Chap.20 I Wanted To Give Her Some Roses

I WANTED TO GIVE HER SOME ROSES

         It was a nice warm spring day after all that cold rain. Joey was at the end of the driveway waiting for the school bus. Watching him from the window Jess thought, how tall he’s gotten, how strong and independent, how much his own person. It was not so long ago he carried this boy on his back everywhere he went. He was proud of this tall handsome ten-year-old. He was so eager for every new adventure, so loving, so full of life and joy and so ready for anything! Jess had watched with almost envy the easy way Joey related to other people, his warm outgoing nature. They said Joey likes everybody and that was true; Joey could not stand the feeling of not liking someone. Everybody liked Joey, too.

         Jesse could see his boy growing away from him. He knew he was supposed to do that. But there was sometimes a sense of regret about it, too. He liked to look back to other times when Joey needed him for everything, when he was essential to the child’s very life. Now while Joey still was and would always be essential to him, he himself was becoming less essential to the child. Joey’s world was widening and opening before him and he was eager to go and meet it. This is how it should be so why did he feel this way about it sometimes?

         The school bus came and Joey got on and greeted his friends. He was off for the day and he would be just fine.

         Feeling a little redundant Jesse went to the kitchen. He looked out the back window and saw Roy Hodie and Ernest Kagan doing his morning chores. “I ought to be out there,” he said.

         “What for?” Trina asked. “They’re doing everything. Come have some breakfast with me.”

         He sat down at the table. “I’m useless,” he complained.

         “Yes I know,” she said with a laugh. “You poor thing, it must be awful to be so useless!”

         He laughed too. “I was whining wasn’t I?”

         “Oh, everybody has a right to a little whine now and then. By the way in case it slipped your mind there’s no school next week.”

         “No school? Why not?”

         “Easter vacation. Day after tomorrow’s Palm Sunday.”

         “Easter, I never even thought of it. Where have I been?”

         “As long as you’re back."

         He thought, ‘almost back anyway.’ It feels good to be able to get up and around again. But even doing that much was a disheartening reminder that he had a long way to go. He hated weakness. He had been working all his life until now and he didn’t know how to handle free time.

         Food was beginning to taste like food again. He was finishing breakfast when Ernest knocked on the back door. Jess motioned him to come in but he said his boots were dirty.

         “Roy says, ‘there’s some rosebushes in the porch that need planting.’ He said to tell you we’ll put them in for you if you show us where.”

         Jess had forgotten the rosebushes. He didn’t want to think about them now but he couldn’t explain that to Ernest. “I’ll show you where,” he said.

         He went outside and showed them the place Lillian had wanted the rose garden.

         He stood at the window and watched Ernest digging through the sod. He turned to Trina.

         “I ordered the roses last winter. Mom picked out the colors and now she won’t even get to see them.”

         Trina came to stand beside him. “Roses are for remembering."

“Yes but it was just one more thing I did too late. I could have ordered the roses last year I just put it off. Why did I think I had plenty of time? I wanted to give her some roses. She didn’t get very many. I thought I had time to make it up to her, but there was so much I didn’t get around to.” He came back and sat at the table. “I need to stop this,” he said and took off his glasses and passed the back of his hand over his eyes.

         “No, Love, you need to do this.”

         “It keeps happening, you know? How long does it go on happening?”

         She put her hand over his. “I don’t know; forever I guess. You don’t want to forget her do you?”

         “No. But ~~ like the other day, I got out my light jacket and there was a paper in the pocket, a list she made of things for me to pick up. Things like that.”

         “Yes, Love, I know. Things like that.”

         “And then today, about the roses. I thought she’d get a chance to enjoy them. I could have done a lot more.”

         “We all think about what we could have done more."

         “Yes but you know I gave her a lot of grief, growing up. She worked hard, Trina! Cecile and I both gave her a lot of trouble.”

         “It’s what children do, you’ll find that out.”

         “I wanted to make it up to her. I gave her too much to be ashamed of! I wanted her to have something to be proud of. I wanted to give her some roses.”

         Trina sat down beside him. “Listen to me, Jesse, you did give her something to be proud of! You gave her a lot of roses, the kind that really matters to a woman. I told you that she was in my prayer group. She told us how much you were doing, what a blessing you were to her. She gave thanks for you. She bragged on you something awful. She was proud of you, didn’t she tell you that?”

         She did tell him, he remembered. When she said it, though, it just brought to his mind all the times she’d been shamed by him, even to the time she had to go fetch him home after a night in jail! He sat silent for a few minutes then he said, “I tell myself there wasn’t time but that isn’t true. There was time; I just didn’t do things.”

         “What didn’t you do?”

         “Not enough.”

         “That isn’t what she said. Yes, she had a hard life after your father died, but she said you made it all worth it.”

         “She said that?”

         “Didn’t she tell you that?”

         “Yes,”

         “Well then, Love, what didn’t you do?”

         Putting it that way he felt better about it. He went outside to watch them planting the roses. Ernest arranged stones around the new rose bed and said he’d whitewash the stones tomorrow. “Then it’ll look real pretty. Mrs. MacIver would like that.”

         “Yeah,” he agreed, “she would.”

         “Course,” said the man who had the mind of a child, “there’s lots better roses where she is now.” He looked up. “Don’t cry! I oughtn’t to have said that! Don’t mind me; I say dumb things.”

         Jess smiled. “No, you say good things. That was good, I needed to hear that.”

         He took a walk down to the brooder houses. Ernest said proudly, “See I told you I know how to take care of chickens! Look at them! They’re growing drumsticks on them already!”

         “I wouldn’t have one left if it wasn’t for you and Roy and some of the others,” he said.

         “Hey, what are friends for? Look at them. Aren’t they pretty? All white feathers and red combs! Roy said,’ They was poultry in motion.’ He said it was a joke. He thought it was real funny.”

         Jess said, “Yeah, he would.” There was great satisfaction in looking at a healthy flock. This flock would not have survived without the work his neighbors had done this spring. There is nothing like what he had just been through to knock the false pride out of a man!

         He looked up and saw Joey running across the yard.

         “We had a half day and no school for a whole week,” exulted the child. “Hey Mr. Kagan!”

         “Hey, Joey!"

         “I’m going to be home all week. I’m going to help you and Mr. Hodie.”

         Jess told him, “Go inside and change your clothes.” He could tell it was about time for him to get off his feet so he went inside with Joey.

         Jess sat at the table and began peeling an orange. Joey came back downstairs. “Jess the guys wanted me to ask you something.”

         “What guys?”

         “Davy, Bret, Matt ~~ all of them. They were wondering if they could come out here sometimes. They miss you being our teacher and they thought maybe you could teach them if they came here until you can go back to church. They said maybe they could help with some of the work.”

         “Isn’t Mr. Wilkes teaching your class?”

         “Yes but we don’t get to do things to have fun together now. Can they come out here sometimes?”

         “Sure, I’d like that.”

         “Tomorrow?”

         “Yeah.”

         Joey headed outside. Jess called after him, “Don’t slam the ~ ” but the door slammed.

         As Jess was eating his orange, Trina said, “I’ll have to bake some cookies if the boys were coming tomorrow.”

         Jess was thinking: Palm Sunday, and then Resurrection morning is only a week away. He was aware of coming alive again after a long dark winter.