Dorothy felt impatient with Gladys; for someone not in charge, she was having trouble acting like it—not to mention sounding more militant than thankful. Without thinking about it, she’d lurched up off her pew. “But folks,” she said loudly enough for them to hear, yet tenderly enough to accompany her message, “please don’t let the idea we’re going to be passing the hat, so to speak, keep you from coming.” A chuckle rippled through the pews. “This meal is a gift of Thanksgiving for all that God has done in our lives. If you can or feel led to give, fine. If it is simply your turn to receive, that is just as wonderful! And if, at the last minute, you haven’t signed up but wish you had, please do not hesitate to come join us. Come as you are. Everyone is welcome around our Thanksgiving table!” Down she went and up popped Gladys, who opened her mouth and looked around at everyone for an awkward moment.
“That’s right,” she said, then plopped herself back down.
Pastor looked at Dorothy, waiting to see if there would be another volley but she shook her head. “Well, then . . .” He paused to push his glasses up his nose and raise questioning eyebrows one last time toward Gladys. Nothing. “Thank you both very much for that report. Both I and Father O’Sullivan feel blessed to watch our generous parishioners (a couple congregant eyebrows raised at the parishioner referral) combine our resources and offer this dinner. We will, I have no doubt, be doubly blessed by all those who come.”
Dorothy was glad to see Jessica in church with Paul and Sarah Sue. They sat in the back pew, though, just in case Jessica had to make a quick exit. Jessica had asked Dorothy to please not tell anyone her news, although she knew Dorothy would never breach a confidence. “It’s just that I haven’t officially been told yet,” Jessica said, looking sheepish. “I’m going to wait a couple of weeks to make my appointment, hopefully with Doc Streator since I haven’t met the new doctor yet. But I’ve already started taking an extra vitamin a day—fat amount of good it does since I usually can’t keep it down.”
Dorothy smiled and touched Jessica’s cheek. “You just take care of yourself, hear?” Although Jessica’s parents didn’t live more than a hundred miles away, Dorothy knew it was a pain in Jessica’s heart that she and her mom, Naomi, weren’t closer. Not in terms of miles, but heart connections. Yes, on that level she wished they were close enough to be discussing life-altering issues like this.
Naomi, born and raised in Partonville, had gone away to college to study business. She couldn’t wait to flee Partonville. She’d told everyone in her senior high school class that she wanted to make something of herself. When she’d told her mom the same thing, her mother brushed her long hair out of her face and back behind her ears. “You are a wonderful young woman, Naomi,” assuring her that she already was somebody. Somebody special. Naomi pushed her mom’s hands away from her face and loosened her hair from her ears so it could drape back around her face the way she liked it. “You just don’t have a clue about me, Mom.” It was a familiar scene for the two of them, one that would play many times over before graduation day.
Naomi, who always hated her old-fashioned name and took to introducing herself as Natalie in college, met Jessica’s dad at a dance her first week away at college, where she’d gone on a full scholarship, which was the only way it would have been possible. One of the things that had attracted her the most to Christopher (never Chris) was his determination to make something of himself, too. It showed in the way he carried himself, the way he managed to hold everyone’s attention when he told a story, the way he appreciated her bold statements about being her own woman. Soon they were on the fast track to success, together. Natalie and Christopher this, and Christopher and Natalie that. They were a duo. By graduation, their top-of-the-class grades, well-honed forensics prowess and calculated maneuvering had landed them jobs less than two miles from one another. It turned out they would be settling in St. Louis, not too very far from Partonville, yet far enough away to be in another world. It about crushed Naomi’s folks to learn their daughter would not be returning to her hometown. “A hundred miles away might as well be five hundred, for as often as we’ll probably get to see you,” her mother had said. “But I understand you need to make your own life.”
After Jessica came along—and she had definitely not been in Naomi and Christopher’s plans, the pregnancy landing in the one percent failure rate of the birth control pills Naomi faithfully took every morning—they enrolled her in nurseries and day care so Naomi could maintain her corporate climb. Depending upon who had the heavier workload for the day, either Naomi or Christopher dropped Jessica off. And at least one weekend a month they would make two roundtrip treks to Partonville to drop off and pick up Jessica. While Jessica spent the weekend with her grand-parents, Naomi and Christopher adored their freedom and entertained in their glamorous home, took off for exotic weekends away (What’s the point of making all this money if we don’t spend some of it on ourselves?) or just lolled around in their peace and quiet.
Jessica grew up loving her visits to the little circle-the-square town where her warm and inviting grandmother lived. She and Grandma would go to the nursing home daily to visit her grandfather, who, due to a severe stroke, could not move other than to smile his dear smile at her with one-half of his tender face and lift a finger toward them—so removed from the grandfather she remembered when she was younger who tossed her high in the air and gave her rides on his back, bounced her on his knee and read her stories. Partonville was also where she learned to love the church, the meaning and importance of the body of believers who had so rallied around Grandma after Grandpa’s devastating stroke. She felt more herself in Partonville than anywhere else.
