Rain Song

by Alice J. Wisler

  And what if I can’t find my way on the trains and get lost in the subway stations? What if the crowds of people that Harrison describes are everywhere smother me and I get claustrophobic, can’t breathe, and pass out? And what if the hospital they take me to is a skyscraper and my room is on the fiftieth floor? How will I ever look out a window that high up?

  True, I was born overseas, but I am really a small town southern girl.

  ———

  On the way home, with the smell of the beach sand and air filtering through my car, I have a craving for shrimp. I stop at Shady Palm, a little seafood restaurant outside of Wilmington. The place looks as if it hasn’t been dusted in centuries, but it has some of the best seafood on the Atlantic coast.

  When I enter through a front door that jingles, I see a large group seated at a booth enjoying a meal. They have ordered salmon, fried shrimp, and scallops in butter, with sides of mashed potatoes. Shady Palm seasons its potatoes with a smoky barbecue sauce. If you can get past the reddish color, they are unbelievably tasty.

  I walk up to a counter that’s in the shape of a palm leaf and order a pound of fresh jumbo shrimp to go.

  “Anything else?” asks a cashier with chestnut hair and fingers donned with silver rings. Her nails are painted black. She looks at me expectantly.

  Anything else? Well, yes, I have a question. Do you believe that God grants wisdom to those who ask for it? And also, how does one know the wisdom is from God, God-ordained, so to speak, and not a human product? To put it simply, do you think that in light of the recent happenings in my life, they have all occurred for a reason? And that if I have to make a decision, that God will help me do the right thing for me and for all involved? I know I’m not deserving of Him to whisper in my ear or put His hand on my shoulder, but the Bible does mention a lot about His mercy and grace. What do you think?

  The cashier is bored; I can tell by her incessant yawning. Her painted nails keep reaching up to cover her mouth. I am weary of watching her.

  She is bored, and I haven’t even begun to tell her my woes.

  I give a small smile and say, “No, thank you, that will be all today.”

  She yawns again, tells me what I owe, and passes my order written on a scrap of green paper to the kitchen crew.

  Within minutes, I am handed a Styrofoam container of jumbo shrimp. My hands are happy just to hold it.

  As I leave, a mother strolls a little girl out of the restaurant door ahead of me.

  The mother asks the child, “Got your soda?”

  The daughter nods, her little chubby hands clasped around a plastic cup with a lid and straw.

  “Are you thirsty?” The mom emphasizes each word, and I wonder if she is an educator. We tend to do that.

  “Yes.” The child takes a sip from her drink.

  “Are you big thirsty or little thirsty?” Her animated voice has a distinct rhythm to it.

  The girl drinks again. “Big!” she shouts and nearly drops her cup.

  I watch the mother push the stroller to a parked van. “Yes, you are a big girl!” The woman claps her hands and then reaches toward her child, lifting her daughter—a toddler with rust-colored hair—out of the stroller. The two embrace, spin around once, and giggle. “Then are you ready to see the big wide world?”

  I place the Styrofoam box of shrimp in the trunk of my car. And as I do, that same question looms at the center of my mind. Are you ready to see the big wide world?

  I can answer that. No. No, I’m not.

  On the way back to Mount Olive, I make another spur-ofthe-moment decision. An hour later, I stand in Ducee’s driveway, my car parked beside her lilac bushes.

  Maggie McCormick wedges her nose between the slats of the wooden fence and sniffs at the box of shrimp. I pet the donkey as the moon glistens like the belly of a white koi.

  Harrison told me that instead of the man in the moon, the Japanese see a rabbit pounding rice. He wrote, “Leave it up to the Japanese to see something more dramatic than a simple face.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Ducee doesn’t lock her front door until she goes to bed, so I know with a shove, it will open. It swings, causing the ivy wreath on it to rattle. Ducee believes an undecorated front door in any season is cause for dismay. Bare doors look empty, uninviting. One should hang some sort of greenery, artificial or real, on one’s front door at all times. This is a Southern Truth.

  Inside the hallway, I hear the TV blaring, and sure enough, as I enter the living room, Ducee’s asleep in her recliner. It’s after eight when these catnaps usually begin. Sometimes she sleeps, wakes to watch more TV, and sleeps again before calling it a day, locking her front door and retiring to her bedroom.

