Chapter 21
TILLEY Hello, Dolly!
It is true that you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help herself.
Tilley should know. Because, for nearly forty years, her sister tried to get her help.
She took Tilley to neurologists for scans Tilley did not want and general practitioners for medicines Tilley would refuse to take.
Therapists for mental exercises Tilley would not do.
When one therapist suggested that Tilley simply did not want to get “better,” she balked at the insinuation.
But, as Tilley came to see nearly four years after the therapist’s proclamation, she was one hundred percent correct.
Tilley did not want to get better. Because getting better would mean having to be a willing participant in her own life.
Getting better would mean having to look her demons in the eye and face the scars of what she had been through—the things that people knew and the things they didn’t know.
But, ever since Amelia and Parker brought the twins home from the hospital three years ago, Tilley had found herself making tiny tiptoes toward getting back to herself.
She willfully allowed herself to have the thoughts she had missed out on.
By retreating into herself after Robert’s accident, she had chosen not to have another man in her life.
She had chosen not to be a mother. Tilley realized once her great-niece and -nephew arrived that she was still here, and, if she worked really hard at it, she might have the chance to be their great-aunt Tilley in a bright and beautiful way.
She wasn’t sure whether anyone else noticed.
But Tilley did. She did exercises to keep herself in the moment, to allow herself to breathe through uncomfortable feelings.
Not every time. Not all the time. But sometimes, which was better than the none she had done before.
She was taking her anxiety medications as prescribed.
She was, as her therapist advised, taking small steps each day to do things that brought her joy and kept her tethered to the present.
One of those things? Every single morning, she got up with the sunrise and baked something delicious for her darling niece and her precious children.
Then Tilley poured herself a cup of tea, grabbed the Cape Carolina Chronicle—she might have been the only person who still read it—and scuttled up to her little balcony so Parker and Amelia could have morning family time with their children without her in the way.
They thanked her every single day. And every single day she felt happy that she could help.
Today, as she pulled the fresh banana bread out of the oven and set out little bowls of butter and mandarin oranges—the twins’ favorite fruit—she smiled at how the simplicity of combining ingredients in a bowl, of creating something beautiful, could make her feel so full.
As the teakettle sang, she reminded herself to stay in the moment, to enjoy the warmth of the mug in her hands, the smell of the peppermint, the steam rising so gorgeously to the top.
She heard the children stirring upstairs and was about to go back up to her room when something wonderful happened: “Aunt Tilley!” Amelia called.
“Yes, love!” she called back.
Amelia appeared at the top of the stairs. “I overslept! Would you mind feeding the twins?”
Tilley was ebullient. Oh, to be needed. To be trusted.
She put her arms around the children as they ran down the steps and sang “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” with them as she sliced the banana bread and slathered it with butter and put the mandarin oranges on the plates.
The children were always excited for breakfast, eagerly climbing up on the barstools to gobble it up.
Tilley felt so fulfilled by her moments with them, so encouraged that their interaction meant that Amelia was seeing the progress she was making, the hard work she was putting into staying here in the moment with them, that she forgot she had not read the paper.
When she opened the front door, the tightly rolled newspaper was still on the porch.
She scurried back up to her room, removed the green rubber band, and, as she did each day, unrolled it and snapped it open.
It always made her think of her dear departed daddy, those rustling pages.
And Tilley wondered how anyone could live a life without the simple luxury of the particular scent of newsprint.
The front page of the Cape Carolina Chronicle was generally a cheery affair, unlike the news in so many towns.
Articles announced the upcoming Splash and Bash, Tilley’s favorite weekend-long event of the year, profiled an exciting new handmade toy vendor at the farmers’ market, and reported on Monday’s town council meeting, where the mayor and councilors agreed to discontinue paid summer parking.
(It felt so unwelcoming.) And then, her heart did a little pitter-pat, as it did each time the front page held this particular call to action: The Cape Carolina Playhouse was hosting an open casting call for the role of Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly!
Tilley gasped when she saw the age bracket: 45–65.
There weren’t too many roles for a fifty-nine-year-old woman, so this was of particular interest.
Tilley allowed herself to imagine, for a moment, wearing a sequined dress and elbow-length gloves with Dolly’s signature feather hat.
She looked at the dates and realized it was a pipe dream.
Elizabeth would never, ever let her audition.
And Amelia would try to talk her out of it, maybe even refuse to drive her.
This was a frequent happening in Tilley’s life.
Imagining herself onstage and then realizing it could never be.
But then Tilley remembered: Amelia and Parker were leaving. Amelia wouldn’t drive her. Elizabeth wouldn’t drive her. But Tilley had the feeling that she knew just exactly who would.