Carry the Light (12 page)

He stopped working. “Is something wrong with Aunt Dorothy?”

“I thought you could use an extra pair of hands,” she replied and waited for him to send her back into the house.

He narrowed his gaze. “You'll probably wind up ruining your good gloves if you help.”

“I have other pairs of gloves,” she said, quite sure now that this was the only man she ever wanted—and she was determined to win him back.

He shrugged and tossed her the ball of twine he had been using.

Naturally, she missed it and had to use her feet to clear away last fall's leaves to find it again. When she did, she turned around and found him still watching her, and the smile on his face gave her hope that he might want to salvage their marriage as much as she did.

N
early two weeks after her mother's emergency surgery, Ellie was sitting behind the desk in her classroom long after the school day had officially ended. She waved off the two students she had held for detention for the past half hour with a smile, satisfied she had been able to help them resolve the argument that had exploded during class earlier in the day.

“I'm really sorry I disrupted your class today,” Harry offered.

“Me, too, Mrs. Waters,” Peter added before the two of them grabbed their backpacks and headed home together, apparently friends again.

Both pleased and relieved that she had been able to help the two boys settle their differences, she reached for her briefcase, wondering why she had never seemed to have the same success resolving the differences between herself and her mother. Humbled by the lesson in forgiveness she had just learned from her students, she pulled the cell phone from her briefcase to call both of her sons before heading home.

 

“I need to go home. Today.”

Ellie heard her mother's terse pronouncement the moment she stepped into the house from work. With a briefcase full of papers to be graded in one hand and her keys and purse in the other, she kicked the front door closed with her foot. By habit, she turned to disarm the security system, then remembered she was no longer arming it for fear her mother might set off another false alarm.

She had no idea what could have happened during the day to make her mother so determined to leave today. When they had talked about the subject last night, they'd agreed that her mother was still too weak to live on her own.

Now Ellie found her mother sitting in the upholstered rocking chair next to the aquarium. She was wearing her spring tweed coat and matching hat. Her suitcase was on the floor next to the chair. With her gaze hard and her lips pursed, she was clearly a woman with her mind set on what she wanted to do.

Ellie spied one of her water turtles swimming leisurely about the calm water in the aquarium, and took a deep breath. She resisted the urge to argue with her mother's demand. She set down her briefcase and drew in another deep breath as she stored her keys in her purse.

Before she could pose a single question, however, her mother glanced at the clock on top of the television and frowned. “You're usually home by three-thirty. I've been waiting for over half an hour. Why are you so late today?”

“I'm sorry. I didn't know you were waiting for me. I had a few things to do after school,” she replied without going into any detail. “Did you have any problems today?”

“Phyllis stopped to see me earlier. She offered to run me home, but I told her she had done enough for me already and that you wouldn't mind taking me home. Unless you've got too many papers to grade again,” she added.

Ellie dropped down on the sofa. “I always have too many papers to grade, but I can save them until later. I took some fish out of the freezer this morning. Are you sure you need to go home right now, before supper?”

Her mother scowled. “You know I'll be too tired after supper to do much of anything.”

Ellie tried a different approach. “Did I do something to make you upset with me today?”

“Other than the fact that you're late getting home from work and you didn't bother to call me to let me know, you weren't here all day, so I rather doubt it. Now, if we don't leave soon,” her mother cautioned, “I'll be so overheated from sitting here wearing my coat, I'll be bound to catch a chill when we do leave. If it's too inconvenient for you to take me home, just say so. I'll call a cab. I need to go home, Ellie. It's as simple as that.”

“You need to go or you want to go?” Ellie questioned.

“Both,” her mother replied. “You may not care about the way you dress, but I certainly do. I've been wearing the same clothes for weeks now, and I wasn't all that thrilled with what you picked out for me, anyway. I need to get more.”

