Spare Change

Spare Change

A Novel

Bette Lee Crosby

Cover Design: Michael G. Visconte. Creative Director

FCEdge, Stuart, Florida

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Copyright 2011 by Bette Lee Crosby

All rights
reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or
information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the
author, except by reviewers who may quote brief passages for a review to be
printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal. 

This is a work
of fiction. All names, characters, places and specific instances are products
of the author’s imagination. No actual reference to any real person, living or
dead, is intended or inferred.

ISBN #978-0-9838879-1-1

BENT PINE PUBLISHING

ort Saint Lucie, FL

Also by
Bette Lee Crosby

CRACKS IN THE SIDEWALK

2010 Royal Palm
Literary Award

First Place
Winner

GIRL CHILD

2007 First Place
Fiction Award Winner

National League of
American Pen Women

To read more
about this author, visit:

www,betteleecrosby.com

For Mom…

Who inspired my love of Southern Storytelling

and taught me how to look at life

with a sense of humor.

Olivia Westerly

I
don’t suppose there’s a person walking the earth who
doesn’t now and again think if I had the chance to live my life over, I’d sure
as hell do it differently. When you get to a certain age and realize how much
time you’ve wasted on pure foolishness, you’re bound to smack yourself in the
head and ask, what in the world was I thinking? Everybody’s got regrets; myself
included.

Some people go to their grave without ever getting a chance to climb
out of that ditch they’ve dug for themselves, others get lucky.  Of course, the
thing about luck is that you’ve got to recognize it, when it walks up and says
hello, the way Charlie Doyle did.  But, that’s a long story and to understand
it, you’ve got to start at the beginning.

Coming of Age

A
t an age when most of her friends had settled into
routines of knitting sweaters and booties for grandchildren, Olivia Ann
Westerly got married for the first time—and, to a man ten years her senior.
“Are you out of your mind?” Maggie Spence shouted when she heard the news, “You’re
fifty-eight years old!”

O
f
course, doing the unexpected was something which could be expected of Olivia.
In 1923, when she was barely twenty-five years old, she went off on her own,
even though her father insisted it was scandalous for a single woman to be
living alone. “What will people think?” he’d moaned as she tossed her clothes
into a cardboard suitcase; but that didn’t stop Olivia. She got herself a
two-room flat in the heart of downtown Richmond and a job working at the
switchboard of the Southern Atlantic Telephone Company. “That’s
shift
work!” her father said, “Some of those girls come and go in the dark of night!”

“So what,” Olivia answered, then she volunteered for the night shift
because it paid an extra sixty-cents per day. Long after any respectable woman
would have been snuggled beneath a down comforter, she’d paint her mouth with
red lipstick, pull on a cloche hat and trot off to the Telephone Company. 

“Have you never heard of Jack-the-Ripper?” her friend Francine Burnam
asked. “Have you never heard stories of women alone being accosted?” Francine,
a girl who married before her sixteenth birthday, already had three children
who clung to her like bananas on a stalk and a husband insistent about supper
being served at six-thirty on the dot.

“That girl will be the ruination of our family!” Mister Westerly told
his wife; but Olivia still stuck her nose in the air and went about her
business. One year later when she was given a three dollar raise and appointed
Supervisor of the night shift, her father disowned her altogether. The last
thing he said was, “I want nothing to do with a girl who carries on as you do;
a respectable daughter would be settling down with a husband and babies!”

“I’ve
plenty of time for that,” Olivia answered, but by then her father had turned
away and refused to look back.

“How much time do you think you have,
dear?” her mother asked. “You’re twenty-six years old. What man would want to
marry a woman of such an age?”

Olivia knew better. With her green eyes and a swirl of honey blond hair
curled around her face, she had no shortage of boyfriends. Herbert Flannery,
District Manager for Southern Atlantic Telephone had on three different
occasions proposed marriage; the last time being in the spring of 1929. That
particular proposal followed on the heels of the worst winter Richmond had ever
seen—months and months of ice crusted to windowpanes and milk frozen before you
could fetch it from the doorstep. In late December, Olivia crocheted herself a
wool scarf, so oversized she could circle it around her throat three times and
tuck her nose inside. Although she’d bundle herself in layers of sweaters,
boots and that scarf, she’d come in from the cold with her nose glowing like a
stoplight and her feet near frozen. That winter there were few parties and
people did very little socializing; so Olivia spent most of her evenings at
home, swaddled in a chenille bathrobe as she tried to stay warm. 

