Elizabeth's Daughter

  Elizabeth’s Daughter

  by

  Thea Thomas

  Emerson & Tilman Publishers

  129 Pendleton Way

  Suite 55

  Washougal, WA 98671-0055

  Elizabeth’s Daughter

  © Emerson & Tilman/Thea Thomas

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrevial system, transmitted or otherwise be copied for public or private use – other than as “fair use” as brief quotations, embodied in articles or reviews, without prior written permission of the publisher.

  Cover copyright © Emerson & Tilman

  Elizabeth’s Daughter

  Thea Thomas

  Chapter I

  Elizabeth took the flower wreath down from the front door. The pale pastel roses laced among the stiff black ribbon were a little wilted but still fragrant. A well-meaning neighbor put it on the door after learning Elizabeth’s Grandfather had died two days before.

  Returning to the kitchen, Elizabeth picked the living flowers from the wreath. They were short stemmed, and she set them afloat in a cut crystal bowl, deciding to leave them in the kitchen. They looked so friendly in the soft light of the antique 1930’s fixtures.

  She’d spent a lot of time, much more than usual, in the kitchen the last few days. She hadn’t realized until this moment that it was because when she stayed in the kitchen, she could pretend Grandfather sat in the front parlor, watching television, as always.

  Elizabeth climbed the back stairs to her bedroom. The house hovered over her, entirely too huge now that she lived alone. Everywhere she moved, she found the presence of Grandfather – some little item of his, a faint scent of his aftershave, or a note written on the back of an envelope, as was his habit. She’d never before realized how little of her could be found in this house, even though she’d lived here her whole life.

  She sat on her chenille bedspread, white with blue tufts of large, brightly-colored flowers, and looked down at her hands in her lap, her thin fingers intertwined.

  Thud-thud, came muffled from outside. Ka-ka-ka-thud. She rolled the window half-way up so she could hear every pop and crackle of the fireworks at Disneyland. She could feel them through the floor. The blue, pink, silver and gold sparkling, transient lights poured from the sky.

  All her life she’d watched the fireworks. All her life their beauty and freedom had made her sad and lonely. Now the sadness mingled with the sadness of the loss of her grandfather. The colors in the sky streaked and ran together and rained with her tears. As she stared at the fireworks through her reflection in the dark glass of the window, her face appeared to change – it became more full, her hair darker and straight. She couldn’t even see her eyes for the glinting of dark-rimmed glasses, though she’d never worn glasses in her life.

  Startled, she stepped back from the window. The strangest sensation ran through her body from head to toes. A muscle in her forearm began to jump. Elizabeth moved to the bed and hugged herself. “I... must be too exhausted. I’ve got to get some good sleep.”

  She turned on all the lights in her room and slipped into a nightgown. But she couldn’t shake the image of that face – that was not her face – reflected in the window.

  Chapter II

  The next morning, Elizabeth opened the front door with her little push cart in hand. A errant stiff breeze caught at the door and the skirt of her house dress. While Elizabeth struggled with the heavy door, her skirt, and her cart, she happened to look across the street, and there saw Mrs. Wilmer doing precisely the same – attempting to grab onto the front door, her push cart, and the skirt of her tiny-print house dress all at the same time.

  Except Mrs. Wilmer was seventy-five years old. Elizabeth stopped. She let the wind fling the door open against the house and her push cart escaped like a puppy, scampering to the corner of the porch while her skirt buffeted about her knees.

  Everything, she thought, the door, my cart, even my clothes, everything is trying to get free.

  Ignoring the push cart, she went back into the house and pulled the door shut. Then she tip-toed into Grandfather’s somber study and stole to the serious, dark monolith of his desk. Even though Grandfather would not come in and ask her what she was doing at his desk, her stomach clinched, her hand shook as she slid open the middle drawer and picked up the car keys.

