Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(23)

“I’d no idea,” Olivia stuttered, “you seem to be getting along just fine.”

“What’s a body to do? Caskets ain’t sized for two people.”

“Huh?”

Canasta slowly shook her head side to side, “No matter how much feeling you got for your man, there’s no way to keep him on earth when the Lord decides it’s his time to go. Once they close that casket lid, he’s gone. You can’t go with him. Only thing you can do is keep on with living.”

“What’s left to live for?” Olivia moaned tearfully.

“Sugar,” Canasta sighed, “There’s always something to live for.” She reached across and placed her bony hand on Olivia’s knee. “Why, a young woman like you…”

“Young? I’m fifty eight!”

“Prime of life!” Canasta snapped back. “You got years of loving yet to do.”

“A woman my age?”

“Yes, indeed. I married up with my dear sweet Elmer when I was eighty-two.”

“Fine for you; but, me…” Olivia looked down at the floor and shook her head side to side, “Uh-uh,” she sighed pitifully, “Without Charlie, there’s nothing.”

“Oh, I get it,” Canasta turned and fixed her eyes square on Olivia’s face, “you’re wanting sympathy. You’re looking for somebody to say how bad off you are—well, it ain’t gonna be me! Everybody gets to feeling low at times, but…”

“Of course, you, a woman who’s had four husbands, wouldn’t understand what it feels like to be lonely!”

“I understand aplenty. Lord knows I’ve done my share of grieving and crying. But, no matter how you love somebody, there comes a time when you got to let them go. See, sugar,” Canasta took Olivia’s hand in hers, “…having a man crazy in love with you is like having your pocket full of money—when you got it, you feel like a rich woman, but when you ain’t got it, you start feeling poor as a church mouse. ”

“That’s surely true,” Olivia nodded.

“Thing is, you ain’t.”

“I’m not?”

“Shoot, no. Making people think they can’t scrape up enough to buy a dime’s worth of happiness, is the Devil’s doing; that’s his way of handing out heartaches. The Good Lord don’t do things that way—when he sees a person’s flat out of hope and feeling dead broke, He slips a bit of spare change into the bottom of their pocket; not a lot maybe, but enough for them to get by.”

Olivia, leaning into the words, crooked her neck to the same angle as Canasta’s.

“Well now,” the old woman said with a smile, “the same thing’s true of the feelings inside a body’s heart—the Devil wants you to believe you’re emptied out; but trust in the Lord, sugar, He’ll see a fair share of love comes your way.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Olivia replied, “I’m not one who’s lucky in love.”

“Maybe you ain’t been trusting in the Lord.”

“I go to church.”

“Regular?”

Olivia had to admit, more often than not, there was some other matter that held her back from attending services—a brunch with friends, a book that had to be read, laundry that needed washing.

“Seems you ain’t on real close terms with the Lord;” Canasta said, “in which case, you ought to seek out an ear willing to listen.”

“Listen to what?”

“Your troubles.”

“Oh, I don’t need…”

Canasta spread her mouth in a wide open grin, “Course you do,” she said, “ain’t a soul on earth who don’t.” She linked her arm through Olivia’s and led the way into a tiny apartment situated behind the calico curtain.

They sat together at a small wooden table and drank black tea; tea so strong that it loosened Olivia’s tongue and prompted her to tell of things that for forty years had been picking at her mind. She told of beaus who had knocked on her door and been turned away; she told of how the sorry sight of Francine Burnam weighted down by five children had dissuaded her from following along on such a pathway. “Many a night, I was so lonely, I’d cry myself to sleep,” Olivia said, “but then I’d remember the look of Francine and figure being lonely was better than being chained to a flock of kids that weigh a woman down worse than a sack of stones.”

“Most every woman’s got stones of some sort or another,” Canasta replied, “some troubles are way heavier than babies.”

Olivia conceded, in certain instances such a thing was true. “Christine Flannigan,” she said, “Now, there’s a case in point.” She then went on to tell of the poor unfortunate telephone operator who’d suffered a nervous breakdown while she was sitting at the tandem board and ultimately had to be institutionalized. But, the moment Olivia finished the story, she jumped back to how she’d met Charlie and fallen in love. “Head over heels,” she sighed, “The very first time he kissed me, I knew he was the one I’d been waiting for!”

Long about dark, Canasta set a pot of okra soup on to warm; then she served up steaming bowls of it and continued to listen.

After Olivia had finished telling most every story that came to mind, she gave a breathy sigh and said, “My Charlie, he was sure a wonderful man.”