Women Undone: A TruLOVE Collection

Mom,” Jason whined, “Josh won’t stop kicking me.”
“He started it, Mom,” Joshua said, a scowl on his normally happy face.
I sighed. Usually, the boys enjoyed our before-lunch walks. We live right near the edge of town, where some people have larger plots of land than ours, with room for gardens and a few chickens or other animals. It’s a good area for kids, and my sons and I had always enjoyed exploring it.
But ever since the McCords had sold their donkey, Maude, things just hadn’t been the same. Our daily visits with the friendly old donkey had been the high point of each outing. We made sure always to take along a couple of carrots, because Maude loved them almost as much as the wild anise that grew just out of reach on the other side of her fence. “Is it made out of licorice sticks, Mom?” Jason once asked, noticing the strong odor as we broke off the tall feathery stalks of anise.
“No, honey,” I’d laughed, “but it probably tastes just as good to a donkey.
“Then she has to eat her carrots first,” Josh had said insistently, “before she gets to have her dessert.”
To tell you the truth, I missed that moth-eaten old donkey almost as much as the boys did. Things had been tight enough for Ken and me when our sons were babies. But now, what with inflation our entertainment budget had shrunk almost to zero. I’d had to be more creative than ever about finding free entertainment. Picnics in the park and potluck dinners were about the only way Ken and I could go out together and be with other adults. Baby-sitters were a luxury we couldn’t even consider.
Thank goodness pre-schoolers are easy to please! To a four- and five-year-old, high adventure is finding a puddle full of wriggly tadpoles or a huge toad sunning himself on a rock. And good old Maude, with her funny hee-haw that was just like the sound of a rusty gate closing, was better than a three-ring circus. Which was a good thing. I don’t know when we could have afforded the price of tickets to a real circus.
“I have an idea,” I said brightly, trying not to let the boys know how grumpy I felt myself. “Why don’t we go back to the corner and look for a street we’ve never walked down before?”
“Yeah,” Joshua agreed. “This street is sure no good without a donkey.”
“Yeah,” Jason echoed, “it’s a dumb old street.”
But when we turned the corner, my heart sank. I’d forgotten that Garson’s was on this street. Old Mrs. Garson had started an antique and curio shop in what used to be the front sun-porch of her house. I’d never actually been inside her shop, because old dingy furniture and ancient mementoes always gave me the creeps. They reminded me too much of a childhood I’d just as soon forget. I didn’t like anything that dredged up memories of how I’d been shuffled from one set of relatives to another, hardly even given the care and attention the overstuffed chairs and hulking credenzas received. I was just the orphan nobody really wanted.
For a long time after my mom died, I used to have nightmares. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, terrified by my dreams. The shadows of the enormous wardrobes and chests seemed like monsters ready to gobble me up or trample me to bits. I’d hide my head under the covers, shaking with fear, until I finally fell asleep again from sheer exhaustion. But it would happen again the next night.
Now, in an effort to clear my mind of those unpleasant memories, I tried to think of something to distract us all. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and somebody will have a goat—or maybe even a duck-pond.”
“Yippee,” Josh and Jason shouted in unison. They went racing off ahead of me, cheered by the prospect of new animal friends. But as they passed Garson’s, they both came to a sudden halt. “Hey, Mom, come look. Quick!”
I felt as though I were glued to the pavement, and I could hardly move my feet. I knew that tone of voice. It meant they’d found something they wanted, something big and expensive. That was enough to make me feel depressed and upset, even without the idea of staring into a window full of gloomy antiques. I hated to disappoint the boys.
It was hard enough to scrape up enough money to buy small, relatively inexpensive toys for the boys. But it broke my heart to see them stare wistfully at some treasure, a treasure which, at that moment, they wanted more than anything in the whole world. That’s the way I always felt about Grammie J’s Blue Willow tea set, I suddenly remembered. To my surprise, the thought made me feel like bursting into tears.
In spite of my dragging steps, I soon caught up with the boys, who were jumping up and down with excitement in front of Garson’s.
“A bear, Mom! A great big bear!” Jason shouted.
“What makes it go, Mom?” Josh asked, his exec shining.
“I’m not sure, Josh,” I answered, shivering as I looked up at the huge mechanical animal. Its shiny worn fur reminded me of those old horsehair sofas, like the one at Aunt Julia’s, where I was supposed to be seen and not heard and not ever squirm—no matter how much the upholstery prickled. But I had to smile at the permanent grin on the bear’s face and at the way it jerkily tipped its faded red cap with one paw, holding its battered tin cup out to us with the other.
“Can we go in and give it a penny?” Jason asked.
“No, we can’t go in there with all those expensive old breakable things,” I answered, relieved that I had a good excuse for staying outside. I was glad the bear was so enormous—at least six feet tall and probably from some long-ago store display—because the boys just nodded resignedly when I added that we couldn’t even consider buying it because we didn’t have room for it at home. At least I didn’t have to mention to them that the price tag read a great big staggering five hundred dollars!
But we can come and visit it whenever we take our walks,” I promised. I didn’t feel so bad now. The bear could replace Maude the donkey, even if it wasn’t actually a live animal. Besides, our trek wasn’t over, and who knew what other surprises we might discover along the way.
Just as we turned to leave, I caught a glimpse of something off in the dim corner of the shop window that stopped me in my tracks. My heart pounding, I moved closer and peered through the glass at what looked like an old washstand set, with a large pitcher sitting in a big shallow bowl. What really took my breath away was the blue-and-white pattern of birds, bridge, and, of course, the willow trees.
“Blue Willow!” I breathed, ignoring the boys’ complaints about being hungry and wanting to head for home. “Blue Willow—just like Grammie J’s tea set.” I sighed happily. A warm feeling started to spread over me. As I stood there entranced, the memories flooded back . . .
I had scarcely known Grammie J, my great-grandmother, yet her house was the only place I ever felt safe and welcome in when I was a child. I was sure Grammie was the oldest person in the whole world.
Her face was a mass of wrinkles, but it was pink and delicate looking, like a piece of china that had shattered into a million pieces and then been painstakingly glued back together. Grammie J never said much to me, but when she did, she looked at me as though I was a real person. She didn’t look through me or around me, the way most of my adult relatives did.
“Georgia,” she’d say to the daughter who lived with her, “tea, with lots of milk and sugar, for Dottie, and plenty of tea cakes. And be sure to use the Blue Willow set.”
Grammie J’s eyes would twinkle as she watched me carefully sip my tea from the child-sized cup. How special and important I felt, as I poured from the delicate little teapot that was just the right size for my young hands. I’d heard the story many times of how Grammie J’s ship captain father had brought it back to her from the Orient, “when I wasn’t much older than you are, Dottie.”
Unfortunately, I’d also overheard other relatives commenting on my great-grandmother’s foolishness in allowing “that clumsy child to play with a priceless treasure like that.”
“Why, with the matching tray, well, I don’t know what it would bring in an antique shop,” Aunt Ellen would say disapprovingly to Aunt Gloria as we drove home, hardly bothering to lower her voice at all.
The whole time I was growing up, I never felt it was safe to relax, even for a minute. I was always braced for the worst, my stomach slightly tensed, as though I were waiting for the other shoe to drop. I had to be careful. I mustn’t irritate Aunt Julia. After all, the whole family knew children made her nervous. Otherwise, I was sure to be shipped off to Aunt Gloria’s farm again, where I was treated more like a farmhand than a member of the family.
To me, life was like trying to balance on a seesaw. One misstep on my part, and off I fell, never sure exactly where I’d land. Grammie J’s was the one place I felt trusted. Not for the world would I have endangered that trust by being clumsy with the wonderful Blue Willow tea set. And somehow, under my great-grandmother’s kind and understanding gaze, I felt grown-up and graceful, like a grand duchess pouring tea for herself and her royal guests.
If only I could have lived there with Grammie J! But she was very old and delicate. Heart problems, the relatives murmured. It was all my Great-aunt Georgia—no spring chicken herself—could do to care for that big old house and for herself and her mother. I’d heard that said often enough. Anyway, I’d never have dared suggest it myself, no matter how much I longed to stay with Grammie J forever.
I was only ten when my great-grandmother passed away, still young enough to enjoy the Blue Willow tea set. But I never saw it again, and I have no idea what happened to it. There was so much squabbling and confusion among the relatives over who was to get which of Grammie J’s treasures that it was more than any one person could do to keep up with it all. Not that most of her descendants cared enough to keep and cherish her things. Mostly, they were just out for the money a particular item would bring in some antique or junk shop. So I was sure the set had been sold. Mainly, I tried not to think about it at all. Once Grammie J was gone, so was my one safe haven. And now, all these years later, the washstand set in Garson’s window had brought it all back, as vividly as ever.
I was barely conscious of the boys’ chatter as we walked home, and I was practically in a trance as I spread peanut butter on slices of bread and got apples and milk from the refrigerator for our lunch.
Once Josh and Jason were settled down for their after-lunch rest period, I had to stifle an almost overpowering urge to rush back over to Garson’s and press my nose against the glass, just like the boys had done while they watched the mechanical bear. Now that I’d discovered the Blue Willow, I no longer dreaded our daily stops at Garson’s. In fact, I could hardly wait until it was time for our walk. Jason and Ken’s own childhood was a pretty normal one. By that, I mean that he got yelled at and punished now and then and occasionally blamed for something he hadn’t done. It’s like that for any kid. But he knew he was loved and wanted, and “being careful” to him meant not tracking in too much mud or not eating chocolate ice cream on the living-room sofa. And I didn’t even have to ask to be sure he’d never had to apologize for his parents, the way I felt I had to about mine.
I always liked to think that my own father wouldn’t have walked out on Mom if he’d just known she was expecting me. Then Mom wouldn’t have been clerking in that department store and wouldn’t have been in the basement stockroom on the day of the big fire. But all the relatives had seemed to think Mom was a fool, “taking up with that traveling man, and him a gambler to boot!” they would tsk indignantly. But if it hadn’t been for my parents’ difficulties, the r relatives wouldn’t have had their scapegoat.
I’ll never forget Uncle George’s pointed comments. “Bad business, anyone having a no-good, two-bit gambler for a father. Runs in the blood, they say,” he’d mumble, chewing on his cigar. Then, lowering his voice and jerking his head in my direction, he’d add, “Better not leave any of your loose change lying around where the kid can get at it.”
My eyes stung with tears at his words, but I pretended not to have heard—as if I’d take their darned money or valuables, anyway! Even if I’d wanted to, I had enough troubles, without bringing anything else down on my head.
Still, I constantly lived in fear that something really valuable would turn up missing and I’d be blamed for it. Like that time with Uncle Herman. Uncle Herman needed glasses. Everyone in the family knew it. He was always thrusting the phone book at one or the other of us and saying, “I don’t suppose you can make out this number either, can you?” Of course we all could. That’s why I didn’t think anything of it the day his gold tie clasp with the tiny ruby in the middle disappeared. I didn’t dare join in the search, though. It would have looked too suspicious if I’d happened to be the one to find it. The family searched everywhere, casting dark looks in my direction whenever they passed anywhere near me. I finally went out and took refuge in the tool shed.
There, I dozed off, sleeping through dinner and causing a general ruckus until one of the cousins thought of looking for me there. Someone had finally had the sense to check Uncle Herman’s bureau. Of course, the tie clasp had been right there all along. If it hadn’t been, I’m sure they all would have imagined me already on the bus to Reno by way of the Old Reliable Pawnshop, instead of out in the tool shed, crying myself to sleep.
Everyone was pretty subdued for days after that, and I felt a certain smug satisfaction. But it didn’t last, of course, so I always had to be careful.
That’s why Ken’s attitude toward lost items was such a breath of fresh air to me. If he couldn’t find something, his first thought was that he’d misplaced it himself. His second thought was to shrug his shoulders and say, “Oh, well, it’ll probably turn up sooner or later.” It was such a relief, and such a surprise, to be trusted 46 like that. It had made a real difference in my life, and I’d gradually relaxed.
I’d never felt I had to have any secrets from Ken. He seemed to take things as they came, without letting his imagination run away with him. I really couldn’t have imagined hesitating to tell him about anything, and I was pretty sure he felt the same way with me. So never in a million years would I have dreamed that a ghost from my past would get me started keeping things from my husband. It all started pretty innocently one day when the boys and I made our usual visit to Garson’s window. Josh and Jason had gotten somewhat resigned to my long stay there. The bear was still in the window, but smaller things came and went. Mrs. Garson seemed to have a fondness for old toys—rocking horses, lead soldiers, all sorts of things that fascinate little ones.
As for me, I lived in fear that someone would buy the Blue Willow washstand set. But, apparently, everyone who’d seen it couldn’t put out that kind of money either. So there it sat. On this particular day, however, my eye caught something new: a single Blue Willow saucer perched on a tiny plate rack.