CONTINUED: JIMMY BEAN 21/22

    

 I was totally obsessed with Jimmy Bean.  The night he took me in his arms and kissed me for the first time will remain with me until my dying day.  I learned things about how my body responded that to me were a wonder and a fright.  And to this day I am convinced there is a God up there … as fickle as he might be … because Jimmy loved me in return.  There was never any need for him to say it.  I saw it in his eyes and later felt it in the tenderness of his hands.  He was my own personal miracle, sent down to love me like an angel would.  Jimmy was the reason for my life.  Everything that had ever happened to me had taken place so that Jimmy and I would unite in love.  But it lasted such a short time.

 

When Jimmy left me on that terrible morning, I did not get over it and struggle on in my world.  Instead, I moved to another world.  I didn’t change jobs right away, I didn’t leave town.  I don’t know if I can properly explain it, but it was as if everything changed in my life.  I was so heartbroken that I refused to think about him, pushing thoughts of anything to do with Jimmy from my mind as soon as they tried to enter.  The thought of future children now played out in my mind without Jimmy hovering behind us.  The trolleys passing on the street now contained no possibility of Jimmy on board.  The handsome man in the magazine advertisement no longer looked like Jimmy.  And when I went to church … well I didn’t go to church hardly at all after Jimmy.  There was no one there I wanted to talk to.

Losing Jimmy was so awful.  I know I’m dragging my heels getting to it, but it’s so hard to even think about.  Sometimes I wish Jimmy had gone off and married some hussy at the factory and I would have walked up to the roof  at lunch time and just jumped over the railing and landed on  Whitesboro Street like a sack of potatoes.  That’s selfish, I know.  Pa and Blanche would have been devastated and I’d have wound up in hell for killing myself, if Father Flaherty is right about those things. 

Jimmy and I were meant to be together.  We never married, but we did … love each other.  Oh, my God, I never dwell on it.  But why shouldn’t I?  I’m too old to worry about what a woman should and shouldn’t think about.  I can think about anything I want.  Just as I now say anything I want.

I never told my husband everything about Jimmy and me.  I could be wrong, but  I don’t think Jack guessed.  He was a gentle and wonderful man and he loved me.  I mentioned Jimmy Bean had been my boyfriend.  I didn’t give him any details.  On our wedding night I said I’d slipped while climbing a fence when I was a little girl and bled a little and what do you know.  Jack loved me until he died a few years ago.  I loved him so much for that, for his caring ways and the children he gave me, now gone too.

 

 

CONTINUED: JIMMY BEAN 19/20

Ever since I was a little girl, I’d stop in front of the iron and stone gate in front of Grace Episcopal Church and pretend I was a bride in my wedding dress on my way through the gate to get married.  I didn’t pretend to be Episcopal, so only in a daydream was it possible to be married in a stone church with wrought iron  and richly dark stained glass right out of a novel about knights and fair ladies.  As a Catholic I had no interest in the religion practiced at Grace, just their architecture.  At night in the winter on the way home, I’d lean back and gaze above at the steeple, way up to the top where the little twinkling stars were just waking up in the night sky.  What a delirious feeling to see all that black up there.  Jack later told me the entire universe was up there and it went on forever.  I didn’t know what was out there when I was a girl.  I just knew staring at it took my breath away.

I passed the Kresge's on the ground floor of the National Bank  building on the corner of Elizabeth and Genesee Streets.  Past Woolworth's I walked and my heart turned cold when I remembered the man who bothered me on the job as I stood behind the fabrics counter upstairs in the back of the building.  He was the store’s floorwalker and he gave me the creeps.  He never said anything to me, but was always hanging around,  I don’t know what he wanted.  I don’t know if he thought I was stealing something or he just wanted to be near me for some reason, but I didn’t like him.  There was a sick something about him.  I was pretty happy to walk right by the store and keep walking.

When I got to the H-I Factory in the morning, I always thought how lovely it appeared.  It was a dirty brick building to most people, but to me it was so solid compared to Woolworth's.  The workers and machines inside H-I turned out thousands of fishing poles every month.  We served the needs of all those men who went down to the streams in the early evening and brought back supper to their waiting wives.  Maybe someday Jimmy would take up fishing after we were married and I’d learn to cook fish.

