Love Invents Us - Amy Bloom [8]
At school on Monday, I asked Mimi Tedeschi, who practically lived in church, who she thought the men on the spoons could be.
“The apostles. Don’t you know who the apostles are? Peter, Andrew, John, Matthias, James the Greater …” She rattled off all twelve names. “I guess being Jewish you didn’t learn about them. My grandmother has a set like that. Apostle spoons. Hers are all on a little wood stand over the fireplace.”
After a few Saturdays, Mrs. Hill and I had gone through all three hatboxes. Besides the apostles and the iced tea stirrers, there were two small bowls of cranberry glass set in baskets of braided gold wire; four monogrammed silver napkin rings; six half-size teacups and matching saucers, each with a different flower garlanding the sides of the cup and the face of the saucer, each with one coy bud resting at the bottom of the cup. I loved them all. Mrs. Hill would hand them to me to admire, and then we’d rewrap them in tissue and I’d put them back in the closet.
In November, Mrs. Hill was always cold. She was tired of the hatboxes, tired of reading my palm, and tired of lasagna. She would fall asleep around two and wake up as the sky was getting dark.
“Don’t you leave while I’m sleeping. Elizabeth, you hear me? Don’t you leave if I’m not awake.”
“Okay. I mean, even if I did, you’d be fine. I mean, nothing would happen.”
“Don’t tell me what’s gonna happen in my own house. You come and wake me up before you leave.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The next Saturday, she fell asleep in her chair right after lunch. I went into her bedroom and stood in the mouth of the closet, staring up at the row of hatboxes. I took down the apostles and chose one whose eyes seemed to tilt up at me beneath lashes as dark and spiky as Seth Stern’s. I put him into my backpack and changed Mrs. Hill’s bed, trying to hold my breath until I got the clean sheets on and the old ones stuffed into the washer.
The following Saturday, I took one with blue eyes, and the Saturday after that, another dark-eyed one. I wanted to take the lady’s-slipper teacup next.
Mrs. Hill said to me, “Could you come this Tuesday? Vivian’s coming by, for just a little while. I think we could do a little cleaning up before.”
I had to smile; when “we” cleaned up, Mrs. Hill put on an old plaid apron and sat back in her recliner while I scrubbed the backsplash and threw out dead plants and moldy bread.
I didn’t like cleaning, and Mrs. Hill never offered to pay me, and even if she had, Reverend Shales had made it very clear that I was not ever to take money from her.
“I can’t. I’ve got school stuff. The paper. I have to go to a meeting.” I didn’t think Mrs. Hill would know that the special ed class put out the school paper all by itself.
“I think you might have to skip that meeting, sugar. I don’t like to put you out, you know that, but I really do need your help on Tuesday. Can’t have my Doctor FancyPants shakin’ her head, talkin’ about putting Mrs. Hill in some home. I need you Tuesday.”
If I came Tuesday, I would be there all the time. I could feel her need for me reaching out like terrible black roots, wrapping themselves right around me, burying me in wet brown earth.
“I’m really sorry. I just can’t. I have to be at that meeting. Maybe there’s someone else from church.” The A.M.E. Zion Church seemed to me to be overflowing with neatly dressed gloved and hatted ladies eager to help.
“Have someone from church come in here? Don’t talk crazy. You’re the one I need. And I need you on Tuesday.