  On a small TV tray, her bifocals rest on top of her maroon Bible. A cloudy orange bottle of her heart medication leans against the remote control.

  Her feet, encased in white tennis shoes with lime green laces, are propped up on the ottoman. I bought the tennis shoes for her from Richard’s shoe store in Goldsboro. He gave me a discounted price and even found a box in the storage room that was one of Ducee’s favorite colors—lavender. Together we placed the shoes inside. Ducee was thrilled to open the box and try on her new sneakers when I brought them home to her. I don’t think she’s taken them off since.

  On TV, Columbo, dressed in his tan trench coat, scratches his head and maintains a puzzled look. “So if you were asleep in bed last night, then why is your lipstick on this wine glass?” he asks a jittery woman in a short scarlet dress.

  I leave Columbo for a moment to straighten the family portrait. This oil painting by Aunt Lucy hangs to the right of the TV on the wood-paneled wall. As I give the frame a little push to adjust it, I think how often I’ve come into this room and done this very thing.

  “What would you do without me to straighten the picture?” I ask Ducee every now and then.

  “You are the only one who straightens it,” she replies. “If it weren’t for you, the picture would always be tilted.”

  It is a portrait of Ducee, Grandpa Luke, Betty, and my mother Emma, done in heavy oil by Lucy. I know Ducee loved her baby sister, but does the love have to be shown in such an overtly visible way? The portrait would never be accepted by any artist I know. Ducee’s eyes are crooked, and my mother, a girl of about ten when it was painted, looks as if she just saw a ghost. Her eyes have a wild, frightened look, and her eyebrows are arched into her scalp.

  “Well, well,” Ducee said once, “it was just so kind of Lucy to paint our picture.”

  Kind, yes. And looking at the picture must give Ducee some satisfaction, for the walnut-framed picture has been on the wall for as long as I can remember. Grandpa Luke is holding a pipe in one hand, and Betty has two double chins. I have heard that my aunt was on the chubby side as a girl, but two double chins? Perhaps this distortion was not Lucy’s inability to draw faces well, but her deliberate stance against the way society had treated her. An attempt to fight back at life for making her give up her infant immediately after its birth. Or maybe she was going for the late Picasso effect—plain ol’ wackiness. All the bourbon she consumed might have kept her from seeing clearly. I don’t know; I never met Aunt Lucy.

  Once Iva looked at the picture, blew out consecutive rings of smoke, and asked, “Why?”

  It was one of Iva’s most profound moments.

  All of us ask that question when we view the painting.

  If it has to hang, at least make it hang straight, is my plea. I will be keeping that piece straight until my last living day.

  After a commercial break, Columbo is back and eager to solve the case.

  Ducee jolts, opens her eyes, and smiles at me. “Hello, dear. What’s in the Styrofoam?”

  “Shrimp. From the beach.”

  “And how was the water?”

  “It’s too cold to go in.”

  “Want to cook them now?” Ducee stretches her tiny arms over her head and yawns. “I’m well rested and ready to cook. Butter and
garlic?” She knows that’s the way I like my shrimp seasoned.

  She points at Columbo and says, “It’s that woman who killed her husband, the one in the red dress. He took out a two-milliondollar life insurance policy on her. But she took a three-million one out on him.” Then she presses a button on the remote and Columbo and his famous trench coat vanish.

  After she puts on her glasses, we peel shrimp together in the kitchen. Ducee asks if we should buy new picnic tables before the reunion. “Both of mine are rotting around the legs.”

  I tell her we could try the flea market in Raleigh.

  She wonders if someone will donate two. That’s Ducee, always hopeful for a bargain or a freebie. Sometimes she jokes about herself. “Me and my frugal Irish ways,” she’ll say. Deep down I think she prides herself on being frugal, just as she prides herself on being Irish.

  As the garlic sautés in butter, Ducee hums a few lines from “Molly Malone.” Next she sings—off-key, of course—“My Wild Irish Rose.” Hearing her sing takes me back to when I was little, all those times of standing in her kitchen helping her prepare jars of chutney. No matter where I am when I hear “My Wild Irish Rose” or “Molly Malone” or especially “Danny Boy,” in my mind I am back in my grandmother’s bright kitchen as a little girl.

