Sweet Mercy

by Ann Tatlock

  I moved across the lawn toward the kitchen, wondering at all the marvelous things people might be, if not for the circumstances that pulled them down.

  Chapter 28

  The knock on the door was so subtle I thought perhaps I had dreamed it. Eyelids half open, I listened a moment before rolling over in bed in the still-dark room.

  Another knock, louder this time, followed by my mother’s voice. “Eve?”

  I moaned, sat up in bed. “Come in, Mother.”

  The door to our adjoining bathroom opened and Mother padded across the room in her slippers and light cotton robe.

  “What time is it?” I asked sleepily.

  “Nearly six,” Mother said. “Listen, Eve, we’ve just received some bad news. . . .” She paused as she sat down on the edge of my bed. In those few seconds, I envisioned every possible scenario, most of them revolving around the secret, all of them having to do with tragedy.

  “What is it?” I pressed.

  “Aunt Cora died in the night.”

  I lifted both hands to my mouth and squeezed my fingers together. “Oh no,” I whispered. “How awful. Does Jones know?”

  “Yes. Cyrus received the call about a half hour ago. He’s already packing and getting ready to go.”

  “Go? Go where?”

  “New York. He’ll accompany her body back on the train.”

  “He’s leaving this morning?”

  “Yes. On the first train out. While he’s gone, Daddy and I will cover at the front desk. Your help will be needed down at the Eatery. It’s just for a few days, of course.”

  “Sure, Mother,” I said. “Whatever I can do to help.”

  “You might want to get up now, so you have time to give your condolences to Uncle Cy before he leaves.”

  I nodded and pushed back the covers.

  Mother stood and wrapped her arms around herself. “Poor Cyrus,” she said. “It’ll be the second wife he’s buried. Such a hard lot for a good man like him. With no children of his own, he has so little to ease his grief.”

  “I wonder,” I said absently, almost to myself, “what Jones will do now.”

  Mother looked at me in the dim light and shook her head. “Stay here, of course. Keep doing what he’s doing. Why should that change?”

  “He isn’t Uncle Cy’s son.”

  “No, but I should think he’d always have a place here, if I know Cy.”

  But you don’t know Uncle Cy, I thought. Not really. Not like I do.

  Mother let her hands fall to her side and seemed to steel herself with a deep breath. “Well,” she said, “get dressed and meet us downstairs so we can see Cyrus off to the train. Daddy’s going to give him a lift and then he’ll come on back and we can have breakfast.”

  Ten minutes later I was on my way downstairs. Mother and Daddy were at the front door waiting. Daddy fingered his car keys while Mother dabbed quietly at her eyes with one of Daddy’s handkerchiefs. Uncle Cy was at the desk, giving last-minute instructions to Thomas. He was dressed neatly in a gray cotton suit and wing-tip shoes; a single suitcase sat on the floor at his feet. His cheeks were crimson and his mouth drawn down, and he spoke with a certain urgency and like a man who was angry, which he very well might have been. He’d been dealt a rotten hand, after all.

  Finally he picked up his fedora from the desk and settled it on his head. He turned and looked startled as he realized for the first time that I was there. For a moment neither of us spoke. His expression became one of annoyance, as though I were little more than a roadblock between him and the door.

  I drew in a deep breath and said, “I’m very sorry about Aunt Cora, Uncle Cy.”

  He nodded curtly. “Thank you, Eve. Did your mother tell you about the work arrangements?”

  “Yes, she told me.”

  “Do whatever needs to be done and don’t cause any trouble while I’m gone.”

  I was taken aback and momentarily silenced. Then I said, “I won’t cause any trouble, Uncle Cy.” I wasn’t a child who needed a reminder to behave. I hadn’t caused a moment of trouble since we’d arrived, and I had no intention of causing any while he was away.

  Only as his gaze bore into me did I begin to understand. Of course. The secret. The knowledge. I realized the power I had in that knowledge, and I realized too that Uncle Cy was afraid. One word from me to the right people and I could bring this whole place down.

