When Mockingbirds Sing (9781401688233)

by Coffey, Billy

  “I think it’s best if you just go, Reverend,” Tom said.

  “You can’t be kickin’ the preacher out,” Barney said. “Reggie came down here special, Tom. Saturday is his gettin’-ready-for-preachin’ time. You can’t blame a preacher for spreadin’ the Lord around.”

  Tom said nothing.

  “It’s okay, Barney,” Reggie said. “I’ll be going. Marshall, Mary, Allie, I’ll see y’all tomorrow. Barney, I’ll see you this evening?”

  Barney nodded. “Sure thing, Reg.”

  Reggie bent his head around Tom and said, “I love you, Mabel.” Then, to Leah, “Happy birthday again, little Miss Norcross.”

  “Thuh-hank you, Ruh-Reverend,” Leah mumbled. She still worked on her thumb. A nervous habit, Reggie thought, just as that stutter must be. If she was doing all that on the outside, how must her insides be? No wonder the poor child was conjuring up people to talk to.

  “Ellen, nice to meet you. Tom, if you should change your mind—”

  “Won’t happen,” the doctor said.

  “God can reach anyone, Tom. Seen it myself.”

  “I’ll have nothing to do with your God, Reggie, and I won’t have such talk spoken in my house.”

  The silence that followed was broken only by Allie, who offered a low, “Oh Emm Gee.”

  Reggie turned to leave, thankful that the others attending the party had been too busy talking and playing to bear witness to the rudeness of what had just happened. He made his way back through the crowd, pausing to say hello and goodbye, then climbed into his truck. He sat there for a long while, replaying the scene over and over in his mind to understand where things had gone wrong. By the time Reggie reached the end of the winding lane, he was sure of two things. One was that he would have to pray for the family from Away. The other was that they were trouble.

  5

  The heat finally got the better of everyone’s curiosity around noon. By one thirty, the Celebration Time men had returned to pick up what they’d dropped off. They’d even disposed of the trash—evidently a hidden perk of the Deluxe Princess Birthday Package. By three, the yellow Victorian’s backyard had returned to its formerly serene and empty state. And by four, Leah had still not come out of her room and Ellen had still not spoken to Tom.

  He told himself both were understandable. The day had simply been too much for Leah. Ellen had to all but hold her in place while the crowd sang “Happy Birthday,” after which Leah and her new friend had escaped back to the hill. If there was one bright spot to the party, Tom thought it was Allie. And if there was one dark spot, it had been meeting the good Reverend Goggins. That little kerfuffle had not only almost ruined the party, it had also frightened Leah and shattered the fragile truce between him and Ellen.

  The worst part was that they couldn’t know why he’d reacted with such anger. Ellen couldn’t read the thick folder marked GLADWELL, MEAGAN that now lay open in his hands. Leah wouldn’t understand what it meant if she did. Tom had refashioned the small opening between his life at home and his life at work such that only he could fit through. That was the only way he could keep his daughter blissfully ignorant of the hardness of the world for as long as possible, and the only way to ensure that his wife would not nearly ruin his career again.

  He closed the file and set it on his desk. The small office just off the living room wasn’t much—aside from the roll top, there was a leather love seat, a cherry bookcase stocked with psychology books, one silk plant, and a file cabinet—but it was enough for Ellen to refer to it as Tom’s Home Away from Home. That most times she said those words in a slightly higher octave than usual was proof of one of life’s great ironies—the old wounds were the ones that seldom healed, while the fresh ones tended to scab over quickly. He rose from the chair, closed his desk, and decided it was time to apologize. He’d start with Leah. Not just because it had been her day and her party, but also because her forgiveness would come easier.

  Ellen was in the kitchen. What remained of Leah’s party had been scrubbed, cleaned, and put away. A bottle of wine rested on the center island beside a half-empty glass—Ellen’s way of dealing with most things, the strange and the stressful among them. Though it had gone unspoken, Tom knew the party had meant just as much to his wife as it had to his daughter. Ellen was the kind of person who needed to be liked, would go to any lengths necessary to ensure acceptance. He thought of that as she took another sip, and he thought of how much things had changed around them and how little had changed between them. Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” echoed through the radio on the counter. Ellen took a sip and looked at Tom, took another sip. Strands of blond hair spilled over her left ear. Her hand moved to the crystal that hung from her neck. The sapphire in her eyes had dulled to a powder blue and was sadder but no less appealing. Tom held up one finger—hold on to that feelin’, the expression said—and continued down the hallway to the parlor that was now Leah’s bedroom. The door was cracked open. He knocked once and entered.

