Lady With The Blue Coat

It was one of those exhausting mid-July days where the whole world slows to a trickle.

Too hot to go outside.

Too hot to have any fun inside.

Nobody reads blogs in the summer, so there’s nothing in the checking account to go shopping with, no cash left in the purse for an afternoon at the pool, only half a tank of gas so not enough to get away to Pittsburgh for an afternoon. Bills threatening to go to collections. Only leftovers and zucchini from the community garden for dinner. A person can get tired of zucchini.

I was slumped on the sofa, sweating, worrying, when the phone rang.

It was the older lady I used to see at daily Mass, once upon a time. I gave her a ride awhile back, and gave her my number in case she needed another. She called me with an emergency: she’d spilled cocoa powder all over her coat, and she needed to go out and buy detergent.

This lady wears her coat everywhere, even in the steamiest part of July, over a sweater and two layers of t-shirts. For years she was homeless and carried everything she owned by wearing it or stuffing it in a backpack. Now that she’s in the nursing home, she’s frightened about her belongings being stolen if they’re not on her at all times. She washes her own clothes in the sink for fear they’ll be lost if she lets the nursing home attendants take them to the laundry. I can see how you’d get that way, if you’d been through what she went through.

I asked Adrienne if she wanted to go along for a drive, but all Adrienne wants to do this summer is play Minecraft, so I got to go out by myself.

The nursing home is way, way out at the edge of Wintersville. Wintersville is the village you run into if you drive west past the Steubenville border toward where Ohio gets flat. There are no shale cliffs up thataway, just rolling hills. There aren’t frightening tumbledown slum neighborhoods like LaBelle and downtown; there are just housing developments, a distinct lack of sidewalks, and a main street with no crosswalks. The bus goes there occasionally but there’s only one stop. If you’re stuck in Wintersville without a car, you are well and truly stuck. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

Yesterday was stranger than ever, because they were trying to hold a summer street fair in Wintersville, on their impassible main street that straddles a four-lane highway. Police were parked in the protected turn lane, directing traffic, pretending there was a crosswalk where there isn’t one. Fairgoers looked bemused as they crossed to the booths, candy stands and taco trucks on either side. It took half an hour to get to the nursing home.

At the nursing home, I realized I’d never been told the lady’s full name. I said her first name at the front desk, and then I said “the lady with the blue coat?”

The nurse went down the hallway to fetch the Lady with the Blue Coat. I waited in the foyer with some of the residents, who were staring into the middle distance not saying much. A nurse came out and told an extremely frail old gentleman that he couldn’t have a Pepsi, only something healthier like cranberry juice.

The man looked crestfallen. “Can’t have a beer, I want a Pepsi,” he muttered, but there was no Pepsi forthcoming.  If I’d had a Pepsi with me I’d have snuck it to him somehow.

Eventually my friend came out leaning on her walker– minus the coat but still wearing the sweater. Her roommate had offered to guard her stained belongings for the afternoon, if my friend would pick up the items on her shopping list. They get three healthful meals a day at the nursing home but the food isn’t very good, and there aren’t many snacks– the man longing for a Pepsi came to mind again.  An escape to go shopping for their own provisions would be a special treat.

I took her to the grocery store, where she found her detergent. We picked out animal crackers and candy bars for the roommate, the biggest candy bars we could find so they’d last longer. She counted out her cash and there was just enough to buy the items on the list, plus two Blizzards at Dairy Queen on the way back if I wouldn’t mind.

“Is there a daily Mass I can take you to this evening before we head back?” I asked, remembering how she always used to walk to daily Mass when she was homeless.

There was a daily Mass, as a matter of fact, at the big Baroque church downtown. She hadn’t been to daily Mass at the longest time, and jumped at the chance as if it was a free vacation. We drove back down to the valley, through that ridiculous street fair, all the way to the church where I dropped her off. My religious trauma doesn’t let me go into churches very often, so all I did was hold the door. She went in to pray and I sat in the car’s air conditioning, worrying.

After Mass we drove all the way back, with a quick stop at Dairy Queen for that treat they wanted. The lady told me her plans for when she gets out of the nursing home, which she’s certain she’s going to do before long. She’s not like the other people there, she’s going to get out. She’s got a property she’s going to buy in Wintersville, to use as a safe house for trafficking victims. She’s going to buy and flip other real estate just as soon as she has money for an investment. She’s already read about all the real estate laws in Ohio so she won’t get into trouble. She will be a life coach and appear on podcasts, which is how she’s going to raise money. She’s also got a plan to stop slavery internationally and put in a crosswalk at the intersection where she broke her leg, which is how she ended up in that nursing home in the first place. I kept nodding and saying pleasant things. Hope is in short supply around here. I’m not going to steal it from someone who seems to have a little too much, any more than I’d refuse a nursing home resident a Pepsi. Everybody needs something sweet now and then.

I helped her carry her packages back to her room– the tiniest, most cramped box of a hospital bedroom with two beds, a tray of bland food waiting for her, the air conditioning not working.

“It’s better than being homeless?” I said.

“Oh, much better.” She took her half-melted ice cream and sat down on her bed.

I stopped at the community garden on the way back to my house.

A few tomatoes were finally ripe. Tomatoes are sweet as candy if you let them ripen on the vine. I took them home to make for dinner, with the zucchini and the leftovers.

Nothing is very good right now, but we can make it better.

Image via pixabay

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

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