The Blue Bottle Club (33 page)

There were a lot of rational reasons for the feeling, of course, reasons that had nothing to do with hearing God's voice. Ellie had been through a great deal of change in the past months—the death of her mother, the loss of Rome and her hopes for marriage, the sale of her house—and everybody said you shouldn't make major life decisions during a time of extreme grief or emotional turmoil. In addition, she had become increasingly attached to East Asheville Methodist Church and its little congregation of enthusiastic believers. For the first time in years, she was experiencing a sense of belonging, a realization that she was loved and accepted for herself, rather than for what she could do for others. She had found a family, and she wasn't ready to let go of that, even to follow her dreams.

And then there was Catherine.

Catherine Starr was the kind of woman Ellie always dreamed she would become. Catherine, with her worn flannel pajamas and no-nonsense approach to her call from God. Catherine, who knew exactly what she was to do with her life. Secretly, Ellie hoped that Catherine might become her guide, might help her sort through her options and find her way to that same kind of self-confidence and assurance. A role model, perhaps. Or, at the very least, a friend.

Whatever part Catherine was to play in her life, Ellie knew instinctively that it was important. Important enough for her to stay where she was, to watch and listen and learn.

The answer she
wanted
to give to Catherine's question was,
God has put
you in my life for a reason, and I need to find out what it is.

But she didn't have the courage, yet, to be quite that honest. Instead, she said, "Well, I have no place else to go, so I guess I'll stay for a while."

Catherine's dark eyes probed Ellie's gaze. For a minute or two she kept silent, watching, waiting.

"I see," she murmured at last.

I
see.
Just two words, nothing more. But those two words left Ellie with the disconcerting conviction that Catherine Starr knew more than she was telling.

31

V-E DAY

May 8, 1945

E
llie positioned the calendar on the hook behind the kitchen door and smiled to herself. Just like Catherine, to forget that April had passed into May—and more than a week ago, at that. She took a pencil from the counter and crossed out the first seven days of the month, then circled today's date with a broad stroke.

The eighth of May. Just this afternoon, on the radio, the exultant news had come: The War in Europe was over!

Ellie stared at the numbers at the top of the calendar.
1945.
Five years since her mother had died. Five years since Rome Tucker had disappeared from her life and Catherine Starr had entered it, with her merry band of misfits in her wake. It hardly seemed possible, but the calendar didn't lie.

The past years had risen and fallen, a series of mountaintops and valleys, like the layers of the Blue Ridge. Heights of hope and ravines of near-despair merged together in a lush and awe-inspiring panorama. Those individual moments of triumph and adversity—the death of Randolph Cameron and her mother's descent into darkness, the years of isolation and the hope that came with Rome Tucker's arrival, the chaos following her mother's death, and the slow, uncertain resurrection of her spirit into the light—all seemed to her now merely inevitable stages of the journey.

Strange, Ellie thought, how the darkness and light blended together, like tints on an artist's canvas. When you stepped back, you could no longer see the distinct brush strokes, the separate events that loomed so large at the time. With a little perspective, you saw instead the wider picture, the overall pattern—how the disparate parts fit together, how it all worked.

Five years ago, she had stood too close to perceive any design at all in her life. She had clung to the familiar like a drowning person grabbing for debris, had stayed on at the James Home simply because she didn't know what else to do. Her decision had derived more from fear than faith. And yet it had been the right one—the single most important choice of her thirty-two years.

She would never fulfill the exalted dreams she had crafted for herself as a girl teetering on the brink of womanhood—would never become a licensed social worker or go to Chicago to work at Hull House. Jane Addams had passed on ten years ago, but Elbe's aspirations had died long before that. No longer did she envision herself as making a difference, as having a significant impact on other people's lives. She was no savior to the masses, no champion of the disenfranchised. She was simply Ellie James, spinster, who longed with all her heart to personify the grace of God to those around her.

Catherine Starr had taught her what it meant to live as Jesus lived. Not in words, but in action—in the tender love she demonstrated to the elderly residents of the James Home, in sacrificial, even menial service, in forgiveness of those who harmed her, in the friendship she extended to Ellie herself.

Over the past five years, Ellie had watched and listened and learned. Almost against her will, she had been drawn into the lives of the people who occupied her childhood home. Who, after all, could resist Burgess Goudge's Concerto for Pots and Pans? Or Frieda Hawthorne's rustic watercolor paintings of her beloved mountains? Or Hazel Dennison's epic poem, a parody of
Beowulf,
in which Pisgah the cat went hunting for the giant mouse Grendel?

Ellie shook her head, but the smile remained. This odd "family" of hers, this ragtag collection of old women and old men who had no place else to go, wasn't exactly what she had in mind when, at sixteen, she determined to follow in Jane Addams's footsteps. But these were the people God had placed into her world, and she would do her best to help Catherine care for them.

There would be no glory in such a life, no accolades from the public, no financial rewards. Only the knowledge that she had said "yes" when God called.

A banging at the door leading to the parlor arrested Ellie's attention, and she turned. Burgess stood there stooped over, cane in hand, the bright kitchen light reflecting from his smooth and shiny head. His weathered face wrinkled into a scowl, his eyes bulged behind thick horn-rimmed glasses, and he shook his cane in her direction.

"Hurry it up, will you? The candles are lit, and I'm not about to try to blow them out without your help." He wheezed dramatically. "Less you want to burn the house down around us all, I'd suggest you get a move on." Burgess turned on his heel and began to stomp back toward the dining room. "Catherine says to bring the cake knife with you when you come," he flung over his shoulder as the door swung shut behind him.

Ellie grinned at his retreating back and retrieved the cake slicer from the top drawer. "I'm coming, Burgess," she shouted after him. "I wouldn't miss your birthday for the world."

