Hearts Left Behind (5 page)

Just then a familiar car pulled into the
cemetery. 
A long
silver Lincoln Continental that
I recognized from the church parking lot.  It drove right in front of me
and then slowed to a stop on the far side of the cemetery.  After a
moment, Phyllis Ross emerged.  I waved, but she did not see me.  She
pulled a spade and a colorful arrangement of wildflowers out of the trunk of
the car and carried it to a nearby headstone.  For the next several
minutes, I watched Phyllis do the meticulous work of planting those flowers by
the grave of her deceased husband PJ.  She worked quietly,
effortlessly.  After tenderly tamping down the earth around the flowers,
she returned the spade to the trunk of the car and brought back a water pail,
which she filled at a nearby pump.  After watering the flowers, she
brushed off her knees, washed her hands, and shook them dry.  In front of
the grave with hands clasped together loosely – back bent from the years it
carried and the burdens it bore - she looked down with the warm smile that
she’d been wearing all along.
  When
she left, I went over to PJ’s headstone.

Beloved Husband and Father

Peter Ross, Jr. “PJ”

1911-1995

Beloved
.
  There it was again.  That was the
thing, wasn’t it? 
Daughter, husband, father, whatever.
 
Year of birth, year of death, the dash in-between.
 
If you were beloved, then, man, you had done something, hadn’t you?  I
thought about Beatrice Hart and her little girl Laura Jane, whose obituary was
folded inside my wallet even now.  That little girl who hadn’t lived to
see the age of four had changed me forever. 
And so had
PJ Ross who had lived to eighty-four.
 
Once
beloved, always beloved.

I had a pen, a notebook, and a vodka tonic.  The
paper remained blank until I figured out that what I actually needed was a pen,
a notebook, and two vodka tonics.  But it was the third drink that
loosened the lid on my emotions and by the fourth that popped it off.  I
tilted my head back in my chair, closed my eyes, and let the vodka remember
what it wanted to remember.  Let it feel what it wanted to feel.  The
past swirled before me and I began to write.  I thought about good old PJ
and jotted down the memories that came. 
Coaching my
Farm League baseball team when I was six.
 
Greeting
me with a handshake and a warm smile every time he saw me in church.
 
How he could click a little wink at you and make you feel like he knew you
inside and out and liked you anyway. 
Its
okay, we all make mistakes.  I like
you.  You’re a good person. 
I
pictured him bouncing along on his John Deere tractor out in his fields of
corn. 
Planting in the spring, harvesting in the fall.
 
I thought of that old tractor sitting in a dark barn, covered with cobwebs and
buried in dust. 
As
unliving
as old PJ himself and rightly so.

By my sixth vodka tonic, I had managed to put words to
the slideshow in my head.  I carefully folded the letter with sharp even
creases and slid it into an envelope that I did not seal.  I couldn’t wait
for morning.  I left right then and there and again walked the half-mile
to that dark and lifeless lot.  Old Man Moon shined down a little light
for me and I was able to find PJ fairly easily.  I stood in front of the
headstone with my hands clasped together in front of me the same way that
Phyllis had earlier that same day.  Then I pulled the envelope out of my
back pocket and paper-clipped it to receptive flowery fingers. 

I went out to the cemetery every day that week. 
Talked to Ethan and Katie, and kept watch on the letter I had left for
Phyllis.  By Saturday afternoon it was gone and so Sunday morning I
decided to go to church just to see if Phyllis Ross looked different
somehow.  She didn’t.  I thought maybe she’d raise her hand during
joys and concerns time and tell the congregation about the letter, but she
didn’t and it saddened me.  My joy was all wrapped up in hers.

In the fellowship hall after the service, I was
listening to Albert Todd talk about how the Church Trustees Committee was in
search of a back-up generator
so if
you know anybody who has one or wants to donate one or
….when from behind me I heard a very dramatic Phyllis
Ross tell her friends Sally Coleman and Carol Carney about the “wonderful
letter” someone had left by PJ’s grave.  I swallowed my donut hole and
choked down the rest of the last bit of ridiculously strong decaffeinated
coffee in my Styrofoam cup.  I feigned an increasing interest in Albert’s
generator talk, but backed myself into a position where I could better
eavesdrop on Phyllis and friends.

