CHAPTER TEN
“Tom,” cried Olivia as she came over and knelt beside him, “are you OK?”
Fred turned and held on to his shoulders with both hands while Ryan got up and knelt down by his wife. A horrified Arthur was glued to his seat with his eyes firmly fixed on his pal. He had no idea what was going on.
A very weary Tom lifted up a shaking hand and softly held Olivia’s cheek. With a weak smile he managed to say, “I’m OK, really I am.” He looked deep into her eyes and with his thumb he brushed away the tear that had escaped its confinement. He shook his head slowly back and forth as he playfully chided softly, “You just scared the living daylights out of me that’s all.” He chuckled and everybody relaxed.
“I what?” she asked in astonishment. Everyone was looking at each other and wondering what he meant.
“Let me gather myself together and……I…I’ll explain myself,” he offered. “But, I’m OK. Really I am.”
Fred looked up at Ryan and suggested. “Have you got any coffee available?” Then to Tom, “Would some coffee help?”
“Probably so,” the tired soldier replied.
Ryan stepped toward the kitchen as he acknowledged, “One Fred special coming right up. You want one, too, Fred?”
“May as well.”
Tom looked at Fred and turned a phrase, “A coffee pot in every port, huh, Fred?”
“Olivia’s kitchen table often subs as my second office sometimes,” Fred affirmed.
“Yeah, they bring newspapers, pictures and letters and all that stuff and look at them for hours. But me and Dad don’t mind do we, Dad?” remarked Arthur a little nervously.
“Not a bit my boy. We give those gloves and that baseball a fit don’t we?” Ryan added.
“You’d better believe it,” Arthur replied as he tried to remain upbeat while watching for signs of Tom's continued recovery.
Olivia was still kneeling beside him. Her hand was on his as she held it as a prisoner to her cheek. As he tried to rescue his hand, she firmly grasped it between her two and playfully said, “No. I’m not letting you go until you promise to tell me what I did to scare you like that. I sure don’t want to do it again.”
Her pulse was pounding. Her heart couldn’t decide which emotion to dwell on. She was torn between joy and sorrow. There was a volcano of joy ready to erupt at the thought that this was HIM. Joyful tears threatened to appear. Sorrow because of the deep-seated loneliness and hurt she now detected in his eyes. Thousands of questions raced through her mind. No. Something she did triggered this reaction in him. She prayed inside, ‘Father, if this is You opening some kind of door into my grandfather then do what You need to do. Help me to speak when I need to and shut up when I need to. You are the only key to his healing. Please help me.’
Tom sighed very deeply. He had carried the hurt for so long. It was almost like a precious treasure and yet a jailer to him. It kept him locked in an era that he couldn’t step out of. The memories, both bad and good had been both a prison and a dwelling place for him for years and years and years. The pain had become comfortable to him. It was his own private world that he visited every now and then. Private. That’s what it was.
No, it was tiresome. That’s what it was. The weight was more than he wanted to bear anymore. Yes. He was tired. He was too tired right now. Could he trust voicing one story in answer to her question? It was such a sweet story. Tom often visited the story as he would a trusted and loving old friend. He received joy as well as bitter-sweet sorrow from his old friend every time they visited.
His longing to visit his old friend right now began to overcome his desire to hide his past. He needed a visit even at the threat of being exposed. But, who knew him here anyway? Nobody. The cemetery had proven that today. There were no Dandridges in the phone book nor on any mailbox. Tom had walked enough today to know that fact very well. They must have moved on to God knows where. Maybe he SHOULD have gotten a subscription to the Elmhurst paper like Horace had suggested. But, that’s a decision he made long ago. Right or wrong, he made the decision. And, it probably was the best one at the time. Probably.
He could afford to tell a story that maybe, just maybe only Fred knew to be true. It didn’t matter about Fred, right now. Tom just needed the comfort of his old friend. He was worn out and tired. Maybe a visit, just one short visit would refresh him.
He smiled a very weary smile as he looked into her eyes and only knew that he did not want to be the cause of another tear to fall down her precious face. “I’ll tell you a story if you promise to give me my hand back and sit back down in your chair because it’s a long story.”
Impulse or hormones, she didn’t know which but before she relinquished her hold she quickly kissed the back of his hand. Then, she blushed as she sat back down and eagerly replied with as big of a smile as she could muster, “OK. I’m down. What’s the story?”
“Well,” Tom started off slowly, “I was taken aback when I first saw you because for a brief moment you looked like someone I knew long ago.”
"Oh?” Olivia tried to look and sound surprised.
