Tending Roses (34 page)

I ordered the beef stew special from the chalkboard as I walked past the counter, then proceeded into the empty dining room. The solitude felt good. Taking a seat at the far end by a long row of windows, I gazed at the miles of rolling, tree-clad mountains below. The view was serene, and I stared at it intensely, hoping to soothe my jumbled thoughts.

Only a half-hour drive waited between me and Hindsville. When I got there, I would have to tell Ben the truth. In my mind, I pictured him going about his daily routine, having no idea a bomb was coming and he was at ground zero. I imagined what he would say when I told him. I imagined him angry, sad, happy, depressed, somewhere in between, but the truth was I didn’t know what his reaction would be.

An hour and a half later, I had eaten my meal, looked over all the souvenirs, and walked the short path to the lookout point nearby. I could find no more reasons to avoid going home, so I climbed into the car and slowly proceeded.

Ben was in a good mood when I arrived at the church. He had just gotten a new consulting job and was on top of the world. I considered not telling him about the baby.

But I also knew that wasn’t fair. “There’s something I have to tell you.” I swallowed hard. “I found out at the hospital today that . . . I’m pregnant.”

Openmouthed, he stepped backward, catching himself against the desk, his face washing white. For a long moment, he stared at me, as if waiting for me to take back the words.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, the heat of tears in my eyes.

He shook his head in disbelief. “B-but we’ve been . . . careful. We used . . .” He rubbed his forehead impatiently, then slapped his hand against the counter. “How could you be pregnant?”

I had asked myself the same question. Unfortunately I didn’t have the answer. “Birth control isn’t a hundred percent,” I said. The look of panic on his face made me feel sick inside.

He snapped suddenly to life and came forward, taking my hand in his. “Don’t get me wrong, Kate. I’m not unhappy about another baby. It’s just”—he grimaced, closing his eyes—“the timing.”

“I know.” And I did, perhaps more than Ben realized. I was contemplating being pregnant, trying to take care of Josh and Grandma, trying to go back to work, trying to keep all the bills paid. I took my hands from his and covered my face, feeling the hopelessness of the situation. “How are we going to pay for all of this?”

I felt him take me into his arms, the warmth of his closeness driving away my misery. “We’ll make it,” he promised, as if he knew it would be so. “We can do it. Things looked bad six months ago, and everything worked out.”

Stepping back, he drew my hands from my face and leaned down until our eyes met. “I think we just need to have a little faith.” He smiled that take-on-the-world smile. “If Grandma Vongortler were here, she’d say, ‘The Lord doesn’t give us more than we can bear,’ or the ever popular, ‘Be patient. Everything doesn’t have to work itself out today.’ ”

His imitation of a high-pitched old-lady voice made me smile in spite of myself. I couldn’t count how many times she had said that to me. Strangely, it always turned out to be true. “She uses that line on you, too?”

He shook his head. “Not directly, but I read the Baptist Buzz.”

“I guess I’d better start,” I joked, feeling my mood brighten as if someone had opened the window and let light into my world. Faith. It was time I gave mine a try. “How do you feel about being a father of two?”

Taking a deep breath, he pursed his lips and then exhaled slowly. “Strange,” he admitted. “But I can get used to it . . . I think.”

“You’re sure?” I pressed.

“Are you?”

“I guess I am.”

“Then I guess I am, too.”

B
Y the end of March, Grandma had spent nearly eight weeks in the hospital battling a prolonged bout of pneumonia that she contracted while bedridden from the stroke. Dad, Karen, and Aunt Jeane had been back periodically to visit her. Aunt Jeane came to stay for a week while Ben and I took Joshua back to Chicago for his six-month heart checkup, where the doctors pronounced him healthy and normal in every way. No further surgery would be needed, just yearly checkups with a heart specialist. In a time when everything else in our lives seemed to be caving in, Joshua’s clean bill of health was an indescribable blessing.

We stayed in Chicago for a few days, enjoying the company of friends and checking on the town house. But Chicago didn’t feel like home, and the town house seemed strange, with its barren white walls and flawless plush carpet. Liz had moved in some of her furniture, and the place seemed to belong more to her than to us.

