Black Chokeberry, page 16
No, I can’t do it. She hates me, and I am so not crazy about her. All right then, take another look at things. How else can you make it work? What’s possible?
Her mind was racing. She kept coming back to the core idea:
Since I’ll be caring for Frances anyway, what if I put the two of them together in Frances’s house? That way, I could care for them both at once. Frances could have her bed on the first floor in the living room, which opens out to the sun porch giving her the sun and light she craves every day, and a view of her gardens. Ruby could stay in the front parlor, which faces West Fifth Street, giving her a clear vista to her world, her neighborhood. It seems like a plan, one that I feel sure Frances will agree to. Ruby is another matter, and in fact, so am I. In the name of all that is honest and true, I don’t wish Ruby any harm. But living with a demanding passive-aggressive vengeful woman I hardly know, much less like, would be a prison sentence. My life as I know it, my quiet, independent, just-Henry-and-me-sorting-things-out-together life, would be over. All for a woman who is suing the pants off me. It doesn’t bear thinking about. Besides, I couldn’t leave Henry home alone. I won’t. This plan is impossible. But what else can I do? Oh, I wish this wasn’t on my plate right now.
Ellen carefully put a sock on Ruby’s swollen foot.
Why is it up to me? Both of these women have lives and they’re not my responsibility. I hardly know either of them past the common pleasantries. Yet here I am and here they are. How could I sit on my front porch and look over at Ruby’s house, or hang out laundry and look over the fence at Frances’s house, and know that I did nothing to help them? How can I turn my back on them? Particularly when I seem to be the one who caused their troubles in the first place.
“Ruby, let me make a couple of phone calls and I’ll be right back. Wait for me to return before you put on that skirt, please. I’ll need to help you with that.” She dialed Frances’s room at the hospital. Twenty minutes later she had the green light from Frances for the combined recovery plan, verification that a second hospital bed and a portable commode could be delivered this afternoon to Frances’s house, and confirmation that Ruby’s doctor would come for a visit after lunch.
“I think we have it all worked out,” Ellen said, as she returned to Ruby’s side. “I think our plan will cover all of your needs, and be fun as well!”
Ruby sat stiff as uncooked spaghetti as Ellen explained the plan to move her into Frances’s front parlor for the next three or four weeks. “What? Do you think leaving my home is fun, Ellen Varner? Are you crazy?”
Ellen sat still, giving Ruby time to get over the initial shock. She could tell Ruby was giving it some thought. “It makes good sense to do this. You still will be on West Fifth, with a view. You won’t lose touch with your neighbors, and you’d be doing me a favor by being there to keep an eye on Frances when I’m not around. Most of all, you won’t have to go back to rehab, which I think your doctor will insist on today if you don’t have other plans. You just can’t stay alone right now, Ruby.”
Ruby wanted to know how long Ellen thought she’d have to stay at Frances’s house. She also wanted to know if Ellen would arrange for a TV to be brought into the front parlor. She didn’t want to miss any of her shows.
“I have no idea how long your recuperation will take until we’ve talked with your doctor and he tells us about that ankle. However, I can say for sure that I will get a TV for you.”
Ruby pulled the Hudson Bay blanket up to her shoulders. She settled the rest of it around her lap and legs. Finally, she looked up at Ellen.
“Well, if I have to live with someone, I can think of no one better than my kind and generous friend Frances. You’ll be all right, too, I guess. The good Lord knows, I am tired of starving, and you seem to be a pretty good cook, Ellen.” She put her hand around the back of her head, cupping her bun, enjoying the feel of combed hair in place. “OK, I’ll do it. It will be hard for me, Ellen, but I do understand I am lucky to have you and Frances to help me. All that being said, I accept with pleasure your kind invitation to take care of me in Frances’s front parlor.”
Ellen squeezed Ruby’s hand. “It’s going to be good, you’ll see. Now let’s get you something to eat before Dr. Davis comes. Could you stand that shepherd’s pie one last time?”
