Spare Change (10 page)

Olivia nodded.

“Just you?”

“I’ve got my husband…”  

“Oh. Then you’ll be wanting a double bed; all I’ve got is three
singles.”

“A single’s okay.”

“Sweetie,” the woman who’d introduced herself as Canasta Jones, said
apologetically, “much as I need your business, there’s no possible way two full
grown people could squeeze into one of them beds; why, they’re narrow as a
cat’s whisker.” She gave a wink that made her seem far younger than her years,
“Honeymooners maybe could, nobody else.”

Olivia was going to mention that she was indeed a honeymooner, but the
thought of being a honeymooner without a husband brought tears to her eyes.
She’d planned on waiting until she could throw herself onto a mattress and weep
the night away, but all of a sudden there she was, squatted down on a bench,
sobbing hysterically.

“I say something wrong?” Canasta asked.

Olivia took the hem of her skirt and swiped the droplet hanging from
her nose. “Not you,” she snuffled, “Charlie.”

“Charlie?”

“He was a man who was truly in love with me,” Olivia sobbed, “we
could’ve been happy for a thousand years.”

The old woman scooted down alongside Olivia and leaned in closer. 
“Your husband run him off?” she asked.

“He was my husband.”

“Was?”

“I killed him. Oh, the opal pendant may have been partly to blame, but
I think it was mostly the jinx. He died twenty-one days after we were married;
so on the twenty-second day I became a widow.” Olivia saw the puzzlement on the
old woman’s face and explained; “Twenty-two—that’s two elevens!”

“What’s eleven got to do with anything?”

Olivia gave an exasperated sigh. “It’s only the unluckiest number in
the universe,” she said. “If anything horrible is going to happen, guaranteed
it will happen on the eleventh of something!”  

Canasta scrunched her face, adding a few more wrinkles, “Who told you
such hogwash?” she asked.

“Nobody
told
me. I learned from experience. I’m a person who’s
jinxed!”

“Hogwash!” the old woman repeated. “Nobody’s jinxed. Specially not by
no number eleven.”

“A lot you know,” Olivia growled. “I could name
dozens
of bad
things tied in to some sort of eleven.”

“Yeah, well I could name some good things!” Canasta shot back.

“Such as?”

“Me. I was brought into this world on November eleventh and year after
year I get a slew of presents on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. I’m
ninety-nine years old—and that’s nine elevens! I got me eleven grandkids, and
Lord knows how many great grandbabies, every one of them, sweet as pie.”

“You’re lucky; you missed out on the jinx.”

“There is no jinx!” Canasta said with an air of impatience. “You’re
just reasoning a way to feel sorry for yourself.”

“What about Charlie—a perfectly healthy man one day and dead the next!
That’s not jinxed? That’s not a true misfortune?”

“It’s a true enough tragedy, but not a jinx,” Canasta answered
wistfully. “Nobody knows better than me, the pain of losing a husband; I buried
four and cried a bucket of tears for each and every one.”

“Four?” Olivia repeated, she stopped sobbing and turned to the old
woman.

Canasta nodded. “The last one was Elmer; he died a month ago.”

“I’d no idea,” Olivia stuttered, “you seem to be getting along just
fine.”

“What’s a body to do?  Caskets ain’t sized for two people.”

“Huh?”

Canasta slowly shook her head side to side, “No matter how much feeling
you got for your man, there’s no way to keep him on earth when the Lord decides
it’s his time to go. Once they close that casket lid, he’s gone. You can’t go
with him. Only thing you can do is keep on with living.”

“What’s left to live for?” Olivia moaned tearfully.

“Sugar,” Canasta sighed, “There’s always something to live for.” She
reached across and placed her bony hand on Olivia’s knee. “Why, a young woman
like you…”

“Young?  I’m fifty eight!”

“Prime
of life!” Canasta snapped back. “You got years of loving yet to do.”

“A woman my age?”

“Yes,
indeed. I married up with my dear sweet Elmer when I was eighty-two.”

 “Fine for you; but, me…”  Olivia looked
down at the floor and shook her head side to side, “Uh-uh,” she sighed
pitifully, “Without Charlie, there’s nothing.”

“Oh, I get it,” Canasta turned and fixed her eyes square on Olivia’s
face, “you’re wanting sympathy. You’re looking for somebody to say how bad off
you are—well, it ain’t gonna be me! Everybody gets to feeling low at times,
but…”

“Of course,
you
, a woman who’s had four husbands, wouldn’t
understand what it feels like to be lonely!”

“I understand aplenty. Lord knows I’ve done my share of grieving and
crying. But, no matter how you love somebody, there comes a time when you got
to let them go. See, sugar,” Canasta took Olivia’s hand in hers, “…having a man
crazy in love with you is like having your pocket full of money—when you got
it, you feel like a rich woman, but when you ain’t got it, you start feeling
poor as a church mouse. ”

“That’s surely true,” Olivia nodded.

“Thing is, you ain’t.”

“I’m not?”

“Shoot, no. Making people think they can’t scrape up enough to buy a
dime’s worth of happiness, is the Devil’s doing; that’s his way of handing out
heartaches. The Good Lord don’t do things that way—when he sees a person’s flat
out of hope and feeling dead broke, He slips a bit of spare change into the
bottom of their pocket; not a lot maybe, but enough for them to get by.”

Olivia, leaning into the words, crooked her neck to the same angle as
Canasta’s.

“Well now,” the old woman said with a smile, “the same thing’s true of
the feelings inside a body’s heart—the Devil wants you to believe you’re
emptied out; but trust in the Lord, sugar, He’ll see a fair share of love comes
your way.” 

