When the Morning Glory Blooms (7 page)

She had no confidence that God was interested in her prayers but trusted He cared about a young soldier willing to lay his life on the line for his country.

I have to get to work. I’ll tell you more about that in the next letter. I like the old folks’ home better than waitressing, even though my waitressing is what brought us together. Remember how clumsy I was when I served you that first
time? You had me so flustered, I couldn’t put one foot in front of the other.

Your letters keep me going, Drew. I miss you so much!

All my love,

Ivy

How different Ivy’s letters sounded compared to Drew’s! Sticking to safe subjects made her letters more like a round-robin written by a cousin dispensing family news and weather reports. Drew seemed to dip his pen in his heart to find the ink with which to write.

My darling Ivy,

I woke this morning with a pain in my chest. Our company medic examined me thoroughly and came to the same conclusion I’d drawn. Missing you has eaten a hole in my heart! There is no cure for me until I see you again.

I’ll always regret our not having gotten married before I shipped out. I don’t know why that would make any difference to me right now, but it would. I want you to be my wife, Ivy. My wife!

You said you didn’t need a big, fancy wedding to satisfy you, even though I know you’ve probably been dreaming about one since you were a little girl. I wish I’d listened to you. When I got called up, I couldn’t imagine our just running off to a justice of the peace in our street clothes with no ring, no plans, no reception, no family around us. Now those things
seem like small concerns. I just want you to be mine  . . .  forever.

We haven’t always done things right. I mean, the way we should have. But when I get back to the States, I swear the first thing I’m going to do is get you the biggest ring I can afford. When you see me, I’ll be down on one knee.

Ivy moaned. Don’t swear it, Drew. You don’t know the whole story.

The thought of putting my arms around you again makes me a better soldier. Honest! I want to push the North Koreans and the Chinese back where they belong and end this thing so I can come home to you. Did you hear there are rumors of peace talks? Hurry up, Truman!

Every night I fall asleep with your picture pressed to my heart. Your face shows up in all my dreams. That sounds sappy, but it’s true. Some of the other guys in my platoon complain they can’t sleep for my calling out your name in the night.

When the Greyhound pulled up in front of the diner the day I left, the jukebox played “Moon River,” remember? There’s a sorry-looking river in my line of sight where we’re dug in. As muddy as that worthless piece of water is in the daytime, it glowed when the moon-light hit it tonight while I was on watch. That’s what you’ve done to me, Ivy. My life was pretty dull before it felt the light of your love.

Yours forever and a day,

Drew

She refolded the letter and swallowed hard. His tenderness should have thrilled her. Instead it made her uncomfortable. How would the fragile web of his love hold up under the anvil weight of what she couldn’t bring herself to tell him? How would his dark eyes—coffee, no cream—respond if she could tell him face-to-face? With disappointment? Anger? One thing she knew. They wouldn’t register gratitude. A baby was the last thing he needed right now.

Drew’s sense of honor would press him to do “the right thing.” They’d be married. And every day, Drew would resent the child’s intrusion in his plans. That was the way of reluctant fathers.

That’s what Ivy learned from her own reluctant father.

Ivy clutched the letter to her heart, willing it to grow arms like Drew’s and envelop her with forgiveness.

He loves me, but for how long?

5

Ivy—1951

Ivy fingered the envelope in her uniform pocket, the paper representing both closeness and distance. As long as Drew remained unaware of what else she hugged tight to her soul, she could live in the fairy tale that things might work out. If he came home. And if he forgave her.

She opened the staff entrance to the Maple Grove Nursing Home. Lemon and cinnamon. A fastidious housekeeping staff and a creative cook—two things that made Clairmont’s Maple Grove Nursing Home different from other facilities caring for the elderly and infirm. She’d heard the horror stories of places that didn’t deserve the word “home” in their name. Glorified prisons in their starkness, smelling of untended bedpans and warmed-over cabbage soup.

The cinnamon fragrance drifted from the kitchen “on warm waves of wonderful,” as one of the more lucid residents once described it. Ivy stepped farther into the facility, appreciating waves like this after her near-collision with Helene’s soaked-through little one.

She clicked open her metal locker in the nurses’ lounge and dropped her purse onto its floor. Shutting the locker door was impossible without another clang of metal.

“Hey! A little sympathy for the walking wounded!”

Ivy turned toward the voice. Jill.

An unlit cigarette bobbed and danced, stuck to the woman’s limp lips. “You trying to make my headache worse?”

“Sorry,” Ivy said. “Rough night?”

“The night was great.” Jill leaned against her own locker and rubbed her forehead as if to erase whatever memory it held. “It’s the morning after that takes its toll on a person.”

“Wouldn’t know.”

Jill raised her narrowed eyes. “You wouldn’t know what a hangover feels like?”

How far into this conversation did Ivy dare wander? “I have an idea. Look, I need to punch in.”

“Yeah, me too. Time to pacify the ancient and the addle-brained.”

Ivy’s back stiffened. “Jill!”

Jill pulled the cigarette from her mouth and gestured with it. “Don’t tell me you like working here.”

Working was better than sitting alone in the apartment above the dry cleaner day after day. Did Ivy like working
here
? It had its rough moments. “I enjoy the residents. Most of them.”

Jill snorted her response and took a long drag on her now-lit Camel.

She eyed her coworker. “What made you choose nursing?”

Jill bent to retie the white laces on her polished white nurse’s shoes. “Didn’t want to be a teacher.” Her pinched sentence ended in a
whoo
of exhaled smoke.

Would the day ever come when a woman could choose a job she was suited for?

Ivy fingered last week’s limp airmail envelope in the pocket of her uniform with her hand as she slid the stiff card into the time clock with her other hand and heard its sinister metallic clunk.

