Chasing Sunsets (17 page)

“Just rest,” I whispered.

I went into the living room, pulled my cell phone from the pocket of my Capri shorts, and called my father.

“Did you take her temp?” he asked me. “Any vitals?”

“No. But she’s pretty hot, Dad. She says it’s just a summer cold, but she’s been coughing a lot and with her age . . .”

“The nearest doctor is going to be in Chiefland. Let me see if I can make some calls.”

“I can get her there if necessary. I can have her there in no time.”

“You’re a good neighbor,” he said. “And a good daughter.”

My shoulders squared. I said good-bye, hung up the phone, set the ringtone to vibrate, and returned to Patsy, who slept. I noticed a small cushioned chair near a window and sat on the edge of it. Within seconds my cell vibrated in my hand. Without looking at the caller ID, I bound from the chair and exited the room.

“Dad?”

“No. Steven.”

“Steven.” I filled him in on Patsy’s condition and told him Dad was making some calls to physicians in Chiefland.

“Hmm,” he said. “It’s Saturday, so medical offices won’t be open. We could get her to one of the walk-in clinics there. They’re open seven days a week.”

“Just tell me where,” I said.

“No, no. I’ll drive you.”

“Don’t you have to work?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

I returned to the bedroom to observe Patsy, to watch the gentle rise and fall of her chest. Every so often she coughed as though her chest had been tickled, but she never stirred enough to wake. I noticed a few discarded tissues on the floor, picked them up, and dropped them into the wastebasket in the bathroom. While there, I picked up the Nyquil bottle on the vanity and studied the label.

The expiration date glared at me. It was over a year out of date.

I looked back at the tiny sleeping form on the bed before returning to the living room to call Dad again. Just as I pressed the speed dial number for him, I heard a light knock at the door. I placed the phone on an end table before answering the door.

Steven and a man I didn’t know stood beyond the threshold. He was young and tanned and gripped the handle of a small black bag in his left hand. It seemed an extension of himself rather than an addition.

“Hey,” I said, looking from one to the other, finally focusing on Steven.

“Kimberly, this is Dr. Willingham. After we hung up, I remembered that he and his family were here from south Florida.” Dr. Willingham reminded me of a young Ryan O’Neal, an actor my mother had swooned over. I extended my hand in greeting, thanked him for coming, and then stepped aside. “The bedroom is this way,” I said.

Patsy continued to sleep.

“I’m more concerned now than before,” I said to Dr. Willingham, who was dressed as casually as Steven: polo shirt and loose-fitting shorts. “I just noticed that the Nyquil she took has expired.”

“By how long?” he asked as he reached for Patsy’s right hand, presumably to take her pulse.

I went to the bathroom and came back with the bottle. “Over a year.”

He shrugged. “A number of studies have determined that if medication has been stored in optimum conditions, there’s little reason to worry. But, with it being a year over expiration, worst case scenario is that it just isn’t working as well as if it were new.”

“Her respirations are shallow but her lips and nails show no signs of cyanosis.”

Dr. Willingham looked perplexed and impressed at the same time. “You sound knowledgeable.”

“My father and sister are doctors. And I helped take care of my mother before she died. When it’s important, you pay attention to details, right?”

Dr. Willingham placed his bag on the bed, opened it, and drew out a forehead thermometer. Without answering my question he swiped it across Patsy’s forehead. I watched to see if she had any reaction, even the slightest movement. She didn’t. I held my breath in wait before glancing over to the chair Steven now occupied. His elbows rested on his knees, and his hands were clasped together.

“One-o-two-point-six,” the doctor said. He looked at me as he returned the thermometer to his bag. “Tell me what you know.”

“Yesterday she was coughing. She said it was just a silly summer cold. Nothing to worry about. But with her age . . .”

“Do you know how old she is?”

I didn’t. I shook my head.

“What’s her name?” he asked.

“Patsy.”

“Last name?”

I couldn’t see that it mattered.

“Milstrap,” Steven answered for me.

Dr. Willingham leaned over the bed, cupped Patsy’s shoulder, and shook it. “Mrs. Milstrap!” he shouted. “Mrs. Milstrap! Can you hear me?”

