Simple Gifts Page 10

  “A statue?” Her laughter trilled, as sharp and clear as a spring-fed brook. “That’s hilarious.”

  “Yes, well. What did you need?”

  “I’ve been thinking. As soon as you get home, we can redo the nursery. I found the cutest butterfly material. You can make a spread and curtains. Wouldn’t that be darling?”

  “Darling. If I knew how to sew. Don’t buy the material yet, okay?”

  “I already have. It’s so cute, I was afraid to wait. I knew they would sell out if I didn’t buy it now.”

  Okay, so I’d take sewing lessons. My social life was nonexistent anyway. “Look, honey, I have to check on Ingrid. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

  “Okay, Mom. Get some rest while you’re there. Remember, I need you.”

  I arrived at Ingrid’s around noon, expecting her to be upset that I was late. She did exactly what she wanted when she wanted to do it, but she expected everyone else to stick to a rigid schedule. I should have been at her house an hour ago.

  She was waiting when I walked in the door. “I was beginning to think you’d had an accident.”

  “No accident. I had a meeting with Winston Little.”

  A curious light entered her eyes. “The committee. About time you met with them. Now. We have business to tend to. You need to phone the hussy and make it clear she isn’t getting Eugene’s foot.”

  I took a deep breath. “We have to do that today?”

  “No need to put off until tomorrow what can be done today.”

  Easy for her to say. I walked to the kitchen cabinet and started opening doors. I didn’t want to call the hussy. I’d had a morning of hussies.

  “Where do you keep the antacids?” Attending the meeting on an empty stomach hadn’t been a good idea.

  I located the antacids and dropped a pink disk into my mouth before turning to the next ugly task awaiting me. Prue Levitt Moss. What did I know about the woman other than she’d moved in like a Sherman tank and mowed down poor Eugene’s resistance until he’d succumbed to her charms—or at least that was Ingrid’s version. Never mind that Eugene’s charms had been easily seized by any or all females. Even staid and true Ingrid had been the recipient of Eugene’s insatiable follies, but his final indiscretion broke her heart. I picked up the slip of paper with Prue’s number scrawled in scarlet letters—Ingrid’s less than coy method of tagging the enemy.

  “I’m calling Hawaii, you know!” If that didn’t shake sense into Ingrid, nothing would. In her opinion, long distance was used sparingly and for emergencies only. Hawaii was a distant planet with a hefty rate.

  Ingrid’s voice came from somewhere in the house. “Call anyway! And put the receiver on speakerphone!”

  “Not a chance!” If I had to do this, I didn’t want Ingrid interrupting.

  I picked up the phone and dialed the number. Maui time? I had no idea what the time was there. Early morning, I thought. I’d probably get Prue out of bed and make her even less cooperative. A voice came over the line, “Hello?”

  “Yes. Prue Levitt, please.”

  “Moss,” a crisp voice corrected.

  “Mrs. Moss,” I cleared my throat. “I’m calling on behalf of Ingrid Moss. Do you have a moment to chat?”

  Inane, Marlene. But how did you begin a conversation about a foot?

  “Depends.” Slight pause on the line. “Are you calling to say the foot has been exhumed and shipped?”

  “No, Mrs. Moss.” Island boars would spout pig Latin before that happened. “Ingrid has appointed me as her personal spokeswoman.”

  The woman’s tone lifted. “She’s passed?”

  “No—“I glanced up as Ingrid walked past the doorway, surprised by the hopeful tone in Prue’s voice. “Temporarily indisposed. She wants me to inform you that she has received your request to exhume Eugene’s foot and have the article sent to you. She’s placed the matter in her lawyer’s hands.”

  Ingrid reappeared, motioning for me to cover the receiver with my hand.

  “Excuse me.” I covered the mouthpiece. “What?”

  “Tell her I’m not shipping the foot. Period.”

  “I can’t tell her that until we hear from Mr. Rexall.”

  “Doesn’t matter what he says; the foot stays here.”

  I turned back to the phone. “You should be hearing something soon.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  I braced for the inevitable. When two strong-minded women set their minds on one goal, hell hath no fury in comparison. “The foot belongs to me.”

