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Authors: Charles Mathes

BOOK: The Girl at the End of the Line
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It was happening again. Nell was having another one of her attacks. She had had them on and off since that terrible day so long ago. Months had passed since her last attack, however. Molly had almost begun to believe that they were a thing of the past.
“She's all right,” said Molly, rushing over. “Just leave her alone. She'll be fine in a minute.”
Molly put an arm around her sister's shoulders and gently stroked the back of her neck. That sometimes worked when Nell
got like this. What had brought it on? The crowded house? Oyster plates? Too many blondes?
“Did I say something wrong?” said the elderly tag sale lady, looking concerned. “I just thought she looked a bit peaked and asked if she wanted some water.”
“Do you want us to call a doctor?” piped in Lillian.
“Thanks, but that won't be necessary,” said Molly. “My sister just gets like this sometimes. A nervous condition. It's nothing to worry about. She's perfectly okay. I need a receipt for those things.”
The ladies returned to the paperwork, occasionally glancing nervously at Nell. Molly led her sister over to the door, stroking her neck and speaking to her in a gentle voice. After a few moments, Nell dropped her hands from her face and stopped shaking.
Molly dug into her pocket for a tissue and wiped the tears from her sister's cheeks. Then she held Nell out at arm's length and scrutinized her.
“You okay now?”
Nell nodded her head.
“What was it?” Molly asked. “What frightened you?”
Nell didn't answer. She smiled weakly and slipped out of Molly's hands. Then she opened the front door of the house and ran out across the lawn in the direction of their van.
Molly didn't try to stop her. She returned to the card table and finished up the details of their purchases. An overwhelming sense of guilt descended on her, as it always did after one of these episodes.
Why did Nell still have these attacks? Why wouldn't she speak after all these years, even to Molly? The doctors all said that there was nothing physically wrong with her voice. Molly had always feared that Nell was just angry. Angry at her. She could hardly blame her sister for that. After all, what had happened to Nell that day had been Molly's fault.
“That wasn't much of a sale, huh?” Molly said later, when she had loaded the morning's treasures into their ancient minivan and they were on the road back home. “But can you believe how they had that radio priced? Those poor women didn't have a clue what they had. We're going to sell it to some fool Yankee for a fortune, you just wait and see.”
Nell nodded, then stared silently out of the window at the strip malls and red clay that passed for scenery in their part of the world. Molly rattled on, as was her nature. The van made more than its usual quota of creaks, knocks, and groans. It had taken to stalling out if you drove it for more than a few hours a day. Molly knew that she'd have to replace it soon—maybe at the end of the summer, if she could put together enough money.
It was another twenty minutes before they had driven back across the spread-out old city of Pelletreau and pulled into the unpaved drive of Enchanted Cottage Antiques. There was parking for up to six cars in front next to a stand of oak trees, but Molly drove the minivan around back and parked under the carport by the rear door. The day was already getting hot, but that was hardly unusual for North Carolina in July.
Molly got out carrying the celery vase and the oyster plate. Nell followed Molly inside with the radio. They deposited their haul on the round maple table in the little kitchen at the back of the shop. It was ten after nine according to the cuckoo clock out front—early, but there was still a lot to do.
“I've got to take care of business before we see Grandma,” said Molly, resetting her watch and giving it a good wind. “You go on upstairs and get ready. I won't be but a minute. I thought you were going to comb your hair.”
Nell had sat down at the table on one of the cathedral chairs that Molly liked too much to sell. She didn't move.
“Come on, honey, we've got to get going,” Molly said gently.
“And please put on some lipstick. You look like an iceberg lettuce. You don't want to scare Grandma, do you?”
An image of their beloved grandmother the way she used to be flashed into Molly's mind—a big woman sitting in an easy chair, sewing dresses for rich ladies. She would sit there like that ten hours at a time, seven days a week sometimes.
