Calling Me Home: A Novel Read online

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  For Grandma, for what might have been

  But all lost things are in the angels’ keeping,

  Love;

  No past is dead for us, but only sleeping,

  Love;

  The years of Heaven will all earth’s little pain

  Make good,

  Together there we can begin again

  In babyhood.

  —from Helen Hunt Jackson’s poem “At Last”

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgments

  1. Miss Isabelle, Present Day

  2. Dorrie, Present Day

  3. Isabelle, 1939

  4. Dorrie, Present Day

  5. Isabelle, 1939

  6. Dorrie, Present Day

  7. Isabelle, 1939

  8. Dorrie, Present Day

  9. Isabelle, 1939

  10. Dorrie, Present Day

  11. Isabelle, 1939

  12. Dorrie, Present Day

  13. Isabelle, 1939

  14. Dorrie, Present Day

  15. Isabelle, 1939

  16. Dorrie, Present Day

  17. Isabelle, 1939

  18. Dorrie, Present Day

  19. Isabelle, 1940

  20. Dorrie, Present Day

  21. Isabelle, 1940

  22. Dorrie, Present Day

  23. Isabelle, 1940

  24. Dorrie, Present Day

  25. Isabelle, 1940

  26. Dorrie, Present Day

  27. Isabelle, 1940

  28. Dorrie, Present Day

  29. Isabelle, 1940

  30. Dorrie, Present Day

  31. Isabelle, 1940

  32. Dorrie, Present Day

  33. Isabelle, 1940-1941

  34. Dorrie, Present Day

  35. Isabelle, 1941-1943

  36. Dorrie, Present Day

  37. Isabelle, 1943

  38. Dorrie, Present Day

  39. Miss Isabelle, Present Day

  40. Dorrie, Present Day

  41. Dorrie, Present Day

  42. Dorrie, Present Day

  43. Dorrie, Present Day

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  I OWE SO many people a debt of gratitude, I hardly know where to begin. The order will seem wrong no matter how I do this.

  I’ve been blessed with amazing literary agents. Elisabeth Weed, you were my first choice all along, and I still can’t believe I’m lucky enough to have you on my team. Foreign rights agent Jenny Meyer is nothing short of magic. We’d all be lost without their assistants, Stephanie Sun and Shane King, who keep the important stuff signed and filed and sent. I believe film agent Jody Hotchkiss is as crazy about movies as I am, which is a good thing. Thank you all for falling in love with Calling Me Home.

  Editors Hilary Rubin Teeman at St. Martin’s Press and Jenny Geras at Pan Macmillan are full of wisdom and just the right amount of mercy. Because of your magnificent teamwork, Calling Me Home is deeper, wider, longer, and truer. Your enthusiasm, and that of the entire St. Martin’s and Pan Macmillan teams, is a dream come true. To my foreign publishers and editors, I am thrilled and humbled and grateful to have so many readers around the world.

  Kim Bullock, Pamela Hammonds, Elizabeth Lynd, Joan Mora, and Susan Poulos, what would I ever do without you? You have become more than my critique group and blog partners at What Women Write. You are my friends, my confidantes, and my writing compass. Calling Me Home would be a different book without you.

  Others were instrumental in reading early versions and giving sage feedback or early endorsements: Carleen Brice, Diane Chamberlain, Gail Clark, Margaret Dilloway, Helen Dowdell, Heather Hood, Sarah Jio, Beverly McCaslin, Garry Oliver, Jerrie Oliver, Judy Oliver, Tom Oliver, and Emilie Pickop. Thank you all.

  Here’s to everyone at Book Pregnant, an invaluable cluster of debut authors, for helping me discern what to worry about and what to leave behind. I am honored to share the joys and trials of birthing books with all of you.

  I’m continually amazed by the generosity of the multitude of other writers who have intersected my writing journey, including the folks at Backspace, The Seven Sisters, Barbara Samuel-O’Neal, Margie Lawson, and the Mount Hood retreaters, especially Therese Walsh, who introduced me not only to that group, but also to my agent.

