That's the writing prompt that inspired the following piece. I originally wrote this several years ago but have made some changes and additions that I think work better.
She had just answered Final Jeopardy when her terrier jumped
from the couch and scrambled to the front door, his tiny bark alerting Dolores of
someone's presence. She assumed it was
the postman preparing to deposit today's stack of bills, catalogs, and
magazines into the mail slot. Instead of
the familiar sound of swishing envelopes, however, she heard the dog emit a low
growl. Maybe a cat or another dog, Dolores thought.
"Hush, Tipsy.
Mama's coming."
Dolores grunted as she pushed herself off of the sofa. She wasn't an especially old woman or even an
especially large woman, but life had weighed heavily on her shoulders for many
years and had taken a toll on her both physically and mentally.
Since Dolores hit
puberty, there had rarely been a moment in her life in which she hadn't been
responsible for the care of another person.
 |
| The Convalescent Woman by Henri Matisse |
As a teenager, she'd tended to her younger siblings as her mother slowly succumbed to cancer. In the final months of sickness, Dolores took
on the role of both parent and nurse.
Her insomnia could be traced back to those nights of lying in bed,
awaiting the sound of her mother's moan or of her siblings' cries. She would rock her younger brother as he
struggled against her thin body, reminding her over and over through his sobs
that she wasn't his Mama. She would
cover his ears as their mother howled in pain, demanding Dolores to put the
child down and come to her aid.
Though it had been 47
years, Dolores still carried the secret shame of her initial feelings the
morning she reached for her mother's hand and found it stiff and cold: relief.
Her mother had insisted
that she not be embalmed, pointing out that her insides had rotted so there was
no need to preserve what was left of her outsides. Dolores knew that her mother's decision could
also be attributed to the modest woman's loathing of the thought of being naked
on the table of the local mortician.
Dolores still cringed when she thought of bathing her dead mother’s body
for the last time.
Tipsy was dancing a
four-legged jig by the time Dolores reached the door, his nails tap-tap-tapping
on the hardwood floor. There still hadn’t
been a knock. Dolores pulled back the
curtains beside the door. There was a
man sitting on her front porch steps.
His back was to Dolores, but his gray hair and posture indicated he was
of advanced age. His head was cradled in
his hands. Dolores couldn’t help but
think of her father.
Jonas Wilbanks was not
a bad man, but he had handled his wife’s illness very poorly. Mrs. Wilbanks had always handled the children
and household responsibilities. Unable to stop his wife’s pain and ill equipped
to handle his children’s emotional needs, he felt completely useless and,
eventually, hopeless. Instead of digging
in and stepping up for his family, he generally came home only to sleep and
eat. Even then he said very little and did nothing to relieve Dolores of her
newfound parental duties. He justified the neglect in his own mind by
increasing the financial provisions which he provided, requesting first
consideration for any overtime at the factory where he was employed. People around town criticized the man for
practically abandoning his children and ailing wife, but Jonas kept his head
down, his mouth shut and just worked harder.
In those days, even Dolores resented her father for what she perceived
as running away from his problems.
Looking back later in life, she realized her father had been in denial about
his wife’s impending death. The long
hours away from home were a distraction that occupied his time and mind and
allowed him to avoid accepting the blow that fate would deliver. The morning Dolores met her father on the
front porch with the news of his wife’s death, the poor man seemed
shocked. He wailed and wept as if she had
been ripped from this life unexpectedly.
Young Dolores’s guilt
increased ten-fold. She already held her
secret shame of relief; now she wondered why she wasn’t more upset. But the girl had watched her mother die
slowly, wasting away each day. There was
no shock, no sobbing. She’d spent weeks
preparing for this day.
Dolores’s father was drunk for an entire week
following her burial. And the next
week. And then pretty much every day
following, especially once the foreman’s sympathy waned and he fired Jonas
Wilbanks.
Jonas was a broken man
and would never figure out how to put the pieces back together. While her friends began their adult lives, Dolores
remained at home, mothering both her younger siblings and her father. Just shy of her 26th birthday, her
youngest brother quit school, found work, and left home. Though still a young woman, Dolores already
felt very old, and she felt older every time her Daddy would stumble home,
often bloody and bruised. She would lie awake as she had over a decade
before, only this time it was her father who cried in the night. When he’d grow quiet, she’d tiptoe down the
hallway and find him sitting in her mother’s favorite chair, asleep with his
head in his hands.
After two years, she
finally walked away with nothing but a suitcase and her guilt. Dolores began a new life on her own.
Dolores unchained and opened the door but did not cross the
threshold. Tipsy ran to the man and
began giving him a once over with his tiny nose.
“Sir?”
The man didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge her or the dog. She noticed hearing aids on the backs of his
ears.
“Sir?” she said, a little louder this time.
The man turned and looked up at her. His face was friendly but heavy with sadness. He put his hands down onto the steps and
carefully hoisted himself into a standing—yet stooped—position.
He was dressed in a short sleeved button up shirt and grey
pants. His hair was silver but barely
thinning as with most men of a certain age.
Behind his glasses were striking blue eyes.
Holding the hand rail, he made his way to the top step of the
porch. Dolores made no attempt to
reenter the house or put any type of distance between herself and the man. She was generally cautious around strangers,
but she knew this man meant her no harm.
“Is there something I can help you with, hon? Are you looking for someone? Are you lost?
I have a phone—“
“They told me you died, Bea.”
“I’m sorry?”
“They told me but I didn’t believe it. I knew you’d be here waiting if I could just
get to you. But all those doors, those
locks, those damned locks. I couldn’t
get to you.”
“Sir, I think you are mistaking me for someone else. My name is Do—“
But before she could finish, the old man covered the few
feet between them much more swiftly than she imagined possible.
He wrapped his arms around her. She could feel his body tremble as he quietly
sobbed into her shoulder. Instinctively,
her arms embraced his body. She patted
his back and soothed him, shushed him.
It had been so long since anyone had touched her, much less
held her. Her husband had been dead for
almost six years, and she had no interest in dating or starting over with
someone else. She had been blessed with
almost three decades of marriage, but the relationship had not provided the escape
she so desperately sought from her childhood.
She had hoped to find a man who would take care of her, someone with
whom she didn’t always have to be brave and strong and responsible.
But she instead fell in love with Erwin Mayes.
Dolores and Erwin met
after he returned home from Vietnam. He
was her first real boyfriend, and it didn’t take long before she became Mrs.
Mayes. Dolores left her job at the small
diner where she worked and became a full-time wife. They bought a house and made a home
together. Neither of them wanted
children, though they never actually discussed It. There was no point in
explaining their reasoning since they were in agreement, especially when the “whys”
were too painful to put into words.
 |
| Weary by Cindy Suter |
Erwin was a kind man,
an honest man with integrity. And he
loved Dolores. But she often wondered if
his love stemmed mostly from his dependence on her. Did he cling to her out of admiration or
necessity? Did he fear a life without
her or just a life alone?
Erwin never spoke of what he’d done or witnessed while he served his country, but Dolores knew that whatever happened during his tour had broken something inside of him. Throughout their marriage, there were periods of days, sometimes weeks, that Erwin would “go into himself” as Dolores called it. He wouldn’t leave the bedroom, wouldn’t eat, often wouldn’t even speak or acknowledge that Dolores was in the room. She would endure these days of living with a shell of her husband by keeping busy as her father had all those years before—cleaning the entire house top to bottom, planting a new garden, baking pies and cakes for all of the neighbors. She would only stop to bathe, sleep, eat, and tend to the few needs Erwin allowed to be met.
Each time Erwin went
away from her, Dolores waited patiently for the door to open and for her husband
to emerge, to hold her, to live again.
She would make the most of the time they had together, forcing herself
to focus on the life they were living and not the imminent threat of withdrawal
that always loomed in the not so distant future.
Then one day, the door
never opened.
Two hours later, Dolores found herself still entertaining—or
rather being entertained by— the older gentleman whose name was Robert Tatum. She had made coffee and found two honey buns
in the pantry for them to eat. He wore a
bracelet with the name of a nursing facility only three-quarters of a mile from
her own home. Or, as she had discovered,
Robert’s former home where he’d lived years before with his wife.
Dolores had not encouraged him to call her Bea, but she
hadn’t corrected either. Though he was
obviously suffering from sort of dementia, he still possessed wit and
charm. He was currently reliving the
early 80s and asking Dolores if she remembered the name of this chalet or that
quaint cafe.
The afternoon passed quickly. Dolores made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato
soup for dinner. She hid a grin when
Robert mentioned that her cooking had improved.
 |
| Tom by Ray Agius |
They ate mostly in silence, broken up by Tipsy’s occasional
whine for a bite of bread crust. About a
half hour later, as Dolores carried the dishes to the sink, she found herself
humming a song under her breath. When
she returned to the dining room, Robert was staring at her. He didn’t look especially upset or alarmed,
but he wore the sad expression she’d first seen on his face, now mixed with
confusion.
“You aren’t Bea,” he said, very quietly.
“No, Mr. Robert, I’m not Bea. I’m Dolores.
I live in this house now.”
“And Bea—“
“I’m not exactly sure, but I think she passed away. I… I can try to find out. My neighbor has a computer with the internet. Maybe I could look it up? Or is there someone
I can call? A family member?"
“No,“ he whispered, “there’s
no need. My Bea is gone.”
He slowly stood, tremors in his hands and tears in his eyes.
“Are you leaving?”
He dropped his head and lowered himself back into the chair.
“I don’t know how to get back to… that place.”
Dolores had grown accustomed over the years to seeing men
cry, to watching them crumble. She had
carefully, so carefully, swept up the broken pieces over and over. She had gently, so gently, tried to paste
them back together, using bits and pieces of herself to fill in the cracks in
those she loved.
Watching the tears stream down Robert’s face opened a door
inside her heart that had closed the day her husband’s body had been carried
from their bedroom.
After a lifetime of meeting the needs of everyone around her,
she had convinced herself that her senior years would be her time, a time of rest and solitude could be the silver lining to
the dark cloud that had followed her for so many years.
Dolores had filled the past six years with weekend trips to
visit nieces and nephews, with reading groups and ladies’ bowling league. She had adopted Tipsy from the local shelter
and nursed him back to health, both physically and mentally. She passed her days with crossword puzzles
and subscriptions to a dozen different magazines. She tended her flowers and
tried new recipes from the cooking shows she watched.
If anyone asked, Dolores was doing just fine. Some might say she had even flourished
following Erwin’s death.
But Dolores was lonely.
No, not just lonely.
She was alone.
And Dolores didn’t know how
to be alone. She hated coming home to an
empty house. She hated eating most meals
by herself. She hated having no one with
whom to share the insignificant tidbits of her day that don’t justify a phone
call to a friend.
Most of all—and she had never admitted it to herself until
this very moment—she hated having no one in her life who needed her. She dreaded the next however many years she
lived solely meeting her own needs. How
terribly unfulfilling it would be.
She thought about Mr. Robert returning back to his room at the nursing facility. She wondered if he anyone ever visited him. She thought about how his face lit up when he thought he had found his precious Bea and how despite the changes in decor, how comfortable he seemed inside his old home.
Some people need to feel loved. Some people need to feel wanted. Dolores Wilbanks Tatum needed to feel needed.
She crossed the room to where the old man sat quietly wept and
placed her hand on his shoulder.
“Let me help you,” she told him.
She had never been so certain of anything in her entire
life.
