We Are All Welcome Here (22 page)

“Diana?” my mother called again.

“I’ll be right there! Just hold on.”

“Come here right now!” she said.

I looked at the man. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll wait right here. But hurry.”

I went to my mother’s bedside, where I stood wide-eyed before her. “Who’s here?” she asked.

I felt for one brief moment like vomiting. Then I told her that the man on our porch said Elvis Presley was in the car outside, come to see her.

“Well, invite him in,” my mother said. She was absolutely calm. I might have been saying Brooks was here.

I went back to Ed Winston and said, “I’m supposed to invite y’all in.”

He nodded. “Okay, good. But I need you to do something for us, honey. Can you do something for us?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m going to get Mr. Presley, but when he’s inside, I need you to make sure nobody else comes over here. Can you do that?”

“Yes, sir. Nobody ever comes here, anyway.” I remembered Susan and said quickly, “Well, our social worker is coming in about an hour.”

“That’s all right, we’ll be gone by then. Now, I’ll go and get him, and then I want you to sit on the porch and watch real good. You call me if anybody starts over here. Y’all have a back door, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay.” He started down the steps, and I said after him, “So he does remember her?”

The man turned around, squinting in the strong morning sunlight. “He never forgot her. She took good care of his mama.”

I watched the man look carefully around at our dead-as-usual street, then open the car door, and there he was. Walking on legs just like a real man, wearing only blue jeans and a blue shirt and those sunglasses, walking up the sidewalk, up the stairs. “Hi, Diana,” he said.

I looked at him. He offered his hand and I shook it. He knew my name. Inside his brain were some cells reserved for me. “Thanks for sending me the song,” he said.

I nodded.

“She in there?”

At last I could speak. “Yes, sir, she’s in the dining room. That’s her bedroom. It’s the dining room but it’s her bedroom and that’s where she is. Right in there.”

I watched the men go into the house, closing the door behind them. But through the open window I heard Elvis say, “Paige Dunn?” and I heard my mother answer, “Yes. Hello, Elvis. Long time no see.” Then I sat ramrod straight at the top of the steps, straining to hear more, watching the street carefully for the few minutes he was there. I saw old Mrs. Harper come out and pretend to shake a rug; and Riley Coombs came out on his front porch and frankly stared. Curtains parted here and there, and I lifted my chin high:
That’s right.
Then, before anyone had time to manufacture an excuse to come to our house, the door opened and Elvis and Ed came out and walked quickly down the steps, got into the car, and drove off. But not before Elvis touched my shoulder and said, “Thanks, baby.”

“Thanks, baby,” I said back to him, like an idiot. I said it back to him! After the car disappeared around the corner, I ran back inside and flung myself across my mother.

“Oh, my God!” I said. “What’d he do? What’d he say? That was really him, right?”

“That was him,” she said. “Oh, did he smell good! What did he say? Well, he said his mama never forgot me. He said he never did, either. And he said he’d gotten a letter from you.” She raised her eyebrows, smiling.

“Yes!” I said. “I sent him your song!”

“Yes. And he said it was too bad what happened to me but wasn’t it good I could still write songs. He said he wanted to buy ‘Sugar Bee Tree’ and that he’d like to offer me a contract to write more songs for him.”

“You’re going to work for Elvis Presley?” I asked.

She smiled. “Uh-huh.”

“He’s going to pay you?”

“Is he ever,” she said.

Epilogue

W
henever I tell people the story of that summer, it’s Elvis they almost always focus on. But one of the reasons I married my husband is that he understood it wasn’t Elvis who was the extraordinary one.

My mother and I moved the very next day into an apartment complex in Memphis designed to accommodate handicapped people. Brooks drove us there, with the few things we wanted to keep loaded in the back of his truck, covered by a tarp. Suralee helped me pack, vacillating between being thrilled and weeping. I gave her the glass my mother had painted and told her, “I just know you’re going to be famous. I’ll see you in the movies.” And indeed I did; in her late twenties, she had a bit part in an independent film that did not enjoy wide distribution, but I loved watching her in the tape she sent me. We lost touch after that, but I still think of her with great fondness.

My mother was able to hire nurses to care for her around the clock. And though I finally had that fantasy realized, though the nurses were wonderfully kind and perfectly trained, they did not come close to offering my mother what Peacie had, for all those years she was with us.

