The Older Woman (11 page)

“So…we’re not going to dinner, then.”

“Yes, we are—Mrs. Bee invited us.”

Which explains the “refusal is not an option” thing, he thought. He was disappointed that there wasn’t a more personal reason for her requiring his presence, but he didn’t really mind. He liked Mrs. Bee.

“Cool,” he said. “She’s been cooking all day.”

“She says it’s an anniversary.”

“Hers and Mr. Bee’s?”

“She says no.”

“Whose

then?”

“I don’t know—I was hoping you did.”

“Nope. So how is Scottie?”

She stopped walking, and so did he. He didn’t think she was going to answer.

“He’s…worried about his mother,” she said after some consideration.

“Yeah, he would be, wouldn’t he?”

“Did he say something to you?”

“Not exactly. He knew she was crying about something and he pretty much understood that he had to stay out of the way. He’s a good little kid.”

Meehan was staring at him in that way she had. “Yes. He is.”

She started walking again, and he went with her.

“You know you’re getting around a lot better?” she said as he tackled the stairs.

“Am I?” he asked, because “better” or not, it still hurt.

“Damn straight,” she said, and he grinned.

Mrs. Bee was standing at the bottom of the stairs, and she’d shown up “battle rattle”—ready for anything. She was all dressed up—beauty parlor, makeup, jewelry, the works. Maybe even a new dress.

“Don’t mention the magazine,” he said to Meehan under his breath.

“Why?”

“Because,” he said, trying not to move his lips.

“You look nice, Mrs. Bee,” he said on the way down, because she did and because his grandmother had always told him women appreciated a sincere compliment—whereas an insincere one could get him hurt.

“Thank you, Calvin. I’m so glad you and Katie could come tonight.”

“Smells good, Mrs. Bee. Special occasion, huh?”

“It is to me, Calvin—and one I can’t share with just anybody. I haven’t been keeping my word about remembering, these last few years. This year I’m making up for it. Come into the dining room. Everything is ready. Ordinarily we’d chat for a while in the front parlor, but I’m a little tired. I hope you’re hungry, Katie. Calvin, I
know
you are.”

“You got my number, Mrs. Bee,” he said, following her and Meehan. Everything was indeed ready. The table was set in what must be her best china. The food was already on the table—meat loaf, as he already suspected, mashed potatoes and gravy, cole slaw, deviled eggs, huge homemade rolls, green beans with white corn, a big pitcher of iced tea with lemons floating on top, two pies—one with icing.

French apple, he guessed.

And there were flowers—roses and something or other and white candles that had already been lit. The table looked like a page out of a magazine.

“The menu is nothing fancy,” Mrs. Bee said. “He asked me to fix all his favorites for him when he came home—but of course, he didn’t.”

Doyle exchanged a look with Meehan. He was on the verge of asking who “he”

was, but he decided to restrain his “hunt the hill” mind-set again, at least for the moment. Mrs. Bee patted the back of a dining room chair as she went around the table.

“You sit here, Calvin—and, Katie, you over there.”

“The table is beautiful,” Meehan said as she took her seat.

“Yes, if I do say so myself,” Mrs. Bee said. “I promised, you see.”

Doyle didn’t see, and he didn’t think Meehan did—but neither of them said so. He suddenly realized that the table was set for four. As soon as he and Meehan were seated, Mrs. Bee reached for their hands and said a prayer that included a petition for his and Meehan’s well-being.

“Comfort food,” she said as soon as she was done, handing Doyle the huge bowl of mashed potatoes. Then, “Oh, I forgot the music.”

“I’ll get it, Mrs. Bee,” Meehan said.

“Oh, good,” she said. “I’m still a little scared of that new machine. It does things with those little silver records all by itself. I told that grandson of mine I didn’t need it, but he insisted.”

When Meehan got up from the table, Doyle watched her walk to the new stereo in the parlor just off the dining room door, intent on verifying one more time that she was as good-looking as he’d only just noticed.

Yes and yes. She was good-looking in both directions.

When Meehan sat down again, he glanced at Mrs. Bee—and realized that she hadn’t missed his interest in her other guest. She was a sharp old lady. Nothing got by her.

The music started almost immediately. He wondered idly if the grandson had given Mrs. Bee a big band CD or if she’d bought it herself. A CD ought to be a piece of cake for anyone as adventurous in her purchases as she was. He could just see her in the mall music store.

