However, after spending all that money, she really didn’t have much to smile about or that many people to smile at. She basically just went to the supermarket and back. And the girls at the checkout counter certainly never noticed her smile makeover. They hardly ever looked up.
Another problem was that all of her life, most of her good friends had been much older than she was. She had read that this was common in only children. But now, most of her friends had passed away.
They say that you should make friends with younger people, and there were a few of Linda’s old school friends still in town who would say hello to her if she ran into them, but most of them had moved away years ago. She blamed the Internet. Now that people could work at home, they ran off to other places to live. Some had even moved to other countries like Puerto Rico or Costa Rica or some place called Palo Alto.
Her daughter, Linda, had moved to Seattle, and she almost never called anymore. She preferred texting. But Norma needed to hear the sound of her voice. She really couldn’t tell how she was doing by an impersonal text. Besides, she didn’t really know how to text. She had never been very good at typing. Macky tried to teach her, but she just couldn’t get the hang of it, and she felt so stupid and out of date.
Her six-year-old granddaughter already had a Facebook account. Even Aunt Elner had learned to use a smartphone. Elner and Linda used to text and email back and forth with each other all the time. Norma was sure she must be the only person in America who didn’t have an email address. A few of her old friends she used to keep up with never called anymore. Nobody wanted to talk on the phone. Even customer service was done over the Internet now, and if, by chance, you were lucky enough to speak to a live person, they were usually in India, and she couldn’t understand them.
She was feeling so lonesome. Lonesome for the sound of old, familiar voices. Lonesome for people to talk to about the good ol’ days, to laugh with and sometimes cry with.
Norma had never dreamed that one day, most of her friends would be gone or that she would fall asleep sitting in front of the television set or that she and Macky would sometimes go to bed before nine. Or that she and Macky would reach an age when they were actually talking about moving to a retirement community, looking at brochures showing good-looking, well-dressed gray-haired couples standing around laughing and drinking wine.
“But what can you do?” she thought. You can’t push a rewind button and rewind yourself back to when you were young. All you can do is try to grow old as gracefully as you can, keep your mind active, and try not to fall down. Since she had been wearing progressive lenses, she had fallen down the front stairs, and then she had fallen going up the stairs.
And her memory wasn’t what it used to be. Last week, she’d gone to the police station and reported to Ralph Childress that her purse had been stolen. Later that afternoon, she had found it in her own refrigerator.
When Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Kidd, both automobile accident victims, showed up at Still Meadows, they said that it hadn’t been a drunk driver that caused it. They had slowed down to avoid hitting a dog, and some teenage kid who was texting while driving careened right toward them.
The next day, Tiffany Ann Smith, the teenage driver, came up as well, and someone made the mistake of asking her how it had happened.
“Oh, well…like, uh…I was driving out to meet my girlfriends? At the mall, you know? And I was late? And like…uh…I, uh…looked down just for like…uh, a second? To like see, uh…like, uh, if it was them texting me? And like…uh…it said like, ‘Where R U?’ And, uh, I went to text them back? And I hit, like, this car? And…I mean, like…I don’t…like, uh, know whose fault it was…or anything? You know? Like…I mean…like, I don’t think…like, it’s really fair? You know, like, to blame me. Like…those people in front of me, like, uh, shouldn’t have stopped. Like, it wasn’t a stop sign or anything. Like…uh…how was I supposed to know that there was, like, this dog in the road?”
While Tiffany continued explaining the long and painful saga of how she came to be at Still Meadows at such an early age, Mrs. Carroll in plot 298, a literature major who cared deeply about English language, murmured to her neighbor, “I feel sorry for the young lady, but dear God, if she says ‘like’ one more time, I may scream.”
As it turned out, Gene Nordstrom wasn’t the only soldier at Still Meadows to receive a medal.
On Memorial Day 2014, Ada Goodnight looked up, and there stood Fritzi Jurdabralinski and Bea Wallace, two of the women she had served with in the WASPs during World War II. She was stunned. She had not seen them in over thirty years, since her last WASP reunion. What in the world were they doing in Elmwood Springs? And why were her nieces and the mayor with them? And a color guard and Cathy Calvert from the newspaper? Hell, there was a whole crowd gathered behind them.
Fritzi spoke first. “Well, Ada, it took a hell of a long time, but we brought you a little something.” She then took it out of a small box and held it up. “It’s the Congressional Medal of Honor. Congratulations, pal.”
Ada was in a little bit of a shock over the whole thing. She said, “I didn’t think anybody would have even remembered us, much less given us a medal.”
“Well, Ada,” said Verbena, “like I always say, it may take a while, but everybody gets what they deserve eventually.”
—
THAT AFTERNOON, THE GROUP was discussing who their favorite American heroes were and why. Gene said, “I think you would have to start with the men who wrote the Constitution. Without them, there would be no America.”
Lucille Beemer said, “Excellent. Elner, who are your heroes?”
Elner thought about it and then said, “Well, I would say that after Jesus Christ, it would have to be Thomas Edison and Walt Disney.”
Ida jumped in. “We are only naming important Americans, Elner. Jesus was not an American.”
“Oh…well, then, Thomas Edison and Walt Disney.”
“I agree with Mrs. Shimfissle,” said Mr. Bell. “I didn’t realize how famous Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck were until I went to Russia. I looked in the window of this shop, and there was a little statue of Mickey Mouse. Old Mickey Mouse made it all the way behind the Iron Curtain.”
Soon everybody started jumping in with their favorites.
“How about Babe Ruth?”
“I say Abner Doubleday.”
“Who?”
“He invented baseball.”
“Oh.”
“Franklin Roosevelt. He kept us all together during the Depression.”
“Harry Truman. He put a stop to the war.”
“Harvey Firestone gave us tires,” said Luther Griggs.
“Will Rogers and Bob Hope. They made us laugh.”
“Don’t forget Andrew Carnegie. He gave us free libraries.”
One of the younger boys called out, “Roy Rogers and Gene Autry!”
“J. Edgar Hoover,” said another.