Tending Roses (19 page)

Wringing the dustrag between her fingers, she pretended to feel guilty. “Well, after dust-mopping the rest of the house, I usually do wet-mop the kitchen.”

“You mopped the whole house!” I gasped.

“It
had
to be done. That coffee boiler went haywire again and made a mess all over the kitchen.” She sighed in a voice that sounded as if it were drifting from her deathbed. “That mess gets on there, and it gets ground around by everyone’s feet. The finish will become scratched, and we’ll be paying to refinish the floors.”

Clearly, I was supposed to be grateful that she had sacrificed herself to save the floors. Instead, I was ready to choke her, whether Aunt Jeane was watching or not. Once again she had flooded the kitchen, and she didn’t want to admit responsibility. “No digging up flower beds, and no mopping!
I
will do it. If your blood pressure goes any higher, Dr. Schmidt is going to put you in the hospital!”

Grandma gave absolutely no indication that she’d heard me. Instead, she wandered a few steps away and began nonchalantly dusting the knickknacks on a table. Her face was tilted stubbornly aside, as if I were no longer there.

“Grandma.” I heard the word come from my mouth as if I were addressing a child, but I was too angry to care. “I
know
you can hear me.”

She didn’t say a word, but batted a hand beside her face as if I were an insect droning in her ear.

My temper went up three notches, and I gritted my teeth to keep from losing it completely. Things had already gone too far, and it wasn’t doing my blood pressure or Grandma’s any good. It wasn’t helpful that Aunt Jeane was seeing the two of us at our worst. Taking a deep breath, I lowered my voice. “Let
me
do the floors from now on. Your face is all red. You need to go sit down and rest.”

She stood for a moment, then turned and shuffled away, muttering, probably not to me, about finishing her Sunday school lessons.

Shifting Josh onto my hip, I called after her as a peace offering, “Do you need me to drive you to town later so you can turn in your article?”

For just an instant, she stopped, and it looked as if a treaty might be signed. With a
humph
that was audible across the room, she continued on, calling back to me, “
Oliver
will come for me.”

Watching her disappear into the back room, I knew I had no future in diplomacy. I had succeeded in getting her away from the mopping, but I was now lower on her list than old Oliver Mason. And I had, most certainly, not impressed Aunt Jeane.

Aunt Jeane just sighed and shook her head. “My point exactly, Kate.” She uncrossed her arms and watched Grandma go. “She is just impossible these days. She’s lost her mind. Why in the world would you want to subject yourself to that?”

Looking at the doorway where Grandma had disappeared, I shook my head, wondering if I was out of my mind, too. “I don’t know,” I said, because I couldn’t possibly explain the way my feelings had changed since I came to the farm. “I just know it’s the right thing to do.” I couldn’t find the words for everything that had happened over the past weeks, and I didn’t want to. “After I feed Joshua, I’m going to town to see what’s keeping Ben,” I told her. But the truth was, I just wanted to get out of the house and clear my head. I was starting to feel as if I was crazy and everyone else in the family was sane.

I needed a reality check, so I called Liz at work. It was good to hear the receptionist answer. For just an instant, I had the sensation of being back home in Chicago.

“Hi, Andrea,” I said. “This is Kate. Is Liz in the office today?”

“Well, hi, Kate!” Unfailingly enthusiastic and perpetually cheerful, Andrea could talk faster than any person I had ever met. It was a running joke around the office. “We haven’t heard from you in a while. How’s everything going out there in the boonies? How’s your grandmother? Is she feeling better? John Ducamp called earlier today and wanted to talk to you. He wouldn’t let me put him through to Dianne. He said he wanted to talk to
you.
I sent you an e-mail. Did you get it? I hope he’s not going to withdraw his support. You know, that audit thing came out in the paper, and it’s made a mess of things around here, but I don’t know if that’s what Ducamp called about. He said he’d be out of town for a few days, but you could call him next week.”

Andrea paused for a breath, and I quickly cut in. “I’ll call his office and leave a message that I’m trying to get in touch with him. In the meantime, tell Dianne not to worry about it. I know Mr. Ducamp pretty well. I’m sure I can reassure him that nobody’s mismanaging from his endowment. Great, this is just what we need at the end of the year.” My head started spinning with office business, and I almost forgot why I had called. “So . . . is Liz in the office today?”

