Calling Me Home (2 page)

She laughed. It’s not like I ever went anywhere, and Thursday was a boring night for television that year.

Since then, it hasn’t been uncommon for her to take me along when the kids have special events. Heaven knows, their father usually forgets to show up. Dorrie’s mother usually comes, too, and we have nice little chats, but I always wonder what she thinks about my being there. She studies me with a shade of curiosity, as though she can’t fathom any reason for Dorrie and me to be friends.

But there’s still so much Dorrie doesn’t know. Things nobody knows. If I were going to tell anyone, it would likely be her. It would definitely be her. And I think it’s time. More than anyone, I trust her not to judge me, not to question the way things happened and the way things turned out.

So here I am, asking her to drive me all the way from Texas to Cincinnati, halfway across the country, to help me tend to things. I’m not too proud to admit I can’t do this alone. I’ve done plenty for myself, by myself, as long as I can remember.

But this? No. This I can’t do alone. And I don’t want to anyway. I want my daughter; I want Dorrie.

2

Dorrie, Present Day

W
HEN
I
MET
Miss Isabelle, she acted more like Miss Miserabelle, and that’s a fact. But I didn’t think she was a racist. God’s honest truth, it was the furthest thing from my mind. I may look young, thank you very much, but I’ve had this gig awhile. Oh, the stories they tell, the lines around my customer’s closed eyes, the tension in her scalp when I massage it with shampoo, the condition of the hair I wind around a curler. I knew almost right away Miss Isabelle carried troubles more significant than worrying about the color of my skin. As pretty as she was for an eighty-year-old woman, there was something dark below her surface, and it kept her from being soft. But I was never one to press for all the details—could be that was part of the beauty of the thing. I’d learned that people talk when they’re ready. Over the years, she became much more than just a customer. She was good to me. I hadn’t ever said so out loud, but in ways, she was more like a mother than the one God gave me. When I thought it, I ducked, waiting for the lightning to strike.

Still, this favor Miss Isabelle asked me, it did come as a surprise. Oh, I helped her out from time to time—running errands or doing easy little fix-it jobs around her house, things too small for a service person, especially when I happened to be there anyway. I never took a dime for it. I did it because I wanted to, but I supposed as long as she was a paying customer—even if she was my “special customer”—there might always be some tiny sentiment it was all an extension of my job.

This? Was big. And different. She hadn’t volunteered to pay me. No doubt she would have had I asked, but I didn’t have any sense this request was a job—simply someone to get her from point A to point B, with me being the only person she could think of. No. She wanted me. For me. I knew it as clearly as I knew the moon hung in the sky, whether I could see it or not.

When she asked me, I rested my hands on her shoulders. “Miss Isabelle, I don’t know. You sure about this? Why me?” I’d been doing her hair at her house going on five years, since she took a bad fall and the doctor said her driving days were over—I’d never have deserted her because she couldn’t come to me. I’d become a little attached.

She studied me in the mirror over her old-timey vanity table, where we rigged a temporary station every Monday. Then Miss Isabelle’s silver-blue eyes, more silver every year as the blue leeched out along with her youth, did something I’d never seen in all the time I’d been cutting and curling and styling her hair. First, they shimmered. Then they watered up. My hands felt like lumps of clay soaked by those tears, and I could neither move them nor convince myself to grasp her shoulders a little tighter. Not that she’d have wanted me to acknowledge her emotion. She’d always been so strong.

Her focus shifted, and she reached for the tiny silver thimble I’d seen on her vanity as long as I’d been going to her house. I’d never thought it was especially significant—certainly not like the other keepsakes she had around her house. It was a thimble. “As sure as I’ve been of anything in my life,” she said, finally, tucking it into her palm. She didn’t address the why of it. And I understood then; small as it was, that thimble held a story. “Now. Time’s wasting. Finish my hair so we can make plans, Dorrie.”

She might have sounded bossy to someone else, but she didn’t mean it that way. Her voice freed my hands, and I slid them up to wrap a lock of hair around my finger. Her hair matched her eyes. It lay upon my skin like water against earth.

