Long Way Home(87)
I exhaled and counted to ten. “Fine. The bank is closed for the day, but I’ll go there tomorrow on my lunch hour and withdraw fifty dollars.” I hurried away before I said something I shouldn’t. Pop might not have realized how much he hurt me when he took Donna’s side against me. It was time for me to move out of the apartment before the two of them broke my heart for good. I could do it now that I had a car and a full-time job.
I walked to the bank on my lunch break the following day and withdrew one hundred dollars. I would give half of it to Pop for the car and use the other half to find a place to live. A widow named Mrs. Jenkins who attended my church operated a guesthouse on the other side of town, a roomy Victorian home with a tower and lead glass windows. She didn’t have regular boarders, just weekend visitors who came up from New York City to spend time in the mountains. I walked there after going to the bank, hoping she would let me board until I could find a permanent place. Mrs. Jenkins didn’t ask any questions as she showed me a large room on the second floor facing Main Street. The simple space was plain but clean, with twin beds and a dresser and a shared bathroom down the hall with a large tub.
“There’s no one staying here at the moment,” she said, “so you’ll have the place to yourself. But I’m expecting people from the city this weekend.” I gave her enough money to stay for a week, including my evening meals, and told her I would be back later with my things. I paid Pop fifty dollars before returning to work, and the old car was mine. Since Buster was already making himself at home at the Barnetts’ house, I summoned my courage to ask if I could board him in the clinic’s kennels at night.
“Pop’s girlfriend hates him,” I explained. “I know he’ll be happier here, since she doesn’t want him around, and then I won’t have to worry about him crossing the road all the time.”
“Of course, Peggy,” Mr. Barnett said. “Is . . . um . . . everything all right?” I could tell by his concerned expression that he didn’t understand what had changed back home. I wasn’t sure I did, either. After all, Donna had moved in with us more than four years ago.
“I don’t think it will be for very long,” I said quickly. “I’m planning to find a place of my own now that I have a full-time job.”
“Buster is welcome for as long as you need. And let me know if I can help in any way.”
Buster followed me home to Pop’s apartment after work, unaware that it would be for the last time. He came up to my bedroom with me and watched as I packed a suitcase with enough clothes for a week and stuffed everything else that I owned into grocery bags. They could stay in the trunk of my car for now. Donna saw me making trips up and down the stairs with the bags and loading them into my car, but she didn’t say a word. When my bedroom was empty, I took Buster across the street to feed him his dinner and lock him inside the kennel. We were both brokenhearted. I couldn’t remember ever being apart from him overnight. And he had never been locked inside a cage before.
“I’m sorry, Buster. I’m so sorry,” I said as I knelt and hugged him. “This is only temporary. I’ll find us a place to live—I promise.” I heard him whine as I hurried away and tried with all my heart not to hate Donna. A desert began to grow inside me as I drove across town to my lonely room in the guesthouse. Grief howled through my heart like a savage wind. I hadn’t felt this bad since Mama and our baby died. It was one thing to leave home voluntarily and quite another to be pushed out of the only home I’d ever known. I felt unloved. Unworthy of love.
“I kept your dinner warm in the oven, dear,” Mrs. Jenkins said when I arrived. “I hope you like chicken and dumplings.”
“Yes, thank you so much.” I had no appetite, but she’d gone to so much trouble. I ate at her kitchen table while she bustled around, washing dishes and scouring the sink with Dutch cleanser. I knew that the polite thing to do would be to make conversation but I felt too desolate to try.
“You’re welcome to use the parlor anytime, to read or listen to the radio, if you’d like,” she told me.
“Thank you. But I think I’ll just get settled in my room for the night.” I wondered if I would be able to sleep.
I set Mama’s crucifix on the bureau as I filled the empty drawers with my things. The little wooden cross brought back another memory of Jimmy, and for a moment, it was as if he had come to sit alongside me and console me in my grief. “It doesn’t matter what other people think of you, Peggety; the important truth is what God thinks. And you are His daughter. His beloved child.”
On the day that he’d spoken those words, I had taken the path from the road down to the river to be alone, upset by something that had happened at school. But Jimmy was already sitting on a rock beside the river, tossing pebbles into the water. I quickly turned back, thinking he probably wanted to be alone, too. But Buster bounded over to him with his crazy, three-legged gallop, and gave me away.
“Hey, don’t go,” Jimmy had called. “Come sit for a while.” I wiped my tears on my sleeve and tried to keep my head lowered so he wouldn’t see that I’d been crying. But Jimmy knew. He always knew. “What’s wrong, Peggety?” he asked after we’d sat there for a while. I was a freshman in high school at the time and Jimmy must have been home from college for the weekend. The war hadn’t started yet.