“Oh . . . ummm . . . no, she’s downtown. She’s down working on the stuff for the audit. I can page her for you.”

“No. Don’t bother.” I suddenly felt like an idiot for calling in the middle of a workday to talk about my grandmother. The past weeks had turned my brain to Jell-O. I always hated it when people interrupted my workday with personal business, and now I was the one interrupting. “I can talk to her later.” But I probably wouldn’t. The fact was that she couldn’t possibly understand, anyway. She didn’t know Grandma, and she didn’t know the farm, and she hadn’t read Grandma’s book. Liz was in another world—one where things were mostly black and white. In my family, there was nothing but gray area. All the normal guidelines were a blur.

“. . . all went down yesterday and looked at the Christmas trees, and watched everybody skate on State Street . . .” I realized that Andrea was still talking. “The trees are positively gorgeous this year and all the decorations are amazing, better than last year. They must have about a million lights down there on the buildings and in the trees. Too bad you’re not here. Yesterday, the Vienna Boys’ Choir was in town performing, and they were just wonderful. We listened to the concert while we ate lunch, and we were saying that you would have liked it.”

“Sounds like I would have,” I said, picturing all that she was describing and suddenly feeling as if I were back home, where things were safe and uncomplicated. “So, did Mr. Halsted send everyone free tickets to
The Nutcracker
again this year?”

Andrea laughed, and the sound strengthened my memories of home. I could remember that giggle echoing through the office at least a dozen times each day. Everyone said it carried like a bugle. “Yes, he did. We went last Friday, and it was too fun. Dianne, Liz, Kristen, and I shopped at Bloomingdale’s last week for dresses, but you know Liz was the only one who could afford a dress there, so the rest of us just scrounged. I wore last year’s. I figured nobody would know the difference. Besides, I was pretty happy to know it still fit. Anyway, the ballet was great, and Halsted had the whole section again. Paul even went this year.”

“Wow,” I muttered, trying to picture my boss, a died-in-the-wool analytical type, at the ballet. “I’m sorry I missed that. It would be good to see him loosen up a little bit.”

Andrea giggled again, then whispered into the receiver, “He claimed he didn’t enjoy it, but he was swaying with the music all the way through. I think he’s a frustrated ballerina.”

That made me laugh out loud. “Now I’m really sorry I missed it.” A strong twinge of homesickness pinched me unexpectedly. I felt like a kid left out of the playground games.

“Well, we thought about you. I took some pictures. I’ll send you some . . . Oh, well, I guess no point in that. By the time they get there, you’ll be back from vacation.”

I didn’t reply, just sat silent, wondering where we would be when Christmas was over, and thinking that my time at the farm seemed more like a life event than a vacation. It was as if I’d been gone from Chicago for months. . . .

“Oops, the other line’s ringing.” Andrea’s voice cut short the silence. “It was good talking to you, Kate. I’ll let Liz know you called.”

“Good. Thanks.”

“We sure miss you around here.”

“I miss you guys too. It was good talking to you, Andrea.”

Good didn’t describe it. It was an experience in altered reality, a temporary teleportation back to Chicago. “ ’Bye.”

I hung up the phone, keeping my eyes closed for just a minute, pretending I was on the other end of the phone shopping at Bloomingdale’s and watching the skaters on State Street. I had a strange sense of missing all the things that a few moments ago I had thought didn’t matter.

I felt a little like a wishbone in a tug-of-war. Stay or go, town house or farmhouse, executive or stay-at-home mom, glitzy downtown Christmas or Christmas pageant in Hindsville, ballet or dancing on the front porch with Ben and Josh. Go home and let Aunt Jeane move Grandma to St. Louis, or stay and try to help Grandma keep the farm. Forget what I learned about her over the past weeks, forget I read her book, forget about the fragile things and the yellow bonnets and the times when the roses grow wild . . .

Sometimes life moves so fast, the road splits in an instant, and you only have a heartbeat to decide which way to turn.

