Get Up Eleanor Read online

  Get Up, Eleanor

  a novel

  Jeffrey McClain Jones

  Get Up, Eleanor

  Copyright © 2020 by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval, without permission in writing from the author.

  John 14:12 Publications

  www.jeffreymcclainjones.com

  Cover art from Shutterstock.com.

  For my mother, whose wisdom has blessed my life and the lives of countless others. I love you.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “Paul. Paul Wasser.”

  “Paul. Thanks for calling me. And for ... what you did for my mom.”

  “Sure. Uh ... I’ll talk to you when you get out here. Again, I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you.”

  Eleanor Petersen disconnected the cell phone call. Apparently her mother had kept Eleanor’s cell number on the refrigerator, and that’s how the handyman was able to contact her. Had she been preparing for something like this?

  Connie Petersen had fallen on the ice. She hit her head. She couldn’t pick herself up. Lying there. For who knows how long.

  Just lying there. In the cold.

  The medical examiner would know how long. There would be a medical examiner, wouldn’t there? Would they tell her how long? Did she really need to know?

  “Eleanor? Eleanor!”

  “What?” She snapped back to the present—back to school, to her office, seated at her desk. The heat from the radiator behind her chair hovered over her shoulders.

  Jackie stood in the doorway. “Has something happened? You’re scaring me.”

  “Yes.” Eleanor nodded. Something had happened.

  “What is it?” Jackie closed the door and stepped next to the padded maroon armchair in front of the desk. “Is it your mother?”

  “Yes. Mom.” Take a breath. “She fell. On the ice. She just lay there all night. Maybe ...”

  “My God. Is she ... ?”

  More nodding. “Gone. She hit her head. Her heart stopped. There ... on the ice.”

  Jackie stepped around the desk and grasped Eleanor’s shoulder. “Oh, honey. Oh, Eleanor. Oh, my God.”

  Eleanor lurched toward her water bottle near the edge of her desk. Her hand shook when she lifted the tall metal bottle toward her. Her right hand trembling, not the left. Not the usual tremors. This was different. This was more.

  After a shaky glug, Eleanor clunked the bottle back onto the desk. She swiped the back of her hand across her chin. “Mom was eighty-seven. She insisted on living in that farmhouse all by herself.” Deep breath. “I was always afraid something would happen.” She looked at Jackie. “But not this. Not like this. Lying out there on the ice for who knows how long.”

  “Oh, my Lord.” Jackie pressed her palm to her mouth, panting and shaking her head.

  Leaning until her forehead rested against the front of Jackie’s blazer, Eleanor closed her eyes, loosening a knot in her chest. Sobbing. Eleanor allowed the tears. The touch from Jackie had broken that barrier against sorrow. Crossed the distance to the pain.

  She had been far from her mother. Far from that woman who lay on the ice with no one to help her.

  Where was the dog? He must have known, even if he wasn’t out there with her. He would have been barking inside the house. But who would have heard him? No one. There was no one there to hear his alarm. No one to find her. Until too late.

  Her weeping hatched a memory of when she was in college. That same heartbroken bawling was all she could do when Gary had left her, when she had lost what she thought was her true love. Lasting love. It didn’t last.

  These tears threatened to last and last.

  “That’s okay. That’s okay. Don’t you worry.” Jackie stroked the back of Eleanor’s head. “Just lean in. Just let it out.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The LCD display showed the flight to ORD, Chicago, was on time. She tugged her carry-on case onto the carpet and aimed for an open chair at the end of a row in the waiting area. A couple across from that seat bowed in unison over smartphones. Two children silently stared at small tablets, feet pulled up onto their seats.

  Eleanor resisted the urge to pull out her phone. She would stay present, outside her phone. Numb but present. This present was just the airport. The gray carpet under her feet was real but impersonal.

  Snorting softly, she recalled the mess she had made of Jackie’s wool blazer. She would owe her for the dry cleaning.

  Then she did pull out her phone. Had Brian replied to her email? She needed him to confirm arrangements for midterm exams before spring break.

  There it was. He had everything under control. He’d sent out announcements to the survey course students. Not to worry. Exams would go ahead as scheduled. The seminar students would meet once with Rosemary, her graduate assistant. Their papers would be due as assigned. All under control.

  Now she was free to fly to Chicago and drive from there to ...

  How long had her parents lived in that farmhouse in southern Wisconsin? They moved right after Dad’s retirement. How long had her mother lived there alone?

  Her phone buzzed. She checked the time before answering. The plane would begin boarding in ten minutes.

  “Hello?”

  “Dr. Petersen. This is Paul Wasser again.”

  “Mr. Wasser. Paul. Please, call me Eleanor.”

  “Okay. Sure. Sorry to bother you. But I wanted to let you know that I have your mother’s dog. Monet.” He huffed once. “I have him with me. I’ll take care of him for now. In case you were wondering.”

  She hadn’t been. But now she was. “Oh. Okay. You’re taking care of the dog. That’s good to know.”

  “Yeah. He’s with me and my dog, Dodger. They’re good together. He’s good.”

  “He’s good?” Good dog. Faithful dog.

