“I’m the quiet type, I hardly said a word.”
“Charles scared the shit out of him! And Arnie doesn’t scare easily.”
“You would have been proud of Charlie, though, he kept things civil.”
Jessie interjected. “Civil maybe, but Arnie’s not too keen to see any of you again.”
“Jessie, the guy gave you a gun. He spirited you out of the country under another name and kept the information to himself while the rest of us worried ourselves sick over whether you were in Deuce McCall’s basement all that time.”
Squirming lower in her seat, hands in the hoodie pockets, Jessie responded. “First of all, all the gun succeeded in doing was getting my wrist broken.” Spying Matt’s inquisitive look, she added ruefully, “He stomped on my arm when I reached for the gun. He had big boots on.”
Matt leaned his head on the steering wheel and closed his eyes.
“And as far as Arnie’s secret went, well he is my faithful friend and will be forever, because he kept the secret all that time. So, Matt, if ever you need anything – and I mean anything – you can trust Arnie. I mean it. He’s a good friend.”
Eyeing her suspiciously, Matt started, “So did you…”
Interrupting, Jessie replied, “No, dammit Matt, I didn’t ask him for another gun. But I want one.”
“Okay,” he said. “But you’re going to learn to shoot properly. And we may or may not tell Charles. I haven’t decided for sure yet. I’m still testing those waters. He’s not necessarily open to you having a gun.”
She grinned. “You rock, Matt.”
Then, as they pulled away from the curb for the short ride down the street and around the corner to the shelter, she added, “ Wish I had known that two years ago. Maybe I would have confided in you then.”
His shifty look towards Jessie held the hint of a smile, but the comment rang true. “As long as you confide in me from here on in, kid,” he said.
She held up a baby finger. “Okay. Pinky swear.”
Now his smile was wide and honest. “Pinky swear.” They shook, pinky style, baby fingers hooked around each other.
And then they were at the homey shelter, where Mary Helen and the girls had planted pink impatiens and blue forget-me-nots in the wooden flower boxes, adding a sprightly feeling of hope and new life to the day. Matt escorted Jessie to the door just as the bright sun started to push aside the grey once and for all. Jessie checked her phone to confirm Matt was on speed dial but still he instructed her not to stay too long. He planned to check in every fifteen minutes or so. She agreed, and gave him a gentle hug before wandering down the hall to the kitchen, from where the comforting aroma of chicken soup was wafting towards her like a beacon of optimism and faith.
Even though the older woman was informed of Jessie’s safe return, she could not suppress a delighted scream when she turned from a kneeling position scrubbing a coffee stain on the floor to see childlike smiley faces on the old yellow Chucks.
“Jessie! Finally!” Mary Helen bounded up in double time, which was no small feat for a woman of a certain age.
Kleenex were shared after their greeting, but soon the women were chatting amicably at the kitchen table over cups of chamomile tea and Mary Helen’s warm homemade biscuits dripping with melted butter and honey. Most of the tenants were out working day jobs, an express condition of living at the home. So the old Victorian home was quiet, with the exception of the gently bubbling soup on the stove and the occasional creak of protest emanating from the fridge.
Mary Helen asked about Jessie’s friends.
“I haven’t seen Carter, Maggie or Sue-Lyn yet,” Jessie said. “Steve was going to tell them, but I think he’s staggering the people I’m seeing. They all think I’m going to have a major meltdown. Actually, Mary Helen…I kind of did already have a meltdown. It isn’t easy, being one person for a year and a half and then suddenly having to become another. Plus I was tired, anyway,” she added, as if that were the main reason for the recent breakdown, and not the fact she had been responding to an angry, hurt Josh and unloading years of a deeply buried tragic secret at the same time.
“I know, honey,” Mary Helen said kindly, sliding another moist biscuit onto Jessie’s floral plate. Everything about this place was so cozy and homey. Jessie loved coming here.
Mary Helen continued, as she buttered another biscuit for herself. “Deirdre was here the day after you had your little meltdown. She was pretty worried.”