  I repeated my message. “Mrs. Moss’s attorney has the matter under advisement.”

  Ingrid blocked the doorway, pointing to the clock.

  Prue turned as mean as a rusty barbed wire. “Now you listen to me, missy. If you and that aunt of yours think you’re going to call me at the crack of dawn, get me out of bed, and keep me from my husband’s—my devoted and loving husband’s remains—you’re sadly mistaken. I’m not asking for the whole body; the foot will be adequate. You would save us all a good deal of time and trouble if your aunt would see the futility of resistance.”

  Futility. Now that I agreed with, but then I didn’t want the foot. As a matter of fact, I was having a hard time understanding why either of them wanted it.

  Ingrid used her hand to make slashing motions across her throat. The long-distance clock was ticking.

  “I have to hang up, Mrs. Moss. You’ll be hearing from Mrs. Moss—“

  “Don’t hang up! Now you listen to me. Eugene was legally my husband when he passed. His folks insisted on burying him in Olathe, and I couldn’t do much about it at the time, but all that’s changed now. I’m living in Maui with my nephew and his wife—my attorney nephew. Do you get the drift?”

  Get it? I was buried up to my neck in it. In an attorney-fee showdown, she was financially light years ahead. Then again, she hadn’t seen Ingrid’s bank statement. If the matter weren’t so somber, a money shoot-out might be interesting.

  Prue’s voice crackled over the line. “You listen to me, dearie.”

  Dearie?

  “You tell Ingrid that she can’t send a fresh-faced-still-wet-behind-the-ears niece to do her dirty work. If she has anything to say to me, she needs the fortitude to say it in person!”

  Ingrid jabbed at the clock.

  “You go back to whatever it is you do, dearie, and I’ll thank you to tell your aunt to fight her own battles. If I don’t hear that the foot is being shipped within the week, you can bet you’ll be hearing from my nephew.”

  “I’m hanging up now, Mrs. Moss. We’ll be in touch.” I hung up before she managed another zing with her venomous arrow. No wonder Ingrid got so bent out of shape when anyone mentioned Prue’s name. Dearie, was it?

  “Well?” Ingrid blocked the doorway, expression hard as a concrete mattress. “What’d she say?”

  “She said no.”

  I dropped the number back in the wicker basket beside the phone. “She said her nephew would be touching base with us within the week.”

  “Humph. We have her whipped. She’s scared.”

  “Yeah.” The woman was quaking in her boots. “Does she have the money to fight this in court?”

  After all, lawyers, even related ones, cost money. One hundred twenty-five dollars an hour! I couldn’t get past that sum.

  “She’s got money; she’s mooching off her nephew. She was in a car accident a few years back and got a chunk of money too. Must have been a pretty penny.” Ingrid frowned. “Life’s not fair. She got Eugene and all that money too. Now she wants the foot. Woman’s never satisfied.”

  “You’ve got all the money you need.”

  “That’s beside the point. I’ve never won anything.”

  “Aunt Ingrid, do you think this is the proper way for a Christian woman to handle this matter? Aren’t we supposed to turn the other cheek—that sort of thing?”

  “Prue’s not Christian.”

  I sighed. How did I get in the middle of this
situation?

  By one o’clock, Aunt Ingrid had taken to a wheelchair. One moment she had been eating an egg salad sandwich at the kitchen table and discussing the weather, the next she was lying on the floor insisting she was paralyzed.

  I scrambled around the table and hauled her off the floor, practically dragging her onto the sofa. Doctor Johnson arrived an hour later and spent a few minutes with Ingrid, then drew me aside in the kitchen. He didn’t mention our earlier meeting involving the Coke display, and I was grateful.

  “What’s wrong with her? “She’d gone from striding around ranting and raving, to a total inability to walk. I’d never witnessed anything like it.

  “Hysterical paralysis.”

  “What?”

  “Your aunt has hysterical paralysis again.” He said the words matter-of-factly, as if this was a common occurrence.

  “Again? You mean she’s had it before?”

