Things Remembered
This book is a love letter to my mother,
Mary Ann Stephens,
and to Susan Grad's mother,
Jean Hulm.
Contents
T
he old woman ran her hand over the chenille bedspread, smoothing the traces of her late afternoon nap. Giving the spread a final pat, she allowed herself to enjoy the accompanying sense of accomplishment. She may not have control over the large things in her life anymore, but she could still handle the day-to-day. If only the imprint the spread had left on her cheek and hand could be erased as easily.
She glanced out the bedroom window at the brilliant red leaves struggling to stay attached to the liquidambar and was momentarily startled to see how long the shadows were on the lawn. In the next instant she remembered it was daylight savings time, not her failing body, that had upset her internal clock, and the insidious, unwelcome feeling of panic subsided.
Her hand left the bedpost, reached for the dresser, and then the door frame as she made her way out of the bedroom and into the hall. For months now the furniture and walls had provided the support her doctor insisted should come from a cane. But she wasn't ready to let herself be stamped an invalid. As soon as she did, her life would be perceived as over. The world wouldn't see her meandering toward the end, it would have her standing with one foot in the grave.
Well, she'd be damned if she'd let that happen.
Orange and gold shards of light cut through the kitchen window and into the hallway. The sunset would be spectacular that night, one she would sit on the porch to witness, aware the number of such evenings was finite and accepting each one like a gift from a repentant lover.
She didn't mind. She'd been allowed more years than she'd expected when she was twenty and had believed old age to be fifty. Of course she'd changed her opinion as she neared the half-century mark and discovered age was a state of mind. The accumulation of years, the gathering of wrinkles only mattered if you let them. Now, at eighty-five, she told herself that old age began tomorrow.
The kitchen still held a lingering smell of lunch, a spicy meat loaf meant to entice long-dead taste buds. Somewhere, sometimeâwithout her even noticingâshe'd lost her desire for food. She didn't know whether to lay the blame on the medicine she took or the realization that after a lifetime of counting calories she could eat anything she wanted without consequence.
Not even crème brûlée tempted her anymore. It seemed crème brûlée had to be a forbidden food to be fully appreciated. The richness had to be a sin, the transgression filled with guilt. Now it was a free food, like celery on a diet.
She made a cup of apple cinnamon tea, one of her remaining pleasures. She would cradle the cup between her hands and breathe in the memory-evoking aroma as she gently rocked and waited. For six months she'd waited, awakening each morning with renewed hope that this would be the day, refusing to feel discouraged when it wasn't.
She had not been so patient as a young woman. Now she knew things in her heart as well as her mind, and it gave her a confidence she'd lacked then.
She would come.
Not out of love, but out of duty. The love she'd buried too deep too long ago. Together they would find it again. This was the reason the old woman hung on to life, this one job left undone, the lone failure she could not forgive herself.
Her teacup in her hand, the woman sat in her rocker facing west. And waited.
I
don't understand why you asked Jimâof all peopleâto run the coffee shop for you while you're gone,” Heather called from the kitchen. “It was a mistake. You know it. I know it. From the way he sounded, I think even Jim knows it.”
Finally, after an entire afternoon discussing pregnancy, labor, baby formula, first steps, first words, throwing up, and potty training, Karla Esterbrook's sister had said something that caught her attention. She stopped distributing silverware around the dining room table and went into the kitchen.
“You talked to Jim?” she asked. “When?”
“He called about fifteen minutes before you got here.” Heather motioned Karla out of the way and opened the oven door.
“That was five hours ago. And you're just now telling me?”
“He said it wasn't important, that he'd catch up with you later.”
“Was it about the shop?”
Heather ignored the question, instead breathing in the smells of the lasagna, her lips forming a small, satisfied smile. “I know I shouldn't admit this, but I just love my own cooking, even when it is Grandma's recipe.”
Heather had the lead. Karla either followed or made a fuss about the phone call, which would be tantamount to an announcement that her interest went beyond business. “Mom's was better.”
“You can't possibly remember how Mom's lasagna tasted. You just think you do. In your mind everything she ever made was better than anything you've tasted since. Martha Stewart couldn't compete with your memories.”
They were on the brink of an old, never-to-be-won argument. Heather had been eight when their parents died, too young to have carried any but the most profound memories of their mother and father into adulthood. Karla had been twelve and believed without reservation that she remembered everythingâfrom the softness of her mother's hair to the smell of her father's aftershave.
“From the wonderful smell, I'd say you've added your own touches to Anna's recipe,” Karla said in conciliation. She wanted this to be a good visit for them, not like the last time when they'd just learned Anna was dying and had gone from one argument straight to the next as they tried to sort through feelings and decide what needed to be done. She adored her sister and wished they lived next door to each other. As it was, they spent half of every visit working through emotions and misunderstandings before they got to the fun of just being together. “I can hardly wait to eat. I'm starved.”
“Good. I made twice what I usually do, and Bill hates leftovers.”
“Back to Jim's call.” Karla had played the game long enough. “Did something happen at the shop?”
“Would you cut it out? You've only been gone for three days. What major catastrophe could happen in that time that Jim couldn't handle?”
Karla looked at her watch. If there really was something wrong, she could be back in Solvang in a little over four hours. “I'm going to call.”
“Dinner's ready.”
The dinner thing took Heather's evasiveness a step too far. Something was going on. It seemed Heather hadn't been playing coy before, she'd been trying to avoid the subject altogether. “Bill and the kids aren't even back from the store yet. Were you planning to eat without them?”
“They'll be here any minute.”
“And I won't be long.” She was testing to see how far Heather would go.
Heather put her hands against the maroon tile counter and leaned into them, her belly protruding as if she were nine months pregnant instead of six. The easy-care pixie hairstyle she'd chosen for this pregnancy made her look as if she were just entering her twenties instead of on the verge of leaving them.
“I shouldn't have said anything. At least not until after dinner. Now everything will be ruinedâand I've been working for days to make tonight special.”
Guilt. Heather was really good at it. “Nothing will be ruined unless you insist on dragging this out through dinner. If you want me to wait to call Jim, tell me what he said.”
“It isn't about the coffee shopâat least not the important part.” She ran a possessive, protective hand over her rounded belly. “There's something you need to know before you talk to Jim. . . . Damn, I really don't want to be the one to tell you this.”
Despite Heather's dramatics, Karla managed to focus on the “at least not the important part.” For the past two years she'd put her heart and soul into The Coffee Shop on the Corner, using work in place of therapy to get past a sense of personal failure. The business she and Jim had once owned together had become everything to her, her only constant relationship, her substitute child.
