The Runaway Midwife Page 21

  “A couple of months ago. I probably should have given it to someone sooner, but I didn’t know Lloyd was so close to death. I just didn’t know who to give it to.”

  “How about giving it to the family?” Jake asks sarcastically. He pulls a silver flask out of his back pocket and takes a snort, then takes two more. “I think you had your own reasons for coming up with the will after you found out we were planning to tear the cottage down and build the hotel and casino. I think you wanted the house for yourself. If it goes to court, our lawyers will make you look like the scheming little bitch that you are!”

  “No threats, Jake, but be realistic, Miss Livingston. We could have you evicted right now.”

  “How? Why?”

  “Do you have a signed copy of your lease?” Charlene asks.

  Here she’s got me. I have no lease at all. I steel my jaw. “You’ll have to do what you have to do. I can get a copy of the last check that I mailed to Wanda that she signed and deposited. I wrote ‘Rent for Seagull Haven until end of November’ on it. I have nothing else to say. Excuse me.” I try to roll my bike past them, but Jake grabs my arm.

  “Don’t think you can get away with this! We know you hang around with those hippies and environmentalists. We’ll sue you for conspiracy and throw so much shit on you at the trial that you’ll look like a walking outhouse.” I feel like laughing at his simile, but the laughter is false.

  A minute ago, I just wanted to get away, now I stand my ground. If I leave, they may go into the house. Maybe they’ll trash the place. The vein in Jake’s forehead stands out like a rope.

  “Take your hand off my arm, Mr. Nelson. You’re hurting me. I don’t think you want me to report you for assault.” This is said with as much strength as I can muster, but my voice cracks at the end.

  “Come on, Jake,” Charlene says. “We’re getting nowhere.”

  I watch as they turn their white convertible around and disappear behind a cloud of dust, then I put my visit to Terry on hold. This is not good.

  “I GUESS I was naïve to think I could just give you Lloyd’s handwritten will and that would be the end of it. You said there would be trouble. I just didn’t know it would involve me.”

  Peter Dolman and I are in the cruiser with my bike in the trunk and he’s driving me home.

  “I was just getting ready to visit Terry Jacob when the Nelsons pulled up. As soon as they left, I counted to one hundred, then biked like hell to your office. I didn’t know what else to do. These people scare me. It’s like there’s a screw loose or else they are so used to always getting what they want that they can’t stand it when they don’t.

  “Jake was pretty liquored up and got mean, threatened to kick me out of the cottage right now and take me to court for conspiracy. I guess they think I’m in league with the Nature Conservancy.”

  Peter breaks my flow of words. “I thought you were friends with the Nelson family. How was it you never met the brothers and sister before?”

  “I exaggerated my relationship with Lloyd and Wanda because I wanted people on the island to like me. I thought it made me seem more connected. Was that so bad?”

  At the corner of Sunset and Middle Loop the cop stops and looks at me. “What the hell. Let’s go see Terry anyway. She might cheer us up.”

  Terry

  Ten minutes later we pull up next to a yellow one-story building with a small wooden sign over the door that says SEAGULL ISLAND FIBRE GUILD AND ART SHOPPE. Inside the sunny showroom, the woman sits in her wheelchair behind a big table sorting balls of colored yarn.

  “How you doing?” she greets us. The weaver is not what I expected. At forty-four, she looks more like thirty-four with brown shiny shoulder-length hair and brown eyes. She’s wearing a long skirt and a low-neck black cotton top and hoop earrings, a beautiful woman.

  “What’s up, Dolman? Making your rounds on your flock like a shepherd, protecting the weak and vulnerable? I told you last time—I’m fit as a fiddle.” Her wide smile illuminates the room.

  “I just can’t stay away, Terry. You’re so entertaining you could be a stand-up comedian.”

  “You mean a sit-down comedian!” The woman grabs his hand and pretends to arm wrestle. “I could take you down anytime, copper!” she says.

  “This is Sara Livingston, RN. I don’t think you’ve actually met.”

  “Oh, we’re old telephone pals. Hi, Sara.”

  “It’s nice to finally meet you,” I respond. “Do you dye your own yarn?”

