Promises to Keep - Ann Tatlock [99]
“Amen,” Mom echoed.
Tillie opened her eyes, nodded, and slowly pulled herself up.
“Can I make you some breakfast before you go, Tillie?” Mom asked.
“Just coffee, thanks, Janis. I want to get there as soon as possible. In fact, I’ll call Johnny and have him go with me, or at least drop me off.”
“Listen, take the car. I can walk to work.”
“Thanks, but Johnny needs to know anyway, and he may very well want to stay at the hospital with me.” She marched back out to the phone in the hall as Mom and I followed once again. “We can’t have Lyle all alone at a time like this. The nurse said someone from the boardinghouse brought Lyle in and stayed with him through the night, but he had to leave for work this morning, so now nobody’s there.”
Tillie hurriedly dialed Johnny’s number. She spoke with him in short, clipped sentences while Mom rung her hands, and I looked on anxiously. When Tillie hung up, she said, “He’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll get your coffee,” Mom volunteered. “And Roz, you go ahead and get ready for school.”
“If you go see him at the hospital tonight, can I come?” I asked.
“Let’s talk about that later,” Mom said as she moved toward the stairs.
“He may not be up to seeing too many visitors at once, Roz,” Tillie said. “But your mother and I will be sure to give Lyle your love.”
That said, she dismissed me with a wave of her hand and went back to her room to get dressed.
Esther Kinshaw was called to watch Valerie and me while Mom and Tillie were at the hospital. Mrs. Kinshaw was our next-door neighbor, the one with the award-winning hot dish recipes and the twin granddaughters in Sausalito named after flowers. She was already there when I got home from school; she had, in fact, been there all day, Mom having called her over before she left for work in the morning. Mrs. Kinshaw met me at the door wearing an enormous bibbed apron over her floral print housedress and a delicate hairnet over her silver bouffant. One sure way to ruin a casserole, she told me, was to allow wayward hairs to slip in unnoticed. No cook was going to win any blue ribbons if one of the judges ingested a hair.
While Valerie napped, I sat at the kitchen table doing homework and watching Mrs. Kinshaw putter around the kitchen. “Did my mom say when she’d be home?” I asked.
Mrs. Kinshaw shook her head. “She just said I was to feed you supper, so I’m assuming it’ll be sometime in the early evening.”
“Did you talk to Tillie at all today? Do you know how Mr. Monroe is doing?”
“No, she hasn’t called. But it’s only his appendix, and Lyle is a strong little boy, so I don’t think we need to worry.”
I wrinkled my nose at her and said, “He’s not a little boy, Mrs. Kinshaw.”
She looked thoughtful as her hands kneaded a batch of biscuit dough. Then she laughed. “No, I guess you’re right about that. But I’ve known Lyle since he was about so high” – she held a hand to her knee – “and sometimes I still see him in my mind that way.” She sighed and clicked her tongue. “Seems like only yesterday Curtis and I moved in next door to Tillie and Ross. We were both young couples then with small children. My, how the time has flown.”
I looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. Not quite four o’clock. Time was not flying for me. Mom hadn’t even left work yet to go to the hospital. She didn’t get off till five, and then she’d probably spend a couple hours with Tillie and Lyle Monroe before she finally came home. We hadn’t had a baby-sitter in a long time, not since Minnesota. Ever since we moved to Mills River, Tillie had been around to stay with Valerie and me.
Sighing, I went back to my long division. But I couldn’t concentrate because Mrs. Kinshaw kept chattering on about Tillie and Ross and what wonderful neighbors they were and how they had such fine sons and it was just a pity Lyle had never gotten married, because he would have made such a nice husband and father. . . .
I didn’t care. I just wanted Mom to come home. And Tillie too. I just wanted everyone to be where they belonged.
It