Are You Sitting Down?

  Are You Sitting Down?

  Also By Shannon Yarbrough:

  Stealing Wishes

  The Other Side of What

  3

  Are You Sitting Down?

  Are You Sitting Down?

  Shannon Yarbrough

  3

  Are You Sitting Down?

  Copyright © 2010 by Shannon Yarbrough

  Kindle Edition: Shanlian Wordlit Press

  www.shannonyarbrough.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, except in the case of brief quotations used in reviews or articles.

  Paperback ISBN: 978-0-984-23833-0

  Cover Art: “Abandoned Chair” by Sally Ashbrook

  www.sallyashbrook.com

  A happy family is but an early heaven.

  -George Bernard Shaw

  To my brother and my sister.

  I may be taller, but I will always look up to you.

  Prologue

  A severe headache woke me from my dreams. I dabbed at my tongue with my fingers, thinking I tasted copper. Maybe it was just the wine we’d had with supper—But wait!—Lorraine and I had not shared a bottle of wine in years. I sat up in bed and did not know where I was. I did not recognize the aging beautiful woman sleeping soundly beside me. She was nuzzled into my arm like she knew me. I pulled myself from her grasp, threw back the sheets, and put my feet on the floor. My sudden movement woke her.

  “Frank, honey, what’s wrong?”

  She knew my name.

  “Where am I?” I asked.

  “What do you mean? Frank, what’s wrong?”

  “I feel sick…don’t know…what…”

  I tried to stand but suddenly felt light headed. My left arm ached like it wasn’t there. I reached up to rub my temples but I couldn’t feel my face. As my sight began to fade in and out, the woman beside me got up and walked around to my side of the bed. She knelt down in front of me and looked deep into my face.

  “Frank, are you okay?”

  “Who….are….you?” I uttered. Inside my head I knew she was my wife, but I had no control over the words coming out of my mouth.

  A tear fell down her face. She ran to the dresser and picked up the phone.

  “Hello, this is Lorraine White. I’m at 48 Main Street in Dogwood. It’s my husband. I think he’s having a stroke or a heart attack. Yes, please send an ambulance. Please hurry,” she managed to say through heavy sobs, dropping the phone on the floor.

  I had lain back down on the bed clutching my numb hand. My ears clogged up like I had gone under water. Lorraine’s voice was suddenly muffled. I watched her drop the phone and rush back over to the bed. She sat down next to me and pushed sweaty strands of hair from my forehead. She took my gimp hand and squeezed it. I could feel it again, there in hers. As I tried to steady my breathing, I concentrated on her lips mouthing muted words of comfort and love but I could not hear them. It was one of those blurry moments in a movie when someone has just opened their eyes to find a loved one standing over them, only nothing was coming into clear focus for me now.

  I studied the wet wrinkles beneath her eyes. I needed to tell her good-bye. I wanted to tell her I loved her and to take care of the kids, but the photo on my nightstand proved they were all old enough to take care of her now. I knew in my heart that she was my wife and that those young people in the photograph were my kids; this was my family. My dear wife. My loving family. But the ruptured blood vessel, the lack of oxygen to my brain, blocked all of my comprehension.

  “She’s going to be okay. She won’t be alone,” a voice said to me from somewhere in the room. It was a voice I knew, but had not heard in a very long time. Looking at Lorraine’s face, I knew she had not heard it. I was either imagining it or it was only a voice for me.

  “Tell her I love her,” I said back to the voice, but I said it inside my head because my lips still would not move. “Tell Lorraine I love her.”

  “She knows you love her. The kids know too. They will be okay without you. It’s time to go, Frank.”

  Had I only known this evening would be the last time I kissed Lorraine and laid down beside her for what should have been just another routine night of peaceful sleep, I don’t think I would have gone to bed at all.

  By now, Lorraine was crying out in agony. The phone screamed a busy signal behind her from being left off the receiver. She crawled across the floor on her hands and knees and picked it up. She madly pressed the buttons, calling someone again.