“Whenever you’re ready to move back in, let me know,” she said as we were getting in the car to return to Missouri.

“We will. Aunt Jeane says Grandma is still recovering from the pneumonia. We hope she’ll be out of the hospital soon, but we don’t want to leave her with a live-in until she’s somewhat better.” The truth was, I couldn’t imagine going back to Chicago and leaving Grandma alone with a stranger. I wasn’t sure how Ben felt about it. I was afraid to ask, and we didn’t have much choice, anyway. My leave would run out in May.

Liz laid a hand on my shoulder. “It’s a great thing you’re doing, taking care of your grandma like that.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling the press of tears. I didn’t feel heroic. I felt I was failing Grandma by being unable to make her well. “I guess we’d better get on the road.”

Liz nodded, stepping away from the car. “Have a good trip.”

I waved, and we drove away from our house. Yet I felt as if we were heading home.

On the way, Aunt Jeane called us and told us she was headed to the airport to catch her flight out, but that we could go to the hospital the next day and pick up Grandma. Dr. Schmidt had told us that her condition had not improved much, but Grandma was strong in her determination to return to the farm. She insisted that if she was going to die, she was going to do it there. Dr. Schmidt had finally given up and admitted that the hospital stay was doing more harm than good.

I wasn’t at all prepared for what greeted me when I entered Grandma’s hospital room the next day. In the week since I had seen her, she seemed to have lost thirty pounds, and her skin hung sallow and loose on her face and arms. Her legs seemed too weak to carry her as the nurses helped her out of the bed and into a wheelchair for the trip to the car.

Grandma batted the nurse away impatiently, motioning to me. “Oh, there is my girl!” she said as if she hadn’t seen me in a hundred years. She clasped her hand around mine and hung on. “Everything will be all right now that my Katie is here.”

The nurse tried to lift Grandma’s foot onto the footrest, and Grandma kicked at her impatiently.

“Grandma!” I gasped.

She looked at me with a pursed-lipped scowl. “Well, Katie, you don’t know. Ever since your Aunt Jeane left yesterday, they have been horrible to me. I told her they would be, but she insisted she had to go home to her job.” She raised the lecture finger and wagged it at all of us. “
This
is the thanks I get. I never once left that child’s side when she was deathly sick with the mumps, pox, strep throat, and rubella.”

Laying a hand on her shoulder, I tried to soothe her as the nurse wheeled her down the hall. “Grandma, Aunt Jeane stayed as long as she could. She had to be back this morning, and she knew I was coming to get you.”

“Yes, well, everybody just shuffles me around. . . .”

Her one-sided conversation went on like that for an hour and a half until we reached Hindsville and picked up Joshua at Ben’s office. The sight of Joshua brightened Grandma’s spirits, and on the way home, she talked about how much he had grown and changed, and how glad she was to hear about his clean bill of health.

By the time we reached the farm, she was exhausted. I helped her into the downstairs bedroom, which Ben and I had vacated so that she could stay in the main house. She fell asleep looking pale, and tired, and sad. I stood in the doorway watching her and wondering what would happen now that she needed more care than a live-in helper could be trusted to provide. I kindled a faint hope that before my leave ran out, she would be well enough to stay at the farm. Aunt Jeane had temporarily put on hold our plans to hire help for her and had made arrangements with a nursing home, in case her health deteriorated.

As the days went by, Grandma was in better spirits, happy to be home at the farm and determined to get back to normal. But her body, which seemed to have operated on will alone over the past months, was slowly becoming her enemy. Nearly everything seemed to take more effort than she could muster. Most of the time she was reduced to lying in the recliner, asking us to bring things to her.

She frequently forgot events that occurred, or people who came to visit, or what we told her. Each time she caught me having morning sickness, she asked me what was wrong, and I was forced to confess again and again that I was pregnant. Each time she would remark on how young Joshua was, and how close together the babies would be, and how I would have my hands full. When she had managed to reduce me almost to tears, she would realize what she’d said, pat my hand or my stomach, and say, “What a blessing.”

