Sadie-In-Waiting (9 page)

“Why, Hannah?” Sadie’s mind was spinning. In a family where so little of any consequence ever seemed spoken, asking about Mom remained the ultimate taboo. No one spoke of her, not even fearless Aunt Phiz. Well, Aunt Phiz had spoken of her once and Moonie promptly sent her away and they didn’t see her again for a very long time. That’s how powerful a prohibition it was. “Why would you do that?”

“
Why?
Because she’s our mother. Because we don’t know one single thing about her. Because I am facing some serious fertility issues, and I don’t have even a hint of medical history to give to the doctors to help them help me. How about that for why?”

“How about respecting Daddy’s feelings on this?” April asked quietly.

“What about our feelings? I think about Mom all the time, y’all. I wonder why she left and if she ever thinks of us. Don’t tell me you two don’t have any questions about her, that you don’t harbor a bittersweet fantasy of maybe even finding her and—”

“
Finding
her?” The words pushed at Sadie. Her knees went weak. She all but staggered at the sheer force of them coming at her. “You didn’t mention that kind of wild impossible notion to Daddy, did you?”

“I…I don’t know.” Hannah cleared her throat. “Maybe. Would it be so wrong if I did?”

“You can ask Daddy for money. You can ask Daddy for advice. You could even ask Daddy to donate a vital organ,
and he’d do it without needing to know why.” The summer breeze fanned Sadie’s face, but that did nothing to cool her passion as she gritted her teeth, took her younger sister by the shoulders and looked her square in the eye. “But you cannot ask him, after all these years, to just open himself up and talk to you about the woman who ran off and left him with three tiny children to raise all on his own.”

“But that’s not fair.”

“Fair has nothing to do with it. I gave up on life being fair a long time ago.” Sadie’s cheeks stung. “It just
is
, Hannah.”

“But if he’d only—”

“‘If only’ are two of the most destructive words known to man, Hannah.” Sadie knew whereof she spoke on that. She had wasted the better part of this last year lost in ‘if only,’ and it still dogged her so closely that she didn’t dare let her sister speak another word about it. “You cannot force Daddy to feel differently about this just because you expect it of him. And you should know by now you are never going to make him act the way you think he should.”

“But she’s our mother, and he alone can tell us about her.”

“For all he has done and all his struggles and sacrifices on our behalf, if he chooses never to speak of our mother again, we have to respect that choice,” Sadie insisted. “Right, April? Tell her.”

April hung her head.

“April?” Sadie tugged at the hem of her sister’s church-camp T-shirt. “Tell her.”

“I’m afraid I can’t, Sadie.” She met Sadie’s gaze, her eyes anxious and filled with unspoken aching. “Because while he stayed with me, I did the same thing.”

“You
what?
”

“See? It wasn’t just me,” Hannah said. “April understands how I feel. April understands.”

“I understand that of the three of us, I am the lone one who has any memories at all of Mama,” April said softly. “It’s been so long, and I’ve tried to preserve them, but they’ve begun to fade and get all jumbled up. I wanted Daddy to come stay with me because I had hoped…”

Hannah placed her hand on April’s arm. “To get your answers?”

April looked from Sadie to Hannah to Sadie again, her eyes moist. “You don’t know how hard it is to keep it all inside.”

“Did you get your answers?” Sadie asked, her voice clipped but not void of compassion. When April did not respond, Sadie looked to the ground and sighed. “You could always talk to us, sugar.”

“And tell you what? A bunch of hazy impressions about people and places I can’t rightly recall? That would be cruel to you two.”

Hannah tucked a stray hair in place and in doing so set off a cascade of red waves on the other side of her head. “Because it would be so awful for us to hear?”

“Because it might be wrong. I might be telling you something as fact that was just a dream or moment where I confused Mama with Aunt Phiz—the way I confused the park here in Wileyville with one I think I went to before Mama left.”

Sadie could understand that. It did not comfort her, but she had learned to deal with things that could only be allowed, not embraced, this past year. Sadly, she realized Hannah, who liked everything tied up in neat little bundles, would never accept the way things had to be.

“No.” April sniffled and drew her shoulders up. “Uh-uh. Talking to you two about that is a pointless exercise. Daddy’s the only living person who could confirm for me what was real and what I’d just
wanted
to be real about Mama.”

“April, you don’t have to give us details. I just want to know if you found some measure of peace,” Sadie said. All this would be worth it if someone in their family at least got that. “So did you get your answers?”

“I got…”

Hannah hunched forward, the fading sunlight through the trees obscuring her expression.

Sadie inched closer, though whether out of an instinct to protect April or to try to better read even the smallest nuance in her words and body language, Sadie didn’t know.

April’s hands slapped against her sides. She hung her head. “I got left in the dust when Daddy hopped on the lawn mower and ran away from me.”