She found several cans of Jolly Green Giant whole asparagus in the cupboard and heated one up. Her hand nearly shook scooping it onto her plate. Get over yourself, you fresh-food snot. She put the last piece of chocolate pecan pie on a dessert plate and found a can of whipped cream on the fridge door. She pumped cream on the side of the pie and brought it to Ruby.
“I saw apples in the fridge. Would you like some fruit?” she asked as she poured a large glass of ice water for her.
Ruby said no. Maybe later.
Ellen sat on the floor and pulled a Twix bar from her pocket. She peeled off the paper, snapping apart the two bars easily.
“Is that all you’re having for lunch?” Ruby asked.
“Uh-huh. It’s all I can do right now.”
Ruby stared at her. “A cook who eats only candy bars,” she said. Licking whipped cream off her fingers, she made a goofy face. “The world is upside down.”
More than you know, Ellen smiled, and took a tiny bite of the crunchy Twix.
“As a matter of fact, there’s one upside down but significant proviso that you need to understand about these plans, Ruby. It’s a critical stipulation, and it is absolutely not negotiable.”
“Oh, what now? Really, Ellen, you can be so dramatic.”
Bracing herself, Ellen focused on the Twix bar pretending she was not particularly interested in Ruby’s reaction.
“Henry will be part of our little Recoup Hotel,” she said. “He’ll be living with us. He’s part of the deal.”
Ruby snapped her head up, eyes on Ellen. “Over my dead body.”
“Fine. I’ll call the rehab center,” Ellen said. Standing up, milk chocolate sticking to her bottom lip, she added, “Or would you prefer the West Side Nursing Home?”
Ellen turned the bed to give Frances a view from the west windows. From that angle she could enjoy the warmth of the afternoon sun, which had started to bathe the side of the house. Frances’s three-story Victorian home was laid out in the traditional manner of its period. The parlor was in the front, bordered on the south wall by tall pocket doors that opened to the living room just behind it. When company called, the parlor was used. On a daily basis Alan and Frances had used the living room, except for large gatherings when both rooms were opened up.
The kitchen ran long across the back of the house with a butler’s pantry separating it from the formal dining room, which was across the center hall from the living room. Off the kitchen, facing the back garden, was a small knotty pine breakfast room with a wall of windows. Frances said she loved this cozy room the best. It was here that she and Alan had shared their daily meals. A library with a mahogany fireplace was in the front of the house, across from the parlor. The library was essentially Alan’s room, although he had allowed Frances to join him for a drink, occasionally, when he was reading and listening to music on a winter’s evening. Every now and then she would smoke a cigarette with him. “There’s nothing wrong with enjoyin’ a nasty old vice from time to time,” she would tell him.
Ellen had closed the pocket doors to give Frances privacy when she set up the Recoup Hotel, the name they all had agreed was more than appropriate. “Recoup, mecoup,” Ruby had said more than once, with a straight face. It made Ellen laugh every time.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to sleepin’ in the living room,” Frances said after her first few days. “It seems so wrong. I’m beginning to understand what Mama’s life must have been like when she took over the sunroom of our home in Augusta.”
“What happened to her?” Ellen asked.
“Nothing terrible, really. She had pulled a muscle in her thigh and couldn’t navigate the front stairs. She stayed down in the sunroom for a week or two while she was on the mend. Then, for reasons known only to her, she remained in the sunroom the last eleven years of her life. Daddy carried her bed downstairs, and he had full plantation shutters installed so that she had a wide view of the side yard and back gardens. At night the shutters were shut tight, allowin’ Mama complete privacy. She just adored that room.”
“Did everyone accept her decision to live there?” Ellen asked, puzzled by the very idea of life in the sunroom.
“Why, of course, yes. The decision was hers to make. Mind you, I don’t think she came to it lightly. There’s an old southern expression, ‘she took to her bed.’ Everyone knows what it means. Sometimes it starts with a the death of a child, or a parent, or sometimes it’s simply the onset of a small illness, something that sends a woman to bed for a week or a month, and she is tended to and cared for until she recovers.
