Though None Go with Me Page 4

  “You’ve been too busy taking care of everyone else.”

  “I’ve used that excuse myself, but now I have no choice.”

  “No choice about what?” she said.

  “Taking care of myself.”

  Despite the still air, a chill made her shudder. “What are you saying?”

  “These extra nights at the hospital have not been for work,” he said.

  She pulled away and set her glass down. The ice shavings had melted. “Don’t make me ask,” she said, suddenly feeling old.

  “I’ve been undergoing tests.”

  Elisabeth could not speak. Her spiritual high disappeared in a wave of nausea. “Tests?” she managed, her voice weak. It was as if she were watching and listening rather than actually engaging in this conversation.

  “Cancer,” her father said, the dreaded word hanging in the moist air.

  She held her breath and stared at him, as if willing him to say more. He glanced at her and looked away.

  “What?” she said. “What do we do about it? People survive that, don’t they?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Then you’ll—we’ll—do whatever we have to do to—”

  “I waited too long, sweetheart,” he said, and he tried to embrace her again. Elisabeth stiffened.

  “What does that mean?” she said.

  “Don’t pull away from me now,” he said, reaching for her. “You’ve heard that a doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient. By the time I knew I needed to consult someone, my illness was advanced.”

  Elisabeth was reeling. “Surely, you have time.”

  “My doctor gives me about eighteen months.”

  “Daddy!”

  “You are strong, Elisabeth. God will be with you.”

  The condensation on her glass had disappeared in rivulets on the wood slats of the porch. She felt as if she too sat in a pool of her own emotions. She hung her head. “Could your doctor be wrong?”

  Her father shook his head. “I’ve seen the test results. Without a miracle, some breakthrough—”

  “That’s what I’ll pray for.”

  “This will not be easy on either of us,” he said. “But it will comfort me to know you will be all right,” he said. “Thankfully, my affairs are in order.”

  “I’m not interested in any of that,” she said. She buried her face into his chest and wept. “I just promised God I would make the rest of my life an experiment in obedience. Look what it got me.”

  “Surely you didn’t expect me to live forever.”

  She knew he couldn’t mean to sound so cavalier. “In a year and a half I will be only fifteen.”

  He nodded. “I want to see your mother, and I long to see Jesus, but in truth I’d rather stay with you for now.”

  A spiritual fountain had washed over Elisabeth just an hour before. Now it had given way to a gnawing emptiness in the pit of her stomach. They sat in silence for several minutes until, without a word, they rose in unison to go inside.

  Elisabeth’s spiritual decision had been real, and it produced in her a hunger and thirst for God and his Word she had never before experienced. Her pastor and the evangelist had warned her not to expect spiritual highs, but rather to expect opposition from the Evil One. While she felt a deep sense of joy that she had made the right decision, her foreboding grew only worse as her father deteriorated.

  First he lost weight. For a month or so he looked healthier, definition coming to his features, his large frame evidencing lean musculature where puffiness had been.

  But he grew tired and weak; his face paled. By the spring of 1914 he was homebound and had quit seeing patients. Elisabeth hurried home after school every day to tend to him and to spell Aunt Agatha, who used the situation to fuel her tirade against God. “Your father was not just a believer,” she told Elisabeth. “He was also devout. Look where it’s got him. Don’t you worry. I expect he’ll provide for me, and you may rest assured that I will provide for you.”

  By late 1914, Dr. LeRoy had to be hospitalized. The church had prayed, visited, helped out, and now seemed merely to await the awful news. They still cared, Elisabeth knew, but the novelty had worn off. She felt she alone was watching him die.

  Maddeningly, Aunt Agatha began redecorating the house. It was nothing major at first, but eventually it became clear she was slowly stockpiling her brother’s belongings. His shoes and clothes were boxed and stored in the dank cellar. His room was rearranged as a guest room, and to Elisabeth it appeared Agatha herself was planning to move in there as soon as her brother passed.