Tom smiled with a faraway look in his eyes as he continued. “Just now, as you were teasing Arthur, you had a mischievous look, and you wrinkled your nose as you winked. There’s only one other person I know that winked and wrinkled their nose like you did. And that was my sweet little wife. For a brief moment, you looked so much like her that I was……..well…..for lack of a better word, shocked. But, pleasantly shocked, let me add."
Now it was Olivia’s eyes that began to redden. She reached over and squeezed Tom’s hand and spoke softly, “My goodness gracious. That has got to be the sweetest compliment I have ever received in my life. I…..I….don’t hardly……know what to say.”
Tom looked intently at her eyes and said, “However, you are missing one thing.”
“I am?” Olivia asked.
“She had a little scar right at the very corner of her noggin where her eyebrow ends,” Tom continued.
Olivia had heard this story several times from her grandmother, and, now she was hearing it from......her very own grandfather. There was no more doubt. Her insides were doing flip flops. The day she had only dreamed of and always hoped for was finally here. She wanted to shout it with all of her strength but she knew she had to let him come out of his cocoon in his own, or should I say, God's prescribed manner. So, to keep from falling apart, she laughingly joked, “What did you do? Did you hit her, you mean old man?”
Everyone at the table laughed as they knew how preposterous the statement was. Ryan could see joy dancing in the eyes of his beloved. This was like slowly unwrapping a Christmas present for her. While he thought everyone was looking at Tom, he brushed a small tear from his eye. His son noticed and looked his way. Ryan gave him a wink and his son smiled back. 'No questions now, my son,' he thought. 'Please, please, please, Lord, don't let him interrupt Tom at a time like this. Please.'
“No, I didn’t,” Tom answered as he laughed with her. Then, he started unwinding his hurt with the story as he said, “Well, she was 15 and I was 16. I had been coming over to see her for a couple of months. We hadn’t started holding hands and such, like some of the others our age were doing. Our ‘thing’, as today’s kids would say was just to talk and cut up."
Tom found such sweet release in beginning this tale that he opened up his soul as he continued, "Well, I was chasing her through the yard one day. I have no idea why. Maybe we were just playing tag………I really don’t remember. But as she cut one way to keep away from me, she started running right towards their clothesline. I tried to warn her and she almost turned her head far enough to get under it. But, it caught the very corner of her head and broke the skin enough to cause some instant bleeding.”
“E-e-w-w-w,” grimaced Olivia as she shook her head at the thought of it. “I know that hurt.”
“What’s a clothesline?” Arthur asked innocently as he looked at his mom and then at his dad.
There was a stun
ned moment of silence as the adults looked at each other and realized how big of a generation gap there was at the table.
Ryan answered, “Arthur, back before there were clothes dryers inside people’s houses, they had to string wire outside to hang their clothes on to dry.”
Then in a moment of juvenile brilliance Arthur added, “And I bet they made the children do it, huh?”
Olivia smiled and said, “Nothin’ gets past that lightning fast mind of yours, does it my little Arty-poo.”
Olivia knew the right buttons to push, alright. Arthur complained, “Aw, Mom, did ya’ have to call me that in front of the guys?”
Then with a voice dripping with honey she continued, “But, Arty-poo, you don’t seem to mind it when you crawl up in your mommy’s lap for a little huggy time, do you?”
Fred and Tom chuckled. Fred offered, “That’s alright, Arthur. We’ve been around long enough to know that, like the commercial on TV, ‘What’s said at the Hollis house, stays at the Hollis house.”
There was laughter all around the table. “Thanks, guys,” Arthur said. Then to Tom he asked, “Tom was she real mad at you?”
“Oh, no,” answered Tom. Olivia noticed the bitter-sweet smile on his face as he continued, “However, she was real embarrassed. She grabbed the side of her head and went running into the house. I waited for her at the front door to see if she was OK or not. Her mother finally came out and told me that she was going to be just fine. Then, she told me that Ellen didn’t want to be seen until after the cut was healed. Her mother explained that it wasn’t just me, but that Ellen had always been bashful when she didn’t look just so-so.”
Ryan piped up as he looked at Arthur, “Sounds like somebody else we know.”
Arthur sat back in his chair and giggled.
Olivia leaned forward in her chair and denied it as she raised her voice a bit in protest, “Ryan!” Then, as she sat back in her chair with a pouty look on her face she asked Arthur, “That’s not really true, is it Arthur?”
For a moment, Arthur just sat there with a blank look on his face and his mouth open and stared at his mother.
Olivia demanded in a slightly higher pitched voice, “Is it, Arthur?”
Not really knowing what to say, he sputtered, “Uh….Uh…..no….I mean, no Ma’am.”
