“I can’t,” Paulie said, reaching around her to get the door knob.
She turned curious eyes toward him. “Can’t what?” she asked.
“Can’t go back to class yet,” he answered, grinning this time. “Gotta go to the office myself.”
She tilted her head at him, puzzled. What’d he do in such a short time to get sent to the office?
“Lice,” he smiled. “I got dozens of them. Crawling all over my head.”
Grace’s mouth fell open.
“Fact is,” said Paulie, pulling open the door, “you probably caught them from me. I told the sub that I felt them creeping. In fact, I think the whole class will have to be checked.”
“But…” Grace couldn’t find a response. Paulie told the substitute he’d found something in his own hair? Dozens of them, according to him. She felt gratitude for this strange act of mercy, for she knew Paulie didn’t have bugs and she knew that she most likely did.
“Come on,” he said before Grace could say anything more. “We gotta get our heads checked before we go back to class.” And he gave her a wink as she passed in front of him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
His coffee had long since cooled off, gathering a white film of cream across the liquid’s top. But holding the paper cup gave Geoff something to do with his hands, a necessity. The anxiety he felt now surpassed the feeling he’d had on the morning of his wedding. But that nervousness had grown from joyful expectation, whereas this found its root in raw fear. Fear to which Geoff Kinner did not want to admit.
The waiting room held half a dozen other anxious relatives of those in surgery. Some, like Geoff, nursed a cup of coffee or tea; others pretended to read the newspaper, drowning out their terror with trivialities.
He traced his finger along the top of the cup once more, then got to his feet and walked over to the receptionist’s desk. The seated older woman barely glanced up.
“Mr. Kinner,” she said, “I’ve told you three times now. When your wife’s procedure is over, we will let you know.”
Geoff nodded numbly. He’d just found his way back to his seat when the door swung open. He sprang to his feet, but the man in scrubs wasn’t Doctor Giorgi after all. This surgeon pulled down his mask and sat next to a young woman who clutched her gloves too tightly in her lap.
Geoff watched them openly, the stress of the waiting room liberating his normally polite nature. Though he couldn’t hear what the doctor said to her, he saw tears fill the young woman’s eyes. She fumbled about for a handkerchief in her black purse, finding it at last. She wiped her wet eyes and stood with the doctor. Geoff observed them as they went through the swinging door.
Something went wrong with that surgery. Was it for her husband? Her mother?
His thoughts returned to Emmeline, even now undergoing the procedure. Her eyes must be closed as in death. O Lord, do not let her die.
Yet the prayer felt somewhat hollow, and he wondered if Anyone listened at all. Emmeline had said to him that God would not give them a stone for bread. But didn’t He? We prayed for a child, and the Lord gave us a child, but He planted it without much thought.
Either God wasn’t listening very well or He didn’t care very much. In either case, prayer will do no good. Geoff sank his head into his hands. But he prayed anyway because he had promised Emmeline he would. And because he was afraid of what God might do next if he didn’t.
The sun had long since sunken low in the autumn sky, heavy as an overripe orange on its branch, when Doctor Samuel Giorgi pushed open the door and entered the waiting room. Geoff had never seen his friend right after a surgery, and he felt some surprise at how tired he appeared. Sam’s eyes sank deeply into their red-rimmed sockets, and his olive-toned cheeks looked bleached; his creased forehead had deepened its lines.
He spotted Geoff right away, at the same moment that Geoff picked up his head from its cradle in his hands. Geoff jumped to his feet with the arthritic quickness of one who has sat for too long a time. He met his friend halfway across the room. “How is she, Sam?”
Sam didn’t smile, but Geoff knew that wasn’t unusual for him. The doctor took his job with acute seriousness, which trait Geoff figured had made Sam the best regional surgeon in his field. “She’s in the recovery room,” he replied, his square chin bumping against the surgical mask he’d already pulled down.
“Why did the procedure take so long?” Geoff couldn’t help but ask.
Sam paused, hands burrowing deep into his surgical coat pockets. “We couldn’t stop the bleeding with curettage alone. I had to perform a hysterectomy to prevent the hemorrhaging from becoming fatal.”
