Pursuing Happiness

Mary Lou Peters Schram

Description

Although the pursuit of happiness is one of our inalienable rights, nowhere is it guaranteed that we will catch it. Mary Lou Peters Schram's witty novel chronicles the lives of four women, all of a "certain age," all residents of Shady Acres, an adult community in California's wine country, as each pursues her own particular vision of happiness.

Sujets

• Fiction
• Novel

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 29 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781728333083
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

MARY LOU PETERS SCHRAM
Pursuing Happiness
...one more time
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: [phone]
 
 
 
 
 
 
© 2022 Mary Lou Peters Schram. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
Published by AuthorHouse   07/27/2022
 
ISBN: 978-1-7283-3309-0 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-7283-3307-6 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-7283-3308-3 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019917331
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
Contents
Previous Novels by Mary Lou Peters Schram
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
P revious N ovels by M ary L ou P eter s S chram
“Stranger in the Dark” - Berkeley Books (now out of print)
“KLIK” - iUniverse, 2004
“Taddy and Her Husbands” - iUniverse, 2007
 
For lovely Ingrid
who was with us too short a time
C hapter O ne
Marion told Bridget this. Later on, when she could talk about it.
When it happened, she hardly knew what to do. One moment she was standing staring down at him as his color slowly faded. The next she was at the nurse’s station signing something, maybe the bill. Almost the very next moment she was standing at the front entrance, outside the double doors that ‘whooshed’ importantly when anyone entered behind her. She was alone. It had all been so sudden she hadn’t had time to call anyone to join her there.
She had driven here, she knew that, but couldn’t remember where she had parked her car. After some minutes, she turned and went back inside and asked to use the phone on the Volunteers’ desk.
The sign overhead said ‘INFORMATION’, but that was a misnomer. Even when someone came to the desk with a question, the volunteers, a bevy of pigeons in white hair and pink uniforms, were usually too busy talking to each other to give out any answers.
They hardly looked at Marion. They gestured toward the phone and went back to their twitter.
Marion called Alice, her sister. She apologized because Alice was at work, and gave her the news. Alice’s voice came over the phone in a screech of alarm.
“Of course, I’ll come, but I don’t know how soon.” She would meet Marion at the house, as soon as she could get someone to relieve her. She couldn’t just leave Dr. Felder with no one to help him.
“Why did he go and do that? Isn’t that just like Jeb? I’ll get there as soon as I can, but it may not be till afternoon.”
Marion wondered what she was supposed to do till then. She guessed that she was becoming invisible. She went back outside and walked up and down the parking lot till she found her car.
She drove the old Tercel home and put it in the garage beside Jeb’s Navigator. How would she deal with two cars? The sun was shining but inside the house was cold. They had left at 4 a.m. without turning on the heat. She was cold and limp, feeling as if she hadn’t enough force to even punch the light switch.
“It’s not fair,” she said out loud.
She wandered through her house, touching objects, trying to banish their strangeness, bring back their familiarity. Jeb’s blue plaid shirt was hanging on a kitchen chair. He had had it on the day before and she had never put it away. She picked it up and then put it down again. The coffee was still plugged in. When they got up at Jeb’s insistence that something was wrong, she had made the coffee automatically, then they had left for the hospital without drinking any.
At the nurse’s station, they had asked her what funeral home did she want to use and could they do an autopsy? She had never thought about those things, had no opinions, was afraid to say yes or no. Jeb had always made the decisions.
She unplugged the coffee, having a struggle to get the plug out of the socket. Nothing was going to be like it had been or act as it should.
She leaned against the patio doors and looked out. Leaning there, her forehead against the cool glass, she was nearly felled with loneliness. To have only herself in the house didn’t give it enough energy to operate. She could visualize lights going out and clocks quitting, all because there was only her there. She had a moment of cold anger. He had promised her more than this. How did he think she was going to cope?
She wanted to hear his voice. It might still be on the answering machine. He left messages for her from time to time, calling on his cell phone, which he had no other purpose for since he retired, saying he was going to be late or wanting to know what to buy at the store. She went to the telephone alcove and pressed the button for messages.
The machine flew into action, rewound, then beeped and the spectral voice said ‘no messages’. Jeb, of course, had erased the messages. She went back to the glass doors, looking at the deep green lawn behind the house. Surely he was right out there – or else in the garage - and would come through those doors in a minute. She listened for him but could hear nothing except the distant sound of a phone ringing in the house next door.
Her elbows were cold. Her head ached. Deep inside, she felt hollow, as if she had caved in so there was nothing inside her to keep her back bone and chest apart. That feeling of hollowness frightened her and only minutes later, a sob came that was so deep she bent over double with it.
Oh God, this couldn’t be happening.
When Alice finally arrived at something after four, she rang the bell then bustled in without waiting for a response. She was flurried, her hair tossed around this way and that. Her rubber-soled shoes squeaked as she walked. Finally she got the box of tissues out of the downstairs lavatory and took them and lay down on the living room couch and just kept crying. There seemed to be nothing else she could do. Nothing would change anything anyway, the future was closed off, everything had ended right here.
“I couldn’t get away. I’m so sorry. We had a ton of patients and I couldn’t get anybody to come in.”
Marion sat up on the couch where she had been dozing and Alice sat down beside her and they embraced awkwardly, their full bosoms butting. Embraces didn’t come easily to them, and Alice was clearly scared of Marion’s condition, leaning back to look at her critically.
“You look a sight. Did you faint?”
“I don’t know.”
“How could he die? He wasn’t even sick.”
“I don’t know. Heart, I guess.”
“Did you eat anything?”
“No.”
Alice went to look in the refrigerator. “There’s not much here.”
“I don’t want anything.”
“You have to eat.”
“Not now.”
Alice fished a pillbox from her purse and extracted a pill. Without explaining it, she got a glass of water and gave it to Marion who obediently swallowed it.
Alice was taking charge which is what Marion had been waiting for all these hours. Alice was good at that and now that her children were grown, she hardly ever had a crisis to get her teeth into.
“Go to bed.”
“Should I really?”
“Yes.” Alice was an RN and therefore to be obeyed. Marion climbed the stairs, already convinced that she would sleep.
*               *               *
The rest, Bridget knew from her own experience. Right away Alice had sat down and started calling Marion and Jeb’s three children as well as Marion and Alice’s two brothers, and a couple of Marion’s friends who lived nearby, including Bridget.
It was not an easy job. The same things had to be said over and over, at least twice to each person she talked to. People had trouble taking it in all at once. “No, nobody knows what was wrong with him. It just came on suddenly. No, no funeral arrangements have been made yet. Yes, Marion seems to be bearing up but is lying down right now.”
Bridget arrived first. She was wearing orange silk, not the best choice for the occasion, but she hadn’t wanted to waste time changing.
Alice was much relieved to have someone to share her burden with.
“Do you think I should call the hospital? I feel like an idiot with no more information than this.”
“Ask Marion,” Bridget said.
Alice thought that was a good idea; she went upstairs to get better instructions but found Marion fast asleep.
When she came down, she said to Bridget, “I never liked him. I wish she hadn’t married him. He had no imagination at all and he was a very fussy eater. Now see how it’s ended. They’re both only sixty five; they should have had some retirement years.”
Bridget nodded, taking off her jacket. “I didn’t really know him but Marion always seemed happy enough. And the children turn