Chapter 6 #2
And I want to keep looking, finding that elusive thing that just hasn’t yet quite come into focus for me—but when I think I hear movement inside the farmhouse directly behind me, I scurry away like a bunny without looking back.
And I scurry to the southeast, of course, because I’m not giving up; I’m just hoping I don’t have to stand exactly where the directions indicate to find the rainbow.
It’s as I’m rushing toward the old plank-sided building, the wood grayed with time and most of the signs rusted, that I spot that which I seek.
Within one of those rusted, fading signs, behind an old 7UP logo and the words “the uncola,” is a groovy hippie-vibe sunshine, and above that sunshine is a thin, little, three-striped rainbow in pink, white, and blue—though I’m guessing the pink was once red. Rainbow found!
“Yes!” I whisper triumphantly under my breath, and I can’t stop myself from doing a tiny victory dance right there in the middle of Lost Valley Lane. I guess there is something to be said for isolation, occasionally anyway, like knowing you can dance in the road without anyone seeing you.
“You there! What are you doing? Can I help you with something?”
So much for not being seen. I look up toward where the screechy voice came from to spot an old woman peeking around the back corner of the pastel house.
“Hello!” I call, instinctively putting on my best Jessica Fox, WRTB 11 voice as I begin to walk toward her. “I’m staying at Mabel’s for a while. My name’s Jessica, and I’m a friend of the family.” I hike a thumb over my shoulder toward the cottage.
As usual, the mention of Mabel’s name seems to smooth things over and put her at ease. She speaks more quietly to say, “Mabel was a good friend to me. Miss her, I do.”
“I never got to meet her,” I explain, still approaching the woman, “but I feel like I’m getting to know her just from being in her home.”
“Why don’t you come back here and sit with me a minute, honey,” the old lady says. “Won’t keep ya long—got a pot of cottage ham and green beans on the stove just about done.”
Her house sits up on a rise, so I make my way to a set of concrete steps in front that have seen better days, then circle around to the back. As I turn the corner, though, I’m overwhelmed and flabbergasted by what I see.
Metal, iron, steel, tin—filling the backyard, and all of it crafted into a strange mishmash of .
.. art? Some of it has been pieced together to make likenesses of animals or buildings, but much of it is just randomly welded together as if to create a perpetual jungle gym.
It’s painted a variety of colors, every bright or pastel shade on the color wheel.
The old woman, in an outdated flowered housedress and sturdy Easy Spirit gym shoes, sits on a bench of welded-together metals, one of many I instantly spot here and there in the mad, messy beauty of it all.
“Somethin’, ain’t it?” she asks proudly, apparently seeing the reaction on my face.
“Indeed.” I’m kind of speechless.
“Ever’ bit of it made by my Walter, God rest his soul. Been gone nearly ten years now, but he’s still with me ever’ day when I come out to the backyard.”
“It’s incredibly unique,” I remark.
She pats the metal seat beside her. “Come sit. I’m Grace Whitcomb.”
I join her, reintroducing myself. “Jessica Fox.”
“Matt told me we’d have us a new neighbor for a spell, but I plumb forgot. He’s a sweet boy, Matt. Looks in on me to make sure I’m gettin’ along okay. My son lives out in Saint Louis with his family. Cain’t get home as much as I’d like him to because he’s got him an important bank job.”
Feeling her pride in him, I say, “I’m sure you miss him.”
“Sure do. And my grandgirls, too. Got two of ’em—twenty-four and twenty-two.” She stops, shakes her head. “Grew up too dang fast for me. Just all went by in a blip. The girls used to come and stay for a while ever’ summer, but ya know how it gets—they outgrew it. Got busy lives of their own now.”
I’m not sure what to say because her words add up to a similar loneliness I sense in Mabel, even though Mabel’s not here anymore to share it.
Given my own recent bouts with loneliness, I instantly want to make her feel better, though I’m not sure how.
“Change is hard,” I hear myself say. Totally weak response. Totally true response.
“That’s why I miss my Mabel,” she says. “Our husbands died within a year of each other. Was neighbors most of our lives and was always friendly and all, but it was after we both ended up alone that we really got to be friends.”
