by Jan Karon
There was just one thing he needed:
Prayer.
But where could he turn for it? He dialed Walter. Answering machine. Blast.
Marge Owen. He wouldn't need to say anything more than "Pray for me," and it would be done at once. No answer. Didn't anybody stay home these days?
It came to him so suddenly and with such force, he didn't hesitate. He dialed the phone and when she answered, he said:
"Cynthia, I'm coming over to see you. Pray for me."
He did his own praying as he dodged through the hedge.
The back door was standing open, presumably so he didn't have to be formally greeted.
"Cynthia!"
"I'm in here," she said from the studio. What did he hear in her voice? Iron. Steel. Sheetrock. Knives.
He walked in and saw her sitting on the floor, piling books into a carton. She brushed her hair back and looked at him. He felt he had been slammed across the chest when he saw her eyes. They were the most extraordinary eyes he had ever seen. Why did he always feel he was seeing them for the first time? "Cynthia..."
"Timothy." She stared at him, cool and removed.
"Listen to me."
He sat on the floor across from her, and Violet slithered into his lap.
"I'm cursed with an orderly mind," he said, "so let's begin somewhere vaguely at the beginning." There! He was not croaking, and he was not going to croak. He had the voice of Moses on the mount. It might have shattered the glasses in her cupboard.
"I tried to call you again and again, but your machine..."
"What about my machine?"
"It made noises like a truck on a highway."
She gave him a stupefying look.
"I knocked one day," he continued, "but it was raining."
"Raining. Oh, my," she said, looking bored.
"And I don't know what you were thinking the morning I came home in Edith Mallorys car..."
"Thinking? I didn't think. My mind felt like oat bran stirred with a spoon."
He plunged ahead. "There is absolutely nothing between Edith and me. She held me at her house against my will."
"Really," she said in a voice encrusted with ice.
"It was raining. Tad and Ron went ahead without me. Ed Coffey was going to bring me home, but the car flooded. I slept in a chair. It was a miserable experience."
"Caring about you has been a miserable experience."
He noted the past tense. "Cynthia, I'm sorry. That's what I really came over here to say. If you could know the letters I've written to you..."
"I never got them."
"I wrote them in my mind."
"Oh, those letters!"
"I tried to call you in NewvYork. I rang your publisher and they wouldn't give me your address." Something was going wrong here. Why was he pleading and explaining?
He tacked into the wind. "Listen," he said firmly, "why didn't you tell me you were moving? Why just go off like that without a word?"
"Without a word? I had hardly had a word from you in months! Two letters that might have been written to a distant relative, and that was all. You said you were going to think about that ridiculous proposition I made to you about going steady and give me an answer on your return. That was your condition, not mine. But of course, you never mentioned it again. And not only did I hardly see you when you came home, but you couldn't even find the time to call me."
"But, Cynthia..."
"No 'but Cynthia,' if you please. And it was you who said we mustn't let the path through the hedge grow over. Well, have you seen it? It would take a bush hog to clear it out again!"
"What do you know about bush hogs?" A stupid question, but out it came.
"There are lots of things I know that you'll never know I know, because you'll never ask."
"I just asked."
She looked at him, biting her lip. "I'm either going to punch you in the nose or bawl my brains out," she said.
"I deserve the former, but I'll leave the decision to you."
Great tears loomed in her eyes, and he rose to his knees on the bare floor and took her in his arms.
It was wonderful to sit close to her on the minuscule love seat, to smell the scent of wisteria, to have his arm around her and hear the silken voice he'd longed to hear again. Violet had sprawled across both their laps, purring like the engine of a compact car.
"I've missed you," he said. "I've missed you terribly. It's been like a death, having the little house empty, and no lights on, and not knowing..."
"I haven't exactly moved," she said, her eyes red from the storm of weeping. "It's just that I had such a terrific deadline on the new illustrations that my editor said why not take his apartment while he's in Europe for six months, and so I thought, of course, how perfect, and I won't have to bother with...with my wretched neighbor!"
He kissed her hair.
"So I moved in there until I'm finished. I had most of my books sent up, and my favorite drawing board, and my bed, which I'm never without—just a few things. Actually, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I felt very foolish, throwing myself at you like that and you backing away from me at sixty miles an hour."
"Fortyfive."
"I prayed for you when you called."
"I knew you would." He kissed her temple.
"I thought it was very clever of you to ask me to do that."
"It was the Holy Spirit who had such a wild notion, not me."
She laid her head on his shoulder. What an extraordinary development. An hour ago he had been sitting at his desk in a hardback chair, laboring over his sermon with an aching heart, and now he was holding someone soft and tender and fragrant and desirable, with a vast furry creature in his lap. He might have sunk to the moss-covered bottom of a clear pond where he was resting like a leaf.
But it was just such false content that had gotten him in trouble before. "Where did you go to school?" he blurted, "and how is your nephew?"
She raised her head and gave him an odd look. "Smith, and he's fine."
