When the Morning Glory Blooms (34 page)

Learning gratitude proved a more challenging lesson for some than others. I was too often the floundering student. It didn’t take me long to discover that my lack of appreciation almost guaranteed we would have lack in our house. An interesting connection that almost never failed.

Every meal, however pale or pitiful, was served on a platter of gratitude. Gratitude was, in fact, a more certain element than the presence of meat. We learned to celebrate the simple
joy of herbs, which Puff encouraged me to plant near the back door of the kitchen—sage, mint, rosemary, parsley  . . . 

And when Puff brought Melody to Morning Glory, both the flavors and joy increased.

Ivy—1951

“Puff was a musician, too? I love music.”

“A musician?”

“He brought melody to Morning Glory?”

“Melody, his sweet-faced, darling, song-in-her-heart bride! And oh, could that woman cook!”

“All that time, Puff had been married?”

“What? No, dear. All that time Puff had been single. Then one day, he came home from town with more than just the flour and salt we needed. Sitting on the wagon seat beside him was a beautiful woman with clear black eyes and flawless skin the color of a rich walnut stain. She floated down from the wagon, a wisp of a thing, like the feather of an exotic bird, shining in every way.”

“I can see it.”

“From a distance, I surmised she was a woman in need of shelter. But she appeared past childbearing age and the exuberant smile on her face told a different tale. She was a woman in love. And Puff! Oh, I’d never seen him so overflowing with life.”

Ivy set aside the notebook and drew her chair closer to Anna’s wheelchair for more details.

“You don’t want to miss recording all this.”

“I won’t. I’ll remember. I just need to sit for a minute in the middle of someone’s love story.”

Anna patted her friend’s hand. “We don’t know the end of the Ivy and Drew love story yet. But someday, someone will sit in the middle of yours.”

“You have more hope than I do.”

“I don’t mind sharing a commodity like hope.”

“Where did Puff find Melody?”

“It was the other way around. She found him. They’d been childhood sweethearts fifty years earlier but lost track of each other. The war.”

“Wars do that to people.” Ivy’s thoughts drifted six thousand miles from where they sat.

Anna readjusted her position, then pressed her hand to her heart.

“Are you feeling all right?”

“A little catch is all.”

Ivy waited a moment. Should she press for more details? “So Puff had never married?”

“He claimed he couldn’t. His heart belonged to someone already.”

“That’s a long time to wait, to hope, to pray that your true love will come back into your life.”

Anna laid her head back against her chair. “He had a knowing.”

“A knowing.”

“Deep in here.” Anna tapped her heart with a reverence equal to the longing. “It carried him through one season after another—barren winters, springs and summers without her, autumns that hinted of yet another barren winter ahead.”

Ivy rubbed her hands together as if they were cold. “Winter’s coming.”

“And so is that precious baby of yours.”

“I may be all she or he ever has. That’s not enough.”

Anna chuffed. “Your baby’s name is not Regret. You’ve still so much to learn.” She folded her hands. “Dear Lord, please keep me alive long enough to walk this child all the way to wisdom.”

“How many of your girls got married, Anna? How many had whole families, more children? How many found grace?”

“I don’t know. I understood most would not return after they left Morning Glory. Some did, to say thank you or to bring a contribution to the needs of other girls as hurting as they had once been. But we understood that even as a city of refuge might be held as a tender memory, we would not be a destination to revisit. We were no tourist stop. We were there for a time of trouble, a time that most hoped would remain locked away from prying eyes and from the future they worked hard to construct.”

“A secret? You advocated that?”

“No, dear. I always encouraged the truth. But I did not encourage my girls to maintain a connection with Morning Glory. They needed to move on, to leave that season of pain and remorse in their past.”

“Didn’t that make you curious about what happened to them? You poured such love into their lives.”

“I did. But I wasn’t asked to keep them. The task I faced was to love them, help them heal, and then let them go. What happened after that was between them and God.”

Ivy thought of the months she’d cared for Anna at the Maple Grove Nursing Home. She’d had no visitors, no family members. She had been alone. Yet never alone.

“I did ask one thing of them.” Anna slapped her palms together as if anticipating a Christmas gift.

“What was that?”

“As they left me, I gave them each a small brown envelope of morning glory seeds. My hope was that those seeds would
be planted wherever the women landed. And I asked that when the day came that their morning glories bloomed in their yards and in their hearts, when they understood the grace they’d been shown and were given the opportunity to show it to others, they’d harvest seeds from those
blossuns
—sorry, that was Puff’s word for them—seeds from the blossoms and send a handful to me.”

“And did they?” Ivy mentally traced through the possessions they’d moved from Anna’s room at Maple Grove to their bungalow. So few possessions for a woman who’d lived so long. Either too few of those she helped remembered her kindness or the way Anna remembered the stories was heavily laced with imagination.

Anna smiled and tugged at the engraved book-shaped locket at her throat.

On Sunday nights,
The Ed Sullivan Show
proved a shared interest between Anna and Ornell. They laughed together as Ivy repaired tiny garments collected from the secondhand store. She edged cotton diapers and stacked them in neat piles in the top drawer of the dresser in the bedroom she would soon share with a child.

Somehow Anna and her father had conspired behind her back on a project that tugged at Ivy’s heart as much as it frustrated her. Her father had brought home what he called an early Christmas present for her—a heavy black Remington typewriter.

“Thank you?”

Anna shot her a look pregnant with meaning.

“Thank you. I appreciate it.”

The gift was too heavy for her to manage in her current condition, so her dad hauled it to her bedroom and set it up on the small desk that he once had claimed.

“Dad, thank you, really. But I don’t type.”

“Not yet,” Anna called from the spot in the hall where she’d wheeled herself. “Not yet, dear.”

“You’re gonna need some more skills for after—” Ivy’s father nodded toward her child-sized belly. “Merry Christmas, and I’d suggest you practice now, before that clacking noise wakes up my grandson.”

“Grandson, Dad?”

“Might be.” The faintest hint of a smile on his weathered face warmed her all the way to her unpracticed fingers.

“Anna, please, now that Ed Sullivan is finished for another week, can we get back to Puff and Melody’s story?”

“It’s almost bedtime.”

“Can we talk while I help you get ready for bed?”

“Not tonight, Ivy.”

Ivy laid the back of her hand against Anna’s pale forehead. “Are you feeling okay?”

“You’re not the only one missing her beloved. All that talk about Puff and Melody, about the girls and their babies who came into my life and left again  . . .”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed.”

“Oh, it’s silly of me. I’ve had my share of wonderful. And now God’s given me another burst of joy watching what He’s doing with you. Can’t wait to hold your little one. Look at that!”

“What?”

“I think that was an elbow making its presence known there.”

“Elbow. Knee. Here.” Ivy took Anna’s hand in hers and laid it on the spot where the baby had last kicked. It wasn’t long before the little one responded with a healthy prize-fighter punch.

Tears filled the crevices on Anna’s face. “Such a beautiful thing. What that must feel like for the mother!”

Anna had never known.

25

Becky—2013

Quiet grace speaks louder than noisy blame.” The flip calendar was right again.

Then Lauren blew into the house and had to be reminded to shut the door behind her, despite the single-digit temps of a late-winter Arctic blast. “Sorry, Mom. But when I tell you what I have to tell you, you’ll forgive me for being a little distracted.”

Becky tucked her feet underneath her on the couch and wrapped the chenille throw tighter around her shoulders. The surge of cold air would dissipate before it tried to slither under the closed door behind which both Jackson and Gil slept in the master bedroom. Both had been whining entirely too much lately. A nap would do them good. She hoped.

“Is Dad here?”

“He’s sleeping off the dregs of driving the fourth-graders on their field trip to the capital.”

“Ooo. Brutal. Can I wake him up?”

“Not without waking Jackson, too. They’re napping together. Your dad volunteered to lie down with him for a few minutes. That was an hour ago.”

Lauren’s mouth formed a series of smooth, cursive w’s. “Hmm. I wanted to show you at the same time.” She bounced
on her toes, her hands stuffed in the pockets of her thank-you-Goodwill coat.

“Show us what?”

“This!” She pulled her left hand out of her pocket and stuck it under Becky’s nose.

“A  . . .  a tattoo?”

Lauren sighed. “It’s a ring!”

“A tattoo of a ring.”

“Right. Brilliant, isn’t it? Can never get lost. Won’t catch on sweaters. Doesn’t need insurance. Don’t have to take it off when I do dishes.”

“Oh, honey! You’re going to start doing dishes? I’m overwhelmed. This is so unexpected.”

“Mother, you’re so funny. Look at it. It’s an en-
gage
-ment ring. Isn’t that the most outrageous thing?”

What was that disease where a person’s eyes bugged out? Former first lady Barbara Bush struggled with it for a while. Graves’ disease. That was it. Lauren had the power to induce Graves’ disease. Becky pressed her palms against her closed eyelids to push her eyeballs back into their sockets.

“Mom, I’m engaged!”

Which, oh which, question to ask first?
Are you kidding? Are you insane? You got a tattoo? You’re engaged? To whom?

“Mom, say something. It’s perfect, isn’t it?”

“In  . . .  what  . . .  way? Could we start at the beginning?”

Lauren huffed her exasperation and plopped on the floor in front of Becky. Cross-legged and almost audibly screeching the brakes of her emotions, she said, “Okay, so, Noah and I were at the mall, and I thought he was just kidding, but he wasn’t, when he said we should look at rings.”

Becky shook the loose synapses in her brain. “Wait a minute. Noah and you are that serious?”

“Uh, yea-uh!” She wiggled her ring finger in Becky’s direction.

“Is he Jackson’s father?”

“That is so not the point, Mom. Will you just listen to the story?”

Hot flash? Heart attack? Stroke? Aneurysm? Her vision skewed as though she were viewing the scene through waxed paper. Her hearing fogged. Incapable of speech, she nodded.