“Oh,” Ellie said and tried not to be hurt by her mother's criticism. “Maybe I misunderstood. When you said you needed to go home today, I didn't realize you meant you just wanted to go home to pack more clothes.”

“Why else would I have my suitcase ready?”

“The suitcase is empty?”

Her mother rolled her eyes. “I couldn't carry it out here if it were full, could I? Neither could Phyllis, which is really why I didn't want to have her run me home. I didn't want to hurt her feelings by telling her she wouldn't be strong enough to carry the suitcase once it was packed.”

Smiling, Ellie stood up, grateful she had cleared up the misunderstanding before it escalated into an unnecessary battle of wills. She grabbed the keys from her purse. “You're right. If we leave now, we'll be home well before dark and before you start to tire,” she said, helping her mother from her chair and grabbing the suitcase.

As they walked to the front door together, Ellie's spirit was refreshed and the light of her faith was burning just a bit brighter, with hope they might resolve their differences one day after all.

 

While her mother sat on the edge of her bed giving directions, Ellie padded back and forth from her mother's closet to the suitcase. She had already filled it with a dozen perfectly coordinated outfits, but there was not a single pair of slacks in any of them.

Ellie was not really surprised. She had never seen her mother wearing slacks, not even during last year's bitterly cold winter.

“That should be enough for now. I don't need anything else from the closet,” her mother said as she refolded the last blouse Ellie had given her. “Since there's room, I think I'll take one of the quilts from the hope chest at the end of my bed. I'm not used to sitting around so much, and I'm always getting a chill. The lap shawl from my friends at the Shawl Ministry keeps my legs warm enough, but it's not long enough to keep my shoulders warm, too. If I move it up to my shoulders, my legs get cold.”

“You might be surprised by how much warmer you'd be if you tried wearing a pair of slacks in the winter,” Ellie said. After she turned out the light inside the closet, she closed the door and lifted the lid of the hope chest. She was so startled to see the little pink quilt covered with tiny green turtles in between two old blankets, she barely heard her mother's response.

She pulled out the quilt and lifted it to her face, remembering all the stuffed animals, mostly turtles, that had been heaped on top of this quilt when she was a small child.

A sentimental keepsake from her childhood was not something Ellie expected to discover among her mother's things. She swallowed the lump in her throat and handed the quilt to her mother. “I can't believe you held on to this quilt all these years,” she whispered. She wondered what other treasures her mother might have saved.

Her mother folded the quilt into quarters, laid it in the suitcase and smoothed the fabric with the palm of her hand. “I made this quilt for you, not that I had much choice.”

Ellie closed the hope chest and sat down on top of it. “You made it? I don't think I ever knew that.”

“You were only two years old when we put your crib away and you started sleeping in the youth bed, but you knew your own mind, even then. I made the mistake of taking you with me to Mendlekoff's to pick out a little quilt for your big-girl bed, but you'd have none of them.”

“I don't remember that, either.”

Her mother frowned, although Ellie thought she detected a gleam of amusement in her mother's eyes for a moment. “I'm certain the salesclerk who waited on us still remembers, if she's still alive. You made such a scene I didn't go back to that store for a good long while.”

Ellie cringed and flexed her right foot. “Then I assume the stomping foot was there,” she ventured, vividly recalling how she used to stomp her foot to get her own way as a child, only to blame the foot itself, as if it had a will of its own, when she was reprimanded.

“That and a whole bucket of tears. I should have known not to even try to get you to choose something you clearly didn't want. They had lovely little-girl quilts with baby dolls or teddy bears on them. But no, you had your mind set on turtles, so off we went to Woolworth's to search for fabric.”

She paused and shook her head. “I was convinced once I showed you there wasn't any fabric available with turtles on it, I could go back to Mendlekoff's, apologize and buy one of the ready-made quilts,” she recounted, then looked at the quilt again and smiled. “You spied that turtle fabric before I did. Once I saw how happy it made you, I knew I had to make a quilt for you, although I had no idea your fascination with turtles would last so long.”