Hannah shut her eyes. “I know that feeling.”

“He didn’t take off on your lawn mower, too, did he?” Suddenly Sadie was Miss Pragmatic, aware that she had no idea of the aftermath of Hannah’s self-professed scaring off of Moonie Shelnutt.

“I only wish he had. We’d have caught up with him pretty quick, since we have an old walk-behind electric mower.” Hannah pantomimed pushing the machine, then raised her open hands to her sides. “No, apparently he talked a friend into giving him a lift while Payt and I were at work.”

“Do you know who?”

“How could we know for sure? Daddy only knows three-quarters of all the people in town. Could’ve been his café cronies, or his insurance-roundtable pals or even one of the willing widows at the seniors circle at church.”

Just then Payt appeared at the door, the phone practically glued to his ear, and shouted, “Found him!”

Hannah spun around. “Where is he?”

“Sitting on Sadie’s front porch,” came the reply through a relaxed and ready smile.

“My…?” Sadie tried to make sense of it all.

Her sisters didn’t seem burdened with that problem.

“Well.” Hannah laced her arms over her chest.

“I couldn’t have said it better myself, little sister.” April cocked her hip and mirrored Hannah’s pose. “Well.”

Being totally devoid of anything remotely appropriate, witty or wise to say about this unexpected turn of events, Sadie managed a weak smile and asked, “Well,
what?
”

“Well, it looks like the decision worthy of King Solomon has been decided and you have been chosen.” April gave a quick nod of her head as if to sanction her own decree. Her pony tail followed suit half a second behind.

“Yep.” Hannah sighed and, in a tone that wasn’t quite smug and wasn’t quite sympathetic, summed it all up, “Looks like Daddy has chosen his favorite home away from home, and—no surprise—it’s Sadie’s.”

Sadie didn’t know whether to celebrate or panic.

“Let’s just hope she can do a better job keeping a handle on the old man than either of us did,” April added.

Panic
, Sadie decided on the spot. Definitely panic.

“S
adie, you know how I hate graveyards.” Moonie picked his way along behind her. Now and again he’d prod the path with the cane he had used ever since his car accident. The doctor hadn’t found any specific injury beyond some bruises, but the old fellow claimed the whole thing left him “a bit shaky,” and so they’d gotten him the antique walking stick to help steady his way.

Sadie suspected her daddy just liked using the polished wooden staff with the brass dog’s-head handle because of the instant attention it garnered him. Always, wherever he went, people peppered him with questions. Was he all right? What had happened? What could they do for him?

Funny, Sadie thought, in all these months she had felt emotionally and spiritually “a bit shaky,” none of those folks had rallied around her. The only questions she had been asked were:
Why don’t you snap out of it? Can you do this for me? When’s dinner?

Not that she blamed anyone. Without any outward manifestation like Moonie’s cane, everyone probably assumed she was just fine. And that’s exactly what she
would have told everyone if they had asked if they could do anything for her, that she was fine. Maybe in this instance she should act a bit more like her daddy, and not be afraid to solicit a little support.

One eye squinting, Moonie poked his cane into a patch of thick grass and took another step.

“What’s the matter? You afraid the Lord wants to get a hold of your charming self so badly that if you make one false move, the very ground might open up and swallow you alive?”

“’Course not.” He didn’t sound convinced. “What possessed you to take a job in a place like this anyway?”

I must’ve taken total leave of my senses
. Sadie stifled her first impulsive response and took a moment to riffle back through the set of ill-conceived choices and out-of-control consequences that had nudged her reluctantly to this spot. Which event, if any, would illustrate it all to a man who first and foremost embraced the concept of life-affirming, joy-seeking self-determination?

I wanted to make my family sorry they ignored me?
Too pathetic, even to tell her own father.

Everybody told me I’d be great in the job and I didn’t want to let them down?
There was a one-way ticket to live-for-your-own-self lectureville.

“Why? Why
did
I take this job?” She had to have a good reason.

Wrapped in a hug of her own tightly woven arms, she took a moment to survey the serene setting.

Pale headstones, their words all but worn away, broken and brackish with age, jutted upward, often at odd angles from the land along the original wrought-iron fence. The newer markers—gray, pink or black granite polished to a mirror finish—filled row after row in the neatly kept rec
tangles framed by gravel lanes. Sweet yet somber figures of angels or lambs, usually denoting the death of a child, dotted the landscape. And crosses. In Barrett and Bartlett Memorial Gardens, every third grave site claimed a cross for its monument.

As much as the shops and offices of the downtown to their east, as much as the homes and churches and schools fanned out over blocks in every direction from them, this tiny preserve of land told the story of Wileyville and its people. Sadie tipped her head to one side and exhaled, long and slow. In a small way, it told the story of all of God’s children.