CONTINUED: Jimmy Bean 13/14

 

But on that Monday evening up on the second floor among the fabrics, Jimmy appeared pale and worn and fidgety.

“How are things at the fish pole factory,” I asked.

“Oh, fine,” he said.  “I guess.”

“Have they promoted you to company President yet?”  I asked with a smile.

“Far from it,” he answered.  “I think they’re going to fire me.”

“Oh, Jimmy, whatever for?  I’m sure you’re a real asset to that company.”

“They don’t think so,” he said “and they have people watching me … at work, at home, probably even here.”

I laughed, thinking he was making a joke.  But his eyes had a serious cast to them and he didn’t stay long.  He smiled when he said good bye and  I said to him laughing, “Well don’t forget I’m always right here on the second floor to serve your tablecloth needs!”  I hoped he got the message to come back anytime.

After he rounded the corner into the main aisle that ran the length of the second floor, I stepped from behind my counter.  I wanted to watch his broad shoulders from behind as he walked to the stairway at the opposite end of the floor.  He was more stooped than I remembered and when he turned to go down the stairs he was talking to himself, or to someone I couldn’t see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONTINUED: Jimmy Bean 9/10

  

A year is a very long time when you’re fourteen.  Especially when Jimmy had graduated the year before and I was yearning to see him again in the hallways

and at lunch.  Now it would be another year.    I day dreamed about us meeting outside the high school at lunch time, sitting on the iron pipe that surrounded the grass while all the girls noticed us and were jealous of me. 

But when I finally arrived at the free academy the next year, Jimmy was lost to me in a cloud of older girls who swarmed around him constantly.  Often he came down the hallway surrounded by a group of girls, all giggling and talking.  If I wasn’t so in love, I’d have been angry with him.  He just got more and more handsome and grownup while I got pimples, eczema and often had sporadic times of the month, which Irene called peek-a-boo periods.

I remember one afternoon after school when I started up Elm Street for home and Jimmy Bean came toward me, walking in a group of eleventh grade boys and girls. He recognized me and ordinarily would have stopped to say hello, but the crowd dragged him along with them.  He quickly glanced at me but kept going along with his friends.  I felt ignored and I knew that even if I were in the same grade as those kids, I’d never be invited along with them and Jimmy.  They wore the latest clothes and said smart things.  I never thought of anything to say.  Maybe I should have given up on being with him, but instead I became even more determined to somehow take him away and  have him all to myself. 

There wasn’t much chance of me pulling it off, not with a boy so popular that, even after he graduated and went to work in the fish pole factory on Whitesboro Street, the senior and junior girls still talked about Jimmy. 

When church let out on Sunday morning I got a half a minute of his time out on the street after Mass.  I kidded him about being so popular. 

“Pretty soon you’ll be in the newspaper,” I said as I caught up to him outside of Saint Francis de Sales Church.  But instead of being embarrassed or even trying to look a little humble, his face lit up in a winning smile.  I never met a boy who made me love him more by loving himself.  He was like his own cheerleader and I couldn’t help to not stand up and cheer him on.

I wasn’t very good at small talk, but I always felt completely comfortable with Jimmy, even though my heart was pumping a mile a minute whenever I was near him.  And although he always said something nice to me,  I knew he was looking at me as a little girl.  That was disappointing, because I was aware of boys in my grade starting to stare at me with that weird look in their eyes.

“Mary, you’re just the swell-est kid on Steuben Street,” he said to me.  I went home and rolled this pronouncement over and over in my mind, trying to find a hint of interest from him.

CONTINUED: CXLviii Only Once, and CXLix. Parting

(Parting appears in this chapter order in the latest version of the novel, Monk In The Cellar.)

My father left us when I was a very young man. He didn't mean to. He just forgot to take care of himself. He might have minded his health and blood pressure if he had realized he would die, that he would leave us somewhat destitute and forever heartbroken.