My head started spinning again, so I gathered up Joshua, told Aunt Jeane good-bye, and headed for town to find Ben—just to talk, I wasn’t sure about what. I wanted somebody to tell me I wasn’t going crazy. That staying with Grandma for months wasn’t an insane plan that would ruin us all. It seemed strange, because I’d been so sure a day ago. One dressing-down from Aunt Jeane, one argument with Grandma, and one phone call to Chicago and I was doubting it all. Maybe I wasn’t as sure as I thought.

When I walked past the little house, Grandma was sitting on the porch, huddled over a meal of Dinty Moore straight from the can. Undoubtedly, the cold stew was intended to make me feel guilty for driving her from the big house—and it worked.

“We’re headed to town to see what’s keeping Ben.” I stopped on the path and held Josh up like a peace pipe. “These are the little booties you made for him. Aren’t they cute?”

“Y-yes.” A feeble voice and one squinty eye rose from the can of Dinty Moore. “Don’t let me trouble you. You go on about your business. I’ll be fine.” She huddled over her lunch and looked at me no more, her aged hands barely able to raise the spoon to her lips.

Swinging Josh onto my hip, I vacillated in place a minute, then decided to try one more time. “Are you sure you don’t want to go with us?”

Setting the can on the table next to her, she looked forlornly down the driveway, and I knew I was playing right into her hands. “No.” She gave a terrible sigh. “I’ll ride with Oliver.”

“We’ll see you later then,” I muttered, giving up. I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to say, anyway. I certainly wasn’t going to apologize for trying to make her follow her doctor’s orders.

I just walked away and left her there, sitting round-shouldered in the rocking chair, gazing down the driveway looking sad and lost. She was still there, in exactly that position the last time I checked over my shoulder as we drove away.

I wondered if the expression wasn’t completely contrived.

Driving the winding road to town, I thought of how it must feel to be unable to do the things you’d done all your life, how frustrating it would be to have to ask for help when you were accustomed to doing for yourself—as if you were a child again, only as a child you know you’ll grow out of your problems. For Grandma, the problems would only grow larger, the list of forbidden activities longer, the need for help greater. She was like a prisoner in a cell with the door slowly being boarded shut.

Now I understood those words. Grandma was angry with the passage of time more than she was with us—frustrated with her own body, and the fog in her thoughts, and her doctors telling her what to do, and her children trying to take away what was familiar.

I thought about her as I wound down the hill into Hindsville. I thought about how many times she must have descended that hill over the years, in the old Buick, in Grandpa’s old farm trucks, in a horse-drawn wagon before that. I thought about how familiar and comforting that view must be to her—the same town, the same gazebo, nearly ninety years of memories. Her feelings for Hindsville and the farm had to be so much stronger than mine for Chicago. Hindsville was the backdrop for her entire life. Chicago was little more than a ten-year career for me, some friends, and a sterile west-side town house that still didn’t have pictures on the walls or furniture in the dining room.

The two places didn’t compare. If I felt homesick for Chicago, how would Grandma feel when she was taken away from Hindsville—from the house with pictures on all the walls and furniture older than any of us?

My reasons for wanting to stay started coming back to me as I pulled into the church parking lot and took Joshua, sound asleep, from his car seat. I started feeling grounded again, rooted in family history and the familiarity of the place.

I touched the church cornerstone with my great-grandfather’s name carved in, as I passed. This place not only held Grandma’s history—it held mine. . . .

From somewhere inside, I heard Ben’s laugh and Joshua stirred on my shoulder, then sighed and fell asleep again. Opening the door quietly, I saw Ben sitting on one of the benches in the lobby, talking to Brother Baker. I stood in the entry and watched them for a moment, surprised to see them laughing and conversing about basketball like a couple of old friends.

The sound of the door shutting caught their attention, and Brother Baker stood up, looking guiltily at his watch. “Well, I should have started on my home visits a half hour ago. How are you this afternoon, Kate? Oh, boy, look at that sleeping baby. I’ll tell you, we sure have enjoyed having your husband around here. This church is too quiet most of the time.”