Story: Treasure (part 2)

(shortcut to part one)

Did she suspect us?  She was looking out the window, her expression either serenely unhappy or simply still.

"It is my house," she said after a moment.  "It's my home now, but we used to live in a big house, up in the hills.  I moved down here after he left."

Something told me not to ask when that was, or whether she meant that he had literally moved away, or the other meaning.

"I didn't know that," I said, just to be saying something.

"You don't know me," she said flatly, and I felt odd again.  The impression I had of her being somehow more in focus was stronger than ever.  Although I barely noticed it, I made a sudden decision then to talk to her like she was a normal person, and not like vacant old Mrs. Turningham, like I always had.

"That's true," I conceded.  I thought for a second.  "Were there many flowers, I mean, at your old house?"

"We had gardens and gardens," she said.  "But we could only ever name a few, it takes a long time to learn something's right name."

"May I see it?" I asked, gesturing to the little book.

"Certainly," she said, holding it out.

I took it, a small flexible journal, unlined pages, bound in cloth the color of a grocery bag.  There were faint etches and colors along the edges of the pages.  I folded it open.

It was easy to see where the colors came from; on every other page were delicate, minutely detailed and painted illustrations of flowers.  On the facing pages of the illustrations there were short paragraphs of words printed in clean, old-fashioned handwriting. I turned over page after page after page, all were different, although many were of the same kind of flower.

"It's beautiful," I said, pausing on one to read the words.  "Are these poems?"

"It's partly poetry," she said, "partly story.  They're the names of each flower, even though they're a little long for names.  Mr. Turningham tried to shorten them as much as he could; that was more than half the time he worked, finding the shortest way to write what the flower had to say of its own story."

"He did the writing then?" I asked. 

She nodded.  "He did the hard part, I just did the drawings.  We would walk in the garden, and find a flower, and spend a few days with it, getting down its little life and its story, then he'd try to find the shortest and clearest way to put it.  And that was its name, and every name was different."  She was looking out the window again.

I paused in my page-turning and read one.  I won't recall the words precisely here, but they're not mine, but it was in essence a declaration of life from the point of view of the flower.  Where it grew, and what time of day belonged to it, and why it had the shape it did.  To be honest, I remember the watercolor painting that went with it better; it was mostly green and white, later I found out it was a snapdragon.

"It's very beautiful," I said.  "Thank you for showing me."

I held the book back out to her.  She held up her hand.

"I want you to have it," she said.

I half-smiled.  "Thanks Mrs. Turningham, but I won't take it," I said.

"Please," she said, turning her large and shining eyes on me.  "I can't find it when I want it anymore.  I look for it some days and I can't remember where it is at all.  Even days like today, the best days, I have to look and look before I remember where it is.  I can't take care of it anymore, I need you to."

"Why don't we keep it here," I said, "and we can look at when--" I hesitated, feeling small at the thought, "when I come back to visit."

She shook her head.  "You boys won't be back to visit anymore after today," she said.

I resisted the urge to flinch and stand upright.  Instead my spine went rigid and cold.  She's turning us in, I thought.  She knows.

"Why's that?" I managed to say in what I hoped sounded like a casual way of speaking.

"Because I won't be here after this week," she said.  "My daughter was here yesterday, or the day before.  They're coming to take me this weekend."

"Take you?" I said.

"To put me in the hospital, with all the other old folks," she said.  "It's been a long time coming, but my time's up I think."

"The hospital?" I said.  "You mean a nursing home?"

"You sleep in a hospital bed," she said.  "You eat hospital food.  You make hospital conversation.  It's not a home, it's a big waiting room.  But yes, that's where I'm going.  It's sad, but I can't stay here anymore.  I don't have many good days."

She trailed off, and for a moment I didn't speak.

"Well then," I said, "I'm certainly not going to take the book," and I held it back out again.

"I need you to take it," she said, raising her hand again.

"You should keep it with you when you go," I said.  "It's important to you."

"It's important to me," she said, "that I leave it here, or give it away.  If I leave it here, my daughter will toss it out."

"Jerry's Mom?" I asked.

"No, not Linda," said Mrs. Turningham.  "My other daughter Elsie.  She's the ringleader, anyway," she said, leaning over and using her co-conspirator voice again.  "Linda probably knows, but she hasn't called."

"You should give it to Jerry," I said.

"No," she said, as flatly as she'd denied the possibility of rain later that day.

"Or Jimmy?" I said.

She made a little face.  "He's a sweet boy," she said, "but he'd forget it, and lose it.  I know you enough, I know you'll keep it safe."

I Felt a weight settling on me.  I made to get up, and she put a hand gently on my knee.

"Please," she said.

"It's none of my business," I said awkwardly.  "Please Mrs. Turningham."

"I'm making it your business," she said.  "All I'm asking is that you take it, and read it once in a while.  Just read it, so that someone will.  So it will be read.  That's all."

I looked at the little book in my hands.