Everyone born to this earth came to the same end.
Whether we live by grace or by greed, with exuberance or apathy, whether we treat others with respect or revile them, we all hurtle toward this same conclusion
, Sadie reflected.
It’s all too brief, and in time all we achieved and owned will become someone else’s treasure, someone else’s burden
.

Knowing that it would not all end here, Sadie found solace in the awareness that one day all earthly troubles would fall away.

From where they now stood, along the far western edge, where the presold plots butted up against the dwindling land set aside for what was once called the Paupers’ Field, Sadie could hear the laughter of children on the swings.

A young mother clapped her hands and urged, “Hold on. Go higher. Don’t give up. You can do it.”

And, though Sadie could not always make herself trust it, this testament to the possibilities life held served as a reminder that no matter what might weigh her down, she had help and she had hope. Even in the midst of her confusion and turmoil, she had hope.

You can do it. Don’t give up
. Sadie lifted her face into the warm summer sun and closed her eyes. She breathed deep and caught the scent of the roses that grew in leggy, tangled masses along the cinderblock foundation at the back of her office.

She hadn’t expected it, but working in the narrow space between a children’s playground and the dearly departed had brought her a peace that she hadn’t known for quite a while. A sense of being woven into the pattern of God’s big tapestry instead of a loose thread clinging to the fringe.

She
liked
it here.

How could she explain that to a man who hated the very notion of this place? And why should she have to? Wasn’t she, after all, Moonie Shelnutt’s daughter? Hadn’t he lived his life providing her with the exact example she needed for a moment such as this?

“I work here, Daddy, because I want to.” She motioned to the spot she’d set out to examine and, taking her father by one arm, started to walk toward it. “If you personally dislike spending time in the cemetery, well, maybe you should have thought of that before you ran off to the daughter who
works in one
.”

He matched her pace with only a trace of the hobble that had slowed him down earlier. “Well, at least you got that right.”

“What?” She stopped in the section of land set aside for the burial of the town’s indigent citizens.

“I aimed to run
to
something, not
away
from anything.” He cast his gaze downward. His muted gray hat hid his expression, but the shake of his head revealed his melancholy. “Your sisters don’t seem to grasp the differentiation.”

“That’s because the way you did it hurt their feelings.”

His head went still. His body tensed and the knuckles gripping the cane went white.

“Nobody, least of all a Shelnutt, feels up to first-rate differentiation when they are sitting on top of a big old mound of wounded feelings.” Sadie looped her arm around his slumped shoulders and gave them a squeeze. “They’ll get over it.”

“Didn’t intend to hurt anybody, Sadie-girl.” His bushy eyebrows hunkered down over his fiery eyes. Gruffness, not remorse, gave energy to his words. “You know that, right?”

“I know what I see, Daddy.” She dropped her arm to her side and turned to begin searching for what she came after.

“What do you see? Because I sure can’t find anything wrong in what I did.”

Sadie tensed, her gaze still on the grounds around them. She had wondered if she should be more Moonie-like. Well, here was her chance. Her daddy would not hold back, and at a time like this, maybe she shouldn’t, either.

“What I saw, Daddy, in April
and
in Hannah, was…was…a feeling that they had somehow failed you. That nothing they did was good enough.”
Was she talking about her sisters or herself?
Sadie gripped her hands together and fixed the focus back where it belonged, on her father’s actions. “What I saw makes me wonder if you ever seriously think about your exploits before you start off on one. Do you ever take a good long, sobering look at your family and ask yourself if the momentary gratification of whatever stunt you plan to pull is worth the consequences those who love you have to suffer?”

“Suffer?” The color drained from his face. “Oh, Sadie, I never…all my days I tried to create just the opposite
effect. I’d give my life—I have given it—to keep you girls from ever having to really, truly suffer.”

Sadie felt like a perfect heel. “I’m sorry. I had no call to talk to you like that.”

“If that’s what you believe, you had every call—”

“I
don’t
believe it, not the suffering part. ‘Suffer’ is not a word I should have used. ‘Insufferable,’ maybe, but not ‘suffer.’”

“Really?” He peered up at her from under the rim of his trusty old hat. “You mean that?”

“I sure do—especially that part about you being insufferable.”

He chuckled weakly.

Sadie laid her hand on his arm, and for the first time she could ever recall, she did not feel warmth and strength radiating from her daddy. It startled her, but she didn’t dare let on. So she swallowed hard, to chase away any sound of fear or anxiety, and whispered, “You’d never cause any of your girls to suffer. You couldn’t.”

He rested his hand on hers so lightly that she had to look to make sure he actually did it. “I hope you always feel that way, Sadie.”

