Carla Kelly (41 page)

But he wasn't there, and her last glimpse of him had told her worlds about his own anguish.

It was her turn to comfort.

They stood close together on the train platform, Papa unable to lift his face from her shoulder until most of the disembarking travelers had moved on. She held him close, much as she had comforted James before she left the Double Tipi. He was dressed in black, and he wore a black armband.

“I'm glad you got my telegram,” she said finally as he stepped slightly away and pulled out a handkerchief. “I would have given the earth to have been here in … in time, but we're so remote at the Double Tipi. I guess your telegram was several days in the office.”

Papa looked old to her for the first time, his wrinkles more pronounced, his shoulders more stooped, his eyes as red-rimmed as hers had been yesterday. “Oh, Papa,” was all she could say then because her voice faltered.

He looked at her and managed a slight smile. “You are a welcome sight, Julia.” He picked up her valise. “This is all?”

She nodded. “Papa, I'll have to go back. You know that, don't you?”

As well as she knew him, she couldn't interpret his expression. It almost seemed to her a curious mixture of sorrow and pride.

“I know that,” he said as they walked through the depot.

When he summoned a taxi, Julia couldn't help asking why he had not driven his beloved Pierce-Arrow. He didn't answer until they were settled in the cab and he had given the driver the address.

“I backed it out this morning, but Julia, my eyes hurt so bad from crying that I can barely see.”

He said it quietly, but the words made her wince. She leaned against his shoulder. “I'm here now, Papa.”

A childish part of her heart wanted him to tell her everything would be all right because he was there to soothe her sorrow. What struck her, instead, was the relief in his eyes at her words, as though he had been hanging on until she could arrive to comfort him.

He didn't say anything for several blocks, just put his arm around her and held her close. When they started the climb to the Avenues, he closed his eyes and slept, vividly showing her the extent of his exhaustion. She doubted he had slept in days.
What do I say to my parents?
Julia asked herself.
How do I help them through the unimaginable?

The answer to her question became clearer as the cab stopped in front of her home, a lovely place with its wide veranda. She looked at the swing where she and Ezra used to sit and felt a momentary pang that dissolved the moment she saw the black wreath on the front door.

“I hate that thing,” Papa muttered. “Can't help but think Iris would have hated it too.”

He paid the cab driver. As they approached the front door, the wreath seemed to grow larger and larger until it filled the door, like an unsightly blemish.

“I don't like it either, Papa,” she said. “I'm taking it down.”

He watched, his expression numb, as she did just that. “I'll take it around back to the dust bin after I see Mama,” Julia said. “Have either of you had breakfast?”

Papa looked at her as though she spoke a foreign language and then shook his head. “I think we ate something last night, before your brothers left for St. George.”

“Gone already? I was hoping to see them.”

Papa sat down in the straight-backed chair in the foyer, as if his feet would no longer support him. “Call me a coward, Jules, but I wanted to go with them,” he told her, running a hand over his face. “I don't want to go to the office next week and try to act like I'm normal again. I don't even want to go to church and see one more sympathetic face.”

This wasn't her father. She knelt beside the chair. “But you will,” she said softly with all the confidence she could muster.
Please, please Lord, let him remember in whom he trusts,
she prayed silently. “But first I'm going to make some Cream of Wheat. I remember one class when Miss Farmer looked me in the eye—she looked at all of us—and said there was no crisis that couldn't be made better by Cream of Wheat.”

It was the right thing to say. Papa raised his head from his hands and looked at her. “You're serious?” he asked, and she heard the humor lurking somewhere in his voice.

“Completely. Let's see if she was right. Come into the kitchen and keep me company.”

He did, first stopping in the doorway and looking at all the cakes, pies, and other funeral food on every surface. “I'm tired of all this,” he told her.

“Then I'll get rid of it. I'm here to cook.” She took Mama's apron from its customary nail and rolled up her sleeves.

He looked better after a bowl of Cream of Wheat, eaten at the kitchen table she had cleared of funeral food.

She sat with him as he ate. “We haven't had cecils since you left. That's a hint, Julia,” he told her. He smiled at her. “This is where you say, ‘I honor all requests.’ ”

Julia leaned over and kissed his cheek. “You know I do.”

She left him seated in the parlor with his shoes off, staring at the
Deseret News
but not reading it, and carried a tray upstairs for Mama. She closed her eyes when she passed the room that used to be Iris's, not wanting to remind herself how empty it was—and always would be, from now on.