  Doctor Johnson nodded his head, tucking a stethoscope into his coat pocket. “Nothing unusual, Marlene. Has anything upset her lately?”

  “Everything upsets her, doctor.”

  “Anything recently?”

  “This morning. She’s upset over her deceased husband’s…foot.”

  Thankfully the doctor didn’t question the bizarre answer. “That’s it, then. She periodically goes through these stages.”

  “Then she isn’t paralyzed?”

  “Oh yes, in her mind she is paralyzed, which makes it a fact. But physiologically? No, she’s as healthy as you and I in most respects.”

  I stared at him. “How long will she stay this way?”

  He lifted a shoulder, his expression sober. “Until she decides to walk again. Ingrid is a highly imaginative woman. I’ll need you to bring her by the office tomorrow morning. I can run a few tests, though she had her yearly physical not two months ago, and everything checked out fine. Her cholesterol is a little high, and I started her on a light dose of thyroid medicine, but in general, her health is good for her age.” He moved to the back door. “I meant to check her thyroid again this week, but you missed her appointment.”

  Oh sure. I missed it. “Her memory doesn’t seem to be exactly intact—it isn’t Alzheimer’s, is it?”

  He shook his head. “Some memory loss is to be expected at her age. I’m not concerned that it’s serious at this point.”

  “She couldn’t remember where your office was.” I wasn’t going to take all the blame.

  “Tell you what, when you bring her in, I’ll run some tests and see if there’s anything for you to be concerned about.”

  Who needed tests? There was plenty to concern me, and Ingrid was merely one of my problems. Between my aunt, my daughter, statue committees, plumbers, and roofers, my stress level threatened to boil over. I was on the verge of erupting in an explosion that would make Mount St. Helens look like a Fourth of July sparkler.

  “She’s done this before. Don’t worry. She’ll come around in due time.”

  Don’t worry? Easy for him to say. I closed the door behind him and leaned against the wood. Due time? My vacation was over come Monday.

  The phone shrilled, and I grabbed up the receiver. “Yes?”

  “Mom?”

  Sara. Again! I slumped against the counter.

  Ingrid needed bread and milk, and she’d lost the remote to the television. I’d searched and couldn’t find it. She was forever leaving it somewhere. I hopped in the car and headed to the store, Beth’s headstone on my mind.

  I still hadn’t phoned what’s-his-name on Highway 86 and arranged for someone to redo the lettering. While I was at it, I might even redo Herman’s stone. His was pretty nondescript for a man the town wanted to honor. Sara popped into my head—I’d sheltered her from the family, and now I regretted my decision to isolate her. She could help, be of comfort to me right now. Instead, I was fighting the battle alone. Our earlier brief conversation came to mind. I’d explained about Ingrid’s sudden paralysis and my initial concern. She had concerns, too—primarily that I wouldn’t be available to babysit the following Saturday night while she and Pete attended a charity function.

  “First a foot, then a crazy ole aunt.” Sara heaved a sigh. Totally put upon. “Your family is bonkers, Mom.”

  I stiffened, resenting her tone, ashamed of my daughter and her cavalier attitude toward her own flesh and blood. “Sara. They are my family.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve said the same yourself. They’re all nuts.”

  “Different,” I corrected. She was right. I had made careless remarks about my family. Since, thanks to me, Sara didn’t know them, she had no way to understand their eccentricities. So why did the disrespect coming from my daughter’s mouth anger me?

  “Whatever. You are still planning on coming home next week, right?”

  “That’s the plan, and I’ll be glad to keep the children if I’m home, but maybe you’d better line up a sitter just in case.”

  “Oh, Mom!”

  “The Houston girl worked out nicely last month, didn’t she?”

  “She was okay.”

  “Then call her.”

  After dinner, Ingrid’s phone shrilled. When I answered, I recognized Winston Little’s voice. “Mrs. Queens?”

  “Mr. Little.”

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you, but would it be okay to drop by tomorrow afternoon? I thought perhaps we could continue our discussion.”

  Was this a test? Was God giving me a chance to prove my faith? If so, I had a feeling I’d be tried and found wanting. Vic’s words came back to me. Be nice, Marlene.