  I offer special thanks to a group of nonwriter friends for encouragement and cheering along the way. May we one day find the eternally peaceful harbor for which we long, but in the meantime, as songwriter David Wilcox suggests, we’ll let the wave say who we are. And speaking of David Wilcox, thanks for the wisdom of Rule Number One.

  Without family, whether by blood, marriage, or honorary designation, none of this would be possible. My parents, siblings, and in-laws never doubted I would one day do this thing I love; it’s how we live in this family. Gail and Jay Clark have loved and supported me longer than anyone I’ve known who is not blood related. I couldn’t have survived without you, seriously. My children have taught me the meaning of true love from the moment they each came into my life. Heather, Ryan, Emilie, and Kristen, your hearts go with me wherever I go. And my husband, Todd, my best friend and true knight in shining armor, made it possible for me to rediscover and focus on my passions with his steady, unwavering support. How can I ever thank you for taking on, with gusto, this roller coaster of a ready-made family all those years ago?

  Fannie Elizabeth Hayes, thank you for helping me conjure up Dorrie through more than a decade of sharing with me your courage, your compassion, and your corny sense of humor. May all your unique and biggest dreams come true.

  To my grandmother, Velma Gertrude Brown Oliver, even though you are already wearing your celebration dress and might not hear me over the singing, thank you for the glimmer of a story that captured my heart and wouldn’t let go. And thank you, Dad, for telling me.

  Last, a note to my readers. Thank you for reading Calling Me Home. Any errors in historical facts or settings are mine alone. I hope you’ll take this novel for what it is: a story I imagined about things that are true. If you live along the routes Dorrie and Isabelle travel, you know better than I do how far things have come and how far they still need to go. It’s up to you to be the change.

  1

  Miss Isabelle, Present Day

  I ACTED HATEFUL to Dorrie the first time we met, a decade or so ago. A person gets up in years and she forgets to use her filters. Or she’s beyond caring. Dorrie thought I didn’t care for the color of her skin. No truth to that at all. Yes, I was angry, but only because my beauty operator—hairdresser they call them these days, or stylist, which sounds so uppity—left with no notice. I walked all the way into the shop, which is no small effort when you’re old, and the girl at the counter told me my regular girl had quit. While I stood there blinking my eyes, fit to be tied, she studied the appointment book. With a funny smile, she said, “Dorrie has an opening. She could do you almost right away.”

  Presently, Dorrie called me over, and certainly, her looks surprised me—she was the only African-American in the place, as far as I could tell. But here was the real problem: change. I didn’t like it. People who didn’t know how I liked my hair. People who made the cape too tight around my neck. People who went away without any warning. I needed a minute, and I guess it showed. Even at eighty, I liked m
y routine, and the older I get, the more it matters. Picture me now at almost ninety.

  Ninety. I’m old enough to be Dorrie’s white-haired grandmother. And then some. That much is obvious. But Dorrie? She probably doesn’t even know she’s become like the daughter I never had. For the longest time, I followed her from salon to salon—when she wouldn’t settle down and stay put. She’s happier now, has her own shop these days, but she comes to me. Like a daughter would.

  We always talk when Dorrie comes. At first, when I met her, it was just the regular stuff. The weather. News stories. My soap operas and game shows, her reality TV and sitcoms. Anything to pass the time while she washed and styled my hair. But over time, when you see the same person week after week, year after year, for an hour or more, things can go a bit deeper. Dorrie started talking about her kids, her crazy ex-husband, and how she hoped to open her own shop one day, then all the work that entailed. I’m a good listener.

  Sometimes, she’d ask me about things, too. Once she started coming to my house, and we got comfortable in our routine, she asked about the pictures on my walls, the keepsakes I have on display here and there. Those were easy enough to tell about.