Jessica vowed she one day would like to raise her own family right there in Partonville, maybe even right next door to Grandma. She loved baby-sitting as a teen since she adored children, and would do so both in her neighborhood and in Partonville. And she spent hours crocheting and painting and all the other crafts her grandmother taught her from the time she was old enough to pick up a needle or paintbrush. She couldn’t imagine wanting to be anything other than a wife and mother. Happy. Content. The way her grandmother seemed to be with her homespun lifestyle. No business suits or day-care setting for her or her children. Ever.
But Jessica’s own mother simply could not understand (like her mother before her had not understood her own daughter) any woman not wanting to make more of herself than a homebody, and over time, they just grew further apart. Oh, not that they didn’t love each other, for they did. But since Jessica’s natural bent was toward the creative and cozy and her mother’s was driven, store-bought and upscale, it sometimes left massive and awkward gaps in their conversations and overall relationship, especially when Jessica’s mom would continually nudge Jessica to go to college.
Her parents were beside themselves that their only child had, during her senior year in high school, fallen for a guy from Partonville whom she’d met at church and who more abhorrently worked in the coal mines. “That’s what we get for getting that child her own car,” Christopher had said to Naomi one night when they were quarreling about their daughter’s ongoing visits to Partonville, long after they’d tired of the weekend drive. “Too sentimental,” her dad had said about Paul after they’d once met him. “A man with seemingly no voice of his own. And certainly no ambition to get out of the coal mine.” But no matter how much they tried to dissuade her, Jessica and Paul stood strongly together.
As soon as she and Paul married, not long after Jessica graduated from high school, she moved to Partonville and they both lived with her grandmother while they looked for a place of their own. Grandma’s offer to the sweet couple whom she’d spent so much time with—witnessing their love for one another and growing to love Paul like her own—had put nearly a final blow in her relationship with her own daughter. Three generations of women pried apart by differing visions of what and how a woman should be.
“You could at least take night classes at Hethrow’s Junior Coll
ege and get yourself an associate’s degree,” Naomi told Jessica after the college came into being. “I mean it’s right there in your backyard. How will you ever take care of yourself if Paul should leave you?” When she and Paul bought the dilapidated Lamp Post motel with a meager down payment—a move that baffled her parents no end since the couple hadn’t even consulted them—Naomi put on a full press for one of them to get some college, offering to pay for it, saying they’d never make a go of a business if one or the other of them didn’t get some business education. Naomi simply could not understand why her daughter had chosen to become what she perceived to be nothing more than a glorified maid. “Really, Jessica, you come from better stock than that!” It crushed Jessica to the core that her mother didn’t understand that her heart wasn’t that of her mother’s and that she and Paul were very proud to set down stakes right on the main road into Partonville. And she wasn’t a maid; she was a business partner with her husband and one of her duties just happened to be that of cleaning the rooms.
It nearly did Jessica in when her grandmother, who loved and supported and cheered her on, had died shortly after they’d celebrated the grand reopening of the Lamp Post from its long-neglected slumber and moved into the little attached dwelling. It was difficult for them both to watch Jessica’s grandmother’s little house, which was right next door to the Lamp Post, be sold for the assets that would pay the nursing home bills until her grandfather died, six months to the day after her grandmother. What little was left was willed to Paul and Jessica, who spent the meager monies for two memorial benches for her grand-parents in Partonville’s Community Park.
But the one thing no one could take away from Jessica and Paul was their desire to make a go of their new business on their very own with no help from her parents (and they wouldn’t have accepted any now should it be offered), which, in their hearts, had been made possible by the love of her grandmother. So far, they had. Yes, money was always tight, and now this pregnancy . . . But overall, neither Jessica nor Paul would change a thing about the paths they’d chosen because they’d led them to each other.
“Your folks love you as best they know how,” Dorothy had told Jessica when Jessica had said how much it hurt her that her parents hardly ever came to visit, not even their own granddaughter, and how they didn’t seem to even notice all of the wonderful improvements they’d made to the Lamp Post the last time they did swing by. And how they refused to stay even one night in one of the newly decorated rooms—“Number Eleven, the best out of the twelve”—she and Paul had been so proud to offer them.
But the hardest thing for Jessica to bear was that Naomi had, from the moment she’d found out her daughter was pregnant with her first baby, coached Jessica to please train her child not to call her Grandma, which was for old ladies who knit, she’d said. “Your baby can just call me . . . Natalie, okay?”
Yes, Jessica was very happy for Dorothy’s presence in her life, and May Belle’s, and that of any other older woman who had ever helped nurture her natural self (and be joy-filled surrogate grandmothers to her daughter) since she’d lost her beloved grandmother, whose endearing presence had been such an affirming force.
She didn’t even want to think about the comments her parents would make when she told them she was pregnant again.
When church was dismissed, Gladys bustled around reminding everyone on the Social Concerns Committee that Theresa Brewton had invited them to St. Auggie’s for a brief meeting. After Edward Showalter reminded Nellie Ruth what set Your Store apart from the mega places, she had decided there was no way she would miss this meeting; she wanted to make sure Your Store, her store, got the business for the dinner. Although she hadn’t officially asked Wilbur yet, he always offered a discount for these types of things and it would be a good thing to remind community folks about that.