“Oh, I doubt that,” Olivia replied, “I’m not one who’s lucky in love.”

“Maybe you ain’t been trusting in the Lord.”

“I go to church.”

“Regular?” 

Olivia had to admit, more often than not, there was some other matter
that held her back from attending services—a brunch with friends, a book that
had to be read, laundry that needed washing. 

“Seems you ain’t on real close terms with the Lord;” Canasta said, “in
which case, you ought to seek out an ear willing to listen.”

“Listen to what?”

“Your troubles.”

“Oh, I don’t need…” 

Canasta spread her mouth in a wide open grin, “Course you do,” she
said, “ain’t a soul on earth who don’t.” She linked her arm through Olivia’s
and led the way into a tiny apartment situated behind the calico curtain. 

They sat together at a small wooden table and drank black tea; tea so
strong that it loosened Olivia’s tongue and prompted her to tell of things that
for forty years had been picking at her mind. She told of beaus who had knocked
on her door and been turned away; she told of how the sorry sight of Francine
Burnam weighted down by five children had dissuaded her from following along on
such a pathway. “Many a night, I was so lonely, I’d cry myself to sleep,”
Olivia said, “but then I’d remember the look of Francine and figure being
lonely was better than being chained to a flock of kids that weigh a woman down
worse than a sack of stones.”       

“Most every woman’s got stones of some sort or another,” Canasta
replied, “some troubles are way heavier than babies.”

Olivia conceded, in certain instances such a thing was true.  “Christine
Flannigan,” she said, “Now, there’s a case in point.” She then went on to tell
of the poor unfortunate telephone operator who’d suffered a nervous breakdown
while she was sitting at the tandem board and ultimately had to be
institutionalized. But, the moment Olivia finished the story, she jumped back
to how she’d met Charlie and fallen in love. “Head over heels,” she sighed,
“The very first time he kissed me, I
knew
he was the one I’d been
waiting for!”

Long about dark, Canasta set a pot of okra soup on to warm; then she served
up steaming bowls of it and continued to listen. 

After Olivia had finished telling most every story that came to mind,
she gave a breathy sigh and said, “My Charlie, he was sure a wonderful man.”  

“No doubt,” Canasta answered, “He don’t sound like a body who’d want
you weeping and wailing over spilt milk.”

“Charlie? No indeed.” Olivia swallowed the last of her soup and asked
if she might have another bowl. Without any realization of what was happening,
a strange feeling settled on Olivia as she sat there and gulped down bowl after
bowl of okra soup. First, she began to feel lighter. Then her feet seemed to be
rising up from her shoes and wiggling around like they were wanting to dance;
then it was her arms and hands, and before she toddled off to bed her brain was
floaty as a feather.

When she got to her room, Olivia set Charlie atop the dresser and
climbed into bed. “Goodnight, sweetheart,” she whispered; then she switched off
the light and closed her eyes. For the first time in two weeks she didn’t
picture Charlie lying face down in a bowl of lobster bisque. Instead, she
dreamt of him as he was on their wedding day; she could picture him laughing,
chucking her beneath the chin, and teasing her for being the worrisome person
she’d turned into. When she woke the next morning, Olivia realized she could
hear the trill of a bird and catch the scent of jasmine—both things she’d been
unable to do since Charlie’s death. It must be due to some sort of flavoring in
the soup she thought, then in the shower she caught herself singing—something
that was totally out of character. She pulled on a pair of pedal pushers and
hurried over to Canasta’s door. “You suppose I could have a bit more soup for
breakfast?” she asked.

The old woman, who on several other occasions had seen her okra soup
have the very same effect, smiled. “You most certainly can,” she said and
opened wide the door.

For the next five days, Olivia had okra soup for breakfast, lunch and
dinner. “There’s something in the soup,” she insisted, “something that causes a
person to taste happiness.” Such a possibility certainly appeared to be the
case, for day by day she grew a bit brighter. It began with the hearing of song
and the smelling of fragrance, then she started feeling the warmth of sunshine
and the softness of a down comforter, after that it was the sight of flowers
abloom with color such as she had never before seen. When she discovered the
right side of her mouth curling into a smile of its own volition, Olivia went
to Canasta and begged to have the recipe. “Please,” she said, “tell me the
secret ingredient.”

“It’s the having of a friend to listen,” the old woman insisted, but
still Olivia continued to harangue her for the secret of the soup. Finally,
when Canasta’s ears had grown sore from the sound of the pleas, she told Olivia
her secret was the seed of a vine that grew deep in the woods. 

“Take me to it,” Olivia begged.

“Impossible,” Canasta claimed, saying she was far too old to go
tromping through a thicket of briars. “Anyway,” she said, “no seed is gonna
help a person who ain’t regular about visiting with the Lord.” Of course,
Olivia swore she’d seen the light and would be attending church every Sunday
from now on.

Seven days after she arrived in Hopeful, Olivia happily tucked a packet
of seeds into her purse; then loaded Charlie into the trunk of the car and
drove off. “I know you’d want me to get on with my life,” she’d whispered
apologetically as she wedged the silver urn back behind a carton of souvenirs.

With her gold tooth sparkling in the sunlight, Canasta waved goodbye
from the front step of the Main Street Motel. She knew, sooner or later,
Olivia, like all the others, would realize the seeds were nothing more than
green peppercorns—hopefully by then she’d be on speaking terms with the Lord
and would have no need for such foolishness.

Olivia Ann Doyle