15. Jo
FIFTEEN
jo
Bill is gone. He’s in Arizona .
Jo wakes up to these mental reminders as she rolls over and stretches in her giant, empty bed. She puts on her robe and slippers and pads out to the kitchen, where she puts on a pot of coffee and looks out the window over the sink at another bright blue, humid Florida morning. The grass is still slightly dewy, and the pool filter hums loudly as she steps out onto the back patio through the sliding door.
The kids are still asleep, so Jo opens the front door and brings in the newspaper, the eggs, and the glass bottles of milk that have all been delivered just after dawn. Unlike in Minnesota, it’s imperative to get the eggs and the milk in and stored safely in the cool refrigerator as soon as possible so that they don’t fry and boil on the front porch in the hot morning sun.
Jo drops the newspaper on the kitchen table as she pours her coffee, and the headlines blaze up at her: There’s going to be a march on Washington at the end of the month; A freak escalator accident kills a man and his eight-year-old daughter at a racetrack in New Jersey (Jo’s hand goes to her heart as she skims this one); Hurricane Arlene passes directly over Bermuda with eighty-five mile an hour winds …Jo sits down and reads on, sipping her coffee in contemplative silence.
She’s trying to focus on the news of the world, but her brain keeps jumping back to the late night phone call she’d received from Bill before going to sleep the evening before: he’d arrived in Arizona, gotten a car and driven straight to Desert Sage, and had seen Margaret for the first time in many years. He’d delivered it all so dispassionately—and Jo had certainly tried to receive the details the same way—but beneath their words there was an undeniable current of discomfort. A frisson of angst. In the end, they’d talked about the children briefly, Jo’s shift at the hospital, and the fact that Frankie was staying with the kids again. Bill told her about the motor hotel he’d booked near Desert Sage, and that he missed them all terribly. The call had lasted less than five minutes due to the exorbitant cost of a long-distance phone call, but hearing his voice had both soothed her and riled her up, leaving Jo with a weird bubbling sensation in her chest that had kept her awake well past midnight.
When Frankie shows up to watch the kids that afternoon, she’s carrying an overflowing bag full of feathers and sequins, but Jo is so distracted that she barely notices her girls’ excitement.
“Mommy!” Kate says, dancing around as Jo clips on her pearl earrings and smoothes her skirt before leaving for the hospital. “Did you know Frankie was a dancer on New York?” She’s looking at her mother hopefully.
“It was in New York, dummy,” Jimmy says to Kate.
“James,” Jo corrects, frowning at him. “Do not call your sister names.” She turns back to Kate. “Yes, I did know that, sweetie. She told you that?”
Frankie is standing in the front room, pulling things out of her bag and laying satiny dresses over the back of the couch. “The girls wanted to see some of my costumes from my days as a Rockette,” she explains to Jo. “I hope you don’t mind.”
Jo fingers the canary yellow feathers of a short dress as Kate sits on the floor with a pair of well-worn dancing shoes, trying to slip her feet into them as if they aren’t several sizes too big.
Since Bill is out of town, Jo figures it can’t hurt to leave the kids in the hands of a woman who wants to dress them in sequins and beads and teach them how to can-can. “Sounds good to me,” she says, dropping a tube of lipstick into her purse. She leans over with a smile and kisses each of the children on their cheeks on her way out of the house.
Jo is uncharacteristically self-assured at the moment; it isn’t often that she’s alone and in charge of everything on the home front, and if she’s being honest with herself, she manages it quite well. Waking up and drinking her coffee in the quiet of the house as she reads the paper, shepherding the kids through their meals and playtime, and running laundry as she sings to herself suits her just fine. Even her simpler dinner plans are like a little vacation to Jo: that night she’s promised the kids fish sticks and oven french fries followed by a swim, and the night before she’d let them eat their franks and beans quickly and spend the evening watching television.
Of course they’ll go back to business as usual when Bill returns, but for now, sitting by the pool and watching her kids take turns doing cannonballs as the sun sets and the dinner dishes languish in the sink sounds just about right.
“Good afternoon, Josephine,” Nurse Edwina says as Jo passes her in the hallway, pushing a freshly stocked and organized cart full of goodies. “Having a nice day?”
