Blue Blazes, Blue Blazes

How, Nan wondered, had she gotten on the Shelburg Warehouse mailing list?  What had she bought? Had it been the honeysuckle starts from a mail-order nursery? She'd ordered those after the blue spruce had shaded out the clematis which once climbed the rickety trellis near the garage. Maybe it hadn't been anything from a gardening catalog. What else? The hand salve from Olde-Tyme Mercantile, or maybe the penny candy assortment from Sweet Treats Unlimited?

When the warehouse catalog had arrived, mixed in with bills and other ads, she’d almost pitched the newsprint booklet onto the recycling stack. But a photo on the cover caught Nan’s eye. What was that thing? 

She looked closely at the metal comb-like tool with a looped handle and a large spring in the center. The metal coil made Nan think of a wooden storm door or a rocking-horse pony suspended on a brown tubular frame. The spring was strangely appealing, maybe because of its enduring nature: when squeezed, it returned to its original shape with no retaliation, every time.

After examining the photo, Nan left the catalog on the kitchen counter, and the next morning, she grabbed it on her way out to the back yard to drink her coffee. Settling onto the garden bench, she balanced her coffee cup on the wood slats of the bench, and paged through Shelburg Warehouse’s offerings until she found the unusual comb thing with the spring handle. It was a "Non-Electric Hair Trimmer."

Why non-electric? Nan thought. Above her head, a cardinal flew through the morning sunlight and perched on the rickety old trellis, a bright red patch among the brown clematis stems. Was the hair trimmer supposed to conserve energy? How much electricity did it take to cut somebody’s hair? Nan picked up her coffee cup, found the contents cold, and drank it anyway. She turned the newsprint pages randomly, noting an old-fashioned stove top percolator, a treadle sewing machine, and ugly outdoor thermometers with illustrated themes: a lighthouse, an eagle, a spray of rosebuds. Opposite the thermometers were clocks, including a key-wound wall model that ran for thirty-one days.  Tucked into the bottom corner of the page was a snow globe enclosing a miniature World Trade Center. “Ground Zero” was written in script across the globe’s white plastic base.

Next, Nan looked at pictures of BB guns, air rifles, and deadly-looking slingshots. On the following page were baby supplies, including cloth diapers and the same kind of white wicker bassinet she’d laid in as a newborn. A lot of the items were for serious country living:  hoof picks, a solar-powered electric fence controller, and pressure cookers “recommended by the USDA for canning meat, fish, and other low-acid foods.” Canned fish didn’t sound tasty to Nan, who still felt her usual morning queasiness.

The mystery of the catalog's target audience was solved by reading the description for a bottle of suede cleaner. Heaven knew a farmer might need to clean suede boots worn to the cow pasture and back. The description said that Suede Renew also worked on black wool hats. Black wool hats?

A picture rose in Nan’s mind: a buggy driven by an Amish man in a round-brimmed black hat, his wife on the bench seat beside him, a lap robe over her knees. Nan and Rhonda had been hiking along a roadside trail in Goshen, Indiana  when the clopping of horses’ hooves startled Nan. This had made Rhonda laugh. She’d grown up in Elkhart, not far away, and she was used to Amish buggies, their lanterns swinging, rattling along major roadways. But Nan was from New Orleans, where the only horse-and-buggy outfits hauled tourists around to see Bourbon Street saloons and ornate mansions haunted by long-dead voodoo queens.

Nan shifted her weight on the bench, bumping her right arm, which was still a little swollen and tender.  She looked down at straggly bits of long grass poking through the border of red clay tiles, at dandelions gone to seed like firecracker explosions, at a pile of bark mulch which had composted itself before Nan had gotten it spread around the perennials. She couldn’t bear to look at the messy yard any more; she picked up her empty coffee cup and the catalog and took them back into the house.

The rest of the morning was spent trying to sort out medical bills, insurance, and co-pays.  Thank heaven she'd had decent insurance from Plants Plus when she'd gotten her diagnosis, but the doctors, the labs, the radiologists, and the hospital all sent separate bills and it took a lot of focus to compare these with the statements sent by the insurance company.  With a sigh, Nan pushed everything back into the folder marked "Medical," and decided it was time for lunch.

After lunch, which she didn’t really want but felt she ought to have, Nan picked up the odd newsprint catalog again. She had some phone calls to make, but wanted to put them off a little longer. She really wanted a nap, but her sleep schedule was fouled up as it was, so she sat down at the dining room table and opened the Shelburg catalog. She started on the inside cover, which had directions to the warehouse for pick-up orders, plus an order form.

Next came sturdy cookware sets, funnels, casseroles, and baking sheets. After that were kerosene lanterns, both outdoor ones that looked like the Tarot Hermit’s light, and indoor ones with rose-tinted glass shades. Turning the page, Nan looked at a row of seamless stainless steel pails. The largest pail was thirteen quarts, and the smallest was two quarts, described as “a nice size for children.” Nan pictured an Amish family walking down a dirt path from a berry patch, with the bearded father lugging a large pail and an overalled toddler in the caboose position, berry stains around his mouth, using both hands to carry a half-empty junior pail.

Nan shifted in her chair, recrossed her legs, and looked at the next page, where the dust covers of a few books were displayed: When the Trumpet Sounds was a collection of true stories of sudden death, while Tragedies and Happenings had “news stories from the Berne, IN & other newspapers." Where was Berne? Nan didn’t have an Indiana map at hand, but she guessed if you asked people from Goshen or Elkhart how to get to Berne, they would point up the road and give you a couple of rights and lefts to make.

The last book on the page, besides a guest book with deluxe padded covers, was Amazing Miracles. Nan didn’t like to think about hard-working country people, already beset by life’s normal burdens, reading about miracles in the hope that angels would slip through the walls of their farmhouses to deliver healing, safety, and comfort.

Yawning, Nan fought off the urge to collapse onto the living room couch, turn on the television, and fall asleep in front of “101 Best Celebrity Hairdos.” Instead, she grabbed the cordless phone and pulled close a stapled set of lists covered with scribbles, cross-outs, and checkmarks.  She traced the names to the middle of the J’s, where the checkmarks stopped at Jha, Manju. She dialed. After the fourth ring, the voicemail system activated itself. The robotic, preprogrammed computer voice said, “You have reached 889-1227. No one is available to take your call. Please leave a message at the tone.”

After the beep, Nan said, “Hello, this message is for Manju Jha. This is Nan May, of the Thursday night support group at St. Anne’s, reminding you that our meeting starts at 7:30 this week. Our presenter is Dr. Beverly Shimoto, who’ll be speaking about lymphedema management. We hope you’ll be able to join us. If you have questions, please call the St. Anne Patient Helpline at 779-9779.” Nan pushed the “off’ button, put a checkmark next to Jha, Manju, and then dialed the number for Jikman, Carol.

A little before three o’clock, Nan gave up and settled herself on the couch with the Amish catalog. She looked at an industrial-size apple peeler with a crank handle, then fell deeply asleep and didn’t wake up until Rhonda came home from work, her keys jangling. Rhonda perched on the edge of the couch cushion near Nan’s feet.  She held a handful of mail and catalogs.  “Hey, bright eyes,” said Rhonda. “I’m glad you got a nap in.”

