When the Morning Glory Blooms (38 page)

Memory fails me now, trying to recall if he spoke more than those words. I was lost in the dream of Josiah at my side, not for an evening near the fire, but for a lifetime. And then I woke with a start. He was not courting me. He was counseling me. With the wisdom of years beyond my own, he was undoubtedly taking the opportunity to advise me to look for a mate.

Perhaps he even hoped that if I succeeded in finding a man willing to care for me, Josiah himself would be relieved of many of the roles he played—listening ear, companion, problem-solver, heart-mender.

Tears stung my eyes. I’d grown to depend on Josiah’s presence, his attention, his strength. And now he was asking me to wean myself from him. I did not even pretend to be ready for that. But I respected him too much to ask more of him than he had already given.

“I will give your counsel consideration, Josiah.”

It must have been the response he was looking for. He smiled and reached over to squeeze my hand. He didn’t intend it, I’m sure, but his touch squeezed the life out of my heart.

Ivy—1951

“You couldn’t see that he was in love with you?”

Anna’s silver eyebrows arched. “Like others I have known”—she slowed her words and leaned toward Ivy—“it took me an excess of convincing to believe someone could love me that completely. A man like that.”

Ivy shook her head from side to side and made the
tsking
sound she’d heard Anna direct toward her in the past. “Oh, Anna. How could you have doubted—?”

“And you are so certain your Drew can’t love you enough to forgive your silence and embrace the child you share?”

“I would have heard from him by now.”

“Oh, my dear.” She scratched the top of her head with a gnarled hand. “And you criticize my naïveté with Josiah?”

“You did marry. Anna Morgan became Anna Grissom.”

“Yes. Not soon enough.”

Ivy’s heart fluttered. “What? Did you  . . .  did you and he  . . .  have to get married?”

“Ivy! After the misery I’d seen? After the remorse I’d felt in my own bones for the young women who paid such a high price for letting themselves be carried away by passion? Ivy, really!”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean that you didn’t marry soon enough.” Her baby kicked as a friend would sock someone in the arm.

“I mean simply that it took me too long to believe he loved me as much as he did. We had only ten years together as husband and wife before I was alone again.”

Ivy drank in the sobriety of her words.
Took too long. Alone again
. “I wonder if I could contact the army directly to ask about Drew. I wonder if I could write to his chaplain and ask him to intercede for me.”

Anna—1890s

In that weariness-drugged moment before sleep captured me, when feathers pillowed my head and invited me to release my hold on the day and its concerns, I often wondered just how far back my girls—or any of us—would have to trace to stop the flow of regrets.

“If we hadn’t let our guard down  . . .  ,” one might confess. But history no doubt contained many pages before that moment. Leaving thoughts unchecked. Challenging the edges of danger, not recognizing that the cliff edge is not solid granite but crumbling sandstone. Entertaining, if only for a flash, risk’s possibility. Opening the door to opportunity. Not looking
away when sin’s bribe was offered, as if the agreement held no consequences.

How far back would we have to go to find the blink of time in which a wiser choice—a different choice—would have changed everything?

I learned and taught that a person doesn’t burn to death by falling on the fire, but by staying there. I learned, too, that grace heals scars, massages the stiffness out of losses, creates purpose out of pain. And that the deeper the mine of shame, the richer the vein of gratitude.

Ivy—1951

The white aluminum tree—bare except for clumps of tinsel, per her dad’s request—crowded the corner of the petite living room. But the way it sparkled as the sun hit it in the morning, or as the rotating red, green, and blue spotlight illuminated it at night, made it mesmerizing, if untraditional. Anna appreciated the aluminum more than Ivy did and asked that her wheelchair be positioned to face the tree as she told her stories on the days she felt up to sitting. It gave her an unobstructed view of the cardboard nativity set at its base.

“Did you find purpose in the pain of losing Josiah?”

Anna fingered the locket at her throat, as she so often did. It rested lower on her chest than it must have when she weighed more than a flyswatter. “Some distress”—she drew a breath—“has no end point this side of eternity.”

“I don’t know that I can live without Drew.”

“And if you have no choice?”

A band of tightness radiated across Ivy’s abdomen and around to the small of her back. “I’m not ready.”

“We never are, dear.”

“For any of this. I’m not ready for metal Christmas trees. For giving birth. For raising this child without his father. For living indefinitely with mine. For getting to the end of your story.”

Anna closed her eyes and didn’t open them.

“Anna?”

“I want so badly to meet your Drew. It makes an ache inside of me that I think will crush me. It’s as if I feel in my own body a hint of what you must feel in yours. That’s what love does.” She opened her eyes then, glassy, glistening, tired-looking. “Time’s running out for both of us, Ivy.”

