By Esther Cohen
Sometimes when you live in a small town, everybody knows everything, if they are interested. Beulah was not much of a social person herself. She kept to herself for most of her 71 years, saying hello, exchanging pleasantries when absolutely necessary. But she herself was never all that curious about the lives of her neighbors. Her across the street neighbor Hilda knew absolutely everything.
Beulah went to Hilda for a background check on John who didn’t provide much in the way of useful information: handsome, a good dancer, and secretly married, revealing nothing that Beulah didn’t know.
She invited Delores’s oldest daughter Alice to lunch, the first person in her entire life she’d ever invited out for a meal. It took Beulah a few days to figure out how and why. She wanted to go somewhere simple – preferably a diner, but she wanted quiet because her hearing was less than optimum. And she hated saying What What What. She settled on the Ambrosia Diner, one of those diners where the menu had pages and pages of options, and where the lights were not buzzing fluorescent. Beulah went there on occasion to indulge herself with a BLT and a piece of cheesecake for dessert. BLTs and cheesecake weren’t appropriate for her, at this stage in life but every once in a while even Beulah broke the rules.
They agreed to meet on a Wednesday at noon. Beulah had asked Alice to describe herself, so she’d recognize her walking in, and Beulah herself arrived at 11:45, just in case Alice was the early type. Alice said she’d wear a red sweatshirt, and sure enough, a woman in her fifties, pleasant looking, walked in the door in the promised sweatshirt. Beulah raised her hand, and even waved.
They spent a few minutes deciding what they wanted to order (BLT and tuna salad, with two iced teas) before Beulah took out her official notebook, and her pen.
“Tell me about your mother,” she said.
Alice smiled, and began a long and effusive description of Delores: her kindness, her resilience, her love of every single person on the planet, her incomparable charm. “Every one of my friends wished she was their mother,” Alice said.
“And I’ll be grateful for her, for as long as I live.”
“Now tell me about John.”
“We all liked him. Even my brother Bob liked him, and Bob’s not easy to please. John reminded me of one of those men in the old-fashioned movies – I think the word is chivalrous. He never visited without flowers, and a box of chocolates.
They went dancing all the time, and he called her early every morning, and late every night. John made my mother happier than she’s been in years. She had boyfriends after my father died – maybe three or four, but none of them made her as happy as John did. He’d walk in the house, and everything just seemed better. Seemed like there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her. He fixed the sink.
He fixed her car. He took her on long rides to buy blueberries, and to have lunch in old-fashioned inns. Every single Wednesday, he drove up to go dancing. My mother told us all that she’d never been this happy. In a way it was all too good to be true. But none of us ever thought for a second that this wouldn’t go on forever.”
“Did you know he was married?” asked Beulah. “Had that ever occurred to you?”
“Maybe. None of us thought to ask,” said Alice.
“What about Delores? Do you think she knew?”
“We’ll never know the answer now.”
Esthercohen.com
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