I think I was in my thirties before I realized that had I been a young child when Dad passed away that afternoon, I would have cried and cried and then somehow gotten beyond the loss, as much as anyone ever can. But I was a young man, home on vacation from college, ready to finally have man to man conversations with him. After all those years of being a somewhat pissy teenager, I was just beginning to really talk to him. I wanted to learn from him. Not so much from his advice, which he was always very careful not to press upon me, but from the interplay of our ideas and experiences as almost equals. I began to see in what ways I was his son and I wanted to learn more from him about his life, his joys and failures. I hoped that doing so would help me avoid a few stumbles along my own path. And he was a nice guy; I just liked talking to him.

But he died. He died in my arms, my mother up front behind the wheel of the old Ford, foot pressing the accelerator to the floor, running every stop light between our house and the Emergency Room. Dad trying to catch his breath in the back seat and me just holding him, not knowing what to do, until he was finally still. Two blocks before the hospital my mother sideswiped a car coming toward us. She didn't stop. The other car took our back bumper off and we just kept going. When we got to the ER door, an ambulance blocked it. Mom pulled the car up on the grass as close as she could get and threw the shift lever up to Park. Then she jumped out her door.

"Carry him in," she shouted at me as she ran in the doorway to get a nurse.

I did as I was told, and only later wondered how I had the strength to carry such a large man.

They took him from me. I started to follow, but an orderly, a large black man, stopped me. When I tried to brush past him, he did the strangest thing. He put his arms around me in a bear hug and he didn't let go until I stopped struggling. Then he pulled me over to a chair and pushed me into it. He sat beside me on the end table saying nothing.

"I'm OK," I said after a few moments.

He stood and patted my arm and then he left.

I was alone. And in some ways would be so forever.

CONTINUED: Jimmy Bean 4

Katie was a lot bigger than me as well as most of the kids in our class and she usually got what she wanted.  The big brat grabbed my sword and pulled with all her might.  She put her back into it and tried to whip the stick from me.  I held on and she swung me right up off the ground.  I slammed into the metal fence that surrounded the school yard.  I bounced off and wound up flat on my back on the ground with my skirt hiked up to the top of my legs.  When I looked up, there he stood, Jimmy Bean, a boy a year ahead of me in school.  

He stood before me with a smile on his face as I brushed down my skirt and scrambled to my feet.  His hair was almost red, but more blonde.  He was lovely.  The sun behind him lit his golden curls and I thought,  “what a beautiful boy!”

“I’m Jimmy Bean.” If he had said he was an angel I’d have believed him.

“You’re who?”  I asked, hoping he would say his wonderful name again.

He said nothing, but just kept smiling.

“Jimmy Bean?”  I finally said.

“I am.” he said, now laughing.  “And you’re Mary Grace, my friend’s neighbor.”

“I am?” I said.

“You are,” said Jimmy Bean.  He winked at me, turned and walked away. 

I watched his square shoulders move across the playground as he joined a group of boys who were looking my way and laughing.  But they stopped as Jimmy Bean came up to them and he assumed a position in the middle of the group.  He commanded respect, I saw that.  Something in his eyes and bearing, just the way he moved his limbs, told you here was someone who mattered.  Katie saw it too when she ran away at his approach.  That’s what Irene told me as we walked home from school.

“He scared her away just by looking at her,” said Irene.

“He’s not scary to me,” I said.

She hugged herself.  “Those green eyes of his ....”

“Jimmy Bean rescued me, Irene,” I said.  “He rescued me!”

“But Mary, you’re too young to have a boyfriend.”

“Jimmy said he’s your friend, Irene.”

”He’s my brother Tommy’s friend,”  she said.

CONTINUED: Ever This Day

I sleep and I dream a lot.  Mostly of standing in a river.  Not a mighty river like the Yukon.  It’s more like a gentle river you can stand in and fish.  In the dream I think at first I’m fishing, but then I realize I’m just standing there as if I’m waiting.  The sound of water flowing is so neat.  It feels like some kind of a bath, like being cleaned.  I want to go out farther, deeper.  But I can’t.  I’m waiting.  The dream comes back almost every night, but I never wade out from the shore into the deeper part of the river.