In March, a month when she expected the crocuses to pop up from the
ground, there was a six inch snowfall and the wind rattled the windowpanes so
loudly that sleep became impossible. When it seemed that spring would never
arrive, Olivia began to question the emptiness of her life. Three weeks later
Herbert went down on one knee and offered out a small velvet box, she nodded
and allowed him to slip the diamond ring on her finger.

Olivia was genuinely fond of Herbert and when she promised to marry him
it was with the utmost sincerity; but, that was before they started to discuss
the aspects of their forthcoming life together. “Won’t it be wonderful,” she
said, “we can walk to work together every day.”

Herbert circled his arm around her waist and pulled her to him in a way
that tugged her blouse loose from the band of her skirt. “Umm,” he hummed in
her ear, making the same sound as a bee when it drains the nectar from a
flower. “We’ll do just that,” he cooed, “until you’ve a bun in the oven.”

“Bun in the oven?” she repeated.

Herbert grinned and affectionately patted her stomach. “A baby,” he
said, giving her a sly wink, “you know, a little tyke, a Herbert Junior.”

“I know what it means,” she replied testily, “but aren’t you rushing
things just a bit?”

It was impossible not to notice the downturn of her mouth, so Herbert
smoothed the situation over by claiming he was, of course, referring to such a
time as they were ready for the thought of raising a family. He kissed Olivia
but when she closed her eyes, there in back of her eyelids was the image of a
woman with the look of hopelessness on her face and a bunch of babies clinging
to her skirt.  Olivia’s eyes popped open and she snapped her head back.  “What
if I don’t want babies?” she asked rebelliously. “What about my job?  There’s a
good chance I’ll be promoted to the central office.”

“Babies are something every woman wants,” Herbert said.  “It’s the
natural way of life.  Men work and women have babies.” He gathered her into his
arms and held her close. “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he whispered, “when the
time comes you’ll be itching to grab hold of a baby just like every other
woman.”     

Although she let it go at that, a feeling of uneasiness started to
settle in and Olivia couldn’t dismiss it. Three days later she telephoned both
of her older sisters and asked if such a thing was true. Yes, indeed, they’d
each answered.  She then telephoned her mother and asked the same question. “Of
course it’s true, sugar,” her mother said.  “As a young girl I used to imagine
that someday I’d be singing at the Opera House in London, England; but after I
married your daddy I got the itch and then along came Robert. The following
year it was Albert and after him Bernice. 

“But, Mama,” Olivia interrupted, “Didn’t you think you’d missed out on
something you truly wanted?”

“Think?” Her mother laughed. “With eight little tykes hanging onto me I
didn’t have time to think!”

It seemed that no matter who she asked, it was the same story. “Bounce
a baby on your knee and you’ll forget about everything else,” Sara Sue said. 

“But,” Olivia questioned, “weren’t you planning to be a newspaper
reporter?”

“At one time, maybe,” her friend said, “but once Willie came along…”

As the days went by Olivia started to imagine a heavy weight tugging at
the hem of her skirt and at night when she closed her eyes and waited to drift
off to sleep she could hear a baby crying. One night she dreamt of sitting at
the switchboard with a stomach so large and round that, try as she may, she
could not reach across the tandem board far enough to connect a call. 

The following Saturday Francine Burnam, who had eight months ago added
another one to her litter, stopped in for a visit—accompanied of course by all
four children, the youngest of them howling like a banshee.  “He’s teething,”
Francine apologized and jiggled the baby from one shoulder to the other. Olivia
was about to suggest that Alma Porter used a piece of ice to soothe her baby’s
gums; but before the words were out of her mouth, Francine, who already looked
like a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown, started to wail. “Oh, Lord,”
she flopped down onto the sofa, “what have I let myself get into?”

“The baby crying has probably got you a bit frazzled,” Olivia suggested,
“…once his tooth comes in everything will be just fine.”

“Fine?” Francine exclaimed. “Fine?  Maybe for you! You’ve got a job
where you’re appreciated! Try taking care of four kids and then see how you
feel!”