In a moment Frank Sinatra began to sing something that had to be called “Don’t Forget Tonight Tomorrow.”

Doyle could see that the song brought back memories. He thought for a moment Mrs. Bee was going to cry, and he plunged into a conversation to get her mind off it. He told her about living on Pop Doyle’s farm and his rule for a happy life.

“Plow straight, plant well, cultivate carefully and harvest like you mean it. If you always do that, he said, whatever bad happens ain’t your fault.”

Then he told her about his grandmother Doyle and how much she loved to cook. Then he switched to her garden and how she spent hours “putting up” the tomatoes and corn, white cucumbers, and the green beans she grew every summer. She even canned sausage, he told her—and always in a blue Mason jar.

“Did you help?” Meehan asked when she could get a word in.

“Had to,” he said. “I couldn’t outrun her.”

Mrs. Bee finally managed a smile and passed another bowl. Frank Sinatra gave way to somebody singing happily about a tomato and Plato, baloney and Tony.

They don’t make songs like they used to, Doyle thought. The meal continued, and the conversation flourished without his help. Meehan held up her end with comments on the possibility of afternoon and evening thundershowers, her job at the post hospital and world headlines. She didn’t go anywhere near the girlie magazine.

They didn’t make cooks like they used to, either, and most of the time he was only half listening. Everything tasted so good. At one point he looked up from his enjoyment to find both women watching him. He winked at Mrs. Bee, making her smile, and no one mentioned the empty chair.

The wind had picked up outside. There was a rumble of thunder, and the candles flickered in the cross breeze from the open windows. The first drops of rain were beginning to fall by the time Mrs. Bee was ready to cut the apple pie. The phone rang—

once.

“Someone dialed before they remembered,” Mrs. Bee said. “Lula Mae and the girls know not to call me today.”

“Why is that, Mrs. Bee?” he asked, because he thought it was time.

“He was a soldier—a paratrooper,” she said instead of answering. “Like you, Calvin.”

“I didn’t know Mr. Bee was a paratrooper,” Meehan said.

“No. Not Mr. Bee.”

The old lady gave a quiet sigh and looked past him toward the empty chair. “He was so good-looking.” She suddenly smiled. “But so was I—that boy didn’t stand a chance.”

“You’re still good-looking, Mrs. Bee,” Doyle said, and she laughed out loud.

“And soldiers never change, do they, Katie?”

“Never,” Meehan assured her.

“His name was William Gaffney,” Mrs. Bee said wistfully. “Everybody called him ‘Bud.’ I met him on a bus from Savannah to Fayetteville—my fiancé was stationed at Fort Bragg—that wasn’t Mr. Bee, either,” she added mischievously. “
His
name was Jeffrey McCall.”

Any kin to Pitty-Pat? Doyle almost asked.

“I was going to see him,” Mrs. Bee said. “His sister was supposed to chaperon, but she was in the back of the bus. She was kind of fast,” Mrs. Bee said, lowering her voice, as if she didn’t want just anybody to hear her.

Kin to Pitty-Pat, he decided.

“I think Bud might have thought I was fast, too—at first—since I was traveling with her. But I wasn’t. I was just young…and bewildered. Everything was happening so fast—the war, all the boys leaving. Boys I’d known all my life. All of us young girls knew there was a good chance we’d never see them again. Everybody was crazy to get married, and here I was engaged when I didn’t really know how in this world I had gotten to that point. I’d known Jeffrey for ages—since we were children—and then there he was in uniform, looking so handsome and not quite able to hide how scared he was, and he asked me. I must have said yes—but to this day, I don’t remember doing it. I don’t think I realized how serious it all was until my mother said I could go to Fort Bragg to see him without her.

“I remember being on that bus, though. It stopped at nearly every wide place in the road. It was so hot, and the bus was packed. Every time it stopped, I’d think they couldn’t possibly get one more person on, but they always did somehow. The woman I was sitting next to was wearing Blue Waltz perfume—the kind you could buy at the dime store. It was so
strong.
I was sitting by a window, but I couldn’t get it open, and I was getting sicker and sicker. We finally stopped at this little service station in the middle of nowhere. It had a really steep roof.” She held up her hands to show them how steep.