I try to stay awake late at night, waiting for Sally Pepper.  I lie in bed hoping for the door to open.  I fall asleep and dream and then wake up a few times before she finally gets here.  She always seems glad to see me.  Her face lights up with the biggest smile.  The other nurses here are nice, but they don't act that happy to see me.  I think Sally likes me.  It would be terrific if she fell in love with me.  When I get out of the hospital I want to keep seeing her.  Maybe she would move to my neighborhood.

When my Dad comes to visit he is always antsy and goes out for a smoke a lot. I ask Mom later if he's mad at me about anything.  She says he's just upset and hates to see me sick.  I think he might be mad about my not wanting to go to school.  When I was home for a while, he thought I should go back to classes. 

"I don't feel good enough," I told him.

"But all the kids miss you," he said.  "They want to see you."

"They want to make fun of me," I said.

He threw up his hands and got up and left the room.  The front door to the house closed a few minutes later.  I wanted to tell him why I just couldn’t go back to the school.  Then, maybe we could have talked about fishing.  We used to go fishing most weekends.  Just because I'm sick doesn't mean I don’t remember hooking that big trout in the river.  And all the fun we had.

Dad must think my going back to school is pretty important.  Well, I did go there for a visit once.  Last March.  A few of the students laughed when I came into the classroom.  My face was bloated from the medicines.  Mr. Bellinger tried to make me feel welcome by asking me questions like he did with all the other kids.  But I hadn’t done any of the school work he sent home and I couldn’t answer the questions.  I felt so stupid.  I had the highest average in eighth grade, but now I'm just like Stephen Walters, the class dummy. 

When I get better, I'll have to start eighth grade all over again next year with those idiot seventh graders. I will definitely get better, but I won't go back to school.  I'll get a job with a big company and work my way up.  I won't need school.  Things will be terrific.  I'll marry Sally Pepper and we'll have a family.  Everything will be just fine.

 But today the thing in my chest presses down more than ever.  It's worse than yesterday.  Breathing is tough.  The doctor never really answers me when I ask if I will get better.  All he ever says is , "We'll see, we'll see."

"Are we in the right hospital for what I've got?" I ask Mom.

"They're doing their very best for you," she says.  "If I knew there was somewhere else for better treatment, I'd have you there in a heartbeat, honey."

I wake in the middle of the night and I’m afraid.  It's so quiet, like a cemetery.  I wish Sally Pepper would hurry up and come on duty.  She'll smile at me and maybe ask about the time I won the essay contest, or tell me she hears I play the piano wonderfully.  She’ll say I’m handsome and all that silly stuff while she brushes the hair out of my eyes and rubs my chest where it hurts. 

Mom brought a new magazine today and while I wait I try to read a story about fishing for salmon in Alaska.  I hear a rustling sound and look  up and Sally is here.  She is so beautiful.  I'm turning a hundred shades of red.  That smile is gorgeous.  I love her.

“Where did you come from?” I ask.

“The river,” she says.  “Can’t you hear it?”

I don’t know if she means what she’s saying or she’s joking.  I don’t care.  I grab her hand and say, "I love you."

"I love you more than you know," she says.

"No, I mean I love you," I say.

She smiles, but her eyes turn serious for just a moment. She laughs lightly.

"In your dreams," she says.

We talk a little and then I get quiet and close my eyes for only a second.  But when I open them she’s gone.

  In the morning old Sister Mary Hymentuum comes in to give me the  bed bath,  a cleansing of the face and pits.  Sister Hy says any work below the belt is my duty.  Thank God. 

This morning her face is more serious than usual.  I wonder if there is bad news from yesterday's tests.  I'd ask her, but she always says the doctors never tell her test results.

"And how are you feeling this morning, young Mister,"  says Sister Hy.

"I'm feeling like I'm going to beat this thing," I reply, wondering how she will answer.

"Well, that's good, that's good," she mumbles without much enthusiasm. She starts my bath.

"Sally Pepper thinks so, too," I say.

"Uh huh," says Sister Hy. "Sally who?"

"The night nurse, Sally Pepper,"  I say.

