runner up: short short story contest

marge/margie
by pat wakeley

While still in mid-air, Marge knows it will be a bad landing. The wet porch and loose board, plus rushing because she’s late, just about guarantee that. She slams onto her left knee and falls forward, scrabbling at the wet porch floor. Her ankle, still caught in the crack, twists and snaps.

She lies still for a moment, getting her breath back. Then she struggles to twist around and pull her foot out of the crack. The effort nearly causes her to black out. Nauseous with shock, she stares at her broken ankle.

What on earth, she wonders, is she doing here? Helpless on the splintered porch of an ancient, sagging-into-the-mud mobile home. With rain blowing in her face. She knows why she’s here, in a way, but she still wonders.

After Richard died last year and the estate was settled, she felt a desperate need to make a fresh start. The children were on their own now, and she was free to go anywhere. But she was drawn to the beautiful hills of western North Carolina, where she and Richard had honeymooned. Life would be simpler there, far from the rush and complications of living in Chicago. Less expensive, too. So she had retired from nursing, sold the house where they had brought up the kids, and made the big move.

After settling in, she cast about for some kind of volunteer work. She wasn’t that old, after all, and she wanted to be of some use in the world. When Meals on Wheels advertised for drivers, she jumped at the chance. Delivering meals to shut-ins would give her a chance to explore the beautiful countryside she and Richard had fallen in love with forty years earlier.

But she hadn’t counted on its being such a lonely job. She sees her fellow drivers for only a couple of minutes at the beginning of each run. Staff is staff, not friends. And clients are, well, clients.
Her route is called Pinnacle. As she told her friends back in Chicago, trying to sound offhand, it was way to hell-and-gone back in the hills — ten miles to the beginning of it, then eight more miles of steep mountain roads, not always paved. After every good rainstorm, when the back roads were muddy and treacherous, she thinks seriously about getting a four-wheel-drive. The man who came to repair her dishwasher called it deliverance country. The Meals on Wheels people urged her to carry a cell phone.

The homes on her route reveal a rural poverty she had only read about. Every week she visits tarpaper shacks on narrow dirt tracks far from the highway, shabby ranch houses surrounded by rusted-out machinery, mobile homes that have sat and decayed for fifty years. Cross-shaped signs by the roadside read JESUS SAVES.

Inside, Margie leafs through her Bible to Psalms. Every day, right after breakfast, she begins with a psalm. Today she reads, “I cried unto God with my voice, even unto God with my voice, and he gave ear unto me.” That’s a good one. She likes it. It leads right into her daily prayer list. She prays for her great-niece Susan who comes out once a month with groceries and stays to mop the floor on her hands and knees. For Jim Bob, her husband, who died on her thirty years ago. For the two babies who died before that and the son in Oklahoma she hasn’t heard from for three years. For her sister Lucille, who passed on last year. For Marge, the lady from Meals on Wheels who comes every Wednesday and calls her Mrs. Hawkins. That sounds so strange after everyone has called her Margie or Miss Margie for seventy-eight years, but she figures it must be the northern way.

“Meals on Wheels!” Marge always calls as she knocks on the door. Then she opens the door and comes on in.

“And how are you today?” she asks brightly, every time. Margie knows she asks everyone the same question, trying to be polite.

Margie tries to be polite back. “I’m doing just fine,” she says. “And how about you?” Sometimes she says her lumbago is bad but she’ll be all right. Once her bathroom window got stuck open when the fall rains started up, and Marge went in and wrestled it down. Then the heat went off in a bad storm and didn’t come on again. Marge reported it to Council on Aging, and they sent a man out to fix it. Margie could have called the Council herself, she had a telephone, but Marge offered. She could see that Marge liked to feel useful.

Now, looking out the window, she sees Marge’s car, red and new looking. Good thing she remembered to unlock the door this morning on her way from her bedroom to her chair.

But wait—what was that thud on the front porch? And a sharp cry? Oh, no. She presses her lips together. She knows it’s slippery out there when it rains. And that board still loose . . . .

Inching her way toward the door on her hands and rear end, Marge feels sweat breaking out on her forehead. One time she bumps her injured foot against the floor and nearly screams with the pain. When she reaches the door, she turns the knob, and pushes the door open, falling across the doorstep.

She doesn’t know what kind of help Mrs. Hawkins can give her, beyond calling nine-one-one. Mrs. Hawkins lives all alone. Most of her clients do. They are old and they live alone and they don’t drive. Mrs. Hawkins is also diabetic and obese, and Marge has never seen her out of her chair.
Now Mrs. Hawkins heaves herself to her feet with a cane and a grunt.
“I’m so sorry,” Marge gasps. “I fell. My ankle, I’m afraid it’s broken.”
“That’s all right, honey, don’t you worry.” Mrs. Hawkins makes her way unsteadily toward the door. When she reaches it, she asks, “Can you manage to pull yourself just a little farther inside? Then I’ll close the door and call for help.”