  One night after Christmas Elisabeth trudged home from the hospital in the dark. She slipped onto the back porch, removed her boots, and stepped into the warm kitchen without a sound. After visiting her father and knowing his time was short, she was not in the mood to talk. Aunt Agatha was.

  “I have not seen your father’s will, remember,” her aunt said. “But you are not of age, and until you are I foresee no one else who might administrate his estate. Regardless how he compensates me for my years of service, I do not intend to take advantage.”

  Elisabeth had been relying on her commitment to Christ in the big issues of life, giving over to God her fear and anger about her father. Lately, she had been working on infusing the same thought process to every encounter. Clearly she was not to be catty. But when Aunt Agatha mentioned that she would “like to buy this house from your father’s estate,” Elisabeth didn’t have time to pray or reflect. Her face flushed and she knew she looked stricken.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I had not heard that my father was selling the house.”

  “I said I would buy it from the estate,” Aunt Agatha said. “In, ah, due time, of course.”

  “So it isn’t that Daddy died since I saw him a few minutes ago and you forgot to inform me?”

  “Forgive me for being presumptuous, Elisabeth,” Aunt Agatha said. “I just want to plan ahead.”

  “How convenient that there is something to plan for.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Elisabeth was hardly in a festive mood on New Year’s Eve. She knew 1915 would bring her father’s death, and all she wanted for her birthday the next day was time with him. She was surprised to see at the desk the same nurse who had shared with her the facts of life two years before. The woman quickly put away what she was working on and followed Elisabeth to her father’s room.

  “Your daughter is here,” she said, though Elisabeth had never been announced before.

  Her father opened one eye. “And were you able to—”

  “Yes, Doctor,” the nurse said, and Elisabeth nearly wept at her tone. Her father was on his deathbed, yet his nurse still treated him with deference.

  “Daddy,” Elisabeth said, accepting his fragile hand.

  “Your present will be here in a minute,” he said.

  “You’re my birthday present.”

  “Naw, I’m not,” he said. “I just take your time.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Anyway, would you believe I went out and shopped for it last night?”

  “Of course,” she said. “And I assume you had a date too.”

  He forced a smile and fell asleep briefly. When he opened his eyes he said, “I dreamt I saw your mother again.”

  Elisabeth had resigned herself to the fact that this was for the best. She did not want him to suffer longer. He looked past her to the nurse, who handed him a paper sack. Inside was a thin, wrapped package, tied with a ribbon. “Open the card first,” he said.

  Elisabeth was crying already. The card had been handwritten, she assumed by the nurse, but her father had dictated it.

  Elisabeth, you are the joy of my life. May you live to a ripe, old age and have to be told when your time comes. Your mother and I will await you at the eastern gate of the city that was built foursquare. Love, Father.

  Isaiah 25:8–9.

  Elisabeth looked up the passage in her father’s Bible. �
�He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from all the earth; for the LORD hath spoken it. And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the LORD; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

  In the package Elisabeth found a simple blank journal with cardboard covers. “Record your journey,” he said. “Someday someone might find it encouraging.”

  “What do you want for your birthday, Daddy?” she said.

  “I want to wake up in heaven.”

  She had quit telling him not to talk about the inevitable. “I’ll miss you,” she managed.

  Ten days later she arrived home from school as her aunt was leaving the house, bundled against an icy wind. “He’s gone,” she said. “The hospital needs us.”

  Elisabeth stood shivering in the snow as her aunt moved past. Agatha stopped and looked impatient. Elisabeth had thought she was prepared for this day, yet the pain bit a hole in her that would never be filled. “I’m sorry for your loss, Aunt Agatha,” she said quietly.

  Agatha Erastus squinted and cocked her head. “Yes,” she said. “Thank you. And the same to you for yours.”

  At the hospital, her father’s nurse friend, red-eyed, handed Elisabeth a business card with the name and address of a lawyer on the front and a note scribbled in pencil on the back. “Please give to Elisabeth at the appropriate time.”

