When the Morning Glory Blooms (22 page)

Still  . . . 

Gil’s odds of finding another job at all in this economy, much less quickly, were slim.

She didn’t need tea as much as she needed his arms around her. Divested of her cup, she snuggled into his chest, her ear against his heartbeat. Steady. Stable. Sure. And a little bit broken.

He smelled newly showered with a lingering hint of lemon. From his dusting. Bless him. The perfect man? No. Perfect for her? Maybe more so than she realized.

“Beck, my peach cobblerness, can we make a pact?”

“I married you, oaf. We’ve already made a pact.”

“About this current crisis. Can we agree not to get consumed by how we’re going to get out of this mess for  . . .  for three days?”

“Why three?”

His heart beat a drummer’s timekeeping intro before he answered. “Because it’s less than four?”

How humiliated he must feel. Jobless at his age, when finding other employment wasn’t automatic and switching careers carried more risk than a high-risk pregnan—

“I need time to process what happened without the pressure of needing to have an answer right away. Does that make sense?”

“It’s called a gestation period, hon.” She reached up to stroke the curve of his jaw. “And yes, it makes perfect sense.”

She and Monica were themselves only in the first trimester of their shared grief. The nauseous stage. Lauren, Monica, and now Gil. Becky was expecting fraternal triplets. Or troublets.

16

Ivy—1951

Is it true what they say, Anna?”

“What?”

“That trouble comes in threes?”

Anna raised up on one elbow so Ivy could flip her pillow to the cool side. “Not at all.”

Ivy sighed, unconvinced.

“No,” Anna said, “sometimes they come by the dozens.” Her broad grin confirmed—all her own teeth.

What would Ivy do without Anna in her life? Who would have thought she’d be the one bright spot? Ivy’s baby punched a fist into her kidney to remind her there were two bright spots. The latest airmail letter in her pocket voiced its vote that there were three.

Bright spots come in threes.

“Another love letter?”

Anna must have noticed her fingering the envelope. “Yes.”

“Is he a good man, Ivy?”

Her thoughts traveled thousands of miles to a drooping olive-green tent under a dripping gray sky and a soldier on the edge of a sagging cot, bent over the letters he wrote to her. A faithful man. Serving his country. Planning for their future
together. An uninformed uniformed man with unbending love for her because he didn’t know any better. “He’s a good man. More than I deserve.”

“What does he write to you now?”

“Bits about the war. Soldiers stationed there longer than he has been talk about the night raids where the Chinese banged drums and shrieked and blew whistles and pounded on gongs as they attacked.”

“Sounds like a circus.”

“Disorienting, I’m sure. Turns out some of the ruckus was because the Chinese communication systems were so bad that they used the noise to signal their other units about their location and tactics.”

Anna thought for a moment and then said, “Babies must operate under the same system. They make a lot of ruckus because they don’t have the communication skills to say, ‘I could use a new diaper!’ ”

As dear as Anna had become to Ivy, it seemed every subject held a danger zone. Drew, work, war, babies  . . . 

“Drew said the men work hard to keep their rifles clean and their knives sharp.”

“Oh, dear. Such a necessary evil.”

“And that they don’t waste time because they can’t afford to have their weapons out of commission for long in certain areas. I can tell he doesn’t want to scare me, though. Those kinds of comments aren’t frequent. He said the biggest surprise for him was that the whole country smells like an outhouse.”

“What?”

“The Koreans use human  . . .  excrement  . . .  on their fields. The whole country smells like it. Others warned him on the ship over. He worked on his dad’s farm as a kid, so he laughed them off. Until they landed.”

Anna pinched her nose. Then she held her hand to the side of her mouth and said, “I half expected the same thing here.”

“Me, too. I’m glad we were both wrong.”

The pause between them hinted of the separation to come.

Ivy skipped telling Anna about the friends Drew had seen cut down by the enemy, about the minutes-old orphans crying through the smoking villages, about the villagers so wracked by starvation that they ate—. Time for another subject. “He draws.”

“Sketches? Of people?”

“Other soldiers. Jeeps. A Sherman tank disguised with rice straw. An amphibious duck.”

“Aren’t all ducks amphibious?”

“This one was half tank, half boat.”

“Oh.”

“Their camp. The mess tent.”

“Is he a good artist? Could I see some of his drawings?”

Anna played the role of mother and grandmother and favorite aunt and much older sister in Ivy’s life. Friend. Her only friend. Friends shared things like quotations and sketches from love letters.

Ivy slipped the thin pages from the envelope, unfolded them with reverence, and flipped through to a series of sketches on a page by themselves. “I think he’s as good as a lot of the war cartoonists I’ve seen in the newspaper.” She handed the page to Anna and held her breath.

“Oh, my. You’re right about his talent. These are wonderful. Oh, to have a treasure like this from—” Anna’s eyes glistened, but she stopped talking.

“I like the one of the soldier sitting under his poncho, with his back against that broken-down shack  . . .”

“His boots and socks on the ground beside him.”

“Soaking his feet in his helmet.”

The two shared a moment of laughter in an otherwise humorless scene.

Anna squinted and pulled the paper nearer. “He’s writing a letter, it appears.”

“I guess so.”

“To his sweetheart? I wonder.”

“Drew says  . . . ”

“What?”

“He says so many of his buddies worry about the women—wives and girlfriends—they left in the States, worry that they’re not being faithful to them. It drives them a little batty.”

Anna pressed her hands to her heart. “How difficult not to trust the one you love, not to be assured that their word is true.” Her gaze drifted to the window.

Too much talking. Ivy hadn’t allowed her mouth so much exercise since  . . .  ever. And for good reason. Look where talking could lead—into inescapable corners. Now she’d have to use more words to climb out.