“Mama?”

She opened the door to her parents’ room, dark now with shades drawn. Mama lay on her side, staring into the gloom as Julia came closer. She set the food on the bedside table and felt her heart turn over as Mama reached for her hand. In another moment, she was in her arms as Mama cried.

“I'm here, Mama. We'll be all right,” she said.

“To stay?”

“For now.”

Mama needed no coaxing to eat. She lay back with a contented sigh when she finished. “Julia, I don't know how you do it, but that was the best thing I've had in days.”

“I'd hate to think you sent me to Boston for nothing, Mama,” Julia teased gently. “Oh, Mama.” Julia took her mother's hand in hers and rubbed it against her cheek.

Mama slid over in bed and patted the sheet. Julia took off her shoes and lay down beside her without a word, cradling Mama in her arms as Mama had done when she and Iris were small.

“It's hard.”

“I wanted to be here. I didn't get the telegram soon enough.” She raised up on one elbow. “Mama, what happened? Can you tell me?”

“I can, Jules. Most of the people who came to the funeral didn't want to ask or didn't know what to say, so they mostly said nothing. They don't understand how much I want to talk about my baby.”

She cried then, and Julia held her, making soft sounds that weren't even words. Nothing she could say was adequate to the occasion, not in the face of Mama's enormous loss.

“What happened?”

Mama sat up again, Julia's arm around her. “She had what is called an ectopic pregnancy. The egg doesn't make its way to the womb, but no one knows until it grows large enough to break out of the fallopian tube.” She put her hands to her face. “It's all so clinical and not something anyone wants to talk about.”

“That makes it harder,” Julia said. “She was alone when this happened?”

Mama nodded, her lips trembling. “Spencer had gone to an auction in Lehi.” She sighed, a sob catching in her throat. “When he returned home, she was lying on the kitchen floor.”

Julia closed her eyes, praying her sister hadn't suffered. “Oh, Mama,” she managed.

Her mother's voice was more firm now. “Her doctor wasn't sure, so he performed an autopsy.” She burrowed her face against Julia's breast. “That was it. He said it could have happened anywhere, and there probably wasn't anything anyone could have done.” Her voice grew far away then. “I have all this pale yellow yarn. I was going to make an afghan…” Her voice trailed off. In another moment, she was lying down again, curled up close to Julia.

She stayed with her mother until she slept and then tiptoed to her own room, standing in the door and reminding herself all over again how lovely it was compared to her little room off the kitchen at the Double Tipi—no newspaper on the walls and ceiling, a wicker rocking chair that creaked in all the right places, and a bed that smelled of lavender. She thought of James's small bed with its pallet on twined rope, the two apple crates that held his possessions, and her wonderful parlor with gray building paper and the leather sofa that sagged in all the best places.

“Julia Darling, you're crazy to miss any of that,” she said before she closed the door and went downstairs again.

She cooked all afternoon, filling the house with aromas her parents were familiar with and not the funeral food so kindly given but so painful to look at. She sat at the table for a long moment, wondering if it was wise to ask Mama to help, but then deciding good ideas shouldn't just be allowed to float away. Papa was asleep in the parlor. Julia went upstairs.

“Mama? I'm going to make chicken noodle soup. Someone left a stewing hen, but you know I don't make noodles as good as yours.”

Although she did. She had an A plus to prove it from Boston, but Mama didn't know that. Julia went back downstairs, crossing her fingers, and sighed with relief when she heard Mama on the stairs and then in the kitchen, reaching for another apron.

“Sometimes those fancy measuring cups and spoons of yours just aren't necessary,” she said as she scooped flour out of the bin with her hand.

“Yes, Mama. I knew I needed your help.”

So it went. She was in charge as her parents regained their composure and their optimism. Friends and neighbors came calling, and Julia served them her best cakes. It only took a small nudge for Papa to go downtown for a Christmas tree, one that filled the back of the Pierce-Arrow. Neither he nor Mama could bring themselves to decorate it, but Julia did that by herself after they were asleep on Christmas Eve. She hung the ornaments of her and Iris's childhood—two little girls in a house where their older brothers were getting ready to leave home. It had always seemed like just the two of them. She felt it keenly as she gently placed the glass ornaments and the homemade ones from earlier, more frugal Christmases, on the fragrant branches.