The Potluck Club (13 page)

There was, of course, the library, where he liked to do some of his research. Something about the smell of musty books intoxicated him, making him even more creative with words than he was by simple talent. And there was Higher Grounds, which practically reserved a table and chair for him. And then there was Sprinkles, the local bakery, where he bought both his bread and a special dessert once a week.

Typically, a birthday cake where the baker had misspelled someone’s name or, as he was buying on this particular day, a half-price cake with special icing scrawled on top, reading: “Congratulations, Jody, on your confirmation.”

“What should it have said?” he asked.

“Congrats, Mark, on your bar mitzvah,” the baker answered with a wince.

Clay chuckled. “I’ll take it,” he said just as the bells on the front door jingled. He turned his head to see Goldie Dippel entering. Clay cocked a brow. The woman looked just awful.

“Mrs. Dippel,” he greeted her.

She raised cocker spaniel eyes. “Oh,” she said. “Hello, Clay.”

He turned a bit more, resting an elbow on the glass display case beside him. “You okay?” he asked.

She stared at an arrangement of Toll House cookies, then looked back at him. “Hmmm?”

Clay winced inwardly.
Dollars to donuts
, he thought,
she knows
about Coach and Miss Hopefield.

16

Searing Revelation

Why does the Lord always use Scripture to make me feel guilty? I sat in my recliner and read from my Bible, which rested on the overstuffed arm of the chair, while Chucky, my King Kong–sized bichon, nestled on top my cushy thighs. He snored as I sipped my first cup of morning coffee.

I let my eyes scan over the words. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”

Comfort. My snort caused Chucky to look up at me, then sniff toward my blue coffee mug. The mug was my favorite because it pictured an adorable baby cradled by a cloud.

“You wish!” I said to my groggy dog. I turned back to stare at the familiar words in front of me and sighed. With all the goings-on of late, God couldn’t expect me to be much of a comfort to others when I felt so comfortless myself. Sure, I’d try to be of help to Evangeline and Leigh; I’d even pray for them, but what words of comfort did I really have to offer? Zip, that’s what.

I’m not saying I don’t have a lot of blessings in my life, and for those blessings, well, I’m grateful. After all, I love God. I have an employed husband who’s in good health; I have a nice home and friends. But that’s where it all ends. Here I am, a fifty-seven-year-old woman without a son or daughter or grandkids to call my own.

We’d talked about adopting but never did. And as both Fred and I were “only children,” we don’t even have a niece or nephew to hug. Where’s the comfort in that?

While it’s true that over the years I’d given myself to the little ones in my fifth-grade Sunday school class and even bonded with a few of them, it’s not the same as having your own to raise.

I turned to the end table next to Chucky and me, reaching for the yellowed photo in a metal frame. There I was, at least twenty years younger, not quite as plump as now. I looked so “eighties,” dressed in a self-belted ivory and red jacquard-print dress topped with a red vest. My still-yellow hair was styled in short waves. There I stood, surrounded by the smiling faces of my fifth-grade Sunday school class. Goodness, they were almost as tall as I was, except for petite Donna Vesey. She stood in front of me while I rested my hand on her shoulder. Her pink, long-sleeved cotton dress was wrinkled, and her tangled hair was in need of a wash.

That was the year I became Donna’s surrogate mother. The poor child needed one, as her own mother had skipped town with that no-good choir director. My relationship with Donna has helped ease some of the pain of childlessness. But comfort? My heart still ached for the baby I never held.

With a sleepy sigh and an arm around Chucky, I carefully set my half-empty mug on the brick hearth in front of the fireplace and closed my eyes, thinking I should probably pray. Actually, I should have prayed last night when I’d been busy tossing and turning through my worries.

I leaned my head back and whispered deep in my heart.
Comfort?
Lord, just what are you trying to say to me?

My prayer faded into peaceful slumber until the phone startled me awake. With my heart pounding, I sat upright, lowered the recliner’s seat, and then bolted for the kitchen receiver.

