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Kelton House
Billie Louise Jones
Kelton House was a home for old folks who needed watching over.
On a quiet, leafy old street in Hot Springs, Arkansas, it was a turn of the century house, white with green shutters and shingles, a wrap around porch, a side wing that had been a conservatory and ball room, and ramps convenient to walkers and canes.
Eliza Wilkins parked her older model LeSabre in the gravel lot in back and walked around the azaleas in the side yard to the front door, which had an oval leaded glass inset and a burglar bar screen.
She had a good fiftyish figure and glossy platinum hair.
She always wore a skirt, because wives of fundamentalist preachers did not wear pants, male attire.
She rang the buzzer and saw Emma Kelton coming down the hall to unlock the door.
Emma, who had been a geriatric nurse, had started the home, for ambulatory old folks; her family lived upstairs.
Emma was a stocky woman with a broad, pleasant face and large, capable hands.
“I thought I’d drop in and take Mama to CiCi’s for pizza.”
She sniffed the fragrance of chicken, celery, and sage in the hall.
“This smells so good she might want to stay here for lunch.”
Eliza and Emma walked into the kitchen, where Emma’s daughter had a big pot of chicken and dumplings simmering on the stove and latticed apple pies cooling on the counter.
Jessie Kelton, a lean woman with curly hair, was a nutritionist who planned and cooked the meals.
She heard Eliza’s remark and laughed.
“Not Miz Marie!
You know she loves pizza more than anything.”
“Jessie fixed pizza last night,” Emma said.
“Miz Marie talked Miz Cherisse out of her share.
I had to make her give it back!”
The three women chuckled affectionately.
Eliza could visualize the scene.
While talking easily, Eliza scanned the surroundings – the impeccable kitchen and the dining room where meals were served family style.
Two men were already at their places, napkins tucked under their chins.
The housekeeping at Kelton House was always flawless, as Eliza knew because she dropped by at different times every day.
The big old-style rooms had been partitioned into rooms for two or three people.
Marie Rayburn had been delighted with the parquet floor and tall, arched windows in her room, once part of the ballroom.
That partly resigned her to being put in a home:
she could think of it as an elegant residence for select company.
Emma touched Eliza’s arm in the hall.
Her face looked troubled.
“Miz Marie is asking for Mr. Richard again.
She wants to know when he’s coming to get her.”
“You just must tell her – gently – that Daddy is dead.
Otherwise, she’ll think he left her.”
Left her again, Eliza did not say.
There had been a time when he did leave her; he came back; but abandonment was still a great fear with her.
“And that would be awful.”
“I know.
But she’s so pitiful....”
Eliza nodded.
She could imagine.
There had been a time, many years back, when Mama had a nervous breakdown and just knew they were coming to get her.
Daddy hugged her and declared that he wouldn’t let them get her.
That calmed her down enough for Richard and Eliza to get her to the Texas State Hospital in Terrell.
But he had confirmed her fantasies.
They had a hard time getting her over that one.
Marie Daniels, either sulking or sad, curled on her narrow bed with her face to the wall.
“Miz Marie, look who’s come,” Emma called.
“Want to go to CiCi’s, Mama?”
“Pizza!”
She sat up.
A bright smile broke through.
She was a petite woman with a fresh permanent in her grey hair.
Emma had an arrangement with a local beauty parlor and barber to keep the residents groomed.
She wore a bright pink and purple striped muumuu.
She darted to the mirror to put on a pillbox hat and little white gloves.
She smoothed her muumuu.
She revolved for Eliza’s inspection.
“Do I look all right to go out?”
“You need a touch of pink lipstick,” Eliza suggested, because she knew her mother loved to fuss over her appearance and have Eliza notice.
Marie put on the lipstick and went out with Eliza, her eyes shining in anticipation.
Tomatoes and garlic and oregano seasoned the air and sharpened appetites.
Eliza and Marie pushed trays down the buffet line.
“Don’t take too much, Mama – it’ll get cold.
You can come back for more.”
Marie’s pink lips pouted, and she made a hand gesture like a pinch on the air.
But she did as she was told.
Eliza settled her mother in a booth and brought cold drinks from the self-serve fountain.
Marie was already tucked into a pepperoni slice, her fingers and chin greasy; but her gloves and purse were neatly placed to the side.
Sending up a silent grace, Eliza slaked her own hunger with a spinach slice.
She held up a pack of new pictures of her granddaughter.
“I’ll show them to you one by one, Mama.
Your hands are greasy.”
Marie sniffed indignantly and slipped her greasy fingers into her little white gloves and took the pictures.
She commented delightedly on each picture.
She adored her greats.
She clouded over and whimpered, “Honey, why can’t I go back home with you?”
“Mama, I can’t leave you alone all day.
I’ve got to work.
And there are all the things a preacher’s wife has to do.”
Small Independent Baptist churches did not make money.
Most of the preachers had to work weekday jobs, while still doing their pastoral duties.
Sam Wilkins managed a motel, and Eliza worked in the office.
With all the calls for visitation and soul-winning, Eliza could not stay home.
Marie could not bear being by herself.
Most nursing homes were too impersonal and much too expensive.
Eliza did not know what she was going to do.
She felt desperate, but then Kelton House opened.
Not exactly a nursing home, more of a boarding house, the rate was the amount of Marie’s Social Security check; and she only needed one inexpensive prescription that Eliza could pay for.
Eliza believed Kelton House was a literal answer to prayer.
“Honey, when is your daddy coming to get me?”
“Mama, Daddy is dead.
He died three years ago.
Don’t you remember picking out the headstone yourself?
Making sure there weren’t any flowers carved on it ‘cause he was allergic.”
Marie looked uncertain.
“What’s going on in Kelton House now?
Tell me all about - ”
Eliza deflected her mother into relaying all the gossip about what “those crazy old people” were doing now.
When Eliza got her mother back to her room in Kelton House, Marie sat on the bed with her toes turned in and her hands clasped between her knees.
She bent her head and looked up under bangs, a woebegone child.
“Honey, Richard is dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes, Mama.
Three years.”
“Did he suffer?”
“No, Mama.
He had a heart attack and never regained consciousness.
It was very quick.”
“That’s a blessing.”
“Amen.”
Before she left, Eliza went around and spoke to all the residents she saw.
She knew them, and by now they knew her.
She was aware that Marie had gone into the living room and bragged that her daughter had taken her out to eat pizza.
Emma went out on the porch with Eliza.
“You do them good – bringing cheer.”
“I’m happy to do it.
And you’ve been an answer to my prayers, and you’ll always be in my prayers.”
Eliza drove back to the motel.
Her mother coasted up and down the same emotions, the same questions then acceptance, every day.
It would be the same tomorrow.
Eliza knew this.