  Leah stood in the far corner of the room, the easel between her and Tom. She wore what was once the white apron Ellen used for cooking. Now it was artist’s attire, coated with splatters of paint. Bits of green and gray and white peppered her face and hair. Oversized dollops of yellow puddled on a plastic drop cloth from the garage. Leah whipped the fat tip of a slender brush in short, purposeful strokes so powerful that they wobbled the easel. Her eyes were trance-like, her breaths shallow.

  “Whatcha doing, Leah-boo?”

  “Hey, Puh-Pops.” Her eyes never left the page. “I’m m-making a thank-you for Mr. Buh-Barney. Be done in a s-second.”

  Tom sat on the edge of the canopy bed and smiled. “It’s awfully nice of you to do that for Barney. It was a good idea.”

  “It is g-good,” she said. She dipped her brush, stared at the page, and resumed. “But it w-wasn’t m-my idea.”

  “Can I see?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “There’s wuh-one over on m-my desk that’s r-ready, though.” She dipped the brush into a small bowl of water beside her, wiped it on the front of her apron, and chose another color. “It’s the fuh-first one I d-did. You can h-hang it up f-for me if you w-want. I did that one all buh-by myself.”

  He walked to the desk on the opposite side of the room where the painting lay, its brushstrokes dry but still glistening. Along with his own likeness, Leah had painted Ellen, Barney, Mabel (complete with wheelchair and an “I love you” speech bubble jutting out from her mouth), the Grandersons, and herself. Bodies were little more than stick figures with right angles for arms and legs. The sky was a flat afterthought. Clouds were oblong boxes, trees squiggly and full. There was no doubt the painting was a Leah Norcross. Generalities were compromised in favor of particulars. Bodies and scenery were unimportant. It was Ellen’s eyes and Tom’s own smile, Barney’s strong hands and Mabel’s doughty spirit, the Grandersons’ familial love. The painting wasn’t about what these people were, but who they were—the heart of the matter.

  “This is really wonderful, Leah.”

  “Th-thanks, Puh-Pops. I can draw b-better on my easel, don’t you thuh-think?”

  Tom didn’t, not really, but said yes, absolutely.

  She dipped her brush again and said, “I thuh-hink it’s because it has luh-love in it.”

  “The easel?”

  “Yes. It has Mr. Buh-Barney’s love. Tacks are on the desk, Puh-Pops.”

  Tom shook out four thumbtacks from a purple bowl on the desk. There was precious little space left on the walls. All the apropos preteen posters of singers and movie stars hung here and there, but the rest of the space was quickly filling with the noble attempts of a fearful little girl to not only define her world but shrink it into something more manageable. Tom placed Leah’s newest attempt in a small space near the window beside other recent works. Some were of the house, others of Ellen or himself, but most were self-portraits. Lined up side by side in chronological order, Leah had rendered herself in each sketch with the s
ame long black hair and round face, but the smiles had regressed to grins and then to frowns. The heart of the matter. Which made the still-shiny smile she’d given herself on her newest masterpiece all the more pleasing. Whatever regrets Tom still harbored from the party faded that moment into a deep sea of warmth.

  “Leah, I want to apologize for the way I talked to Reverend Goggins today. I can’t tell you why I did it, but if I could, you would understand.”

  “That’s okay, Puh-Pops. I just fuh-figured—” Leah stopped, spellbound again, eyes wide. Tom was about to ask her what was wrong when she finished. “—it w-was about your wuh-work. M-Mommy says you get muh-mad sometimes because you luh-love too m-much.”

  Tom supposed that was as good a way of putting it as there could be.

  “But I shouldn’t have done that to the reverend. It wasn’t a nice thing. Are we square?”

