“Jane,” she said, as I reached for the knob.
I looked down at her.
“You’re a very good person,” she said. “Just not a very good social worker.”
46
Ivy
“You sit,” Nonnie said to me when I started to make us tomato sandwiches for dinner. She took the knife out of my hand and pointed to one of the chairs. She wouldn’t hardly let me breathe since Nurse Ann left that morning, telling me I’d have another fit if I lifted a finger. I did what she said, moving around the house slow and careful because I didn’t want to go in no hospital. Mary Ella went in the hospital and came out cut open and ruined. I needed Mrs. Forrester to stop that operation.
“I’m okay,” I said, but I sat down like she told me.
Nonnie sliced the tomato real thick, the way we both liked it. “If she puts you in the hospital,” she said, “I’m gonna be all alone.”
“I won’t go,” I said.
“She said you have to, or that baby might come too early.” She got the jar of Duke’s out of the refrigerator. “I don’t know what to do, Ivy,” she said. “When that pee turned orange this morning … well, I imagine the good Lord is trying to tell me something.”
“Like what?”
She spread the mayonnaise near as thick as the tomatoes on the top slice of bread. “Maybe punishing me for not raising you girls up right or something.”
Nonnie hadn’t been herself since Mary Ella passed. It scared me, her sounding lost like she did.
“It’ll be okay,” I said. “But you got to be better about what you eat.” I wasn’t sure the tomato sandwich was exactly right for her.
“Nurse Ann tells me all the things I can’t eat and not a blessed thing about what I can.” Nonnie put the sandwiches on two plates and sliced them into halves. “I’m tired, Ivy,” she said, handing me one of the plates. “Your daddy would be right unhappy with me to see how bad I took care of you girls.” She sat down across from me with her own sandwich, and tears was sitting above her bottom eyelashes. I wished I could do something to keep them from spilling out. “Mary Ella.” She shook her head, staring into space. “Mary Ella.”
This was a side to Nonnie I never seen before. This weak, soft side. I knew all of a sudden this was the real Nonnie. It got covered up by her yelling and hitting, and it scared me more than anything to know she wasn’t as tough as she seemed. I needed somebody in my life to be strong.
“Ain’t none of it your fault, Nonnie,” I said, though some of it truly was. Wouldn’t do no good to point that out to her, though.
I ate a bite of my sandwich, but Nonnie was raising her head high, trying to look out the window. She stood up and grabbed her cane.
“Mrs. Forrester’s here,” she said, wiping her eyes.
Oh no. I didn’t know whether this was good news or bad. I got to my feet and pulled open the door. “Did you stop it?” I hollered. “The operation?”
She climbed the porch steps, out of breath and red in the face, and I wanted to run into her arms at the same time I wanted to punch her. I didn’t trust her one bit, but she was all I had.
“You best stay away from here,” Nonnie said to her. “You cause a stir wherever you go.”
“Ivy.” She was so winded, I guessed she’d run all the way from her car. “Come with me. Ann … Nurse Ann’s coming to take you to the hospital. If you go there, they’ll sterilize you. I wasn’t able to stop the petition—the order—”
“You said you would!”
“I know, but they fired me. Now I have no authority to do anything.” She looked at Nonnie. “Please let her come with me. She doesn’t want that surgery. I’ll make sure she doesn’t get it, but you have to promise me you won’t tell that I took her.”
Nonnie’s eyes bugged out of her head. “You’re one crazy girl,” she said to her.
I didn’t know what to do. How could I believe her? “Maybe you’re the one taking me to get the operation,” I said.
She shook her head, a sad look on her face. “I want to keep you safe,” she said. “My husband’s out of town. I know you’re supposed to take it easy. Rest. You can do that at my house for a few days while I get in touch with a lawyer I know. I’m pretty sure he can help you.”
I looked at Nonnie. Her face was so tired. She was fed up with everything, including living.
“Go with her,” she said. “I’ll say you run off.”
