Tender Grace (21 page)

There were only three people left by then. An old gentleman and a woman of undetermined age, sitting across and down from each other, had started up something that resembled a conversation, so I approached the remaining man, who sat sullenly at a back table. His hair was pulled back into a greasy ponytail; he did not have a beard, but he had a start on one; he had on a flannel shirt, though it might have been eighty degrees outside and the air-conditioning in the shelter was poor or nonexistent; and he had not washed his hands for some time, certainly not before lunch.

What to say? How’s your Sunday going?

“Lunch looks good,” I said.

Dear God, send some useful words.

The scruffy man looked up from his plate, wondering, I’m sure, what he had done to deserve this intrusion on his meal.

“Do you want anything else?” I asked.

“Now, that’s a fine question.”

I’m an idiot.

“I mean, anything else to eat. A roll? Or more spaghetti? Another brownie?”

“No.”

“Did you go to church here this morning?”

“Am I eating?”

“Trying to,” I said, smiling.

He didn’t smile back. A stab at humor and subtle self-deprecation had gotten me nowhere.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m probably bothering you. I’m just looking for a way to help.”

He laughed.

Here stands a hilarious greeting card.

“What’s your name?” I asked, sitting down instead of running to the kitchen.

“Jenkins.”

“I’m Audrey. I live in Missouri.”

Finally I said something that got his attention.

“One of my kids lives in Missouri.”

“You have kids?”

“Something wrong with that?”

“Well, no, of course not. Do you ever see them?”

“Sure, lady. I fly to Missouri once a month, and every Christmas I invite them here to the shelter.”

I needed a minute to think.

“I can’t even call them,” he continued. “Takes money, you know. I can’t remember when they last heard from me.”

He was finished with his plate. He wiped his mouth on his shirt sleeve and stared at me.

“Do you want me to take your plate?” I asked.

“Sure, you do that.”

I stood up and reached for it and then sat back down. I opened my purse, took out my billfold, and slipped two twenty-dollar bills out of it.

“Maybe you can call your kids with this,” I said.

He stared at the money in my hand and then grabbed it. “Sure. That’s real nice of you,” he said, shoving the bills into his pocket and heading for the door.

“Wait,” I said. “Actually, you can use my cell phone.”

I was digging it out of my purse when Jenkins left, slamming the door on his way out.

Bill came up to me and asked what had happened.

“He wasn’t a very happy man,” I said.

“No, Jenkins isn’t a happy man.”

“I gave him some money to call his kids.”

“Oh, Audrey, we don’t give out money like that. You mustn’t do that again.”

“Why?”

“Jenkins won’t use that money to call his kids. We have donated calling cards they can use here. It’s very likely he won’t use your money for anything good.”

I should have known that. Well, great, I had come into the shelter and violated their rules in less than thirty minutes.

“I’m sorry. I only wanted to help and it looks like I made a mess of things. Is there something I can do that might really help before I slink off into the sunset?”

“Well,” he said, “there’s a bathroom that needs cleaning. Someone threw up in there, and nobody has had time to get to it.”

Oops,
I thought,
I don’t do vomit.

“The supplies you’ll need are in a closet in the kitchen.”

Someone came in from the hall and said they needed Bill upstairs, and I headed for the kitchen even though every atom in me wanted very much to head to my car. The two women I had seen earlier were scrubbing pots. I thought about asking if they wanted me to finish them up while they attended to the bathroom, but I had loused up one assignment and intended to do this one right before retreating to my Solara and Coronado Island.

That, despite the fact that the few times my children threw up and didn’t make it to the bathroom, Tom took care of it. The one time he was asleep and I had no choice but to clean up the mess, I threw up myself during the whole disgusting process.

“Sorry, Mom,” Molly had said. “I tried to make it.”

“No problem, honey.” I gagged, handing her a cold cloth. “Go back to bed.”

Now I was at it again.

Armed with a bucket, Spic and Span, toilet cleaner, rubber gloves, a roll of paper towels, and a mop, I opened the door to the offensive men’s bathroom. It was big enough for only a toilet, a sink, and over the sink, a mirror with a crack running like a graph catty-corner across the lower half.

