the same fog, maybe it will be time to reconsider.
But this is my blog, and for right now, I’m changing the subject.
When I was in high school, finances in our family were very tight-and I do mean
But then a miracle happened. Someone I didn’t even know offered me a scholarship-an unexpected scholarship, one I hadn’t heard of much less applied for. And that scholarship made all the difference.
When my friends went on to college that fall, so did I.
This morning I received an invitation to tea from the daughter of the woman who gave me that helping hand so long ago. And I’m going. This afternoon. As soon as I finish posting this, I’m going to shower and put on my makeup. I’ll dress up in my Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and go there to say a much deserved thank you to someone whose unsolicited kindness opened up a world of opportunity for me.
I’m hoping that while I’m out there counting my blessings, maybe I’ll find that some of the clouds that have been obscuring my view of the sky come complete with silver linings.
A.M
Ali was out of the shower, dressed, and mostly made up when the doorbell rang again. This time Kip Hogan, his customary Diamondback baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, stood waiting outside her front door. Beside him, resting on a four-wheeled dolly and swathed in a layer of quilted gray moving blankets, stood Ali’s fully restored bird’s-eye maple credenza.
“Hi, there,” Ali said, opening the door. “Come on in.”
“Afternoon, ma’am,” he returned, lifting the brim of his cap. “Sorry I couldn’t get here earlier. Something came up. Where do you want this?”
“Right here,” Ali told him, pointing. “In the entry. Are you sure you can move it by yourself? Chris will be home from school in a little while. I’m sure he’d be glad to help.”
Christopher, Ali’s son and current roommate, was a recent UCLA graduate and a first-year teacher at Sedona High School.
“No need, ma’am,” Kip told her. “I can handle it just fine on my own.”
Ali moved back out of the way and made room for Kip to bring the credenza inside. Now he was a familiar and far less scary character than he had been months earlier when Ali’s father had first brought the man home.
In the aftermath of one of the year’s final snowstorms, Ali’s father, Bob Larson, had taken his grandson snowboarding. While grandstanding for Chris, Bob had attempted a flawed turn that had resulted in a terrible spill. Bob’s injuries had been serious enough that he had been thrown into the hospital briefly and then confined to a wheelchair on a temporary basis. Needing help with the most basic of tasks and loathe to listen to Ali’s mother’s not undeserved blitz of “I told you so’s,” Bob had found Kip Hogan.
Ali had no idea how long Kip Hogan had been living rough in a snowbound homeless encampment up on the Mogollon Rim before Bob Larson dragged him into the Sugarloaf Cafe for all to see. Ali and her mother were accustomed to the fact that Bob Larson brought home various human “projects” on occasion. At first glance, Kip had definitely looked the part. He had been gaunt and grimy, unshaven and taciturn. Ali’s initial expectation had been that he’d eat a square meal or two and then be on his way. That was what had happened to any number of Bob Larson’s new friends, but Kip had defied the odds. Ali’s father had been off the injured list for months now, but Kip had stayed on, staying clean and sober. He had made himself indispensable, helping Ali’s parents with chores around both the house and the restaurant.
Months of eating decent food had put flesh on the man’s scrawny frame. Still, Ali was surprised to see Kip was strong enough to singlehandedly wrestle the credenza off the dolly and move it into place. When he finished, he stood back and admired his handiwork. Then, frowning, he removed a hankie from his pocket and used it to wipe a speck of invisible dust off the refinished top. After stuffing the hankie back in his pocket, he ran a single finger along the smooth grain of the wood.
“Thank you so much,” Ali said admiringly. “It’s absolutely beautiful.”
Kip looked at her and grinned. In all the time Ali had known the man, this was the first occasion she ever remembered seeing his face with an expression even vaguely approximating a smile. And that’s when she realized what was so different about him on this particular day. Kip’s nose still looked like it had been broken half a dozen different times in as many directions, but the gaps where teeth had been missing had now been filled by a partial plate. He looked years younger-and almost civilized.
“Never tried my hand at this kind of work before,” he said, self-consciously erasing the unaccustomed grin. “I couldn’t have done it if your dad hadn’t showed me how.”
“You’re right,” Ali agreed. “Dad’s a good teacher, but I know you’re the one who did all the work, and I’m so grateful.”
Nodding, Kip picked up the dolly. “You’re welcome,” he said. “I’d best get going.”
Ali watched while he loaded the dolly back into Bob Larson’s beloved 1970s vintage Bronco. As Kip drove away, Ali remembered her father mentioning that someone he knew up in Flagstaff was thinking about starting a low-cost dental clinic. While Kip had been busy repairing the water damage to Ali’s credenza, Bob Larson had been busy repairing Kip.
Ali’s scholarship from Anna Lee Ashcroft had seemed to her like a bolt out of the blue. Now she wondered if maybe it hadn’t been an example of karma in action. Bob Larson had spent a lifetime evening the score for that unexpected scholarship with his own countless random acts of kindness to people less fortunate than he.
With her blond hair freshly blow-dried and with a coat of properly applied makeup on her face, Ali left her house half an hour later to drive to Arabella’s place on Manzanita Hills Road. The sky overhead seemed bluer and the rock-lined canyons redder than she remembered seeing them in months. Maybe the curtain of gray that surrounded her was starting to lift just a little.
Ali drove uptown and then on up into what had been one of Sedona’s pioneering subdivisions, dating from the early 1950s. In the intervening years since her last visit, lots of houses had sprouted on the winding streets and cul-de-sacs on the lower part of the hillside. Those various homes, nice though they were, somehow betrayed their dated heydays like so many beads on a retrospective architectural necklace. But the Ashcroft place, situated at the top of the ridge and overlooking them all, was by far the oldest and still the undisputed top of the heap.
Ali saw the first small differences almost at once. The paved surface of the narrow, steep drive had once been a ribbon of pristinely smooth blacktop. Now the pavement was scarred with numerous webs of patched cracks and pockmarked with all sizes of potholes.
She pulled into the circular driveway at the top of the hill and gazed out at Arabella Ashcroft’s unparalleled view. As a high school senior, Ali had been dazzled by the low-slung house with its massive windows set in deep, shady overhangs. She hadn’t been experienced enough back then to recognize the stylish home’s origins. Now she did. Clearly the Ashcroft place was a variation on a Frank Lloyd Wright theme-a Frank Lloyd Wright copycat if not the real thing.
In Ali’s memory the place had loomed large so as to seem almost palatial. Compared to where her parents lived in a humble two-bedroom apartment behind the restaurant, the Ashcroft place was still large and lush. What had really changed was Ali’s own perspective. She had spent almost a decade living in the oversize grandeur of Paul Grayson’s Beverly Hills mansion, in a place where appearances always outgunned substance. It was that experience that accounted for the startling reduction of Anna Lee Ashcroft’s once seemingly massive house.
There was still an undisputed air of quality about the place, but there were also signs of slippage. Some of the paint in the window surrounds was chipped and flaking. A few of the red roof tiles had evidently come to grief. The replacements didn’t quite match the color of the original, giving the roof a somewhat spotty, freckled look.
The aged wisteria Ali remembered still covered the wide front porch, helping to shade it from the afternoon sun. Now, though, it wasn’t blooming. Instead, its gnarled limbs were bare and gray in the high desert’s January chill.