  “Sure. We work as a collective when we do the colors. That way each fiber artist doesn’t have to buy or make their own dye.” She indicates a row of deep sinks and an electric stove in the back. (Every table, I notice, is made so a wheelchair fits under it.)

  “Now the shop . . . we take turns behind the counter.” She looks around at the shelves that hold knitted sweaters, caps, shawls and mittens in natural white, gray and tan wool and some that are brightly colored. There are also woven blankets, rugs, scarves, shawls and placemats.

  “I’m amazed. All this time, I could have shopped here and I didn’t know it. I want one of everything.”

  While Terry and Peter clown around, I peek into the studio. It’s a large cozy space with three looms and an antique wooden spinning wheel. There’s also a small flat-screen TV and a desk with a laptop computer. All over the walls are skeins of yarn: gray, white, purple, green, gold, red.

  On a table, I notice a folder of drawings. “Gull Point Proposed Hotel and Casino,” it says on the cover. Why does Terry have plans for the casino? I decide to come right out and ask her.

  “So, Terry . . . I noticed a folder on a table that said something about the casino on Gull Point. Is that something you’re involved in? I was kind of surprised.” Peter looks away, embarrassed at my snooping.

  “Surprised? Why? I sit on the township council.”

  “So what do you think of it? The plans, I mean? The proposal.”

  “I’m trying to keep an open mind. We have until November to reject or require modification of the plan. The council is split down the middle.”

  “Well, we have to do something,” Peter puts in. “The island is dying.”

  “I thought Jed said that the number of full-time residents went up for the first time in years,” I offer.

  “Yeah, but 304 isn’t much. We don’t have a big enough tax base to grade the roads, keep the water lines running and make repairs on the school. We have to do something,” he says again.

  “I agree,” Terry concurs. “The question is what do we gain and what do we lose with this casino idea? It’s tricky. You should come to the next township meeting, Sara. You might find it interesting.” This raises my adrenaline.

  “Did you hear about Lloyd Nelson’s second will, Terry?” Peter asks.

  “Yeah.” She blows across her handmade pottery mug to cool her coffee. “Heard a simple written will surfaced that gave his land and cottage to the Nature Conservancy.”

  “Sara is the one who found it.”

  “Really?” The woman looks at me sideways, probably surprised and I squirm, wishing Peter hadn’t divulged that information.

  “Don’t tell everyone, okay?” I ask.

  “Why not?” Terry asks, turning to me. “You didn’t do anything wrong, did you?”

  “No,” Pete defends me. “All she did was find the folder in the top of the Nelsons’ closet and bring it to me. That was the right thing to do. Anyone asks, Terry, you tell them that.”

  Fall

  CHAPTER 36

  Vigil

  When Jed calls me, it’s already dark and I’m in my flannel nightgown, curled in front of the fire.

  “Hey, sweetie. Could I get you to come down to Nita’s and sit with me tonight? I need the company.”

  “What’s up? Is it her hip? Or her lung problems?”

  “Both, also her leg and her back hurt. She doesn’t want to be alone.”

  WHEN I GET to Nita’s house on my bike with a flashlight tied t
o the handlebars, the house is dark, except the front bedroom, the one that faces the lake. I don’t knock but quietly open the door and step in.

  I haven’t spent as much time with Nita as I should have and her health has been poor, but she assured me, when I called last week, it was just some kind of bronchitis and she’d be better after she finished the antibiotics. Now Jed is acting like she’s in a bad way.

  “Hey,” I say quietly, approaching the bed. “How’re you doing?”

  Jed turns and I see that his blue eyes are red. He swipes them with the back of his hand, embarrassed.

  “Hi, Sara,” Nita whispers. “It’s the cancer. I’ve known for a month. I’d already decided two years ago that if it came back I wasn’t going to fight it. My time is over.” (She says it like that, just as simple as anything and reaches out for my hand.)

  “Over?” I say, not wanting to understand, and I lower myself to the side of the bed.

  Jed hands me a report from Windsor Regional Hospital, but my vision is blurred by a sudden burst of tears and all I can read is something about carcinoma of the breast and tumors in the left femur and the right lung base.

  “It’s okay,” Nita says to me. Her brown skin is chalky and her face is too thin. “I’m ready to cross over. My husband, Lowell, is waiting.”

  I hear Jed let out a long breath. “Need some coffee?” he asks, nodding toward the hallway.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I hiss in the kitchen. “How long have you known?”

  “Since before the folk fest when we flew to Windsor to have her last MRI. They found tumors all over. That’s why I was so bummed and got drunk. We had a long talk when she went through chemo and radiation with her breast cancer a few years ago and now she has a ‘do not resuscitate’ form in her chart.”

  “How long does she have?”

  “Hard to say. She’s going downhill fast and she didn’t want an IV, so I’ve been giving her morphine drops by mouth. Might be a couple of days. When she starts coughing she sounds like shit. I wanted to tell you weeks ago, but Nita said no. Tonight, I just couldn’t stay awake again, so I told her I had to phone. I’ve been here since Wednesday and the clinic is closed.”

  “Damn!” is all I can think to say, although there’s much more, like, “Nita, don’t leave us!” Then the old lady begins to cough again and we run to her room.

  To Suffer

  For two days I don’t leave Nita’s house except to run home and check on my cat. Finally I bring him over and let him bounce around Nita’s bedroom. Tiger likes to sit on the bed where the old lady can lay her hand on his head.

  Most of the time Nita is peaceful. She watches the cat play with some cat toys I brought over and that makes her laugh, then we listen to music or watch old movies on her DVD player: The Manchurian Candidate with Denzel Washington, In the Heat of the Night with Sidney Poitier, Men in Black with Will Smith. “I like to see their beautiful brown faces,” she tells me without apology.

  During the day, Jed decides to go back to the clinic. I change Nita’s linens, wash her small body and braid her white hair. These are the things I used to do for women in labor and it gives us both comfort.

  Jed brings us adult diapers from his office and meatloaf and mashed potatoes from the pub. Molly Lou stops by with a macaroni dish and a blueberry pie from the Baa Baa Bakery.

  “How’s she doing?” Molly asks in the kitchen.

  “Not so good.”

  She tips her head to one side and smiles sadly, then pokes her head in the bedroom door to say hello, but the old lady sleeps. With Nita so sick I haven’t had time to find out how the remaining STD tests came out, so before Molly leaves, I catch her and whisper, “Any lab results yet?”

  She smiles and raises a thumb. “Except for the chlamydia, I dodged a bullet or God was looking after me.”

  ON THE THIRD afternoon, Jed tells me to go home and rest and get some clean clothes. “Hate to tell you, babe, but you stink.”

  Once back at the cottage I turn to the comfort of the lake and the sky. First I swim, letting the cold water wash away my exhaustion and then I walk, with Tiger on his leash, searching for pieces of smooth colored glass.

  Looking down at the ripples in the sand, I spot a trail of small footprints leading back toward the cottage. I kneel down and study Tiger’s prints, comparing one to the other. My cat’s heel has three parts. The other heel has two and is slightly bigger. They both have four toes, but the wild animal has claw marks at the end of its toe pads. I’m no expert but I’d say the footprints in the sand were clearly made by a canine, perhaps a fox, but there’s no way to tell if it’s gray or red.

  As I stroll past a patch of tall beach grass, I hear a clucking sound and Tiger goes on alert. In the shadows of the foliage, a strange brown bird stares back at me. He’s as big as a chicken with a black fringe of feathers on his head that makes him look like a punk rocker on the city streets. Almost hitting me, the bird flies off in a rush and I watch as he skims the sand toward the point.

  LEAST BITTERN

  A small bittern with a black cap and brown body

  a long yellow bill and white belly

  Diet: Small fish, amphibians and insects

  Found in wetlands among the reeds where it feeds and nests

  Voice: Cluck, cluck, cluck with a twitter

  Breeds in the central and eastern US and southern Canada

  Winters in Central America and the West Indies

  Wingspan: 18 inches

  Alpha and Omega

  On seeing the strange bird, a great sadness washes over me. The world is so beautiful and it’s so hard to see the old lady suffer, but maybe there’s no way to get through this life without pain. I deceive myself if I think we can . . . We all suffer. We are born in suffering, and we die suffering, we leave loved ones behind to suffer, but in between we fly.