“I probably won’t be able to sleep tonight,” said Nan, sitting up and dropping the crumpled catalog to the carpet.

Rhonda sorted the mail into two piles, a small one and a large one. She handed the larger pile to Nan, and stood up. “I’m going to go change,” she said. “Do you want me to bring you down a blanket?”

“No, I’m getting up,” said Nan. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I was looking at a catalog and I guess I dozed off.”

“You got about another five or six of them today,” said Rhonda, putting the smaller pile on mail on the end table before she climbed the stairs.

Nan looked through the larger stack of mail, putting her bills from Radiology and BioPoint Labs to the side, and looked through the catalog selection: Land’s End, Abundant Life Seeds, Junonia, Lillian Vernon, Musser Forests, Ladyslipper. The Junonia catalog had a full-bodied woman doing a yoga stretch on the cover. Nan’s doctor wanted her to do something to relieve stress, and had suggested swimming, yoga or, oddly, bowling.

Bowling was something Nan had once done weekly for years, and she looked through Junonia's selection of sports and exercise outfits. Were there New Age bowling leotards with blooming irises on them? Her chest and arm had healed, but she’d never again feel confident about throwing a twelve-pound ball with her right arm. As a gift, Nan’s bowling ball had been plugged and re-drilled as a lefty model, a get-well gift from Rhonda. Rhonda herself was left-handed and a good bowler, with an amazing hook that always looked as if it were going to swerve into the gutter before it took out the head pin and caused havoc among the other standees. Nan wondered if she could actually throw lefty, but she had a pretty high handicap in the new league, so there was room to improve.

Rhonda, dressed in sweat pants and a Capital University tee shirt, came thumping downstairs. “I’m going to call my mom, and then I might try and get in a quick run before it rains,” she said.

“Do you think I could really learn to bowl left-handed?” said Nan, as Rhonda went to the hall closet.

“Sure,” said Rhonda, slipping on her rain jacket. “After you’re comfortable with the re-drilled ball, maybe we could get you a new lefty one.”

“Can I have one with glitter in it?” said Nan. “Blue with silver glitter?”

Rhonda came over to look through Nan’s pile of mail. “Are you getting bowling-ball catalogs now?” She smiled, then picked up the Ladyslipper catalog and looked at some CD covers.

Nan held up the Junonia catalog. “No, it’s just -1 was looking at these sports clothes and I was thinking about how Dr. Eftimie wants me to do some exercise. Maybe it’s time for me to start bowling again.”

“That would be great,” said Rhonda. “I could stop trying to line up subs. And you could still get in on Penny-a-Pin.” She went back to the closet and brought back Nan’s denim jacket. “Here, come with me.” She held out the jacket.

“I can’t run,” said Nan. “I get tired just -“

“We’ll walk,” said Rhonda.  She laid the jacket on the sofa next to Nan.  “Are your shoes under the couch?”

“Don’t you want to run?” said Nan. “I can wait here.” She held up the catalogs. “I have plenty of reading material.”

“We can walk,” said Rhonda, holding out her bent arm. Nan grasped Rhonda's forearm and stood up, then poked around with her bare foot under the couch till she found her sandals.  She scooted them out with her toes.

As she locked the front door behind her, Nan asked “Should we go the long way or the short way?” 

“How’s your energy?” said Rhonda.

 “Maybe the long way will give me an energy boost,” said Nan. “Lying around on the couch is making me feel more tired.”

She followed Rhonda, who’d turned right at the bottom of the driveway. “This long after chemo, should I still be this tired?”

“I think it takes a while for all the chemo to get out of your body,” said Rhonda. “And you might be kind of stressed, maybe. I know I’m stressed and I’m not the one that was sick.”

They followed the sidewalk out of the cul-de-sac and turned onto the walkway fronting the old West High School building, now West Adult Education Center. Some years back, Nan had taught at the Center, .mostly classes in bonsai and organic gardening. The landscaping around the red brick building bore her touches: a cluster of purple coneflowers around the flagpole base, an herb garden reduced now mostly to scraggly sage shoots emerging out of a sea of lemon balm, and a fence woven with honeysuckle vines which sent a sweet fragrance across the lawn to Nan’s nose.

“I think it’s your job that’s working your nerves,” said Nan. She noticed that she was already getting a little out of breath, and it was hard to talk and walk at the same time. “When your practice takes on new partners, you can start giving the newbies the hard clients.”

Rhonda came to a stop, pretending to look at the coneflowers, but of course really giving Nan a chance to get her oxygen debt repaid. “Is it the purple flowers that smell good?”

“No, it’s those vines all wound up in the chain-link fence,” said Nan. “Honeysuckle.”    

They walked on, passing the public library, which had a yard sign asking residents to Vote Yes on Issue 9, and the upholstery shop, where a sunflower-pattern sofa was displayed in the front window.

“Is that the before or after example?” asked Nan.

“Got me there,” said Rhonda. “I do case law.”

They turned right at the next corner, circled the block and came back down Wendell Street on the other side of the road from the library and the upholstery shop. When they got to Mysteries & More, Rhonda hesitated for a moment and Nan said, “Want to stop in and look for a bit?”

“Maybe just for a minute,” said Rhonda. Nan followed her in, and while Rhonda looked at paperback mysteries, Nan wandered to Health, Well-Being and Spirituality. The first book on the eye-level shelf was The Cancer Prevention Guide: Seven Steps to Staying Well. Too late, thought Nan, moving on to look at The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and What to Expect When You ’re Expecting. Expecting what? thought Nan, and then realized the woman on the cover was pregnant. Oh.

Nan turned her head and saw Rhonda at the front desk, so she moved slowly to the counter too. Rhonda took a twenty out of her wallet and handed it to the clerk, then turned to Nan. “I probably should have just waited for this at the library, but it just came out in paper.” She indicated a novel with John Grisham’s name embossed in gold along the bottom.

“Required reading for attorneys,” said Nan, and smiled at the clerk, who gave Rhonda her change and then the book in a little brown paper bag rubber-stamped “M & M” in Gothic font. “You should be able to take a tax deduction for it.” She opened the door for Rhonda, and they went back out to Wendell Street, which was filling with evening shadows. Nan’s fatigue came on strongly. Would she be able to walk back, or did she need to wait while Rhonda went to get the car?

“You look tired,” said Rhonda, who crooked her right arm so that Nan could hold onto it. “Do you need me to bring the car? You could wait here.”

“I think I can make it,” said Nan. “Maybe we should cut through at Sullivan, though.”

They took the shortcut along Sullivan Avenue, where nice houses were mixed in with dilapidated ones. Some lawns were mowed to straight-line perfection and bordered by box hedges, and others had gone wild and were awash with fuzzy white dandelion heads.

Near the corner where Sullivan ended and the cul-de-sac began, Nan slowed to a stop and Rhonda waited while her spouse took a few slow, deep breaths. Nan must have shut her eyes while she was catching her breath, because she opened them and found that she was looking at a strange half-dead, half-living thing. 