“Goodness, how lovely.  Who was it from?” asked
Carol.

“Well that’s the thing,” Phyllis answered, “it wasn’t
signed.”

Sally put a hand over her heart and gasped loudly.

“It wasn’t signed?” Carol whispered. 
“Oh my, an anonymous letter.”

“At the bottom of the letter it just said
He won’t be forgotten
.”

“I’ll bet it was Pastor Judy,” said Sally.  “She
was very fond of PJ.”

“I thought of that, too,” Phyllis said, “but I don’t
think so.  For one thing, Pastor Judy’s only been here four years and something
about that letter made me think it was from someone who had known PJ for longer
than that.  Plus, the handwriting looks like a man’s.”

I shifted a half-turn on my feet and could see them
out of the corner of my eye.  I nodded my head toward Albert, but
fine-tuned my ears into the ladies’
conversation.  Carol and Sally peppered Phyllis with questions from the
left and the right.  Breathy and desperate, they gasped out their
speculations.

Left:
“Well,
who do you think it was?”

Right:
“Must
have been Ivan Sheridan.  He and PJ were friends since they were boys.”

Left:
“No,
I bet it was Cal
Dierke
, he’s more the literary type
than Ivan.”

Right:
“Maybe
it was Glen Hoover?  He replaced PJ as Sunday
usher
and he works for the post office?”

Left:
“The
Post Office?  Now what difference does that make?  You think that
letter went through the post?”

Right:
“I
don’t know, maybe.  It could have.”

Left:
“Yes,
Sally, that’s right.  It was special delivery and PJ signed for it
himself.”

Sally gasped at this and stared at Carol with mouth
agape.  Carol turned to Phyllis and dipped an apologetic look. 
Phyllis smiled tenderly and grabbed the hands of her two good friends.

“What do you think, Phyllis?” Sally asked. 

Phyllis sounded dubious, “I don’t know, that just
doesn’t seem like something that any of them would do.”

“Well who then?”

There are some memories that are so corner-of-the-eye
difficult to recall that they are like that powerful dream that startles you
into consciousness, but by morning has faded into nothing more than a general
recollection of intense emotion.  In that living waking moment, you can’t
imagine how you could possibly forget that foundation-rocking sleep-movie, and
yet we always seem to manage to lose the details.  Fortunately or
unfortunately, with both dream and memory the mind will fill in the gaps to
help complete the story in a way that makes it memorable.  And so it is
with my memories of my Aunt Paula.

Aunt Paula lived two houses away from Grandpa and
Grandma and had been the town mayor forever.  She was also the town
beautician, her living room the salon.  Henry Ford once famously said that
people could have their Model-T in any color they wanted as long as it was
black.  And so it was at my Aunt Paula’s beauty parlor.  The salon
patrons, some of whom seemed to have multiple appointments weekly, entered that
parlor like loose items on the assembly line and reemerged hours later as the
finely engineered finished product, packaged up nicely in box and string. 
Riding out on a conveyor belt and sporting dreadfully similar hairdos,
cellophane-wrapped and fastened securely to their heads - each one
an
exquisite black Model-T.  My mind has somehow tied
these memories of Paula’s beauty shop to the song Hotel California by The
Eagles and that is the tune that plays in my head with this music video
memory.  You can check out any time you like, but you can never
leave. 

Now, Paula had not only cornered the market on hair
care for the elderly woman (a perennially strong demographic – Willow Grove
women seem to age quickly, but die off slow), but as a Mary Kay representative
she was also the sole source for female beauty products in town.  And
nobody dared to compete.  She defended her turf like a street corner tough
peddling heroine on Chicago’s south side.  One time, when she had failed
to win the Mary Kay pink Cadillac she went out and bought herself a white Caddy
and had it painted pink.  When customers would ask her about the car she’d
put on a real modest look and say something like “Now, you know I’m not one to
brag.  But I really did work hard for that car.  I earned it.”