  Leah said, “Yuh-yeppers,” but Tom thought she didn’t realize what she was agreeing to. Her focus was still on the paper. He looked back to the painting by the window. Her smile was still there—that was the important thing—but there was no denying that Leah had taken a step forward in her abilities. Maybe she was on to something with the easel. The colors were brighter, the strokes bolder. And there was something he hadn’t seen the first time.

  “Hey, Leah-boo, what’s that behind us in your picture?” Tom moved closer to the paper. It seemed nothing more than a dollop of colors.

  Leah stopped painting and studied him. “Puh-Pops, do you buh-lieve in m-magic?”

  “I believe in grand things,” he said. The something was nothing more than a smudge, he decided. A slip of the brush. Brushes were harder to manipulate than colored pencils or Crayola markers. “Things that make us wonder. But I think magic is a kind of mystery, and mysteries are just questions we can find answers to if we look hard enough. So, no, I guess I don’t believe much in magic, just good tricks.”

  “Then it’s juh-just nothing,” Leah said. She set the brush down. “I’m d-done, Puh-Pops. Wanna see?”

  “Sure.”

  He looked away from the smudge and returned to the edge of the bed. Leah took a deep breath, tore the page from the easel, and turned it around.

  “What do you thuh-hink?” she asked.

  Tom’s shoulders slumped as all feeling left his body. His brain, formerly sharp enough to understand the whys and hows of his wife’s anger, stuttered to a stop.

  He called out the door, “Ellen.”

  “What’s wruh-wrong, Puh-Pops?”

  A part of Tom knew that his jaw had loosened itself and was now hanging where his chin once was. What’s wrong? He didn’t know. Or he did, but explaining it to Leah would be like explaining the color red to a blind person.

  “Ellen, can you come in here, please? Can you come here right now?”

  The hard tinkle of Ellen’s wineglass hitting the kitchen countertop sounded as if it were a million miles away.

  “Leah,” he asked, “how . . . ?”

  Heavy footsteps down the hall. Ellen appeared at the door. She may have meant to ask what was so important to interrupt her vino therapy, but when she saw Leah’s painting, all she managed was, “Whaa . . .”

  “Hi, M-Mommy,” Leah said. “I puh-painted a thank-you p-picture for Mr. Buh-Barney. It’s what he n-needs.”

  Ellen walked into the room and slumped down beside Tom. Leah stood by the easel with the painting in front of her—one arm wrapped around the top of the page and the other hand holding its bottom, as if shrouding her own nakedness. Ellen reached for Tom’s hand. He had the vague understanding that the truce was back on after all. Strangely, that didn’t seem to matter. All that mattered was the picture in front of them.

  The field was dense and emerald, washed in a rain just past. Droplets of water covered the blades of grass, each of which had been painted in singular precision—hundreds of them, thousands, covering the bottom third of the painting. Above the field, gray clouds gave way to their white cousins, both of which were sprinkled with patches of cobalt sky that united them in a seamless, almost illusory effect. A rainbow spilled from the largest patch of blue in a perfect arc into the middle of the field. Halfway between sky and meadow, the colors transformed into pieces of gold that showered down into an overflowing clay pot. Piles of gilded coins were scattered around the pot in a pattern that was at once haphazard yet perfectly symmetrical. Written at the bottom was a smiley face and Thank you Mr. Barney Love Leah.

  “What’s the muh-matter?” Leah asked. “D-don’t you luh-like it?”

  Tom tried to work his lips, happy that at least “It’s . . .” came out.

  Ellen finished with “. . . wonderful,” but that was all she could manage without the benefit of another breath. “Leah, how did you paint that?”

  “I juh-just listened,” Leah said. “The easel has Mr. Buh-Barney’s l-love in it, Muh-Mommy. All it t-takes is l-love and l-listening, I guess.”

  Ellen started, “But . . . ,” then fizzled. It was more than Tom could say for himself. “There’s . . . gray, Leah. You don’t have gray paint. You painted in colors you don’t have.”

  “I muh-mixed them. It’s easy.” Leah placed the painting on the top of her desk to dry, then turned back to her parents. “I nuh-need to guh-het this to Mr. Buh-Barney this afternoon. It’s i-important. Allie can go w-with me. She says we’re fuh-friends now. I’ll c-call her. Is that okay?”

