, pushing away from the table. “I’ll finish whatever isn’t done.” She glanced around the spotless kitchen. “It looks better in here than it has in weeks.”

  Celia ran to the utility closet with the duster and grabbed her purse from a shelf. “The sheets are still in the dryer.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll remake the beds.” Sandy walked her to the door and waved at Mando and the girls in a battered white Chevy. “Thank you, Celia.”

  “Thank your mama. I did not want her to pay me, but she began to cry. She looked like she had been crying already. Is everything okay?”

  Sandy nodded. “It will be. You keep that money. You can’t do everything for free.”

  “You do.”

  Sandy watched Celia get in the car and lean over to kiss her husband. The small gesture was so ordinary yet so intimate.

  Was having that too much to ask for herself?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “BUT, I DON’T WANT a shot!” Zoey complained as Sandy led the girls through Columbia Memorial Hospital’s glass doors the following Monday. Zoey held her wand and Addie wore her tiara. Their expressions were very unprincesslike.

  “We’ll go somewhere fun for lunch,” Sandy promised. “We’ll have hot chocolate and go grocery shopping. How’s that?”

  “Let’s do that without the shot,” Zoey bargained.

  “You’re going to kindergarten, Zo.” With a firm grip on both girls’ hands, Sandy walked down the hallway to the right, where the doctor’s offices were located. Their pediatrician was at the very end of the hall. “You have to have all your vaccinations before you can go. You don’t want to stay home, do you?”

  “I like daycare. I’ll just go there.”

  “But they can’t teach you all the things you’ll learn in school.” Actually, they came pretty close, but that wouldn’t help her argument. “You’ll get to meet new kids, make new friends, and the school has that double slide you like so much on their playground.”

  “The shot’s gonna hurt.”

  “Just a little, and for just a second.”

  “I want to go to school,” Addie said, an uncharacteristic whine in her voice, “but I don’t want a shot, either.”

  “You’re too little to go to school.” Zoey was starting to drag her feet. Sandy pulled a little harder.

  Addie, having heard all her sister’s complaints, stopped in the middle of the hallway. She said her favorite word. “No.”

  Sandy did her best to consider their feelings in most things, even those that were inconvenient for her, but in matters of their health and welfare, she was firm.

  “We have to do this, Addie,” she said.

  “You said I was too little for school.”

  Good argument. “But we have to keep your shots up, too. Come on. Let’s just do it, and after lunch and groceries, we’ll help set up the Clothes Closet.” They were less than enthused.

  “You’re going to give them our coats,” Zoey complained.

  “Because Grandma bought you new ones. And some girls and boys don’t have coats at all.”

  Addie’s arms were folded resolutely, but the man who ermerged from the door to her right momentarily distracted her. Sandy was surprised to find her father mere inches away. Not that he noticed her. He was staring at his granddaughters with amazement.

  “Hi, girls,” he said quietly, carefully getting down on his knees.

  “Hi.” Addie pouted. “I don’t want a shot.”

  Zoey nodded. “Me, either.”

  He tore his eyes away from them and looked up at Sandy. His manner was hesitant.

  “Hi.” She smiled, a lot still unresolved between her father and her, but unwilling to expose the girls to conflict. “We’re getting their back-to-school vaccinations. Zoey starts kindergarten, and Addie has to get them just to keep up. We’re going to go shopping and have hot chocolate. Girls,” she said, “this is your grandpa, Harry.”

  He seemed inordinately pleased that she’d introduced him. He smiled into the girls’ pouty little faces.

  Sandy had discussed their lack of a grandfather a few times with the girls. She’d told them he lived across the country, though she hadn’t been sure where he was. She appreciated that he didn’t smother them with hugs and kisses. He simply smiled warmly and looked them over as though he couldn’t get enough of the sight of them.

  “I thought you were far away,” Zoey said, touching a small finger to a round zipper pull at the collar of his jacket.

  “I used to be,” he replied, “but I heard you two were getting so tall and pretty that I had to come and see for myself.”

  “Did you get a shot?” Addie asked.

  “No, just a test. Now I’m going to get a hot chocolate. You know what?”

  “What?” they asked simultaneously.

  He dug several bills out of his pocket and extracted two tens.

  “Dad,” Sandy warned.

  He gazed up at her, his eyes soft with affection; he was apparently too thrilled that she’d called him Dad to notice the warning note in her voice.

  He gave a bill to each child. “This is for being brave about getting your shots. When you and your mom go shopping, you can buy yourselves something fun!”

  The girls grinned from ear to ear, then looked to her for approval. “Is it okay?” Zoey asked.

  “Yes, it is,” she said. “Tell Grandpa thank you.”

  They singsonged in harmony. “Thank you, Grandpa!”

  He was a happy man. He studied them an extra moment, then had a little trouble getting to his feet. Sandy put a hand out to help him.

