“I have a skort.”
“A . . . skort? That sounds like a strong drink. I could use one about now.”
I got huffy. We were in Charlie’s and my bedroom—my bedroom now—and it had been Charlie who’d bought me my first skort and matching shirt as a birthday present the year we got married so I’d have something nice to wear out on the patio. That was where I’d planted the flower beds, around the edges. The reds and yellows and purples brightened it up so much, and down here, they bloom ten months a year, sometimes eleven. Louisa sure couldn’t say that about Indiana farm country. The winters are brutal. Maybe she thought I’d developed Alzheimer’s on that subject.
There might have been a touch of sarcasm in my tone when I said, “A skort is a pair of shorts that’s fashioned to look like a skirt. As people who don’t buy their clothes at Goodwill know.” I’d climbed on my high horse and was about to go from a trot to a gallop.
“Well, Miss High-and-Mighty, you can pack your skort if you want to, but you’ll be needing jeans back home where normal people live.”
We were not off to a great start.
* * *
Right after I signed the contract to put the house on the market, I met with Charlie’s lawyer, who advised me not to make any major decisions for a year.
“Oh,” I said. Now you tell me. “Why is that?” I asked, glad that Louisa was at my house emptying kitchen cupboards instead of in this thick-carpeted office with the fat mahogany desk and brass lamps and hot to inform the attorney that he was a blazing idiot.
“Always best to get your feet on the ground, get a sense of what you really want. It’s too emotional a time, too much adjustment. Give yourself time to grieve,” he said kindly. “You’re in great shape financially with Charlie’s investments and pension. Just wait.”
“Thank you,” I said, shook his hand and got out fast after he’d ended the appointment with that advice. Charlie had set up a living trust, so everything was already in my name. That good, generous man. I’d made the appointment with the lawyer to change the beneficiaries of my own will. Louisa and Gary. Who did I have now but my people?
When I got home, I didn’t tell Louisa what he’d said. Why bother? We’d already gone to the mall here—because there’s not one anywhere near the farm—and bought me two pairs of jeans and some “normal people shorts,” and they were packed, along with two flannel shirts and two long-sleeve T-shirts and four short-sleeve T-shirts. And a sweatshirt. “This’ll hold you into fall, if it comes early,” she said. “If you need anything else, you can wear mine.”
“The bag lady look. Save me,” I muttered.
“Huh?”
“Thank you,” I said.
It was a done deal. It hadn’t exactly been a year. I hoped two weeks was close enough.
* * *
Gary was going to drive the U-Haul—not that it was one of those huge ones—north to Louisa’s farm in Shandon, Indiana, which hardly merits a dot on a map. I would have hired a company, but they are both used to being frugal. As I’ve mentioned, too, Louisa wouldn’t hear of my getting my own place. We decided which of my furniture we’d keep, swapping it out for her much older versions, which she said might have some chicken poop stains on it. “Seriously, Louisa? We’ll need to have this treated then, with stain-guard stuff,” I said. “Do you know what good furniture costs?” Louisa has a perfectly fine chicken coop behind the house, but in good weather she lets the hens free-range during the day and has been known to leave her back door open. Have they wandered into the house? You heard it here first.
“Not a clue,” she said, all blithe like it didn’t matter in the least. “But that chair is a pretty color. Sort of matches Abigail’s tail feathers. And it’s comfortable, so we’ll get rid of my old blue one.” We were surrounded by boxes of my stuff we were getting rid of. It didn’t seem like a huge sacrifice on her part.
“Abigail, huh? A new one.” I huffed. Louisa started out naming all her chickens and farm animals after characters in Little Women, because she’d been named after our mother’s favorite writer, Louisa May Alcott. A little weird, I know. I have no idea how our mother came up with CarolSue, probably for a mysterious, differently weird reason. When Louisa ran out of those characters’ names after so many chickens and animals, she turned to using names of other Transcendentalists. “Wonderful,” I said. “How many others haven’t you mentioned?”
“I told you about Abigail!”
“Don’t remember. Anyway, I’m asking you about the ones you haven’t mentioned.”
“You’ll love Abigail. And Sarah.”
“What else?”
“Well, Rosie Two isn’t really new anymore and she’s strictly outside. And you know about the puppy.”
“So just a dog, the two additional chickens, one you’d forgotten to mention. And being strictly outside would be appropriate for a goat. Wouldn’t you say?”
She can make me crazy, Louisa can. I didn’t let her see my tears. She’d feel bad, but her Plan was set in cement, immutable, and I guessed it didn’t matter if I grieved here or there.
Chapter 3
CarolSue
On the plane from Atlanta to Indianapolis, Louisa sat in the middle and gave me the window seat. She said she thought I’d like to have the view. Bless her heart, does she think I’m too grief-addled to figure out that she just doesn’t want an extra person to climb over to get to the restroom? Her bladder is the size of a pea. I told her not to have all that coffee, but did she listen?
I didn’t want to wake her to get to the restroom myself, nor the man in the aisle seat who might have been sleeping. Anyway, the man had earbuds stuck in, and it was darn impressive that they didn’t fall out since there was so much hair growing wild there. His eyebrows looked like shrubbery, and there was a pretty amazing amount of nasal hair, too, but his head was bald. The point is that seeing him made me miss Charlie because Charlie was so different, kept himself so groomed, and had a full head of hair that was not charcoal shot with silver anymore, but more silver laced with charcoal. If he’d been on the plane, he’d have been sitting next to me, and he’d have asked me which seat I’d like.
Now, though, he wasn’t and wouldn’t ever be again. Louisa was snoring lightly, and I rested my head back and watched the clouds through the window. Somewhere on a highway below, Gary was driving what remained of my worldly possessions, jigsawed into a U-Haul, to Indiana. My life with Charlie was over. I did not want this to be happening. I couldn’t endure this. And yet, from the beginning, I’d known I would. And I’d said, “Yes, yes, I will. Yes.”
* * *
When I met Charlie, Phillip had divorced me twenty years earlier and I’d sworn off men forever. Good riddance. I’d married him before I turned twenty-one and I miscarried a total of seven babies before I had my last, my stillborn son. Phillip ground me under his heel when he left, claiming he couldn’t take the pain and grief of so many ghost children. What kind of excuse was that for leaving the mother of those lost babies? In short, I realized I’d been better off before I married, and I’d been smart enough to stay single after Phillip, even if that book about regaining your virginity was fake, and Louisa said she’d meant it as a divorce joke to lighten my mood. She should have known I wouldn’t get it at the time. Anyway, I was fifty-two when I met Charlie. Why on earth would I allow myself to be vulnerable again just because The Change was upon me, and of course a man wouldn’t expect me to bear him a child.
No, avoiding men didn’t have anything to do with children anymore. It was knowing that the person I’d trust to stand by me might break that promise whenever life decided to replace moisture evaporated from the ocean with my salty tears. Best to be alone