I couldn’t say nothing right away, I was so shocked. “I can’t leave you here alone,” I said. And I couldn’t leave Henry Allen. At least staying here, I had a chance of seeing him. If I went to Mrs. Forrester’s house, how would he find me if he got the money for us to go to California?
“I’ll be all right.” Nonnie looked at Mrs. Forrester. “When’s Nurse Ann coming?” she asked her.
“Sometime this afternoon.”
Nonnie reached in the cupboard where we keep the paper grocery bags and handed me one. “Put your things in here and go,” she said. “Hurry now!”
I couldn’t believe Nonnie was telling me to go. Pushing me to go. And as I threw my underwear and one of Nonnie’s old dresses and my transistor radio into the bag, I wondered if they was in on it together, all three of them. Nurse Ann and Mrs. Forrester and Nonnie. But I had to pick one person to trust, and I guessed that was going to have to be the lady who took me to the beach and told Mary Ella the truth and cared enough to ask me questions about my daddy.
* * *
I didn’t say much in the car. We drove down the lane to get to Deaf Mule Road and I guessed she went that way so we didn’t have to go past the Gardiners’ house. She didn’t want nobody to see her car.
I leaned against the car door. If we pulled up someplace that looked like a hospital, I’d get out and run, even if the car was still moving. Where I’d run to, I didn’t know, but I’d figure that out later. I should of somehow got word to Lita to tell Henry Allen that I’d be back when I could. When it was safe. But there wasn’t no time for that.
We rode quietly for a pretty long while, me watching the whole time for a hospital. After a while, Mrs. Forrester looked over at me.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “Do you feel all right?”
“Well”—I leaned right up against the door—“I don’t trust you far as I can throw you.”
“I don’t blame you.” She smiled but it wasn’t much of one. “But you’re going to have to trust me,” she said. “Please believe me, I’m on your side. I feel strongly that you have the right to decide if you should be sterilized or not. It might turn out to be the right choice for you, because of the epilepsy or because … just because. But I don’t like that the choice has been taken away from you.”
“Like they done to Mary Ella.”
“Mary Ella was a different case,” she said.
I watched her face. She looked angry and not at me. “What do you mean?”
She shook her head. “Now listen. Please. Like I said, my husband is out of town but my maid is at the house, so—”
“You got a maid?”
“I do.” We came to a red light and she stopped and looked over at me. “You’ll stay in the car while I pay her and tell her to take a few days off.” She bit her lip and I could tell she hadn’t thought none of this through very well. When she started talking again it was more like she was talking to herself. “I’ll pay her for a few days,” she said, driving the car again. “Paid vacation. I’ll tell her I don’t need her as much while Robert’s gone.” She looked at me for a second. “Then I’ll call the lawyer I know. He’ll help you.” She gave a little laugh. “He’ll have to help both of us because I’ll be in a lot of trouble for what I’m doing.” She pressed her hand to her cheek. “I can’t believe I’m doing it.”
“Doing what?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. The important thing for you to do … your job right now … is to rest. That’s why Ann wanted you in the hospital. She’s afraid you’ll deliver early. So when we get to my house, y
ou’ll just sit with your feet up and let me wait on you.”
“Wait on me?” Either she was crazier than my mama, or she was telling me the truth about going to her house and calling the lawyer. Either way, I stopped worrying she was taking me to a hospital.
“Yes.” She sort of smiled again. She reached over and put her cool hand on my arm. “I’ll wait on you.”
“Nobody ever waited on me in my life,” I said, and I started loving her again.
47
Jane
“You live here?” Ivy’s eyes were huge as I pulled into my driveway. I could only imagine how my house looked to her. Huge. Sparkling clean yellow paint. White trim. A broad porch with hanging ferns and white rockers. My garage alone was larger than her house.
“Yes,” I said. Then, as if it explained everything, I added, “My husband’s a doctor.”
I parked the car in the driveway. “You wait here while I speak to my maid, all right? It’s better if I don’t introduce you.”