  “I think we’ve exhausted the subject.”

  “I was hoping now that you’d had a little time to think about it, you’d view the situation differently. Herman was Parnass Springs. He imbued the milk of human kindness—the childlike innocence found in folks here. I beg you to please reconsider your objection, to at least take the offer under consideration.”

  I could hear sweat in his voice. Why was a statue of an artless man so important to Winston Little? To Parnass Springs?

  We chatted another few minutes, and more out of desperation than honest reconsideration, I agreed to give the idea further thought. Given the situation, I knew any consideration of the shelter’s request would be slight, but at the moment, I didn’t have the energy to argue. When I hung up, I had yet another matter to keep me awake at night.

  Did I subject the image of odd but lovable Herman to fallible humans, or did I allow my simpleminded father, whom I was beginning to see in a different light, to rest in peace?

  I sat at the kitchen table and stared out the window. Memories of Herman flitted through my mind. We’d sat at this very table many a morning, eating breakfast. He’d come over here for his first meal of the day because he wanted to eat with me. He…he…

  Wait a minute.

  The man wanted to be with me.

  Come to think of it, most of my memories involved Herman wanting to be with me, while I wanted to escape. Had I been kind to him? I wasn’t sure. I only knew that for years I’d harbored a child’s perception of what my life had been. Perhaps it was time to take a closer look from an adult perspective.

  The doorbell rang, and I found Joe waiting on the porch, a bouquet of French lilacs clutched in his hand. “Here. Gathered them just for you. Melba loved them, and we’ve got a whole row blooming out back.”

  I buried my face in the dark lavender blossoms. “They’re lovely.” God had a way of sending what was badly needed. My eyes lifted to Joe, and it occurred to me that maybe God wasn’t just sending me the flowers. “Come in. I’ll put them in water.”

  He followed me to the kitchen where I filled a Mason jar from the faucet and arranged the blooms. “They smell so good.” It was hard to be stressed with the smell of lilacs scenting a room.

  “They’re pretty, all right.” He sat at the table, and I poured him a glass oficed tea before I picked up mine and sat across from him.

  We sat in silence for a minute before he s
aid, “You left early this morning. Looked like you were in a hurry.”

  This morning? Had it only been this morning when I’d set out on an ordinary day?

  “Oh…the new animal shelter wants to put up a statue of Herman. I had a meeting with them.”

  He nodded. “Knew they wanted to do that. What did you think of the animal shelter?”

  “It’s nice.” More than nice; I knew that. Herman would have burst his buttons over the accomplishment.

  “Town’s rather proud of it. Real state-of-the-art facility.”

  I nodded. New York probably didn’t have any finer.

  “He did it for you.”

  He. Herman. “If he was going to do something with his money, I guess an animal shelter would make sense. He loved animals.”

  “That he did. Never saw him without a Butchie on his heels. When one died, he got another, but the name never changed.” Joe grinned. “Makes it real easy to remember. Herman had a lot of love to give, Marlene. He loved this town, and he loved you.”

  I nodded, the lump in my throat too big to speak around. “I’m beginning to understand that.”

  “I tried to make you see it when you were younger, but it was hard to say too much without hurting your feelings. Didn’t want you to stop confiding in me. I figured you needed me back then.”

  “I’ll always need you, Joe. You’ve been a blessing in my life. I think in some ways you’ve been the father I never had.”

  He shook his head. “You had three fathers, Marlene. God, Herman, and me. Herman wasn’t like other fathers, but his love could never be faulted. Fact is, other than God, I don’t know anyone who had more unconditional love for you.”

  I got up from the table. My relationship with Herman was so—confusing. Maybe my attitude had been detached, but I lived the life, not others. Joe didn’t understand. No one did. A memory flashed through my mind. Herman picking flowers from the city boxes in the park. He’d presented them to me, as if they were a precious treasure. Tears burned my throat. Where had that come from? How many other things had I forgotten?

  Joe finished his tea and stood up to stretch. “I’ll be getting along.” He paused. “Marly—I know life’s pressing in on you right now. I’m here when you need to rant.”