  He picked up his suitcase and stepped around me to the door. “You ready, Drew?”

  “I’m ready. But don’t worry, Cy. There’s plenty of time before the train pulls out.” Daddy kissed Mother’s cheek and settled his own worn fedora on his head. Then the two men disappeared through the front door.

  “Poor Cy,” Mother said again.

  “Jones isn’t going with him?”

  “No. Cy’s going alone.”

  “How come?”

  “How come Jones isn’t going?”

  I nodded.

  “Apparently, he wanted to stay here.”

  “Sure he did,” I whispered.

  “What, Eve?”

  I hesitated. “Nothing.”

  Mother sniffed and tucked her handkerchief into her skirt pocket. “Well, I’m going to see if Annie has the coffee on. Do you want to join me?”

  “In a few minutes.”

  She stopped briefly to talk with Thomas on the way back to the kitchen. He smiled at her politely as they exchanged a few murmured words. When she left, Thomas peered at me over the round lenses of his glasses. His smile had disappeared, and the look in his eye told me he’d be watching and waiting for me to do something wrong in my uncle’s absence. I narrowed my eyes at him and turned away to the window.

  Like Mother, Thomas had no idea. Uncle Cy wasn’t telling me to be good; he was telling me to be quiet.

  The door to the apartment was closed. On the other side, a radio played something fierce and loud. I heard violins screeching, horns bellowing, cymbals crashing.

  I knocked. No answer. I thought maybe Jones couldn’t hear me over the music, so I knocked louder. Still no answer.

  I almost turned away but something told me to stay. I knocked again. The music stopped abruptly. “Who is it?”

  “It’s me. Eve.”

  Silence. Then footsteps as he walked across the hardwood floor. The door squeaked open a crack and there was Jones, his red eyes staring out from behind the magnifying lenses of his glasses. He looked at me but said nothing.

  “I’ve come to tell you how sorry I am about your mother.” I waited. It was obvious he wasn’t going to invite me in. “I just wanted you to know that,” I finished awkwardly.

  “Thank you, Eve.”

  His voice was strained and barely audible, but he hadn’t cried. That much I knew. He appeared more ghostlike than ever, as though all the lifeblood had been sucked out of him, but he hadn’t yet shed a tear.

  “Uncle Cy didn’t want you to go with him, did he?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t discussed,” Jones said flatly.

  “He should have let you go. She was your mother.”

  He shrugged resignedly. “My going with him wouldn’t change anything. She’d still be dead.”

  I had no response.

  He removed his glasses, folded them, and slipped them into his shirt pocket. “When are you leaving?”

  “What?”

  “You know, going back to St. Paul.”

  “Oh.” I nodded. Of course he knew. He’d been there when Daddy had confronted Uncle Cy and our future had been set. “Soon. A week, maybe less. We’ll probably caravan with Cassandra and her family on their way back up.”

  He lifted his chin a notch. “You’ll be here for the funeral?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. When will it be?”

  “Soon as the body gets here, I suspect.”

  I grimaced at his choice of words. “How long will Uncle Cy be gone?”

  “Four, maybe five days.”

  “Then I imagine we’ll be here.”
<
br />   “I’d like it if you were at the service.”

  I smiled sadly. “Then I’ll try to be there.”

  He looked down, shifted his weight from one foot to another.

  “Jones?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “What will you do now?”

  He looked up, not at me but somewhere over my shoulder. “Some wide open spaces out there are calling my name, with nothing holding me back now. I best get busy.” He held out a thumb like he was waving down cars. He actually smiled.

  “I think I’m going to miss you, Jones.”

  He sniffed shyly. A corner of his mouth drew back. “I think you’ll be all right.”

  “Jones?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Can I hug you good-bye?”

  “I’m not leaving yet.”

  “Can I hug you anyway?”

  “What for?”

  “Because that’s what people do when someone dies.”

  Jones hesitated, rubbed his jaw. “I guess they do. All right, then.”