  “Thanks. Old age,” he joked. “Getting rickety.”

  “We have to go.” Sandy checked her watch. “Our appointment is right now.”

  “I’m so glad I ran into you. Call your mother. She’s worried about you. Oh, and we want to make plans to distribute the money to your nonprofits. Will you set it up?”

  “Sure.”

  “Great.” He waved at Zoey and Addie. “Bye, girls.” They waved back as he walked away.

  “Okay. Are we ready?”

  They nodded, each clutching a ten-dollar bill, avarice a powerful motivator. Then they skipped off down the hall. As Sandy moved to follow, her eyes caught the name on the door of the office her father had exited. It was the name of an oncologist.

  She stopped, a cold finger of
concern running down her spine. An oncologist. A score of alarming possibilities ran through her mind. As the girls pushed their way into their pediatrician’s office, she temporarily put her concerns aside and hurried to catch up.

  * * *

  ZOEY AND ADDIE were heroic about their shots then prowled the toys at Fred Meyer, looking for just the right thing to spend their money on, while Sandy paced, wondering about her father. She leaned against a display of stuffed animals and called her mother’s cell phone.

  “Hi, Sandy,” her mother answered.

  “Mom, the girls and I met Dad this morning at the hospital.”

  Her mother hesitated. “Yes?”

  “He was coming out of an oncologist’s office? Is he okay?”

  She hesitated again. “We’re waiting for the results of some tests.”

  She had it on the tip of her tongue to ask why no one had said anything about tests, then she remembered that during their past few meetings, there’d been little time to talk about anything but their family problems.

  “Okay, listen,” she said.

  “I always do, sweetheart.”

  “Dinner at my house, Sunday. 2:00.” The girls had made their selections and were running to her, Zoey waving a child’s umbrella with flowers on it, and Addie carrying a plastic Jeep. Conversation would be difficult from here on out. She straightened away from the stuffed animals. “See if you can get Dad to make the new whoopie pie. Bye.”

  That anvil was back on Sandy’s chest. She could barely breathe past it, and almost couldn’t speak. But she’d promised the girls lunch at the Coffee House to practice their social skills and they were behaving well. Once there, she ordered them hot chocolate, and sipped at a soft drink while waiting for their fish and chips.

  Was it possible, she asked herself, that her father could finally be restored to her, then taken away again? She really didn’t want to follow that thought to a conclusion.

  After lunch, she drove home and collected all the clothing she’d received for the Clothes Closet. She put the girls into their car seats first, then packed trash bags of clothing around them and under their feet, while they giggled. Since they were enjoying it so much, she added blankets on their knees and hats on their heads.

  She headed for the Food Bank, housed in an abandoned church on a hill overlooking the river. Volunteers had spent months of their spare time converting the old parsonage next door to the Food Bank into the Clothes Closet.

  She parked in front of the church, and gave the girls hats and socks to carry, then gathered up as much as she could of the bags. Winter clothing was heavy. A helpful volunteer pushed up a shopping cart next to her.

  “Oh, thanks!” she said without paying attention to who it was, concentrating on hefting the bags into the cart. “I also have a dozen blankets in the trunk if you don’t mind helping with those.”

  A large hand took one of the bags from her. Recognizing its strong, lean lines, she glanced up. Hunter stood there in a paint-smeared gray sweatshirt and old jeans. He looked wonderful.

  “Do you ever stay in the office?” she teased to hide her delight at his presence.

  “We closed right after lunch. The whole office is here helping. That’s what happens when your boss is on the Food Bank Committee. And, speak of the devil.”

  Nate appeared with another shopping cart, Addie in the child seat and Zoey inside. “We’ve got the kids helping Bobbie make signs to mark categories of clothing. They’re in the basement of the church. Is it okay if these two artistes help out?”

  “Please, Mommy!” Zoey loved working with Bobbie. Addie had picked up a small plastic fire truck somewhere and would have happily gone anywhere with it. “Sure. Is it okay that Addie has that?”

  “Yeah. We’ve got all kinds of toys to sort through as well as clothes. I’ll make a donation to cover it.” Doing vroom, vroom noises, Nate pushed the girls toward the church.

  “You take the cart,” Hunter directed Sandy, “and I’ll get what’s in the trunk.”

  Several trips back to the car were required to transfer all the items into the Closet. They spent hours sorting clothing by type and size, and placing them in areas designated for men, women and children. Eventually, everything was hung on rolling racks the recently remodeled Fred Meyer store had donated.

  The store had contributed bins as well for stockings and socks, hats and mittens, and scarves.

  Mando Moreno, who’d painted a lot of the space, touched up a closet that would be used as a dressing room, while Celia folded baby clothes.

  Blankets hung on pegs all around the Clothes Closet, several opened out for decoration. Sandy had received a donation of umbrellas from a rain shop in Portland, and Hunter suspended one by its handle from the ceiling.