*   *   *

L
ATER, IN MY
shop, I paged through my appointment book. I took inventory, checked what kind of week I had ahead. I found a lot of empty space. Pages so bare, the glare gave me a headache. Between silly seasons, things were quiet. No fancy holiday hairstyles. Prom updos and extensions for family reunions were still a month or two down the road. Just the regular stuff here and there. Men for brush cuts or fades, a few little girls for cute Easter bobs. Women stopping by for complimentary bangs trims—it made my life easier when they left the damn things alone.

I could postpone my guys. They’d drop twenties still crisp from the ATM on the counter like always whenever I could get to them, happy not to explain to strangers how they wanted their haircuts. I could even call a few to see if they’d come by that afternoon—I was usually closed Mondays. The nice thing about leasing my own little shop the last few years was I made the rules, opened on my closed days if I wanted. Even better, nobody stood over my head, ready to yell or, worse, fire me for taking off without notice.

Surely Momma could handle the kids if I went with Miss Isabelle. She owed me—I kept a roof over her head—and anyway, Stevie Junior and Bebe were old enough all she really had to do was watch their steady parade in or out of the house, call 911 in case of a fire on the stove, or send for the plumber if the bathroom flooded. Heaven forbid.

I ran out of excuses. Plus, if I were honest, I needed some time away. I had things weighing on my mind. Things I needed to think about.

And … it seemed like Miss Isabelle really needed me.

I started making phone calls.

Three hours later, my customers were squared away and Momma was on board to watch the kids. The way I figured it, I had one more call to make. I reached for my cell phone, but my hand stopped midair. This thing with Teague was so new—so
fragile
—I hadn’t even mentioned him to Miss Isabelle. I was almost afraid to mention him to myself. Because what was I thinking, giving another man a chance? Had I misplaced my marbles? I tried to scoop them up and dump them back into my stubborn skull.

I failed.

Then the ring of the shop phone yanked me from my thoughts.

“Dorrie? Are you packing?” Miss Isabelle barked, and I snatched the receiver away from my ear, almost flinging it across my tiny shop in the process. What was it with old folks shouting into the phone as if the other person were going deaf, too?

“What’s up, Miss Izzy-belle?” I couldn’t help myself sometimes, playing with her name. I played with everyone’s name. Everyone I liked anyway.

“
Dorrie,
I warned you.”

I cracked up. She breathed hard, like she was leaning on her suitcase to zip it closed. “I think maybe I can clear my calendar,” I said, “but no, I’m not packing yet. Besides, you called me at the shop. You know I’m not at home.” She insisted on calling the shop’s landline if she thought I’d be there, though I’d told her a hundred times I didn’t mind her calling my cell.

“We don’t have much time, Dorrie.”

“Okay, now. How far is it to Cincinnati anyway? And tell me what to bring.”

“It’s almost a thousand miles from Arlington to Cincy. Two good days of driving each way. I hope that doesn’t scare you off, but I hate flying.”

“No, it’s fine. I’ve never even been on an airplane, Miss Isabelle.” And had no plans to change that anytime soon, even though we lived less than ten miles from the Dallas–Fort Worth airport.

“And what you’d wear anywhere else will do, mostly. There’s just one thing. Do you even own a dress?”

I chuckled and shook my head. “You think you know me, don’t you?”

In truth, she’d rarely seen me in anything besides what I wore for work: plain knit shirts paired with nice jeans, shoes that didn’t kill my feet when I stood in them eight hours a day, and a black smock to keep my clothes dry and free of hair clippings. The only difference between my work and not-work clothes was the smock. Her question was valid.

“Surprise, surprise, I do have one or two dresses,” I said. “Probably wrapped in cleaner bags and mothballs and stuffed way in the back of my closet, you know, and maybe two sizes too small, but I’ve got a few. Why do I need a dress? Where are we going? To a wedding?”