  She doesn’t ask how I am. I know she’ll wait until we are seated at her table. Then she’ll dish out the questions, one after the other. It’s a good thing I’m eager to talk to her.

  I watch as she spreads a yellow-and-white daisy tablecloth over the pine kitchen table and sets two plates. She removes a vase of orange day lilies from the counter and places it in the center of her table.

  I pour iced tea into two crystal glasses as the cooking shrimp fills the house with its savory aroma.

  After bowing her head and thanking God for the food, she fills my plate with shrimp. Picking up a spice container, she sprinkles a little fresh oregano on top. Then she places a few shrimp on her plate. “I ate too much this afternoon,” she confesses. “Mrs. McCready brought over an apple-cinnamon pie, and I had a big piece. Too big, I’m afraid.”

  Suddenly I feel very hungry. I haven’t eaten since breakfast when I wolfed down a bowl of grits before opening Harrison’s email. I spent lunch in the janitor’s closet reading Harrison’s message. I bite into a fat shrimp. Ah, this is a taste of heaven.

  “So, any reason you went on an outing to the coast?” Ducee asks.

  I swallow. Twice. I’ve been over in my mind what I plan to tell her. But how should I start?

  “Something bothering you, dear?”

  Where are the words I rehearsed on the ride back to Mount Olive? Did I leave them on Route 117? “Do you think . . .” I begin and then give in to hesitation.

  “Take your time,” Ducee says. “I know you must be hungry.”

  I follow her advice and eat a few more shrimp. Then I try again. “Do you think that people can care about each other deeply before ever meeting?” My eyes bulge, and I sit there in shock. That was not at all what I planned to say.

  Without missing a beat, Ducee says, “It’s been done many times.”

  “When? How?”

  Ducee pats my hand. That gesture has always comforted me over the years.

  She closes her eyes, as if in thought, then opens them and wipes her mouth. All my life I have watched my grandmother wipe her thin lips on linen napkins. No paper ones for her. Southern etiquette has a rule about this, I’m sure.

  “Let me tell you,” she says. After a sip of tea, she begins. “We go back to Ireland. Our motherland.” There is no doubt that pride flows in Ducee’s voice. “There was Lizzy McCoy. She was a beauty. Yes, yes.” Ducee’s eyes close. When they open she says, “She looked like you, in fact.”

  I want to say that she couldn’t have been a beauty, then, but it’s my grandmother’s turn to talk.

  Ducee’s small hands clasp under her chin. Her eyes hold that looking-into-the-past stare. After a moment of silence, she places her hands on the table. “Yes, yes. Lizzy was an Irish rose. And she was in love with her brother’s best friend, who happened to be in England. Now we Irish weren’t too fond of the English, as your history books will tell you. Edgar McCormick was living in London at the time.” She whispers, “As a spy.”

  I wonder why, when I came to talk about me, my grandmother is diving off into her storyland. Patience, patience. I should have talked when I had my chance. I finish my shrimp.

  Ducee continues, “Lizzy first heard courageous stories about this Edgar from her brother. He would come home from battle and talk about this young man. Edgar was a warrior. Strong, big, bold.”

  Like sitting on the beach, Ducee’s storytelling is an art not to be rushed. I stretch my legs and chew on a nail.

  “Edgar,” says Ducee, “would be Ireland’s salvation. Lizzy listened to the stories, and as she listened, her heart grew quite attached to this hero. She’d never laid eyes on him. But the stories, if they were true—and her brother was an honest man—then, this Edgar McCormick was most certainly a man she respected and admired. She asked her brother to please tell Edgar about her, just to see if perhaps this lad might be interested. Many battles were fought after that. Lizzy wondered if her brother had forgotten her request.”

  The grandfather clock lets out nine chimes.