  She left the study and continued resolutely out the back door, then into the garage, trying not to think about the last time she’d driven. But she couldn’t help it – she saw herself two months ago driving into the garage, the last time she brought Grandfather home from the hospital.

  She refused to linger on that memory, turning her thoughts to the fact that she’d almost never driven anywhere alone in her life, and she’d certainly never driven Grandfather’s car without him present. She put the key in the ignition, turned it. The engine kicked over a couple times, then fell silent.

  “What’s wrong with you, old timer?” She tried again. Again it ground and quit.

  Elizabeth got out of the car, pacing around it. Then she climbed back in, staring at the steering wheel, thinking. “Ah-ha, the battery! The car’s been sitting a long time.” She waited a couple minutes, then turned the key again. It kicked over three times instead of twice.

  She got out of the car again and strolled around the garage, contemplating the tools hung neatly on the walls. Every other Saturday Ralph-the-gardener came and clipped and snipped and mowed the front yard, the back yard and the side yards to neat and trim perfection. He had a truck full of his own equipment, but from time to time Elizabeth had seen him sharpening and tending to Grandfather’s tools. Suddenly Elizabeth understood Ralph’s affection for these antique tools. Even though she couldn’t guess the function of half of them, they were beautiful, each hanging in silent repose, waiting to do its job. How much more beautiful they must be to Ralph, who knew which chore each one made easier in a time before noisy riding mowers, blowers and weed whackers.

  Elizabeth got in the car again and turned the key. The engine kicked and started. “What a clever car!” Elizabeth patted the dash, feeling very accomplished herself.

  She drove the two-and-a-half blocks to the store. Yes, she told herself, it was silly to drive two-and-a-half blocks. But this particular drive, the first of her independent life, had nothing to do with the two-and-a-half blocks, or the groceries.

  As she pushed a grocery cart up and down the aisles, she noticed other young women about her age. They wore T-shirts and shorts or form-fitting jeans. Their hair shone bright with natural colors, and quite a few unnatural colors, long and straight or short-short exotic cuts. And these young women wore make-up.

  She looked at the mirror overhead at the end of the aisle–a stranger, a virtual recluse, in this sea of modern chic at the local grocery store. She studied herself, bemused – dressed in an over-sized small-print house dress, hair in stiff little curls. She didn’t even know when she’d last seen her lipstick – the sum total of her cosmetics – a sample left by an Avon lady.

  As she pushed her cart past the paperbacks and periodicals she stopped before Mademoiselle. She’d always wondered what might be secreted between its covers. If ever Grandfather’s disapproving spirit intended to make itself known, this had to be the moment. But she didn’t feel him over her shoulder as she picked up the magazine and put it in her cart. She moved purposefully to the packaged cosmetics and added a compact, mascara and a lipstick, ‘Mauve’s Twilight,’ to the Mademoiselle.

  Feeling guilty and tremendously pleased, she continued her circuit around the store, gathering breakfast cereal, vegetables, bread, milk, some peanu
t butter, jelly, cans of soup. In the last month of being alone she’d discovered that she didn’t like to cook. Now, once in a while she’d make herself a sandwich and maybe open a can of soup, but she’d decided that cooking for one was simply boring.

  Indulging in one last whim, she grabbed up a two-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper, her special secret. She loved Dr. Pepper. Back at the car she stowed the groceries on the floor behind the driver’s seat. Then, because only the milk was perishable, she decided to go all out with this freedom idea and go for a drive.

  Driving up Tustin Avenue and then down Main Street without goal, she became certain that men were looking at her. It didn’t make sense, she thought, who cared about a mousy woman in an old car? Ridiculous! But as she paused at a red light, two cute young men a couple lanes over were unquestionably looking right at her, nodding and talking animatedly.

  She glanced down self-consciously and discovered to her horror that her gas tank registered below empty. She pulled into the first filling station she came to, got out of the car and went into the Quik-Mart-Gas-Up.