One of Molly's clearest memories from her childhood was of a six-year-old Nell, a Nell who was still a normal, happy little girl climbing into the old lady's expansive lap and stopping Grandma's needlework with her tiny hand.
“One day I'm going to buy you a great big house, Grandma,” Nell had promised, her eyes wide and earnest. “And you'll never have to work again.”
Grandma had smiled her sad smile, clearly not believing that it would ever happen, not believing that she would ever have anything but a two-room apartment in downtown Pelletreau.
Even then, even before the tragedy that had befallen them all, hers had been a hard life, but until three months ago Grandma had still smiled her resigned smile and sung funny old songs in her big, raucous voice. Then she had had the stroke that had put her in the Pelletreau Charitable Nursing Home. Now it was Molly who tried to smile and do the singing.
“Nellie, what are you doing?” asked Molly, coming out of her reverie only to find Nell lost in one of her own. “Where are you?”
Nell still didn't move or make eye contact with her sister. She looked deep in thought, like she was trying to remember something, something very important, but very lost.
“Go on,” said Molly, coming up behind her sister and squeezing her shoulders. “Git.”
Her expression unchanged, Nell rose and wandered through the kitchen archway into the back hall. Molly listened until she
heard footsteps going up the stairs to the bedroom they shared over the store. Then she brought out the ledger in which she kept track of purchases.
In her tiny neat handwriting, Molly entered the information for the celery vase, the radio, and the oyster plate.
The cuckoo clock out in the shop chirped its quarter hour reminder that cuckoo clocks didn't sell. If someone didn't buy it soon, Molly was going to bury the damn thing in the backyard. The shop fell silent again.
Molly closed the ledger and replaced it behind the sugar jar. She sat for a moment, enjoying the silence and the unfamiliar sensation of being alone.
Another image from childhood drifted into Molly's mind. She and Nell were at their grandmother's tiny apartment again. Their mother had often left the girls with her when she had to do something in the city. Nell was coloring with a crayon in a coloring book. Grandma was sewing, as she always was.
Suddenly the old woman's face grew dark with unmistakable rage. She took the garment in her hands and tore it in half, threw it on the floor. Molly was terrified. She had never seen her grandmother so angry, even when she argued with their stepfather after Sunday dinners.
But Nell wasn't frightened by Grandma's unprecedented outburst at all. She looked up from her coloring book with a stern look and shook her finger at the old seamstress.
“Temper, temper,” she chided in a mild little voice.
Grandma's face had melted into a smile. She cut another piece of cloth and returned to her thankless work.
Nell had been such a brave, smart little girl, Molly remembered. But this morning at the tag sale she had been a mass of terror. Why? It couldn't have been just what happened seventeen
years ago, that was ancient history. What had set her off this morning? What had she seen?
The kitchen was getting too crowded, Molly thought glancing around the room, trying to shrug off the guilt that began to overwhelm her again.
There were books everywhere—under the table, lined up against the walls, blocking the hall. Molly might not have had a lot of formal education, but knowledge was survival to an antiques dealer and she was probably better read than many PhDs. There were even books in the oven, a 1940s-vintage gas behemoth.
That probably explained why Nell hadn't baked any pies lately, Molly realized. Nell's apple pie was something directly from heaven. But this wasn't the time to worry about her lack of library space. Or about Nell. Or about pies. Molly stretched and headed for the stairs.
Upstairs, Nell was sitting on her bed, staring at a small white booklet in her hands. She had made no move to comb her hair.
“Oh, for pete sake's,” Molly exclaimed. “Next time I cut your hair I might as well do it with the lawn mower if you can't keep it combed. You want Grandma to think you're some kind of semihuman creature from the swamp? What am I going to do with you?”
When Nell didn't look up, Molly went over and took what she was reading out of her hands. It was a “Playbill” from the Booth Theatre in New York City. The late Edna Gerritze had apparently been to Broadway.
