Thursday, January 31, 2019

A Favor for Grace



Lunchtime. Carol stood up from her desk and began to layer herself with warmth: a bulky sweater, her heavy overcoat, a scarf, and the gloves she knew she would need for the gray January day. Once she was out on the street, she burrowed her head into her over-sized collar, hunched her shoulders against the biting wind, and pressed against the flow of the masses of New Yorkers equally bent on arriving at their destinations.  They, too, were undoubtedly intent on feeding themselves. 
 
Impatient drivers’ blaring horns were as persistent as her thoughts: There were orthodontia fittings for Lara and a teacher conference for Mark.  His history teacher, the one so sadly lacking in regard for his students, had ironically claimed that her son had an attitude problem.  Mark had an attitude problem all right; he had a problem being subservient to someone he didn’t respect.  If Carol had known how to manage that, she thought wryly, she would still be married to shit-for-brains.

As she stepped through the arched entrance to the park and began to slow her pace and meander along the path, the traffic noises faded behind her, also quieting the anxious voice she heard in her head.  The wind died down here and the exhaust fume odors gradually began to be replaced by those of crushed peanuts and tree sap.  A newly constructed bench in a bright spot of sunlight beckoned.  She sat with a sigh, paused a moment to pull off her gloves, shrugged halfway out of her coat, and then realized she was hungry.  She pulled out her lunch.  

She had rescued the last tangelo from her children’s relentless raids on the refrigerator and relished it with a cup of vanilla yogurt and five saltine crackers. That consumed, and with the delicious smell of the tangelo peel clutched in her hand, her magazine opened and ignored in her lap, she turned her face up to the sun’s rays. Ten minutes of bliss.

Carol was a tall woman, small boned with delicate wrists and long, slender fingers.  In spite of her height, her substantial hips and thighs kept her from being seen as thin.  ‘Rodin would have loved me,’ she had been known to confide to her art-aficionado friends, especially after a margarita or two.  Her eyes were a clear turquoise, without the assistance of contact lenses, and they were set in a face that revealed rather than hid her intelligence and wry sense of humor.  How long had it been, she wondered, since she had sat like this, her worries temporarily stashed away in denial for a few brief moments, just to enjoy the feel of the sun on her face?

“Too long,” came a disembodied voice.

Carol was sure she heard it rather than thought it, and she opened her eyes to the sight of a small, gnome-like woman sharing her bench.  The newcomer was neatly dressed in a black wool suit, with a matching hat perched atop gray hair that was pulled back into a tight chignon.  A net that couldn’t have provided much protection from the weather and certainly had seen better days surrounded her tiny felt hat.  The corners of her collar and the edges of her cuffs were threadbare.  Her face was a myriad of wrinkles.  It’s impossible to guess her age, Carol thought, as she took in the sight and met the woman’s eyes, tiny, coal-black orbs peeking mirthfully in Carol’s direction.  For a moment she felt annoyed at the intrusion, but when the tiny woman smiled at her with genuine good will, Carol relented.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked, not at all sure that she wanted to know.

“Too long.  I said it.  I know it has been too long since you took the time to give yourself the gift of solitude and sunlight on a winter day in the park,” she said.  “I so hated to impose.”

Her voice was rich, deep and melodic, in complete contrast to her slight physical stature.

“But, how did you know…” Carol started to ask.  
 
That radiant smile again.  Well, of course she didn’t really know, she just surmised – not really too difficult for a perceptive person, Carol thought.  Convincing herself that this was not going to be a paranormal experience, seeing that this petite, frail woman was hardly a threat, she closed her eyes and turned her face upward again.  Maybe she will go away.

“I wonder if you could do me a favor,” came that ethereal voice again, resonant and clear, lacking any tremor that age might have contributed.

Oh, God, Carol thought, why is this city so filled with weirdos and con artists? Without looking, she replied, “I only have bus fare to get home on and I’ve eaten all my lunch.”  Her voice was flat, designed to discourage her persistent intruder.

“Oh, no,” the intruder protested, “I don’t need money or food, I just need to borrow your legs and your good will.”

Carol turned and gazed at the woman with intense skepticism, asking, “My what?”

“I can see what you are thinking,” the woman said, as she straightened her spine gaining maybe an inch with the gesture, and raising her chin with pride.  “But it is not like that at all. You see, I found a wallet on the path in the park and I need to take it to the police station.  Arthritis renders me unable to walk very far, so I was wondering if you would be so kind as to take the wallet to them for me.”  

“By the way, my name is Grace, Grace Delaney,” she said as she extended a small, thinly gloved hand obviously crippled with the cruelty of the disease she had disclosed.

