Chalk by Lily J. Adams
Chapter Four: Time to Make a Move
Lucinda
I’d been waiting for an answer from Holbeck hospital, all part of the application process. Please don’t contact us; if you haven’t heard from us in the four weeks from the application date, that means that your application was unsuccessful.
In a few days, that option would expire, and I was on tenterhooks hoping for the best. I wanted to believe the job was mine and every day I walked to my parents’ mailbox and opened the creaky flap, hoping to see something just for me. I’d just about given up hope on it.
I woke up to the smell of the coffee machine and my retired father flipping the paper open to read the news.
“Hey, Dad. Anything exciting in there?” I greeted him.
He was leaned against the kitchen countertop with his glasses perched on the end of his nose and his comfy slippers on his feet, along with the bathrobe that my mother would want to put in the trash.
“Nothing but sadness and despair, that’s what we have in here,” he groused. He looked around the paper, and when he saw my face he smiled. “Checking the mail today? This might be the day.” His normal grumpiness gave way to a pleasant optimism. My father was more ready to let me go than my mother. He was more realistic in knowing that I couldn’t live with them forever.
I loved my parents and got along with them well, but my stay was reaching the end of its tenure. “I’m about to go out and check it now.” I wore my favorite jammies, hoping for good luck this morning. I opened the front door and headed to the mailbox. I found inside a folded-over white envelope. Could this be it? Could it be? Did I get the job? Surely, they would call me as well.
I raced inside and sat down on the couch as my father continued to read the paper. I pulled out the documents which were all paper-clipped together. At the front was a letter. The top line read: ‘Congratulations…’I shrieked.
My father put the paper down and ran over. “What! You got the job, didn’t you?” He hugged my shoulders.
“I got it, Dad. I did it!” Tears started to salt my cheeks. It had been such a long road to get to this point, and I made it.
“I knew you could do it. Wait ‘til your mother hears. I’m so proud of you. This is what you wanted. You’ve done it now.” My father’s voice rang true and proud.
I touched his hand wrapped around my shoulders as I stared at the letter a moment longer. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“You could have, but we wouldn’t have wanted you to.” My father was a kind, sweet and patient man. He loved his family and would do anything for us.
“I got so much to do. I have to sell all my stuff. I have to figure out how to tell Sarah, I have to talk to Chalk. I just have so much…” I felt like I was about to hyperventilate from the whole thing.
My father touched my arm lightly. “Sweetie, sweetie, calm down. One step at a time. You just got in. Let loose for a minute. We can help with that. You don’t have many things to sell, you’ll be completely fine.”
I sunk down into my body realizing he was absolutely right. I did still want to talk to Chalk because Sarah was having trouble with an assignment at school and wanted to see if I could help her. “Okay thanks, Dad. Thanks for respecting my decision with Chalk for Sarah to stay with him. I didn’t want her seeing me so ill.”
“I understand, it was a tough call and you made it. Proud of you.” He patted me on the shoulder and went back to his paper.
I moved off the couch and into the back end of the house where my room was. My bookshelf with half anatomy and study books, the other half fiction books I enjoyed. Pictures of yesteryear with Chalk, me and Sarah. All my friends at Malibu Health Center and the good times we’d had. Every time I looked at those photos, pieces of my heart opened.
I unhooked my cell phone from the charger and rang Chalk.
“Hello?” he answered.
The phone was my sole link to the only man I’d ever loved. Now when I spoke to him my heart dropped. We’d become colleagues somehow to one another, along the way. When we ended it, it was clean, no ties. He was free and I was free. Chalk possessed an animal magnetism that any woman would want. I imagined he would be dating up a storm in Holbeck. I hadn’t decided how to give Chalk the news about coming back to town, plus I had to wait for the call from the hospital and step through the next part of the process. “Hey Chalk, how are you?” The hitch in my throat made me sound stilted as my heart skipped a beat.