“Oh, this is marvelous!” Molly exclaimed. “My baby sister's a thief now, too. You stole this from that box at the sale this morning, didn't you? What did you do? Stick it under your shirt when I wasn't looking? Are you going to start knocking over Seven-Elevens next?”
Nell reached for the program, but Molly pulled it away.
“I should make you take it back to those people. If it weren't so far away I would, I swear. You know how we feel about shoplifters. You should be ashamed of yourself. What's so darn interesting about this thing anyway?”
But what was so interesting was right on the cover—a beautiful young woman in an elegant white gown. Molly's mouth dropped open as she read the caption beneath the picture of the strangely familiar-looking actress.
 
Margaret Jellinek in
Without Reservations
 
It was Margaret Jellinek, their grandmother. Margaret Jellinek, the seamstress.
“ … and to think Grandma never said a word about it, never let on that she ever did anything but dressmaking!” marveled Molly, trying to keep her eyes on the road and at the same time catch a glimpse of Margaret Jellinek's picture on the cover of the “Playbill” in Nell's lap. “I didn't think she even liked the theater. Remember when I did that play in high school and told her I wanted to be an actress? Remember what she said? No, don't say it—I don't want you using that kind of language!”
Nell scratched her cheek and nodded. Molly crossed Highway 5 and turned down Moffat Road, talking all the while.
“I mean, Grandma must have been a star. Did you see all her credits in the program, all those other plays she'd been in? They don't put your picture on the cover if you're just some walk-on from the chorus, you know. Why didn't she say something? That's what I don't understand. Unless she was ashamed, maybe. Ashamed that she lost her big Broadway career and had to work her fingers
to the bone making dresses for people in Pelletreau, godforsaken North Carolina, just to stay alive.”
Molly reached over and playfully punched her sister on the shoulder.
“And if you hadn't found that program we never would have known a whit about it, you clever thing. You steal anything else, and I'm going to break your arm.”
Nell grinned. Molly turned into the drive of the Pelletreau Charitable Nursing Home and parked in the drab little lot. Then she got out of the van and came around to Nell's side. Nell had made no move to open her door.
“Of course, we can't put Grandma on the spot about it,” Molly chattered on, “not with her the way she is right now. We'll have to bring it up casual-like, when the moment is right. ‘Oh, and speaking of the weather, look what Nell happened to find the other day. We didn't know you were a famous Broadway actress. My, what a pleasant surprise.'”
But Nell wasn't listening. Her face was suddenly full of panic. She glanced around like a frightened animal, then stared at the floor. Molly opened the door.
“Are you okay?” asked Molly in a quiet, serious voice. “Is it happening again?”
Nell shook her head, but didn't look up.
“Is it this place?”
Nell nodded, still looking at the floor.
“It's okay,” said Molly with a sigh. “I understand. You don't have to come in with me, if you don't want to. I'm not going to make you.”
Nell raised her eyes, hopefully.
“It's just that she's got nobody but us,” said Molly, “and it's been practically two weeks since our last visit. I think she's pretty lonely and miserable. I know I would be.”
Nell took a deep breath, then nodded. Looking grim, she got out of the van.
“Thanks,” said Molly, reaching back inside for the theater program, then locking the doors. “We won't stay long, I promise.”
They crossed the parking lot to the nursing home entrance.
Molly didn't want to admit it, but she wasn't looking forward to seeing Grandma any more than Nell was. Not like this, not the way she was. Besides, Molly was puzzled and hurt that Margaret Jellinek hadn't said anything about her stage career. It had never occurred to Molly that Grandma would have kept secrets from her. They had always had a special relationship. With their mother dead, the girls were all the family the old lady had in the world, as she was always reminding them.
Grandma must have had her reasons, Molly knew, but the cat was out of the bag now. Molly was determined to find out all the details of Margaret Jellinek's life in the theater. Of course she probably wouldn't learn much today, she knew. The therapist had said it might be months before Molly's grandmother would be able to hold an intelligible conversation. But she would pry out the whole story, sooner or later. Once Molly got her mind set on something, she never gave up.