"How is The Mouse in the Manger doing? Is it selling well? How did I do as a wise man?"
"Mouse is selling very well, thank you, and sometimes I think you are not very wise at all."
He had broken the spell, but she mended it with a dazzling smile.
"What do you want in a companion?" he asked.
"Someone to talk with," she said, stroking his cheek. "My husband was too preoccupied to talk. He was too busy making babies with other women..."
"Is that why you ended up in the hospital?"
"Yes. I tried to kill myself."
The pain of her confession pierced his heart.
"My parents were wellmeaning, but they were always too involved socially to talk. And so, you see, what I want is very simple really."
"What do you want to talk about?"
"Everything and nothing. What you did today, what I did today, what we'll do tomorrow. About God and how He's working in our lives. About my work, about your work, about life, about love, about what's for dinner and how the roses are doing—do they have black spot or beetles..."
He kissed the bridge of her nose, smiling.
"Life is short," she said.
"Yes. Yes, it is."
He kissed her mouth, and it was as if he'd been doing it all his life; it was the most natural thing in the world. He felt he was taking a kind of nourishment that would make him strong and fearless.
She wasn't going back until Sunday afternoon. He would wine her and dine her, he would wrap her Waterford goblet in gold paper, he would fulfill that silly and heedless wish of hers, he would buy a dozen roses from Jena, he would buy a new jacket at the Collar Button sale, he would make her a peanut butter-and-banana sandwich, he would buy a tango album—or was it the rhumba she liked? He would bathe Barnabas, he would give Violet a can of white albacore tuna in spring water, he would ask Dooley to put on his football uniform for her, he would pray for rain and take her walking in it.
He coll
apsed in bed. It went without saying, he supposed, that the love business could be exhausting.
•CHAPTER FOUR•
"I'LL COME HOME AT CHRISTMAS," SHE SAID.
They might have been sitting together in just this way, slouching into the disheveled slipcover of his study sofa, since time began.
"I'll string the lights on your bushes to welcome you home."
"What a lovely thing to even think! Oh, Timothy, how could you not have loved someone all these years? Loving absolutely seeps from you, like a spring that bubbles up in a meadow."
"Maybe you can convince me of that, but I doubt it. I find myself niggardly and selfseeking, hard as stone somewhere inside. Look how I've treated you."
"Yes, but you could never deceive me into thinking you were hard as stone. You've always betrayed your tenderness to me, something in your face, your eyes, your voice..."
"Then I have no cover with you?"
"Very little."
"Violet only wanted a friend," he quoted, "but every time she tried to have one, she did something that chased them away."
She looked at him with a kind of joy. "You've read a Violet book!"
"Yes, and learned something about myself, disproving entirely that Violet books are only for ages five through ten. I really try to express my feelings for you, but I always chase you away. It makes me want to give up."
"Please! I can't bear it when someone says that. Remember what Mr. Churchill told a class that was graduating from his old school?"
"I confess I don't remember."
"When Mr. Churchill was a student, the headmaster had told him how hopelessly dumb and trifling he was, and then, years later, when he was prime minister and had written the history of the English-speaking people, for heaven's sake, they invited him back to address a graduating class. They anticipated one of his brilliant and lengthy speeches, and here's the entire text of what he told them:
" 'Young men,' he said, 'nevah, nevah, nevah give up!' And he sat down."
He laughed.
"Nevah," she said soberly.
'I regard that as wise counsel."
"It has counseled me for years."
"Will you have dinner with me on Friday evening?"
She looked into his eyes and smiled. "I would love to have dinner with you on Friday evening."
"How do you like your peanut butter-and-banana sandwiches?"
"With the bananas cut in thick slices and smashed into the peanut butter."
"Smooth or crunchy?"
"Crunchy."
"White or dark?"
"White."
"With or without crusts?"
"With!"
With such knowledge now his forever, he felt invincible.
"Yellow or red?" asked Jena Ivey at Mitford Blossoms.
"Red," he said.
"Loose or arranged?"
"Loose."
"In a vase or a box?"
"A box."
He needed an assistant, a curate, a gofer, anybody, somebody. Puny had helped him put the tablecloth on and had polished the glasses until the lead crystal sparkled like gems. She had vacuumed the entire house, then cleaned out the rabbit cage in case Cynthia, who loved rabbits, wanted to hold Jack on her lap. She had washed the dining room windows, refilled the bird feeder outside the windows, changed the threadbare mat at the front door, waxed the entrance hall, and done the grocery shopping.
But that only made a dent in what had to be done. At last, and the thought made his heart hammer, he would have to take Walter's advice and let the Holy Spirit come up with Sunday's sermon, because there would be no time for carefully structured notes.
"What can I wrap this goblet in?" he asked Puny. He realized he had been walking around the house in a daze, carrying it in his hand.
"If you aren't the beat," she said, putting her hands on her hips. "I'm wore out jist watchin' you moon around."
"I am not mooning around. I am looking for wrapping paper."