We saw Peacie and LaRue infrequently, but not for long. Peacie died from a stroke a couple of years after we moved to Memphis. Unbeknownst to us—and apparently to her—she’d suffered from high blood pressure. LaRue died shortly after that, and my mother and I both believed it was from a broken heart. I took some comfort from the fact that they got to see what happened with my mother, and a lot of comfort from the fact that they died free. After we first moved, my mother had offered Peacie and LaRue a job “supervising the nurses,” but they ended up opening a grocery store, and they very much liked where they lived.

Elvis never came again, but it was because of his initial generosity that my mother finally lived as comfortable a life as she did. She tried writing a few more songs, but her heart wasn’t in it, and she knew that Elvis didn’t really want her music, anyway. What he’d wanted was to repay a kindness, which he did in more than full measure.

My mother went back to school, saying that she wanted to make a living for herself, earning her own money. An attendant took her to classes in a van and set her up to take notes in the classrooms—she became a whiz at writing quickly with her mouth. She was a great favorite among the other students. “I’m their pet,” she told me, but it was more than that. They respected and admired her for her intelligence and appreciated her willingness to listen to their problems in the face of her own. More than once my mother’s phone rang in the middle of the night with a sobbing coed on the other end of the line.

My mother graduated with honors and became a counselor for quads. She lived to practice for several years and to enjoy one of the three children I have. At forty-nine, she succumbed to a respiratory infection, as we had always feared she would. The night before she died, I sat by her hospital bed not talking much, mostly holding her hand. It was a glorious night, the stars sharply clear. She could see only a little bit of the sky from her bed, and at one point she asked me to disconnect her from the vent and take her down to the visitor’s lounge, where there were big plate-glass windows. By that time, she couldn’t breathe for very long without assistance, and I was afraid to disconnect her. But she gave me one of her famous looks, and I did.

When we arrived, no one else was in the room, and I shut off the lights so that she could see better. “It’s everywhere,” she said, and those were the last words I heard her speak.

She meant redemptive beauty, I think. Despite her many obstacles, what my mother succeeded best in doing was appreciating the many forms of beauty in life—as well as its possibilities. And she relished perhaps more than any other mother could the growth of her daughter, seeing in me a part of herself set free. I don’t think it’s any accident that I work for the airlines, that I am regularly lifted miles up into the sky.

After the funeral, Brenda told me my mother had always worried that the gamble she took in keeping me might have crippled me in a way different from her, but devastating nonetheless. When I heard that, I joined with so many others who wish for a chance to tell someone whom they’ve lost just one more thing.

I pray every night. I do it in an old-fashioned way, the way Peacie taught me, kneeling on the floor beside my bed, my hands folded beneath my chin, my eyes closed. I whisper the words aloud. At the end, I always say the same thing. I thank my mother. I tell her I’m fine. I say I’m happy. I say she was right.

We Are All Welcome Here

A Reader’s Guide

ELIZABETH BERG

A Conversation with Elizabeth Berg

Reader’s Circle:
You’ve said in the past that until this book came along you hadn’t ever considered using a reader’s idea or story for one of your novels. But this time, with Pat Raming and Marianne Raming Burke, you took a real-life experience and made it your own. What was different this time? What about their story spoke to you?

Elizabeth Berg:
It wasn’t the story that spoke to me, at least at first. Rather it was a photograph Marianne sent to me of her mother, Pat. Something in her face was so strong. I needed to know—and tell—about her. What I loved about the true story was Pat’s refusal to let extremely difficult circumstances prevent her from having a rich and rewarding life. When I wrote the fictional book, I was interested in looking at a lot of issues. One of these was: Is it “fair” for a severely handicapped woman to try to raise an able-bodied child? Another was: What does freedom really mean?

RC:
Paige and Diana may have been based on real people, but they are fictional characters. How did you balance the Ramings’ story with the Dunns’ story? And how did you create such a rich, vibrant, and unique mother/daughter dynamic?

EB:
Oh, this is always such a hard question to answer. The short answer is, Beats me. A longer one is that as a writer you look at something real, and then you consider what might have been if…. My imagination is always straining at the leash, asking to embroider, embellish, and change the things I see. I can’t explain how it works, really, how stories and characters are created, but it is very much tied up with trusting the unconscious. Ultimately, the less I know about what I’m doing, the better the work is.