  “Yeah. I just wanted to let you know. I mean, since he doesn’t belong to me, I wanted to be clear that I was just watching him.”

  “You didn’t steal him.”

  He laughed and then aborted that instantly. “Well. Yeah, that’s kinda what it sounded like I was worried about.” He sighed. “I guess you never know what to say at times like this.” He waited as if hoping for instructions. “I was helping Connie with things around her place, ya know. I was ... as I said, I was the one that found her.”

  Connecting each of his little pieces of confession wasn’t important. He was just offering condolences and apologies.

  Why apologies?

  “You found her?” Eleanor knew that. It wasn’t really a question. More an invitation to say more. “That must have been terrible.”

  “Yes. Yes, it was.” His next breath tripped and stuttered. “I don’t know how much to say. How much do you wanna know? I mean, we can talk. We can talk when you get here.”

  “What was she doing? Why was she out there?”

  “She had a large canvas with her. She was under that canvas when I found her. It sorta covered her.”

  A stretched canvas as shelter? That was fitting, or maybe pitiful. Eleanor squelched a sob, holding the phone away from her mouth.

  “She kept some of the larger raw canvases out in the barn. She must have gone out there to get that one and then slipped on the ice on the way back. It was a spot where the old snow kept the meltwater from draining, and it just kept freezing over. I cleared it off and put down salt. But ...”

  Was he defending himself? “You cleared snow and ice for her all the time.”

  “Yeah. That sidewalk was a constant hazard. I don’t know how many times I warne
d her about it.”

  “She didn’t always listen.”

  He snuffled a laugh. “I guess you would know. I bet you tried to talk her out of living out there by herself.”

  “I did.”

  “But she had it her way. She got to live the way she wanted right up to the end. She got the life she wanted.”

  “And the death?”

  “Oh. Well. I don’t know. I didn’t mean ...”

  “No. Of course not. I wasn’t really ... Not really arguing. Just thinking aloud. I argue with myself sometimes.”

  “Yeah. I do that too. I’ve been chewing myself out for not gettin’ to her place sooner. I was supposed to check on the ice at her place. But I was stuck dealing with a flooded basement in town.”

  He was defending his actions. Anyone would.

  “I’m sure it’s as you say. She knew the risks. None of us could really protect her from every contingency.”

  “Yeah. I guess you can hear me trying to convince myself that it’s not my fault. Not sure I’m ever gonna be able to do that, though.”

  Was it his fault? In some way? But she wasn’t going to blame this handyman for her mother’s death. Blame offered no relief. Tears, on the other hand ...

  “Well, I should go. I need to board the plane here in a bit.”

  “Is someone picking you up? Is it Milwaukee or Chicago?”

  “I’m flying into O’Hare. I’ve rented a car.”

  “Oh. Okay. I’ll talk to you when you get here. You’re gonna stay at the farm?”

  “I had planned on it.”

  “Careful of the ice.” A paralyzed silence followed. Then his voice softened. “I’ll get over there to put down some more salt.” Another pause. “But be careful, anyway.”

  Was he afraid she would suffer the same fate as her mother? That would be too much for him to bear, apparently. “Thanks. I’ll be careful.”

  Paul Wasser was the one who had found her mother. But was he the last person she’d spoken to before that?

  When had Eleanor spoken to her mother last? There was the usual Sunday night phone call. But they had both been distracted. Their exchanged words were the opposite of memorable, the opposite of significant, until now. Now everything had taken on significance. The last visit. The last time Eleanor heard her mother’s voice.

  She stopped staring at the blank screen on her phone and slipped it back into her jacket pocket. She gazed down at the toes of her black loafers. The carpet beneath them was still there. She was still here. Back from thoughts of the house in Wisconsin and that conversation with Paul Wasser. And now she was stacking sandbags against more of those tears.

  After Eleanor boarded the plane, she sat staring out the window, blinking at the itchy blur, hunkering into the tight airline seat.

  When had she last seen her mother cry?

  There was the funeral. Her father’s death. Her mother’s greatest loss. That’s what she had called it. The way she moaned his name. “Darrel. Oh. Darrel. My love.” Her voice had disabled everyone’s defenses against total breakdown that day. Contagious grief.

  What had startled Eleanor at the time was the contrast with the smiling woman who persistently faced even bad news with a grin. A cold grin. That was how it had often felt to Eleanor. Her mom wouldn’t swear or complain. She just grinned. At most she might say, “Oh, bother.” That was the worst.

  Until she lost the man who had been her partner and best friend for fifty-six years.

  “Best man.” That’s what she used to call him. “He’s my best man.” A strange twist. But Connie liked to twist a phrase. She was her own person, with her own way of speaking. Her own way of living.

  She hadn’t grinned when Eleanor confronted her in the kitchen over the butcher block island after Dad’s funeral. “This is where I live. And this is where I’ll stay.”

  “You’re seventy-seven years old, Mom. You can’t live here all alone.”

  “I’ll get a dog. I’ve always wanted a dog.”