“And big shade trees with the trunks whitewashed—they don’t do that much nowadays—

and some picnic tables. It was a kind of place where they’d let everybody get off and get something to drink and take the children to the rest room. I was feeling so bad, and he got me a bottle of cola. He’d been watching me, you see, and he knew I wasn’t feeling well. The drink was all icy. The best cola I ever had. I wanted to pay him for it, but he wouldn’t let me.

“Well, it made me feel better, and we talked all the way to Fayetteville, both of us standing up because I’d lost my seat and there weren’t any more—and me in high heels, too. Brown-and-white spectator pumps. You didn’t go anywhere in public in those days unless you had on high heels. And you didn’t go bare-legged, either. I had on my mother’s last pair of silk stockings. They were too small because the toes had been darned so many times, and between the stockings and the heels and the heat—and being totally mortified by what Jeffrey’s sister was doing in the back of the bus—I’d never been so miserable in my whole life. Or so happy. I just knew in my heart something marvelous was happening.” She reached for the tea pitcher and refilled Meehan’s glass.

“Well, I broke my engagement that weekend,” she continued. “It was a hard thing to do. Both our mothers cried for days. I wasn’t sure I’d ever see Bud again, but I was very sure I didn’t want to marry Jeffrey just because there was a war on and I felt sorry for him. I’d given Bud my name and address, and I watched for the mailman every day after that, as if it was a matter of life and death—and I guess maybe it was. He wrote me a letter—he was very good at writing letters. Some people have that knack, you know. When you read them, it’s as if they’re actually speaking to you. I’d been waiting for days and days, praying he would write to me—and then when the letter finally came, when I finally saw it there in the mailbox, I didn’t open it. Not at first. I just held it and looked at it. I wanted to make the feeling last, you see. That wonderful feeling of expectation that comes when you think something good is about to happen and your life is going to change forever.

“He came to Savannah to see me—when he could only stay a couple of hours. After that, he hitchhiked down there every chance he got—he used to take me to this Irish pub down on the riverfront. I wasn’t old enough to be in there—my mother would have had a fit if she’d known—but most places didn’t bother too much about that kind of thing, because of the war and so many boys going overseas all the time. We went for the music, believe it or not. It was a lot like your uncle Patrick’s place, Katie—the customers could sing something for the crowd if they wanted to. The last time we went there, Bud went up to the microphone. I thought it would be something funny—because he was so funny—and maybe a little risqué, but it wasn’t. He sang this sad song about a soldier looking for the one he could love and finally finding her. There was a part in it about him praying for angels to always protect her—it was so beautiful and it was for me. There weren’t many dry eyes in the pub that night, I can tell you.”

“Did you marry him, Mrs. Bee?” Meehan asked, handing Doyle the second piece of pie she’d cut for him.

“He asked me. And I got all silly about it. I wanted him to be my husband more than I’d ever wanted anything in this world, but I told him no because I still regretted the brainless way I’d gotten engaged to Jeffrey. I said something about us not knowing if what we felt was real and that only time would tell.

“He said time was something we might never have—and even if we did, there were no guarantees. Our chance had come along when the whole world was in a mess, he said, so we had to make do—because if we didn’t, maybe we’d would lose something really precious, something other people only dream about.

“I’m happy to say I didn’t stay silly for long. We eloped,” she said with a slight smile. “I met him about halfway—in a little county seat in South Carolina. It was a real leap of faith for me. I kept thinking he wouldn’t come—he’d have a change of heart or maybe he’d get sent overseas and I’d never see him again and never know what happened to him. He was late, but we made it—just barely. He was sent to the West Coast right after that. I think the government did that to fool the German spies. They sent them west—when they were really going to Europe. Anyway, he went overseas. He was killed in the Normandy invasion—it was a very bad place for paratroopers. He’s buried in the cemetery there. The news about him came in the middle of
Fibber McGee and Molly.
That’s a radio program. I was at home with my mother and sisters, and we were all laughing. Somehow you just never think you could get such bad news in the middle of something like
Fibber McGee and Molly
—oh, now I’ve made you both uncomfortable. I didn’t want to do that. It’s just that I promised him I’d make him his favorite dinner when he came home again. He didn’t come home, but I still make the dinner sometimes—on our anniversary. It’s my way of remembering him. I haven’t done it in a long time—but this year I felt that I really wanted to. He would have liked the two of you so much. Mr. Bee and I had a good life together—but I haven’t forgotten Bud. Someone has to remember, you see. He didn’t have any family but me.”