16
Katie sat in the SUV in the church’s parking lot after the service waiting for Josh, looking from her wristwatch to the digital clock in the Lexus and back no fewer times than once a minute. She didn’t know whether to go in and round up Josh from whatever he was doing—and what on earth could it be since Dorothy had scurried over to St. Augustine’s and Shelby didn’t attend church, at least not this one—or to lay on the horn, which was her impatient instinct, although she curbed it. After five minutes passed she decided to go in and find him. She didn’t have to look very hard. When she opened the church door she nearly ran smack into him, Pastor Delbert beside him, his hand on Josh’s shoulder. They were apparently just getting ready to come outside.
“Oh! There you are!” Katie gasped. She looked from Josh to Pastor and back again, just like she’d been doing with the clocks, an awkward silence suddenly filling her mouth.
“I was just walking Josh to the car,” Pastor said. “No need to keep you standing outside in this cool weather.” The three of them walked in silence to the SUV. She got in and buckled up. Josh stopped outside of his door and extended his hand to Pastor, who gave it a hearty shake.
“Thanks for stopping by, Josh. I’m looking forward to getting to know you better, too. Dorothy brags on you all the time. You’ve obviously got her under your spell,” he said with a smile. Josh felt an inexplicable surge of happiness flood though him.
“See you next week!” Josh said through the window after he got in and buckled up. “Mom, did you know Delbert and his wife and kids have decided to come to the church’s Thanksgiving dinner? Isn’t that just the coolest? He said it was his wife’s idea and that he thought maybe she just didn’t want to cook. But he laughed, so I’m sure he was kidding. He’s funnier than I thought he was.”
“You’re not even going to be in town for Thanksgiving, Josh.”
“I know. But you will!”
Aside from Gladys, everyone on the UMC portion of the joint Social Concerns Committee was shocked at how efficiently and calmly a meeting could run when Gladys wasn’t in charge of it. There were, of course, a couple of things Gladys commented on after they were out of earshot and one was the lack of refreshments. It was a fact: everyone at UMC had been spoiled by May Belle. Her sweets were such a natural part of every meeting that it never occurred to them anyone had a meeting without refreshments.
“Had I known about their lack,” Gladys said somewhat indignantly, “I would have gathered up a few cookies and such from the meet-and-greet time we had to miss.”
“Wasn’t a morsel left on our table when we headed out,” Dorothy said. “Wanita’s two rascally boys had their pockets full, I think.”
“I don’t know why that mother doesn’t make those two boys have better manners rather than just letting them run wild.”
“They’re just boys,” May Belle said. “It makes me happy they enjoy my cookies and that they are so healthy and rambunctious.” While Gladys gave a harrumph, May Belle thought of her own quiet Earl, how far back in the corners he stood when he was little, uncomfortable with crowds and loud noises, strangers and the other children his age. Of course, she’d loved him just the way he was. Still, it was hard to hear anyone complaining about boys who were just being boys. But then, Gladys could complain about anything—the other thing being Jessica’s sudden and shocking departure from their meeting, her hand over her mouth. “I sure hope I don’t catch whatever she’s got! Why on earth do people go out when they’re sick?” Dorothy had to swallow down a laugh. “Oh, I doubt very much you’ll catch what she’s got, Gladys,” she said while thinking it would take a miracle unlike any she’d ever see again!
Although Nellie Ruth was silent during all of this, she was smiling, too, but for a different reason. She’d not only convinced the joint committee members that she was in the best position to do the shopping (“just give me a list!”), but she was already picturing herself gliding along delivering all the beautiful groceries tucked in ES’s spiffied-up van.
When Tuesday night bedtime at the Landerses’ rolled around, Arthur announced he was going to Harry’s for breakfast Wednesday morning. Said he was go
nna be there at 6 A.M. sharp and if nobody was up he was going by himself. Said they’d all be worried about him at the grill since it had now been over a week since he’d been there for breakfast and that their late appearance last week didn’t count because all the regulars had already come and gone. “Hard tellin’ what all mischief might be a goin’ on in town. Got to keep up with things,” he declared as though he was speaking about the state of the union. “Besides, yur gone too long and all they’s talkin’ bout is you.”
“But you get the Partonville Press, Art,” Herm said. “Seems to me they don’t leave many a stone unturned. And from what I recall, there’ll be a new edition right in your paper box come tomorrow, it being Wednesday and all. Still got that visitors column? Wonder if we’ll be in it!”
Arthur sucked air between his front teeth. “I said I’m goin’ to breakfast at six A.M. No, let me correct myself. I said I’m gonna be at the grill at six A.M. tomorrow. I ain’t waitin’ around fer you lazy bones to make yur brunch appearance at the table. Fella’s gotta start the day off early and get some bacon and eggs in his belly before the sun starts settin’. Anybody wants to come along, they better git up and have their britches on by five-forty cuz that’s when the taxi’s leavin’.”
Dearest Dorothy, Who Would Have Ever Thought?! Page 16