  He opened the door a little wider. I took a step toward him and lifted my arms around his neck. He didn’t hug me back, but he let me cling to him for a long moment. The way his shoulders trembled I was sure it was the first time he’d been held by anyone other than his own mother.

  Chapter 29

  The stars shimmied and winked over the Little Miami. Uncle Cy had booked a band from Cincinnati to play the final Friday night of July, and even though he wasn’t there, the band kept the date. Orson Albright and his musicians had played the island before, and they knew Uncle Cy was good for the money.

  At a little after nine o’clock, their buoyant music enticed me from the lodge and drew me down to the pavilion. I stood in the shadows off to the side of the dance floor, watching, listening, drinking in the joy of couples dancing to “Happy Days Are Here Again.” The song was popular just then because our country needed it; while it played, whenever it played, for those three minutes people could pretend that the days really were happy, in spite of everything. How I would miss that about the island, the live music rising up in the open air, spreading delight, reaching so far as to leave even the stars dancing overhead, their jubilance mirrored on the water.

  I stood tapping my foot, my hands behind my back. I didn’t want to leave the island to go back to St. Paul, but neither did I want to stay. All I knew for sure was there wasn’t a place in the world that matched my dreams. For as long as I lived I would never stop pining for Paradise, but the gates had been shut and bolted long before I was born. I knew that now. The heartsickness of life outside of Eden was everyone’s lot, including mine.

  But it will be all right, I told myself. We’ll go back to St. Paul, and I’ll make the best of it. Ariel, at least, would be glad I was there. I’d return to school in another month as though I’d never been gone, and I would graduate next spring with the classmates I’d known since grade school. Yes, everything would be all right.

  As I stood there consoling myself, someone tapped my shoulder and spoke quietly in my ear. “Want to dance?”

  Marcus! I thought. But it wasn’t Marcus; it was Link. Link towering over me, his smile vaguely apparent in the dim light.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Same as you. Enjoying the music. So do you care to dance or not?”

  The band was playing a swinging rendition of “Nobody’s Sweetheart,” which seemed somehow appropriate. I looked over the bobbing hands of the dancers to where Orson Albright waved his wand at his men, pulling the music out of them as though by magic. I turned back to Link. He stood expectantly, his thumbs hanging idly from his suspenders.

  Don’t do it, I told myself. Lie. Tell him you’re needed back at the lodge. Anything. Just don’t spend the evening dancing with Link.

  And then I smiled at Link and said, “Sure. Why not?”

  He let go of the suspenders and grabbed my hand. He pulled me out of the shadows and, with his usual vitality, began to spirit me around the dance floor. I couldn’t help but laugh. For an hour we forgot the world, though somehow the joy of the music and the dancing and of each other seemed more real than anything the world had to offer. When the band took a break, I was sorry for the interruption, but I invited Link to follow me to the Eatery. My cousin Earl, Uncle Luther’s oldest son, was working the stand, and with a nod and a wink, he gave us a couple of tall cold glasses of lemonade free of charge.

  We chose a table in the breezeway where we could sit and enjoy our drinks. The welcome iciness of the lemonade moistened my throat and sent shivers down my spine and out my arms.

  “So when’s your sister coming?” Link asked. He pushed his unruly curls out of his eyes. He remained sorely in need of a haircut.

  “Tomorrow. They should arrive sometime toward evening.”

  “Well, I hope you all have a nice visit together.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Don’t bother getting your hopes up too high. My sister and I aren’t exactly the best of friends. On top of that, we have a funeral right in the middle of their visit.”

  “A funeral?”

  “Yeah. Haven’t you heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “My Aunt Cora died. Uncle Cy’s wife. He’s in New York right now, bringing her back so she can be buried here.”

  Link shook his head. His expression became serious. “I hadn’t heard. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t know Cora, really. I met her only once, at the wedding about five years ago.”

  “Well, it’s a terrible loss for your uncle.”

  “Yes, I guess it is. It’s the second wife he’s buried. The first one died of the Spanish flu and now Cora’s died of tuberculosis.”