  THINKING SUCH WEIGHTY thoughts as I walk, Nita’s beautiful brown face comes back to me. She keeps talking about going to meet her husband, Lowell, and seems sure of her place with him. I envy that faith. I’d like to ask Nita what she thinks about death, but it doesn’t seem appropriate to bring up the subject.

  “Oh, by the way, I know you’re going to die pretty soon, so what do you think happens next? Will your soul silently slip out of your body or does it explode into the heavens like fireworks? Or do you even believe in a soul, that unseen part of a person that has nothing to do with their flesh and bones?” No, these are the questions I must ask myself.

  Then I see it . . .

  Sticking up sideways is the largest green glass beach stone I’ve ever seen, the bottom of a beer bottle, I would bet. It’s round and flat and fits in the palm of my hand, a perfect stone for skipping on water, but it is much too special for that.

  Before Nita, I wouldn’t have known what beautiful art objects could be made of such glass and this gives me an idea. The old lady sleeps most of the time and is too ill to go into her studio. What if I could bring the studio to her? I return to her house with a mission.

  WHEN I GET back, I find Jed snoring softly in his chair next to Nita’s bed with his chin on his chest. “Why don’t you go home?” I ask him. “You need to lie down and get a good night’s sleep.” Nita’s eyes are closed and the sun is just setting. I light some votive candles. Only once does she begin to cough, but she stops in two minutes.

  Before he leaves, Jed shows me how many drops of morphine to give. The poor woman hasn’t eaten for a week. She takes only sips of Gatorade and Jed is okay with that. “It’s her time,” he says. “She’s in control.” He seems so confident and sure, but that makes me wonder.

  When women are in labor, some make good choices and some do not. Some walk and rock and shower and bathe and lean over the sink and roll their hips and hug the baby’s father and slow dance in his arms, while others are so afraid they retreat behind anesthesia, crouch there, hiding, until the event is all over, more a victim than a participant.

  So, I consider . . . if some women don�
��t know how to give birth gracefully, some people probably don’t know how to die gracefully, either. Maybe everyone needs a midwife to help them at both the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega . . . the beginning and the end.

  Kum Ba Yah

  Around nine, after watching Coming to America with Eddie Murphy, I sing Nita to sleep with an old church camp song I used as a lullaby when Jessie was little.

  “Kum ba yah, my Lord—Kum ba yah—Someone’s singing, Lord—Kum ba yah.”

  “Do you know what that means?” Nita opens her eyes and asks so softly I have to lean over.

  “Kum ba yah?” I shrug my shoulders, indicating that I don’t.

  “Come by here, Lord. Come by here. It’s a spiritual from the Gullah people who live on the coast of South Carolina. The Gullah are the descendants of African slaves . . . I’m a descendant of African slaves. Don’t you forget that! We are strong people. To have made it alive from Africa to America in those awful slave ships, we had to be strong people. Don’t you forget.”

  Here she trails off as if telling the story has exhausted her. I squeeze her hand to give her strength, but she’s on her own journey in a little white boat bobbing over the waves across Lake Erie. Then she opens her eyes and smiles.

  “Are you happy, Nita?” I ask. “Have you had a happy life?”

  “Don’t you know that’s not what it’s about, Sara? There are moments of happiness, but life is not a fairy tale or an Eddie Murphy movie. It’s not supposed to be.” She stops and takes a couple deep breaths and coughs once. “Happiness is a necklace of colored glass beach stones and each stone is a moment of happiness. Right now is one.”

  Then the old lady fades back into that place between death and dreams, where she seems to sleep, but is maybe just gliding through the clouds with seagulls.

  CHAPTER 37

  The Temple

  When Nita’s breathing is regular and slow and I think she’s going to be out for a while, I enter her studio as if it were a temple. Colored light streams through the sparkling sea glass made into sculptures, mobiles and jewelry; deep blue, turquoise, green, amber, brown, gold, even red.