Could she hear him? The dead could hear him.

Patsy’s eyes fluttered as he called her name one more time. “Who in the land of the living are you?” she asked.

A breath escaped my lungs and I laughed, then glanced at Steven, who winked at me.

“I’m Dr. Willingham,” he answered, his voice still elevated.

“Well, my goodness, why are you yelling at me?”

Dr. Willingham’s smile was broad. “Mrs. Milstrap, can you tell me how old you are?”

“Of course I can,” she said. She looked at me. “Do you know this man?”

I nodded. “Patsy, your fever is a little high. And you’ve taken cold medicine that is outdated. I called Steven,” I said looking over at him, “who knows Dr. Willingham.”

Patsy’s lips formed an
O
. She looked at Dr. Willingham and said, “Well, I’m seventy-eight years old. And if the good Lord allows, on my next birthday I’ll be seventy-nine.” She sighed. “I do admit I don’t feel so well.”

I rubbed my hand along the comforter, where her legs stretched out like two short sticks. “We’re going to get you better.”

“Mrs. Milstrap, how long have you had this fever and your cough?”

“Just a couple of days. I thought it was just a summer cold. But I ache pretty bad, doctor. I clearly do.”

Dr. Willingham smiled at her. “Well, I think you’re probably right there. But at your age, a bad summer cold can turn into something more.” He smiled again. “Don’t you worry now. We’re going to take care of that,” he said. “In the meantime, no more expired Nyquil for you.”

He straightened and turned to me. “Can you stay with her?”

“Of course.”

He looked at Steven, now standing. “Steven, I’m going to write a prescription for Mrs. Milstrap. Not sure where you’ll fill it,” he muttered under his breath.

“I can handle it,” Steven said.

“Kimberly, I’m going to leave my phone number with you. If her fever doesn’t break or she gets worse, do not hesitate to call.” He pulled a business card and pen out of his bag and jotted his number on the back of it. “This is my personal cell.”

“Thank you,” I said as he dipped his hand back into the bag and came up with a prescription pad. “I really appreciate this.”

“Here you go,” he said to Steven as he tore the top page from the prescription pad. “And I’ll call you in the morning if I don’t hear anything from you.”

“Thanks, Doc,” Steven said as though they were old friends. “I’ll walk you out.”

The doctor told Patsy he’d call in the morning, but she was sleeping again. I followed the men into the living room, where my phone glared, lit up, from the end table. “Oh,” I said. “I’ll bet Dad has been calling.”

While Steven walked the doctor to his car, I called Dad, who was worried sick, he said. “I had all kinds of visions running around in my head.”

“Don’t worry, Dad. Steven came with a doctor who is vacationing here and took care of Patsy. I’m sorry I haven’t called you back . . . the doctor is actually just leaving.”

“Steven?”

My legs grew weak; I hadn’t told Dad about Steven. About seeing him . . . dating him . . . feeling a little bit crazy when I was near him. I took a deep breath and tried to sound nonchalant. “Steven Granger. You remember him, don’t you?”

“I remember him, yes. How is it that Steven Granger knew about Patsy?”

“I know what you’re thinking, Dad. He just happened to call after I talked to you and—”

“Why was he calling you?”

I swallowed. “Because, Dad. We have a date tonight and—”

“You have a date tonight?”

“Dad, are you going to interrupt me every three words or are you going to let me finish?”

A moment of silence passed before he said, “I’m listening.”

I turned toward the door to see Steven stick his head in and say, “I’ll be right back.”

I nodded. He closed the door behind him.

I walked briskly into the kitchen and sat in one of the chairs at the table. “Dad,” I said, crossing my legs. “I don’t understand the tone in your voice. Steven Granger is living here now. His father had a heart attack last year and he moved back down to help with the business.”

“I know all of that, Boo.”

“Okay. Well, then.” I took a breath and spoke quickly through the exhale. “We ran into each other, he asked me out, I said yes, and that’s that.”

“Not a good idea and you know it.”

