When the Morning Glory Blooms (31 page)

“But, you would have been twenty years old by then.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand.”

“If it weren’t for love, I wouldn’t either.”

Ivy’s heart rhythm lurched forward. “Please. Tell me.”

“We worked hard, my mother and I. Long hours. Difficult conditions. Too few doctors. Too many babies. We lived as sparsely as we could and served as often as we could.”

“I can’t imagine how rewarding that must have been for you.”

Anna drew the blanket around her arms as if the room weren’t already toasty. “It became all the more so in my memories when she died.”

“How did it happen?”

“I should have known what she intended. I should have known. I should have stopped her.”

Ivy slid her chair closer. “Stopped her from what?”

“She sent me away for a holiday. A month at Aunt Phoebe’s. I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t come with me. We were never apart. She loved her aunt.”

“
Her
aunt?”

“Phoebe was my great-aunt. My mother’s aunt. Hadn’t I said that before?”

“I don’t think so. Why did your mother stay behind?”

“To save me.”

The color faded from Anna’s complexion, what little color remained after a lifetime of labor.

“We can talk later, if you’d like, Anna. Is this too much for you?”

She patted her hand on her chest.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap
. “It’s lived in here too long.”
Tap. Tap. Tap
. “No one alive remembers what she gave. Except me.”

Ivy laid the notebook aside and watched for evidence that Anna’s breathing was suffering from squeezing out a long-tamped memory.

“While I frolicked at Aunt Phoebe’s, taking tea every afternoon in the parlor that would one day become my office, while I slept until the sun was high and stayed out late with young people who Phoebe had enlisted to see that I was sufficiently entertained—me, who had skipped most of my childhood—”

The words stopped.

“What happened while you were gone?”

“My mother gave up her life.”

“What? Why? Oh, Anna!”

“A mother with four young ones and another on the way. Three of them with the sickness—smallpox. No one would go near the home when her time came. My mother knew no one would help. And she knew if I were at her side, as I always was, I’d either stop her or enter the house and the danger with her. So she sent me away, ‘gave’ me to someone who would love me when she couldn’t.”

“And you never went home again.”

“Once.” Anna’s chin quivered. “For her funeral.”

Anna—1890s

You can see how the path of my life helped paint with delicate strokes the exquisite gift of adoption, the true meaning of a mother’s sacrifice.

You can see why I mourned over those who spat on the sacrifices made for them.

Like a deep, untouchable bruise, my heart ached for women who, despite our best efforts, left Morning Glory pregnant with unresolved doubts.

Mamas and papas sent me their shame-shrouded daughters. Unable to shrug off their own embarrassment, parents sent their unwed children to me.

I cried for the stony-hearted, who refused to cry for themselves. I cried for the young mothers with no mother-heart, who coldly announced their distaste for the child they carried, their indifference about its future, and their eagerness to rid themselves of their “problem.” As I consider what I have just spoken, it sounds as if I had a joyless life, that the task assigned to me was one of crushing heaviness and unbearable concern. Forgive me for sketching the picture with excessive shadows. Light beat back the shadows. Joy was a daily companion.

Ivy—1951

“Joy?”

“You didn’t miss that part, did you?” Anna twisted her hands over each other. “Oh, that would be my fault. I’ve been so intent on explaining the heart-wrenching and the miraculous that I may have given too little attention to the joys.”

“I’ve been guilty of the same, I suppose.” Ivy laid a hand over her child and waited for it to acknowledge its presence. A child, curled on itself now, cushioned in a sea of warmth that pulsed with its mother’s pulse. A child that already kept her awake at night as it rolled in the sea and stretched its limbs, practicing for life outside the womb. A baby. A joy-maker.

“You know the details about that first dinner party. We made fund-raising an event for the social calendar. Picnics
and potlucks, holiday gatherings. Christmas at Morning Glory became a tradition for local society. Not right away, mind you.” Anna waved her hand as if dismissing a misconception. “Over the years, the ice melted and charity won another heart or two, then three. Buggies and wagons filled the yard. Then a mix of cabriolets and automobiles.”

“Cabriolay?”

“Fancy word for buggy.”

“Christmas at Morning Glory. I wish I could have seen that.”

“What a sight! A fire in every fireplace. Tables of food—our own Morning Glory handiwork plus donated goodies. Pine boughs cut from the trees that lined the property. Josiah’s contacts in the cities meant we always had musical entertainment—a harpist, a string quartet, a vocalist who eventually went on to make a name for herself in radio.”

“And people were more charitable at Christmas?”

Anna’s eyes danced with the light and warmth of a long-ago hearth. “Something about the babe in the manger—a child born to an unwed mother, but a child who changed the world—made people pull their hands out of their pockets and give.”

“I can’t imagine how hard you worked. But how much fun it must have been.”

“Oh, my legs ached at the end of those nights. Throbbed clear through the next day sometimes. But I soaked them then sat with them propped on pillows with a muscle-cramping smile on my face.”

“It’s still there.”

“Not because of the festiveness or the way the house glowed. Not because of those divine aromas—pine and brown sugar and ginger and pumpkin. But because of the people—some of the very people I least expected to care, I’m ashamed to say.
Do you know that Mrs. Witherspoon volunteered to direct the Ladies Aid Society in sewing layettes for the newborns?”