Oh man, she’s killing me. My own loneliness suddenly feels superficial compared to what I imagine hers to be. “I’m glad you both found each other.”
“We raised a little garden together over yonder.” She points to a flat patch of ground near the sign-covered garage.
“We cooked dinner together many a night, and we’d play board games of an evenin’.
Was a right nice way to pass the time.” She seems to come back from her reverie and pats my knee with her hand, like we’re already friends.
“But now tell me about you, honey. What brings ya to these parts?”
Apparently today is the day of explaining my situation to strangers. And just like with Jo, I could sugarcoat it—but for some reason, I don’t. “Long story short? I’m a newscaster who lost my hair from chemo, and they don’t want me back until I look better.”
Her eyes go wide, and whoa—even I’m a bit taken aback by the short, harsh way I’ve broken it down in this particular telling.
The truth I suddenly see: I’ve actually been sugarcoating it in my own mind , making it even less heinous than it is because it’s so ugly and hurtful, and I simply didn’t want to believe that of the people I work for.
The toughness in me just didn’t want to let any weaker parts truly accept that.
“That’s a damn cryin’ shame, honey,” she says, patting my knee more fully now.
“Thanks,” I softly reply, still a little thrown by my own brutal honesty.
“No fun to be judged by how ya look, is it?” Grace is African American, and though white chick me has no idea what she has experienced, I suddenly feel like she gets me—in a way I couldn’t have been gotten a year ago.
So I’ve found three new kindred spirits—two living and one dead—all in tiny, not-even-a-town Lost Valley. I’m going to chalk that up to something like a miracle I could have in no way expected when I set out looking for Mabel’s mimosa tree.
“Just gotta know you’re beautiful anyway, that’s all,” she goes on more gently, her voice full of conviction. “I didn’t always know that about myself, ya see. It took my Walter to make me see it. You got somebody who makes ya see it, honey?”
“No,” I whisper, still taken aback by this whole unexpected conversation.
Sure, there’s Kevin and Sydney. But I don’t think that’s what she means.
She’s talking more about someone who makes you feel beautiful effortlessly—a lover, a life mate.
And beautiful is something I haven’t felt in quite a while now.
Maybe it’s a thing that shouldn’t matter, to any of us—but the WRTB managers and Tiffany have shown me, undeniably, that it does.
“Well, I promise you are, my dear,” my new friend tells me. “I promise you are.”
“Thank you,” I gently reply. Mostly out of words. Because I’m not at all sure how this happened—one second I’m looking at an old 7UP sign and the next I’m bonding over unseen beauty with an old woman I’ve never met.
“Goodness me,” she says. “How on earth did we get so serious here so quick?”
My thoughts exactly, Grace. This is not who I am, nor the level of intimacy I’m cut out for.
Then she smiles. “Can I ask why you were doin’ a little dance down on the lane?”
Okay, to my utter surprise, that’s a better subject. And as much as I intended to keep my search between Mabel and me, I feel different about it with Grace. She might value knowing I’m on a hunt for Mabel’s secrets.
So I reach into my pocket and pull out the list of instructions. “I found this in Mabel’s jewelry box.” I give her a minute to read over it before I say, “I was dancing because I’d just found the faded rainbow. In your 7UP sign.”
This makes her grin at me. Then she looks back to the sheet of paper, now kind of crumpled.
“Will you do me a favor?” she asks. “Will ya come back sometime and sit with me a spell? Maybe let me know whatever it is ya find of Mabel’s?
I could make us up a pot of brown beans and some cornbread one night. ”
I have no idea what “brown beans” are and no idea what Grace and I might have to talk about once we exhaust Mabel and unfair judgment.
But maybe those things are enough, especially given our kindred-spirit moment.
Plus I don’t exactly have a lot on my day planner right now. So I say, “Yes, absolutely I will.”
“That’ll be right nice,” she replies with a smile. “Now reckon I’ll let ya get back to your rainbow, and I’ll get on to my cottage ham. Nothin’ like fresh green beans—got me a mess of ’em down to Mert Dwyer’s roadside stand last week since my knees don’t let me do my own garden no more.”
We end the conversation then—I tell her to enjoy her dinner, and she tells me to enjoy my hunting. And I feel gladder than I might have guessed to have been caught dancing in the road.