"In th' buffet, don't you remember? That's where you told me you always keep wrappin' paper."
How could he have forgotten? He felt his face grow red. "Did you get the white albacore tuna?"
"I did."
"In spring water?"
"I don't know what it's in."
"I wanted it in spring water. I specifically wrote that on the list."
"Is that what you were talkin' about? I thought you wanted spring water, so I got two gallons."
Why wasn't this more fun? "The Collar Button is having a sale," he said, trying to sound casual. "I thought I might pick up a jacket. What color do you think?"
"What color does she like?"
He should have known there was no hiding from Puny Bradshaw. "Blue. I think she likes blue."
"Perfect! I'm sick of all that brown in your closet. It looks like a pile of dead leaves in there. Besides, it will bring out the color of your eyes."
"Dark or medium?"
"Dark. Get a blazer."
"Thank you," he said, sincerely relieved.
Now if he could get Barnabas bathed and find a rhumba album—or was it the tango?—he would nearly be caught up.
"Here," she said, snatching the goblet from his hand, "let me do that. White tissue paper or red?"
"White," he muttered, feebly.
"Of course!" she said, clearly disgusted.
That he had to drive to the far side of Wesley to find a music store was no surprise. The surprise came when he discovered they had no record albums.
"No record albums?" He was stunned.
"Just compact discs," said the sales clerk, eyeing him as if he'd come from another planet.
No albums! What was the world coming to? Seriously? What did one do, just throw out a perfectly good record player, which was probably not even recyclable? What kind of sense did that make?
He didn't really want to know but thought he should ask. "How do you use a compact disc?"
When he came out of the music store, he went straight to his car and put the box in the trunk. He must not allow Puny Bradshaw to lay her eyes on what he had just purchased. Never. He put the musicstore bag containing the rhumba and the tango discs inside the trunk and closed it.
A little excitement was beginning to build, he admitted, but it had not yet risen above the apprehension of where this whole thing might be going and the deep, instinctive fear that he could not, in any case, stop its progress.
"You are far too handsome in blue," she said.
The extraordinary thing about his neighbor is that he knew she really meant this foolish remark. He could see it in her eyes.
"Impossible! I've been plain as a fence post as long as I can remember."
"Well, now that you've started being far too handsome, there's nothing you can do to reverse it." She smiled. "That's the way it works, you see."
He was standing at her back door, having popped through the hedge to fetch her to the rectory. Not knowing what else to say or do, he handed her the can of tuna. "For Violet."
"How lovely! And in oil, just what she likes best. Thank you!"
The stock market might have taken a radical upturn for the relief he felt.
"And thank you for the roses. Do come and see them!"
He smelled them as he came along the hall. They were in a vase in front of the bay window of her living room, illuminated by the last rays of light through the curtains. "Here," she said, removing a long stem from the vase. "This is for you."
She had taken his breath away when she appeared at the door. Her freshness, her inner vitality were dazzling. Everything about her stood out in the sharpest focus, as if he'd just gotten new glasses. "I...," he said, taking the rose from her hand. He was sinking into her, somehow, and didn't know if he could swim.
He had waited until Dooley went to his room last night before attempting to hook the thing up and put on a disc. He was astonished when music came pouring out, nor had he ever heard anything like it; it was so clear, so lucid, so like the living sound. He
confessed he would not miss the riot of static produced by ancient scratches or the scraping of a worn needle.
"It's been years since I danced the tango," he said, holding her close.
She laughed. "The rhumba!"
"Ah, well, I've always been a foxtrot man, to tell the truth."
"Foxtrot men usually have a streak of rhumba in them somewhere.
It simply takes some doing to pull it out."
"Could you pull a bit harder then?"
When the dance ended, he stood with her in front of the fire, in front of the table so carefully set with his grandmother's old Haviland and the single rose in a vase.
"Look me in the eye," he said, taking her face in both his hands.
"I'm looking."
"I want to ask you a question."
"I love questions!"
He remembered asking her once, "Is there anything you don't love?"
"Yes," she had said, "garden slugs, stale crackers, and people who're never on time."
"Well, then...would you kindly consider the possibility...that is to say, the inevitability...of going steady?"
She burst into tears.
"Cynthia!"
"I always cry when I'm happy," she wailed.
"Well, answer me, then," he said, giving her the handkerchief from his pocket.
"Yes. I'll consider it!"
"Wait a minute. Will I never get this right? I asked you to consider it, but what I really meant was, will you do it? Starting now?"
"Yes. I'll do it."
He was going to kiss her, but his legs began to buckle under him.
"Timothy!" she said, holding him up. "Sit down before you fall down!"
He sank onto the sofa, laughing. "Hopeless," he said, feeling the trembling in his knees and the pounding of his heart. "Utterly hopeless."
She fairly hooted with laughter. "You'll get over it!" she promised, giving him a hug.
They were still in a frenzy of laughter, tears streaming down their cheeks, when Dooley walked in and looked around. "Mush!" he said, backing out the door.