“I think I have my answer already.”

“Which one?”

“I think the only glimpse I’ll ever have of Drew is in the face of this child.” She caressed the mound that held her baby, soothing it as she would if rubbing the little one’s back while she or he slept in the waiting crib in the other room. The lullaby of the circles she traced were as much for her as for the baby she cradled. Another wave of tightness stretched across her muscles. She rubbed it away.

“Ivy?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Are you now willing to talk to Drew’s family?”

She curled the corner of the notebook paper. “I wrote to them.”

Anna leaned forward in her chair. “You did? I’m proud of you. You told them everything?”

“I asked if they’d heard from Drew. I said that I was concerned about him and needed to get in contact with him.”

“Skirting the truth.”

“It didn’t seem fair for them to know about the baby before Drew does. And yes, it’s another twisted consequence of not being honest from the beginning.”

Anna tilted her head to the side. “Did they write back?”

“Just one word.”

“One word?”

A sour taste flavored the saliva that pooled between her tongue and teeth. “It starts with a
w
and rhymes with
more
.” She swallowed hard. “They already know.”

“Rhymes with—? Oh. Oh, dear.”

What was it about Anna that made it so easy for Ivy to spill her soul? “I can only think of two ways they might have found out. Someone from here in Clairmont told them. Or  . . . ”

“Or  . . .  ?”

“Or Drew told them after he found out.” Gripped by a pain that flashed through her like lightning, she paused to let its intensity fade before finishing her thought. “And that would explain why I haven’t heard from him.”

Morning dawned with new snow and no new contractions. They’d passed in the night, unlike other kinds of pain.

Anna begged for another hour’s sleep, commenting that the heavy crop of pinecones and the amount of black on each end of the wooly worms portended a harsh winter ahead and misery for her
ar-thur-itis
. So Ivy and her father shared the breakfast table alone. The newspaper headlines drilled the ongoing dangers in Korea, despite the peace talks. Celery on sale at the Piggly Wiggly. Holiday bazaars at several local churches. More MacArthur hubbub.

Ornell folded the paper and set it beside his glass of tomato juice on the yellow Formica table. “You have plans for Christmas Eve?”

A ready-to-be-born baby kept Ivy from sitting close enough to the aluminum edge of the table. She held her breath, waiting for the cramping to start again. Maybe today. Maybe next week. Maybe Christmas Eve. “I don’t know, Dad. Do you have plans?”

“Could we maybe have deviled ham?”

“Okay.”

He pointed to the folded paper. “Candlelight service at Trinity Church that night. Thought about going.”

Oh, Anna. You’ve gotten through to him, too!

Ivy took a deep breath to slow her heart rate. “Anna would say I’ve more than approached my time of confinement.”

“What?”

“That’s what they used to call it when a woman was ready to give birth.”

“Now?”

“No, not now, Dad. Soon.”

His gaze darted around the room, as if searching for a safe place to land. “Well, then.”

27

Becky—2013

There was no joy in Mudville  . . .  but there was neither joy nor mud at all in Monica’s household. Becky’s once-a-week cleaning job still felt like a mercy hiring, and the discomfort about what they both knew about each other’s daughters—a link that should have drawn them together—stood between them like a thick acrylic barrier. See-through, but impenetrable.

Becky suspected Monica intentionally timed leaving the house before Becky showed up with her knee pads and cleaning supplies. She often saw Monica’s SUV rounding the corner toward downtown when pulling her own car into Monica’s drive. Too coincidental to be coincidence.

This day, though, Monica sat at the kitchen island, worrying a cup of tea into dizziness when Becky entered the rear-of-the-house kitchen.

“Oh, you’re home! Sorry, I would have knocked.”

Monica looked up, a tight smile fighting for legitimacy. “Yes, I wanted to talk to you.”

“Great,” she said, depositing her coat, boots, and bucket of preferred cleaning supplies near the door.
Ooo. New hall tree for coats. Antique. Nice. Fits the place
.

Monica pushed a cup of tea toward her.

“Thanks. Is that the ginger peach I like so much? Smells like it.”

“Comforting.”

“Soothing.”

“Smooth.” Monica’s line of sight seemed somewhere beyond where Becky stood.

Becky turned to look. Nothing. Windows. A well-maintained but now snow-covered backyard. A handful of apple trees on the rise at the far edge of the property, their branches clothed in individual late-winter snowy sweaters with sequins sewn in for sparkle. She pivoted to face her friend. “I’m glad we’ll have a chance to talk. I’ve missed you. How’s Brianne?”