  “Forty dollars on number five, please.” She handed cash to the boy behind the counter.

  “That your fifty-six?” the boy asked.

  “My what?” Elizabeth asked.

  “The fifty-six, the mint condition fifty-six.”

  Elizabeth continued to stand with her hand extended, wondering what the boy was talking about.

  The big man with the beer belly and a six-pack in line behind her spoke up. “Yeah. It’s a beaut, huh?”

  “What?” Elizabeth tried again to dispel her confusion.

  “The fifty-six,” the boy said again, “the one with the wide white walls.”

  “Ha-HA!” the big man behind her seemed almost to explode. “Funny, kid! The one with the wide white walls. HA-ha-ha.”

  Elizabeth turned and looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. “Your Chevy, lady,” the big man gestured toward her car. “The one with the wide white walls... get it?”

  Elizabeth shook her head slightly.

  “A car like that, you know, it’s like, if you had an elephant out there and someone asked, is that your elephant, the one with the tusks... you know. Like as if there’s a lot of elephants... see?”

  “Oh,” Elizabeth said. “Well, yes, that’s my car.” She hated getting gas, she decided. “That’s my elephant,” she added, walking out the door.

  As she walked to the car, she replayed the conversation, then she put it together with all the men who seemed to be looking at her as she drove around. Well, that explained that! But she still didn’t understand if the attention was because the car was admirable or... a white and turquoise elephant in the street.

  “ ‘Scuse me,” the beer-bellied man said, deferential, approaching Elizabeth as she struggled with the gas cap.

  “Yes?” she said, wrenching the gas cap off. She did not want him to ask her if she needed help.

  “I’m wondering if... if your car might be for sale?”

  “You like it?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I just said it’s a beaut, didn’t I?”

  “I didn’t know if you were serious, or....”

  “Serious, of course. A refurbished fifty-six in mint condition. Yeah. Absolutely serious.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said, “It’s not refurbished.”

  “No?” The man’s expression took on disbelief.

  “No. This is its original condition.”

  “Wow,” he said reverently. “That’s amazing. Would you be interested in selling it?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.”

  “No? Too bad. Would you mind... could I just peek at the interior?”

  “Well, I suppose,” Elizabeth said, not knowing what else to say.

  He poked his head in the door. Elizabeth replaced the gas nozzle and screwed the gas cap back on. She came around to the driver’s side of the car, trying hard not to think about how embarrassed she felt. His muffled voice came back out to her.

  “Wow... ‘s great. Lookit... no holes... clean’s... whistle.” He backed out of the car and turned to Elizabeth. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that’s actual mileage?”

  “Well, everything on the gauges is just... what is.”

  A car behind them honked. Elizabeth jumped. “Oh, goodness,” she said, “how rude of me.” She worked her way around the large man, slunk into the driver’s seat and started the car. As she pulled away she nodded with a small polite smile at the big man.

  He nodded back, grinning, holding a thumb up.

  At home she put the groceries away, alternately feeling embarrassment for herself, and laughing at herself.

  “Serves me right for thinking men were paying attention to me!” She scolded while putting the broccoli and carrots in the refrigerator vegetable bin. “First of all, vanity is a dangerous emotion, or so I’ve been told. Secondly, you have to have something to be vain about.”

  The Mademoiselle and cosmetics were in two small plastic bags at the bottom of the big one. Elizabeth had forgotten that she’d even bought them.

  “Speaking of vanity!” She tried to keep her disapproving tone of voice, but excitement won over. She took her treasures to the second floor bathroom, battling them out of their plastic packaging, and, finally, applying them. The lipstick was too dark and the powder too light, but she didn’t care. Maybe it’s a little sad, she thought, to be experiencing at twenty-eight a thrill over cosmetics that I might have experienced years ago.

  She smiled at the small heart-shaped face in the mirror. “At least I’m willing to admit I’m acting out my arrested growth. Grandfather raised me to the best of his ability, even if outmoded by a century.” She had a wild and absent mother to thank for that.