A broken stump, somewhere between gray and brown in color, was wedged between the sidewalk and the curb.  From its top sprang a vibrant spray of green leaves.  Other long branches, knotty with twig bugs, jutted out from the broken stump. In between these, small greenish-white flowers leapt out toward the street. In the evening breeze, young flexible green shoots bobbed up and down gently in the breeze.

“Look at that,” said Nan to Rhonda, who had slid her Grisham thriller out of the paper sack to glance over the back cover.

“What?” said Rhonda, sliding the book back into the M&M bag.

“That stump,” said Nan. “Look at the top of it. It wasn’t cut down -- it’s uneven at the top. See? It looks like it was either starting to get a rotten place, or maybe a car banged it or something. The trunk broke off and fell over into the street.”

Rhonda glanced up the lawn toward the house belonging to the tree. The dilapidated home's old siding had buckled in a few places, and the roof shingles rippled, curling away from the straight metal edge of the gutter.

“I bet they knew it was diseased and didn’t want to pay to have it looked at,” said Rhonda. “They waited till it fell into the street so the city would take care of it.”

“I think you’re right,” said Nan. “The top of the stump’s, like, split-level. That lower part’s where it fell out over the curb.” She bent and touched one of the young, strong, leafy branches coming out the side of the stump. “But the root’s still alive. Look at these leaves, and it’s got little flowers. I think it’s a mulberry, don’t you?”

“The only trees I know are Christmas trees and tulip trees,” said Rhonda. “But I do think mulberry trees do get flowers. I think Mom’s got one in her yard.” She looked at Nan. “How’re you feeling?”

“Better,” said Nan. “Let’s go ahead and see if we can stagger on home and we’ll get some dinner started.”

In the middle of the night, Nan woke up thinking about the mulberry stump. How had it gotten there to start with? The grassy strip between the sidewalk and the curb was narrow. Surely even a person with little tree awareness would figure out that as the mulberry reached upwards, its trunk would also swell outward. Why would anyone deliberately wedge it into this unsuitable spot when there was lawn between the house and the sidewalk?

The mulberry must have been a volunteer, thought Nan.  She sat up to flip over her pillow. Birds ate mulberry fruit and then plopped reddish-purple poop onto her car roof, so if a mulberry seed, enclosed in fresh bird fertilizer, tumbled down out of the sky, couldn’t it have penetrated the grassy turf deeply enough to get a sapling started?

Adjusting her pillow hadn’t helped. Pain was creeping up from below Nan's armpit and around her chest, moving toward her shoulder and neck. She got out of bed. 

“You okay?” murmured Rhonda, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand, her eyes still closed.

“Yeah, just getting up for a bit,” said Nan.

 Rhonda murmured something like “Wake me up if you need me” which Nan could partly understand, and then snuggled down beneath the blankets.

Inside the bathroom medicine cabinet, Nan saw a space where her bottle of pain pills should have been, and then remembered that the pills were in her purse. She went back into the bedroom for her glasses, then moved downstairs slowly in the dark, holding the rail with her stiff arm and shoulder. She found her purse on a chair in the dining room. The bottle was nearly empty, but there were two capsules, and Nan carried these in her palm to the kitchen, where she gulped them down with a swig of water from the glass she’d used at dinner.

On her way to the living room, Nan stopped at the stack of catalogs sitting on the corner of the dining room table, and pulled the Land’s End issue off the top. She took this to the couch, and propped herself against a corner cushion so she could look at women in sailor tops and white capris lounge against weathered deck pilings. Nan pictured herself in white capris, viewed from the rear, and it wasn’t a comfortable thought. She flipped through to the shoe section, where there were some cute pastel sandals.

At the back of her mind, Nan was still processing the stump with the spray of new leaves shooting out its top and sides. She saw the little blooms dipping down and fluttering up in the breeze. When she’d first seen the flowering stump, the shoots had seemed miraculous and hopeful, life breaking free from the rotting wood prison. But now Nan pondered the future of the mulberry, and found that she was worried. 

She stared at the catalog page, trying to focus on some canvas slingbacks in denim, powder blue, pink, and tan, but the image of the broken-off mulberry tree stayed with her. So much of the trunk was dead, and the broken tree was already crowded in by concrete on both sides. As the branches grew longer, wouldn’t they be snapped off by cars and trucks that parked along the the street? Maybe the mulberry would have been better off to let itself dissolve slowly into a heap of damp grayish-brown bark dust.

The next morning, despite not feeling quite up to par, Nan had gotten the rest of her support group calls done by eleven o’clock. She felt tired by the time she’d phoned Wong, Brenda and Young, Yvette, and she wondered how she was ever going to return to a normal work schedule. Rhonda’s law practice was going well — somebody was always suing Microsoft - but the two of them couldn’t live on one income forever, and Nan’s boss Pam couldn’t hold the position at Plants Plus open forever, either. The company’s bid to take care of all the indoor and outdoor plants for CityOne Financial Services had just been accepted, and this was the third big contract Pam had won in six months. She’d had been great about waiting for Nan to get better, but with only one other helper, Pam had to be putting in ten-hour days, six days a week, maybe more.

Nan’s spirit sank. If she’d had Pam’s go-getter spirit, would her own landscaping business have lasted longer? To be fair, Nan had been the only woman in her landscaping classes in vocational school, alone with men who only talked to each other while they all learned about pruning, tree selection, and rock gardens. Then when she’d started Willow Way Landscape Design, nobody was used to a woman in a truck coming to talk to them about soil acidity and parterre gardens. Nan had never liked the part of the work that involved people; she’d loved being outside all day, touching and smelling the mulch and pine sap.

Since she’d given up her own business and hired on at Plants Plus, she’d mostly worked under fluorescent lights, replacing brown asparagus ferns with green asparagus ferns.  Just thinking about hauling plants out of the back of the van and up and down stairs made Nan even more tired. It was theoretically less work than digging up a lawn with a spade, or stooping to plant hundreds of square feet of ground cover, but the work at Plants Plus was never anything but a tiresome chore. Nan skipped lunch and laid down on the couch, not even bothering to turn on the television first.

Maybe it was the unbroken silence which woke her, or the neighbor’s dogs barking at a UPS van, but Nan woke up on her own, surprisingly refreshed. She scrambled a couple of eggs and had them with toast, and then showered and got dressed, slipping on her Blue Blazes bowling shirt.

She went to the hall closet and fished around among the shoes, boots, and umbrellas until she found her bowling bag, which she dragged out by the strap. The bag was gritty on the bottom and had dust bunnies stuck all over it.

Nan went to the kitchen and reached under the sink for a rag, which she held under the running faucet before wringing it out. She spread a newspaper out on the kitchen linoleum, went back for the bowling bag, and set it on the open newspaper. She was still wiping down the leatherette bag when Rhonda, holding that day's handful of mail and catalogs, came in from the dining room and stared.

“Well, you’ve been busy,” said Rhonda.

“Tuesday’s bowling night,” said Nan. “Do you want me to microwave something for dinner, or should we just get pizza there?”

“Pizza’s fine,” said Rhonda. “I’m glad you’re up to going. Everybody misses you.”