I think I yelled when I opened the door. I also think I heard the women in the kitchen laugh. I doubt they could help themselves.

I took one look at the toilet stool and the floor and ran back into the kitchen.

“Do you guys have a pancake turner?”

The women looked at each other before one of them opened a drawer and rustled up one for me.

That pancake turner saved me more time and trouble than they’d ever know. After sticking toilet paper up my nostrils, I started scraping gunk into the trash can. My eyes watered and I gagged, but I didn’t throw up. I didn’t need any more trouble.

After I got the stuff up (and believe me, every surface had been violated), I began scrubbing everything in sight: the toilet, the sink, the floors, the mirror, the light fixture, even the walls. I put a new roll of toilet paper on the back of the tank, since there was no holder, and went into the kitchen and asked the ladies where I might find a can of air freshener. They exchanged an amused look before one of them explained the shelter didn’t stock air fresheners.

Undaunted, I found a convenience store nearby (ignoring completely my recently developed aversion to convenience stores) and bought every can of freshener they had (that would be two). I came back, held up the cans for the ladies finishing up in the kitchen to see, and sprayed the scent of lilacs in every crevice of that bathroom. Then, for a finale, I left the cans on the tank beside the roll of toilet paper in hopes that they would continue their freshening work. Backing out of the tiny space, I felt like saying,
Da dum!
I’m sure the ladies in the kitchen fully expected it.

Bill had finally returned. I noticed this when I backed into him.

“Whew,” he said. “I think you’ve found your calling. It actually smells good in there.”

“Does it smell like the fragrance of love?”

He had not been privy to my Bible reading and subsequent thoughts early this morning. “More like lilacs,” he said with a smile.

“You’re right, it does smell good. Now let me get out of here while my tally of good and evil is even.”

“Thanks for caring, Audrey.”

“Thank
you
for caring, Bill.” I took out my checkbook and wrote a check that should equal the cost of my stay at the Hotel del Coronado and handed it to him. “You have a lot of needs.”

“Yes, we do. So thanks for this too,” he said, holding up the check before folding it and tucking it into his shirt pocket.

The afternoon was spent before I drove over the bridge to Coronado Island, but after I was checked in and settled, I walked the beach at dusk. I breathed in the ocean air, an air freshener I wish I could have left in the shelter bathroom. Fresh ocean air helped. When I came in, I e-mailed the kids and told them I’d arrived at Tom’s island. I did not mention my ineptness at the homeless shelter. I’d save that for another day.

I stood at my window later looking at the stretch of beach I had just walked. “I’m here, Tom,” I said. “It’s as lovely as you said it was.”

When I could leave the view, I walked over to put ice in my glass and pour a much-needed Diet Coke. I sat in my very nice chair and put my feet up on the edge of the bed. I was still feeling pretty stupid. My attempt to help couldn’t have been more bumbling. Or humbling.

“I wasted my first day on the island, Lord,” my spirit grumbled. “I didn’t help. Not one bit.”

I heard a response, inaudible but real nonetheless, and quite sweet:
“You did it unto me.”

I smiled then, a smile that would not go away.

twenty-one

September 18

I felt fine when I awoke this morning, despite yesterday’s fiasco. In fact, I felt sociable enough and brave enough to experiment with eating by myself in public. I stepped inside a casual dining room at the hotel to see if a table for one was available. I gave the packed room a cursory look and started back out the door when a lady at a table for two near the entrance jumped up.

“Ma’am,” she said, “you can have this table. My husband had to run up to our room before we take our walk, but we’re through.” She waved someone over to clean the table. “I’ll just wait for him in the lobby,” she said, looking on the floor around her chair for her bag.

“Please,” I said, “stay and wait for your husband.”

She put her bag in her lap, told me her name was Liz Emerson, and recommended the buttermilk pancakes.

“I’m glad to hear that. I’m hungry for pancakes, despite the fact that the nutrition gurus say I’ll be hungry for something else in an hour. Oatmeal would keep me until noon, but it isn’t worth it.”

I told her my name then, and she said that she and her husband live in Phoenix, Arizona, and spend a week on Coronado Island every fall.

“This is my first visit, but my husband has been here before,” I said.