A hysterectomy… Emmeline would be devastated when she awoke. This is the end of the road for us to have children. There’s no chance anymore. He kept his eyes on the floor, memorizing the pattern of miniature pink-and-gray tiles at his feet as tears blurred his vision.
Geoff felt the doctor’s hand fall on his shoulder and squeeze it with firm gentleness. The gesture of compassion released the floodgates in Geoff; his eyes welled with tears before he could make any attempt to control himself. Blinded, he stood, shoulders shaking, hands covering his face as he wept. And he knew then something of the Heavenly Father’s grief when He, too, lost His only Son.
“May I see her?” Geoff asked at last. “I… should be the one to tell her.”
“Walk you home, Grace?”
The gladness outweighed the dread for the first time as Grace heard Paulie’s voice behind her. She picked up the rest of her books from the locker shelf and turned toward him. “Sure, that’d be alright, I guess,” she answered, a little smile creeping up on her face.
“I figure we’ve got time to amble since Mr. K. cancelled the choir.” Paulie grinned at her. “Guess that wasn’t all bad, was it? I get to walk you home now.”
Grace couldn’t prevent her heart from picking up speed. But she would be careful. Paulie most likely didn’t know from what kind of family she came; he’d only moved to town a couple of years ago. She took in his brand-spanking-new sweater and neatly-ironed trousers, his shined-up shoes. Paulie comes from a whole different planet.
He fell in step with her as she shut her locker, and then he grabbed her books, bestowing plenty of his wide grins. He smiles at everyone, Grace told herself.
Not like he does at you, her inner voice replied. She promptly ignored that voice and straightened her cardigan, hoping Paulie wouldn’t notice the growing holes in both of the elbows.
“So,” Paulie began as they stepped into the fresh autumn air, “are you going to let me really walk you home this time, or are you going take your books back halfway there and hightail it?”
Grace felt the blood leave her face. It was true; each of the half-dozen times Paulie had insisted on walking her home, she’d stopped a good half-mile before the turn-off path. She’d always made the excuse that she had to hurry; she had chores, and Mama wouldn’t want to be kept waiting.
“Where do you live, anyway?” Paulie asked now, and Grace sure was glad that he couldn’t hear the pounding of her heart.
“Uh… just through Main Street, over the hill.” She hoped – no, she prayed – he wouldn’t press for a more exact location. I shouldn’t have let him walk me home. But she couldn’t very well say no to a boy who’d let the school nurse treat him for lice just for her sake.
Paulie nodded. “You live on Main Street, then?” They stepped up onto the sidewalk that began right after the school’s tiny parking lot.
“Uh, yeah, sort-of,” she half-lied, swallowing down her guilt like castor oil. Let Paulie think she lived in one of those grand, newly-built homes near the center of town. Better for him to believe that fib than for him to know the truth: that the Picolettis resided in a ramshackle brick farmhouse that her father could care less to repair because his mind was on his mistress.
“The church Dad and I go to is on Main Street. First Baptist,” Paulie commented as one of their teachers pedaled by them, astride her shin
y black bicycle. Her textbooks sat primly in the basket attached to the handlebars.
“That looks like fun.” Grace remarked, watching the teacher fly down the sidewalk, the feather on her small hat bobbing to-and-fro.
Paulie stopped short. “Haven’t you ever ridden a bicycle?” he asked, squinting in the bright mid-afternoon sunlight.
“Yeah, of course,” Grace responded, not liking the surprise she detected in his voice. “Well, once, when my cousins from Massachusetts came.” That had been when she was five years old and she’d only gotten to sit on the handlebars while Ben pedaled, but Grace figured it still counted.
“Don’t have one yourself?” Paulie asked, shifting the books from one arm to the other.
“No,” Grace answered, pulling her cardigan more tightly closed and wishing the bottom button hadn’t fallen off. What’d he think, everybody was rich? Was he trying to make fun of her or something?
But he wasn’t. “Wanna come over and ride mine sometime?” he offered, and Grace let her defenses lower just a little.
