A Story that Nobody Would Believe

In the weeks following her father’s passing, Kathleen discovered that volunteering at the Richmond Hills Nursing Home was the only thing that kept her getting out of bed in the morning. Her father had been a resident there leading up to his death, and she regretted that she hadn’t made time to see him more frequently. As a volunteer, she had the chance to help other elderly people feel less isolated in the facility, and doing so enabled her to maintain a sense of connection to her father. Buried in debt from his funeral expenses, and recently let go from her job amidst a flurry of lay-offs at the factory, Kathleen stayed up most nights worrying about how she would make ends meet as a single mother with dwindling savings. The only time she felt peace was when, after dropping her daughter off at school every day, she turned into the parking lot of the nursing home to start her volunteer shift. She knew she would have to spend most of the afternoon searching for a new job, but at least for a short period in the morning she could forget everything that weighed on her.

It wasn’t a Hallmark card scenario when she walked into the home. Kathleen wasn’t greeted by smiling residents who couldn’t wait to spend time with her. She possessed no illusions that her presence there would improve the life of the man in the wheelchair who sat by the common room window all day, no longer able to speak, or the woman with advanced dementia who stood at the door of her room and shouted unintelligible phrases at anyone passing by. But she had come to see that her visits meant a great deal to one of the nursing home residents, and that was enough for her.

“Good morning, Kathleen. How’s life on the outside?” Mrs. Abernathy always greeted her the same way.

Their friendship was an unlikely one, given that Mrs. Abernathy had driven off the staff and other residents with her cantankerous behavior. Kathleen hadn’t had much luck with her either until she asked, in a last effort to strike up some shred of civil conversation, “do you have any children?” The woman’s entire bearing had changed when Kathleen raised that particular question.

Soon Kathleen found herself listening for an hour to stories about Mrs. Abernathy’s son, David, and the stories continued day after day. Kathleen ended up sharing her own stories in return, memories of her father, and Mrs. Abernathy never ran out of questions to ask about him. They discovered a strange symmetry in each other, a mother talking endlessly about her cherished son and a daughter talking endlessly about her cherished father, each of them hoping words might somehow make the absent loved one materialize. The despair Kathleen felt in knowing that she could never again see her father faded when Mrs. Abernathy’s stories about David, told with so much pride, filled the air.

He was an Eagle Scout as a boy. A three-sport athlete in high school. A valedictorian. An Ivy League graduate. A Fulbright Scholar. Top of his class in law school. Recently married to a beautiful young women he met while clerking for a prestigious law firm.

“He’s such a good son,” she said over and over. “He’s planning to visit next week. You’ll get to meet him.”

But next week always arrived without a visit from David, with Mrs. Abernathy emphasizing how busy he was and how he had promised her that he would be coming soon. Kathleen was glad that Mrs. Abernathy was not alone in the world, unlike so many of the residents at the home who had no family. Talking about David lit up Mrs. Abernathy from within. Yet Kathleen also felt a growing sense of frustration at David for putting off his visits. She knew firsthand how overwhelming life could become, how easy it had been to put her father on the backburner during busy times, and it pained her to remember every instance in which she hadn’t found the spare hours to come see him. She knew that David would feel the same way if he lost too many opportunities to spend time with his mother.

One morning, Mrs. Abernathy took a small black moleskin notebook out of her bedside table drawer.

“I’ve written down David’s phone number in here,” she said. “If anything happens to me, please call him and let him know. I’d like him to hear the news from a friend rather than just from some doctor or nurse.” She put back the notebook and closed the drawer.

Kathleen had so many questions, but she could sense Mrs. Abernathy signaling, as she shut the drawer, that the subject would be discussed no further. While Mrs. Abernathy launched into a long story about one of David’s boyhood feats on the soccer field, Kathleen wondered: Had Mrs. Abernathy received poor news about her health, giving her a reason to worry? Did she not have any friends other than Kathleen, someone else who might notify her son if something did happen to her? Was Mrs. Abernathy losing hope that David’s long-awaited visit would ever actually occur? Kathleen wanted to snatch the notebook from the drawer, tear out David’s phone number, ring him up, and give him a good talking-to about neglecting to visit his mother. But she knew it wasn’t her place to interfere, so she resisted the urge.

When Kathleen walked into Mrs. Abernathy’s room to find an empty bed, a few days later, she felt her heart collapsing inward. As a nursing home aid explained what happened—she had been sick for a while, rushed to the hospital last night, didn’t make its—Kathleen’s mind went immediately to the moleskin notebook in the drawer.

“Has her son been informed yet?” she asked the aid.

“I have to go check on that,” he said. As he left the room to find an answer to her question, she pulled the notebook out of the drawer and opened it: David, 618-453-0999

Kathleen wondered if she should wait and call him later, when she was back at home with more opportunity for an in-depth conversation. She didn’t have all of the details yet, and she hadn’t even known of Mrs. Abernathy’s illness. It would surely be best to hold off and call him once she knew more. Yet she couldn’t stop her fingers from dialing the number on her cell phone right then and there, as she stood next to his mother’s empty bed.

“Hello. You’ve reached Murray and Bronstein Law,” a man answered.

“I’m looking for David. His mother Linda Abernathy gave me this number for him. She did mention he’s a lawyer, so maybe he works at your firm?”

“We don’t have anyone named David working here. Is your name Kathleen Roswell?”

“Yes,” she answered, taken aback. “How do you know who I am?”

“We’ve been expecting your call. Linda mentioned that you would ask for someone named David. This is going to take a few minutes to explain…”

As Kathleen tried to make sense of what was happening, the aid walked back into the room.

“Sorry to interrupt your call, ma’am. I just wanted to let you know that I looked into your question. Mrs. Abernathy’s son wasn’t informed of her passing because she doesn’t actually have a son. She has no living family.”

Over the next several weeks, whenever Kathleen replayed the events in her mind—the death of Mrs. Abernathy, the phone call to the number in the moleskin notebook, the lawyer explaining that she was the beneficiary on Mrs. Abernathy’s $20,000 savings account, the discovery that Mrs. Abernathy never had a son—all she could think was: This is a story that nobody would believe.

Kathleen now kept the moleskin notebook in her own bedside drawer. She loved how the smooth blank cover suggested countless possibilities for what one might find inside. She thought about how Mrs. Abernathy had conjured enough tales about her son, a man who never existed, to fill forty moleskin notebooks, a way to help her fight the loneliness that stared her down day after day in the nursing home. Mrs. Abernathy wanted to believe that she had a son who loved her and who was coming to visit her, just as Kathleen wanted to believe that volunteering at the nursing home could somehow make up for the times she prioritized other activities above visiting her father. The gift that Mrs. Abernathy had given her, Kathleen understood, was greater than money. Yes, Kathleen could now cover her father’s funeral debts, and she could afford to keep herself and her daughter afloat while continuing to look for work. More than that, though, Mrs. Abernathy had shown her how believing in stories, whether real or imagined, can sustain people through even the most trying situations. The moleskin’s pages, except for the one on which Mrs. Abernathy had written the name and phone number, were still blank. Kathleen knew that she would be filling those pages for the rest of her life.