The phone rang, and Rhonda went to answer it. As Nan finished with the bowling bag and put away the rag, she could hear Rhonda talking to her mother. “I’m sure it’s fine,” said Rhonda. “But do you want me to call the gas company to make sure? Or I could stop by-- yeah, that would be fine. We’re going out anyway, and I can just -- yes, it’s no problem. We’ll just leave a little early. Okay, see you soon. Okay, no, that’s okay. I’ll be glad to -- Okay, Mom, we’ll be by.” Rhonda hung up and drifted back toward Nan, who was gathering the newspaper sheets, splotched with damp spots.

“That was Mom,” said Rhonda, shifting her feet uncomfortably.

“Would she like us to stop by?” said Nan, putting the wad of damp newspaper on the recycling stack.

“Just for a sec,” said Rhonda. “She thinks her stove is making funny noises. It’s the wind blowing down the vent, I know it is. But she’s scared the kitchen’s going to blow up.”

“Get your bowling shirt on then,” said Nan. “We’d better get going.”

                                                   ***

At Rhonda’s mother’s house, Nan waited in the car while Rhonda went in. Nan really did need to rest a little, but was glad that her health provided a good excuse. She found it hard to be inside Mrs. Tenaglia’s house. The windows were always shut tight, summer and winter, shutting in the aroma of cigarette smoke, dust, and overripe fruit.  Piles of books, magazines, and bric-a-brac, towered from every chair seat and table top, giving the living room the feel of a hastily thrown-up bunker.  The stacks of objects rose high enough to shut out what little light came through the cloudy windows.

Nan turned her gaze from the house to the front yard, which she’d helped along over the years by digging out hundreds of dandelion roots, aerating the turf, and the wheeled grass feeder. She’d cleared the heavily-thatched grass away from the rose bushes and then cut back the overgrown bushes.  The cut-back had frightened and angered Rhonda's mother until Mrs. Tenaglia had seen the new green leaves and the abundance of blooms later that spring. At the comer where the driveway met the sidewalk, the miniature yew Nan had planted was doing well. The neat tuber-shaped top gave the front yard a little touch of interest.

Rhonda came out the front door of her mother’s house with the haunted look which always made Nan sad. By the time Rhonda got into the driver’s seat and shut her door, Nan had put on a cheerful face. “Was the stove okay?”

“Yeah.” Rhonda turned the ignition key, then put her arm across the back of Nan’s seat as she turned to look out the back window, backing the car out of the driveway. “Tomorrow she’ll think somebody’s been trying to pry open the storm door, or that the television’s about to explode. Meals on Wheels comes by every day, so they’d give me a ring if there was anything real going on.”

As the car gently eased into the street, Nan saw that the carefully-trimmed yew had sprung one errant branch, which defiantly poked out toward the sidewalk. Mrs. Tenaglia wouldn’t be able to see it from the house, but if she ever came out to the sidewalk, she’d want the branch trimmed.

The crazy little spurt of greenery seemed bent on ruining the yew’s curved symmetry. But as the car bumped down over the driveway curb, stopped, and then began moving forward, Nan felt admiration for the shrub’s small gesture of cheekiness.

“How’s Becca?” she asked. “Did your mom have any news?”

“She’s out of the hospital,” said Rhonda. “They had to do inhalation therapy with Pulmozyme.”

“Is that serious?” said Nan.

“It’s a normal CF thing,” said Rhonda. “Not like cystic fibrosis is normal, but you know what I mean.” She put on the left turn signal and waited for traffic to clear. “But Mom said Becca’s doing pretty good. She’s been able to go to play rehearsals.” She turned the car left at the light and pulled into the Fiesta Lanes parking lot.

“What’s she in?” said Nan, as the car moved into a parking space and stopped.

“The Miracle Worker,” said Rhonda, shutting off the engine. She got out and began to get both bowling bags out from the back seat.  Nan turned her head and said quickly, “I can get mine.”

“You sure?” said Rhonda.

“Well, yeah. If I can throw it, I can carry it,” said Nan. She got out and shut the passenger door, then came around the back of the car to get her bowling bag. “The Miracle Worker. . .  Is Becca Helen Keller?”

“No, she’s Annie Sullivan,” said Rhonda, looking doubtfully at Nan’s bowling bag. But she picked up her own bag and started for the bowling alley’s front door. “She’s definitely got acting talent.”

Nan did allow Rhonda to open the heavy glass door for her as she hauled her bowling ball inside. Nan’s breath was a bit coming quickly and shallowly but she hoped no one would notice.  They probably wouldn't with all the rolling, thumping, and crashing as players rolled practice balls down the shiny wooden lanes.  At Lanes 9 and 10, Joanna and Lila, in their Blue Blazes shirts, were already seated in bright-colored plastic chairs. Joanna had bent down to lace her tan-and-aqua shoes, so she didn’t see Nan, but Lila said, “Well, lookie, lookie! Somebody’s back!”

Joanna finished with her shoelace and looked up. “Well, hey!” She stood mi and gave Nan a little hug. “Oh, I hope I didn’t hurt you!  Sorry, I didn't think."

“I’m fine,” said Nan. “All healed up.” She sat down and let the bowling bag drop to the carpeted floor. To hide her fatigue, she got busy with unzipping the bag and taking out her towel and shoes.

“Think you remember how to bowl?” asked Lila, coming around the table to give Nan a little pat on the back.

“Let’s see,” said Nan, carrying her ball to the circular metal rack. “De we knock those white things down? We want those over on their sides, spinning around, right?”

“Well, you’re way ahead of the sub we had last week,” said Rhonda, zipping her empty bag shut and shoving it under the bench. “I don’t know what game she thought she was playing.”

“She found her way to the bar and back all right,” said Joanna, sitting down in front of the score screen. She began typing in their names. “She just had trouble finding the pins.”

“Don’t know why,” said Lila. “She was seeing twice as many as everybody else.”

Joanna finished the set-up and Nan’s name appeared on the overhead screen in white letters, underlined by a row of flashing arrows. “It feels good to type your name again, Nan. Especially with Penny-a-Pin coming up pretty soon.”

“Don’t get your hopes up too high,” said Nan, stepping up to the ball rack. “I’m throwing lefty now.”

“Gotta have hope,” said Joanna. “Or something. We’re ranked nineteenth.”

Nan’s first ball was a little weak, and even though it went into the pocket, there wasn’t much action. Four pins went over, and then a fifth wobbled and hit its head on the floor. But her second ball was a clean spare, brushing away the remaining pins easily.

“Hey, did those doctors add a little something while they were at it?” said Lila, getting up to take her turn and giving Nan a high five as. “I might go in for some of that.”

“Aw, just got my boob out of the way, that’s all,” said Nan, sitting down. “If I’d known it would help my bowling, I would of done it sooner.”

                                                * * *

In the middle of the night, Nan woke up with a backache. She got up and went to the medicine cabinet for her pain pills, realized she'd taken the last two, and took out a bottle of Advil. An evening of throwing her lefty ball hadn’t affected her surgery site on the right too badly, but of course she should have realized that she wasn’t in shape. In the Willow Way Landscape days, she’d spent hours every day digging hard clay and raking mulch and carrying plant buckets back and forth to the truck.  She'd been very fit in those days.  Nan’s indoor job at Plants Plus hadn’t really kept her strong.  Switching out asparagus ferns didn’t have that vigorous, fresh-air feel to it, but was more like a mule’s steady, weary pull on a heavy cart.

