Return to Harmony

by Janette Oke

  Bethan let the door close behind her, the little notice-bell sounding shrill and mocking. She forced her legs to carry her down the length of the building to where the dirt alleyway opened up at the corner. Bethan stopped there because she could not go a step farther. She leaned her back against the brick wall and turned her face to the sun. She tried to catch her breath but could not. The air was too full of her sorrow. It was like drawing shards of glass into her lungs, each breath hurt her so.

  “What’s that you’re telling me?” The strange woman named Netty Taskins squinted down from the top stoop in nearsighted hostility. “You’re aimin’ on doing what?”

  “I’m not aiming,” Jodie replied, holding on to politeness only because she needed a room. And a bed. The long train ride and the heat and the heavy satchels and the uncertainties were all weighing her down. “I’ve already been accepted. I am going to study chemistry at the university.”

  “Well, if that don’t beat all, I don’t know what does.” The woman turned, pulled open the screen door, stepped through, and held it open for Jodie. “A lady chemist. You a suffragette as well?”

  “I’m not really much of anything,” Jodie replied, following her into the coolness. “Yet.”

  “My Harry, he didn’t hold with women having the vote. Called them suffragettes a bunch of Yankee troublemakers. But he passed on, must be seven years now if it’s a day. He probably wouldn’t have held with a lady chemist neither, but he’s beyond caring now, bless his cranky old soul.” The woman had features so pinched they looked pickled. She inspected Jodie with eyes glimmering from within deep folds. “Who’s your folks, missie?”

  “Parker Harland, up Harmony way. He runs the town apothecary.”

  “And your momma, what does she think of this chemistry business?”

  “Momma passed on when I was fourteen,” Jodie replied, fighting off an attack of the old familiar ache. “But I think she’d be pleased. It’s Daddy who’s the hard one to get around.”

  “Yeah, them men, they do surely take some convincing.” The wrinkles creased into deeper folds as she gave a quick smile. “Reminds me of what my mammy used to say. Best way to convince a stubborn man is to apply a skillet judiciously between his eyes.”

  Jodie smiled back, liking this curious old woman. “The college said you might have a room for me, Mrs. Taskins.”

  “Sure do, missie. I surely do.” She reached over and took one of the satchels, then stumped toward the stairs. “Always had a wish for education, myself. Nice to see somebody with the gumption to go where I couldn’t. Gives me hope for the future. I’m glad the Lord sent you my way.”

  Jodie had to stop and catch her breath before going into the department store. The doors were steel and glass and taller than any doors in Harmony, even bigger than the church entrance. Inside she could see people moving about, all of them looking so elegant and busy.

  “Are you going in?”

  Jodie spun about and faced a stern woman leading a child by the hand. Both were dressed in Sunday-go-to-meetin’ finery. The woman looked like something out of a magazine, her hair done up perfectly and topped with a snappy little hat with a pair of black feathers. The pearls around her neck looked terribly expensive. