I'm writing a story, and have the rough draft for the first 8 chapters written. Currently, my story is on hiatus while I care for my mother-in-law. That new thing is going well, so far. If you are a care-giver, you have my respect and empathy. If your Loved One is difficult or you care for more than one, my heart goes out to you. in the mean time, here's a "fluffy fiction" (the term is borrowed from a friend) for you to peruse at your leisure. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
Chapter 1
It’s been a few decades since I’ve seen her last. The first time I’d met her was in a care home, and her name is Dorothy. I remember doing the things they SAID she’d like; brushing her hair, putting her jewelry on, reading to her. All any of that did was put her to sleep. She was bored. She shared a room with two other women, both strapped to their beds. Several times, when I realized that Dorothy had fallen asleep, I would watch the other two women for a little while, before I went home. One of the women had the habit of reaching into the air as if she was picking fruit from a tree, or grapes. Then she would put her thumb into her mouth as if she was eating the fruit only she could see.
They also told me that her family had put Dorothy there, and when they visited, they would talk to her as if she was a baby. They asked me to make sure I didn’t do that. And they also said that if any family came by, that I should leave them alone so they could visit. I made sure I didn’t talk to her as if she was a baby. And the one time that any one came to visit (I guess it was her son), I smiled and let Dorothy know that she had a visitor, and left them alone.
They also said that she never talked any more. Well, I got tired of reading her to sleep, brushing her hair until it was nice and she was sleeping, and putting jewelry on her that she didn’t seem to like. So I started talking to her. I talked about my family; about how my dad retired from the military. I told to her about the places we had lived while he was in the military. I told her about our trips to see relatives every summer, about our pets. One day, I talked about my brother, Joshua. I talked about how Joshua could play different musical instruments and how he loved to play soccer.
That day, Dorothy turned her face to me. She asked slowly, and in a clear voice “How old is Joshua?”
After the first time Dorothy spoke to me, we agreed that I’d come see her more often. She whispered “Bring paper and pencil”.
The next day, when she saw me, she waved at me to walk faster. She pointed at the privacy curtain and gestured that I should pull it around. When I had closed the curtain, she whispered “Did you bring…?”
I held up a composition book and a pencil case. She smiled hugely and reached for them both and wrote on the first page; “I have a car. We should go get it.” Then she handed an old Reader’s Digest to me, pointed to a story and winked at me. I began reading the story to her and she began writing in her composition book.
Each day that I visited, Dorothy wrote and sketched in her book while I read to her. Then she would hand me the book, her face beaming, and whisper “Read it. Read it.”
Dorothy’s book was full of maps and written directions, packing lists, descriptions of places, almost like a travel guide. I looked through it every night, trying to make sense of it.
One day she gave the book a hug before she handed it to me. She whispered; “Do you look at it every day?” I told her yes. Her face brightened and she said “Good”.
That night, I looked at it, as usual, and at the top of the next page she’d written “We need to go for a drive. Ask the front desk for permission before you come to my room. Bring clothes for me and leave them in the car. I wear size 8 shoes”
That night, I slept only moments at a time, it seemed. When I did sleep, maps and lists and diagrams swam before me.
The next morning, I went to the thrift store down the street from where I lived, and bought a pair of shoes, a pair of spring green drawstring shorts, and a bright pink t-shirt that said “Flamingoes” in even brighter pink and orange stripes. I went back to my place and got a pair of socks out of the dryer (Who has time for laundry, any more?), and stuffed them into a paper bag.
From the looks of what Dorothy had written, I was sure that we might be gone long enough to want something to eat. I went to the kitchen, and grabbed a canvas shopping bag, loaf of bread, a package of salami slices and a four pack of strawberry pop. In the last moment, I grabbed the bananas off of the counter, and dropped them in. I stopped before I went out to the car. I thought how nice it would be if the pop was cold. (And the salami) I opened the hall closet and took the picnic cooler off the top shelf and put the canvas bag in it. Then I took the ice packs from the freezer and dropped them on each side of the canvas bag, and put it in the trunk next to the clothes.
Dorothy’s eyes were bright, but she suppressed her smile, for the staff. Only after the orderly said, in her cheeriest voice “It sounds as if you’re going for a drive, Dorothy”, did she smile, and said nothing. They helped her into a wheelchair, and helped her into the car, and I folded the chair and put it behind the passenger seat.
“Just be sure she’s back before supper, and have a nice day!” They waved at Dorothy through the window and we drove away. Dorothy waited until we were down the drive and around the corner before she spoke.
“Whew! I was on pins and needles all night! I hope they didn’t suspect something, do you think they did?” I told her I didn’t think so.
“Let’s go down to the boat landing. Is there still a restroom there? Oh! Did you bring me any clothes? All they let us wear is pajamas, day in and day out!” I reassured her that I had brought some clothes for her, and drove to the boat landing.
When I pulled the clothes out of the bag, she exclaimed
“Flamingoes! Why, I haven’t been there for so long! It was
I reached for the wheelchair and she said “Oh, never mind that. My knees give me a little trouble, but I can still walk. It just takes me a little extra time to stand up and then I’m fine.” While she spoke, she put the sock and shoes on. She handed her big fluffy pink slippers to me and, true to her word, she was able to walk to the restroom. When she came back out, she was wearing the clothes I had brought her, and was beaming. She had folded her terrycloth bathrobe around her flannel night gown, and draped the whole thing over her arm so it looked more like a beach towel.
I remembered an extra pair of sunglasses in the console, and handed them to her as she walked up. Dorothy put them on and “struck a pose”, asking, “How do I look?”
I said “Ready for a vacation, and about ten years younger”. She got back into the car and by the time I sat in the car, she had already buckled her seatbelt. Then Dorothy said “I AM ready for a vacation, and I FEEL younger, too. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.” Then she turned to me and burst out “Well, let’s go!”
We both laughed as I started the car and I asked “Where to?”
She said “Let’s head out of Newberg. Just head for Highway 240, then toward the coast. I’ll let you know where to turn before it’s too late”
I turned where ever Dorothy told me to, never paying much attention to where we were. As the day warmed up, we appreciated the coolness of the shade of the trees and overgrown blackberries along the road. Finally we turned onto a driveway, and she placed a hand on my arm, and whispered to me to go slow. I glanced at her and saw the caution in her eyes. I rolled nearly to a stop.
“No, no, go on. I don’t think there’s any one here. Look it’s all boarded up”, she said, pointing to the house. Her voice was low and quiet, partly of relief and partly of disappointment. I drove forward, slowly. I glanced at Dorothy and she gestured toward a small outbuilding with an enormous camellia growing over it. The camellia shaded the building and the drive leading up to it.
“Stop here”, she said, as she unbuckled her seatbelt. “The doors open outward”. Then she got out of the car and walked up to the doors. The wood was worn out. The paint had been weathered away long ago. There were still flecks and streaks of it left, mostly up under the eaves of the roof, where the sun and rain had not reached. The coolness of the shade was a relief from the hot sun, growing hotter. I got out of the car, and watched Dorothy.
She said “This used to be my garage”, as she opened the doors. “And it still IS!” She beamed. “Look at you! You’re still here!” She waved wildly at me to come in. Her face was radiant and her smile was broad, even enormous.
I looked from her face to the car inside her garage. It looked a lot like a Volkswagen Rabbit; one of the earliest years. She leaned forward and blew on the car. A cloud of brown dust kicked up, revealing that the “brown” car was, in fact, white. “Goodness! When was the last time you had a bath?” Dorothy laughed and waved at the dust, as if to shoo it away. She turned to me and said “May I introduce to you a good friend and the conveyance of all my best adventures. Rabbit, meet my young friend Lavonne. Lavonne, meet one of my oldest and dearest friends, Rabbit. Dorothy then turned to the shelves that ran the full length of the garage, and lifted a pack of cards, still in their box, and took the key that had been sitting under them. On her face was a look of hope, or worry, or both, as she unlocked the door and got into the car. She tried the ignition, and, nothing.
Disappointment washed over her face, and I asked her “Do you think maybe the battery just needs to recharge?” The bright hope returned to her face.
“Yes! The poor old thing has been parked for years! That must be it!” She walked to the back of the car and pulled out a jumper cable, and returned to open the hood of the Rabbit. She handed me one end of the cable, and I hooked the clamps onto my car battery. Dorothy clamped the other end to the Rabbit’s battery, and I started my car. Dorothy got into her car and waited a moment, and turned the key. The engine turned over, but too slowly to start. Dorothy’s face beamed as she exclaimed “Well, that’s encouraging!” She fairly hopped out of her car and almost skipped to my car. She said “We’ll just give this a few minutes and try again! I’m so excited! Oh, after all these years! I mean, almost ten years! It’s good to get out! It’s good to get home! It’s good to see Rabbit again!” Dorothy laughed, and I laughed with her.
After a few moments, she said “We should give Rabbit a proper bath. Let me try to start him again, and then I’ll get some things ready”. She got back into the car and after a hopeful grimace to me, turned the key. The Rabbit turned over and “ahem”-ed briefly, and ran. Dorothy’s grin was ear-to-ear. I thought I also caught a brief look of mischief on her face. She sat in the car and clapped her hands, giddy as a child on Christmas morning. Then she took a deep breath, and let it out again in a long sigh of relief, and turned the ignition off.
Dorothy asked what time it was. It was noon. “Oh! She said. We should go to town and get something to eat! But I really don’t want to leave Rabbit here, not yet”, she started.
I interrupted and said “I’ve brought a lunch”, She watched me walk to the back of my car and let an “Oh, goody!” escape as I lifted the cooler out. She pulled a wooden folding chair out of the back of the Rabbit and said “It helps to be prepared”. She walked to the space between the two cars. As she set the chair down, it opened. She said “There’s another one in the back. Could you get it? I set the cooler down in front of her chair, walked to the back of Dorothy’s Rabbit and looked. There was a folding table with a top the size of a cafeteria tray, but no chair. I brought the table back and opened it as I set it down. “I didn’t see another chair, but this was there. I could just sit on the cooler”, I offered. I opened the cooler and lifted the canvas bag out and set it on the table. As I sat down, I noticed that Dorothy looked perplexed.
Dorothy noticed me looking at her and said “Well, I remember that table, but I wonder where the other chair went?”
I set the lunch out on the table; the bread, salami, bananas, and a row of four strawberry soda pops. I tucked the canvas bag under the table. I pulled on a slice of salami and set it on a slice of bread and began munching. Dorothy broke out of her reverie and also put a slice of salami with some bread and took a bite.
“Oh! This is so good! Much better than lasagna flavored mush!” As we ate, she described how, since she didn’t speak at the “home”, they assumed that she didn’t or wouldn’t eat on her own, so the pulverized her meals and spoon fed her. She also described how she would wake up around two in the morning and walk up and down the halls, looking at the pictures on the walls, ducking around corners if she heard foot steps and sneaking back to her bed, and tucking the covers around her legs again before laying down. “And I haven’t been caught yet” she flourished, with a look of mischief on her face.
“You seem to be good at managing your mischief”, I said.
“Mischief? Dorothy asked, “Why, what ever do you mean?”
“I mean, when you talk about not getting caught at the home, and even when you started the car”, I paused, curious to see her reaction.
Dorothy looked at the car, and then at me. Then she stood up and said “Let’s give this car a bath. I’ll tell you the story.”