“I’m glad she has you to talk to, MH,” Jessie said, biting into the biscuit after loading it with butter and honey, and then licking honey off her fingers like a child.
“Who would have thought it?” Mary Helen said, laughing. “We’re not exactly from the same side of the tracks.”
“Oh yes you are,” Jessie grinned. “In your hearts, at least.”
“So how are you doing with all of this?” The conversation was destined to take a serious tone. Mary Helen was the champion of getting sad women to share their stories. And really – that was the reason Jessie was there. She needed someone almost neutral to talk to, and Mary Helen was the perfect choice. She was a trusted friend, a woman who understood love and loss like no other.
“I don’t know,” Jessie answered honestly. She could feel tears welling up but she forced them to retreat. This would be a difficult conversation to get through if she couldn’t keep her fragility in check. “Mary Helen…” She cocked her head, curious. “How have you managed to go on after suffering so much personal loss?”
She was thinking of the extreme losses suffered during Mary Helen’s lifetime – a husband, a son, a daughter, all in fairly quick succession.
“It’s simple,” Mary Helen said, sitting back. She was often asked this question, mostly from people afraid of losing. “You have two choices. Either you go on, or you don’t. That’s not to say I didn’t have my own very gray time in my life while I was trying to sort things out, while I was, well, choosing which way I wanted to go. Because it would have been easy just to call it a day, you know.”
She took a sip of the soothing hot tea as she pondered what she felt Jessie needed to hear.
“Late one summer afternoon I was sitting outside my apartment in Coquitlam on one of those moldy white plastic patio chairs everyone had before they all bought those neon green and yellow ones, and I was sucking back smoke after smoke and annihilating a bottle of some old Scotch my husband had kept in the cupboard for years…” She turned to Jessie. “He was saving it for some perfect day down the road which, you are aware, never came. It was raining. In fact it poured from the heavens as a little storm passed by, but it was warm, muggy, and I was about ready to cash it all in. I was pretty pathetic, sitting there bawling and desperately missing my family…and then, lo and behold, they spoke to me. As real as you are, sitting here in front of me.”
Mary Helen leaned forward as the memory took hold.
“I’m not kidding, Jessie. It was like I could hear them, although it was like one voice, and it said look up, Mary Helen. So I did, and guess what I saw, my dear? It was a triple rainbow – have you ever seen one of those?”
A tremor of energy passed from Jessie’s toes to the top of her head as she silently shook her head no.
“I swear it was three rainbows all nestled into one. I felt instinctively one was my daughter, one was my husband, and the other was my son. It wasn’t a decision, it was more of a knowing. The very next day I went to the government manpower office to register that I was looking for work, and the day after that I got a call from Deirdre asking me to interview for this job. Now I have had hundreds of daughters, sixteen at a time. I started a whole new life at a time when I thought I was dead, Jessie, or almost dead - because I was heading in that direction. I honestly was thinking about ending my life. I had it all planned. But then those rainbows…”
She blushed, remembering. “You probably think I’m crazy, hearing voices and all. But honey I have to tell you – it felt like it was them. As if
my family was still out there somewhere telling me to go on, that it wasn’t my time to join them just yet. I’ll tell you something – that crazy experience sure makes the passing of others easier to bear.”
Jessie sat across the table from Mary Helen and studied her. The woman had a calm about her, stemming from miniature wrinkles here and there - at her eyes, on her hands, by her lips. Her inner light was bright and beautiful, and she carried a certain peaceful aura that drew people to her, especially the disenfranchised, the women who felt society had thrown them away. Mary Helen was an extraordinary woman, and Jessie felt utterly blessed to know her.
“Sometimes I think my dad talks to me in my dreams. He sends me music. I’m fairly sure of it.”
“I’ll bet he does, Jessie. Although you wouldn’t take credit for your music if your life depended on it, would you?”
“Ha. I dunno.” Jessie looked down as her cheeks turned pink. “It comes from somewhere, MH. Sometimes I swear it doesn’t feel like it comes from me.”