RC:
We Are All Welcome Here
is rich with historical detail of the 1960s South and the political upheaval of the time. How did you re-create this time period for your readers? Did you talk to people who lived there, do research, or both?

EB:
I went to the library and read history. And watched documentaries. I also looked at magazines from that time.

RC:
Until now, most of your books have been set in the Midwest and the Northeast—places you have lived. But this novel is so much about the South. Was it different to write about the South, and to write about southern characters? How? Do you think you’ll return to the South for another novel?

EB:
Durable Goods
takes place in Texas, but Texas is very different from Mississippi. I’m nuts about the South—the people, the language, the food, the land, the stories and writers that come from there—but it’s hard to know whether I’ll use it as a location again.

RC:
Elvis has a very interesting role in this story. What made you include him, and what do you think he adds to the story?

EB:
Elvis is symbolic of a lot of things, dreams coming true being one of them. I didn’t know I was going to put him in, but I was happily surprised at the way he did appear.

RC:
What are you working on now?

EB:
I just finished a novel called
Dream When You’re Feeling Blue
. It’s about three sisters and takes place during World War II. More research!! But it was really fun, because I love the forties: the food, the fashion, and especially the music.

Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion

1. Elizabeth Berg includes an Author’s Note at the beginning of the book, informing us that this work of fiction is a bit different from her other novels. What did you think of this choice before reading Berg’s story? Did your opinion change after you read the book? How?

2. At the end of the Prologue, speaking about her mother and herself, Diana reflects: “[Elvis] had a kind of great luck and then terrible tragedy. For us, it was the opposite.” (p. 6) What do you think she means by this? After finishing the novel, do you agree with her?

3. Despite skepticism from the medical community, Paige Dunn gives birth to her daughter, Diana, in an iron lung, and they both survive. Even more amazingly, Paige is determined to raise Diana despite her condition. What do you think about Paige’s decision to keep her baby? Do you support her?

4. How does Paige compensate for her disabilities and serve as a strong parental figure for her daughter? Do you think Diana is forced to grow up a bit faster than other kids her age because of her mother’s condition? Why or why not?

5. Berg sets her novel in Tupelo, Mississippi, during the volatile Freedom Summer of 1964. How does she weave the events of the civil rights movement into her novel? Is the civil rights movement simply background for the story or a part of the story itself?

6. How does Peacie function in the novel? Describe her relationship with Diana. Is it motherly? Sisterly? Something different? How does Peacie interact with Paige? How is their relationship different from Peacie’s relationship with Diana?

7. Discuss Peacie and LaRue. What is their relationship like? How is their life away from the Dunns different? How does their relationship with Diana enhance her understanding of the political and cultural climate of the time?

8. Describe Diana’s friendship with Suralee. How do the girls interact? Why do you think Diana likes to play with Suralee? Can Suralee ever be a good friend?

9. What do you make of Dell’s courtship of Paige? Were you surprised by his treatment of her? Disappointed? How do you think Diana feels about their relationship, both while it is happening and once it is over?

10. Berg’s novel is full of strong female characters. Compare and contrast the women in the novel, from Paige to Peacie to Mrs. Gruder to Mrs. Halloway and others. How are they similar and dissimilar? What about Diana and Suralee? How do they assert themselves as strong figures in the novel, even though they are still very young?

11. Consider how Diana changes and grows throughout the course of the novel. How does she react when her mother gets sick? When her father rejects her? When Peacie and LaRue leave town? Discuss her progression as a character.

12. Berg chooses interesting and appropriate names for a few of her characters, such as Peacie. Do these monikers enrich the characters, in your opinion? Do any other names stand out for you? Why?

13. In the beginning of the novel, Diana reflects, “I believed that despite what people said, money
could
buy happiness.” (p. 8) Does this prove true in the novel? Do you think she changes her mind after winning the sweepstakes? Why or why not?

14. Elvis Presley makes a grand entrance at the end of the novel. What did you make of his appearance? What did you think of Paige’s reaction to it? Were you happy to see him? Were you disappointed that he doesn’t return?

15. At the end of the novel, Diana tells us that she says a prayer every night, and that she always thanks her mother. Diana adds, “I tell her I’m fine. I say I’m happy. I say she was right.” (p. 187) What do you think she means? What was Paige right about?