“But then,” Frances said, “before you know it, six months or a year has gone by and the woman is still in the bedroom, choosin’ to be confined to the house.”
Frances gripped the sides of the bed, raising herself up a little. She was fascinated by the progress of a big-breasted robin strutting across the grass, clearly making its way to her muddy bed of herbs, which had been devastated by the recent frost. “That robin is late in leavin’ us,” she told Ellen. “He needs to be headin’ south before an early winter storm traps him. I’d surely hate to see him feet-up in the sage one morning.”
Ellen didn’t share Frances’s interest in robins, but she looked at the errant bird to please her friend. After a minute she asked, “So what’s life like for a woman who sequesters herself like that?”
“Oh! Forgive me, dear. I am easily distracted, aren’t I? Well, she stops going out and doin’ things like she used to, and rarely receives company or even extended family, unless it’s well planned in advance. She reads and sews, watches the television some, takes naps, and listens to the radio. Mama kept track of things talkin’ on the telephone with friends and relatives. She ran the house from that sunroom, receivin’ visitors now and then, and just enjoyin’ the vista she had created. She never was so relaxed as when she took to her bed, Daddy said.”
Ellen moved to the foot of the bed to face Frances, hoping to keep her focused. She was intrigued by this peculiar southern tradition.
“Are you telling me your mama just stayed inside the house for the rest of her life?”
“Essentially, yes. It sounds strange to say, but when she took to her bed people didn’t worry. It was understood, and graciously accepted, that a sensitive woman in her seventies might decide to settle in and enjoy a simple life in her home.”
Ellen couldn’t imagine it.
“You’re not going to take to your bed, are you?” she said. “We need you up and around, being company and receiving company.”
Frances smiled for the first time since coming home two days ago. “My word, no. I’d be out of this bed and in the garden right this second if I could.” She laughed. “I have no intentions of shuttin’ myself off from the world just yet. This sleepin’ in the living room is the strangest thing in the world to me.”
Ellen looked up, suddenly annoyed. She could hear the high-pitched ringing of the small bell, the wrist action more frantic with each shake. She had given the bell to Ruby to use in summoning Ellen when Ruby needed something. In one short morning, that bell was in danger of being rung out. Henry got up when Ellen started to move, stretching his hind legs, preparing to follow her anywhere. Ellen had noticed he was sticking to her like peanut butter on a knife these days. Most likely he was afraid she’d leave him behind in this strange old house with its strong smells of two bedridden ladies who couldn’t take him for a walk, even if they wanted to.
Ellen went back to the kitchen to get a fresh glass of apple juice for Ruby. Dr. Davis had said she must stay hydrated, telling her to drink eight ounces of juice or water every hour, and Ruby was happy to comply. Coming out of the kitchen, she went through the butler’s pantry. She enjoyed making her way to the front of the house through the beautiful dining room.
A museum-quality mantle encased the white marble fireplace in the dining room corner opposite the floor-to-ceiling windows framed by eggshell blue satin drapes, which puddled as they rested on the floor. A chandelier, which Frances had said held 120 crystals, was suspended from the fifteen-foot ceiling. The chandelier was centered perfectly above the round, polished cherry dining table with its twelve pale-blue, rose, and yellow floral-patterned silk seats. Ellen loved the room and hoped someday to eat at that table. With its delicately watermarked silk wallpaper, it was a room that was at once historic and modern in its decoration, a style embraced by Frances throughout her home. She has impeccable taste, Ellen thought, delighting in the rich patterns of the deep rose and pale-blue, yellow, and green in the Oriental rug that grounded the room, leaving three feet of lustrous hardwood floors to add warmth.
“Coming, Ruby,” she yelled forward. Please stop that incessant bell ringing. Ruby’s bed was set up in the front parlor, at an odd angle to the bay windows, at her request. She had said she wanted to “see the street, not be part of it, for heaven’s sake.”
“I feel like all I do is ring this bell,” Ruby said now, the bell still poised in her hand. “Can you hear it?”
Ellen attempted her best customer-service smile.