“None were born during the fund-raising parties, were they?”

Anna’s smile widened. “Only one. Dr. Noel spent the latter part of the evening upstairs with Lydia and a laboring mother. We fully anticipated a long labor for that wisp of a girl. The celebrating carried on. As was our custom  . . .” Her voice quavered.

Ivy waited, feeling in her own body empathetic twinges.

“As was our custom, Josiah concluded the evening with the reading of the Christmas story, including Isaiah, chapter nine.” She leaned closer. “Can you imagine the thrill that rolled through the parlor when he read, ‘For unto us a child is born,’ and a baby’s first cry pierced the night?”

“Oh, Anna!”

“Half the crowd dropped their teeth and the other half burst into applause.”

Ivy sobered. Who would applaud when her child was born? She alone. And the woman with more stories than time. “Was it a boy or a girl?”

“A darling, red-haired, red-faced boy. The mother named him after Dr. Noel.”

23

Becky—2013

Becky set her purse on the boot mat inside Monica’s back door. “If asked how I thought the New Year would begin, I can’t imagine it would have occurred to me to answer, ‘Working a mercy job.’ ”

Monica stopped sliding her laptop into the glove-leather shoulder bag lying on her granite countertop. “It’s not a mercy job. I really do need help.”

Friend of mine, you need a little practice in authenticity
. “And I really do appreciate it.”

“How did the house showing go?”

Becky draped her coat over the back of a bar stool. “They weren’t interested.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I’m okay with it.”

“Really?”

“Lauren was still on Christmas break then.”

“Brianne, too.”

“Oh. Right. So, we weren’t sure when would be the best time to talk to her about the whole idea of selling our house and moving to the duplex.”

Monica zipped her shoulder bag closed. “You haven’t told her?”

“We did. Right after the realtor called and said he wanted to bring someone over. Are you familiar with the term
hissy fit
?”

“Seen a few.” Monica smiled. “Thrown a few. Lauren wasn’t happy about it?”

“When the realtor called back to confirm a time, he could hear her in the background. He offered to try to set up a different day.”

“How kind of him.”

“Christmas week? Really? I don’t know how he could have imagined that was a good idea. But desperate times call for—” Would conversation ever be devoid of dangerous topics, pain-inducing catch phrases?

Monica shrugged into her coat and tucked a too-stylish-to-be-warm scarf around her neck. “Is Lauren more comfortable with the idea now?”

“She’s gone from hostile to mildly irritated that she wasn’t brought in on the initial discussions, since it’s ‘her life’ and all. Not her money, but her life. I can’t blame her, I guess. She was so close to expressing gratitude that we’d be willing to do something like that to help give Jackson and her a head start, but then  . . . ”

“Then what?”

Becky sighed, well practiced at it. “Then she heard that the duplex doesn’t have a built-in dishwasher and  . . .”

With her hands gripping the ends of her scarf, Monica said, “I don’t think God intended life to be this complicated.”

“Agreed. Well, I’d better get busy and you’d better get moving.”

“Everything on the list make sense?”

Becky scanned the spreadsheet of cleaning chores that her best friend had created for her. “Makes sense.”

“So what do you think? Four hours? That’s about all I can afford to pay, and about how long I’ll be at the women’s shelter annual meeting.” Monica hiked the strap of the shoulder bag higher. “With Brianne back at school, you can feel free to  . . .  um  . . .  use the sound system if you want music. There’s bottled water in the fridge. Leftover quiche.”

“I brought a sandwich.” Becky rattled the lunch bag in her hand as if to prove the point.

“Is Gil watching Jackson?”

Yes. Instead of job hunting
. “He has me on speed dial for emergencies, like losing the pacifier.”
Bad example! Becky, can you never say anything right to this woman with whom conversation used to flow like a chocolate fountain?

Monica laughed more loudly than the situation called for. “Well, there’s a cure for that.” Monica’s face blistered.

Awkward
. Their debates about the merits of pacifiers and Brianne’s history of finding a “cure” for an unwanted baby fogged the air between them.

“So, have a great meeting, Monica. Don’t worry about anything here. If I can’t get it done in the four hours, I’ll make a note on the spreadsheet.”

“Great. That’s  . . .  thank you. See you in a bit.”

Becky took a deep breath the moment the door closed behind her friend.
Awkward, awkward, awkward
.

What was there to clean? She had a list, but from all appearances the kitchen, at least, was photo-worthy. Nothing out of place. Not so much as a water spot on the faucet or a dot of burned-on mac and cheese on the stovetop. She tucked her lunch bag onto one of the sparkling clean refrigerator shelves and turned back to the room and the list.

Arms extended, she leaned over the granite-topped island and laid her cheek against its cool, impossibly smooth surface, not out of island-envy or granite-envy, but with the exhaustion
that comes from holding it together when everyone around her was falling apart. She stood like that—bent at the waist with her cheek pressed into the granite—until her neck protested.

Upright, and with the stark winter sun flooding the kitchen as if it owned the place, Becky noticed the smudge her cheek had left on the stone surface.

Finally. Something to clean.