Loss Story

         Loss Story



Garnie gazed out through the screen of the enclosed porch staring at one exceptional azalea bush.  She watched, as it’s brilliant fushia blossoms bled burgundy in the fading sunlight.  They had planted that bush, and all the others—that first spring they were in the house.  Could it really have been over sixty years ago?

         She had never been bothered by a lack of friends or suitors.  She felt safer alone—or so she thought.  She was nearly twenty-four and had long ago accepted that she would live out her life on their Ohio farm.  Her days would be spent caring for her parents and grandparents.  That was what happened to spinsters. 

         She had seen a new century dawn and a war begin.  They hadn’t concerned her.  What difference did a number make?  Why should she worry over a war halfway across the globe?  But then her baby brother—her favorite—enlisted and went to France to fight.

         Now she read each paper and kept a map where she plotted battles and troop movements.  She became aware of the strong, independent women emerging around her.  Women who had opinions and weren’t afraid to voice them.

         She found more and more reasons to visit town, and became less and less enchanted with life on the farm.  She thought about taking some kind of nursing or secretarial course, so she could leave the farm and declare her independence.  But she never did.

         Her brother came home from France, and he brought a friend home with him.  She had always scoffed at novels that described ‘love at first sight’ or how the sight of some man had taken the heroine’s breath away.  Then she had met Fred.  And she lost her heart.

         She did her best to hide her feelings.  After all, nice girls—ladies—never showed emotions.  And they certainly never chased after men.  But her brother, Reed, had always understood her, and he noticed.  He saw how her face blushed when she was near Fred, how she had begun dressing with more care and how quiet and shy she was around him.

         Fred had also noticed.  More than that, he returned the flush, kept his moustache neat and stammered when she was near him.  And Reed understood his friend too.

         She and Fred married late that summer and moved to New Orleans.  They rented half of a double shotgun house on Pine Street and settled into their new life—Fred working at a newspaper and Garnie running a home. 

         Just after the New Year she found herself pregnant.  They were ecstatic.  Fred insisted they find a larger house, something they could rent to buy.  She had miscarried before they could even move in.

The doctor assured her that this didn’t mean she wouldn’t be able to have children.  When women lost their babies this early, he told her, and for no obvious reason, it meant there was something wrong with the child.  It was better this way.

Her mother just reminded her of the baby she had lost and added the comforting words, “It’s God’s will.”  As if that would give her solace.  As if anything could numb the hurt.

Only Fred felt her pain, knew her grief and shared her sorrow.  Fred had grownup in an old southern family—one where emotions were honored.  He saw nothing improper in her crying.  He saw nothing in his crying.  They comforted each other and shut out the rest of the world.

Reed came to visit them after they were settled in the new house.  He liked the city and it’s people.  He decided to stay in New Orleans.  Their mother was very unhappy—writing letters to all three of them, but to no avail.  He had found a job, a tiny apartment, but more importantly, he’d found a girl.

The four became inseparable.  Allie—the only native New Orleanian among them—showed them the sights, told them the folklore and introduced them to Cajun and Creole cooking.  She even attempted to teach Garnie how to cook. 

Even Garnie had to laugh at the memory of that.  It had taken days to clean all the smoke from the kitchen ceiling.  But that had been easy compared to when she had forgotten a dozen eggs boiling.  Scraping exploded eggs from the twelve-foot ceiling took two men and a tall ladder the better part of a week.  No, whatever Garnie was, or had ever been, it was not a cook.

A chorus of crickets roused her from her remembrances.  She could no longer see color outside.  Gray shrouded the landscape beyond the porch.  She was stiff from sitting so long, and it took a minute for her to stand up. 

She took one last look through the screen at the night beyond, before she went inside.  She checked the deadbolt and then shuffled through the darkened house, making her way to her bedroom.

Strange, she still thought of it like that—her bedroom.  Once it had been their bedroom.  But that was before…

The old year died away and another took its place.  But with the New Year came news of a new life.  She tried to hold off telling him.  After all, there was no reason for both of them to mourn.  But nothing happened.  She felt fine—wonderful in fact!  And Fred recognized her joy. 

He research which hospital had the best maternity ward, found her a new doctor and insisted they get a maid.  Mary had entered they lives on a sultry summer afternoon.  She had come through the wrought iron gate and up the walk as if she owned the place—all 4’9” of her. 

A coronet of tight braids topped with a prim cap, sparkling white starched uniform—a sharp contrast to her chocolate skin and snapping black shoe-button eyes, she was a force to be reckoned with.  Many a door-to-door salesman had underestimated her, and barely lived to regret it.  Somehow she was able to raise herself up, ramrod straight, and make them feel her wrath with only a glower.

Always humming, she had cooked and cleaned and fussed over Garnie throughout her pregnancy.  Together, they furnished the nursery, and bought diapers and baby bottles, tiny clothes and baby blankets, and waited.  And as they waited, they prayed.

But in the end, it all came to naught.  Garnie had a trouble-free confinement.  The hospital was a modern marvel.  The doctor exhibited incredible skill.  And the little boy was perfect—except he was dead.

It was then everything changed.  Mary was just as efficient, but she no longer hummed through her day.  She tucked a black-bordered handkerchief in her pocket, and would often find need for it.  Fred took on a stoic stance.  And Garnie just stopped interacting with everyone. 