  Link gave out a low whistle. “Some people have it rough, don’t they?”

  I nodded but didn’t say anything.

  Link asked, “So when is the funeral?”

  “Daddy and Uncle Luther have been making plans. Last I heard it’s supposed to be held on Thursday.”

  “Will it be at a church here in town?”

  I shook my head. “Aunt Cora was Catholic. It’ll be up in Lebanon at the Basilica of St. Matthew.”

  Link nodded, dropped his eyes, became intent on his lemonade. No one wants to interrupt laughter to acknowledge death. Certainly I didn’t. I finished my drink, feigning interest in the people milling about us, wishing I hadn’t mentioned Aunt Cora’s funeral.

  At last the band returned from break. When we heard the opening notes of “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” Link looked at me expectantly. Visions of Aunt Cora and the funeral drifted off and disappeared. Link and I were animated again, living in the buffer zone of youth, eager simply to be alive.

  “Ready for another go-round?” he asked.

  “Ready.” I smiled.

  For another hour, maybe more, we danced ourselves into a sweat, danced until our feet hurt, danced until our lungs ached for air and our hearts burst with happiness. And then . . . then the band eased into “After You’ve Gone,” a slower song that called for dancing cheek to cheek. I couldn’t reach Link’s cheek, he was so tall, but he held me closer than before—a gesture that broke the spell I’d been under all evening. I didn’t belong here—not in Mercy, not on the island, not in Link’s arms. I’d be gone soon and it wasn’t likely I’d ever come back.

  I struggled in Link’s grip, just slightly, just as though I were seeking cooler air, but he held on tight.

  “Say, Eve?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Oh.” He seemed to think about that a moment. Then he said, “When will you be eighteen?”

  “September.”

  “September what?”

  “Twenty-first. Why?”

  “I’m just thinking.”

  “Thinking about what?”

  “Thinking about when it might be appropriate to ask your father if I can call on you.”


  I gasped. My feet were suddenly rooted to the floor. Link stumbled, righted himself. “What’s the matter, Eve?” he asked. At last, he loosened his grip. He frowned at me. The band began to play “Let Me Sing and I’m Happy.”

  “Link, I can’t—”

  “I know I’m not working a steady job right now, Eve, but—”

  “You don’t understand. I . . .”

  I never should have accepted the first dance. I should have known better, did know better and hadn’t heeded my own warning.

  “Listen, Eve, I just want the chance to spend some time with you, get to know you.”

  “I can’t. It won’t work. It won’t—”

  “But why not? Whatever you’re afraid of—”

  I wiggled out of his arms, bumping into the couple dancing behind us. The man glared at me a moment before whisking his partner away. I started to cry.

  Link reached for me. “Eve!”

  “I’m sorry, Link. I’m just . . . I’m sorry.”

  I fled the dance floor and stumbled back to the lodge. To my relief, Link didn’t try to follow.

  Chapter 30

  I didn’t sleep much that night for thinking about Link. Two months at Marryat Island—two broken hearts. Things seemed not to be working out in my favor.

  Maybe I should have explained. Maybe I should have told Link we were leaving, but he’d want to know why, and I couldn’t tell him. Besides, I wasn’t supposed to know myself that we were leaving. Daddy planned to sit down with Mother, Warren, Cassandra, and me sometime in the next few days to announce his decision to return to St. Paul. I was to act as surprised as the others.

  Just before dawn I slipped out of bed and sat by the open window. The view was of the side yard and the wall where Link took his meals when he came. I wondered now whether I would ever see him again. I decided it didn’t matter. Another few days and I’d be heading back to St. Paul, and that would be it.

  The world outside was gray shadows. In some unseen place, the sun was just beginning to rise. As light seeped in, trees, shrubs, the wall where Link sat became more distinct, their edges defined. Colors, once only suggestions, began to bloom. The morning air drifting in through the open window was cool and sweet. It chilled the tears on my cheeks and made me shiver.