“See the benches and the rough podium in this sketch, Anna? That’s where they have church. No walls. No stained glass. Their chaplain is a character, from what Drew says.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“And this one.” Ivy pointed to the lower right-hand corner of the paper. “I  . . .  I can’t look at this without getting choked up.”

“A child.”

“One of the Korean children from an orphanage his unit visited. The little face seems to say so much, doesn’t it?”

“It says a great deal about your Drew, too, Ivy. That the face of a child would so capture him. That he would sketch that face with such a tender touch and such vibrant expression. Mmm. A good man. He’ll make a good father.”

Words. Too many words. Ivy’s long-braced resolve dislodged. “He  . . .  he doesn’t know.”

Anna held the sketches toward Ivy. “Most men doubt their abilities to be a good father. That’s only natural. It’ll come to him. He has all the signs.”

“Anna, he doesn’t know I’m carrying this child.”

The older woman plopped her hands down along her sides on the bedcovers. “Oh, Ivy, you’ve been working so hard to hide the truth. You must be exhausted. Honesty takes so little energy. Dishonesty can wear a person out.”

The smell of Salisbury steak and creamed corn signaled Anna’s supper was on the way into the room, which meant Ivy needed to be on her way out.

“Get the letter written tonight, Ivy,” Anna called out as Ivy collected her purse, the pieces of the letter, and the notebook with Anna’s latest story. “We all must risk rejection in order to live honestly. A man like that deserves your whole, true heart.”

17

Anna—1890s

It became routine for Mr. Grissom and me to share tea or coffee and sometimes a light meal after an adoption signing. His volunteering to come to the house, rather than our making the trip to his office, was much appreciated. The Kinneys stayed on occasion as well. But more often than not, other duties called them, leaving Mr. Grissom and me to reflect on the proceedings and speculate on the outcome.

Puff always seemed to be otherwise engaged. I assume he was not comfortable with anyone observing how the loss of our tiny houseguests registered on his face. I, on the other hand, had too little shame. I didn’t even attempt to stop the flood of tears when they pressed.

Defying explanation, Mr. Grissom always waited patiently for my tears to subside before launching into discussion. He busied himself with paperwork or leaned his head back against his chair and closed his eyes. I imagine he prayed. I suspect he often prayed for me.

A team of permanent backers. That’s the phrase Josiah used in describing the phantom people yet to reveal themselves. As grateful as I was for Puff, Lydia and Pastor Kinney, Dr. Noel,
and Josiah, I had yet to discover those with the means and the desire to invest financially in homegrown acts of redemption.

The church was slow to be convinced. Wouldn’t one think that the forgiven would be quickest to forgive others? That the redeemed would fall over one another in their rush to carry the song of deliverance to those who had yet to hear its calming melody? That those who had found refuge would do everything in their power to light the way for others?

But despite Pastor Kinney’s best sermonizing on the subject, the church people seemed to see only sin and rebellion, bulging bellies of disobedience to God’s plan of purity. They raised their chins and crossed the street to avoid us, as if their own white robes of righteousness might turn gray if they walked through the same patch of air. As if He whose hands had fashioned their robes had reached His limit of sinners to love. As if He’d exhausted His supply of grace.

Puff assured me the townspeople were not hopeless, just stubborn, steeped in traditional taboos, bound by fears that they couldn’t love the sinner without being tattooed with her sin. Imagine what they thought of me! I must have seemed a carnival freak, every inch of my skin branded by the stains of the young women who sought refuge in my home.

The congregation might have run me out of town if they could have seen the stains on the inside of me, the pain I’d caused.

I recall an afternoon’s conversation with Lydia that almost forced a confession.

“Your face is as gray as a November sky, Anna.”

I wasn’t hiding my disgust at the latest snubbing from the president of the Ladies Aid Society. Insightful to a fault, Lydia would have noticed even if I had successfully masked my disappointment.

“Anna, I know the joy is there, somewhere behind the clouds. But at present, you are casting shadows.”

“Lydia, I don’t understand how you can be patient with these people.”

“Our parishioners? They need grace, like anyone else.” She crossed her arms as if that were the end of it.

“They’re pigheaded and rude and self-righteous and—”

“And your words just now were  . . .  were what, Anna?”

“But their hearts are Siberian! They’re cold and unfeeling toward these unwed mothers. How can they not see that the girls don’t need more judgment and shame, but love and careful guidance and encouragement and  . . .  and understanding that when people are in trouble, they need more grace, not less.”

Lydia, always the wiser of us, waited a moment before she spoke, allowing the poignancy of what I’d spoken to seep into my own soul.

“They can’t see, Anna, because we haven’t shown them.”

“But—”

“We have talked
at
them, not with them. We’ve responded to their disgust with disparaging looks and remarks of our own. Their arrows of prejudice against these hurting women are returned by our poisonous darts of judgment against their judging others! How can that honor God?”

“Lydia, I know He wouldn’t want my girls to be shunned by His people.”

“Nor would He want us to grow bitter toward those who have yet to plumb the full depth of His grace.”

Had I plumbed the full depth? Obviously not. I’d seen it. I lived because of it. And my mother died at its hand.

Lydia’s comment stung in a healing way. Medicinally. Like iodine. “They deserve the very kindness I’m asking from them?”

“Yes, Anna.”

“My most challenging assignment yet.”

“But might it also be among the most rewarding? Few things are as beautiful as the scene when the Son parts the clouds.”

The dinner party almost a year into it was Lydia’s idea.

I’d always answered honestly when asked about the financial picture for the home. “God is good. We have no reserves. But God is good.”

I often tacked a faith statement onto both the front and back of our needs, like a train with a locomotive at each end. There were times, many times, when the cars in between reached far down the track, around the bend, beyond my sight. But I was often reminded that where God is concerned, there is always a locomotive at each end.