The Wishing Jar

by Penelope J. Stokes

  Birdie snatched the phone out of Abby’s hand and placed it decisively atop an overflowing file on Ford’s desk. “If she gets any calls while she’s out, take a message.”

  Ford grinned, his round schoolboy face blushing in Birdie’s direction. “Yes, ma’am—as you wish, ma’am.” He gave her a snappy salute.

  Abby looked from Ford to Birdie and suppressed a sigh. “I should be back by two. While I’m gone, could you sort through those photos on my desk and give me some recommendations for the piece on ‘Biking the Parkway’?”

  Ford nodded. “Be glad to. Anything else?”

  “Just hold down the fort. See you later.”

  As they stepped through the front door of the Flat Iron Building into the September sunshine, Birdie linked her arm through Abby’s. “I think Ford Hambrick’s got a crush on me.”

  “He’s fifteen years younger than you,” Abby said. “Besides, half the men in Western North Carolina have a crush on you. And besides that, you’re married.”

  Birdie’s grin never wavered. “Of course I am, and very happily,” she chuckled. “But you don’t have to live on the mountain to enjoy the view.”

  They stood on the sidewalk outside Café on the Square, waiting for a table to open up. Across from them in Pack Square, a small crowd gathered to listen to a street musician. The Vance Monument rose like a lance toward the sky, and as the fiddler alternated between lively mountain tunes and plaintive ballads, the wavering reflection of the obelisk in the fountain below seemed to take on a life of its own, dancing and rippling in time with his bow.

  Abby watched as the man lifted his bearded face to the blue sky and closed his eyes, immersed in the music. She went to the curb for a closer look. He wore faded jeans and a threadbare plaid shirt, but nothing seemed to matter to him except the late-summer sun on his face and the music that poured from his soul into his fiddle. For a brief moment, Abby was seized by a deep-seated longing, a nameless and unfathomable sadness.

  Birdie nabbed a vacant table and called to her. Reluctantly, Abby dragged her attention away from the fiddler and sat down. The waiter appeared, and they ordered iced tea and grilled chicken salads.

  “What would it be like, I wonder, to live with that much passion?” Abby murmured when the waiter was gone.

  Birdie set down her iced tea glass and frowned. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “That musician. Look at him. He seems perfectly content and at peace. And it’s obvious he loves what he’s doing.”

  “He’s playing for quarters on a street corner,” Birdie said. “I don’t see anything so fascinating about that.” She narrowed her eyes. “You love what you’re doing, too. Don’t you?”

  Abby forced her attention back to Birdie. “I guess so.”

  “You guess so? Abigail Quinn McDougall, you’re the editor of one of the most respected magazines this side of the Continental Divide. You’re a fabulous photographer and a successful writer. What else could you want?”

  Abby shrugged. “I don’t know. Just . . . something. For some time now, I’ve felt that something was missing in my life. I wish I knew what.”

  “What’s missing is a relationship. I wanted to talk to you about that, in fact. Taylor has a new colleague, a professor in the Business School. I met him at the dean’s cocktail party last week. He’s good-looking, single—and straight. But he’s new in town and doesn’t know many people, so I thought maybe—”

  Abby shook her head. “No. Absolutely not. I told you, Birdie. No blind dates. I’m not ready.”

  “When are you going to be ready, Abby? John Mac died more than two years ago. I know you miss him, but you’ve been shut up in that old house for far too long. Do you ever see anyone except your mother and Neal Grace? And speaking of your mother, how is Edith?”

  “Mommie Dearest?” Abby grimaced. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have called her that. I love her, but she’s a handful. Ever since the stroke she’s been impossible, and getting worse all the time. The doctor says it’s not unusual for a stroke victim to become depressed, or even hostile. She’s lost so much—her independence, her dignity. Still, it’s hard to take on a daily basis. I don’t want to have to put her in a nursing home, but caring for her is stressful. As for my daughter—” She paused and sighed. “Neal Grace is—well, to be honest, I don’t know how she is. Strange, mostly. Something’s happened lately. She used to be so outgoing, so happy and well-adjusted. Now she keeps to herself a lot. And she seems—how do I explain this?—as if she’s barely containing some kind of explosion.”