At the busy reception desk a stern, pasty-faced woman in rhinestone-studded glasses was talking into the phone. The other receptionist—the sweet, black girl who knew everybody's relatives by name and always seemed happy to see them—must be off today. Pasty-faced Mrs. Springer didn't know anyone and obviously didn't care to.
Molly fought down an urge to dodge the ritual check-in entirely and just go up to the room. The Pelletreau Charitable Nursing Home's
security
was little more than an annoying formality.
“Molly and Nell O'Hara to see Mrs. Jellinek,” she said obediently, however, when the woman finally put down the phone.
“That other man still with her?” asked Mrs. Springer, who had a voice like a frog.
“What other man?”
“Redheaded gentleman,” croaked Mrs. Springer. “Asked for her room number earlier.”
“Who was he?”
“Don't recall the name. He was wearing sunglasses and had a bushy mustache. Said he was a friend of hers. The limit's two visitors per room. He still up there?”
“Oh,
him,
” said Molly, wondering who it could be. “No. He left.”
“Okay, y'all can go up then.”
“Thanks.” Some security.
Molly led Nell to the elevator. The hallway was a sickly peagreen and badly in need of a paint job. She made it a point to keep her eyes straight ahead and hoped that Nell would follow suit.
Modesty was no longer a high priority for many of the resident old folks. The last time they had been here Molly had come back from the drinking fountain to find a little old man outside his room regaling Nell with tales of the shoe business. He was buck naked beneath his robe, and his robe was hanging wide open. Nell had found the whole thing hugely amusing—though perhaps hugely wasn't the right word to describe what she had seen.
Molly pressed the button for the elevator and waited for it to arrive, wondering who her grandmother's visitor could be.
She had thought she knew all Margaret Jellinek's friends. None of the men had much hair left at all, let alone red hair and bushy mustaches. A son, perhaps, paying respects for someone too old and sick to come herself? Or did Grandma have other secrets besides her long-lost career? Was this some old beau? Some guy who liked loud, older women like Grandma? Molly smiled at the
thought of it, trying to ignore the odors of medicine and decay in the hall.
When they got to the little room on the second floor the door was closed. Molly opened it, half expecting to find an unfamiliar man sitting by her grandmother's bedside, holding a bouquet of flowers, and making the kind of awkward small talk that visitors made with sick people.
There was no visitor, however. The lights were off. Margaret Jellinek lay in bed flat on her back under the covers, her pillow on her chest.
Molly turned to Nell.
“Sssh,” she whispered, putting a finger to her lips. “She's asleep.”
Nell shrugged uncomfortably and stared at the pillow on her grandmother's chest. With a smile, Molly gently picked up the pillow and went to place it under Margaret Jellinek's head.
Instantly she knew that something was terribly wrong.
“Grandma?” she said in a voice so small it frightened her.
There was no answer. Molly grabbed the call button next to the bed and pressed it repeatedly.
“Go get someone,” she said after a moment when no one came.
Nell looked from side to side, but didn't move.
“Get the nurse! Now!”
Nell darted out of the room. She returned a few moments later, pushing an annoyed-looking aide in front of her, but it was too late, of course. Molly had known from the instant that she touched her grandmother's head that Margaret Jellinek was dead.
 
 
The funeral was three days later.
More than two dozen old people and Nell and Molly in dresses their grandmother had made for them stood at graveside under a tent against the morning drizzle. All around them the green grass was crowded with white gravestones, some older than the Civil War. A rented clergyman spoke of the Resurrection and Eternal Life.
Margaret Jellinek had never had much use for religion. Neither did Molly, but she thought it wouldn't have been fair to her grandmother's friends not to have a service and let them say good-bye. There hadn't been a service for Molly's mother seventeen years ago, and it still seemed like her death was unfinished business.