  It’s funny how sometimes you find a friend—in the likely places—and almost immediately, you can talk about anything. But more often than not, after the initial blush, you find you really have nothing in common. With others, you believe you’ll never be more than acquaintances. You’re so different, after all. But then this thing surprises you, sticking longer than you ever predicted, and you begin to rely on it, and that relationship whittles down your walls, little by little, until you realize you know that one person better than almost anyone. You’re really and truly friends.

  It’s like that with Dorrie and me. Who would have thought ten years later we’d still be doing business together, but so much more, as well. That we’d not only be talking about our shows but sometimes watching them together. That she’d be making excuses to stop by several days a week, asking if I need her to run any errands for me—wanting to know if I’m out of milk or eggs, if I need to go to the bank. That I’d be making sure when I ride the cart around the grocery store, after the Handitran drops me off, I put a six-pack of her favorite soft drink in the basket so she’ll have something to wet her whistle before she starts on my hair.

  One time, a few years back, she looked embarrassed when she started to ask me a question. She stopped mid-sentence.

  “What?” I said. “Cat got your tongue? That’s a first.”

  “Oh, Miss Isabelle, I know you wouldn’t be interested. Never mind.”

  “Okay,” I said. I was never one to pick something out of people that they didn’t want to tell.

  “Well, since you begged me…” She grinned. “Stevie’s got this concert at school Thursday night. He’s got a solo—on the trumpet. You know he plays the trumpet?”

  “How could I miss it, Dorrie? You’ve been telling me about it for three years, since he auditioned.”

  “I know, Miss Isabelle. I’m kind of over-the-top proud when it comes to the kids. Anyway, would you like to come with me? To see him play?”

  I thought about it for a minute. Not because there was any question whether I wanted to go, but because I was a little overcome. It took too long for me to find my voice.

  “It’s okay, Miss Isabelle. Don’t feel like you have to. My feelings won’t be hurt and—”

  “No! I’d love to. In fact, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do Thursday.”

  She laughed. It’s not like I ever went anywhere, and Thursday was a boring night for television that year.

  Since then, it hasn’t been uncommon for her to take me along when the kids have special events. Heaven knows, their father usually forgets to show up. Dorrie’s mother usually comes, too, and we have nice little chats, but I always wonder what she thinks about my being there. She studies me with a shade of curiosity, as though she can’t fathom any reason for Dorrie and me to be friends.

  But there’s still so much Dorrie doesn’t know. Things nobody knows. If I were going to tell anyone, it would likely be her. It would definitely be her. And I think it’s time. More than anyone, I trust her not to judge me, not to question the way things happened and the way things turned out.

  So here I am, asking her to drive me all the way from Texas to Cincinnati, halfway across the country, to help me tend to things. I’m not too proud to admit I can’t do this alone. I’ve done plenty for myself, by myself, as long as I can remember.

  But this? No. This I can’t do alone. And I don’t want to anyway. I want my daughter; I want Dorrie.

  2

  Dorrie, Present Day

  WHEN I MET Miss Isabelle, she acted more like Miss Miserabelle, and that’s a fact. But I didn’t think she was a racist. God’s honest truth, it was the furthest thing from my mind. I may look young, thank you very much, but I’ve had this gig awhile. Oh, the stories they tell, the lines around my customer’s closed eyes, the tension in her scalp when I massage it with shampoo, the condition of the hair I wind around a curler. I knew almost right away Miss Isabelle carried troubles more significant than worrying about the color of my skin. As pretty as she was for an eighty-year-old woman, there was something dark below her surface, and it kept her from being soft. But I was never one to press for all the details—could be that was part of the beauty of the thing. I’d learned that people talk when they’re ready. Over the years, she became much more than just a customer. She was good to me. I hadn’t ever said so out loud, but in ways, she was more like a mother than the one God gave me. When I thought it, I ducked, waiting for the lightning to strike.