Things only became worse when the doctor announced that she should not have anymore children.  She had often wondered if he ever realized the devastation he done with that one statement.  No hope for the future—nothing left to dream for.

It was then that Fred moved into the front bedroom.  He had said it was just while she recovered, that she needed time to herself.  But she knew he wouldn’t come back.  It was all broken.  The golden bubble had burst.

This time they grieved separately, each alone in an empty bed, divided by so much more than distance.  Time past and they all tried to pretend that the breach had been mended.  Garnie started going out to lunch with Allie again.  Fred went fishing with Reed.  Mary rejoined the choir at her church.  But everything had changed.

On the surface, things seemed normal.  A stranger meeting any of them for the first time would see nothing amiss.  Allie and Reed saw, of course.  But after several false starts as peacemakers they gave in, as well.  The problem was that they weren’t at war.  They were trapped in an uncomfortable truce—and uneasy neutrality.

And just as it looked as if they had each become islands to themselves—a miracle happened.  Allie and Reed produced a healthy baby girl.  She was a joy to her parents, a prize to her grandparents, but Carol was a savior to her aunt and uncle.

Things did even out after that.  They at least became friends again, if not lovers.  Little Mary at last had a child to spoil.  And for nearly twenty years they remained, living comfortably together.

They had gone to Ohio to visit her people and were coming back on the train.  They had eaten dinner and returning to there compartment when Fred clutched at his chest and slid to the floor.  He was taken to a hospital in Louisville and pronounced dead almost immediately.  She sat in the waiting room, stunned and silent, while nurses in white uniforms and rubber-soled shoes bustled around her.  When she had collected herself once more, she called her brother in New Orleans. 

She planned out the funeral on the train ride home.  She put on a brave face at the service.  Allie, Reed & Carol came and stayed with her for several days.  Neighbors brought food and distant relatives sent letters.  Garnie answered each with a note of her own, and time moved forward. 

Her brother’s family returned to their house several blocks away.  And as a final strike against her—the coup de grace—Mary’s mother had a stroke and needed her home in Mississippi.  Now she was truly alone. 

The years went by.  She continued having Thanksgiving dinner, but now Allie came the day before with her own mother to cook it.  Carol got married and had children of her own.  Christmases led to Easters and time crept forward, one tiny inch at a time. 

Carol’s husband took a job up north and they moved away.  Allie’s sister’s husband died.  Garnie and Reed’s brother in Ohio died.  Leaving her own sister-in-law alone—unless you counted her seven children. 

Her neighbor’s grandson went to the seminary and became a priest.  The little grocery on the corner closed and a big supermarket opened several blocks away.  And the house around the corner was sold to a young couple who managed to produce at least one new child each year.  And Garnie was surprised how much their squeals of joy and laughter annoyed her so.

Like water from a faucet, time kept dripping away.  Garnie’s once lustrous hair, grew gray.  But her skin, thanks to Elizabeth Arden remained smooth and supple.  It had always been her one vanity. 

She would sometimes sit, with only the television for light, and spend the entire evening massaging creams and moisturizers into her skin.  But she didn’t watch TV very often.  In truth, she’d only bought it for when Carol’s children came for overnight stays.  But since they had moved away, she rarely turned it on.

She liked to read the paper—but not much else.  Sometimes she’d do the daily crossword puzzle.  Once, on a whim, she’d even bought a crossword puzzle book.  But she never finished all of them.

She liked to walk.  She would walk to the grocery and the drug store.  She never bought very much, because she couldn’t carry very much and some point through the years, the groceries had stopped delivering.  They built a Burger King about a mile a way and she discovered she liked ‘Whoppers’.  Sometimes she’d walked there twice in one day.  Well, after all, she had to eat and she never had learned to cook.

Once a year she would fly to Connecticut to visit Carol’s family.  Occasionally she would go to Ohio and visit her other brother and his family.  And once or twice they came to visit her.  But except for these brief respites her days were pretty much the same.

Reed died, and four years later, so did Allie.  And with them, her daily contact with the world ended.  Over the years, she’d obtained a certain reputation in the neighborhood.  The children called her names, and she did nothing to dispel their stories.

She was alone.  And that was how she wanted it.  Just to be left alone.

When she was about eighty, she began to wonder about God.  She’d been raised to believe, of course.  Though she’d always felt ambivalent.  And when her second baby was died, what little faith she had had also.  But lately she had allowed herself to ponder on a higher power.

She would have liked to believed.  It would have been a comfort to her in her final days—that all those who’d passed before her would be there (wherever ‘there’ was) waiting to greet her.  But she thought it highly unlikely.  Why should she believe in him?  He had never believed in her.

He had given her hope and taken it away.  Just as He had done with her children, her husband and the rest of her family.  In the end she decided that God didn’t play fair, for he always managed to win and she always lost. 

She was about to turn out the light when she stopped, she went to the cedar chest—her hope chest—and opened, lifted out the tray and felt around until she found the little bundle she sought.  Then she sat on the vanity stool and unwrapped it.  She spread the small, soft blanket across her lap, her fingers tracing the white rabbits on the blue background.  And for the first time in a long time, she cried.  She didn’t cry for those she’d lost—but because, somewhere she’d lost herself.



Word Count:  2262