The door swung open again. "You don't have to yell at me, girlie," he snapped. "Just because I'm ninety-eight years old doesn't mean I'm deaf, you know."

"I know, Burgess. I've got the knife. Let's go."

"All right, all right. But don't point that thing in my direction."

In the dining room, the cake was indeed blazing, a conflagration worthy of the entire Asheville Fire Department. Burgess paused at the head of the table and waited for the singing to conclude. He turned to Ellie. "You make this yerself?"

"I did, just for you," Ellie admitted. "Used two weeks' worth of sugar rations too."

"Tryin' to put me in a coma, are you?" He gave her a toothless grin and winked at her. "It better be good."

"Just blow out the candles, Burgess." Ellie stepped to his side and counted. "One, two, three, blow!"

A great cheer rang out as the last of the candles fluttered out, followed by a round of sputtering and coughing as the smoke dissipated.

Catherine sidled over to Burgess and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "You want to cut it, or shall I do the honors?"

"You cut it. I got too much of the trembles." He raised a shaky hand as proof. "But make mine a big piece, with one of them roses on top."

An hour later, the party was still going strong. Burgess had insisted on "cutting the rug with all the young gals," and he was doing a pretty fair imitation of a jitterbug to Glenn Miller's "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" when Catherine tapped Ellie on the shoulder and cut in.

"Hey!" Burgess objected. "You're not gonna take my favorite partner away, are you?"

"Sorry, old man, you'll have to make do with me as a substitute." Catherine pulled Ellie close and whispered in her ear, "Hazel's asking for you. I'll hold the fort down here."

Ellie made her apologies to Burgess, wished him a happy birthday, and with a heavy heart climbed the stairs to Hazel Dennison's room. For three years the old woman had put up a valiant fight against the cancer that had invaded her body; now at last, it seemed, the disease was winning.

Ellie had envisioned this moment and believed she was prepared for Hazel's passing. But when she entered the bedroom—the very room where she had cared for Mother every day for ten long years—her resolve failed, and tears blinded her. A musty, acrid odor filled the room.
The scent of death,
Ellie thought suddenly.

"Now, honey, don't cry," Hazel said in a raspy voice. She held out a hand, a withered, palsied claw lined with veins and spotted with age. "It's time. I just wanted to see you before I go."

Ellie settled on the edge of the bed and took Hazel's hand gently in her own. She couldn't stop the tears, but managed to force a little smile for the old woman's benefit. "Let me get you some water, Hazel," she whispered with a catch in her throat. "Your medicine?" There must be something she could
do
—some action she could take that would postpone the inevitable, if only for a little while. She couldn't just sit idly by and wait for the end to come.

"No, my dear. There's nothing to be done."

"But—"

"No buts, child. I beg you, Ellie, not to try to keep me here. The pain is almost gone, and soon I will go too. All I need is for you to sit and wait and listen."

"Are—are you afraid?" Ellie stammered.

"Afraid? Of what?"

"Why, of—of death." The very word,
death,
scraped across Ellie's eardrums like a file on metal, dredging up ancient images of a dark and hooded figure from the world of nightmares.

"What is there to fear?" Hazel responded. Her eyes grew distant and clouded. "To live without regret makes dying easy."

Ellie leaned forward. "I don't understand, Hazel. How can you live without regret?" Her heart filled with pain at the recollection of so many losses. Her parents, the man she loved, the dreams she cherished . . . .

Hazel clutched her hand, a grip surprisingly strong for one so ill. "Listen to me, Ellie James. Regret for what has been—or for what
might
have been—is folly, a waste of precious time and energy Don't give your future to the past. Don't look back." A ghost of a smile flitted across her face, transforming the wrinkled countenance with its glory "Only two things are important in this life, Ellie," she went on after a moment. "Love and forgiveness. If you let yourself love, you will never regret it, for even if your love is unreturned, it will enrich you. But to love purely you have to learn to forgive. Only in forgiveness can you be free. Forgive others. Forgive yourself. The path is before you, not behind. You've already made a good start, by putting yourself into the hands of the only One who is capable of guiding you. Trust, child. Trust."

"I'm trying to trust, Hazel. But I'm afraid I'll never understand."

"Understanding is irrelevant," the old woman breathed. "What's important is who you are becoming. Remember Yeats?"

Ellie nodded. Countless evenings over the past few years, she had sat in the parlor and listened as Hazel Dennison read from the works of William Butler Yeats. Much of it she didn't understand, but Hazel's voice made the words sing with an ethereal beauty.

"Then remember these lines, if you heed nothing else," Hazel went on.

"Time
can hut make it easier to he wise
. . . All
that you need is patience."

"What does it mean?"

"It means," Hazel sighed, "that if you wait with hope, you will find wisdom. Wisdom comes not from the mind, through understanding, but from the heart, through trusting. Have faith, child. With God there are no mistakes, no missed opportunities, no irredeemable failures—only lessons to be learned."

The old woman's breathing grew labored, and she leaned back against the pillows, an expression of wonder and joy on her face. Suddenly Ellie realized she was witnessing a miracle—a woman who could embrace the unknown with the absolute certainty that something greater awaited her.

Ellie's awe at the miraculous quickly dissipated, however, as a different emotion gripped her in a stranglehold—a rage, hot and wild and utterly selfish, at the idea of losing Hazel Dennison so soon. It wasn't soon for Hazel, of course—she had lived a long and fruitful life, rich in wisdom and knowledge and godliness. But Ellie's time with Hazel had been much too short. Hazel had become the mother Ellie had never known, not even while her own mother was alive and well. There was so much Ellie could learn from her yet, so much she needed to know. So much love and appreciation she had yet to demonstrate. . . .