  “A dog?” Eleanor could still remember the emptied and washed collection of casserole dishes assembled on the butcher block, a geometrical chaos of round and square and rectangular dishes, yet uniformly Pyrex. Perfect for reheating. They had contained various dishes, but uniformly creamy with cheese. Cheese and butter infused into noodles in ethnically diverse combinations from Italian to Swedish to whatever “tuna hot dish” was. The leftovers would last for the rest of the year. Maybe a dog would come in handy for devouring all those carbs and fats.

  “Your father never wanted a dog. He was too softhearted. He never would have wanted to leave a puppy at home, ever. I wouldn’t ha’ been able to get him to go anywhere.”

  “So, you’ve been waiting for Dad to die so you could finally get a dog?” Eleanor could joke with her mom most times. But that jab had been too early, and too sharp.

  “Lenny! I can’t believe you would ...” And then that grin was back. Flat line. A grin as tight as the seal on the freezer.

  Maybe after Dad died Eleanor should have tried harder to convince her mom to stop calling her “Lenny.” She hadn’t tried very hard before that. Her mom had usually called her “Eleanor” when she referred to an article or book review, proud of her daughter’s honors and publications, proud when she was named Chair of the History Department.

  Eleanor sat back and closed her eyes. How long had Connie lived on that Wisconsin farm by herself? It must have been fifteen years with Dad. Then about ten without him. Ten years by herself. A stubborn woman. With that stubborn grin on her elfin face.

  The white noise of the jet engines cocooned her. Eleanor fell asleep beneath her mother’s grin.

  When she woke, the plane was just crossing the shore of Lake Michigan. A golden sunset embossed the city. Eleanor pressed her forehead against the window, assessing downtown Chicago. No longer that toddling town. No longer the phoenix resurrected from the great fire. A metropolis of businesses of all sorts and sizes. Maybe she should come out here to The Chicago Historical Society again. Surely she could fill in more details on women-owned businesses in the nineteenth-century.

  The flight attendant’s announcement erased those thoughts. Eleanor shifted to anxiety about the rental car connection and the drive toward the north and west.

  “I’m coming home, Mom.”

  But it had never been her home. The farm was her parents’ retirement spot. Not Florida. Not Arizona. They were Wisconsinites. They’d migrated from the Milwaukee suburbs to Dove Lake. Mom would paint. Dad would be a gentleman farmer, managing his investments, reading books, and occasionally doing consulting work for cities around the area. Dinners out. Bridge.

  Dove Lake had become Eleanor’s surrogate home only because her parents lived there.

  Was her mother still there?

  Was Connie’s spirit lingering in the studio on the first floor? In the bedrooms upstairs? In that kitchen, where she had made pies to give to the neighbors? Was her spirit waiting there for her only daughter, her only child?

  As the wheels rumbled over the tarmac, Eleanor leaned into the fact that she was alone. No longer just an only child. She was the only survivor of their little family.

  Snap out of it, Lenny. You have to get off this plane, pick up your rental car, and drive over the Wisconsin border.

  Get it together, Lenny.

  Eleanor.

  When she climbed into the Prius, she checked her rearview mirrors and gripped the contoured steering wheel. As she wound her way out of the rental lot toward the freeway, she considered the business ahead of her. House, bank, funeral home, dog. The business of cleaning up after a life. Cleaning up all that was left of her mother, her family.

  “That attitude will never do.” She snorted, imagining what her mother would say.

  “Lenny, you’re just gonna have to face it. You may as well make the best of it. That’s all we can ever do in life, make the most of what we’re given. I know it’s a bit of a bother. But you don’t have to settle everything all at on
ce. And there will be people to help you.”

  That’s what her mother would say.

  Eleanor relaxed into her seat, surveying the broad highway ahead of her. “Glad we had this little talk, Mom. It really helped.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Dove Lake, Wisconsin, had been incorporated in the middle of the nineteenth century, during the boom of immigration and settlement, and the first promise of agricultural prosperity in the upper Midwest. The native nations had been forced west and onto reservations, leaving open prairie. Available land. That was the vision, the dream. It was the attraction for northern European people seeking a new life.

  One mystery about the town was the absence of a body of water called Dove Lake. Numerous Wisconsin towns had been named for the lake on whose shores they were built. Not this one. None of the lakes around there had ever been called Dove Lake. Not even a Dove Pond in the lot.

  The naming conundrum was the only mystery about the town of which Eleanor was aware. At least, so far.

  Approaching the farm from the south and east after dark, a hazy glow smudged the western horizon—the lights of the little business district of Dove Lake. She would avoid town tonight.

  Slowing on the county highway, she turned, her headlights catching the quaint and crafty wooden sign painted by her mother. “The Dovecote.” Her mother was half Scottish, her maiden name Constance Ferguson. But her name for the farm had been more about teasing her new community for its lack of a lake, dove or otherwise. Connie was the kind of woman who needed to name her farm. And Eleanor hadn’t contested that name’s cheeky cuteness.

  Sitting in the driveway with the high beams illuminating the white slats of the barn, the trip and day fuzzed into silence. Eleanor just sat there.

  There was the barn. If she tried, she could probably see the sidewalk, the spot where her mother had fallen. Flat on her back? Under a raw canvas stretched over a pine frame.