  “Do you think she might be experimenting with drugs? Sudden behavior changes can sometimes be a sign.”

  “I don’t think so. We’ve talked about that in the past, and she’s always been adamant about how stupid it is to do drugs. No, there’s something else. I’ve tried to get her to talk about what’s going on, but you know teenagers.”

  “Can’t say that I do,” Birdie answered, “having never known the joys of motherhood myself.”

  Abby laughed. “If you want the experience, you can borrow mine anytime. At the moment I’ve had about all the joy I can stand.” She shook her head ruefully. “I should have had children in my twenties, not my midthirties. At my age, I should be planning a wedding or bouncing a grandchild on my knee, not dealing with a rebellious seventeen-year-old.”

  “All the more reason you should get out a little. Now, about this new friend of Taylor’s. His name is—”

  Abby held up a hand. “Birdie, I’m fifty-one years old. I am not going to get involved with dating again. Especially with a younger man. End of conversation.”

  “Who said anything about being younger? He’s fifty-three, married once, has two grown kids. And he’s aging nicely, if I may say so.” She laid a hand on Abby’s arm. “Come to dinner next week. Meet him. No pressure. You never know what might happen.”

  “All right. Whatever.”

  “Do you mean it? How about next Thursday, at our house?”

  “Sure, sure,” Abby said, but she wasn’t really listening. She was watching the fiddler again; he had seated himself on the edge of the fountain and was playing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” to a giggling baby in a stroller. His improvisation on the simple tune was entrancing—at least the baby seemed to think so.

  Abby leaned down and rummaged in her bag.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting my camera. It just occurred to me, this guy would make a great story for the magazine. I’m going to ask him if I can take a few pictures, and try to set up an interview.”

  “Can you not stop working for one hour?” Birdie sighed, then waved her off. “Go on. I’ll wait here and flag you down when our lunch arrives.”

  His name was Devin Connor, and he had the most incredible eyes Abby had ever seen. A clear, deep blue, like the cloudless sky over the mountains, like the watershed up on the Parkway, like the blue topaz ring she had inherited when Nana died. His face, weathered by sun and wind to the color of toffee, was seamed with craggy lines. His hands held the fiddle as if it were alive, an infant cradled against his chest.

  Abby introduced herself and briefly explained what she wanted. He caught her gaze and held it for a moment, then brushed a lock of hair away from his forehead and nodded. “Yes,” he said quietly, “yes, I suppose I would be willing to do that. There’s little in life that pleases me more than talking about my music”—he paused and grinned—“unless, of course, it’s playing my music.”

  She handed him her card. “My office is in the Flat Iron Building. Could you call or come by tomorrow?”

  Nodding his agreement, Devin Connor took the card, stuck it in his back pocket, and resumed playing. Abby took a few photographs— the Vance Monument in the background, some closeups of his hands on the fiddle, a nice shot of him leaning down next to the laughing baby, and one of his reflection in the fountain. Then she waved good-bye and left, dropping a ten-dollar bill into the fiddle case when he wasn’t looking.

&n
bsp; 3

  Neal Grace

  Neal slid her key into the lock and tried to open the front door quietly so her grandmother wouldn’t pounce on her. Sometimes Granny Q reminded her of a cat waiting for a mouse to stick its head out of a hole. For someone who had suffered a stroke, she had surprisingly good hearing, and even better instincts. Neal couldn’t often put anything over on her grandmother, but that didn’t stop her from trying.

  She felt a finger poking into her back. “Hurry up, will you?”

  Neal grimaced. T. J. Sweet might be her best friend, but sometimes she could be the densest, most frustrating person on the face of the earth.

  She turned and frowned at T. J. “Shhhh!”

  “Why are you whispering?” T. J. asked in a voice about ten decibels above normal.

  “Because I don’t want to rouse the dragon,” Neal hissed.