  “Martin! It’s Mom. Are you sitting down?”

  I stopped fighting and let my eyes close, and when I opened them again I was standing with my mother and father who had both died long ago. They were smiling at me like they had not seen me in years. They hadn’t. I felt the need to look back and see Lorraine just one more time, but something wouldn’t let me. My parents took me by the hand and we faded away.

  Beautiful white light surrounded me and I didn’t hurt anymore, and I knew it was the end of days when our stories—Lorraine and mine and the kids—had happy endings. Or was it only the beginning?

  Travis

  “What happened to your goat?”

  Mom had asked me to stop at Four Points Grocery on the way home to Dogwood to pick up her ham. She’d left it there two days ago to be smoked. It was a service Mr. Greer, the owner and sole employee for as long as I could remember, offered during the holiday season.

  “What’d ya say? You Lorraine’s boy, ain’t cha?” Mr. Greer was hard of hearing.

  “Yes sir, I am. I asked what happened to your goat.”

  “I got her ham ready. Be right back.”

  Mr. Greer lived in a small farm house behind the grocery in a grove of trees surrounded by an old rickety fence. He kept a black pygmy goat tied to the fence during the warmer months. As a child, I always looked for the goat when we drove by going to and from school. Sometimes Mom would stop in for a fill up or just for a bag of ice. I’d sit in the car and through the window I’d watch the goat nibble shoots of grass as far away as his leash would let him.

  Four Points Grocery was the only convenience store from here to the town of Ruby Dregs, which was only five miles away. To the few hundred people who lived in Dogwood and kept Mr. Greer in business, they preferred not having to “go to town” just for a dozen eggs or to buy a stamp. Veterans played checkers in the corner atop a pickle barrel. Mr. Greer still sold penny candy and cold drinks in glass bottles.

  The highway had been paved and painted with a dotted line years ago, but you almost expected to see horse drawn wagons in his parking lot. It was as if someone had put a glass dome over the place to preserve it just the way it was. It was the way it’d always been. Although there was snow on the ground now and the goat was probably keeping warm in Mr. Greer’s barn, I was sincerely interested in that grass-eating childhood landmark of mine.

  “Here’s that ham,” Mr. Greer said returning from the back room. “What else did you need?”

  The cowbell on the door clanged behind me. I turned to see some local farmer coming in, clad head to toe in camouflage. He knocked his snow-caked boots against the threshold.

  “Jeb, I got that goat all wrapped up for ya. Right there on the counter,” Mr. Greer called out.

  Jeb didn’t say a word. The floorboards creaked beneath his pot belly weight. He picked up the mound of white butcher paper wrapped in twine, laid two wrinkled twenty dollar bills on the counter,
and walked back out into the snow.

  “Was that your little black goat?” I asked wide-eyed and confused.

  “Sy? Naw, old Sy died bout two summers ago. Laid him to rest on that hill where he always liked to graze. Lots of folks miss him. They put a big write-up about it in the paper.”

  “I’m sorry. I would have liked to have read that.” I made a mental note to ask my mom about the article. It seemed trite, but I was somehow interested in the life of that goat that had grazed serenely in the distance of the gas station for so many years.

  “Old Sy was twenty years old. Goat dat old no good for eatin’. Meat too tough. Jeb there is an ole goat farmer. He knows. That goat he brought in sure was tender. You like Billy goat, boy?”

  “No, sir. Only if they are in a petting zoo.”

  Mr. Greer laughed a toothless chuckle that was more like a whistle.

  “That’s a purty ham ya Momma got there. You like ham?”

  “Not really.”

  “Turkey?”

  “Now you’re talking, but we have that at Thanksgiving. We always have ham for Christmas.”

  “Ah, I got a turkey you’d like. Deep fried. How bout that?”

  “No, that’s okay. Thank you,” I said.