“Well then,” Mary Helen smiled softly. “What does that tell you, honey?”
“Yeah.”
Jessie picked up a biscuit and peered closely at it. “My dad, I always figured he loved my mom more than she loved him. You know why? It has to do with biscuits.”
“Hmm. Okay, shoot. I’m curious.”
Smiling mischievously, Jessie leaned both elbows on the table and held the biscuit out as if it were a trophy or a specimen in a science exhibit.
“Well, he liked his biscuits crunchy, and my mom liked them soft and fluffy, like these. But he always made them the way she liked them, not the way he would have preferred them. And then one day the strangest thing happened, or at least I thought it was, at the time. It was a Sunday afternoon, I remember that, and my parents – their names were David and Emily – were sitting at the kitchen table trying to sort out which bills to pay. They had them all lined up, like little soldiers, and they kept moving them from one pile to another.”
Jessie took a few biscuits from the platter in the table’s center and lined them up next to each other. She moved a few here and there to illustrate her point.
“They were arguing about it. Then all of a sudden, my big strong dad – he was gentle, Mary Helen, you would have liked him – he started to cry. I remember he put his head in his hands and behind him the sun was pouring in the window like it is in here, lighting up the room, but he was crying. I had never seen him cry before. Ever. My mom cried, a lot actually, usually behind the closed door of their bedroom. But it was weird to see my dad all of a sudden crying right there at the kitchen table. So my mom, well…she put her arms around him and told him not to worry. She picked up the bills and started to put them away, but he stopped her. And together I guess they sorted out what to pay because soon instead of bills being lined up there were little envelopes lined up, all stamped and ready to go.”
She hesitated, recalling her parents that way. On that long ago day it was like she wasn’t in the room with them, sitting at the table drawing. They were in their own confused and frightening world, one where a basketful of unpaid bills was terrifying and threatening.
Jessie sat back, the original biscuit once again dangling from her fingers. “That night at dinner my mom made biscuits. And she made them the way my dad liked them.”
She looked up at Mary Helen, who was amazed and humbled Jessie was comfortable enough with her to share such a personal story about her past. “That was her way of telling my dad she loved him, regardless of the fact he only pumped gas and played small gigs here and there and couldn’t scratch together enough cash to pay the bills. Then – well, he died a few months later, and my mother remarried a short time after that. We moved into this big house, and you know what? She never had to worry about not being able to pay the bills again. The rich guy she married took care of those for her. Suddenly my mom had everything she could want, materialistically. But it didn’t matter. She would have thrown it all away just to make biscuits for my dad again.”
Quietly the two women sat and devoured a few more of the little homemade biscuits, washing them down with sips of the fragrant chamomile tea. They were pondering life and love, and the fact that often people don’t reflect and give thanks for what they have until it is taken away.
Jessie had one more thing to say - a question, this time. Mary Helen could see right through to her soul then, with all its cracks and fissures, and a body and spirit that seemed to barely be able to keep it all together.
“What kind of sign do you think…,” Jessie paused before continuing, struggling to grasp what it was she needed to ask, “…do you think God or the universe of whatever you want to call it, might send to say there’s still hope for someone mourning the loss of someone who…is still on earth? Of someone you want to make biscuits their way for.” She looked up expectantly, and they heard the front door quietly close as Matt popped in again to ensure everything was all right.
“I don’t know, honey,” Mary Helen said, subdued. “But I think if you watch for signs, you’ll find them.” She hesitated before adding one word. “Josh?”
Unable to find the words to respond, Jessie just nodded. Her voice was choked with emotion when she finally trusted herself to speak. “I don’t even know if he likes his biscuits crunchy or soft and fluffy. There are so many things I never got the chance to find out about him. I miss him, Mary Helen. I miss him a lot.”
She swiped at a tear as Matt backed away slowly. The women were fine. Just sad. And well, these days that was part of the fabric of Jessie’s life. At least she had someone like this amazing lady from the shelter to help her put it all in perspective.