“Pleased to meet you, Grace,” Carol heard herself saying with little conviction, as she gently held the woman’s hand. “But how do you know I won’t just keep the wallet for myself, rather than turning it in?”
“Oh, I’m a very good judge of character,” Grace replied, “I am rarely ever mistaken about a person’s honesty.”  The sun had slipped behind a cloud briefly and Carol could see the woman shiver in her thin wool suit coat.

“Is there money in the wallet?” Carol’s curiosity could not be hidden.
“Yes indeed there is. The person who lost it will be most happy to get it back, I’m quite sure; don’t you agree?”

“Quite sure,” Carol murmured vaguely as she dug into her pocket to check her cell phone for the time.  Well, actually she did have just enough time to make it to the police precinct station near her building, and there was something very endearing about this strange little lady.

“Are you a newcomer to New York?” Carol asked as she uncrossed her warmly clad long legs and brushed back her unruly pale hair. She began to pull on first her gloves and then her quilted coat. 
 
“No, no,” that remarkable impish smile again. “I was reared here in the city and performed off Broadway in some of the most magnificent works – and some not so magnificent, I’ll now admit – for more than forty years.”
“Well, what do you do now?” Carol found herself asking, as she sat back down, her interest piqued, even though she suspected that her inquiry was going to make her late to work.

“Good deeds,” replied Grace Delaney, as if she had declared a vocation in tax accounting or gourmet cookery.
“How’s that again?” Carol put her gloved hand over the leather wallet she found in her lap.

“You heard correctly, young woman, I fill my days finding ways to help out – either by design or by accident, like today.  I just go about…oh meddling, I guess you could say.”

Carol glanced up to see that the sun had re-emerged, so she unwrapped her scarf and stuffed it into her pocket.  “Okay, I’ll take your find to the police, if you trust me.”

“Oh, indeed, I trust you all right; there was never any question of that,” 

Grace replied with all the dignity of a queen knighting her loyal servant.
Embarrassed, Carol stammered, “Uh, well, if there is a reward, you better give me your address so you can benefit from your generosity.”

“Oh, no, dear, please have the proceeds, if there are any, forwarded to the Mazie Neiderham Home for Girls in Queens, should that be the case.  They can use the money much more than I.”  Regal was the only way to describe her manner, and Carol regretted for a moment that she had never seen Grace perform.

“Well, fine, then.  I have to dash if I am going to make it back to work on time.”

Grace was emphatic: “Yes, yes, dear, you run along, and please accept my most sincere appreciation.”

The lobby of her building was stuffy, and people began peeling off outer garments among the din of muted conversation and the ding of elevator arrivals. At last she was back at her desk, only then able to reflect on the lunch hour events.
At the police station she had discovered that there had been nearly a thousand dollars in that wallet, Carol thought, as she scrolled through the e-mail messages awaiting her.  She definitely could have used the money, and she had been momentarily tempted.  She guessed her honesty had never been tested before quite to that extent, and she was relieved – and a little surprised – that she had passed.  How many times had the question been posed in “what if…” situations?  Now, perhaps she knew.

All she could say for sure was that a favor was asked of her, she agreed to it, and she kept her word.  Wouldn’t she want the same from Lara and Mark?  Set the bar high and adhere to your own standards – advice she gave her kids.  Nice to see she followed her own edicts. 
  
As she leaned back in the much used office chair, she heard its springs protest with a familiar metallic complaint.  She probed her pocket for some chap stick and discovered a piece of paper folded into a small square and softened by time.  It was a flyer she had retrieved from a bulletin board in the lobby of her apartment building.  Singles support group.  They were meeting tonight.

She hardly qualified as a newly single person, but she would never forget how uncertain life had felt when her divorce was new.  She had vivid memories of how frightened and alone she had been, how she had questioned her decision to leave, and how often she had doubted her ability to just get through another day with two kids to raise.

Doubts and fears aside, she was pretty content with her life now, so what had made her take that flyer? She looked at it again – they were meeting at the Unitarian Church in the Heights, only three blocks from her building.  Maybe she could offer some dubious gems of wisdom. Maybe she could help.  They did call themselves a support group didn’t they?  Why not?  She could walk there.  She smiled as she realized:  all it would take was her legs and her good will. 

The End

2 comments:

  1. I can't edit or delete my comment in the future so I'll have to be careful and not misspell any words. Okay, let's give it a try: ... "I liked it very much!"
    Me

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your words painted a picture in my mind of these 2 ladies and their interaction, enjoyed

    ReplyDelete

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