The Fragrance of Geraniums (A Time of Grace Book 1)

by Ruggieri, Alicia G.

  Paulie’s grin widened. “Hey, you’re a girl who knows how to pick out a book,” he complimented sincerely and was glad to see her wary countenance relax a little – a very little – bit. “I love Tennyson,” he offered as they reached the auditorium’s double-doors. Maybe it’ll bring another smile to her face. “I thought I was the only one who liked it when we read In Memoriam in Mr. K.’s class.”

  Grace’s eyes grew large in surprise, and they paused before the doors, Paulie’s fingers closing around the door handle. “Oh, no. How could you not love Tennyson? His poems are so… so wonderful,” she finished, red blushing over her face like a McIntosh apple in the autumn.

  “Agreed.” Paulie pulled open the door, letting out the sound of chatter from the students already gathered in the auditorium. Wow, a lot of kids had showed up. They filled the front two rows of the large room, stretching across from left to right. Mr. Kinner sat at the piano up front, apparently looking through some music before they began to rehearse.

  Paulie began to stride down the center aisle. Suddenly, he realized Grace hadn’t continued at his side. He turned to see where she’d gone and found that she lingered near the entrance. Her pale face with its large unblinking eyes stood out in the dim entryway lighting.

  “Hey, you coming?” asked Paulie, backtracking a few steps.

  Grace’s gaze flickered from Mr. K. at the piano to Paulie. “Uh… I think… I have to use the lavatory.” The words stumbled out of her mouth.

  “Oh, sure.” Paulie smiled and placed her stack of books on one of the auditorium’s back row seats. “I’ll set your books here for you.”

  “Thanks.” But she didn’t sound grateful at all. Just preoccupied. With what, though? This was the first rehearsal of the new choir! Girls. You couldn’t figure them out.

  “No problem,” Paulie replied. “Hey, don’t be too long. Mr. K.’ll probably be starting soon.” Sure enough, just then, Mr. K. rose from the piano bench, climbed the short stair to the stage, and walked to the center of it. His footsteps echoed on the wooden flooring, shiny with wax. Paulie watched the teacher for a moment before the sound of the auditorium door clicking shut caught his attention. Grace had slipped back out to the corridor to use the lav.

  “Paulie! Paulie, over here!” His chum Elliot Krieger stood up in the second row, beckoning to him. “Got an empty seat for you, buddy!”

  Paulie glanced one more time at the closed auditorium door before shrugging off Grace’s odd behavior and moving with quick steps to join his friends.

  Grace scurried through the corridor, looking over her shoulder to see if Paulie had followed her. Why should he follow you, Grace? You’re paranoid! He just thinks that you’re using the lavatory. And she would visit the lavatory, too, because she didn’t want to commit the mortal sin of lying, after all.

  As she came up to the creamy-tiled girls’ restroom, Grace caught her breath as she realized, I already did lie. I forged Mama’s name and told Mr. Kinner that she had given me permission to join the chorus. The guilt rose as bile from her stomach. Now she would have to receive the sacrament of Confession as soon as possible. Mama always told Grace and the other kids about her great-uncle who had lied about something and hadn’t gone to Confession before he died. Mama still prayed for her great-uncle’s soul, but she said she had doubts regarding whether it would do any good, seeing that he had committed a mortal sin.

  Grace entered the lavatory with slow steps. She could see two high-heeled feet below the stall dividers, but she couldn’t say for sure to which teacher the feet belonged. Before the occupant could emerge, Grace ducked into the other stall and latched the door, leaning against the green-painted metal. The girls’ bathroom smelled heavily of bleach and ever-so-lightly of smoke. Some of the bad girls must have been lighting up cigarettes in here today. She was glad that the teacher in the next stall – whoever she was – had come into the lavatory first and so couldn’t suspect Grace of smoking.

  The toilet flushed in the stall beside her, and Grace felt the tremor through the metal as the door unlocked and opened. The high-heels tapped their way over to the sink. Grace listened as the woman washed her hands and dried them. Then more taps came, and Grace could be sure the woman had left the lavatory.

  Slowly, Grace unlatched her own stall door and came into the silent bathroom, like a scared rabbit hopping oh-so-gingerly into the twilight surrounding his burrow. She walked over to the smeary mirror, reflecting the bathroom’s glaring light, and stared at her own face.