"Never heard of her," she says. "Hold your other arm up, now."

I'm surprised. She’s a little forgetful, I guess.  Maybe it’s a nun thing to not remember the prettiest nurse in the hospital.

"Young man, I have a heavy heart for you this morning," says Sister Hy.

"I'm doing fine," I say.  I do not want to hear this.  Sister Hy has my arm in the air and she keeps scrubbing my arm pit, over and over.

"You know," she says, "no one here is talking to you about  ..."  She drops the arm and begins to wash my chest. 

"About what?" I say.

"About  ... " she says,  "the future.”

“The future is great,” I say.  “I’m going to pull through this.  I am.  I definitely am.”

“It’s not my place to –“ she begins

“That’s right,” I say, interrupting her.  “It’s not. We’ll let the doctor do the talking.”

Sister Hy gathers up the towel and pan of water and starts to leave.  But she stops, leans over me and places a kiss on my forehead.  She walks away and out the door and I feel relieved. And rotten.

Later I ask Sally if she is my night nurse.

"I am here for you," is all she says.

"Why don't you ever give me a shot or take my temperature?" I ask.

"They do that for you during the day," she says.

 Yes, they do. I get needles stuck in me all the time.  They're painful, but Sally Pepper says to pray, "Ever this day be at my side" while the needle goes in.  It hurts less and I remember a prayer Mom taught me when I was a little kid.  It goes “Ever this day be at my side,  to love and guide.”  I can’t remember the rest.   I’ll have to ask Sally if she’s ever heard it.

I think about Sally getting a shot in her bottom. I suppose I shouldn't.   If I were her doctor, I wouldn't be embarrassed. I'd just say,  "OK, Sally Pepper, give us a cheek."  I really don’t know if I could say it that way. It sounds profane.   I've been thinking a lot lately about how I would give her a shot.  She'd have to raise her skirt, and I’ve never had a girl do that in front of me.  And I guess you can't give someone a shot through their underwear, so who pulls it down, me or her?   Do I sit or do I stand behind her?  This would be kind of sacred for me, you know? Maybe I’d light a candle or put on some music, like a CD of a symphony.  Dad would probably choose Mahler’s 9^th.  He always plays that when something important happens, like when he got promoted at work.   I’d be a gentleman, of course. I wouldn't touch more of her skin than necessary.  I promise not to.  I’d bless myself as I pushed in the plunger. 

Sally hasn’t been to see me the last few nights.  I hope  she’s not upset that I said I loved her.  I’d be humiliated if she could read my thoughts … some of them.  I keep praying she’ll come be at my side, but she hasn’t come back.  When I try to think of us being together after I get out of the hospital, something in my mind won’t let me see the future.  I get upset and almost cry.  It’s as if the future is on the other side of the river and I can’t get to it. 

It’s strange, but I think Sally has always been with me, since the day I was born.  I can’t explain how that’s possible.   I’ve seen her only the last few weeks and I wonder how I overlooked her before.

I guess I’m sleeping most of the day now. Of all things, I dream of learning to sew while I sit by a river.  Sister Hy shows me how to use the scissors in a way that doesn't fray the material.  She puts a thimble on my finger and helps me to thread a needle.  I look around the river bank, hoping no one sees me doing a girl thing. 

"I don't like doing this," I say.

"But it's no different than tying a beautiful Royal Coachman trout fly," she says

"Well, I'd certainly say it is very different," I reply.

"We’re making something for your beloved.  You’re sewing a dress for Sally Pepper.  It's for a very special occasion."

I wonder how Sister Hy knows of Sally and that I love her.  Once I start working, I realize I’m happy for the first time in weeks.  I cut out the pieces and lovingly form every fold of the white fabric to fit each curve of her body.  I stitch a beautiful fitted gown to embrace Sally Pepper. It's like dressing her. It feels almost as nice as it would to touch her.

It’s getting harder to breathe now.  I take long, slow pulls through my nose and each time the pain is worse.  I’ve lost track of everything around me.  My whole world is my breathing and the pain.  It always seems like late afternoon.  It’s cold and I haven’t seen the sun since forever.