Nan put an Advil on the back of her tongue, washed it down with a scooped handful of water from the bathroom tap, then took a second capsule. While she was waiting for the pills to work, she went downstairs and sat at the dining room table.  She pulled the pile of new catalogs closer and began flipping through them.

At five-thirty a.m., the sound of Rhonda's traveled down from the second floor.  Rhonda herself appeared five minutes later, groggily wandering down the stairs and coming to look over Nan's shoulder as Nan filled out an order form.   Rhonda gave her a kiss on the side of the head and went into the kitchen to start the coffee maker. “You’re just going to get more catalogs when you order stuff,” she called out cheerfully.

“I know,” Nan called back, carrying the Subtotal amount down to the Total line and reaching for the checkbook. “But this will be handy to have. If s a wind-up radio with a flashlight built into it. It has shortwave, too.”

“Be prepared!” said Rhonda from the kitchen, chuckling. The refrigerator door opened, then shut, and Nan heard Rhonda put down three items on the counter top: first the egg carton, then a package of turkey bacon, then the carton of orange juice. There was a little gasp from Rhonda, and Nan guessed that her girlfriend had nearly knocked the egg carton off the counter with her elbow.

“The last time the power went out, we had one utility candle,” said Nan. “And nothing to put it in.  I had to stick it on a jar lid for a holder.”

“Hey, we still had the birthday candles!” culled Rhonda. “I’m getting up there, so we had a lot of birthday candles!”

“Seriously,” said Nan, putting the order form and the check into the envelope. She wrote her return address in the upper left corner, and came into the kitchen to get a postage stamp from the junk drawer. She saw the egg carton still precariously close to the edge of the counter, and she pushed it back into the safe zone.

“Want an egg and a strip or two of turkey bacon?” said Rhonda, applying the Teflon spatula enthusiastically. 

“No, not yet,” said Nan. She opened the junk drawer and took out the booklet of stamps. “You’re feeling good this morning.” She smiled and shut the drawer, then took the stamps back to the dining room.

“Don’t know why,” Rhonda called over the sizzle from the stove top. Nan heard her pick up a plate and shovel her breakfast onto it. “I got going on that John Grisham book and I couldn’t put it down. I didn’t go to sleep till I don’t know what time.” She brought her plate and juice glass into the dining room and sat down across from Nan. “What do you have going on today?” She used the side of her fork to cut an egg into fourths, then eighths.

“I go see Dr. Eftimie at ten,” said Nan. She reached over, picked up a slice of Rhonda’s bacon, took a bite, and put it back on the plate.

Rhonda picked up the turkey bacon strip and tried holding it out, but Nan waved it off. “That’s all I wanted. So I have the doctor, and then I thought I might try to clean up the backyard a little.”

“Call Pam to see if she’ll come help you,” said Rhonda. She got up and went into the kitchen and came back with the salt shaker.

“Pam’s crazy busy like it is,” said Nan. She opened a Blake Shoes catalog and looked at some braided-leather loafers. “I think it’s time for me to get my body moving, anyway. You know, we have the Penny-a-Pin thing in a month. I need to get some good donations.  I don’t want to go over to the CF office and have to give them a check for thirty-eight cents.”

                                               ***

The morning sun felt good as Nan dragged an empty yard-waste can across the backyard to the trellis.  She began pulling dead, crumbly clematis blooms and wiry vines from the wooden slats. It was a relief to get rid of the dead clematis, which had frozen to the trellis’ faded white frame in the posture of a live plant but without green, or moistness, or flexibility. The new honeysuckle plants were just beginning to find their way upwards from their roots in the black crumbly soil at the foot of the trellis, and Nan wanted clean paths for the new shoots.

Dropping the last bits of brittle vine into the waste bin, Nan decided to bend down and pull off some of the explosive, fuzzed-out dandelion heads before they launched a seed-storm. She cradled each fluff ball in her palm, letting it drop deep into the waste can, to fall among the brown clematis leaves, so it couldn’t sow dozens more dandelion pals.

A hundred dandelion heads later, Nan’s shoulder and back were complaining about the stoop-work, so Nan went into the house for a glass of iced tea, and came back to sit on the wooden garden bench. She'd just settled down when her eye was caught by something.  In the longish grass in front of the blue spruce, something was alive and shifting a little, disturbing the grass blades and clover stalks. Nan thought it might be a squirrel or maybe a neighbor’s cat, but when she put down her iced-tea glass and looked carefully, she saw that the shape in the grass was smaller than she’d thought. A flash of red showed that it was a bird -- a cardinal.

Had an animal gotten to it? Was it a fledgling fallen from the nest? Nan sighed and eased herself off the bench, not sure what she could do to help a half-dead bird. A startling burst of movement brought the bird’s red body into diagonal flight across Nan’s path, and the cardinal disappeared into the leafy top of a silver maple in a neighbor’s yard. Good fake, thought Nan. Thought you were a goner, birdie.

The cardinal’s impressive zoom to the tree-top motivated Nan to get busy again. She went into the garage and came out with the string trimmer and a large spool of orange extension cord. Nan plugged one end of the neon-orange cord into the grounded outlet just inside the garage door, and looped the other end through the handle opening and into the trimmer socket. She went back into the garage for a pair of plastic safety goggles. She adjusted these till the black elastic band across the back of her head was comfortable, then Nan flipped the trimmer’s carry handle up and squeezed the trigger.

She moved along the red clay tile border, and wet bits of weed leaf and stem flew around, some of it hitting her goggles, neck, and chest. Though the trimmer’s weight pulled her arm downward, slightly stretching her surgical scar, the joy of physical work was stronger than the discomfort.

When she got to the end of the tile border, Nan moved on to the narrow concrete walkway between the house and the garage.  Turning the trimmer on its side, she edged the turf along the walkway. She was happy. Her body told her that she’d rather run a string trimmer eight hours a day, outdoors in the sun, wind, or rain than ever carry another dying asparagus fern out of a bank lobby.

What if she took out a little capital on the home-equity line of credit, say five thousand dollars at five percent? 

Could she start up Willow Way Landscape Design again and maybe work for Pam at Plants Plus on a part-time basis? That would be hard on Pam, though --  the way the business had been growing, Plants Plus might need a new-hire pretty soon even if Nan came back full-time, and besides Nan just plain didn’t want to drive the Plants Plus van into office complexes, perpetually lost as she scanned one anonymous glass-and-steel building after another, looking for CityOne Financial Services or Westgate Mortgage Group.

At the walkway's end, Nan turned and flipped the thick orange power cord around so she could run the edger back toward the house, and said "ow" aloud.  She had to remember to take it easy.  She gently let the cord drop and put the trimmer in position. What if Willow Way Landscape was part of the Plants Plus family? If she and Pam split the profits and Pam got them clients and did the payroll and taxes, and if all Nan had to do was put in twelve-hour days with a rake and a spade and a hedge clipper, getting soaked in cold spring rain and frying in the summer sun, life would be splendid.

