“Right. So that is one of my something to look forward tos. I want to write a little note thanking Anne for her regular kindnesses. You remember how Lady Bird Johnson had flowers planted all along the highway? That’s how I feel about these things. One person does one nice thing, and it blooms in the breast of another. Pass it on. Sometimes the strife in this world makes me think I must be silly to have such hope for the spread of good. But I have it anyway. You never know when something is going to hike your spirit up. Like when that man told me something as he was leaving; he looked back over his shoulder and he said, ‘I never did know what kindness was in the world until I admitted my need for it.’ ”
Mildred sits back in her chair. “Flo, would you give me permission to write an article about this? Would that be okay?”
“Well, of course it would!”
“I think if a magazine takes it, it might make a nice Christmas story. I’ll have it framed for you.”
“…Oh,” Flo says, and Mildred says, “What’s wrong?” and so Flo tells her she won’t be around at Christmas, and why. And here’s what Mildred does: she puts her hand overFlo’s and looks clear and direct at her. And that is all and that is everything: a friend talking to a friend and the sun coming through the kitchen window and the birds yakking in the backyard trees and the way Flo might be gone but the story will be there.
Today I found Terrence’s collection of pocket watches and I hope you’ll be thrilled when you see them. They are something to behold, all engraved and many of the faces illustrated with flowers and birds, and the second hands so delicate you wonder that they didn’t disintegrate into thin air years ago. Terrence got those watches from his grandfather and he cherished them so much he never would use them. He liked to just sit in his chair of a Sunday afternoon and look at them and reminisce. His grandfather was not an affectionate person, but he knew Terrence liked those pocket watches, and when Terrence was a little boy, his grandfather would pull him onto his lap and let him touch them. It was the only time he ever let Terrence get close to him, and so I expect the watches were imbued with something more than beauty. Terrence had a soft cloth he would polish the watches with after he looked at them, and then he would put them away. I found them in a box on the top shelf of his closet, I had completely overlooked them for all these years. And now they are yours.
Four in the afternoon. This is the time of day I used to start dinner preparations. I’m not cooking much these days but I still have my metal box full of recipes and you might like some of them. Remember when you first tasted my hamburger stroganoff? You were loath to try it because you said it looked like dog throw-up. But then you did try it and commenced toeat practically the whole thing. It’s in the recipe box that I’ll leave out on the counter by the sink.
In the basement, on a train table, is Terrence’s set-up for his model trains. He was embarrassed by how much he loved those trains and by how he loved to play with them. But I thought it was wonderful. One year I got him an engineer’s cap for Christmas, and he wore it, too. Sometimes I’d be upstairs and I’d hear him tooting that train’s whistle downstairs and it never failed to make me smile. We’d always wanted to take a train trip clear across the country, Terrence and I, but we never did. I don’t rightly know why. But I’d hear that whistle blow and I’d imagine us sleeping at night in the little beds, one above the other, the velvet curtains pulled, and the landscape whooshing by. I liked to think of it snowing hard outside, and us lying there and peeking out our windows, no worries about having to drive through a storm.
If you ask me, toy trains are always special, but Terrence’s were nigh onto exquisite, the little coal car complete with pellets to make it really smoke. Scenery all around, people and little stores and even a black cocker spaniel on a red leash. Now I have to tell you a sad thing, which is that these trains were meant to go to a little boy used to come and watch Terrence play with the trains, and Terrence let him blow the whistle, and sometimes he let the boy drive the train too, but the boy had a tendency to go too fast around the curves and derail. Terrence would get kind of mad when that happened and one day he yelled at the boy, who was eight years old, he yelled that if he was really driving that train he would have maybe killed some people by derailing. Well, the boycommenced to crying and he ran out of the house, and there I was standing in the kitchen with my laundry basket at my hip thinking, What happened? What’s wrong? And there on the table were the snickerdoodles I’d set out for him and Terrence just sitting there, glasses of milk to go along. After I watched the boy go tearing down the block, still crying, Terrence came walking up slow and shame-faced from the basement and sat at the kitchen table and I asked him what had happened. He didn’t answer for a long time and then he was very soft-spoken, telling me, and he wondered why he’d been so mean. I still had never talked to Terrence about what happened in the War, and I thought maybe the notion of killing people was what had gotten Terrence so upset. I was fixing to gently ask him, but then Terrence said it was likely that the boy, Robin was his name, Robin Miller, he’d likely not ever come back because he was a very sensitive boy. Now I’ll always be that mean man to him, Terrence said, and he commenced to rub one hand with the other. I went to kneel before him and I took his hands into my own. It was a mistake, I told him. We all make mistakes. But that didn’t seem to help. Terrence said, That boy will never come back, and I wish I could just give him the trains, but I don’t think he’d take them now. I said, In time he will come back, as though I knew for sure, and you know I did feel sure. But it seemed the boy never did recover or else he went on to other things. I don’t believe Terrence ever got over that, and he said maybe it was good he and I never had children since look how delicate everything could be. You have Ruthie, Terrence said, but I have lost my Robin. I didn’t know what to say then. I just sat with him andeventually he bit into a cookie and I got up and sat across from him and I had one, too.
I would like you to give those trains to some boy would appreciate them if you can, Ruthie. No money exchanged. Just give them to a boy whose eyes will light up at the opportunity. Now be sure to tell him to wear that engineer’s cap.
Flo is in her nightgown making coffee when her phone rings. When she answers, she hears, “I did it!”
“Well, good morning, Teresa!”
“Did you hear what I said? That I did it?”
Flo looks out the window.Did it. Did it.Then, “Oh!” she says. “You and the cashier and the stars?”
“Yes!”
“Was it fun?”
“Yes!”
“Well, come and have some coffee with me and tell me all about it.”
“I have to go to work now, Flo, but I can come and see you at five.”
“Just stop by now. One second.”
“Okay, but I can’t stay.”
Flo waits on the front porch for Teresa to pull up outside and then come onto the porch.
“I just wanted to give you something,” Flo says.
“What?”
Flo steps forward and hugs Teresa hard.
“Thank you,” Teresa says. “For everything.”
“You’re welcome.”
Teresa heads back to her car with what Flo can only call a spring in her step. She looks different. She’s acting different. All right, then.
Flo goes back inside to get dressed. Standing out on the porch in her nightie for all the world to see! But she’d beenso excited about Teresa she’d plum forgotten she is all but naked.
When she reaches into her dresser drawer for some clean clothes, she finds something she’s not thought about for a long time: a newspaper article with a photo of her and Terrence. The page is yellow and delicate to the touch now; she fears unfolding it. But she sits on the side of the bed to read it. After a while, she goes downstairs to enclose the article in plastic wrap.