  Mr. Greer was already fishing a sample out and handing it to me on a paper napkin. I took the white meat from his callused fingers. The turkey’s encrusted skin melted in my mouth like butter. The dry meat and kick of spices reminded me why I liked Thanksgiving better. I couldn’t resist. I paid Mr. Greer for smoking the ham and then bought the turkey as well. Between Jeb and me, Mr. Greer had made eighty dollars. Something told me his modest living made him feel like a rich man that day. After all, the man still sold pickled eggs for a nickel out of large five gallon jars of brine.

  He helped me to the car with the turkey and ham although I told him he didn’t have to. I wished him a Merry Christmas, and then offered my hand so that he wouldn’t fall on the slushy pavement while going back inside. He smelled strongly of tobacco and whiskey. He always did. He stood at the door of the grocery with a heavy dentureless frown on his face and watched me like a parent who was sad to see his loved ones go when the holidays were over.

  I looked up the hill and was sad to see one of my faint childhood memories replaced with a wooden cross and some faded silk flowers half buried in the snow that I hadn’t seen there before. It’s odd how our eyes trick us sometimes because we are so accustomed to seeing the same things in the same places everyday; and when it’s been so long and they suddenly aren’t there anymore, it’s hard to see what replaced them. The sound of a car pulling up behind me broke my thought. I turned to make sure I was not in their way.

  “Merry Christmas, Travis,” the driver called out the window as it rolled down.

  I recognized the wispy falsetto voice immediately. It was Justin’s father.

  “Merry Christmas, Mr. Black,” I said leaning down to his window to speak to him as he put the car in park.

  “When did you get into town?” he asked.

  “I actually just arrived. I haven’t even been home yet. Mom called and asked me to pick up the ham on the way in.”

  He glanced over at my car out of the corner of his eye. The wrapped gifts in the passenger seat assured him I wasn’t lying. Something deep inside him wanted to find Justin sitting there. I longed for the same sometimes.

  “Nobody smokes ‘em like old Greer, eh? I see your mother each week at church. Lorraine looks good,” he said looking back up at me.

  “She’s doing very well, sir. What about Mrs. Black?”

  “She has her ups and downs. Some days are better than others. Tomorrow won’t be a good one. The holidays never are. You should stop in and see her. Visit with us a while.”

  “I just might do that.” This was a lie.

  I had not seen the Blacks since Justin’s funeral. They had made it a point to tell me several times that they didn’t hold me responsible for not getting Justin back to them soon enough. In the hospital that day, on the phone, at the funeral home, even in a birthday card the following year, they constantly reminded me it wasn’t my fault.

  It wasn’t my fault.

  Standing in the cemetery on that last day of summer, Mr. Black had looked so uncomfortable in the black suit he’d outgrown. It was probably the same suit he’d worn to his wedding years before. Tufts on the shoulders left from the hanger told me he’d slipped it on right from storage. A faint brownish-gray ring of dust encircled the collar, where it had been left exposed outside the garment bag in the attic or in the back of his closet untouched for so many years. I remember his face was pale and blotchy, like someone had kicked him really hard.

  The cool wind that rustled the first autumn leaves from the trees blew Mrs. Black’s handkerchief from her hand. It flitted through the air like a white downy feather then landed in the hole in the ground there between us, slipping off Justin’s coffin and disappearing in the fresh dirt beneath. Everyone looked at her for a response. Mr. Black touched her arm and she gave a nod to just leave it. She buried her face in his side and cried out. Everyone winced with sorrow. I was accustomed to the sound of her weeping since I’d heard a lot of it for more than two days now, but one never becomes comfortable with the sound of a mother’s pain. Lorraine, my own mother, took my hand in hers without looking at me. She felt my pain too.

  I didn’t mean to distance myself from them after that. It wasn’t intentional. With Justin gone, I also needed to mourn and then find a way to fill the empty void in my life where he had been. After spending nearly ten years of your life with someone, a part of you dies with them or just goes missing. There are no pictures of broken hearts or your sanity on the back of milk cartons like the ones of lost children they once put there.