  Still, this favor Miss Isabelle asked me, it did come as a surprise. Oh, I helped her out from time to time—running errands or doing easy little fix-it jobs around her house, things too small for a service person, especially when I happened to be there anyway. I never took a dime for it. I did it because I wanted to, but I supposed as long as she was a paying customer—even if she was my “special customer”—there might always be some tiny sentiment it was all an extension of my job.

  This? Was big. And different. She hadn’t volunteered to pay me. No doubt she would have had I asked, but I didn’t have any sense this request was a job—simply someone to get her from point A to point B, with me being the only person she could think of. No. She wanted me. For me. I knew it as clearly as I knew the moon hung in the sky, whether I could see it or not.

  When she asked me, I rested my hands on her shoulders. “Miss Isabelle, I don’t know. You sure about this? Why me?” I’d been doing her hair at her house going on five years, since she took a bad fall and the doctor said her driving days were over—I’d never have deserted her because she couldn’t come to me. I’d become a little attached.

  She studied me in the mirror over her old-timey vanity table, where we rigged a temporary station every Monday. Then Miss Isabelle’s silver-blue eyes, more silver every year as the blue leeched out along with her youth, did something I’d never seen in all the time I’d been cutting and curling and styling her hair. First, they shimmered. Then they watered up. My hands felt like lumps of clay soaked by those tears, and I could neither move them nor convince myself to grasp her shoulders a little tighter. Not that she’d have wanted me to acknowledge her emotion. She’d always been so strong.

  Her focus shifted, and she reached for the tiny silver thimble I’d seen on her vanity as long as I’d been going to her house. I’d never thought it was especially significant—certainly not like the other keepsakes she had around her house. It was a thimble. “As sure as I’ve been of anything in my life,” she said, finally, tucking it into her palm. She didn’t address the why of it. And I understood then; small as it was, that thimble held a story. “Now. Time’s wasting. Finish my hair so we can make plans, Dorrie.”

  She might have sounded bossy to someone else, but she didn’t mean it that way. Her voice freed my hands, and I slid them up to wrap a lock of hair around my fi
nger. Her hair matched her eyes. It lay upon my skin like water against earth.

  * * *

  LATER, IN MY shop, I paged through my appointment book. I took inventory, checked what kind of week I had ahead. I found a lot of empty space. Pages so bare, the glare gave me a headache. Between silly seasons, things were quiet. No fancy holiday hairstyles. Prom updos and extensions for family reunions were still a month or two down the road. Just the regular stuff here and there. Men for brush cuts or fades, a few little girls for cute Easter bobs. Women stopping by for complimentary bangs trims—it made my life easier when they left the damn things alone.

  I could postpone my guys. They’d drop twenties still crisp from the ATM on the counter like always whenever I could get to them, happy not to explain to strangers how they wanted their haircuts. I could even call a few to see if they’d come by that afternoon—I was usually closed Mondays. The nice thing about leasing my own little shop the last few years was I made the rules, opened on my closed days if I wanted. Even better, nobody stood over my head, ready to yell or, worse, fire me for taking off without notice.

  Surely Momma could handle the kids if I went with Miss Isabelle. She owed me—I kept a roof over her head—and anyway, Stevie Junior and Bebe were old enough all she really had to do was watch their steady parade in or out of the house, call 911 in case of a fire on the stove, or send for the plumber if the bathroom flooded. Heaven forbid.

  I ran out of excuses. Plus, if I were honest, I needed some time away. I had things weighing on my mind. Things I needed to think about.

  And … it seemed like Miss Isabelle really needed me.

  I started making phone calls.

  Three hours later, my customers were squared away and Momma was on board to watch the kids. The way I figured it, I had one more call to make. I reached for my cell phone, but my hand stopped midair. This thing with Teague was so new—so fragile—I hadn’t even mentioned him to Miss Isabelle. I was almost afraid to mention him to myself. Because what was I thinking, giving another man a chance? Had I misplaced my marbles? I tried to scoop them up and dump them back into my stubborn skull.