“Dad—”

“Hear me out on this one, Kim.”

My jaw flinched. “Okay.”

“I’ve never seen you so hurt in my life as you were at the end of your senior year.”

“You mean other than when Charlie left me and the boys?”

“Well, of course. But you were older then. Steven was your first love, and he ripped your heart out.”

“You sound more like a mother than a father.”

“A father doesn’t forget that kind of heartache when it’s his little girl who’s crying.”

I rubbed my forehead with my fingertips. I leaned over as though in pain. “That’s sweet, Dad, but I’m not a little girl anymore.”

“I know that. But you’re still
my
little girl.”

I smiled but remained silent.

I heard him sigh. “Well, then. Does it feel like it did twenty years ago?”

I straightened as I laughed. “Honestly? It’s not as hormonally driven.”

“I didn’t need to hear that.”

“I know you didn’t. But . . . we had our second date last night. He got me to take pictures with his camera, Dad. And he made me laugh.”
And cry.

“I haven’t seen Steven since you were kids.”

“Well, he’s not a kid anymore. Neither am I. And I don’t know what all this means or where it will lead, but I have to tell you. I’m more than a little willing to find out.”

“Just be careful, sweetheart.”

“I will.” I heard Patsy coughing from her bedroom. “Dad, I need to go check on Patsy. I’ll call you later, okay?”

“Take it easy, Boo.”

Summer 1946

With the war a lasting memory and the manufacturing of appliances back in full swing, thirty-year-old Bernice Liddle went to town and splurged on a new Maytag wringer washing machine. Not so much for herself, she told her husband, Ira—a man as tight with a penny as he was firm on her role as wife and mother—but to enable her to bring in other people’s wash. It was for a good cause too, she’d told him, what with so many women still working outside of their homes.

“And goodness knows,” she told her thirteen-year-old daughter Patsy, who rode with her to Gibson’s Department Store on the day of purchasing, “we could use the extra money.” She cut a sharp eye toward her daughter. “You tell Mr. Liddle I said that and I’ll deny it, you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Patsy replied. Not that her mother had to tell her. She was smart enough to know the rules of the house. No one demeaned Ira Liddle, not to his face, that is. Not to mention this was the first time her mother had said anything in confidence to Patsy, making Bernice’s quiet firstborn feel all the more close to her mother.

“You’re a good daughter,” she said after several minutes.

Patsy knew her mother had been thinking. Thinking about what she’d just let slip. Thinking about what would surely happen if Mr. Liddle found out she’d said it, even to her own child. Her words of praise were no more than a line of insurance, but Patsy felt pleased to hear them anyway.

Patsy looked out the open passenger window of the oversized black 1936 Chevy coupe Mr. Liddle had purchased for his wife the year before. “To use when you have to do your shopping or if the kids get sick,” he told her when he brought it home. “Not for any running around to visit with your friends.”

As if Bernice Liddle had friends for visiting.

“Sure is hot out there,” Patsy now said. “The beans are near about drying up before I can pick ’em.”

“You just have to get out there earlier, is all.”

Patsy’s eyes scanned lazily from the side of the long dirt road they traveled to the woman behind the steering wheel. She was only seventeen years her senior, yet she looked and seemed so much older. Like a grandmother instead of a mother.

“Yes, ma’am.”

They purchased the washer for $54.95 plus tax. As her mother counted out the last of the loose change, Patsy ran her fingertips along the wringers of the floor model. She listened when Mr. Gibson told Patsy’s mother someone would deliver it to the house within the next few days. Then, Mrs. Liddle gave their address and phone number—931—and asked that someone call before they arrived. “To make sure we’re home,” she said, as though they had such a social schedule.

Patsy looked up, wondering where else they’d be when the washer came. She heard her mother whisper, “Will you let others know, Mr. Gibson, that I’m taking in wash now?”