  As Aunt Agatha signed papers, Elisabeth sat alone with her memories. Pastor Hill soon joined her. He simply sat and wept with her. His was the most poignant response of the hundreds who attended the funeral. The only other who knew enough to say nothing was Will Bishop, whose own father was near death.

  Two weeks later Elisabeth came home from school to find her Aunt Agatha stewing in the living room with a well-dressed man in his late forties. “Won’t speak to me, Elisabeth,” Agatha said. “Only to you.”

  Marlin Beck, Esq., whose card Elisabeth had been given at the hospital, rose briefly to greet her. “I have been assigned executor of your father’s estate,” he said, settling back down. “Much to the consternation of your aunt, I’m afraid.”

  “And we’ll see what my lawyer says about that,” Agatha chirped.

  “He’ll find the documents in order, ma’am,” Beck said.

  “My brother was in no condition to draw up a will. I couldn’t get him to so much as look into—”

  “Pardon me, Mrs. Erastus, but there was no need. He had prepared his will very early on in his illness and was of sound mind. You would be ill-advised to contest it.”

  “Are you my lawyer now as well?”

  “I beg your pardon. But you might wish to hear the will before deciding to contest it.”

  Elisabeth eyed her. “Do you have a lawyer, Aunt Agatha?”

  The old woman turned away. “I can easily retain one.”

  “You would contest your own brother’s will?”

  “If necessary!”

  “I’d let you have everything before I’d fight you over one shoestring,” Elisabeth said, desperate to keep from raising her voice.

  “Miss LeRoy,” Mr. Beck said, “I urge you not to speak from emotion. Your father precluded eventualities such as this by having his affairs put in order. I should think everyone involved would desire to accede to his wishes.

  “Those wishes, as outlined in his will, were that his entire estate be put into a trust for Elisabeth and that she be given full access to it at age eighteen. In the meantime, his sister is to be allowed to stay in the house in exchange for her guardianship. The property is not to be sold before Elisabeth is of age, and its disposition will be solely at her discretion.”

  Mr. Beck read, “‘It is my expectation and hope that my daughter, Elisabeth Grace LeRoy, shall treat my sister, Agatha LeRoy Erastus, with the Christian charity she deserves for the rest of her natural life.’”

  “How do you interpret that, Mr. Beck?” Agatha demanded.

  He seemed to fight a smile. “How much Christian charity do you deserve?”

  “That’s not amusing.”

  “Dr. LeRoy was a plain-speaking man, Mrs. Erastus. I expect he wishes Elisabeth to provide reasonably for you in gratitude for your years of service.”

  Agatha pursed her lips and shook her head. “I came here years ago in the midst of my own grief and had to be reminded every day of the precious baby daughter I lost. I was paid not a dime for virtually raising this ungrateful child myself.”

  “Ungrateful?” Elisabeth said. “If anything I’ve ever said or done has made you think that either I or my father were un—”

  Aunt Agatha waved her off. “I ought to have the right to buy this house,” she said.

  Horrified at the depth of her aunt’s disdain, Elisabeth snapped, “Fine!”

  “Excuse me, Miss LeRoy,” Mr. Beck said. “Legally the house is not yours to sell until you are of age. In the meantime, it is under my purview, and I am charged with retaining it for you.”

  “I’ll sell it to you as soon as I’m able,” Elisabeth told her aunt, determined to keep peace.

  “At fair market value, of course,” Mr. Beck said.

  “At whatever price Aunt Agatha feels is fair,” Elisabeth said.

  “Oh, my,” Mr. Beck said, putting away his papers, “I beg of you to carefully—”

  “We both heard her loud and clear, Mr. Beck,” Agatha said.

  “Yes, but—”

  “My niece will honor her word. She always does.”

  Mr. Beck shook his head and took a breath to speak, but Mrs. Erastus cut him off. “Unless you have other business specifically related to the will or your purview, as you put it, I’ll thank you to leave my house.”