There weren’t many events these days where a nice pair of slacks and a dressy top wouldn’t do. I could only think of two. Then Miss Isabelle’s silence brought the foot I was gnawing into the spotlight. I winced. “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry. I had no idea. You never said—”

“Yes. There will be a funeral. If you don’t have anything appropriate we can stop along the way. I’ll be glad to—”

“Oh, no, Miss Isabelle. I’ll find something. I was mostly kidding about the mothballs and such.” While her packing noises continued in the background, I tried to remember exactly what I owned that would do for a funeral. Exactly nothing. But I had just enough time to run by JCPenney’s on my way home. Miss Isabelle had done plenty for me—big tips every time I did her hair, bonuses whenever she could think up an excuse, greeting me with a pretty sandwich when I didn’t have time to eat before her appointment, acting as a sounding board when my kids were making me crazy—but no matter how close we felt, I would never let her pay for this dress. That crossed some kind of line. But why hadn’t she mentioned we were going to a
funeral
? That was an important detail. Make that a critical detail. When she said she needed to tend to some things, I’d assumed she meant papers that needed to be signed in person, maybe for property to be sold. Business. Nothing as big as a funeral. And she wanted me to take her. Me. I’d convinced myself I knew her better than any of my other customers—she was my
special
customer, after all. But suddenly, Miss Isabelle seemed a woman of mystery again—the one who’d eased into my hair chair all those years ago carrying burdens so deep inside, I couldn’t even speculate about them.

Miss Isabelle and I had spent hours in conversation over the years—more hours than I could count. But it occurred to me now, as much as I cared for her, as much as she trusted me to accompany her on this journey, I knew nothing about her childhood, nothing about where she came from. How had I missed it? I had to admit I was intrigued, though I usually left mystery solving to television personalities—figuring out how to pay my bills was mystery enough for me.

Miss Isabelle apparently got things all zipped up, and she startled me out of 007 mode. “Can we leave tomorrow, then? Ten
A.M.
sharp?”

“Absolutely, young lady. Ten
A.M.
it is.” It’d be tight, but I could manage it. Not to mention, what’d felt like technicalities before seemed weightier now.

“We’ll take my car. I don’t know how you young folks tolerate those tin cans you drive these days. Nothing between you and the road at all. Like navigating a ball of aluminum foil.”

“Hey, now. Tinfoil bounces. Kind of. But sure thing, I’ll relish driving that big boat of yours.” Too bad CD players were still mostly options back in 1993, when she’d purchased her fancy Buick. I’d tossed all my cassettes. “And Miss Isabelle? I’m sorry about—”

“I’ll see you in the morning, then.” She cut me clean off, mid-sentence. She obviously wasn’t ready to discuss the details of this funeral yet. And me being me, I wasn’t going to dig.

*   *   *

“F
UEL
?
” SAID
M
ISS
Isabelle the next morning as we prepared to pull out.

“Check.”

“Oil? Belts? Filters?”

“Check. Check. Check.”

“Snacks?”

I whistled. “Capital C-H-E-C-K.”

I’d arrived at Miss Isabelle’s an hour earlier than we planned to leave, so I could run the car by Jiffy Lube. They gave it a once-over; then I stopped for gas and other necessities. Miss Isabelle’s list of road snacks had been well over a mile long.

“Oh, shoot,” she said now, snapping her fingers. “I forgot one thing. There’s that Walgreens down the road.”

What on earth could she need so fast it required a detour before we ever left town? I shifted into reverse and eased the Buick down Miss Isabelle’s driveway and into the street. At the corner, I waited an extra long time, patiently allowing cars to pass until I had a long, clear space to enter.

“If you drive like this the whole time, we’ll never get there,” Miss Isabelle said. She studied me. “You think because you’re accompanying an old woman to a funeral, you have to act like an old woman, too?”

I snorted. “I didn’t want to get your blood pressure up too early, Miss Isabelle.”

“I’ll worry about my blood pressure. You worry about getting us to Cincy before Christmas.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I touched the tips of my fingers to my forehead and pressed down on the accelerator. I was happy to see she was as ornery as ever—death wasn’t a happy business, after all. She still hadn’t given me all the specifics—just that she’d received a call, and her presence was requested at a funeral near Cincinnati, Ohio. And, of course, she couldn’t travel alone.

At Walgreens, she pulled a crisp ten from her pocketbook. “This should be plenty for two crossword puzzle books.”

“Really?” I gaped at her. “Crossword puzzles?”

“Yes. Wipe that look off your face. They keep me sane.”

“And you plan to work them riding in the car? Do you need Dramamine, too?”

“No, thank you.”