She looked past me toward the house. “You’ll be right back?”
“No more than five minutes,” I promised. I picked up my purse and briefcase from the seat and started toward the house, wondering what in God’s name I was doing. Had I just kidnapped Ivy? I felt like a teenager planning a wild party after her parents left for the weekend. Whatever I’d done, there was no turning back, and my legs were rubbery as I crossed the yard. How long before Ann got to the house and discovered Ivy was gone? How many questions could Nonnie endure before she gave in with the truth? I needed to call Gavin right away.
I walked in the front door to the foyer. Angeline peered out from the kitchen, her hand to her throat and her doe eyes round in her face.
“You gave me a start!” she said, then chuckled. “Why you home in the middle of the day? You sick?”
“No, no,” I said, setting my briefcase on the floor by the entry table. “I’m fine, but I decided to take some time off. And that means you’re taking sometime off, too.” I put my purse on the table and reached inside for my wallet. “I’ll pay you for the rest of the week, but I want you to take it off.”
“What do you mean, ‘take it off’?”
“You don’t need to work the rest of the week. It’s just me here, with Dr. Forrester out of town, so it’s silly for you to work.” I handed her the bills, double what I would have paid her for a week’s work, and she gave me a suspicious look.
“What you got planned?” she asked. She was too smart for her own good.
“A long bath followed by a long nap,” I said, “and I’m dying to get started, so collect your things and go on home.” Her purse was on the table and I handed it to her and guided her toward the door.
“My sweater,” she said, pointing to the foyer closet.
“Go ahead,” I said, hoping the impatience in my voice wasn’t too obvious.
“When you want me back?” she asked as she took her sweater from the hanger, and I realized she was afraid I was letting her go permanently.
“Sometime next week,” I said. “I’ll call you. You still have a job, Angeline. Don’t worry.”
She put on her sweater and was finally gone. I waited until she’d walked out of sight in the direction of the bus stop before heading back to my car. I pulled open the rear door where we’d put the grocery bag with Ivy’s clothes. “Come in,” I said to her, lifting the bag into my arms.
She was slow as she got out of the car, and seeing her now, away from the farm, she suddenly looked enormously pregnant. I rested my free hand across the small of her back as we walked. Once inside, I wouldn’t let her lift a finger. I needed to keep her safe and healthy.
She was a little out of breath as we climbed the few stairs to my porch and I kept a careful eye on her, remembering her seizure on the day we walked across the dunes, but she seemed fine. In the foyer, she stood and looked around her.
“I ain’t never seen nothing like this house,” she said. “It’s bigger than the Gardiners’ house and it’s so empty!”
“Empty?”
“There ain’t things everywhere. It’s clean, like.”
Remembering the Gardiners’ house with its knickknacks and quilts on every surface and the deer head on the living room wall, I thought I understood what she meant. The truth was, I didn’t spend enough time at home to clutter it up with anything. With Angeline instantly cleaning up any small mess we might make, our house looked like a museum.
“I’ll show you around and then we’ll get you settled in the guest room. Which is upstairs.” I was suddenly worried about my plan. “There are a lot of stairs,” I said, pointing to the staircase. “Please go up them very slowly. Nurse Ann said it’s important that you rest, so you can stay up there and I’ll bring you anything you need.”
Ivy was looking all around her. To the right was the living room, with its blue striped wallpaper. To the left the dining room, where we’d yet to entertain Robert’s colleagues and their wives around the big table. The cabbage-rose wallpaper was still up in there and I remembered saying to Robert, “That will be the first thing we need to change.” We’d changed nothing. I felt a stab of guilt, remembering Robert’s dream for our lives in this house and knowing they would not come true because of me. I wasn’t the right girl for the lifestyle he wanted. If only I’d realized that before I married him.
“It’s so pretty,” Ivy said as she took another few steps down the hall and peered into the pine-paneled den. “You have a television!” she said.
“Have you never seen a TV before?”