  Ducee waits for the last one and then says, “And then . . .” With her eyes toward the ceiling as though she is reading the ancient words of this story there, she whispers, “Yes, yes. One night, at midnight, a peasant knocked on Lizzy’s door and told her a boat was waiting for her at the shore. The arrangements had been made; she was to set sail for England immediately. It was all done very carefully and secretly. She rode with soldiers, Irish soldiers, all sworn to secrecy. For many nights she was on that boat. Oh, she got seasick and a storm nearly killed them all. But she made it to England to see this man she had never met.”

  A rumbling occurs in my stomach as I think of Lizzy out on a stormy sea. What in the world would make anyone do what she did? I drink some tea.

  Ducee, as though reading my mind, says, “That is the power of love.”

  The room is silent.

  “So? Did she make it?”

  “Ah.” It’s as though Ducee has left her kitchen, transported to her beloved Ireland. I wonder if she sees rolling green hills dotted with wooly white sheep. She moves her head a bit to the left and smiles. “Let this be the clue. McCormick.”

  When I don’t respond to her smile she repeats, “McCormick.”

  “Oh.” Sometimes with Ducee you have to act like you follow what she’s trying to convey.

  “McCormick.” My grandmother says the name with a pride and a strength I have heard many times over the years. “Yes, that was Edgar’s surname.” Then she folds her hands together as though that ends the story.

  But I know better.

  “Yes, yes. Lizzy married Edgar McCormick and worked with him as a spy. I understand they were quite a team. He became my great-grandfather. She became my great-grandmother.”

  Well, I have never heard this story before from any of my Mount Olive relatives of Irish descent. Which makes me wonder, is it true?

  “And so.” Ducee pats the table. “We sit here. Generations later. Here because Lizzy took a risk and went to England to meet the man she loved, the very man she’d never laid eyes on before.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Before Ducee starts another tale, I’d better tell her what I came here to say. Jump right in, I urge myself. It’s now or never. But the words seem stuck in my mouth, trapped back behind my molars.

  Ducee provides a questioning look.

  Okay, now or never. “You know how I want answers to what happened in Japan.”

  Ducee gives a gentle nod.

  “Well, I’ve found some things out.”

  Ducee’s look reassures me that it is safe to continue. “The maid we had was the one who carried me from the fire.”

  “Oh, I used to know her
name. What is it?”

  “Watanabe-san.” I have no idea how to pronounce the name, but hey, neither does my grandmother. “The fire started downstairs. That’s what Watanabe-san said.”

  Ducee’s eyes grow wide. “You heard from Watanabesan?”

  “Yes. No. Well, Harrison has talked with her.”

  “Harrison?”

  “He lives in Kyoto. He was born there. He’s an English professor at a university. His mom and Mama were friends.” I pause between each sentence, hoping something will make Ducee say, “Ah! I recall. I remember.”

  “I see.” Ducee only nods.

  Mama wrote letters to Ducee; didn’t she mention Harrison? “Harrison’s mom is named Rita.”

  Ducee has either forgotten or Mama never wrote about these two.

  “He grew up in Kyoto. His parents were missionaries like Mama and Father.”

  It doesn’t seem like any buttons of recollection have been triggered for Ducee. She says, “I don’t remember hearing about a Rita.”

  “Well, she and her son, Harrison, were often invited over for chutney. Mama served it on rice crackers.”

  Ducee laughed. “Really? That Emma, she knew how to connect the East and West, didn’t she?” I smile as Ducee squeezes my hand. “So you have found some answers.”

  Her eyes, framed by her bifocals, look exceptionally happy tonight.

  I nod. “Oh, and even my scar.”

  Ducee looks at me with a hopeful expectation.

  “I fell off a swing. Harrison was pushing me at a park and a stray dog scared me. I either jumped or fell off the swing and hit a board with a nail in it.”

  “Oh, my.” Ducee shakes her head. “No magic blessing from the Princess of Susunanastan.”

  We laugh.

  She reaches over to kiss my forehead, and her lips rest against my scar. “I have always thought that scar beautiful. I can’t imagine your face without it. It has given it character.” With hands in her lap, she speaks just above a whisper, “God gives us faces when we are born. They are innocent and pure, young and without a crease. As we grow, as we live life, we develop them, these faces. Yes, that’s it, yes. They develop us. Your scar is part of you and now you know its story.”