She started to say something in response but saw her husband in the doorway. “Ah,” she said, “here’s Vernon now.”

“Feel better?” she asked when he came over and stood beside our table.

“Who’d you give my seat to?” he asked gruffly, his smile indicating he was no curmudgeon.

“I gave it to Audrey Eaton,” Liz said, clearly familiar with this persona, “and you haven’t answered my question.”

“I feel fine,” he said, offering me his hand. “Good morning, Audrey.”

I told them to enjoy their walk, and they left as the waiter brought my breakfast, which was delicious, though my suspicion proved correct: Room service is much more comfortable for me than sitting alone in a dining room. Of course, I had to admit I wouldn’t have met Liz and Vernon Emerson if I hadn’t left the comfort and security of my room.

I passed them on the beach a little later.

“You weren’t gone long,” I said as the three of us stood soaking up the morning sun.

“I’m a party pooper,” Vernon said. “I’ve got a little indigestion this morning.”

“He should have had the pancakes, instead of sausage and fried eggs,” Liz said, taking his arm. “Or oatmeal.”

I grimaced. “Heartburn sounds better,” I said. “Well, I’d better get on with my walk and see if the Travel Channel exaggerated when it named this beach one of the best in the world.”

An hour later, walking into the back entrance of the lobby, I saw an ambulance in the front drive with its lights flashing, a crowd standing back from a gurney being pushed through the front doors. Liz stood by one of the emergency personnel. Before I could compute what this meant and get over to her, she had walked out behind the gurney and was climbing into the back of the ambulance with her husband.

Ordinarily I would simply have gone to my room or back out on the beach to say a prayer for this sweet couple, but today I felt very strongly that I should go to the hospital, and for once, I didn’t consider sloughing off what might be the urging of the Spirit. After the ambulance pulled away, I told the manager on duty I was a friend of the Emersons and asked if he knew where they were taking Vernon. I was relieved when he picked up the phone, made a call, and told me the name of the hospital and how to get there.

I didn’t find the hospital as easily as I would have liked. Of course, considering there were only right turns on the map the clerk drew me, I probably shouldn’t have made a left-hand turn when I was halfway there. By the time I found Liz in the waiting room of the cardiac intensive-care unit, she must have been there alone for an hour. When she looked up and saw me, she burst out crying.

I rushed over to the couch where she sat, put an arm around her, and patted her shoulder. “I saw the ambulance pulling away when I came in from my walk, and I was afraid you were here alone. Do you want company? Is there anything I can do for you?”

“I wish you could go in there and find out what’s going on. I haven’t seen anyone yet, and honestly, I’m going crazy.”

“Well, Vernon must be hanging in there if no one has come out yet.”

Liz squeezed my hand. “Thank you for coming, Audrey. I can’t believe you did. My daughter is driving in from Phoenix, but she can’t possibly get here before late this afternoon. My son says he’s coming, but he lives in Seattle, and I told him he should wait until we know more before he flies down. It’s nice to have you here.”

A doctor came into the room then, looking at the groups of people clustered together in different areas.

“Mrs. Emerson?” he asked.

“Here,” Liz said, standing. I stood beside her, and we listened to him explain that Vernon had had a relatively minor heart attack but that he needed quadruple bypass surgery immediately. Liz began to shake, and the doctor and I each took an arm and guided her back to her chair. I sat beside her, and he knelt in front of her, sandwiching her hands between his.

“He made it here, Mrs. Emerson. That’s a good thing, and he’s stabilized—that’s good too. We believe he will make a complete recovery. We can’t promise that, of course, but that is what we anticipate. You and your daughter should try not to worry.”

“This is my friend,” she said. “My children will be here soon.”

He told her she could see Vernon for a minute before they moved him to the operating room.

She turned to me before she followed the doctor to see Vernon. “Can you wait?”

“Sure,” I said.

I wasn’t going anywhere. I had decided this was a divine appointment.

When Liz came back from seeing Vernon, she seemed less upset, and we stepped into a courtyard so she could call her daughter and son with an update. Both of them were already en route, which seemed to relieve her. Before she hung up with each of them, she said, “Pray for your dad.”