“I am,” Jo says with a nod. “And you?”
Edwina blows out a long breath as she looks down the hall in one direction and then in the other to make sure they’re alone. “You know, Josephine, it’s been a long day. Anytime there’s a full moon things get crazy around here.”
“So that’s true then—about full moons and more accidents and births?”
“Oh, definitely.” Edwina nods as she clips a ballpoint pen to the chain that hangs around her neck. “There’s more of everything, but always more drama.”
Jo keeps this in mind as she floats from room to room, handing out bottles of juice, packets of pecan sandies, and reading materials to the various patients—some familiar faces, and some new since her last shift. When she gets to Mr. D’s room, she pauses, pulling the two new books she’s brought for him from the bottom shelf of the cart. She’s hidden them there beneath a pile of discarded magazines so that no one would see them and ask to read the books she’d earmarked for Mr. Dandridge.
“Good afternoon,” Jo says, peering in as she knocks. She pushes the door open tentatively. “It’s Josephine.”
Mr. Dandridge is fast asleep. Jo is disappointed; visiting Mr. D has quickly become her favorite part of coming to the hospital. Since she’s already finished the entire floor and has been saving Mr. D’s room for last so that she can sit and visit, she creeps all the way in, leaving her cart near the bathroom door and taking the seat next to his bed. She takes the time to breathe in and out, sending good and positive thoughts towards Mr. Dandridge as he sleeps, and hoping for him to make a full recovery from whatever ails him.
“Ah, an angel has fallen from heaven while I slumbered,” he says, startling Jo from her meditative state.
“Oh! Mr. Dandridge!” Jo stands up from the chair, tucking her shirt in and making sure she’s presentable. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t,” he assures her. “Please sit again. Waking up and finding you here has been the best part of my day—maybe even of my week. Wait—let me think about it for a second,” he says, putting a finger to his lips as he considers the week and all that it’s entailed. “Yep. Best part of the whole week.” Mr. Dandridge looks right at Jo with a big grin. “And how are things for you, Josephine?”
Jo exhales as she sinks back into the chair, putting her hands between her knees. Her shoulders roll forward. “Things are challenging right now,” she admits. “My husband is out of town, and I’m just…”
Mr. Dandridge frowns and looks as though he’s trying to sit up in his bed. “You’re afraid to be alone, Josephine? Are you worried you’re not safe?”
Jo’s insides melt. Sweet Mr. Dandridge, with his shock of white hair and his mottled and spotted skin, is ready to climb out of bed and do his duty to protect her and make her feel safe, and she can hardly stand it.
Jo puts out a hand and touches his arm. “No, no—it’s not that. The children and I are getting by just fine on our own. In fact, we’re having a bit of fun,” she admits with a quirk of her lips. “We’re eating what we call ‘fun food’ for dinners, and watching TV together in the evenings. It’s like we’re on a campout or a vacation. Do you know what I mean?”
“Of course, of course,” he says, waving his gnarled hand at her. “Everyone feels that way when they get a little change to the routine. Naturally you miss the person who is always at your side, but the beauty is that you get to miss them, and then they come home and things go back to normal. Whenever my darling wife used to leave to visit her sister in California, I’d go down to the nearest ballpark where the kids played baseball, and I’d order three hotdogs and sit on the bleachers and eat them all for dinner.” He grins like a naughty little boy admitting a secret. “Then I’d go home, take a package of cookies and a stack of comic books to bed with me, and I’d read until I fell asleep. Of course I always cleaned up before she came back home and I told her I ate the meatloaf and peas or the chicken cutlet dinner at the diner in our town every night, and she was never the wiser.” Mr. D reaches out and taps his closed fist on Jo’s hand like they’re co-conspirators. “I bet your guy is the same way: if you left town, he’d eat hot dogs for dinner and drink a beer in the bathtub. So you letting the kids have a bit of fun is just par for the course.”
Jo smiles at him. “Thanks, Mr. D. I know he’ll come home and things will be back to normal before I know it, it’s just…he’s gone to Arizona.”
“Hot there this time of year,” Mr. Dandridge says noncommittally.