Punched in.

Without needing to remove the envelope from her pocket, she knew exactly what it looked like. The familiar, boxy handwriting. The heart-pounding postmark: Seoul, Korea, July 7, 1951—only a month in transit this time. A return address with power to rearrange her internal organs. Navy ink, paled slightly by the ocean crossing, by the sun and air and humidity, by the Army transport and freight plane and ground truck and on-foot mailman that brought the paper treasure to her door.

Drew’s latest love letter. They didn’t come every week, but often enough to testify to his sincerity. He was too good to her. Better than she deserved. Was it just selfishness that kept her from telling him the truth? The longer she postponed the news that was sure to bring their relationship to an end, the longer she could wrap herself in the warmth of his devotion.

She wasn’t just lying now, she was
using
him! How long would her sins pile up before the ground opened to swallow her?

Ivy stood behind the wall of medicine cupboards and discreetly adjusted her stockings so the seams were straight in the back. The garter clips holding them dug into her thighs, a button of dented flesh forming already under each one. Regulations demanded hose, even on sweltering summer days. A few years prior, they’d been forbidden because of the previous war’s rationing.

The clunk that imprinted Jill’s time card startled Ivy. Her fingernail snagged her stocking. By the day’s end, the tiny hole would be a full-fledged run, thigh to toe. Could she never be put together for a whole day? Did her scars always have to show?

Show. Soon her biggest scar would show.

Jill slid her time card back into the steel holding slot not far from Ivy’s. “Welcome to another shift at the funny farm.”

“Do you have to call it that?”

“What are you flapping your lips about?”

“Never mind.”

“No. What did you mean?”

“It’s just  . . .” How badly did she want to stay on Jill’s good side? Riding a wave of distractions, the moment passed.

“You’re going to have a time with 117 today.”

“Anna? What’s wrong with her?”

“Stubborn old coot.”

“Jill!” Ivy tsked.

At the percussive sound, Jill looked up. “Don’t flip your cap. She couldn’t hear me if I was standing on the edge of her ear lobe.”

“What happened?”

“Refuses to take her medicine. Yesterday, she’d have spit it on me if I hadn’t ducked.”

“Honestly?”

Jill’s rubber-soled white shoes squeaked as she pivoted to leave the nurses’ lounge. “I’ve got to get that review report done. And I do not relish the tongue wagging I’ll hear if our illustrious head nurse finds out I failed to get that biddy to take her morning meds again today.”

“Let me talk to Anna.”

“Good luck.”

“I can’t administer her meds, but I’ll see if I can get her to cooperate.”

“More power to you. Don’t let her nab you with one of her rambling stories. You’ll never get any work done. The senile imagination. Isn’t it a hoot?” She shook her head. “No explaining some people.”

Anna Grissom’s eyes lit up like a flashlight with fresh batteries when Ivy entered her room.

“Mrs. Carrington! You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

Ivy let the misnomer—
Mrs
.—go uncorrected. If the staff and residents didn’t believe her married, she’d soon be fodder for the rumor mill.

“Doing okay this morning, Miss Anna?”

“Been better. At my age, is there any other reasonable response?”

“How old are you now? I could look it up, but  . . .”

“I was born the day Lee surrendered at Appomattox.”

“And that was  . . .  ?”

“The end of the Civil War.” The look of incredulity on Anna’s well-lined face said,
How could you not know that?

“I mean the
date
, Anna.”

“Oh. Yes. April 9, 1865.”

“Eighty-six.”

“Sixty-five, dear.”

“No, I mean you’re eighty-six years old, Anna.”

“That’s right. Am I confused, or are you? Silly question.” Anna reached a gnarled hand to brush a stray hair off her forehead.

Ivy adjusted the lap robe around Anna’s legs, tucking her securely into the wheelchair in which the woman would spend most of her day. “Anna, your nurse tells me you gave her fits about taking your medicines this morning.”

“I gave
her
fits?”

“You saw it differently? I thought you might.”

“It’s my teeth.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve still got all my own teeth, or most of them.”

“That’s wonderful, Anna, but—”

“Did I ever tell you about Puff’s teeth? Now, there was a man with less than a full complement.”

Another train of thought derailed. “Your medications, Miss Anna?”

“I didn’t take them.”

“I know.”

“Because of my teeth.”

Ivy wondered how much searching it might take to find a container with a secure enough lid that it could keep Anna’s musings from spreading where they didn’t belong, like egg whites on linoleum. “What?”

“I’ve got my own teeth, still.”

“Yes?”

“And I can’t abide cold.”

“Anna, I’m sorry, but I don’t understand—”

“That Jill person.” Anna’s sigh seemed to rattle her skeletal system. “She gives me ice water to swallow my pills with. I’ve told her my teeth are sensitive. Doesn’t seem to care. Every day she works this wing, she hands me my pills and a glass of icy water. And yesterday I decided to hold out for room temperature.”

“Oh.”

“Does that make me ornery?”

Ivy bent to lay her too-warm, fleshy hand on Anna’s bird-bone arm. “No.”

“Cantankerous? Jill said I was cantankerous. I remember having a pig once that was cantankerous. I know the difference. Did I ever tell you about Ham?”

“Ham?”

“The pig. Try to keep up, dear.”

Ivy smiled. Only Anna could chide her without guile.

“I called him Ham. His real name was  . . .  was  . . .  oh, I forget what Puff called him.”

“Anna, I’d love to stay and chat, but I have eight other patients today, some of whom are
genuinely
cantankerous. I’ll stop back a little later. Can I tell Jill that you’ll take your medicines without a fuss if she brings you room-temperature water?”

“Of course!” Anna’s eyes sparkled with a precocious child’s delight. “I’m not here to make waves. I’m too old for that.”