“One day at a time, honey,” Mary Helen suggested helpfully, her voice a smooth patch on a wind-tossed sea. “One day at a time.”
The front door slammed again and two sets of female footsteps bounded down the hall, almost crashing into Matt. Both girls skidded to a halt when they saw Jessie.
“Holy shit! We just heard on the bus radio that you were back! But we didn’t expect you to be here!”
Chuckling, Jessie extricated herself from the antique wooden chair. Thrusting out a hand, she introduced herself to two of the shelter’s latest residents. “Jessie Wheeler,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”
After some excited chatter the girls each grabbed a few still warm biscuits from the sunny kitchen before going upstairs to change. The taller of the two, Adele, a girl of African heritage with exquisite enigmatic eyes and an obvious ability to pull a cool outfit together, threw a hopeful invite over her shoulder before leaving the room.
“Hey, we’re gonna play a board game. You in, Jessie?”
Matt, standing quietly in the hallway as the girls bounded by him on their way upstairs, sent Jessie a mute question by virtue of raised eyebrows.
“Another half hour, okay Matt?” Jessie entreated him. “Or do you need to get home?”
“Half an hour,” he agreed, trying to maintain control over this wild girl in his care.
She grabbed his elbow. “Come on upstairs, Matt. I know Dan’s outside, I saw him, like a hawk,” she pantomimed a bird with claws, “watching me. Come on up and play because we’ll need a fourth. And Mary Helen insists on adding carrots to that soup, which smells divine, so she’s not available.”
They ended up sitting across from each other as Adele lifted the box lid off the game Life, which Josh played the day he was at the shelter with Jessie. As Adele pulled out some papers resting on the game board in the box, she exclaimed, “Oh! You’ll love these.”
Tentatively, she handed them over to Jessie. “I forgot they were there,” she said. “We don’t play this game very often. We’re usually too busy trying to figure out the real thing.”
Slowly, curious, Jessie flipped over the papers. There were three sketches, all done in pencil. All were clearly images of Jessie and Terri sitting on the nearby window ledge as Jessie worked with Terri, teaching difficult bar chords on the guitar. Each image featu
red a different pose – in one, Jessie was laughing, in another Terri was peeking up at Jessie in shy but sincere admiration and friendship. The third featured the two girls with their heads down, concentrating on the position of Terri’s fingers on the strings. Jessie’s hand was carefully laid over the fingers of the younger girl.
Even Matt understood the significance of the drawings, but he was surprised to find out the identity of the artist.
“Who?” Jessie asked, holding up one of the drawings. But she knew. They were drawn by someone who was sitting in the exact seat she was sitting in now – someone with a perfect view of the two girls perched happily in the window ledge. They were drawn by Josh mere hours before he and Jessie finally admitted their feelings for each other – when they first allowed themselves to believe in love.
“I thought it would be a rainbow,” she managed to croak as she ran a finger over Josh’s familiar cursive J, testament to his enduring presence not only here in this upper attic room, but in her life.
Neither Matt nor either of the girls understood her comment. But when Adele divulged it to Mary Helen later only to be suddenly grabbed and roughly hugged by the teary shelter manager and housemother, she knew Mary Helen comprehended, and that it was a good thing.
Jessie replaced the sketches in the box when they finished their game because somehow the drawings seemed to fit in their shelter home, cozied up to the game of Life, as if the three people tied intimately together by their penciled renderings were still happily living life together as well.
Then she and Matt drove peacefully back to the Keating home, and the thing called real life threw her another graceful curve.
***
Chapter Twenty-Four
Overall it had been a good day for Jessie to venture forth in Vancouver society. When she cheerfully dropped down on a stool by Deirdre’s kitchen island, tired but placated both by Mary Helen’s wisdom and Jessie’s own open communication with Matt – which, thankfully, was not as difficult as she anticipated - she was all set to attempt some dialogue with Dee. Part of her cheery mood was due to the “sign” the universe had gifted her in the shelter’s attic room. Maybe Terri was telling her to hang on and not to give up on Josh.
No Greater Love Page 25