  Ellen said nothing. Tom, at least, nodded. He wondered how much of his wife’s wine was left.

  6

  Though only a few blocks separated the Treasure Chest from the Norcross house, Barney was just getting Mabel home. The old Dodge had sputtered and spat and finally died just after they’d turned out of the winding lane. He couldn’t leave Mabel there alone, and he didn’t think he could push her all the way back up the hill to Tom’s house. He didn’t have a cell phone to call Reggie or Marshall or Jake. Those who passed did not see him. Barney couldn’t understand how that could be, what with him standing there waving them down. But they’d passed on anyway, their eyes to the opposite side of the road or down at their radios. He was left with no other course than to try and figure out himself what had gone wrong with the truck. Thankfully, the problem was little more than a mucky battery cable in need of a good spit and polish with his shop rag. He filled Mabel in on the solution when he climbed back into the truck, but she had slumped over against the window.

  “Mabel? Hey there, old girl.”

  She didn’t move. Barney fought the urge to panic and gently shook her arm.

  “Hey there, honey. You okay?”

  Mabel’s eyes fluttered and her lips parted. “I love you.”

  Barney smiled and loved her back. The old hoopty fired up on the second try and carried them onward. Barney took a left at the light (a blinker; Mattingly had only one stoplight and that one was mostly ignored) and drove into downtown. The smell inside the truck was enough to force his head out the window.

  “It’s okay, Mabel.” Barney supposed Mabel was fine with the odor, even if a bit of it had gotten down his throat. “We’ll be right home.”

  Pebbled sidewalks and ancient trees lined the four square blocks of shops and restaurants, anchored by the town hall and the sheriff’s office. The Old Firehouse Diner stood to Barney’s left. He waved as a few customers straggled out, their bellies full and cholesterol high. No one waved back. The next right was Second Street, which flowed into an alleyway that dead-ended in front of a two-story edifice of peeled and fading brick. A cobbled sign hanging from the door said simply The Treasure Chest.

  The Dodge settled in the second of seven parking spaces in front of the building, these empty but for tall weeds poking through asphalt that had last been sealed back when Mabel still knew the world around her. The Treasure Chest had turned a profit that year, enough to pave the lot and buy a new lathe for the shop. Barney lurched out of the truck and retrieved Mabel’s wheelchair from the bed, then eased her down into it.

  �
�Home now, Mabel,” he whispered, to which he received a shallow mmmm that gave him relief.

  The wooden front door creaked and opened into the middle of the store. Barney retrieved a rock to prop open the entrance while he wheeled Mabel inside. The last of the day’s sun struggled through the grime on the windows, highlighting a shower of dust motes and rows of neatly placed marble rollers, wagons, and dollhouses. An assortment of wooden trucks and cars lined the far wall. Barrels of building blocks and Lincoln Logs stood in the middle of the room under signs that read Ahoy! 20 Cents Each! A hand-cranked cash register sat on the warped counter. The shelves behind it were stocked with jars of candy and lollipops, all of which had been purchased around the same time as the parking lot had been sealed. The air was thick with pine and cedar and must. Barney kicked the rock out of the way to let the door swing back. He turned the sign in the window from BLIMEY, CLOSED to AHOY, OPEN out of habit rather than necessity.

  The building had seemed a castle when Barney and Mabel first signed the loan not more than two months after their marriage. The Treasure Chest was to be their business, yes, but more than that, it would be their home. The Realtor (that would be Margie Black, a cousin to Mayor Wallis, though Barney didn’t hold that against her) had been quick to point out the prime business location and the fact that there was even a basement, something no other building in downtown Mattingly possessed, given the steep costs of boring into the rock upon which the town proper had been built. All was bright until the business faded and Mabel took ill. Now only ghosts roamed the aisles of toys and stood at the counter. There were times when Barney would stand in the middle of the store and hear the echoes of children now grown with children of their own.

  The pungent odor, mixed with the smell of wood and forgottenness, did not allow him to pause for those sounds that day. Barney gathered his wife of fifty-four years from her wheelchair and cradled her up the stairs to their one-bedroom apartment above. The door clanked against the rubber doorstop and swung back toward them, almost bumping Mabel’s head, but Barney moved out of the entranceway and stopped the door with his foot.