  He shouted to Sandy from the top of the ladder. She looked up from organizing socks by color in the bin. “Yeah?”

  “How’s the umbrella? Do you want the others in a straight line down the middle, or randomly throughout the room?”

  She knew climbing up and down a ladder a dozen times was no pleasant feat. “What’s easier for you?”

  He grinned down at her. “Usually, whatever you’d like done. Less backtalk from you that way.”

  She acknowledged the playful slam with a smiling nod. “That one’s great. How about randomly, wherever you can set up the ladder without breaking your neck? Although, breaking your mouth is acceptable.”

  “Ha, ha.” He climbed down to move the ladder.

  In late afternoon, Bobbie came with the children to place their signs. The day after Bobbie returned from visiting her father, Sandy phoned to tell her about the Connolly family drama. That had been before Sandy had seen her father coming out of the oncologist’s office. She didn’t have the emotional energy to share that news today.

  Bobbie now came to give Sandy’s shoulders a squeeze. “You doing okay?” she asked softly.

  “Of course.”

  “Good. You will prevail. You always do.”

  Sandy smirked. “Yeah, right. I’d like that on my tombstone. Or does the tombstone invalidate the whole notion of prevailing?”

  “Aren’t you funny.”

  Someone ordered pizza, and everyone went back to the Food Bank basement to sit on the outdoor-carpeted floor and eat. When they’d finished, the children played with a small bowling set someone had brought along to donate, and the adults lingered over the soft drinks provided with the pizza.

  Nate and Bobbie and their boys, and Hunter and Sandy and the girls stayed to clean up. Addie stood on the broad broom Hunter pushed across the floor, while Zoey helped Sandy and Bobbie throw away paper plates and napkins and other remnants of the volunteer crew’s meal. Nate and his boys carried chairs across the yard to the Closet so that shoppers would have an opportunity to sit while trying on shoes.

  Sandy held the trash bag so that Hunter could empty the dustpan into it. Addie headed off with the broom to do unnecessary sweeping while Bobbie and Zoey put away the supplies they’d used for making signs.

  “You all right today?” Hunter asked Sandy as he took the bag from her to tie a knot in it and heft it onto his shoulder. He waggled his eyebrows in theatrical seduction. “Want to come to the garbage cans with me?”

  She didn’t think she had any laughter in her, but she did. She shouted at Bobbie that she was taking out the trash. Bobbie waved to let her know she’d heard and would keep an eye on the girls.

  Sandy followed Hunter up the steps to the main floor of the Food Bank and out a side door. It was dusk. Trash cans lined the back of the building. He deposited the bag in a can, then reached for her hand and led her around the building in the other direction.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Around the garbage cans isn’t the most comfortable place to talk. Everybody’s left the Closet. There�
��s a glider on the front porch of the parsonage.”

  They climbed the parsonage steps and sat side by side on a two-person bench. From there they could see Washington on the other side of the river and the headlights of the traffic on the Astoria-Megler Bridge in the distance. Hunter propelled them slowly, rhythmically, back and forth with his foot. “You still haven’t made peace with your parents?” he asked.

  “I have, sort of.” She wrapped her arms around herself. A light breeze had whipped up the hill from the river.

  “What do you mean, sort of?”

  Her throat hurt suddenly and she had to swallow and start again. “You know, for most of my teen years, I wanted the solid family some of the other kids had. So many times I longed for a father who would go to bat for me, handle our money problems, deal with household issues. Just to feel strong arms around me that let me know I had someone to turn to.”

  Hunter put an arm around her. She wondered if he was trying to offer comfort or warmth, then decided it didn’t matter. She leaned her cheek against his chest and accepted the offering.

  “Anyway...” she went on “...I’ve come to terms with what happened and decided you were right. Adoration is for little children. We all just do the best we can and that’s all we can expect from the people who raised us.” She pushed away just a little but he kept his arm around her. She loved how that felt. His expression was grave, sympathetic.

  “I was beginning to think that after all these years we were going to be a family again.” She drew a deep breath. “But the girls and I ran into my father as he was coming out of an oncologist’s office. My mother says they’re waiting for test results.”

  He put both arms around her now and made a sympathetic sound. “Sandy...I’m sorry you’re worried, but you don’t really know that there’s cause yet, do you?”

  “I guess not. But that would be just like life, wouldn’t it? To give me everything back with one hand and take it away with the other?”

  “Hey. You’re usually the optimist.”

  “I know. Anyway, I’m tired of being mad, so I invited my parents to Sunday dinner. Is that crazy?”

  “No. In their confusion and pain they hurt you, but now, instead of running away, or hurting them back, you’re reacting with kindness. You’ll provide them with the loving family they took away from you. That’s big, Sandy. It’ll be good for the girls, good for you, too.”