  I wish Mama had said yes.

  That would have prevented all these problems, after all. The priest surely would excuse her forgery because she had not willfully misled Mr. Kinner. Now, Mama had denied Grace’s request, and so Grace’s falsification of Mama’s signature appeared an outright falsehood, something she’d meant to do.

  Why did I sign Mama’s name, anyway? she wondered, looking at her own large eyes in the mirror. I could have just asked her if I’d thought she would say yes.

  And the answer came to her: In her heart, she’d known that Mama would say no.

  And I didn’t want to face that. I… I want to be in this choir so bad. The tears bubbled up and over the rims of Grace’s eyes. Trying hard to stop them, she crossed her arms over her chest and bit her lips.

  But it was no use. The tears wouldn’t stop but merely increased at her attempts to stem the flow. Stop! Stop! Her mind screamed it but for once, Grace knew herself unable to force her emotions to bow the knee to her will.

  I want this, she realized, thinking of the auditorium with its brightly-lit stage; the popular, nervy kids practically bouncing excitedly out of their front-row seats; Mr. Kinner standing there, exquisite as one of the heroes in Grace’s books; and even Paulie shining his welcoming smile at her. “Don’t be long,” he’d grinned before she fled to the lavatory to try to figure a way out of this mess she’d gotten herself into.

  Mama has no right to take this away from me. The thought popped into her brain suddenly and with a force that knocked the breath out of her heart. She saw her mother scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing the kitchen floor on calloused knees; operating that clunky antique washing machine twice a week; baking and cooking constantly for her thoughtless kids and her unappreciative husband. That’s how I’m gonna end up, thought Grace. That’s how Mama wants me to end up. Her fists clenched into balls at her sides. She remembered her mama’s mocking words that morning before Grace had left for school, and she knew she was right. I won’t – I won’t – I won’t! Grace stared hard into the mirror, watching as her eyes turned to ice.

  I will be in Mr. Kinner’s choir. I’m nearly sixteen years old. Mama can’t stop me, Grace asserted, lifting her chin boldly and dashing away the rest of her tears. A weight seemed to lift from her chest. She breathed in deeply and turned on the sink faucet. The cool water refreshed her flushed cheeks. Grace wiped her face on a paper towel and raked her fingers through her hair to neaten it. Hopefully, no one would see the red rimming her eyes. Other than that, no visible signs remained of her sobbing attack.

  With a feverish heart, Grace rushed from the lavatory. Her skipping steps brought her back to Mr. Kinner and the chorus. She could hear the throb of voices in the auditorium, warming up.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It was tough to please two women at once.

  Charlie put his back into raking, scraping the ground with vigor, shoveling thoughts of Gertrude and Sarah from his mind. The pile of dead leaves grew into quite a mound. The front lawn looked pretty good; he’d go around to the back after poking his head into the priest’s house to see if he couldn’t snag a drink. A lemonade, at least. Though he was a priest; maybe he had some good red wine available.

  The church building rose high and gray behind Charlie, giving him the shadow of its blessing. As it should. The Picolettis had always paid their dues to God. Charlie had seen the arrival and departure – some through death, others through reassignment – of four priests during his lifetime in Chetham.
The first priest had baptized him and his two siblings. The second had administered Charlie’s First Communion and confirmed him. The third had performed the Sacrament of Marriage for him. Father Fredrick was number four. He hadn’t done anything for Charlie yet, but maybe he’d bury him one of these days.

  Setting his rake to the side, Charlie had just determined he’d go inside and ask to use the restroom or something when the Father himself appeared, smiling out the church door at Charlie. Father Fredrick wasn’t a bad chap as far as church men went. He kept to himself and let folks keep their business to themselves. Charlie appreciated that kind of thoughtfulness in a priest.

  “Looks like you’ve got quite the pile here,” remarked Father Fredrick. He hadn’t quite reached his fifties, yet he had a full crop of hair as white as confectioner’s sugar. His eyes bulged pleasantly as he talked, joining with the priest’s stocky build to remind Charlie and the other parishioners of a polite, pious bulldog. “Do you think you’ll finish by dinner?”