As Fred and Tom tittered, Ryan reached over and patted his son’s hand, “That’s right. Be da’ man, son, be da’ man.”
Arthur looked at his father and whined, “Aw, D-a-a-d.” Then he looked over at Tom and asked, “Did she ever speak to you again?”
Olivia was on a roll with, “Hey, rocket scientist. They got married. D-u-u-h.”
Tom chuckled as he continued, “All while I was in high school, I worked at Johnson’s Grocery Store. Ellen’s mother came in about every other day and handed me a little note from Ellen, and I would hand her a little note to take back. She didn’t normally come in that often so I knew she was just coming to be the ‘mail lady.’ It took about ten days for the cut to heal enough for her to want to be seen in public.
“Her family invited me over for supper. Of course, I got all spruced up and went over. I have no idea what was cooked or what I ate. All I could think about was how good it was to be near my Ellen.
“After supper, we went for a walk up and down the street and talked to the kids we knew. When it started getting dark we headed back to her house. I knew that we would sit on the front porch swing and the swing was right in front of the living room. I knew that the windows would be open and her mother and father would be able to hear anything we said. So, I stopped her at the front gate and told her that during the ten days that I couldn’t see her made me realize how much I ‘liked’ her. I couldn’t bring myself to say ‘love.’ I was just too shy to say it”
Arthur spoke up, “Mr. Tom. You what……?”
Olivia corrected Arthur, “Arthur shush.” Then to Tom, “I think that’s awfully cute. Then what happened?”
Knowing his next statement would add fuel to Arthur's curiosity, Tom went on, “Well, before she could say anything, I asked her to marry me.”
Arthur almost came unglued, “You what? You hadn’t even kissed her yet. How did you know……but you couldn’t be sure…..I mean.”
Tom smiled at him and said in a fatherly manner, “Arthur, I hope you will find out that there is more to love and marriage than hugging and kissing. There are things like friendship and companionship. When life comes at you all rough and tough, you’re going to need a good friend to stick by you more than you'll need some hugging and kissing. That's not to say that it isn't important, though”
Ryan spoke up, “What he says is true, Arthur.”
Olivia added, “Your dad and I have been through several rough places. There have been times when our love has been severely tested. It was our relationship with Jesus Christ and our strong friendship that made our love for each other stronger in spite of our trials.”
Ryan just looked over at Olivia and winked an ‘I love you.’
Arthur caught the wink. “Ok, you two,” Arthur admonished his mom and dad. “It’s a good thing there’s a long table between y’all or you’d be going after each other again.”
Without taking her eyes off of her husband Olivia responded with, “And?”
“Sheesh,” added Arthur. Turning to Tom and wanting to move the story along, he asked, “So…. what about it, Mr. Tom? What did she say?”
Tom smiled at him and continued, “Well, keep in mind she was just 15. The first thing out of her mouth was that she couldn’t answer me because she had not officially started dating anyone, yet. Well sir, my little 16-year-old heart couldn’t bear the thought of my Ellen even seeing anyone else. Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, ‘But, Ellen, I will love you so much that you wouldn’t ever want to be with anyone else but me.’ Then my eyes grew wider and my mouth dropped open as I realized what I said.”
Olivia's heart began pounding, as she thought, ‘Come on Grandpa, come all the way out.' Her hand was ready to empty the Kleenex box but she didn't dare move or hardly even breathe.
Arthur was all excited. He blurted out, “And she said yes, huh?”
Tom frowned and answered, “No.”
Tom was so busy playing the story to Arthur that he wasn't watching too close. Olivia slipped her arm over the back of her chair. As she supposed, it got Ryan's and Fred's attention. With one of those knowing smiles and red puffy eyes she nodded her head and mouthed the words, "Oh, yeah."
Ryan tried to hold her back by furrowing his eyebrows and giving her a questioning look.
That girl's mind was made up. She had a plan that she was about to put in place that she would not back down from. Even if she had a Holy visitation, she would probably argue with the angel Gabriel. That girl wanted her grandfather, doggone it.
Tom’s answer and demeanor threw Arthur for a loop. “Why?” he demanded to know.
“Because, the first thing she said to me was, ‘You’d better close your mouth before the lightnin’ bugs find a new home,” Tom replied with a grin. “Then after she giggled a moment, there was an awkward silence where neither of us knew what to say. Then she looked me straight in the eyes and asked very seriously, ‘If I say no, what will you do?’ My reply was that I would be the best friend she ever had and would ask her to marry me every week until she said ‘Yes."