“Splendid,” Nan said aloud, turning the trimmer upright again and flipping the cord to do the tile border on the other side of the yard. “Splendid in the grass.” She smiled, and a clump of weed stems hit her in the teeth. She spit out the juicy green bits, laughing, and rushed the last few feet of trimming, getting the worst of the crabgrass and horsetail obscuring the red clay of the border tiles. 

When she let go of the trigger and the trimmer spun to a stop, Nan’s fatigue swam up over her and she quickly unplugged the heavy orange cord and put the trimmer inside the garage, just inside the door, too tired to carry it back to the wall hook. She had overdone it, and now would she be able to go to her support group at seven-thirty?

When she came in the back door, after slipping off her wet, grassy sandals, she found Rhonda in the kitchen, taking a Tupperware bin out of the refrigerator. “Hey. listen,” Rhonda said. “I’m going to make a tuna salad sandwich real quick, and I need to run over to Mom’s.”

Nan hadn’t meant to look disapproving, but Rhonda must have seen something in her face, because she said, “You know what’s good? We’re having a family meeting. Julie and Becca are going over too.” Rhonda put the Tupperware on the counter and went to the bread drawer for a loaf of Pepperidge Farm Country White. “I didn’t ask you, because I know Mom’s house - “

“No, I don’t want to go over,” said Nan. “Unless you need me.”

“I don’t think so,” said Rhonda. She took a soup spoon out of the silverware drawer and used the back of it to spread tuna salad over the bread. “I’m hoping Julie and Becca might move in with Mom.”

“What about Steven?” asked Nan. She opened the refrigerator, took out a bag of mini carrots and shook some onto a plate. “Here.” She gave the plate to Rhonda, who took a bite of her tuna salad sandwich before putting it down next to the carrots. Rhonda carried the plate into the dining room, and Nan followed.

“Julie’s divorcing him,” said Rhonda, pulling out a chair.

“Well, that’s good news,” said Nan. “Do you want a glass of milk or something?”

“Is there coffee left?” asked Rhonda, crunching into a carrot.

“It’s cold,” said Nan. “I could microwave - “

“How about just put some into a glass of milk, like a mocha thing?” said Rhonda, around a bite of tuna salad. “With some ice?”

Nan went into the kitchen. As she held a glass under the ice maker, she called out over the clinking cubes, “Why doesn’t she stay in the house and make Steven move out?”

“They're selling the house.  Julie will need to go on Medicaid for Becca’s treatments,” said Rhonda.

Nan added milk, then coffee to the glass, then brought it to the table. “That stinks,” she said, putting the glass down near Rhonda’s plate, then pulling a chair out for herself.

“Republican reality,” said Rhonda, before sipping her coffee drink. “Julie stays married to a creep and Becca has health coverage, or Julie starts life over and has to go on Medicaid.” She drank some of the mocha drink. “This is great -- thanks.”

“When you get done suing Microsoft, let’s sue the insurance companies,” said Nan, getting up. “Or better yet, the government. I’m going to go make myself a sandwich, if there’s tuna salad left.”

“Yep, left you some,” said Rhonda. “I should have made you - “

“I didn’t think I was going to my support group,” said Nan. “But now I’m feeling better so I’ll eat real quick and go.” At the kitchen doorway, she turned. “I’m glad Julie’s moving in with your mom.”

“It’ll solve a lot of problems,” said Rhonda, picking up her empty plate and following Nan into the kitchen. “Julie can save her money and get her teaching certificate, and Mom can take Becca to her treatments. I think it’ll work out.”

“I hope Becca can breathe there,” said Nan. “I find the air kind of stuffy at your mom’s.”

“Yeah,” Rhonda said, “we’ve got to work on that. There’s a lot of dust with all those books piled up. It’s hard for Mom to dust around all that.”

“We could go over on a weekend and maybe help her get ready for the move.” Nan opened the refrigerator and took out the Tupperware of tuna salad.

“Um, yeah, that would be great,” said Rhonda, leaning in the doorway. “Listen, I gotta run. I told Julie I’d meet her there at six.”

“I’m going to my group - did I tell you that already?” said Nan, getting the loaf of bread from the bin. “So I won’t be home until nine-thirty or ten.”

“Okay,” said Rhonda. She came over and gave Nan a quick forehead kiss. “See you later.” She grabbed her keys from the wall hook and was gone.

                                                 ***

After her support group meeting ended at nine o’clock, Nan stayed behind to talk with an older woman in a tropical print blouse, who said, “It just surprised me so much. Were you really surprised?”

“No,” said Nan. “My mom and my older sister both had it, so. . .”

“Did you get that gene testing?” asked the woman, bending to retrieve her jacket and purse from the back of her chair.

 “Huh-uh,” Nan said as they moved toward the meeting-room door. “I just figured my turn would come after Mom and Kate.”

“How are they doing?” the woman asked, as they moved through the lobby toward the revolving door.

“They both passed away,” said Nan. “The chemo was too much for Mom. Kate had the cells in her liver too, and they can’t do radiation on the liver.”

The woman moved through the revolving door, then Nan had her spin and they were out in the parking lot.

“I’m sorry,” said the woman, reaching out awkwardly to cup her palm over the curve of Nan’s shoulder for a moment.

“Life’s like that, I guess,” said Nan, taking her car keys from her purse. “You never know. I was the lucky one - who knows why.” She smiled. “I hope your treatment goes smoothly and it goes by quick.”

“I just want to get well,” said the woman, slipping her jacket over her shoulders. “Whatever they tell me to do, then I guess that’ll be what I need.” She turned her head for a moment, then said, “Will you be at the next meeting?”

“I wish I could be there,” said Nan, “but I’m in a charity bowling tournament, and I’ve got to go to that.”

“That’s nice,” said the woman. “It’s good that you’re doing something for charity.” She took a few steps toward a gray Nissan. “Well, here’s my car. I hope we can talk again some time.”

“I’ll be back for group in a month,” said Nan. “It was nice to talk to you.” She moved to her red Volkswagen and unlocked the driver’s side door. Reaching inside the car, Nan took a form from the stack on the passenger seat, and brought it to the woman's Nissan just before the driver pulled her door shut.

“I don’t know if you’re interested,” said Nan, “but we’re doing our Penny-a-Pin tournament for cystic fibrosis.” She held out the pledge form, which the woman accepted. “You can pledge a penny, or a nickel or a dime or whatever you want, for every pin I knock down in five games. It’s got a postage-paid thing here” - she indicated it with her thumb - “so you can just drop it in the mail with your check. There’s a number to call if you want the pin total, or you can just make the amount whatever you want.”

“Yes, I’d like to,” said the woman, looking at the barcode on the postage-paid rectangle before putting the form on the dashboard ledge. “Good luck with the tournament.”

“I’m bowling lefty now, so it’s a challenge,” said Nan, stepping back so the woman could shut her car door. “But I enjoy it. It keeps my mind occupied.”

“I know what you mean,” said the woman, giving a little wave before shutting her car door and starting the engine.

Nan walked back to her Volkswagen, hoping it had been okay to give the woman the pledge form. Oh well, she could throw it out if she wanted.