“Oh, sure I’ve seen one. I never seen one with a picture, though.”
“Why don’t you watch it while I call the lawyer?” I pointed to Robert’s chair and ottoman. She’d be able to put her feet up. “Have a seat and I’ll bring you a Pepsi Cola.” I remembered she’d been eating a sandwich when I arrived. “You must be hungry, too. How about a grilled-cheese sandwich?”
She looked up at me as she sat down. “I can make it myself,” she said, “but I ain’t really hungry. I’m too shook up.”
“No, honey, you just sit.” I turned on the television. Guiding Light was on. “This is a soap opera,” I said. “Do you know what that is?”
“Made-up stories about people? I heard of them.” She was looking out the window instead of at the television.
“Right. You can change the channel if you want with this knob”—I tapped the knob on the TV to get her attention back—“but it would be best if you didn’t get up, okay? I’ll be right back.”
I walked into the kitchen and stood leaning against the counter, letting out a long anxious breath. I was going to land in jail. Please, Nonnie, please don’t tell. Even if she did tell, she’d given her permission. That would be my defense, although I thought of Charlotte telling me to leave the office and knew that nothing I’d done in the last couple of hours was defensible.
My hands shook as I sliced the cheese. I smeared butter on the bread and cooked the quickest grilled-cheese sandwich I’d ever made in my life. I put it and a bottle of Pepsi on a tray and carried it back into the den, where I found her nibbling her thumbnail.
“First time I get to see television and I can’t pay no mind to it,” she said. “Did you call the lawyer?”
“I’m going to do that right now,” I said.
“He’ll make me do it, though, won’t he? Have the operation?”
I shook my head. “He can’t make you do anything.”
“But he’s got to do what the law says if he’s a law man.”
“He’s not … that’s not what a lawyer does. Don’t worry. He’s there to help us.” I hoped I was telling her the truth.
She looked hard at me. “I’m scared you brung me here to trap me,” she said. “You just made up about the lawyer helping me.”
I sat down. “Ivy,” I said, “I’ve been honest with you and I’ll continue to be honest with you. I promise you that. Mary Ella was sterilized before I got involved and I told her the truth, didn’
t I? It hurt her and I’m so sorry about that, but I thought she should know the truth, even if it hurt. And I’ll tell you the truth, too.”
She looked at the TV for a moment and I could tell she was thinking about what I said.
“You took Baby William away,” she said. “That was the worst thing you could of done to Mary Ella.”
“I know, and I’m sorry about how much that hurt her, but William needed protection.”
“I ain’t forgiving you for that,” she said.
“You don’t have to, Ivy.” I stood up. “Time to make that call.”
Back in the kitchen, I found Gavin’s office phone number in the phone book, dialed the number, and sat down on one of the breakfast nook benches.
“Parker and Healy,” a receptionist answered.
“I’d like to speak with Gavin Parker, please. This is Mrs. Robert Forrester.”
“Mr. Parker is on vacation all week,” she said.
I pressed my hand to my mouth to keep from screaming.
“Ma’am?” she said. “Can I take a message to give him when he gets back?”
“I really need to speak to him,” I said. “This is an emergency. How can I get in touch with him?”
“Well, I’m afraid you can’t. He’s out of the country. Mr. Healy is here, though. Would you like to speak to him?”
Did I dare tell a stranger what I’d done? No. I couldn’t entrust this to someone I didn’t know. I didn’t even know Gavin very well. He was nice. He liked me. I was counting on those two facts to get me through this. To get Ivy through it.
“Ma’am?” the receptionist said. “Are you still there?”
I felt frozen on the phone. I wanted to call again and have her come up with a different answer. This one felt unreal.
“If you could call Mr. Parker and tell him that Jane Forrester needs to speak with him, I think he’d—”
“He’s on a cruise with his parents and daughter, ma’am,” she said. “There’s no way to reach him. But I’m sure Mr. Healy could help you.”
“No,” I said. “No, thank you. I’ll call back on Monday.”