  “If it’s your house already,” Mr. Beck said, rising. “I prefer to leave. But I promise you, I’ll fight for my late client’s wishes, and you may—”

  “Good-by, Mr. Beck,” Agatha said.

  Elisabeth believed God would have her honor her aunt, even if Agatha didn’t deserve respect. Being cordial to her, let alone loving her, was a chore Agatha made more difficult. Elisabeth sympathized with young people who grew frustrated at home and couldn’t wait to get out. Agatha reminded Elisabeth almost daily of her promise to sell the house.

  “At fair market value,” Elisabeth said.

  “Those were the lawyer’s words, not yours,” Agatha said. “You said at whatever price I thought was fair.”

  Not sure what she was going to do about her foolish promise, Elisabeth found herself more aware than ever of every detail of the only home she had ever known. She knew every squeak on the stairs, every depression in the floor. She loved the highly polished lacquer on the great banister, the feel of the flocked wallpaper in the parlor and front room. If Elisabeth indeed had to sacrifice this place to a promise made in anger, she would memorize every detail of it. But as she walked slowly from room to room, running her finger over every surface, from the bricks around the great fireplace to the plaster walls of the kitchen and the tile in the bathrooms, Elisabeth felt the bitterness of Aunt Agatha’s stare.

  Elisabeth found it a relief that summer to be gone nearly every night for training hour activities at church. Will Bishop often sat near her but hardly said two words to her. She spent most of her time deflecting the attentions of Art Childs, who seemed to always want to sit with her, walk with her, talk with her. “Can we walk in the woods tonight after the meeting?” he suggested one day.

  “No, Art. No, thank you. All right?”

  She feared she had humiliated him. He looked at the ground and busied the toe of his shoe rearranging the dirt. “Well, no, it’s not all right, but I get the message.”

  “There’s no message, Art,” she said, feeling awful as he forced a smile, then turned from her. “It’s just, I—”

  “It’s all right, Elisabeth,” he said. “I know you can do better.”

  “It’s not that at a
ll,” she called after him, but he didn’t look back.

  There was, Elisabeth had to admit, a young man she wouldn’t have minded strolling with. Five years older, he would be a junior that fall at a small Bible college in Grand Rapids. He had been invited to both sing and speak every night for a week, and his dark eyes and light hair captivated her nearly as much as his obvious devotion to God did. How strange to see a young person so bold and unashamed of his faith.

  But Benjamin Phillips seemed to have eyes for no one, even the classmates who came with him to help out. More than one mooned over him, but not even the girls Elisabeth’s age could detect favoritism. Art Childs tried vainly to best him on the baseball diamond, and Frances Crawford said she was convinced Benjamin had his eye on her. Elisabeth was certain his affections were set on things above.

  “I guarantee he’ll write to me,” Frances said more than once. “I may have to write him first, but you watch. I got his address.”

  Later it came out that she had copied the address of the school from a pamphlet. She wrote him twice before receiving a cordial reply. “He’s conceited after all,” she told Elisabeth.

  “Why do you say that? Let me see his letter.”

  Frances handed it over with a knowing look. Ben had written, “Forgive me if I can’t immediately put a face to the name, Francine. I met so many wonderful kids at your church. I agree it was a refreshing time in the Lord, and thanks for your kind comments about my role in the program. God’s best to you. Warmly in Christ, Benjamin P.”

  “He doesn’t sound conceited at all,” Elisabeth said. “He seems perfectly wonderful.”

  “He didn’t even remember me!”

  “Should he have, Frances?”

  “We shook hands after the service one night, and I told him I might come to his school.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t propose on the spot.”

  “That’s not funny, Elisabeth. He should have remembered. I told him my name.”

  “We all did.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The pain of the loss of her father was never far from Elisabeth. She busied herself in church work, playing the piano, singing in the choir, teaching a Sunday school class—one year young girls, the next young boys. She joined the junior missionary society and took her turn writing to missionaries, though she soon found herself the only young person who stuck with that.