  “Your grandmother, you mean? That sweet old lady? What’s the big deal? You come home from school and bring your best friend with you. Not exactly a capital crime.”

  “I’m just sick of everybody knowing my business all the time, all right? Now, if you’ll just be quiet, we might be able to sneak in and get upstairs before she knows we’re home.” Neal leaned on the door, and it gave a loud creak as it swung open. She groaned.

  “That you, NeeGrace?” a garbled, wavering voice called from the kitchen.

  T. J. grinned. “It’s us, Granny Q!” She dropped her book bag on the sofa and grabbed Neal by the arm. “Come on.”

  Reluctantly, Neal followed her friend into the kitchen. Granny Q stood beside the stove with the oven door open. The acrid smell of something burning filled the air, and a thin haze of blue smoke hovered near the ceiling.

  “T’resa? Little T’resa Joy Sweet!” Granny Q tried to smile, but her mouth was still paralyzed on the left side, so the expression came out more like a grimace. Her words slurred, and her left eye had the droopy, bloodshot look of a hound dog. “Come in, children. I made cookies—’cept I burned ’em jus’ a little.”

  Neal dragged herself into the room and slouched into a chair at the kitchen table. She fixed her eyes on her hands, on the wooden tabletop—anywhere except her grandmother’s face.

  “They look just fine, Granny Q,” T. J. was saying. “They’re not real burned. We can just scrape off the bottoms, and—”

  “I don’t want any,” Neal interrupted. “Let’s go up to my room, T. J. We’ve got homework.”

  “Nonsense,” her grandmother said, but the word came out as nunshens. “You girls need a snack after school. I baked ’em special.” She shuffled over to the refrigerator, bracing herself against the counter, and took two glasses out of the cabinet. Neal watched out of the corner of her eye as her grandmother tried to pour milk, sloshing it onto the floor. She looked away and gritted her teeth.

  “Here, let me help,” T. J. said brightly. She took the half-gallon jug and finished pouring, then retrieved a paper towel from the roll and mopped up the mess.

  Granny Q lurched over and sat down opposite Neal while T. J. set the milk and cookies on the table. “How was your day at school, NeeGrace?”

  “Fine.”

  “Don’t wan’ some milk and cookies?” She pushed the plate in Neal’s direction with a spotted, palsied hand.

  “No.”

  Neal ducked her head, trying to avoid meeting her grandmother’s gaze. But she couldn’t help seeing the tear that leaked out of Granny Q’s bad eye, matched by a string of saliva that crept from her sagging mouth. Anger boiled up in her—an acidic, unpredictable, unstoppable rage.

  She didn’t want to see this. Didn’t want to be anywhere near her grandmother. Everything about the old woman disgusted her. The grotesque, twisted face. The way she sidled into a room, dragging her numb left side behind her like half a cadaver. The pale legs webbed like a road map with purple varicose veins. The flat, ugly feet sheathed in dirty chenille bedroom slippers.

  And the smell. The smell was the worst of all. It wasn’t body odor, exactly, but a hot, stale, medicinal smell.

  Neal vividly recalled the days when Granny Q smelled like lavender water and lilac powder, when she smiled without drooling and spoke complete sentences that could be understood without an interpreter. She remembered childhood Christmases in this house, with an enormous tree in the front foyer and lights everywhere, with Mom and Dad laughing, and Granny Q and Grandpa Sam handing out presents like Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus. In those days the entire house filled up with delicious aromas—fresh pine and apple pies and turkey and homemade yeast rolls.

  But that was before. Before Grandpa Sam’s heart attack. Before her own father’s death in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. Before the stroke that took Granny Q away and replaced her with this—this walking corpse.

  Neal tried to push the memory of her father from her mind. She missed him so much that she didn’t dare think about him. The pain of losing him was like a bottomless pit, a vacuum at the center of her soul—if she got too close, it would suck everything inside her into the darkness. She could almost imagine herself being pulled inside out and then vanishing completely.