Touched by the memory her mother had shared, as well as her mother's willingness to please the little girl Ellie had once been, Ellie smiled. “I've loved turtles for as long as I can remember, although I'm not sure why.”

Her mother sighed. “Neither am I. I thought collecting turtles was a phase you'd outgrow, but I guess I was wrong about that, too. Just how many turtles do you have in those aquariums of yours?”

“Five water turtles, plus the two land turtles.”

“I shouldn't be surprised. Your father encouraged you by finding that baby box turtle on his way home from work and bringing it home. After I refused to have it in the house, he made a place for it in one of the window wells, where you could care for it outside without worrying that it would run away.”

Ellie grinned. “That I remember. I kept Myrtle the turtle for the entire summer.”

“And you had the sense to let her go in the fall to hibernate.”

“But only after I painted my initials on her shell. Remember? Miss Dillon lived a few blocks away. All the kids used to call her the turtle lady because she always had a few turtles for pets in her backyard. She knew everything about turtles. She gave me the idea, as I recall. I searched and searched for that turtle in the spring, but I never did find it. Miss Dillon let me play with her turtles, instead, but it wasn't the same as having Myrtle back.”

“Miss Dillon was a strange one,” her mother noted. “But even she had the sense to keep her turtles outside. Why you insist on having turtles as pets now, in the house, no less, is beyond me. I suppose it's better than having a dog or a cat, but all pets are a nuisance,” she grumbled.

Instead of defending pets, Ellie probed deeper. “Did you ever have a pet growing up?”

Without replying, her mother got up and walked over to her jewelry box on her bureau. “I need to get a few pieces to match my outfits,” she said, ignoring Ellie's question.

“Did you ever have a pet?” Ellie repeated as her mother sorted through her jewelry.

Her mother paused and held very still for a moment. Ellie saw her mother's pained expression reflected in the mirror. “When I was eight, I had a dog, a German shepherd mix of some kind. His name was Duke, but he got too big for the house,” she said before rooting through the jewelry box and laying a silver necklace on the bureau.

“Oh,” Ellie breathed, with a glimmer of understanding of why her mother had never wanted her to have pets. “Did you have to give Duke away?” she asked, watching her mother's face closely.

Her mother pursed her lips for a moment, as though she was trying to keep them from trembling. “He…My father was waiting for me when I got home from school one day, but Duke was gone. My father told me he had taken Duke out to a friend of his who lived on a farm.” She paused, cleared her throat and closed her jewelry box. Tilting her chin up, she carried several sets of earrings and necklaces back to the suitcase and laid them on top of Ellie's old quilt.

“Did you ever get a chance to visit Duke?”

Her mother closed the lid on the suitcase. “No. My father said Duke was happy on the farm with his new family and probably wouldn't remember us, anyway. I just need to get a few things from the bathroom. If you could carry my suitcase out to the living room, I'll meet you there. Remember to turn out the light when you leave,” her mother said, and walked out of the bedroom.

Ellie sat on the hope chest for a moment. With only limited memories of her grandfather, she had no basis to attempt to understand what he had done. Instead, she grieved for the little girl her mother had been. A little girl who had loved her dog, only to have him sent away forever. And she had never even had the chance to say goodbye.

She stood up and hoisted the suitcase from the bed. Now filled with her mother's things, the suitcase was very heavy, but Ellie's steps were quick. She turned out the light, but the gentle beacon of new understanding shone in her heart. She hoped she would find many more opportunities to learn about her mother.

 

Ellie sat at the kitchen table, watching her mother serve herself. Since the incision on her mother's arm was nearly healed, Ellie hadn't had to help her with her meals for several days now.

Tonight's menu of broiled flounder, steamed peas and brown rice would have required little assistance anyhow. There was no salt or butter on the table and no cream sauce for the peas. Ellie was proud of herself for sticking to the dietary guidelines for her mother's heart condition.