So Paula’s home was part beauty salon, part Mary Kay
retail shop, and part City Hall.  Perhaps predictably, it was also the
a-number-one, hands-down, undisputed Heavyweight
Champion rumor mill in town.  When it comes to collecting intelligence,
the CIA should be so efficient.

The women of Willow Grove didn’t go to Paula’s to get
their hair done and to socialize.  They went to socialize and
“Oh, why don’t you go ahead and do my hair as long
as I’m just sitting here anyway.”
 
I’ve long suspected that Paula launched her business by slyly throwing one of
those clear plastic aprons around the neck of some chatty old Willow Grove bird
paying a visit and simply asking, “Ok, so what are we doing today?”  Heck,
I’ll bet there were times when Paula just sat those women in a chair and
gossiped for an hour without ever touching a hair on their heads. 
Probably the women wouldn’t even notice.  Probably they just wrote a check
and walked right back out with all the same hairs that they came in with.

Now, I do like my Aunt Paula.  She’s
just a little weird. 
And loud.
 
And pushy.
 
And opinionated.
 
But also kind-hearted – a real shirt-off-her back type.
 
That was Paula, the person you went to for hair care, makeup, the latest
gossip, and the shirt off her back.

T
hree of Paula’s
most loyal patrons were Phyllis Ross, Sally Coleman, and Carol Carney. 
And as I walked in Paula’s salon with a laundry basket full of towels that
Grandma had washed for her, there they all were, sitting under those
mad-scientist hair-dryer helmets, facing straight ahead and talking loud, like
they were each on the same ledge of a tall building and threatening to
jump. 

“Oh, hi there
,
Tucker.  Would you be a dear and put those away on that shelf for me,”
Paula said.

Sitting under
a
fourth hair-drying, brain-sucking monstrosity was Beatrice Hart’s aunt
Lucy. 

“WHAT?” screamed
Phyllis.

“I SAID BEATRICE GOT THE SAME KIND OF LETTER THAT YOU
GOT, PHYLLIS.”

“SHE DID? WHEN WAS THIS?”

“IT WAS RIGHT AFTER WE LOST LAURA JANE AND IT WAS JUST
LIKE YOU DESCRIBED. 
A LETTER OUT AT THE CEMETRY.”

“REALLY?” said Carol and Sally together.

“DOES BEATRICE KNOW WHO HERS WAS FROM?”

“NO.  SHE THOUGHT AT FIRST IT MIGHT BE FROM A
GIRL SHE USED TO GO TO SCHOOL WITH.”

“EXCEPT,” continued Lucy, “SHE’S DEAD.”

“DEAD?” said Carol and Sally
together.

“YES, DEAD.  PLUS SHE THOUGHT THE HANDWRITING
LOOKED MORE LIKE A MAN’S.”

“
NOW, SEE, I
THOUGHT MINE LOOKED LIKE A MAN’S HANDWRITING, TOO!” said Phyllis.

And here my Aunt Paula chimed in and started working
her magic.

“WELL, YOU KNOW,” she said, “NOT ALL WOMEN HAVE GREAT
PENMANSHIP.  I, FOR ONE, HAVE BEEN TOLD MANY TIMES THAT MY HANDWRITING
LOOKS LIKE A MAN.”

I could almost hear the mechanical clicking of the
wheels turning in Paula’s head.

“WELL, WHOEVER IT IS, I THINK THEY’RE JUST WONDERFUL,”
Sally said.  “I BROUGHT IT UP IN PRAYER GROUP LAST NIGHT AND THEY ALL
THOUGHT IT WAS WONDERFUL, TOO.  IN FACT, WE STARTED TALKING ABOUT WHO WE
MIGHT WRITE LETTERS FOR.”

“AND BESIDES,” Paula pressed on, “WHAT MAN DO YOU KNOW
WOULD DO S
OMETHING LIKE THAT? 
ESPECIALLY THE LUNKHEADS IN THIS TOWN.”

Heads and shoulders turned awkwardly as the four women
tried to gauge each other’s reactions to what Paula was saying.  “NO,
LADIES.  THIS IS THE WORK OF A WOMAN.  A MODEST WOMAN WHO – AS YOU
SAID - HAS BEEN AROUND THIS TOWN FOR A LONG TIME.”