“Yes, I can, Ruby. But it may take me a few minutes to finish up what I am doing with Frances, or projects in the kitchen, or taking care of Henry, before I can get to you. Please be assured, I can hear you from all parts of the house.” Taking the bell from her hand, Ellen set it within easy reach on the table, next to the alabaster lamp. “A couple of good shakes will bring me bedside in a minute or two. If you’ll have just a smidgen of patience, I’ll be here before you know it. I promise. Deal?”
“All right, I’ve got it,” Ruby said, an edge to her voice. She shifted sideways in the bed, flinching as the weight of the blanket momentarily pinned down her ankle. She faced Ellen and took two deep breaths before beginning.
“Now this is why I called you, Ellen, and it is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. What you must understand is that I have no choice.”
Ellen braced herself. Ruby had been here less than twenty-four hours and already she was high maintenance personified. What in the world did she want now?
Ruby took another deep breath, blowing it out slowly, her eyes closed.
“Could you help me onto the commode?” she asked. “I’ve put it off as long as I can, but I think it’s time. I would rather do anything than ask you to help me with this, Ellen, but I just can’t manage it myself.” She opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling. Exhaling, her cheeks puffed up like well-done beignets.
For the love of Pete, is that all?
“No need to apologize, Ruby, it’s fine. That’s what I’m here for. I’m glad to help.” Ellen turned around and pointed Henry toward the hallway. “Go lie down, please.” He headed out of the room. “Good boy. Now stay.”
She pushed the wooden stair steps alongside the bed. The steps were wide and secure, with rubber grippers on their feet. Ellen had been glad to discover that both Ruby and Frances could navigate them, with a little help. When searching for equipment she’d need for the Recoup Hotel, she had been amazed to find a large, well-stocked medical supply store right in a prime location on West First and Bridge streets. Home Care at Home took up two storefronts in what she estimated to be about five or six thousand square feet.
“Oswego’s demographics are kind of scary when you take a good look at them,” the store owner, John Huckenbary, told her. “We’re a graying city. We’re not attracting young people because there aren’t enough good jobs here anymore.” He showed her the expansive selection of mobility chairs, canes, bathroom tub and shower supports, swinging table trays to fit his inventory of at-home hospital beds, and row after row of oxygen equipment and diabetic monitors, shoes, socks, and test strips.
“The kids who want to stay here and raise a family have a tough time,” he added. “Most of the time they wind up moving away. It’s a shame. If it weren’t for Oswego State, we’d be turning out the lights altogether. Still,” he said, “I can’t complain. My business is booming.”
She had one of his best customers to deal with now, she thought, as she maneuvered Ruby off the bed. It was interesting to feel how solid she was for such a petite woman. Edging down the steps, Ellen holding her under the arms from the back, Ruby carefully shuffled the few steps over to the commode. It was a wide square wooden box with a lift-up top covering the seat and the bowl that housed the discharge unit down in the middle. Only three feet high, it was designed for easy landings. Someone had painted the commode an antique blue to give it a decorator touch, Mr. Huckenbary had noted.
Ellen helped Ruby center herself, pulling up her nightgown to keep it out of the way. As soon as she was settled, Ruby shooed Ellen away.
“Just leave me the bell, please, and go on along now. I’ll let you know when I need you to help me get back in bed.”
Ellen exited quickly, hoping to get away before she had to pretend she didn’t hear the explosive noises that would inevitably come from Ruby. It would be an embarrassment to them both. Turning to leave, she thought about opening the living room window to let in some fresh air, but she had left it too late. If she did it now, Ruby would be even more ashamed than she already was. Ellen would have to work in the fresh air later that afternoon before the sun set and it got too cold.
She was grateful that it was just Ruby who needed the commode. Frances was able to walk to the downstairs bathroom and use its facilities, particularly its stall shower. Dr. Ireland did not want Frances handling the main stairs yet, but she could easily negotiate the three steps down into that small bathroom, which had been an addition just off the mudroom several decades ago. Unfortunately, neither Ruby nor her wheelchair could get down those steps.