“Mmm.” Jo nods as she chews her bottom lip. “It is. But…I hate dumping my personal life on you. In fact, I shouldn’t.” Jo stands up resolutely, ready to hand Mr. Dandridge his books and make her exit so that he can rest.
“You sit yourself down, miss,” Mr. Dandridge says in what Jo imagines was his commanding teacher voice from his years in the classroom. Without argument, Jo sits. “You are not bothering me with your personal life. In fact, I have come to relish our friendship, and I appreciate you trusting me with the details of your lovely life.” He looks at her and holds her gaze. “Now, what is going on with your husband in Arizona.”
Jo sighs and lets go of the tension in her shoulders. “He was married to someone else before he met me.” She looks at her lap and twists her wedding band in circles as the story spills forth. When she’s done talking, Mr. Dandridge is still watching her from his hospital bed. He turns and looks out the window for a long moment.
“I see,” he says, thinking. “Well. Never underestimate the power of first love.” As if realizing that he may have said something to offend or upset Jo, he turns quickly to look at her. “Which is not to say that he’s there because he still loves her, but Jo, the first person you give your heart to is always special. They stay with you. They linger.”
She knows he’s right, but there’s always been a dark, jealous, petty little corner of her heart that hates Margaret for getting there before she did. The grown up part of Jo is ashamed of this, but she can’t help the fact that it’s true.
“Who was your first love?” Mr. Dandridge asks her.
Jo blows out a breath that lifts her wispy hair away from her forehead. “Oh, jeez,” she says with a laugh. “Ralph Putnam.”
Douglas Dandridge looks at her expectantly. “He sounds like a dandy. Go on.”
Jo giggles. “He was definitely not a dandy. He was the star basketball player at my high school, and I thought for sure we’d get married and have children and live happily ever after.”
“And yet your last name is Booker, so…”
“Precisely.” Jo shoots him a knowing look. “So Ralph Putnam asked me to be his date to the winter formal when we were sixteen, and of course I said yes and then immediately started choosing what song we’d dance to at our wedding.”
Dandridge gives an amused huff. “I spent far too many years around teenagers not to have seen this play out a time or two.”
Jo nods. “So then you can imagine what happened: Ralph picked me up for the dance, and I’d gone all out. My mother had made me a pink chiffon dress with a gathered waist, and I had an orchid in my hair. I’d practiced dancing with my younger sister for weeks, and I was ready for the most magical night of my life.”
“Oh no.” Mr. D winces as if he’s in physical pain. “Not the most magical night of your life then?”
Jo shakes her head sadly. “I found out that he’d only invited me to make Suzanne Wimmer jealous. They’d been dating for a year and she broke up with him, and he thought taking me to the dance would be the thing to get her back.”
“And did it?” he asks hesitantly, as if hearing the truth might break his heart.
“As it turns out, Suzanne had broken up with Ralph because she was in love with our Algebra teacher, Mr. Simpkins, who had just finished his teaching degree. He was twenty-two, and he waited for her to graduate high school and then they got married.”
Mr. Dandridge shakes his head and tsk-tsks at this turn of events. “A tale as old as time,” he says. “An ugly one, but still. It happens.”
Jo shrugs. She’s almost cheerful. “I hate to say that I kind of felt like Ralph Putnam got exactly what he deserved in that situation, but…I wasn’t the least bit sorry for him.”
“So what happened to old Ralphie in the end?”
“Joined the Coast Guard, last I heard. I think he was stationed up near Alaska. A friend of mine from back home was close with one of his sisters, and she heard he dated a bunch of different local girls up there, but was still single.”
“And yet, after all of this, you still call Ralph Putnam the first love of your life?” Mr. Dandridge frowns at her.
“Oh, yes.” Jo nods enthusiastically. “The amount of time I spent daydreaming about him in class, going to basketball games and pretending I cared about school spirit, and walking past his house hoping that he would notice me and ask me to the dance—I loved him. For sure. He even kissed me that night before I found out about him just asking me to make Suzanne jealous.” She makes a face now at the memory of the kiss, which was lukewarm, at best, though at the time she’d ascribed much more meaning to it than it had deserved. “But what about you—first love—was it Mrs. Dandridge?”
