Merry Christmas!
Countless times I've watched Verona Worth dole out extra chicken strips to Mandy, her granddaughter, the only third grader in Greenwood School she wouldn't dare to touch. I've worked with Verona ever since she started in the lunch room, and a hundred times, I bet, I've seen her dawdle over a cup of applesauce just to keep Mandy at the window for an extra second. Sometimes she'll scrape beans off trays for twenty minutes on the chance the girl will give her only the slightest glance when she files by the tubs of dirty silverware.
Every noon she stands a countertop away from that child and sees her own son's eyes—strong and bright and quick, blue as heaven. And when she does, what she feels is written so deeply on the lines of her face that it doesn't take a gypsy to read it, only another grandma. She loves that child, even though Mandy doesn't know her from Martha Eshuis or Sylvia Brantsen—or any of the girls who work the lunch lines with us.
Mandy is my granddaughter, too, my seventh, out of twelve in all. She's the daughter of my daughter Kelly—and Verona's son Jeff, who wouldn't marry Kelly, even though my daughter surely would have had him. But at school the whole business has never come up between us, even though Verona and I work side by side, baking chicken, spooning chocolate pudding into the Charlie Brown pies, and scrubbing out pots once the sixth grade is through the line at 12:30.
It happened at college, like so much does, and the night Jeff and Kelly came to tell me and my husband, Verona came with, alone, like she's been since her husband died trucking a dozen years ago or more, killed on an interstate in Utah, I think, or maybe Nevada. My daughter was pregnant, we found out, but Ted and I jumped the gun ourselves way back in the olden days, so I've been through some of that hurt myself, even though it's a whole lot worse when it's your daughter, let me tell you, and when she doesn't have a husband.
I love my Kelly, and I always have, but she's been a chore to bring up, headstrong as she was from the moment she wouldn't take a nook. But that night it wasn't Kelly that scared me, it was Verona, who sat with her legs crossed in a rocker beneath the clock and couldn't stop crying. She didn't bawl really, just whimpered constantly, kept dabbing at her eyes, so that whatever she said, or tried to say, came out off‑key.
She'd taken Jeff over to our house to apologize to us because he'd already made it clear he wasn't about to marry my daughter. Lord knows Verona tried to do everything right, tried with a passion, but she was so broken that night, all she could do was mumble.
We never talk about little Mandy on the job, even though what happened is eight years behind us. It never comes up because Verona is embarrassed about what her son did to my Kelly. But that isn't all of it. She's embarrassed about that night, too, about how she couldn't do much at all but slobber when she tried to be the mother—and the father Jeff never had.
I feel the same way around the nurse that stood by me when my son Tom was born. When that boy didn't want to come, I know I made a horrible ruckus. If I see that nurse on the street—even today—I look away. She saw me in a state I'm not proud of, the way I saw Verona pinched in the rocking chair, in perfectly helpless pain over her only child.
Jeff's gone on to be someone, but he's never married; and if you ask me he doesn't pay much attention to his mother. He lives in Virginia and works in Washington D. C., does something with numbers--financial, works for the government, Verona says.
My Kelly took the next best thing once Jeff turned his back on her. When Mandy was a year old, Kelly married Reggie Ellenson, who stands first in line to inherit his father's masonry business. Reg never went to college. He's a fine man, but Kelly runs him, and she knew darn well she would. There's already two little boys—two little masons—behind Mandy, the princess she had with Jeff. I'm not proud of saying this, but I pray more for my Kelly today than I did eight years ago, the night she told us she was going to have a baby. My daughter is not finished growing up, even if she doesn't know it herself.
* ~ * ~ * ~ *
Countless times I've watched Verona Worth dole out extra chicken strips to Mandy, her granddaughter, the only third grader in Greenwood School she wouldn't dare to touch. I've worked with Verona ever since she started in the lunch room, and a hundred times, I bet, I've seen her dawdle over a cup of applesauce just to keep Mandy at the window for an extra second. Sometimes she'll scrape beans off trays for twenty minutes on the chance the girl will give her only the slightest glance when she files by the tubs of dirty silverware.
Every noon she stands a countertop away from that child and sees her own son's eyes—strong and bright and quick, blue as heaven. And when she does, what she feels is written so deeply on the lines of her face that it doesn't take a gypsy to read it, only another grandma. She loves that child, even though Mandy doesn't know her from Martha Eshuis or Sylvia Brantsen—or any of the girls who work the lunch lines with us.
Mandy is my granddaughter, too, my seventh, out of twelve in all. She's the daughter of my daughter Kelly—and Verona's son Jeff, who wouldn't marry Kelly, even though my daughter surely would have had him. But at school the whole business has never come up between us, even though Verona and I work side by side, baking chicken, spooning chocolate pudding into the Charlie Brown pies, and scrubbing out pots once the sixth grade is through the line at 12:30.
It happened at college, like so much does, and the night Jeff and Kelly came to tell me and my husband, Verona came with, alone, like she's been since her husband died trucking a dozen years ago or more, killed on an interstate in Utah, I think, or maybe Nevada. My daughter was pregnant, we found out, but Ted and I jumped the gun ourselves way back in the olden days, so I've been through some of that hurt myself, even though it's a whole lot worse when it's your daughter, let me tell you, and when she doesn't have a husband.
I love my Kelly, and I always have, but she's been a chore to bring up, headstrong as she was from the moment she wouldn't take a nook. But that night it wasn't Kelly that scared me, it was Verona, who sat with her legs crossed in a rocker beneath the clock and couldn't stop crying. She didn't bawl really, just whimpered constantly, kept dabbing at her eyes, so that whatever she said, or tried to say, came out off‑key.
She'd taken Jeff over to our house to apologize to us because he'd already made it clear he wasn't about to marry my daughter. Lord knows Verona tried to do everything right, tried with a passion, but she was so broken that night, all she could do was mumble.
We never talk about little Mandy on the job, even though what happened is eight years behind us. It never comes up because Verona is embarrassed about what her son did to my Kelly. But that isn't all of it. She's embarrassed about that night, too, about how she couldn't do much at all but slobber when she tried to be the mother—and the father Jeff never had.
I feel the same way around the nurse that stood by me when my son Tom was born. When that boy didn't want to come, I know I made a horrible ruckus. If I see that nurse on the street—even today—I look away. She saw me in a state I'm not proud of, the way I saw Verona pinched in the rocking chair, in perfectly helpless pain over her only child.
Jeff's gone on to be someone, but he's never married; and if you ask me he doesn't pay much attention to his mother. He lives in Virginia and works in Washington D. C., does something with numbers--financial, works for the government, Verona says.
My Kelly took the next best thing once Jeff turned his back on her. When Mandy was a year old, Kelly married Reggie Ellenson, who stands first in line to inherit his father's masonry business. Reg never went to college. He's a fine man, but Kelly runs him, and she knew darn well she would. There's already two little boys—two little masons—behind Mandy, the princess she had with Jeff. I'm not proud of saying this, but I pray more for my Kelly today than I did eight years ago, the night she told us she was going to have a baby. My daughter is not finished growing up, even if she doesn't know it herself.
___________________
Tomorrow: Kelly goes ballistic when her daughter gets yet another anonymous gift. She threatens to sue.
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