Фэнни Флэгг - The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop

BRIARWOOD MANOR

2013

WHEN HIS WIFE, Peggy, had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, Bud decided to sell his veterinary practice so he could look after her. He took care of her at home for as long as he could until the doctor said that she needed to be placed in memory care with twenty-four-hour professional supervision. But as Bud and Ruthie quickly discovered, trying to find a good facility on such short notice was almost impossible.

But luckily for them, Martha Lee had very close ties with Briarwood Manor, a top-rated “continuing care” senior community right there in Atlanta with an excellent memory care unit onsite, and close to Ruthie. There was a three-year waiting list to get into Briarwood Manor, but it took Martha Lee only one phone call to get them admitted that day.

Getting them into Briarwood so quickly had not been an act of kindness on Martha Lee’s part. She didn’t want the Threadgoodes moving in next door with their daughter. Caldwell Circle was for immediate family only. Also, the thought that the mother might bring her ceramic frog collection terrified her.

After Bud and Peggy moved from Maryland to Briarwood Manor, Bud spent every day with her in the memory care unit, staying by her bedside, until she fell asleep at night. Even at the end, when she didn’t know who he was anymore, he still came. She was still his Peggy and he could still hold her hand.

For those four years, Bud didn’t give much thought to the future. After Peggy died, he found he was having a hard time adjusting to life without her. From the age of eighteen, he had been one-half of a couple, Bud and Peggy or Peggy and Bud. They had rarely been apart. She ran his office at the clinic, so they’d been together almost twenty-four hours a day. They had been so close it was almost as if they were the same person.

—

WHEN HER MOTHER died, Ruthie begged her daddy to leave Briarwood Manor and move in with her. However, he didn’t think it was a very good idea.

“But, Daddy, I really want you here,” she said.

“I know, honey, but I don’t want to put anybody out or cause trouble. Martha Lee was so kind to get your mother and me in here. And if I just picked up and left, it might seem ungrateful. I’m fine right where I am.”

But he really wasn’t fine. He was a country boy at heart, and used to the outdoors and open spaces. Now he mostly stayed inside his room, trying to figure out what to do with himself.

—

A FEW WEEKS later, Bud fell asleep in front of the television set again, and woke up just in time to get ready for bed. He went into the bedroom and put on his blue striped pajamas and then walked to the bathroom to brush his teeth. He had just put his toothbrush back in the glass, when he happened to look in the mirror and was startled to see some strange old man looking back at him. Who the hell was that guy? Surely not him. Bud looked again and made a face. Oh yes, it was him, all right. Good Lord, when did all that happen?

Peggy had looked at herself in the mirror every day, mostly complaining about something she saw. But like most men, he had never paid much attention to what he looked like…until now. What a rude awakening.

After he got into bed, he had to laugh at himself. How shocked he was, seeing how much he had aged. After all, he was almost eighty-four years old. What did he expect? You go along in life thinking old age will never happen to you, and then it does. But what can you do? As he lay there thinking about it, he realized he really didn’t care so much about looking good. For whatever time he had left, he just wanted to feel good. But lately his body was not cooperating. Whatever happened to just getting up out of a chair? He’d been forgetting names, and he lost his glasses a lot. But he figured as long as his brain was functioning pretty well and he could still walk, he had a little time left.

He also realized that maybe he should go ahead with a plan he’d made, and sooner rather than later. That old geezer in the bathroom mirror looked like he didn’t have a lot more time to spare. He needed to do it now, before it was too late, and just hope he could still pull it off.

Bud got in bed and closed his eyes and, as he often did before going to sleep, he thought about Peggy.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA

2013

RUTHIE HAD PICKED her father up in front of Briarwood Manor and was driving him to the store to get his favorite coffee when he said, “You know, Ruthie, the one thing I really regret about getting older, is that I am sadly unmotorized.”

“What?”

“I don’t have a car. If I want to go somewhere, I have to call a taxi, or go with a gang of other people on the Briarwood bus. And when I do call a cab, that head guy Merris pokes his snout out of the front office and wants to know where I’m going and what time I’ll be back. I feel like a teenage girl.”

Ruthie laughed. “Serves you right, Daddy. Do you remember all the times you did the same thing to me? ‘Be home by ten,’ you’d say.”

“Yes, but you really were a teenager. And, by the way, don’t think I didn’t know all the times you snuck in after ten.”

“You did?”

“Yes, I did, and not only that, I always knew where you were and who you were with.”

“You did not.”

“Did, too.”

“How?”

“Not telling.”

“Okay. But did you know that sometimes I came home before ten, let you hear me come in, and then snuck out the back door?”

Now Bud was surprised. “When?”

“Ha-ha, I have secrets, too.”

“Was that when you were dating that idiot Hootie Reynolds?”

Ruthie was surprised. “How did you know I was dating Hootie?”

Bud looked at her. “It was not hard to miss. You had ‘Hootie, Hootie, Hootie’ written all over your notebook with big kiss marks and hearts. What scared me was when you wrote ‘Mrs. Hootie Reynolds’ all over the page. It’s a good thing you broke up with him, or I would have had to kill him.”

Ruthie smiled. “Poor Hootie. He was cute, but he was an idiot, wasn’t he? I wonder what would have happened if I had married him.”

“You wouldn’t have. I would have seen to that. You did just fine in that department. You couldn’t have done better than Brooks.”

“No, I could not. I still miss him every day, Daddy.”

“I know you do, honey. I still miss your mother.”

—

AFTER HE BOUGHT his coffee, and she was driving him back, Ruthie said, “I wonder whatever happened to Hootie.”

“I heard he did quite well in sports. Even went to the Olympics.”

Ruthie was surprised. “He did? Doing what?”

“Javelin catcher.”

“Oh, Daddy. You made that up.”

“Yeah, but it could have been true.”

—

RUTHIE’S HUSBAND, BROOKS, had died suddenly of a heart attack three years earlier. At the time, their two children, Carolyn and Richard, were still living in Atlanta, and that had helped her get through it. But then, when Carolyn got married and moved to Washington, D.C., and Richard and his girlfriend, Dotsie, moved to Oregon, all Ruthie had left of family living in Atlanta was her father, and if anything happened to him she didn’t know what she would do. She adored him, and even after all these years, he could still make her laugh.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA

MARTHA LEE HAD never completely accepted Ruthie into the Caldwell family, but that was not the case with her grandchildren, Carolyn and Richard. On the day each child was born, Martha Lee had come swooping into the hospital, dressed to the nines, accepting congratulations from everyone on the birth of her grandchild.

Before they were even born, Martha Lee had already chosen their middle names, the schools they were to attend, and the classes they would be taking. Ballet for Carolyn; tennis, golf, and swimming for Richard. And by royal command, every Sunday and every holiday meal was to be spent with Martha Lee at the club. And while at the club, any introductions to her friends went as follows: