The Notebook on Evelyn’s Nightstand
“Sang all of ‘In the Garden’ in the tub. Every word. Could not tell me what day it was.”
I kept it on her nightstand with a pen clipped in the spiral. After the second year, when she fell in the hallway and I quit trusting the nights, I slept there more than I slept at home, on the daybed in what used to be Janet’s room.
People ask how you do a thing like that for six years. You do not do it for six years. You do it for one day, and you write it down, and then there is another one.
There is one kind of entry I need to tell you about, because it matters to what happened in that hall.
Evelyn asked for her girls.
Not every day. But often, and more as her mind went, usually around suppertime when the light got low and she got anxious. She would pick at the blanket and look at the door.
“Did Janet call?”
“Not today, Mom.”
“Did Paula?”
“Not today. Maybe tomorrow.”
And I wrote it down. I did not write it to keep score. I wrote it because it had happened in that house that day and somebody ought to know it.
The first year, I did more than write it. I called them. I called every Sunday afternoon, Janet first and then Paula, and I told them how the week went and I said, “She asked for you. It would mean the world if you’d call her.” Sometimes they did. I wrote those down too. “Janet called, talked 4 min. Mom smiled all through supper.”
Janet came three times that first year. The third time was a bad day. Evelyn looked right at her oldest child and called her Dorothy and asked where Mama was, and when Janet said, “Mom, it’s me, it’s Janet,” Evelyn started to cry because she thought she was being scolded.
Janet went out to her car and sat there forty-five minutes. Then she drove home to Ankeny. After that it was Christmas Eve afternoon and a delivery of flowers on Mother’s Day.
Paula was four hours off and had a husband with a bad heart of his own. I believe she thought Janet was looking in. I believe Janet thought Paula was calling. I believe they both thought, “Well, Lori’s right there,” the way you think about a porch light.
After the first year I stopped making the Sunday calls. I am not proud of that. I got tired of hearing my own voice ask.
And there was a night, about the fourth winter, that I did something I had to take to the Lord afterward.
Evelyn had been asking since four in the afternoon. Did Janet call. Did Janet call. She would not eat. At nine o’clock I sat down on the bed and took both her hands.
“She called while you were napping,” I said. “She said to tell you she loves you and she’ll see you soon.”
Evelyn’s whole face let go. “Well, why didn’t you say so,” she said, and she ate a dish of butterscotch pudding and slept till morning.
I wrote it just like that. “Told her Janet called while she slept. She did not. Lord forgive me. She ate and slept through.”
I told that lie eleven more times before the end. Every one of them is in the book.
I do not want you thinking hard things about my husband.