I hate to be caught with sleep in my voice, and I hoped my jog across the room would jar me to my senses.

“Hello?” I said a little too brightly.

“Why, hello, Vonnie. It’s Lisa Leann. Say, did I wake you?”

“Well, okay. It is after 9:00 a.m., after all. Hey, I just called to talk to you about the Potluck luncheon tomorrow. I’m so excited to finally get a chance to show off my barbeque brisket.”

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Brisket?”

“Brisket’s all right, isn’t it? I mean, you’re not making a brisket too, are you?”

I shook my head as though she could see it. “Oh no.”

“Well, what are you bringing?”

“Potato salad?”

“That would be perfect! Say, Vonnie, as this is my first time and all, and as I want to be PC . . .”

“PC?”

“You know, politically correct. Well, I was wondering about Evangeline’s niece. Do you think it would be okay for me to bring up that I’m planning a baby shower for her?”

“I thought I would . . . I mean, it’s so soon.”

“Well, honey, that little girl is going to have a baby, and
soon
is the word. How much longer can I wait? Besides, it’s not a secret. Everybody in town knows. You should hear what they’ve all been saying down at the market. Oops. Hang on, another call is beeping in. I’ll call you back, okay?”
Click.

How is it that whenever I talk with that woman I always feel like
I’ve just had a conversation with a steamroller?
But even before I could shake my head, I heard lapping sounds coming from the living room. “Chucky?”

I peeked around the corner just in time to see Chucky lick the last of my coffee from the mug. Now, that’s just what I needed, a wired dog leaping about my priceless collections.

“Chucky, no!” I scooped up the mug and took it to the kitchen sink; Chucky followed behind, licking his chops and looking very smug. As I rinsed the mug before placing it in the dishwasher, my eyes swept over the windowpanes, where a half dozen or so stained glass babies tumbled about. I looked past their antics into the bright mountain morning. The glare of the sun hurt my eyes. The intense light was such a contrast to my cozy, albeit dark, home. But I’m convinced my babies love the dim light, which swirled with prisms of rainbows from dangling crystals and dancing stained glass splashes of color.

I turned back to look at what so many describe as “Vonnie’s museum.” Patches of yellow, blue, red, green, and purple light skimmed across wide-eyed and sleeping faces. Babies. Babies everywhere. Every square inch of my house is covered with them. Antique, new, porcelain, china, rag, and plastic—all babies, in large, medium, and miniature. The babies, of every race and nationality, line my mantle, shelves, bookcases, display cabinets, and piano, not to mention my walls. Many sit on specially built shelves, hovering above my comfy blue sofa, which of course is covered with even more babies. I walked over to the bookshelf and picked up Baby Amanda from her vintage wicker carriage. Amanda, one of my greatest treasures, looked adorable in her ivory lace gown. I stopped to admire her long lashes closed in sleep and her sweet rosebud lips painted on her porcelain face. I sat Amanda back in her carriage and looked about like any proud mother. At last count, I had over 528 babies in my collection, each dressed, pressed, named, and loved. Even so, somehow it seemed that no matter how many babies I took home, I ached for more.

Now that I’m finally retired from Doc Billings’s office, not a week goes by that I don’t sweep through the local antique stores and yard sales, hoping for a find. And recently, much to my delight, Donna showed me how to search eBay on Fred’s computer. From what I’ve seen there, my hobby’s about to get much more expensive, at least as soon as I set up my PayPal account. Good thing Fred’s still employed—I’m going to need that paycheck to keep up with our ever-expanding family.

It wasn’t hard to remember when my collection started. True, I’d always had baby dolls as a girl. But it wasn’t until Evie and I left Summit View for Cherry Creek College in Denver that I’d added my first baby to my collection, a baby I soon lost.