Sister Hy comes to me again in a dream, but this time she doesn't want to sew.

"Come with me," she says.  We're not at the river, but instead in a desert.  The sun is impaled on the edge of the sky, its top half above the far hills.  I can't tell if it’s dawn or evening.  Sister Hy stays ahead of me and leads the way.  We walk for quite a distance and the ground gets steeper.  The sun never moves.  It sits there with one leg over the horizon and watches us.  A thick mist swirls up ahead of us and the path disappears into it.   I stop, but Sister Hy reaches back and pulls me into the fog.  We edge forward, pushing our feet ahead, as if we were nearing the edge of something.  I hear a river, but this time it’s not a lazy flow.  It is running from my left to my right, a huge and powerful flood of water pounding a course from horizon to horizon. I can't see it and I don't want to get any closer. 

"Come ahead," says Sister Hy.  "You need to see this."  I can’t.  I am thoroughly frightened.  I don't want to see what is beyond.  My stomach churns and moans, and I have to go to the bathroom.  My head is throbbing and I can feel my heart thumping in my chest.  I do not want this.  Why does this have to happen? 

"I can't come with you," I say to Sister Hy.

"You must." She answers. "I won't let you fall in, but you must see this."

"I'm not going anywhere," I shout.  "Why are you doing this to me?  I want to go back to the hospital.  Where is Sally?  I want to go home.  I want to see my Dad.  Why is he always leaving me?"

I awake soaked to my skin.  I am bawling like a two year old.  I realize I’m back in the hospital.  Someone is holding me. 

"I'm dying," I say through my tears.

"I didn't want to tell you," says my father.   He pulls me closer into his arms and kisses the top of my head.  Then he lets go and stands up.  He crosses the room and leaves.  I can hear him crying.

I dream that Sally Pepper and I make love.  I don't see anything.  It must happen in the dark.  I only know we do it.  I can tell.  It's strange, as though I'm in a dream while I'm dreaming about it.

Later, I see our children.    I'm proud of them and of myself.  I come home from work wearing a shirt and a tie and Sally Pepper is cooking supper and feeding the baby in a high chair.  Our little boy plays under the kitchen table.  He looks like me.

  I say to him, "Why don't you come out and be with Daddy?"

"I'm busy," he says.

"Busy with what?" I ask.

"You know," he says. "I'm dying."

It’s very dark now.  The pain isn’t gone, but it feels like it belongs to someone else.  I haven’t taken a breath in a while.  I tried and tried and then I just gave up.  It’s very quiet, except for the breeze that blows at my back and nudges me forward.  I can hear the sound of flowing water again.  I'm on the edge of the world.  It's not a dream.  I want to call out for Sally Pepper, but I can’t get enough air to speak.

I know I'm leaving.  I'm not afraid.  I'm awfully sad. I will never be here again.

I hear a shout and turn.  Behind me in the distance great dark clouds rise up into the sky above a raging river that makes no sound.  My father stands on the far shore, almost hidden in the shadow of the storm.  Although he is at a distance, I see him place a fist over his heart.  His other hand comes up and closes over the fist.  He will always hold me in his heart.  I feel tears start, but I have no breath to cry out to him.

Turning back to the path my eyes feel as if they are opening and the world begins to glow with a new light.

Sally Pepper is at my side.  She is stunning, dressed in the gown I sewed.  She is absolutely beautiful and I’ve never seen her so radiant.  There are gorgeous velvet hills all around us and the sky is a perfect robin's egg blue.  We walk hand in hand and she brings me to the top of a hill.  Down the green slope in front of us is a valley.  At the bottom a river flows away as far as I can see.  A small group stands on the shore  and they look up at us,  waving.  Three or four  of the young women carry bouquets of flowers.  Sally Pepper walks a few steps forward, then turns and invites me to follow.   I walk up to her and she takes my hand and places it over her heart.  She leans into me and whispers in my ear, "Ever this day be at my side."   The sun is warm on my face and the wind caresses me. I am laughing.  I am crying.  I can breathe.

copyright, 2008/2012   David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com