“I'm so sorry,” said Mrs. Hoyt, another seamstress, afterward.
“It was a blessing,” said Mrs. Siegrist, the pharmacist's wife. Mr. Siegrist nodded sad agreement.
“If there's anything I can do,” declared Mrs. Onckelbag, for whom Margaret Jellinek had made dresses for thirty years, “please let me know.”
As the crowd began to disperse, Tessie Haimes, Margaret Jellinek's neighbor and best friend, made her way to their side.
“How are you girls holdin' up?” she asked in her sugary North Carolina drawl, squeezing Molly's arm.
Tessie was a round little woman with curly bluish hair and deep dimples in both cheeks that made her look like an ancient Shirley Temple. She had worked most of her life in a fishmarket, but always smelled of face powder and English soap.
“We're fine, Tessie. Thanks for coming.”
“Maggie would have liked this. All her friends. The two of you.”
“She would have hated it, and you know it,” said Molly. “She would be yelling at me for wasting the money. She once made me promise to bury her in a tin can in Wheatman State Park.”
“Oh, she was just carryin' on,” tittered Tessie, waving her lacy handkerchief in the air and shaking her head. “You did the right thing. It was a real nice service.”
“Thanks.”
“Hi, Nellie,” Tessie said, turning her attentions to Molly's sister. “You're lookin' real pretty. How are you, sweetheart? You remember me? Tessie?”
Nell shrugged out of Tessie's attempted embrace. She had always been agitated around Grandma's friends, especially when they tried to touch her—as practically all of them had tried to do today.
“That's okay, honey,” said Tessie, not taking it as a personal rejection, the way some people did. “I know you're upset ‘bout losin' your grandma. I understand.”
“How about you, Tessie?” asked Molly in an amiable voice. “How are you doing?”
“Oh, I'm all right,” sighed the old lady. “I should have expected something like this, I guess. Was it another stroke?”
“The doctor at the home thought it probably was. That or her heart. He said that in her condition she could have gone at any time.”
“And here I was convinced she was gettin' better. Last time I saw Maggie, she was beginnin' to growl again, just like her old self. She even told me to shut the hell up when I started talkin' about the damned Republicans—I swear I understood every word she said.”
“She was something else,” said Molly, smiling. “Did you know she was an actress once?”
“Really? She never said nothin' 'bout that to me. Here in Pelletreau?”
“On Broadway, almost fifty years ago.”
“No!” squealed Tessie. “You're funnin' me.”
“It's true. Nell found a program from a big New York City theater with her picture on the cover.”
“Well, if that don't beat all. It's possible, I s'pose. Maggie never would talk about her life before she came South, and she certainly was a dramatic individual. Always making grand pronouncements in that big ol' voice of hers. And y'all didn't know?”
“Not a thing.”
“Your mama never said nothin'? Evangeline was just a baby when they came to Pelletreau, but surely Maggie would have said something to her over the years. She never passed it along?”
“If she did, I don't remember,” said Molly.
“No, of course not. Whatever happened to my brains? You was just a little girl when Angie got … when your mama passed away.”
Molly suddenly noticed a white Mercury Sable parked across the drive. The driver wore sunglasses and had rust-colored hair and a thick mustache, but as Molly looked over, he lowered his face and pulled into the line of departing cars.
“What is it?” asked Tessie, trying to follow her gaze.
“Do you know who the man in that white car is?” said Molly, wondering why he hadn't gotten out and come over for the service. He seemed to match the description of Margaret Jellinek's visitor that last day.
“What man?”
“It doesn't matter,” said Molly with a shrug. “He's gone now. Well, anyway. Thanks again for coming, Tessie.”
“Listen, Molly, honey,” said the little woman, lowering her voice and leading Molly away from the gravesite to the back of the tent. “Maggie gave me somethin' for you, somethin' she wanted you to have when she was gone.”

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