While Evie had majored in business management, I chose nursing. Nursing had been a fascinating study. It became even more so when I took my senior year clinicals at the local Cherry Creek Hospital. There, I quickly discovered that nursing had a lot to offer; that is, besides emptying bedpans, making beds, and spoon-feeding some of the more feeble patients. Nursing at Cherry Creek Hospital had one bonus that stood head and shoulders above the rest, and his name was Joe. Joe was six feet tall and worked as an orderly. With his good looks, dark wavy hair, and dreamy brown eyes, he had quite the following when it came to student nurses and candy stripers. So I’d been surprised when he sat next to me at lunch one Saturday at the cafeteria.

“Hey, Von. What are you studying?” he asked, pointing to the book spread wide next to my plate of half-eaten spaghetti.

I closed my book. “I’m cramming for a test tomorrow.”

He looked over at the cover. “Psych, huh?”

“You’ve taken it?”

“Last year.” He cleared his throat before continuing. “Tonight, after work, how about grabbing a pizza with me on the hill?”

I hesitated before answering. “With clinicals and my studies, I don’t have much time for dating,” I lamented. “Maybe we’d better not.”

“But you do eat, don’t you? And judging from all the remains of cafeteria spaghetti left on your plate, I’d like to take you to get some real food.”

“And pizza’s real food?”

Joe laughed at that. Then he looked at me and smiled in a way that warmed me right down to my toes. When I think back, I’m certain it was his smile that caused me to lose my heart that very moment.

Our pizza date became the first of many enchanted occasions, all of which found us hand in hand, walking the hill across from Cherry Creek College, an area busy with students, hippies (protesting the war, the establishment, or the wearing of a bra), restaurants, and a park on a hilltop that overlooked the city and the mountains beyond. Our evening walks became the highlight of my life. Joe was a source of ceaseless stories about his family life in East L.A. Somehow, Joe made growing up poor sound like a privilege. His father was a busy doctor at a clinic, and though he, his mother, and his three older sisters lived in a modest home, money was always tight. “But we always had enough,” Joe would say. “And we had more than enough, we had each other.”

One evening, just after we watched the sun set, a bearded young man stopped us. He was barefoot and wearing white striped bell-bottom pants with a dirty tie-dyed T-shirt. His long, straggly hair was held in place with a wide band of braided beads. Experience told me this glassy-eyed man was about to ask us for a quarter, but instead he grabbed Joe’s hand like he was going to shake it. “Man, is that your old lady?”

Joe slid his arm around me, but not before he gave me a reassuring wink. “Yeah, man. Why?”

“Well, if I had an old lady, a blond bombshell like that, I’d never go to Nam. I’d make love, not war, man. Do ya hear? Stay in school, man, don’t risk it. You’ve got too much to lose.”

My cheeks burned at the idea of lovemaking, but Joe just nodded his agreement and gave me a light squeeze. “Sir, you do have a remarkable point.”

But the truth was, Joe was not a student. He had once been pre-med at Cherry Creek College but had taken a year off to find himself after his father died in a car accident. He hadn’t gone back home to L.A.; he’d stayed here, in the beauty of Denver, Colorado, beauty he’d hoped would help heal his grief.

His self-prescribed therapy had worked.

One night we sat on a bench in the park watching another sunset over the mountains. Joe cradled his arm around me. “Vonnie, my father had always been my inspiration. He was such a caring man, which is one of the things that made him such a good doctor. But when he was killed by that drunk driver, it was as if everything I had ever found to be true and good died. Even my faith in God.”

I pulled back from the crook of his arm. “But, Joe, how could you not believe in God?”

“I believed. But I was angry. But now that I’ve found you, I just can’t stop thanking God for bringing you into my life. You’ve helped me find my purpose. Vonnie, because of you, I’m going back to school. I’m going to be a doctor and follow in Papa’s footsteps.”

I could have cheered, but instead I raised my lips to meet his. It was then I experienced one of the most tender, passionate kisses of my life. And yes, I had been kissed before, mainly by my old school chum Fred Westbrook. But Joe’s sweet kiss had an intensity that I’d never felt with Fred.