At Fiesta Lanes, league bowlers were very busy, turning in Penny-a-Pin pledge forms, fastening on their wrist supports, and polishing bowling balls. Brent, the league president, came over to the Blue Blazes table. His red T-shirt had a Ferrari zooming across the front, with lettering below it that said “Fast & Furious.”  Brent leaned on their table, smiling.  He had dimples.  "Hi girls."

“Hi Brenda,” said Lila and Joanna together, then Lila continued, “Heard you closed down the bar last night,” and they all smiled.

“The old queens have to stay till the end to get the leftovers,” said Brent, making a face. “It’s the clearance rack for me.”

 “Qh, fifty-seven isn’t that old,” said Lila, and Brent, who was forty-ish, aimed a light mock slap at her.

"Well, anyway,” Brent said, turning to Nan, “did you get any last-minute pledges?”

“There might be one in the mail,” said Nan. “I gave an envelope to somebody the other day, and I think she’s going to send it in.”

Rhonda stopped tying her gray-and-pink bowling shoe, and reached into her jeans pocket to take out a folded wad of wrinkled pledge forms. “These went through the washing machine, but you can still read them, and the checks are okay.” 

“Talk about money laundering,” said Joanna, and they all laughed. 

  

 “Thanks,” said Brent to Rhonda. “You girls are in the top five for pledges this year.”

“And in the bottom five for bowling,” said Lila.

“You said it, I didn’t,” said Brent. As he walked away, he gave the seat of his pants a little wiggle.

Rhonda went to the bar counter and came back with a foamy pitcher and four frosty-white beer steins.

"Oh, like I need that, ” said Nan, but when Rhonda filled a mug and pushed it across the table to her, she took a couple of healthy sips.

“Oh, Lord,” said Joanna from the computer console as she logged their names on the screen, “I know it’s for charity so I shouldn’t care, but it would be so nice if we could move up a slot or two. We’re behind Lightnin’ Strikes, even.”

“They’ve got Kim Castiglioni, though,” Rhonda said, “and she can bowl.”

“Kim joined Lightnin’ Strikes?” said Nan. “Boy, you miss a week or two. . .”

“Okay, goils,” said Joanna. “Let’s do our cheer, and then Lila’s up.”

“Blue Blazes, Blue Blazes, Blue Blazes!” they chanted, then smacked themselves in the foreheads and said in unison, “Oh, no, not again!”

By the second game, Nan’s upper back was beginning to ache. She dragged her purse out from under the plastic bench and took out the bottle of Advil.  She washed two capsules down with a gulp of beer.

“Shoulder hurting?” Rhonda asked quietly as she walked by one her way to Lane 10.  She held the ball to her chest and looked back.

“My back,” said Nan. “I took some Advil a minute ago.”

 Rhonda nodded, turned back, hesitated, and then with two quick steps, she swung her left arm back and then released the ball.   The bowling ball, swirled black and green, rolled down the middle of a two-pin split without touching either pin.  Rhonda turned back toward her team, making a comic grimace and raising her arms into the 'touchdown" signal.  

“Think some chili dogs would help our pain?” asked Rhonda, nodding toward the food service counter.

“Only if we get onion rings too,” said Nan. “It’s what do you call it - complementary healing.” 

“I’m on it,” said Rhonda, and started for the counter.

 Nan looked up to see Lila standing at the end of Lane 10. “You’re on deck,” she said, wiping her hands on a little terry towel. “And where’s my high five?” 

“What?” said Nan, looking at the end of the lane, where the automatic setter was gathering the pins.   “You didn’t go yet, did you?"

“Been there, done that, got a strike, and sent you a picture postcard,” said Lila, holding up her palm for Nan’s high slap. "And got a couple more pennies for those kids."

There was a break between the third and fourth games, and as the four members of the Blue Blazes  sat at their table, dipping onion rings into Joanna’s special sauce (two packets cocktail sauce and one each of mayo and Gleason’s Hot Relish), Brent came hurrying to their table. “Nan, we’re going to do the fifty-fifty raffle and then I want you to tell them about the charity.”

Brent zipped off and Nan said to Rhonda, her mouth full, “He would ask me when I’m eating a chili dog." She chewed, swallowed, and sipped some beer, then brushed at the front of her Blue Blazes shirt with a wadded napkin. “Do I have anything down my front?”

“You look nice,” said Rhonda.

“Really, you're the one that ought to go up there and talk,” said Nan, pushing her chair back. “Becca’s your niece.”

 “She’s our niece,” said Rhonda. “And I only talk in public when there’s twelve jurors, and a judge, and I’m being paid.”

Nan adjusted the bottom hem of her bowling shirt over her slacks and approached the front desk, where Brent was standing in front of the counter, holding a microphone and shuffling through some paperwork. When Nan approached, Brent looked up, smiled, and tapped the head of the mike with his fingertip. Tremendous booms caused people to turn and stare, laughing. 

Brent reached over the counter and turned a knob down, then  leaned into the microphone and said, “Test, one, two, three. All right, that won’t bust your eardrums.” He looked at the top sheet of a stack of papers. “Okay, I know you girls and boys and girl-boys and boy-girls want to win this fifty-fifty raffle so you can go out and get your . .. head gaskets blown and whatnot.” There was an explosion of indignant catcalls from a table of women near the back of the room. “Or your . . .wax finish rubbed good.” The room echoed with laughter and cheers, and a small snowstorm of plastic straws and cocktail napkins flew toward the front desk.

“Now, now,” said Brent into the mike, smiling. “I’ll have to pick these up later and you know I’m not bending over in this crowd.” More laughing and yelling followed, and Brent waited, grinning at Nan, until the room quieted somewhat. “Okay, we’ve got a good pot for this raffle. The winner’s going to take home - “

“Me!” shouted someone from the Lightnin’ Strikes table.

“You better see who wins first,” said Brent, then twirled the mike on its cord and caught it. “If she ain’t got no wing-wang, you won’t know what to do. Okay, the pot’s at a hundred and eight dollars and the winner’s got ticket number. . .” Brent paused while he fished around in a big plastic jar labeled Perkins’ Gherkins. “Five zero nine, six six three. That’s five zero nine, six six--"

He was cut off by a cry of “Got it!” from a man in a plum-colored T-shirt which had the sleeves ripped away and a deep V clipped out of the neckline. The man ran between the tables toward the front desk, receiving pats on the back from other bowlers as he trotted.

“Oh, lordy, it’s Miss Kreske!” Brent said, reaching for an envelope on the counter. “Before the night’s over, he’ll have made a deposit in somebody’s. . .bank account.” He handed the envelope to the winner, who raised his arms like Rocky, then did a glamor-girl vamp before moving back toward his table, where a group of men and women in plum-colored shirts whistled through their fingers, clapped, and stomped.

Brent made a “down” gesture with his open hand, and the noise level slowly dropped. “All right, now I know we’ve got two more games to bowl, but to motivate you to do your best - even you at the Split Endz table - here’s Nan May to tell us about this year’s Rainbow League charity.”