Patsy walked away from the embarrassment of the moment. Not that she was ashamed of taking in wash; she merely felt the sting of her mother’s humiliation. But a week later, that machine became her own cross to bear. While her friends from school met at Cassel Creek in the hot summer afternoons, Patsy stayed busy washing clothes for her family while her mother took care of what felt like the rest of Casselton, Georgia. Her days became endless hours of caring for her little brothers, five-year-old Harold and four-year-old Billy, picking and putting up vegetables, helping to keep their two-story bungalow clean, and washing clothes.

The washing was one thing. The ironing and the folding and the putting them away was another.

They kept the machine next to the door on the wide, screened back porch. Twice a week Patsy pulled the washer from the outside wall, ran the electric wire to a kitchen plug, added water and Duz detergent to the tub, allowed it to agitate for a few minutes, and then added the clothes. While they washed, she ran clean water into a wooden rinse tub, which she then dragged to the back side of the washer. After flipping the chrome switch of the machine to the off position, she pulled the soapy clothes into the rinse tub, added another load to the wash, and then began the back-breaking task of wringing the individual pieces.

When it was all done, she hung the clothes on the line, then set everything to rights on the back porch, including returning the Duz powder to its place under the skirted kitchen sink.

Oh, how her mother loved Duz. Their kitchen had been furnished by the goblets, dishes, dishrags, and drying cloths that came inside its box, which meant she didn’t have to spend any extra of the allowance Mr. Liddle gave her, and she could still have nice things.

On the days she wasn’t washing the laundry, Patsy ironed it. And on the days she didn’t iron the laundry, she dusted the house and broom-swept the carpets. Living on a dirt road in a house that sat on a plot of land without a blade of grass meant the house always stayed dusty, and the rugs sometimes felt like a sandbox to bare feet. To keep from stirring the dust, she used the sprinkling bottle from laundry days and cast droplets of water on top of the worn wool before sweeping. She thought it a good idea, and her mother had even praised her for it.

One thing she was never allowed to do, though, was enter into her mother’s bedroom, the one she shared with Mr. Liddle. Had it been up to Bernice Liddle, Patsy could have played in there all day. But it wasn’t. Mr. Liddle said children didn’t belong in the bedroom of their parents. Even though Patsy wasn’t technically
their
child, she was forced to comply.

Until the day her mother was overwhelmed with other people’s laundry and two little boys who’d eaten too much of the taffy they’d pulled the day before. “Patsy,” she called out the back door as Patsy walked up from the vegetable garden; a bushel of peas rocked against her hip as she toted it in the late morning sunlight.

Patsy shielded her eyes against the sun and squinted to the back of the house. “I got enough peas to shell for a month of Sundays,” she called back.

“Never mind that now,” her mother hollered.

Patsy made her way to the unpainted wooden steps leading up to the porch before she set the bushel basket at her feet. “What’s going on, Mama?”

“I need you to help me out here, clearly I do. I’m running back and forth with a chamber pot for your brothers and trying to stay on task with this wash here. Mr. Liddle will be home tonight from his sales route, and if he sees the dust that’s built up in the house . . . well, you know how he gets. Go put on one of my aprons and get to work in the house, now.”

Patsy ascended the steps and got right to it. Some time later she went to the kitchen in search of her mother, finding her there stooped over the sink, wearing her old house dress and a pair of Red Goose shoes in need of resoling, washing the peas from the earlier picking. “Mama, I dusted the whole house except for your room.”

Her mother glanced over her shoulder. Her eyes went first to the kitchen wall clock and then to Patsy. She raised her hand to press against the brush rollers that held her hair in tight curls. “Lord-a-mercy, I gotta get my hair done too, so go ahead and dust in there too.”

Patsy did as she was told before her mother could change her mind. Oh, how she wanted to be in that room . . . to touch the dainty items that rested atop her mother’s vanity. She walked into the room as though entering a church—reverently, taking it all in. Every bit of furniture, every framed picture, every needlepoint pillow from her mother’s hand. She started her work with the four-poster oak bed. She stuck a finger into the dust cloth, dropped lemon oil onto the finger so as not to spill it, and then meticulously cleaned the carved roses in the headboard.