"All I ever do anymore is wait," she said.  "Wait to go to the grocery store with Linda, wait for a show to come on the television.  Wait to cook the next meal."

I still looked at the book.

"It's more than loneliness," she said.  "It's having no purpose, no use.  My time is up, and everyone's embarrassed that I'm still here."

Her voice was gentle, and without emotion, unless it was a little uncertainty, as if she were thinking this through even now.

I was still looking at the book.

"I just don't want to take this part of me," she said, "into that last place.  Here, it feels like my waiting itself is useful somehow, because it's a place I know and can keep up.  But I can't keep it up anymore."

There was a step upstairs.

"Once I'm there, I'll just be waiting.  The flowers deserve a better place to keep than that."

There was another step upstairs, and a clatter on the stairway.

In a single quick motion, without thinking about it, I slipped the little book inside my jacket.

Jimmy and Jerry came down into the room, Jimmy looking pale, Jerry's cheeks looking weirdly mottled, like cherry syrup just mixing into milk.  He looked angry, and a little downcast.

"Would you boys like some tea?" asked Mrs. Turningham.

Jerry looked at her blankly.

"Sorry Grandma," he said, "we've got to get going.  It was nice seeing you."

"So soon?" she said, and I noticed her sharpness, her strength, seemed to have vanished, been tucked back inside somehow, and only vague forgetful Mrs. Turningham was here, eyes damp and unclear.

"'Fraid so," said Jerry, stooping to give her another hug.  His eyes stayed open this time.  Jimmy gathered up the tea tray and blundered with it towards the kitchen, still tight-lipped and gray.

We all got up and headed for the kitchen.

"We'll have to come back and see you soon," said Jerry as he went to the door.

"It's too bad you boys weren't here for the yard sale," Mrs. Turningham said as she shuffled across the linoleum to hug Jimmy.  "We could have used a few strong backs to lug stuff outside."

"Yard sale?" asked Jimmy.

"What yard sale Grandma?" asked Jerry, his eyes suddenly strangely lighted.

"Your Aunt Elsie came by a few days ago," she said.  "They gathered up most of your grandfather's things upstairs, the older things I mean, to put somewhere safe, and the rest they took out, and we had a little yard sale.  We made a pretty bundle too.  You know we got almost forty dollars for everything?"

"You don't say," said Jerry, his mouth setting in a line.

"Forty dollars!" said his grandmother.  "The things people will pay for old junk, I'd never have guessed."

"Well we'll have to be sure to help out," said Jerry, suddenly turning and yanking the door open, "next time you have one."

"Surely dear, surely," said Mrs. Turningham sweetly, and we all shuffled out.

I caught one look at her face as I turned to go; she looked me straight in the eye, her features seeming a little sharper and her eyes a little less dim, but then it was gone and I walked to the car.

Jerry was swearing, and we got in the car he started it angrily and smashed the gas pedal down.

"All gone," he said, tearing around the first turn.  "We spend an hour tearing that place to pieces and putting it back together again, and for what?  Everything gone.  When I get my hands on that--" He continued using bad language in reference to his Aunt Elsie, the house, the things he'd wanted to sell, and the general situation.  I sat in silence.

Eventually his wrath exhausted itself, and I relaxed a little as his driving improved commensurately.

"How was Grandma?" Jimmy asked from the backseat.

"Yeah," said Jerry gruffly, "how was Grandma?"

For some reason, I felt like laughing.

"She seemed fine," I said.  "I think she likes it when we visit, it seems to make her a little sharper, less forgetful."

"Not too sharp, I hope," said Jerry.  "We don't need her finding out about everything that goes on."

"I don't think it's as bad as that," I said.

"What'd you two talk about?" Jerry asked.

"The flowers," I said simply.

"Do you think Aunt Elsie really came by?" asked Jimmy.

"Who knows," said Jerry.  "Mom never talks to her.  For all we know the old lady just put everything out herself and the trash guy picked it up."

"At least," Jimmy said cheerfully, "we know she's probably not on to us."

"Probably," said Jerry.  "Who knows."

I folded my arms across my jacket and said nothing.

I remember now that we actually drove past the home where Mrs. Turningham wound up that day, on our way back through town.  I didn't know it then.  She didn't move there that week, or the next, but about two weeks later, when it had warmed up outside a bit more.  Almost another whole month passed before I'd worked up the courage to go and visit her, and bring the book, but after that it got easier, and I went almost every week.

"Can you imagine the nerve of that lady?" Jerry said, that grey day in the car, after we'd all be quiet for a while.

"Mrs. Turningham?" I asked, coming out of a reverie.

"No, Aunt Elsie," said Jerry.  "Her coming down out of nowhere, when she never calls and never visits, and deciding what goes where and what goes with her."

He was speaking into the rear view mirror at Jimmy, who remained silent in the back.

"I mean, who put her in charge?" he demanded, turning to me instead.  "We're the ones who visit her, we're the ones who care about her.  It's an outrage."

"I can't imagine," I said.