  It was already three o’clock in the afternoon. Charlie started to give the priest an odd look, but then he remembered that the priest had come from a snooty background. The religious man called “supper,” “dinner,” and “dinner” to him was “luncheon.” So Charlie nodded. “Oh, I think so,” he said. “At the latest, by five o’clock.”

  The priest smiled benignly. “Good. You wouldn’t want your wife’s dinner to get cold.” Suddenly, the cheerful expression fell from Father Fredrick’s fleshy, mobile face. In its place, the priest attached a different mien: a concerned and somewhat stern one. Startled, Charlie put up his guard, ready for whatever the priest might say.

  “You know, Charlie, I’ve always seen you as a family man,” Father Fredrick began, his well-fed jowls flapping a bit in the wind that whipped around the corner of the church.

  Warily, Charlie nodded his agreement. “That I am, Father.” He wrapped both meaty hands around the rake’s handle and waited.

  Father Fredrick held Charlie’s gaze, his bright blue eyes scalding. You can’t intimidate him, that’s for sure! “Well, I’ve heard reports…”

  The priest seemed to be searching for just the right words to explain. His lips tightened together, then released. He must’ve figured out how to say it. “A reliable source tells me that you are not entirely faithful, Charlie.” The priest glanced left and right, as if afraid someone might have overheard.

  Faithful? What’d the priest mean? Of course Charlie was faithful! He provided for his family, didn’t he? Wasn’t he doing yard work right now, earning a pittance from the parish to add to his weekly wages? His eyes narrowed in disbelief. “Faithful?” he echoed aloud, cocking his head to the side.

  “Yes, faithful to your wife,” the priest clarified.

  “To Sarah?” Charlie would have snorted at the humor of it, if he hadn’t been so insulted by what the man insinuated. “’Course I’m faithful to my wife, Father. No man’s more so. And if he tells you otherwise, he’s a lying Kaiser.” Charlie ground those words out, turning them up and out of his mouth like fresh sod in a flowerbed.

  Faithful? Didn’t he provide for Sarah? And all them kids? Hadn’t he given her six – no, seven children? What further faithfulness did the priest require? Charlie knew that he was loyal to Sarah in every way that could be expected – realistically, at least.

  Trying to keep his anger down, he clamped his jaws shut so that the muscles pumped with blood. He should not – he would not become angry with a priest, may his mother rest quietly in her grave! To show his honesty, Charlie lifted his square chin up and stared Father Fredrick straight in the eyeballs. I’d love to see him flinch.

  But Father Fredrick retained his calm demeanor, merely returning the gaze with his own cool eyes. After a moment, he let the corners of his neat mouth turn upward ever so slightly in what Charlie had come to see as the sign of the priest’s benevolence. “Well,” the father said, “that’s good to hear from your own lips, Charlie.”

  Charlie nodded, brows contracting into a cloud against his will. His hands throttled the rake handle. I’d like to find whoever’s been having a good time telling the priest about me and thrash them good!

  “Would you care for some fresh lemonade? That’s very thirsty work you’re doing,” the priest remarked, the same slight smile touching his mouth.

  Suddenly, Charlie’s desire for lemonade fled. “Uh, no, Father. I’m not thirsty at all.” Without waiting for the priest to go back inside the church, Charlie turned back to raking, lashing the ground with gusto.

  Grace flew all the way home. The tops of her shoes shook free from the soles; the rubber bands had broken on the first block. I’ll have to ask Cliff for some more, she thought, knowing that Cliff had lots of the cheap “ammunition” for his rubber-band gun. Sweat began to run down her back, but she didn’t want to take the time to stop, remove her cardigan, and tie it around her waist. She could feel her blouse untucking from her skirt’s waistband.

  I have to hurry! Mama’s gonna be so mad! Grace pumped her legs faster, not caring as much about the people who saw her running as about her fuming mama, waiting for her at home.

  Oh, but the chorus rehearsal had been glorious while it lasted! Grace couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed anything so much. Except for the occasional pang of guilt she’d felt when she glanced at the clock or at the stack of permission slips resting on Mr. Kinner’s piano, the hour glowed. Mr. Kinner had placed her with the other sopranos, to the bottom right of the choir. They’d warmed up their voices with challenging exercises, and Grace felt a thrill run up her spine at the sound of all the other students singing up and down the scale together, all around her. If only it hadn’t ended!