  Justin had been quite remote with his parents. He didn’t visit them as often as I visited mine. He took his reasons to the grave. I figured his parents blamed me, but they always hugged my neck when we did go to see them. Inside my head, I imagined it was just his mother being hospitable. In her head, she probably gritted her teeth and loathed the day Justin had met me. And Justin always made me go with him to see them. He never wanted time alone with his family.

  And now that he was gone, I couldn’t be there for them. I couldn’t answer their questions or be the last living entity to connect them to their son. When he was living, their house was a shrine to him. School photos from every year decorated the walls in numerical order. The trophies he’d won running track or playing piano recitals still adorned the mantel. I had my photos and souvenirs too, now tucked away for rainy days. I knew Justin would understand. It was easier to think his parents despised me because I knew their son better than they did.

  That was two summers ago when I lost my lover and my best friend, and without even knowing it, I lost a part of my childhood too. Sy the goat.

  “Is your mother having a big dinner tonight?” Mr. Black asked.

  “Yes sir, the whole family should be there. It’s the first time in a long time since Pop died.”

  “Your brothers and sisters?”

  “Yep, all five of us.”

  “Justin always wanted a sibling,” Mr. Black said. The glazy look in his eyes told me he was fading away to grab hold of some distant recollection of a better day.

  “What about you and Mrs. Black? Any plans for Christmas?” I asked, changing the subject to bring him back.

  “No plans. Just us. If you find the time, please come by and see us. Will you?” He pleaded.

  “I’ll certainly try,” I said looking away to avoid the hope in his eyes. I glanced at my car and then looked down the long empty stretch of highway like a weary traveler with miles to go, but my mother lived within walking distance from Greer’s.

  “Tell your mother Merry Christmas from the Blacks.”

  Justin had always hated their last name, mainly because in a small town like Ruby Dregs “the blacks” was also used to reference the African Americans who mainly lived on Fo
rrest Avenue. There were no colored people living in Dogwood, but when a family of them showed up one morning at the Baptist church because the preacher had invited them, “the blacks are here” is what everyone whispered in Sunday school. Justin once told me a wooden plaque reading “The Blacks” hung on the side of their home below the mailbox till he conveniently buried it in the backyard one summer while in grade school. His father had blamed “the blacks” for stealing it.

  With my last name being White, it didn’t help much. It never made Justin mad but it was good material for a joke whenever he started talking about it. “Whites and Blacks shouldn’t date one another,” he’d say in a twangy voice while imitating his mother. We never put our name on the outside of the house though because Mom would have thought a sign reading “The Whites” was tacky. I’d have to agree with her.

  Mr. Black shook my hand after opening his car door. I stepped back and got into my own car and watched him disappear inside the grocery. He had always been a big man, but it looked like he’d put on even more weight. Walking looked tedious, and he had to steady himself against the door handle just to climb the three small steps to get inside.

  The sweet smell of the ham and turkey lingered in the car, reminding me of home. I was glad I was almost there. I closed my eyes tight to erase the thought of tears. Fishing my keys out of my pocket, I hurriedly started the car to drive away before Mr. Black came out.

  * * * *

  My mother’s entire yard was a garden. It disappeared in the winter beneath the South’s heavy ice and snow, but grew back almost effortlessly every spring. Mother pampered large ferns, poppies, roses, lilies, daffodils, and every kind of bloom imaginable as long as the warm weather would let her. The month of December sprouted a garden of lights and plastic Christmas people. A life-size Santa waved to passersby where the birdbath had been. Neon blue icicle lights hung from the gutters. A plastic baby Jesus lay in the rose bed with an entourage of colorful nativity characters that all lit up at night. With the Christ child in one corner and ole Saint Nick in the other, Justin had laughed at the Las Vegas-like menagerie the first time he saw it.