She moved to the bedside tables, ever so careful to pick up the lamps, dust under them, and return them to the exact spot she’d found them. Patsy swallowed hard when she came to Mr. Liddle’s chest of drawers. If he thought for a moment that Patsy—rather than his wife—had been the one to touch his things . . .

She drew in a deep breath, picked up each item one at a time—the brush and comb set, the matching lint roller, the small jewelry box placed perfectly in the middle. A library book—
Listen, Germany
by Thomas Mann—rested along one edge. Patsy picked it up to run the oily cloth over the wood. Thinking herself quite wise, she laid the book on the white crocheted bedspread her mother had made from a Star Book pattern so as not to get oil stains on the back cover of the book.

Her mother’s vanity was neatly arranged. Her lotions, perfume, and dusting powder were to the left of the oval mirror. To the right, a faux gold filigree lipstick holder, with Cupid playing a guitar in the outside center, held four tubes of lipstick with the matching vanity set angled to the left in the center. Patsy glanced toward the opened door. With a captured breath, she removed each item and placed it on the padded stool at her knees. She oiled the wood until the patina all but reflected her image. Before replacing her mother’s pretties, she pulled a dry cloth from the pocket of the apron and wiped each one as though she were drying a freshly bathed infant. She hummed in her efforts, imagining herself as the wife of some wonderful man—unlike Mr. Liddle—and caring for her own delicate things. When she came to the lipsticks, she took each short tube from its gold holder, slipped off the lid, and twisted the base. She watched with wonder as the cylinder of waxy color emerged, then quickly sent it back into its cave. When she got to the pink, she pretended to slide it across her bottom lip, pressed her lips together, then pursed them and peered into the mirror.
My, my, Miss Sweeney, but aren’t you lovely this afternoon in your house frock and smelling like lemons?

Before finishing the vanity, she inhaled from both the perfume bottle and the dusting powder tin and imagined herself getting ready for a fancy party, the likes she’d most probably never see. When everything was as it had been before she entered the room, she straightened and smiled. She’d done a good job, she thought. Maybe Mama would let her do it again.

“Patsy?” The voice came from behind her; it was neither harsh nor gentle.

“Oh, Mama,” she said turning. “You startled me.”

“Hurry, child, before Mr. Liddle comes home.”

Patsy crossed the room to where her mother stood framed by the doorway. “I did a good job for you, Mama,” she said.

“I know you did, now, come on. The boys need a bath and the dining room needs preparing, and then I want you to comb out my hair.”

Her mother always put Mr. Liddle’s traveling things up the minute he returned home from his sales trips, while her husband played with his sons first, then smoked a pipe and read the paper in wait for supper to be on the table.

He never said a word to Patsy other than, “Girl, you been helping your mama?”

“Yes, sir,” Patsy always said. She tried not to look him in the eyes—they were steel gray and sharp as a shark’s tooth—when she answered. She just replied and then went on her way.

It had always been like that between them. He only spoke to her—really spoke to her—when he was giving her a whipping. On those occasions—not as frequent since her twelfth birthday—his words came in staccato beats. “What. Did. I. Tell. You. About . . .” and then he’d finish with whatever he’d told her about that she’d not done. Or had done. It made no never mind. He’d hold her forearm by one sturdy hand and swat her with the other, most often on her rear end. One time he hit her across the back so hard she lost her breath. That night Mama tucked her into bed, which was unusual, asked if she was all right, then said, “Just don’t make him mad, Patsy, and you’ll be fine.”

He never hit the boys. For that, at least, Patsy was grateful. But he’d hit Mama a few times—most often a slap across her face. Those times he called her names like “stupid” and “worthless” and said she was lucky he came along when he did and rescued her sorry self from “that pit five-and-dime and Mr. Harvey Jenkins.”

Patsy didn’t know what that meant, exactly, but she knew better than to ask.

That night—the night of the bedroom dusting and Mr. Liddle’s return—was no different from the others. At least for the most part. While the boys sipped broth in their bedroom, Patsy and Mama listened while Mr. Liddle spoke of his travels and sales between bites and swallows. Afterward, Patsy cleared the table and cleaned the kitchen so Mama could tend first to the boys and then to her husband.