In between I heard a squeal from not one, but two voices in the background. Sarah must have had a friend over. The mountain of guilt over not being there to help piled on top of me as an annoyed grunt came from the other end of the line.
“I guess you can hear that, Sarah has her friend Jessica over and both of them are driving me insane. They’re having a good time though. I’m about to take them out for a minute to run off some of this excess energy at the park.” Chalk’s sigh rang out through the phone.
“Can I talk to Sarah before you go? Maybe I could calm her down a little bit,” I soothed.
“I mean maybe you could, but it would be better if her mother was here,” he grumbled.
I knew he didn’t want that statement to come out mean, but the sharpness hurt. Resentment was brewing from him to me, and it turned my stomach into a bundle of knots. “I’m sorry you have to deal with everything at your end, and I know we have to work things out between us for the long term. I’m feeling a lot better, and I even think I can make a visit down there.” I wanted to give a hint, but I didn’t have a start date at Holbeck. Given the huge divide between us, I wasn’t in a place to dish out false hope.
“We’ve been down this road before. When you’re 100% then yes, you should come down to Holbeck and spend time. Let me go get her.”
There wasn’t time for me to even get the words out. Every time I tried to be real or honest, he shut me down and moved away from the conversation.
“Hi Mommy! I’m about to go play! What are you doing?”
“I’m about to go out to the beach as well for some fresh air. Are you going to play on the monkey bars?”
“Yep! I’m so good on them. I can get all the way to the end. Jessica falls off all the time.”
I noticed Sarah had this bossy boots tone, and if I was there I would’ve wanted to teach her the value of human compassion, kindness and helping your friends. “Honey, you should help your friend up if she can’t make it to the end. If you fell off wouldn’t you want someone to help you up?” I asked her.
“Yesss,” she sang back to me coyly. “I guess I didn’t think of it like that.”
“Something to think about. It’s great you can make it to the end. I wish I was there with you to swing. I used to be good at the monkey bars when I was a kid too. Would you like it if I came there?”
“Are you coming here? Come here Mommy, come here!”
“Shh. I will soon. Have fun at the park and I love you.”
“Love you too, Mommy. Kisses. Mwah!”
“Mwah!” I kissed her back through the phone and she hung up. I wanted to wrap things up with Chalk, but the dial tone went dead…. like our love.
The Holbeck hospital rang me in the afternoon, confirming the pieces of the puzzle, next steps and start dates.
Relief washed over me like the rising tide of the Californian Ocean I loved so much. Holbeck didn’t have the beach, so it would be a struggle to find a place where I could rest my mind. Although I did remember they had a wharf near the casino. I opened up my closet and dropped down to find one of my smaller suitcases at the bottom of the closet. How do I begin this? As I folded some of my clothes off their plastic hangers a beautiful memory came to me.
“You wanna become a nurse? That makes a lotta sense to me. You’re a nurturing person, you care more about other people than yourself. I think you’ll be great at it.” Chalk knew the right words to say to keep me on track. He encouraged when the doubts crept in on the long study nights.
“You think so? I’ve always wanted to be one.”
“I’ve always known you can do it. I believe in you.”
We missed the boat and life broke the raft we’d built with the remaining strands of our seemingly perfect life.My hands shifted over one of my favorite sweaters that was coming with me. I wondered who was loving Chalk now? Did he have someone? I guessed he did, he was a catch. My mind shifted to another moment.
“You’re running a temperature and you’re burning up.” Chalk soaked the washcloth in the little basin and put it over the top of my forehead to cool me down, but I wouldn’t cool down. The cups of tea, changing sheets, him aging before my eyes. I knew it wore him out, but he held it all inside and he wouldn’t tell me about it.
I looked down at my hands, realizing I’d balled the sweater up too many times. Flustered, I unravelled it and folded it into a neat square, packing it into the suitcase.
Time to say goodbye to California. We’d had our time together and now Mississippi was calling me back to its arms. I felt so anxious about the reception I would get.