  No. She couldn’t go there. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  It was partly her fear of the vacuum that made her so eager to come and live at Quinn House with Granny Q. Here, at least, Daddy’s memory didn’t pervade all her senses. The sturdy old brick house, with its dark green roof and shaded porches, had been in the family since the early 1900s. Yellowed photographs of the Quinn ancestors lined the walls, and above the marble fireplace in the living room hung the family crest, emblazoned with the Quinn motto: Purity of Heart, Faithfulness of Soul.

  By the time she was five, Neal had memorized the motto and knew all of her ancestors by name. She would walk slowly along the walls, pointing to the photographs and identifying each one. Kensington Quinn and his wife Gracie, the first of a long line her mother referred to as “the strong Quinn women.” Then their daughter, the original Abigail, whom Mom called “Nana,” with her husband, James Nelson. Photos of James and Nana’s three children were there, too—the sons who had died in the war and the surviving girl, Edith Quinn Nelson, a radiant bride on her wedding day.

  Neal would never forget the first time her mind connected that dazzling young woman in the photograph with her beloved Granny Q. Her grandmother, all dressed in white, bright-eyed and shimmering, with a handsome, younger version of Grandpa Sam standing proudly at her side. She remembered climbing onto a small stepstool and putting her nose close to the glass, inspecting every detail of Granny Q’s face, tracing the eyes and nose and mouth with one finger. This was the grandmother she adored. And she had once been fresh and beautiful, with smooth, bright skin and eyes that didn’t crinkle at the corners.

  All her life Neal had been awed by those photos and the heritage they represented. A legacy of character and love and family loyalty—five generations of it, counting Neal herself. Nearly a hundred years of Quinn history. She could close her eyes and see those faces. Sometimes at night when the house was quiet she imagined she could hear their voices, whispering to her on the breeze: Pure of heart . . . of heart . . . of heart . . .

  In her younger days, before she knew better, the idea of that legacy brought her comfort, made her feel part of something special, something important. But after Daddy’s death and Granny Q’s stroke, everything changed.

  No longer did Neal relish the idea of becoming “one of the strong Quinn women.” She had seen, firsthand, how quickly strength could turn to weakness. Every time she looked at her grandmother, a caustic and troubling thought rose to the forefront of her mind: If this was the reward for being pure and faithful, she wanted no part of it.

  Laughter drew her back to the present, and Neal looked up to see T. J. smiling, holding her grandmother’s hand, talking animatedly, as if everything were perfectly normal. A weight pressed in upon her, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe.

  At last she found her voice. “I . . . I’m not feeling so good, T.
J. I’ve got a headache. Think I’ll go upstairs and lie down for a while. See you tomorrow.”

  Before T. J. or Granny Q could protest, Neal jumped up from the kitchen table and fled the room.

  She was halfway through the living room before she could catch her breath. Panic roared through her—the kind of blind terror that comes with total darkness, the fear of being buried alive, locked in a mausoleum with only the dead for company. These feelings had been coming on for months—years, maybe. Certainly since Granny Q’s stroke six months ago, perhaps even since Daddy’s death—or at least since moving into Quinn House. The sensation of being trapped, not able to breathe, not at home in her own skin.

  Claustrophobia. Yes. That’s exactly what it felt like. The walls—these stout brick walls mortared together with Quinn family character and loyalty—were closing in on her.

  Neal sank down on the sofa and stared with unfocused eyes at the family crest over the fireplace. Behind her, in the kitchen, she could hear the muffled voices of T. J. and her grandmother. Talking about her, probably. Wondering what had gotten into her.

  She couldn’t help wondering the same thing.

  All her life she had lived up to the expectations presented to her. She did well in school, never got into trouble, always made friends easily. Her mother trusted her, and the two of them got along pretty well. Why, then, did she feel so . . . so suffocated? Why did she want nothing but to get away, to be anywhere but here, where the heritage of her Quinn-ness pressed in upon her like stone walls of solitary confinement?

  Even her name betrayed her: Neal Grace Quinn McDougall, after her great-great-grandmother, the matriarch of the clan. Every single woman in the family bore the Quinn name in one form or another. She could never get away from it, no matter how hard she tried.