  There wasn’t enough time to stop at the red-flowered house today, to just stand there gazing at the hanging baskets’ flaming beauty. She dashed by it, not slowing down for an instant. Yet Grace couldn’t resist peering out the corner of her eye at the porch just to see that flash of scarlet that had glanced back at her for the past month. After all, she hadn’t paused this morning, either, on her way to school; she’d been too distraught over Mama’s refusal to grant Grace permission to join the choir. So, now, at the end of the event-filled day, Grace stole a glance at the porch with one straining eyeball.

  But the red flowers were gone.

  Grace’s steps slowed to a jog, and her head fully turned toward the white house. Her eyes widened in disbelief. The baskets, too, were stripped from the porch without warning. Grace came to a complete and dazed halt. To say the least, she’d not expected it, and she felt now as empty as that porch, swept clean but lacking anything to fill it.

  That is your punishment. The thought startled Grace with its sudden clarity. Of course! She had disobeyed Mama, had lied and kept that lie alive knowingly. So God had taken the red flowers away from her, that bright spot of joy in her rather dreary existence. Even the piano doesn’t play, she realized, noting how the floral curtains blew at the partially-opened second floor window. Grace swallowed, feeling the lump of guilt grow in her throat. With one more stare at the pretty house with its hollow porch, she bolted toward home.

  “You did what?”

  Grace heard her papa’s incredulous tone as she entered the kitchen. The guilt that steadily wrapped itself around her brain caused her to think that Papa addressed her. Holding the screen door as it shut so that it wouldn’t slam – something that irked Papa to no end – Grace opened her mouth to explain her lie with trembling words.

  But Papa’s face turned toward Mama. He didn’t even peep to see which one of his children had entered the house. His jaw pumped heavily, like a boxer’s fist, and his eyes barely blinked as they trained on Mama.

  Mama. Her defensiveness coated her vulnerability as she sat crouched at the kitchen table. Her hands wrapped around her cup of black coffee like it threatened to jump out of her grasp.

  Trembling with fear, Grace turned her eyes toward Papa. The china-thin silence gave her thoughts time to ramble.
What was this all about? Gertrude, again? But then, why would Papa say that Mama had done something? She waited just inside the doorway, frozen as one of the blocks that the ice-man brought.

  “You. Had. No. Right.” Papa spit out each word separately, bullets to pierce Mama’s head. Grace could see his teeth bared like one of the feral mutts that roamed around the neighborhood. “No right at all.” He stared down at Mama, eyes ablaze, nostrils flaring with wrath.

  Mama responded by jutting her chin out, pressing her thin white lips together. “I had to do it! And I have every right. I’m her mother.”

  “And I’m her father!” Papa roared, neck muscles bulging. Grace cringed as his hands cracked down on the table. Mama’s coffee bounced and spilled out of the cup, running over her hands.

  “What do you think you’re doing, woman?” His face lunged into Mama’s, but Mama barely flinched.

  The sunlight filtered through the screen door, streaming by Grace, touching on Mama’s pale face. “I did what I had to do, Charlie. And I don’t want to hear another word about it.” Browned and wet from the spilled coffee, Mama’s hands kept their grip on the cup. Her eyes stayed fastened on Papa, ignoring Grace’s presence.

  Grace watched as Papa’s lips curled into a smile of mockery. “Oh, now you don’t want to hear another word about it? After you give away my daughter to your sister? Is that how it is? Jezebel!” Without warning – though Mama should’ve known she had it coming to her – Papa’s open-palmed hand struck hard, right across the side of Mama’s head.

  Mama hadn’t been prepared for the blow. Her head reeled to the side, the graying brown hair falling over her face. She wobbled on the chair but managed to regain her balance. Then Mama surprised Grace by sweeping her hair back away from her eyes and standing up, holding onto the table’s edge for support. “How dare you? How dare you call me that?” Mama hissed at Papa, using a voice Grace had never heard. “I’ve given you six children. I keep up this house for you! I cook three meals a day with that skimpy thing you call a paycheck for you! I wash your clothes. I do your ironing. I garden. I churn butter. For you, Charlie!”