Tom paused for a moment to gather his emotions together and then finished. "Then she laughed and said, ‘Well, I guess I’d better say yes to save you all that trouble."
“And then you kissed her, huh?” asked a wide-eyed Arthur.
“Nope,” Tom answered.
Arthur got the most confused look on his face as he blurted out, “Mr. To-o-o-m. What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you kiss her?” As he realized how he sounded, he tried to cover it up by adding, “I mean,…..it was the right time…and the right place……I mean…”
Tom continued, “As I was going to say, she stood on her tip-toes and gav
e ME a small kiss. And right on the lips, too. I got so excited, I grabbed a hold of her shoulders and gave them a gentle squeeze and finally managed to say, ‘Gee whiz, thanks. I gotta go.’ And I jumped on my bike and rode the two miles back to the house faster than I have ever ridden before.”
“Gee whiz, thanks, I gotta go? Is that the best you could do at a time like that?” Arthur was more puzzled right then than he had ever been.
Tom leaned over and winked as he replied, “You didn’t hear what I said. I said that I had to go. I did. I had to go…….pottie before I made a puddle, dunderhead. I drank about four glasses of sweet tea at Olivia’s and by the time we got back from visiting our friends I needed to go pretty bad. I was too shy to ask if I could use the bathroom at her house. Then when she kissed me, my nerves got the best of me and believe me, Arthur, I….had….to….go and go right then.”
Everyone at the table enjoyed a good laugh. Even Wendy carried on even though she did not know what they were laughing about.
Olivia was about beside herself to break things wide open. Her excited little mind concocted a plan that just might work. As the laughter settled down, Olivia asked, “Arthur came in this afternoon and said that you served our country in WWII. What branch were you in?”
Now that Tom had opened up a bit, his resistance was down. There was a certain release in recounting his past that had quieted him down. He saw no harm in continuing. “Yes, I joined the Army in 1942. I went to basic training and came home on leave for a couple of weeks. I left behind a very sad princess and a two-year-old son. But, I knew that it was something I had to do.”
Knowing exactly where she was going, Olivia continued, “Did you ever have your picture taken here in town in your uniform?”
“Oh, certainly,” answered Tom. “The three of us posed in front of a Greyhound bus that was going to take several of us to San Diego to be shipped to the Pacific. There was about five of us, that day. Some lady took pictures of all of us. She said it was for the newspaper.”
Olivia thought carefully for a moment before she went on, “You know, when I took over the Historical Society, I was given several boxes of old pictures. I think I remember seeing some that looked like that. Hang on, let me go see if I have one of you.”
Fred and Ryan knew exactly what she was about to do. Olivia slipped off down the hall and left the men to idle chit-chat. They stopped momentarily when they heard her blowing her nose. Ryan just shrugged his shoulders and they all chimed in together, “Hormones.” Then they broke into laughter.
However, when they heard her open the door they all got quiet and waited her appearance. She came into the dining room holding an 8x10 photo close to her chest with one hand and the other hand behind her back. Her eyes were still red and watery from crying but her face was lit up like a Christmas tree. She took up a position right beside him so she could show him easier. With the biggest smile her face could manage and a bit of a shaky voice she managed to announce, “Boy, have I got a surprise for you.” Then she proudly held out the picture for only Tom to see.
Tom froze for a moment as he gazed at the picture of his wife, his son and himself. As loving memories began to fill his heart, a contented smile came to settle on his face. His hands shook as he gently took it from her hand to look at it closer. Olivia slipped directly behind him.
Slowly and softly he barely uttered the words, “This was taken over sixty years ago. Every picture I ever had was lost or destroyed.” As he fondly gazed at the picture he softly asked, “How did you find it so fast in all those boxes you said you had?”
“How did I find it so fast?” she repeated. Then, as she pulled a picture frame from behind her back, she continued with an impish smile, “I got it from this picture frame that has been sitting on my dresser for over ten years.”
Olivia conveniently put her left hand on his left shoulder and leaned over his right shoulder to place the picture frame on the table in front of him. When she stood back up she rested her right hand on his other shoulder.
So many different thoughts clamored for first place in his mind that he didn‘t realize what she had done. He looked at Ryan and Fred to get some kind of clue. When no reason came to the forefront, he was forced to ask, “Wh-a-a-t? I mean, why? Why put my picture on your....dresser?”
She slid her left arm around his neck and pressed her cheek against his. She tapped the image of the little boy with the index finger of her right hand as she responded in a shaky voice, “Because, my dear Tom, that little boy……………..is my daddy.” As her right arm gently settled on her left to form an embrace, hot tears made a collision where their two cheeks met. She added in a barely audible voice, “Grandpa.”