“I do. I’m older than I look.”
“How old is that?”
“Fifty-one.”
Teresa heads for the door, and Flo says, “Hold on. I believe I ought to giveyoua dish. I’m doing a little cleaning house. You know.”
“I’ll take a dish if you want,” Teresa says. “But I think this might be the time when you tell yourself you are ready for your own miracle.” She comes over to Flo and says quietly, “Close your eyes and think hard that you want your body to heal. Take it seriously.” She takes Flo’s hands into hers.
Flo closes her eyes. Then she pops them open. “Whooeee, I just felt something. A big rush of a feeling running straight up.”
Teresa touches Flo’s shoulder. “I’d love to visit you again.”
“I hope you will. Any time.”
Flo stands on the porch to watch the last of the colors leach from the sky. She has heard of people in California who gather together to watch the sunset like they’d watch a show. And they clap afterward! She wishes she’d have done that. That is something she should have done regularly. She thinks about how when you watch a sunset, the sun slips away so fast. Only at the end, though. You watch thinking it will last forever, but then the sun all of a sudden flattens, becomes a pinpoint of hard shining light with those holy rays, and then: gone.
Of course, nighttime has its charms. The hooty owls and the frogs singing and how a voice can carry. And if you’re lucky the sky fills up with stars like to take your breath away no matter how old you are or how many times you’ve seen them. The stars can set you to wondering outside yourself, is the thing. They can make your mind big. No need to miss the sun if the stars come out right after.
Flo sits in the rocker and closes her eyes. She remembers when she was a girl and liked to sit out on a blanket inher backyard and watch the sunset most every night. She wrapped her arms around her knees and rested her chin on them and held still and watched. She always did say it was a full-out education, just watching. She’s told people that’s what she got her doctorate in, taking note of Homo sapiens and environs. One thing she loved about Terrence was how he never made fun of her lack of education, and so she learned. Just about anybody would learn if you gave them a running start ofI like you how you are already.
After Flo washes up and gets into bed, she thinks about whether a mind might really be able to cure a body. Shehadfelt that jolty feeling, and she had never felt anything like that in her life. But how much faith could someone have in something like that? She is ninety-two. Her doctor is not a dope.
She turns onto her side and closes her eyes, even though it’s awfully early to go to sleep. Flo thinks one of the pleasures of living alone is that you can nap or go to bed whenever you feel like it. But when you wake up alone, doesn’t the ticking of the clock sound so loud.
She lies still, thinking of the dinner she had with Teresa, and the way Teresa had brought everything in her hamper, even plastic cutlery. Flo should have suggested they use some of her fancy silver, which she ought to have used more often. This reminds her of something, and so she gets out of bed and goes downstairs to add a little more to her letter.
Ruthie, do you remember a collection of silver spoons, mismatched pieces I’d collected? You always liked them. I remember one summer day, the breeze pushing at the dining room curtains and you were lining those spoons up, making them spaced exactly even. You had graduated high school and were off to college the next day and you seemed sad about it. You had come over to say goodbye and it was lunchtime and I asked you if we should have a fancy goodbye lunch together, and by fancy I meant we’d eat tuna sandwiches in the dining room, and I’d cut off the crusts. I came out into the dining room with our plates and there you were, sitting before those spoons, and they had a silvery glow with the sun coming in on them. You looked up when I came in and you said how pretty the spoons were. This, too, seemed to make you sad. And then I remembered how you used to use those spoons for Terrence’s soup when he was sick, when he got to where he couldn’t hardly eat you liked to bring him soup with a different silver spoon every day. Well, look at this, he would say, every time. And you would sit by his bed while he ate and just talk to him. It was a kindness beyond what a child can usually offer, Ruthie. You did that.
But anyway, I was remembering that day when you’d lined the spoons all up. And I asked you, when we sat down to eat, were you okay. And you commenced to crying and said you wanted to go to college but you didn’t want to go away. Andthen you started talking about how things could never be perfect and you always wanted them to be perfect. And you moved one of the spoons just a tiny bit to be in exact alignment. You looked up at me and said, See? And I remember just what I told you. I told you that part of life was learning how perfect imperfect could be. You just sighed but you thought about what I’d said, I know you did. That was one of the many times I wished I were your mother. I always wanted to be a mother, I wanted it awful bad. But year after year I would turn to Terrence on a certain day of the month and tell him my “friend” had come and he would nod and say quietly, All right. And then one day he said, It’s just not for us, then, and that was the last we ever spoke of it. He never let on how much that particular loss hurt him. We contented ourselves with taking care of the neighborhood kids, which you know very well since we spoiled you nigh unto kingdom come.
Flo, Teresa, and Flash the cat are sitting on Flo’s front porch in the early evening on Saturday night. A boy maybe ten years old comes to the bottom of the stairs. “Knock, knock,” he says.
“Come in,” Flo says, and the boy climbs up onto the porch.
“I’m just seeing if you need some help with your garden,” he says. He hands Flo a flyer. The Wacky Weed Puller, he calls himself, and he charges ten cents apiece for the weeds. He takes PayPal because his dad helps him do that.
“That’s a good service,” Flo says. “How is it you learned about weeds?”
“Huh?”
“How do you know what to pull and what not to pull?”
“Oh!” the boy says. “Well, see, weeds are taller.”
“Okay,” Flo says. “I’ll keep you in mind. If you decide to diversify and sell chocolate bars, I’ll for sure buy one of those from you.”
“What kind of chocolate bars?”
“Hershey with almonds.”
The boy nods gravely. “Okay.Maybe.” He hops down the steps and goes over to the next house.
“He’ll think about those Hershey bars,” Flo says. “I’ll bet you he shows up tomorrow with a few and then I’ll need to buy them all.”
“You wouldn’t have to buy them all,” Teresa says.
“Oh, they freeze well.”