  The dark lipstick made her mouth appear too tiny, and the powder made her already white skin pallid. But the effect of the mascara was transforming. Curling and defining her thick eyelashes made her big brown eyes sparkle. She’d never dare say, or even think herself beautiful, but she considered that she could possibly pass for... rather pretty.

  She took the Mademoiselle to her room and sprawled out on the bed, studying the women in the ads, and lost heart.

  “I’m just a pale frump, and there’s no point in trying to tell myself otherwise.”

  Chapter III

  The next morning Elizabeth woke up when she realized that the annoying noise was the telephone ringing. The ogreish troll behind her in a Mack truck, honking his horn, fell back into the abyss of dream.

  As she stumbled sleepily out of her room she noticed the Mademoiselle in the trash. That’s strange, she thought, it’s four feet from the bed, it couldn’t have slipped there. The telephone kept ringing and she couldn’t give the magazine more thought. She ran downstairs to the only telephone in the house, in Grandfather’s study.

  “Hello?” she answered breathlessly.

  “Well, hello yourself, where were you?”

  “Martha!” Elizabeth exclaimed, delighted to hear her friend’s voice. “I was sleeping. I had to run from my room to the phone in Grandfather’s study.”

  “Well, for pity’s sake, girl, get a cell phone!”

  “Oh!” Elizabeth couldn’t imagine it. “I don’t think I can afford it.”

  “Oh, please, Elizabeth, you can afford it.”

  “Really?” Elizabeth hadn’t spent money on anything beyond subsistence, until last night when she bought the magazine and cosmetics. She’d broken two appointments to talk about finances with Grandfather’s attorney. She couldn’t bring herself to discuss Grandfather’s ‘estate,’ which would make his passing so final, even though he was gone. And she also didn’t want to find out she had no money to live on. “Do you think Grandfather left me anything besides this big old house?”

  “My goodness, you’re naive,” Martha asked.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth agreed, “I am.”

  “Your grandfather had a highly successful men’s clothing store for fifty y
ears. When he sold both the property and the business he must have seen a small fortune, not to mention what your ‘big old’ house is worth. You could probably sell the house, buy a condo and live on the interest from the profit alone.” Martha paused, then continued, “your Grandfather only had you, an obedient granddaughter with straight teeth and perfect health, to spend money on. And I don’t think he made a vice of spending money on you.”

  “No, not much, he didn’t.”

  “So, get some phones already! Anyway,” Martha continued without missing a beat, “I called to tell you about a rug and wall hanging exhibit at the Bower’s Museum. Do you want to go with me?”

  “I’d love to. But I’m afraid I might bore you, droning on about stitches and styles.”

  “That’s precisely my point, dear girl. I want to learn, and you’re my valued resource.” Elizabeth could hear Martha tapping her ipad. “Let’s see, today’s pretty booked. How’s your tomorrow?”

  “All my tomorrows are un-booked,” Elizabeth answered.

  “Agh! Deplorable, Lizzie, that’s got to change! I’ll pick you up at eleven-thirty tomorrow, and take part of the afternoon off. Maybe I’ll get crazy and take the whole afternoon off.”

  “We could wait until Saturday.”

  “No way,” Martha came back emphatically. “You miss my point, I want to take some time off. Besides, the exhibit will be crowded on Saturday. Don’t start that ‘oh no, I’m in the way,’ routine of yours. Now I mean it, no guilt, just fun.”

  “Yes Martha. Okay Martha,” Elizabeth recited, “no guilt, just fun. See you tomorrow!”

  Elizabeth went back upstairs, passed her bedroom and continued down the long dark hall to the end room, the room that long ago had been her mother’s. Elizabeth had taken it over for her work room when her mother gallivanted off to who-knows-where the last time the last time Elizabeth saw her, twelve years ago.