“A bundle of tablecloths. Or that’s what I thought at first. Underneath the pile of red gingham came a bossy sort of voice: ‘Out of my way!’ The short girl pushed her way past me, into the back seat cramped up between the frame and the front seats. Her patched coinpurse ripped open, all her hard earned money fell into the gutter with barely a splash. Time seemed to slow down before a wave – yes, a wave in the street – came and whoosh! There went her hard-earned livelihood. Oh, she was crying fit to contend with the clouds.
“Being a chivalrous sort of young man, as any decent man in those days was, I came up and offered her my assistance. ‘Miss,’ said I, ‘I’ll pay for your cabfare along with my own, if you’ll only do me the pleasure of riding with you, and having dinner.’ Now she was a spirited sort of thing, her eyes wild, her hair a mess, blood frenzied in her blushed face. ‘That won’t be necessary. I’m late as it is, and my boss hates it when I come in with strange men.’ So I did the only thing any self-respecting man would do. I leaped into the back seat and ordered the cab to drive.
“No!” The women gasped. Marge, clutching her hand, could barely pay attention, whereas Suzanne was entranced. It was a time when Grace had not been born yet, and rainy. Fat water slapped its palms against the steamy windows of a wildly swerving cab.
“Yes!” Mr. Averstand cried. “She had some very choice words for me. My ear didn’t clear out until a week later. When we got to the diner where she worked, she slammed the door on my knee and it stung something mighty awful. That’s when I knew something good was going to happen. The driver must have thought I was a loony, rolling on the floor laughing all the way home.
“But dear, she slammed the door in your face. I don’t see how you two ever got to talking again.” Suzanne wrung her hands wistfully, her large eyes shining.
“Soon after that, my dear, dear woman, I found the diner. I sat there every day after dinner rush and the occasional date with a nurse girl or two. She never came to my table. One day, I stuck out my leg to trip her. The coffeepot left her hand, did a somersault, and cracked solidly over my knee. Her boss wasn’t even yelling at her to clean it up, no one else noticed how she just she whipped off her apron and ripped up my pant leg. The horseshoe was mighty angry, its red face almost looked as bad as when I first got it. She stopped mopping then, asking, ‘Did I do this to you?’ You see, it was the leg with the horseshoe. Oh, did I mention that already? I mighta. It was kinda bleeding, so she took me to the hospital – the very same hospital I had left a month previously. My leg was paining me so much, I knew something good was bound to happen.
“We were in the waiting room when who should appear but Doc Robbins. He gave me and the gal next to me one look, and said, he said, “Clement, you’ve done well for yourself. How was it?’ ‘Doc, not yet, not yet. It still needs some patchin’ up.’ ‘Well, then, am I invited?’ She hadn’t a clue what we were talking about. I saw her stare at him with such a look of incredulous mistrust that my heart rose to my mouth and I bellowed, ‘Doc, of course you are,’ and furthermore I said, ‘And I want you standing right up next to me when it happens.’
His wrinkles filled with a kind of buoyant joy. “It was the next St. Patrick’s Day when I asked her to do me the honor. I brought her to a small café we’d talked about visiting but never had. I had about a dollar and some more in change on me, and so I ordered us the fanciest cups of joe the place had. Now, I didn’t have a ring, see, but I was going to get one. But since I didn’t, I just came out and asked her.”
“And then she said yes?” Suzanne said hopefully.
“Not exactly. Right then a horseshoe fell from the ceiling and landed – smack! – on the table. Just like that. To this day I haven’t an inkling what it was doing there. A smack, like that, that landed right on our cups of coffee and tipped them over. They spilled like the water at Niagra, down the edge of the table, and onto my knee. Well,” he cracked a grin, “you can sorta see where this is headed. My lady, so very pretty for one of the first times that day, mopped up my leg as she began to cry. I was about to ask, but she smothered me with a napkin, saying, ‘you fool! You oughta be ashamed of yourself, being such a slob. Stop talking and keep yourself clean. What am I saying, you can’t do it yourself. Oh, for Pete’s sake, I’ll marry you!’
“After that we sent out the invitations, the first to Doc Robbins. They had a frame of horseshoes on it, and some of them mighta had a coffee stain or two on it. I think that extra invitation is around here somewhere. It might be with Cynthia’s letter. Where did I put it?” His bemused expression came away again as he said, “Ah, well, I’ll ask her where she put it. She always knows how to clean up after me.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Suzanne, humming, her fingers bouncing in tune. Overhead, the sun sent its rays to all the occupants of the courtyard, including a bird using its orange beak to navigate the mesh wall at the eye level of the attendant and her patients. They all listened for a while to its clucking and scraping, each lost in an own memory lane.
“Grace,” Marge at last turned to the veiled young female nurse who had all this time hovered slightly outside the conversation about things before her time, things she wouldn’t totally appreciate until she had lived a few years; she turned to her for indulgence. “Grace, is it lunch yet?” She shivered still, cold in the warming sunlight.
Those youthful eyes touched for a moment on understanding beyond their years. “The time will be here soon.”
“And then it’s gone again like that lost thread in the middle of sewing a row,” said Suzanne.
Grace nodded. “Almost, I would say, but not quite.”
Mr. Averstand asked, “So what brings you two fine females outside this time of morning?”
“I wanted to show her the exact spot where last week Eddie relieved himself,” said Marge, throwing out a grin, and Suzanne giggled like a schoolgirl.
“When a man’s got to go, a man’s got to go,” said Mr. Averstand, chuckling softly.
“In the aviary, in front of a nun and five children?” Suzanne asked, wheezing chortles moving her like a rocking chair, back and forth, forward and back.
“Well, I…I don’t know about that one,” he admitted. “Grace, doll, I think this sunshine might be getting too bright for me.” He held his hands like a shield in front of his eyes as he swayed back and forth.
“Yes, yes, I think it might be. Let’s all have a rest.” Grace pointed to a glass door which threw the flashing light of the sun across the wide courtyard as it opened, gently, like a good conversation.
At the wince on Marge’s face as her eyes caught the glare, the nurse patted Mr. Averstand on the shoulder and said, “I’ll be with you in a moment.” She sauntered over to Marge and bent down as she said, “Margaret, it’s time.”
Marge nodded. “I thought it must be. It is noon, after all. One can’t keep an old lady waiting, you know.”
Grace smiled. “It’s nice to have met you. I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again very soon. I hope you have had a wonderful day so far.”
“If you can believe Mr. Averstand, the old aches can only mean something good’s about to happen.”
“I’m certain he was right about that.” Grace looked over at Mr. Averstand, to whom Suzanne was showing the very place of the scandalous exposure. “Well, I have business to attend to. God bless you.” She left Marge sitting, watching the nurse tuck a thin blanket over Suzanne’s legs, taking Mr. Averstand and leading him slowly by the elbow, over winding concrete paths, to the pristine glass door which opened for their admittance and then returned to its frame.
Marge felt a pain in her hands which made her smile. Then, in that moment, she knew something good was about to happen. The two friends talked on the way to lunch, laughing again as they, too, passed through the white door to their meal.
Fin
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