Brent held the microphone out to Nan, who hesitated and then took it. The mike’s head brushed against her rayon shirt, and a loud rustling noise filled the room. Nan quickly moved the microphone away from her body and said, “Hi everybody, and thanks for making this year’s Penny-a-Pin tournament a success.” There was scattered applause, and Nan went on. “This year’s proceeds are going to the Tyler Matteson Research Fund, to help kids and adults with cystic fibrosis. You all know Rhonda--" Nan looked across the room at the Blue Blazes table, where Rhonda stood for a moment and waved, then sat again -- “and Rhonda’s niece has CF. She’s doing real good, but the hospitals need to do more research so they can find a better -- so they can come up with new medicines and such.” Nan hesitated, looking at Brent, but he didn’t move to take the mike, so she added, “The life expectancy is getting better with CF, but the kids who have it know they don’t have as long as the rest of us, and it’s - it’s a tough illness to have. It’s hard for them to keep going with a dark prognosis, you know. So what you’re doing today will help these kids and their parents enjoy, um, a brighter future. Thanks a lot.” Nan, flustered, thrust the microphone at Brent and headed quickly to the Blue Blazes table as Brent said, “Thank you, Nan and we all wish your niece the best. So far our Penny-a-Pin contribution is one thousand, two hundred and seventy dollars.” 

There was an outbreak of applause but Brent raised his microphone and lowered his head and the clapping died away. “But our goal is fifteen hundred dollars, so let’s get some of these pins knocked down.” A thin young man carrying an empty beer pitcher came forward, and Brent pointed. “If you’ve already been to the bar counter ten times and you’re too drunk to bowl any more, then C.J. --" Brent looked around. "-- no, not B. J., I said C.J. - is going to come around and collect. See if you can work up a wad of. . .cash and stuff it right into his little. . .pitcher.”

Brent put the mike down on the front desk and four or five people got up from their tables to help gather up the straws and cocktail napkins from the carpet in front of the counter.

At the Blue Blazes table, Joanna took her checkbook out of her jacket pocket, and wrote out a check for a hundred dollars, which she slid across the table to Nan. “Do you want to hang onto this, or do you want me to put it in the pitcher when he comes around with it?”

“That’s a lot of money,” said Nan.

“Me and Joanna, want to do it,” said Lila. “It’s in appreciation of you getting well.”

Nan had left the check in the middle of the table, and when C.J. passed by with the pitcher, now brimming with cash, Joanna picked up the check and pushed it down securely into the pitcher as C.J. held it steady with his thin arms. “Thank you,” he said quietly, and moved on to the next table.

“You guys are so sweet,” said Nan, and she felt tears coming into her eyes. Rhonda scooted her plastic chair over and put her arm around Nan’s shoulders.

A couple of lanes over, Kim Castiglioni, in her new Lightnin’ Strikes shirt, hurled a jet-black ball and the pins flew around in a perfect strike pattern. Bowlers in other lanes went to the metal racks for their balls, and Joanna stood up and stretched, then looked around at the Blue Blaze bowlers. “You all ready to get clobbered?”

“Hey, we’re ahead of Split Endz,” said Rhonda, standing up and pushing in her chair.

“Now, that’s saying something,” said Lila, and all of them laughed so much that people at nearby tables looked over at them, including a couple of the Split Endz bowlers, whose innocent stares made the Blue Blazes team laugh harder.

                                                      ***

A week later, Nan was kneeling on the living room floor, her upper body inside an immense shipping carton full of styrofoam popcorn, when Rhonda came home from work. She looked at Nan, half-inside the box, then went to the kitchen to hang up her car keys. When she came back, Nan was digging with puppy paws through a sea of packing pellets.

Rhonda shuffled through the mail and held out a catalog. “Okay, how’d you start getting Poultry and Game Breeder’s Catalog? She pulled it back toward herself and flipped through the pages. “Are we getting an automatic egg turner? Or a Hova-Bator? I don’t think we have a Hova-Bator, do we?” She looked at the open carton as Nan, kneeling, pulled out a bubble-wrapped tool. “Is that your landscape stuff?”

“Yes,” said Nan, sitting back on her heels to peel an adhesive sheet of bubble wrap from a short, thick metal auger.

“And that is. . .?” said Rhonda, dropping the mail onto the couch and coming closer to peer into the box.

“A drill for planting bulbs,” said Nan. “It’s good for when you want to put bulbs into an area that’s already been planted, because you don’t have to dig up what’s already in the ground.” She set the drill on the floor and began pawing through the pellets again. A couple of white S-shaped curls drifted over the box’s edge and dropped to the floor.

Rhonda went to the kitchen and came back with a white plastic trash sack. “Do you want to scoop some of that styrofoam into this?” Nan nodded, and Rhonda held the sack open as Nan used a two-handed scoop to move the white foam pellets into the mouth of the bag, where they tended to cling to the sides instead of dropping to the bottom.

When the trash sack was half-full, Rhonda set it on the floor next to the box, and then sat down on the couch to watch Nan remove more treasures from the carton. The next item out was an X-shaped wire contraption that looked like two giant metal popsicle sticks crossed over each other. “This is a root ball carrier, in case you didn’t guess,” said Nan, setting the tool near the auger and adding a sheet of bubble wrap to the one already on the floor. “I can keep it small and hold the two sides myself or it expands out for like a tree or something big like that, and somebody can hold the other handle and we can get the seedling and the root ball over to the hole.”

“Speaking of sharing the burden,” said Rhonda. “Did you talk to Pam about how the profit’s going to be split?”

“Yes, we had coffee yesterday, and we’re hoping you know somebody who does contract law.

Pam was hoping you could do our business agreement, but I told her I didn’t think you had time.”

“Or the expertise,” said Rhonda, leaning back and resting her head on the back of the couch. “I had some courses in contracts in law school, but that’s been a while.” She sighed, and used one foot to push the shoe off the other foot, then used her sock foot to push off the first shoe. “Did I tell you that Howard called me and asked me again to take over the state consumer union?”

“Do you want to?” asked Nan, reaching into the shipping carton to pull out a sod-cutting saw.

“I think it would be less stressful and more interesting that what I’m doing now,” said Rhonda,“but I think my salary might only be two-thirds of what I make now, and no bonuses or freebies.”

“If Willow Way does well with Pam managing it,” said Nan, setting the saw down and gathering some loose packing peanuts to put into the trash sack, “then you wouldn’t need to earn as much and you could do it, the Consumer Union job.”

“You shouldn’t have too much pressure on you,” said Rhonda, picking up a gardening catalog and flipping through it. “Let the business build itself up and then we’ll see. Howard will hold the job open for me, at least for a while. He’s got a decent acting director for now, but she doesn’t want to do it permanently.” Rhonda folded back a catalog page and turned it around for Nan to see. “Did you know you can buy strawberry plants by mail, twenty-five in an order?”

“They take a while to get situated,” said Nan, putting the pile of tools back into the shipping carton one by one. “The first year, you have to pinch off all the blossoms before they turn into fruit, or else the strawberries will start runners all over the place and never make good fruit later.”

“It must be depressing for the plants to have somebody come around and pinch their blossoms off,” said Rhonda. “Or maybe they’re long-term thinkers, and they know it’s good for them in the long haul.”

“Speaking of haul,” said Nan, “can you help me up off the floor?”

“Come on, grandma,” said Rhonda, standing and then stooping to hold out a hand. “Let’s totter off into the sunset together.”

‘Do we get onion rings along the way?” said Nan.