They stood there for only a moment before the old fire lit his face and he blustered, “So now that you’ve dragged me into the middle of the last place on earth I ever planned to go, and I mean that literally, what are we looking for?”

“A grave.”

“There’s one now.” He pointed with his cane at the nearest tombstone. “And another.” He indicated the next stone over. “And another and another. Can’t swing a cat without hitting a grave out here, girl.” He waggled his cane left and right, then leaned it against his supposedly
injured leg and smugly slapped his hands together. “There. Seems our work is done. Let’s get out of this place.”

“Very funny. But I’m not looking for just any grave. I’m looking for a fresh one.”

“Fresh grave? Anyone tell you that this job has turned you positively ghoulish, girl?”

“I’m not looking to exhume a body, Daddy, though I have a sneaky inclination we just might dig up a little dirt.”

“Now you got my interest.”

“Yeah, mine, too.” She rubbed her temple. “Going back through the records yesterday, I found some paperwork on Melvin Green.”

“Wait. I know that name. The last holdout living in the Paddock Hotel, right?”

“Uh-huh. He had a contract, and they couldn’t tear the place down until he moved out.”

“Or moved on.” Moonie pointed skyward with his cane, his face a mix of reverence and humor. “To that great men’s dormitory hotel in the sky.”

“Which he did four-and-a-half months ago.”

“Nothing suspicious in that, I hope?”

“No, no. Not unless you find it suspicious that a crotchety old man who smoked for eight decades and lived on a diet of sardines and candy bars would die quietly in his sleep at the age of ninety-eight.”

“Sardines and candy bars?” He clucked his tongue. “The poor lonely old soul.”

“I know. When they scoured the place after he passed, looking for anything that might give the name of his next of kin, a will or at least some indication of his financial situation, that’s all they found. No bankbook. No legal documents.”

“If he had insurance, I sure didn’t sell it to him.”

“He didn’t have so much as an address book or a birthday or Christmas card tucked in a drawer that might have provided a clue about his friends and family.”

“Then he died isolated and utterly alone.” Her father’s mouth set in a grim line, his shoulders drooped. He clutched his cane. “Ain’t right for a human being to end up that way, unnoticed and unloved. Surely he had someone, somewhere—”

“No one found any indication of it—just a cabinet full of cigarettes, candy wrappers and sardine tins. That’s why he ended up buried in the county lot for the destitute.”

Moonie jerked his chin up, his jaw tight. “So where’s this poor, forgotten man’s grave?”

“I don’t know. There should be a temporary marker out here, but I can’t find it.”

“Maybe the groundskeeper knocked it over and forgot to replace it, or maybe some ill-behaved kids came round to snatch it for a souvenir.”

Sadie sighed. “I guess. I just think there ought to be some evidence of a grave that’s less than six months old, that’s all.”

“Could someone have come up with the funds, you know, last-minute-like, and afforded the lonely old boy some swankier digs?” Solomon suggested.

“Oh, Daddy,
digs?
”

He chuckled. “If we can’t laugh a little at what scares the devil out of us, then we’re too scared to enjoy life.”

Scared? She never envisioned her father as scared of dying. Or maybe something else about Melvin’s passing had Daddy on edge. “You feel sorry for Mr. Green, don’t you, Daddy?”

“Ain’t right. A life shouldn’t end up that way.”

“Well, maybe he didn’t. Maybe you figured it out. Someone came forward and paid for a proper burial for the man, and the data didn’t get filed right. Anything’s possible, given the state the records are in.”

“Bad, huh?”

“A total wreck.”

He laughed. “I’d say that surprises me, but having worked with Wileyville officials most of my life, I’ve grown to expect the unexpected.”

“Little of the ol’ pot calling the kettle black again, there, huh, Daddy?”

“Difference is, folks voted them into power on the promise they’d act better than they did. Me, I never had no power and never promised anyone I’d be anything other than myself.” He winked. “Don’t worry yourself overmuch, Sadie-girl, you’ll sort it all out in no time.”

“Sort what out? You acting like yourself, or the mess the last administration left in my office?” Either way, she found his confidence in her quite touching.

He rasped out a soft chuckle. “Let’s go see if we can’t locate Melvin’s final resting place.”

“You don’t have to do this, you know, Daddy. Knowing how much you dislike cemeteries, it doesn’t seem right to ask you to traipse all over one looking for a stranger’s grave.”

“No, having heard the story, I feel I owe it to Melvin Green. And I want to help you, Sadie. When I’ve gone on, I don’t want you to have any added reasons to think of me as a man who put his own choices and reservations above the best interests of his daughters.”

“Daddy…why would you say such a thing?”

He searched her face but gave no answer.

The summer breeze lifted the hair off the back of her neck. She shivered. “Oh, Daddy, I’d never feel that way.”