32
The Last Ride
Los Altos, 1939
When did Nellie’s heart begin to fail? While Felix languished in a rest home, Nellie lay in her small twin bed in the back bedroom of the house, never quite sure whether her eyes were open or shut, or whose face loomed above her, whose voice murmured in her ear.
Eustace leaned in to kiss her. She was blind. No, no, those were John’s thin, dry lips pressed to hers, his mustache a not unpleasant tickle under her nose. Tucked up under his arm, wearing a light cotton dress, her body warmed to his on the porch of the new house he had built for her in Kansas.
In the yard, Johnny stirred up dirt practicing his rope tricks. The girls played dolls on the wooden steps. Wood steps? No, that was the soddie. Never mind. Focus. There was Mabel, giving instructions to her cornhusk doll, and baby Opal gathering fistfuls of dirt, letting them fall from her hand and blow away in the wind.
Stone still, Nellie lay in her bed and let memories tumbleweed past. Steam whistled in the distance. When did her affection for home and hearth boil away? A copper kettle dragged across an iron burner; wheels clattered on rails; burnt coffee grounds prickled in her dry mouth. She thrust her tongue past her parted lips to receive the ministrations of soothing icy coolness amid snatches of conversation.
Look here; see the lines on the bullets and the casings. What was the question? What was the answer?
The scent of roses and the whisper of words; we wanted you as a witness to our marriage. Who stood under a bower of roses?
A hand on her back; a handsome lawman. Did she? Nellie’s outstretched hand was taken up, fingers pressed rose petals into her palm and gently moved her hand toward her nose.
“Smell these, Mother. These are from the rose bush you and I planted last spring. It’s a Harison’s Yellow rose.”
Nellie’s eyes flickered. So seldom had she used her voice in the past few days she hardly recognized it as hers. “Tell me.”
Opal sat on a chair by her mother’s bed. “It’s a vigorous, hardy rose, known for resilience and resistance to disease.”
“Good stock”—Nellie squeezed Opal’s hand— “like us.”
“Yes, like us. It’s also called the Oregon Trail Rose because the pioneers carried it west.”
Her speech came easier now. “Did we have roses in Kansas?” Nellie blinked away tears that protested the bright sunlight shining through the window.
“I seem to recall that we did.” Opal took a tissue from her pocket and dabbed at the corner of her mother’s eyes. She stood up and walked to the window to lower the shade.
“I should have brought some root cuttings with me when we left Kansas.” Nellie’s arm fell to her side and the petals Opal had placed in her hand scattered onto the cream chenille bedspread. Real tears fell in earnest now. “Do you blame me for leaving your father?”
Opal took her mother’s hand and placed it gently under the covers. “I missed Johnny very much.”
“Your brother.”
“Yes.”
“But not your father?”
“Well, yes, but I didn’t know him very well.”
“I don’t think I did either.”
Nellie closed her eyes. Some minutes later, a ragged noise in her throat choked her. She struggled for breath, her eyes opened, and she tried to sit up. Opal pulled a pillow from the foot of the bed and helped her mother lean forward so she could fit it behind her. She held a glass of water to her mother’s lips, but Nellie refused it.
“What will you do, Opal? With Leone on her own now, and Felix. He can’t last much longer.” Nellie coughed and wheezed with the effort of speech.
Opal put her finger to her lips. “Don’t try to talk.” She took a long, deep breath and raised her eyes to the partially shaded window. Outside, the morning glory vine stretched along the window ledge, its flowers tightly closed against the heat of the summer day. “Felix is in God’s hands. I’ve made my peace with that. God has been good to me. I have Jane. We take care of each other. I have my students. I have my little house. My life is full of blessings.”
A shadow passed across Nellie’s face. In a spurt of energy, she wrestled her hands free from her covers and grabbed Opal’s arm. “It isn’t dying I’m afraid of, Opal. It’s leaving you to fend for yourself.”
Opal sat very still. She pulled her arm out of Nellie’s grasp and placed her hand on her mother’s forehead, smoothing a few thin strands of hair. “Mother, if there is one thing you taught me, it was how to fend for myself. Don’t worry about me. Jane and I will be okay.”
Nellie relaxed into her pillow. “And Leone?”
Opal slumped a little and then pulled herself up. “All I can do is pray that God is watching out for her.”
Nellie closed her eyes and Opal slipped out of the room to get a vase for the roses. The room darkened. Stillness laid a hand on Nellie’s chest and pushed her back into her pillows. She fought to hang onto her thoughts … Leone and Jane … Jane had been a twin. What had happened to that baby? Her name had been Jean. No. Helen, that was her name. Helen couldn’t see either.
A honeyed smell filled the room; sweet like grass; sour like hay; musky like her Indian paint pony. Racing across the Kansas plain, her long dark hair whipped across her cheeks. Her legs wrapped around his belly, she urged her pony toward the horizon and drew her last breath.