Marge, with tremendous effort, manages to pull herself into the house. She hates being so helpless.

Mrs. Hawkins closes the door against the rain and slowly goes back to her chair and table. From beneath a loose pile of newspapers she draws a telephone. Still standing, she calls nine-one-one. Marge can tell from the sound that that’s what she’s dialing. “Yes, ma’am,” she says to the dispatcher, “this is Margaret Hawkins out on Hyder Lane. We’ve got this Meals on Wheels lady here, and she’s fallen and hurt her ankle. Yes’m, it’s pretty bad. She’ll need an ambulance. . . . What? No, no one here can drive. I think it’s just her . . . . wait a minute. . . . Marge? is anything else hurt besides your ankle? . . . No, ma’am, just her ankle. All right, I’ll tell her.”
Marge’s whole body begins to shake. It’s such a relief to have someone watching out for her. Mrs. Hawkins, thank goodness, is more competent than she expected. Tears spring to her eyes.

The old woman gives her a sharp look, then makes her way to a tattered recliner in the corner piled high with clothes and pillows and every kind of thing. It’s hard to see the chair at all beneath the junk. But Marge knows from earlier visits that this is one of those houses where things are never put away because there’s no place to put them. Where heaps of mismatched objects — boxes, pans, sweaters, old coffee pots — pile up in the corners because there’s no other place for them and the people are too poor to say no to a donation. You never know when something might come in handy.
Mrs. Hawkins also keeps most of her food supply out on the kitchen table beside her chair where she can easily reach it. Vanilla wafers, cans of salt-free tomatoes and corn, bread, margarine, the can opener. It looks messy, but it’s practical. On the table beside the food is her open Bible.

Now Mrs. Hawkins pulls a pillow and blanket from the pile on the recliner. She brings them over to Marge and gently drops the pillow. “Can you put that under your head?” she asks. Then she drapes the blanket over her, careful to avoid the injured ankle. She goes to a different pile and returns with a plastic dishpan and another blanket. “Here,” she said, handing them to Marge. “If you can put those under your knee, you can rest without touching your foot to the floor.” She pushes the first blanket aside with her cane so Marge can make the arrangements: the pan upside-down and the blanket folded over the pan. Marge manages to lift her injured leg on top of all that and lies back exhausted. Mrs. Hawkins spreads the first blanket back over her.

“Now then,” she says, easing herself back down into her chair. “I hope you feel a little more comfortable.”

“Everything feels wonderful,” Marge says, grateful. She never knew a bare floor could feel so good.

“Now here’s the situation,” Mrs. Hawkins says. “The nine-one-one lady said both ambulances are tied up because of a bad accident on Route 64. So it might be an hour or two before they get here.”

Two hours! But it could be worse. At least she’s indoors, warm and dry. “Could you — I mean, would you mind making another call for me?”

“Of course.”

“Please call Meals on Wheels and explain why I’m not coming back right away.” It’s lucky Mrs. Hawkins is the last person on her route. “The number is 695- . . . . “

“I have it right here.” Mrs. Hawkins says, pulling a card from beneath the stacks of things on the table. “-0473. “ She dials the number, gives a brief explanation, and sits back. “There now,” she says. “That’s all taken care of.”

“Mrs. Hawkins, I’m more grateful than I can say . . . .”

Mrs. Hawkins interrupts, planting her cane squarely in front of her feet and leaning on it with both hands. “Marge, honey,” she says firmly, “why don’t you call me Margie? Everyone else does.” She sits back in her chair. “Now, then. Why don’t we have ourselves a good talk?”

Marge has never had a personal conversation with Mrs. Hawkins — Margie — or any of her other clients. She thinks it’s rude to invade their privacy by asking personal questions — that’s city etiquette. And she calls them by their last names to show respect. First names would mean she was condescending to them, treating them like children. Yet here is Mrs. Hawkins inviting her to use her first name. Offering.
She has in fact done far more in caring for her than Marge could ever have expected. She isn’t just a fat old woman in a chair. Mrs. Hawkins—Margie—has shown considerable intelligence and resourcefulness.

“All right. Margie. But how did you know how to take care of me? I mean about the blankets and the dishpan and all?”

Margie nods. “I took a course in first aid once from the Red Cross. It’s come in handy a few times. And when I saw you lying there on the floor and beginning to shake, I thought to myself, this lady might be going into shock. Better get her warmed up. But I knew better than give you a cup of tea, in case the doctors have to operate.”

Marge has to smile. “Did you know that I’m a nurse?”

“No! Tell me, did I do things right?”

“You did everything perfectly.”
Now it’s Margie’s turn to smile. “So, what kind of nursing did you do? My sister Lucille was a nurse.”

When the ambulance arrives an hour later, they are just getting around to their husbands and children.

 

Pat Wakeley is a Hendersonville writer. This is her first published story.