“What’ll you ride if I’m riding your bike?” she asked cautiously as they turned onto Main Street and Grace caught sight of her brother Cliff popping into the Old Man Turner’s candy store with a gang of his buddies. Probably leaching off them, she figured. That one’s got no pride. But she couldn’t really blame Cliff; the last time she’d had a sweet was when Ben had brought the chocolate babies weeks back.
Paulie shrugged. “Dad’s got a bike. I can always borrow his. Wanna come over tomorrow after school?”
“Why?” The question popped out of Grace’s mouth before she thought about it. Followed, of course, by a blush to beat the band. Good thing that Paulie had several inches on her; it made it that much harder for him to glimpse her scarlet cheeks.
“Whaddaya mean, why?” Paulie laughed and shook his head like she made no sense at all.
A very nice laugh, Grace thought even as she scrambled for an explanation.
But she needn’t have worried. Paulie kept talking; that was surely the Italian in him. “Cause I think you’re swell, Grace Picoletti. And I want to spend some time with you, but you’re always rushing off to get something or other done after school. So if luring you with a bicycle is the only way to get you to stop a minute, I’ll happily offer you a bicycle ride!”
He means that. He really means it. The smile spread slowly over Grace’s lips even as Paulie’s words sank into her soul. They’d come to a stop on the sidewalk without meaning to, and an old man carrying a crate full of apples nearly crashed into them. “Watch it, kids!” the man barked, giving them a glare.
“Sorry, sir.” Paulie pulled Grace to the side of the walk, and the old man hobbled on his way. Paulie waited until they could no longer hear his grumbling before turning back to Grace. “So how about it? Tomorrow after school?” He raised his eyebrows expectantly.
But no. Grace wouldn’t let him persuade her. Beneath that dimply grin, deep inside those warm eyes, Paulie was a man – well, he would be one soon. Like Papa. Mama had always said Papa had been the perfect gentleman when she met him. Had promised her the world. Mama had accepted Papa’s offers, first of a soda downtown, later of dates in the moonlight, and finally his proposal of marriage.
I ain’t gonna become like Mama. Grace forced the smile off her face and shook her head. “I can’t.” The words hurt her, but she would buck up and bear it. Look at the stars, canary…
“Why not? Just for a little while?” Paulie appealed, frowning slightly.
See, he’s just like other men. Now he’ll get mad at me ‘cause he didn’t get his way. But Grace would stand her ground, unlike Mama. “No,” she stated. I don’t owe him an explanation. She saw her books tucked under Paulie’s arm. “Here, gimme my books. I gotta get home.” She raised her chin, waiting for his anger to shoot out at her.
Yet it didn’t. Paulie nodded and slowly handed her the books. “You sure? That’s a lot of books; they’re heavy. I’d like to carry them for you.” Instead of irritation, friendly concern spread over his countenance.
“I’ve carried them before,” Grace replied, marveling at how firm she could be when she tried. She ignored the pain in her heart. Taking the stack from him, she cradled the books in her arms.
“Oke-dokey,” Paulie said, serious-faced. But not mad. “I’ll see you in school tomorrow.”
Grace couldn’t help but feel a bit of pity for him. But she wouldn’t let it show. “See you,” she answered, short and sour as a baby dill pickle. Turning on the dusty sidewalk, she dashed toward home.
She didn’t let herself look back until her feet had carried her a good block away.
Paulie was gone.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mr. Kinner returned to school three weeks later. Paulie thought he looked a bit drawn, and while never a giddy teacher, Mr. K. now wore a faint expression of preoccupied sorrow as he taught his lessons.
On his first day back, he stood before the class and apologized for cancelling the choir. “I know that several of you hoped to continue in it all this year,” he said. “Unfortunately, it will not be possible for me to direct it. Perhaps next year. We’ll see.”
In his careful, private way, Dad had let Paulie know that he’d performed some kind of serious surgery on Mr. K.’s wife. Paulie felt bad for Mr. K. and his wife, that was for sure, but he also wished that the special choir could have continued. Stealing a glance at Grace’s bowed head near him, Paulie knew the true root of his desire: He’d been looking forward to getting much better acquainted with Grace Picoletti. So pathetic she looked, yet… something about her thoroughly intrigued Paulie. She had strength of mind and spirit that the other girls lacked.
She’d not allowed him to walk her home again, rushing out of the school building like a frightened mouse running from a cat. I scared her off with the invitation to ride bicycles, I guess. Paulie passed the mimeographed worksheets back to Toby. You shouldn’t have been so forward, he scolded himself. You know that she’s shy.
Paulie sighed and turned his attention to the first instruction on the worksheet: List three adjectives describing a person whom you admire. Barely thinking, Paulie’s pencil scratched out, “Delicate, mysterious, enchanting.” His eyes sought out Grace again; yes, he’d described her perfectly.
He turned to the second instruction: Use those three adjectives in a sentence. Smiling now, Paulie wrote, “Bejeweled with enchanting blue eyes, her delicate white face held a mysterious charm for him.”
She deserved better, but it would have to do, for Paulie was the son of a doctor, not a poet.
A cool late October breeze caused the remaining leaves on the steady oaks to rustle and woke Emmeline from her doze on the front porch. She winced as her consciousness rose, reminding her of her still-healing incision. It stretched several inches long across her abdomen and looked rather grisly, but its appearance – however horrible – could not compare with the excruciating pain Emmeline had experienced after the surgery. Just in the last two days or so, the agony abated enough to allow her to sleep without the aid of drugs.
Her left arm tingled a little. She must have slept on it the wrong way. Carefully, flinching a little, Emmeline adjusted her body position on the long wicker lounge chaise and pulled up the light quilt until it tucked under her arms. The day nurse could not have known it when Emmeline had asked her to find a quilt before she left an hour or so ago; but Emmeline’s own grandmother had stitched this delicate covering almost forty years ago when she was a young woman in her thirties. Emmeline knew that her grandmother had been a devout woman and that she often used her quilting time as extra prayer time. Warmth swelled in Emmeline’s heart as she pondered the idea that she was covered – literally and figuratively – in the prayers of a faithful grandmother.
She lost all three of her sons. Emmeline traced the delicate hand-stitching with one finger, brooding. Two had died in the Great War and a third had committed suicide unexpectedly some years ago. Yet Grandma never walked
away from her faith. Emmeline squinted down at the pin-straight patchwork pattern. Actually, her grandmother was fond of saying, “God only gives good gifts, though the wrapping on them seems ugly at times.”
He only gives good gifts…
Emmeline’s hands floated over her abdomen, covered by both her nightgown and the lovely quilt. Empty. There was no gift there. And never would be. The place where she had expected the blessing – the only logical place from which it could come – that place was barren and scarred. It seemed that God had cruelly snatched away the half-formed answer to her and Geoff’s prayers.
“Barren,” she said aloud. Even the word sounded terrible.
Hopeless.
A deep breath.
And then…
Thy best, thy heavenly Friend, through thorny ways, leads to a joyful end…
The tears rose up, welling at her lower lids. Emmeline brushed them away with a patient hand. The tears would come, and she would not be frightened of them. She would not be ashamed to admit her sorrowful heart’s cry. But now Emmeline knew a hunger for hearing God’s voice, desiring it to drown out her own pitying whimpers. Her heavy hands picked up her small personal Bible, tucked away between the side of the chaise and her wounded body.
Before the surgery, Emmeline had been reading in the minor prophets; since then, she’d not stuck with a particular reading plan, as the initial physical pain seemed to make it difficult for her to even think. But now that the pain had diminished somewhat, the steadying routine of having a reading plan again appealed to her. Emmeline smoothed her hands over the worn Bible – Geoff had purchased it as his wedding gift for her – and asked the Holy Spirit to open His Word to her heart. “And open my heart to Your word, Lord,” Emmeline finished, her fingers finding the place in Haggai which she had last bookmarked:
The Fragrance of Geraniums (A Time of Grace Book 1) Page 13