Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(41)

Once home, Olivia set about filling what strangely enough had become her kitchen cupboards with the store of foodstuffs. She placed three different kinds of cereal and a row of spices on the first shelf, then stacked cans of mushrooms, corn and peas on the second. She lined up row after row of Campbell’s Soup atop the next shelf, then wedged in packages of macaroni and cheese. After she’d squeezed the final box of beans into place, Olivia threw open the cupboard doors and admired the look of what she saw—the cabinets which for months had been empty as a broken heart, were now chock full; and by some odd coincidence there was not a vacant spot on a single one of the shelves. “Providence,” Olivia sighed happily; then she began to wonder why she hadn’t realized from the start—this was where she was destined to be. It’s so obvious, she thought, why even a blind person would have seen it right off.

When Clara stopped by early in the afternoon, Olivia was already at work unpacking. “What’s this?” Clara asked, her voice registering a note of surprise. She had come to expect an air of gloominess, but instead there was Olivia, humming a rather pleasant tune and pulling clothes from her suitcase.

Olivia dropped her blue blouse atop a pile of things to be laundered. “I’ve come to my senses,” she said. “A woman alone needs to live in a place where she’s got friends, where she can put down roots and feel she belongs!”

“I don’t get it…” Clara stammered. “What exactly are you saying?”

“It’s simple,” Olivia hesitated long enough to consider a pair of brown shoes she’d pulled from the suitcase; she wrinkled her nose, set them aside and continued on. “Last night I got to remembering something Canasta told me when I was looking to find my way back home. ‘Honey,’ she said, ‘people don’t find a home, they gotta make one. Sometimes sad folks hurry off to some new place and then when they get there, they say, why this ain’t home at all—thing is, you got to give it time. You got to set growing things on the window sill, say howdy to your neighbors and write little notes on the wall calendar, then one day you get a whiff of your own stew simmering and it hits like a brick dropped square onto your head—you’re right where God intended you to be.’”

“I still don’t get it,” Clara said, “you trying to tell me you made a stew?”

“Actually, I made a meatloaf. But, that’s not what’s important. See, the stew was simply Canasta’s way of meaning a person had settled in.”

“So,” Clara said, still looking a bit confused, “Does this mean you’re staying?”

“Absolutely!”

Although Clara claimed she had already defrosted a stewing chicken, she stayed for supper and declared the meatloaf to be one of the best she’d ever tasted. “It should be,” Olivia said wistfully, for in it she’d used the very last of the seeds given to her by Canasta Jones. Once the meatloaf was gone, she’d be on her own.

After Clara had gone home, Olivia finished unpacking her suitcase. With a lengthy stretch of dresses, skirts and blouses lined up across the sofa, she went in search of hangers and found three, even those she’d had to pry loose from a closet still crowded with Charlie’s clothes. She searched again and twice thought she’d come upon an empty hanger, but as it turned out, both had trousers hanging across the bar.

It seemed highly impractical for a man to have so many clothes, particularly since he’d been deceased for several months and no longer had need of them. Initially, Olivia removed only the plaid suits, thinking they were somewhat outdated anyway, but that gave her just four more hangers. She then did away with all of the suits, grey, blue, green and one that was the color of day old buttermilk. “Why he wouldn’t be caught dead in this thing,” she mumbled without thinking. After the suits were gone, it seemed rather senseless to hang on to a collection of ties, sport jackets and slacks, so one by one Olivia removed the things from their hangers and folded them neatly. “I’m sorry,” she whispered into the lapel of his grey blazer, “I never wanted it to be this way.” When she caught the whiff of cologne that lingered on his blue cardigan, she cried for a good half-hour. “Please try to understand,” she sobbed, “I’ve got to get on with life.” When she pulled his shoes from the closet floor, Olivia slid her feet into them and drifted back to the time when he had waltzed her across the dance floor as if there was a carpet of rose petals beneath them.

But it was his bathrobe, the bathrobe that still carried the odor of not cologne, but him, which caused Olivia to fall upon the bed and weep through most of the night. By morning, she knew what she had to do.

As soon as the sun came up, Olivia telephoned Clara, “If you’re not too busy, I was hoping you could come for a visit,” she moaned soulfully,

“Visit? At seven o’clock in the morning?” Clara growled; then she plopped down the telephone. She rolled over to go back to sleep, but the sound of Olivia’s voice stayed with her—the echo of neediness squeezed in between words. Moments later, Clara stormed into Olivia’s apartment looking like a bulldog in yellow pajamas. “Okay now,” she said, thumping her hands onto her hips, “what’s the problem?”

Olivia explained how she’d suffered through the night and finally come to the conclusion that she needed a bit of help, advice maybe, or someone to lend a hand. “I know it’s what needs to be done, but I can’t bring myself to get rid of Charlie’s things,” she sniffled. “One minute I’m thinking about painting the bathroom or getting new curtains for the kitchen, then some little belonging of his grabs hold of me and I switch right back to crying.” Olivia stopped to blow her nose and wipe a well of water from her eyes, “See that,” she moaned, “it happens every time. I take a jacket or shirt out of the closet and whoosh—I end up with a picture of him wearing it. I go into the bathroom and run head on into his decrepit old toothbrush, waiting for him to come back. And, his bathrobe! One glance at that and I start wishing I was buried alongside of him.”