On days when she felt well enough, I took her to town and left her at the church office or the Senior Citizens’ Center across the street. When she didn’t, Oliver Mason came to our house to sit with her—an arrangement that irritated her to no end. She had always been certain that she would survive him by many years. Now he was bringing her cups of tea and pillows for her feet. It was not what she had planned, and she hated it when the world did not turn according to her say-so.

Dell Jordan visited often in the afternoons, bringing little drawings or pretty rocks and pine cones and, finally, the first wild daffodils of an early spring. Grandma looked forward to her visits, and they sat for hours going over Dell’s schoolwork or looking at the old photo albums. Grandma told Dell about all the things she had done without while growing up, and I think Dell understood.

As the weeks passed, I felt lousy and looked worse. I lost weight because I was too sick to eat, and changing Joshua’s diapers and taking care of Grandma didn’t help. I was worried about my leave of absence running out in May, and about the fact that I still hadn’t told my boss I was pregnant again. He was already irritated enough about all the leave I was taking. He didn’t have much sympathy, and in a way, I didn’t blame him. It was hard to understand about Grandma Rose’s situation unless you were living it. It would have been hard for me to understand, sitting at my desk in Chicago six months ago.

Sometimes, I fell into feeling sorry for myself, burdened with the work of taking care of Grandma and Joshua while I was frequently sick from the pregnancy. Then I would look at Grandma, exhausted in her chair, and feel guilty. I reminded myself of her story about the roses, and of how I had felt when I read it—glad to be young, surrounded by activity and noise, not caged in the silent solitude of old age. I wished I could read the story again, but the wildflower book was nowhere to be found. I tried asking her about it, but she looked at me with confusion and told me where to find a pad of paper. I wondered if the stroke had taken away some of her memory and if the book was finished, or even lost, forever.

Whether it was the pregnancy hormones or the stress, I don’t know, but I sat and cried daily. It was only a matter of time before Grandma Rose caught me at it.

“What’s wrong, Katie?” she asked, coming into the kitchen with her walker just as I was closing the back door.

“Ben forgot his lunch,” I said, keeping my back to Grandma. Ben forgetting his lunch was nothing to cry over, but I was disintegrating into tears once again.

The floor groaned softly as she moved toward the table. I heard her labored breathing as she pulled out a chair and sat down. “Well, he can eat over to the cafe. It’s not worth worrying about.” Her voice was steady and understanding, as it used to be before she went to the hospital.

Wiping my eyes impatiently, I turned around, not wanting to miss the chance for a lucid conversation with her. So much of the time she was either muddled in her thoughts or angry about being stuck in her recliner. We were as much her jailers as her caretakers.

“Oh, I know,” I said. “It’s just that we don’t need to be spending any extra money.”

She spat a puff of air. “One lunch won’t make any difference.” This from a woman who had forced me to gather and store enough discarded potatoes to feed an army.

“You’re probably right,” I agreed, raising the shade so that the morning sunbeams danced into the kitchen like a troop of pixies. Pouring a cup of coffee, I sat in the chair across from her.

She stared at the sunbeams and took a deep breath, her eyelids drifting downward, then rising again. “I feel very well today.”

“I’m glad,” I said, harboring a hope that this might be a sign of recovery, though the doctors had told me not to expect it.

She looked at me very directly, as if she knew what I was thinking. “There are some things I want to say while I can. I don’t want you finding out when I’m gone.”

“Grandma,” I admonished, “you’re not . . .”

She impatiently raised a hand to silence me. “I haven’t time to waste. I do not know how long my mind will stay with me. First of all, I spoke yesterday with Reverend Baker about Dell’s situation, and I’ve told him I would like to leave a small stipend in his charge so that he might help to look after Dell and get her the things she needs for school, so that the other children will not be cruel to her. Also, I have encouraged him to begin making regular visits to her home, and to consider organizing a church workday to clean up and repair that awful place. She is a good girl, and she deserves better.”

“You’re right,” I agreed. “Ben would probably like to help plan the workday.”