He turns and looks out the window again wistfully. “Oh, sure, sure. You could say that. First girl I really and truly gave my heart to. But first love? The kind of love you’re talking about, where you wish and hope and dream…and never forget the heartache?” He glances back at Jo with a twinkle in his eye. “Mrs. Shane.”
“Mrs. Shane?”
“My best friend’s mother,” he says with a bad boy laugh. “Oh, she was a beauty!”
Jo is scandalized; her hand flies to her mouth and she can’t find a single thing to say.
“Diana Shane,” Mr. Dandridge says. His eyes are misty with the memory of her. “Tall and leggy and brunette. She had my best friend, Chester, when she was only sixteen. So you can imagine that when I was a twelve-year-old boy, she was a gorgeous woman still in her twenties.”
This sounds slightly more reasonable, and Jo lets her hand fall to her lap as she listens. “Wow,” she says, shaking her head in awe.
“Wow, indeed.” Mr. Dandridge laughs again. “Chester and his mom lived with her parents on the outskirts of town, and anyone who didn’t know them always assumed she was his big sister, which he didn’t bother to correct. I remember this one time, I went over to their place on my bicycle, and Mrs. Shane was outside in a pair of jeans! That was outrageous, Josephine, for a woman to be wearing jeans held up by a bit of twine in the late 1800s. They belonged to her father, and she’d borrowed them so that she could build a chicken coop. So I pulled up on my bike, and there she was, in jeans and a dirty white shirt, sweat on the back of her neck and dirt on her hands, and oh, was I in love. I wanted to marry Diana Shane and build her a million chicken coops. I wanted to be the husband she never had. You know, it never once occurred to me that marrying her would make me Chester’s stepfather.” He chuckles at his younger self as he talks. “Silly kid stuff.” Mr. D grows serious. “But love is love, and you never discount it. Never call it stupid or brush it away, you understand?”
“Sure.” Jo nods fervently. “I agree. It’s important to love and to suffer through heartbreak and loss. It makes real, lasting love even sweeter.”
“Aha!” Mr. D says, pointing a finger in the air like he’s made his point. “There you go. A+ work, Mrs. Booker.”
“Ohhhh.” Realization dawns on Jo.
“You see? You don’t get to discount Mr. Booker’s first love or brush it away, because for him, the heartbreak and the loss of it makes his love for you even sweeter.”
Is she an idiot that she needed a ninety-year-old man in a hospital bed to state the obvious for her? “You are so right.”
Mr. Dandridge’s raised hand falls to his lap and he sighs. “Okay, now pass me those romance novels and some extra cookies, and I promise not to tell the nurses who gave them to me.” He winks at her and points at the door. “And then you go out and spread your cheer around this place so that you can go home and have beans on toast with your children.”
“Fish fingers and french fries tonight,” Jo says with a smile as she hands Mr. D three packets of pecan sandies and two paperback books.
He flips the books over to inspect them. “ Her Lonely Heart ,” he reads. “ Under the Willow Trees ,” he says, glancing at the other book. “They sound lovely, dearest Josephine. Now, off with you.” He waves at her and opens the cover of Her Lonely Heart . “I have my books to read.”
Jo backs out of the room with her cart and the promise to come by next time she’s on duty, and she’s still smiling to herself when she nearly bumps into Dr. Chavez in the hall.
“Josephine!” he says, smiling widely with those big, square, white teeth set against a deep tan. “Good to see you!”
“And you as well,” she says. She’s about to offer Dr. Chavez a packet of cookies for lack of anything better to say, when Nurse Edwina approaches them with her face red and her eyes worried.
“Dr. Chavez,” Edwina wheezes. “You’re needed in triage immediately. Potential head injury. Young female, unresponsive.”
“Any idea what happened?”
“She fell and hit her head on the edge of a pool, and was apparently in the water for a couple of minutes before her neighbor was able to pull her out.”
The smile vanishes from Dr. Chavez’s face and he turns and walks towards triage without another word.
Jo watches him go, his white coat flapping behind him and his shoes squeaking importantly down the length of the hall.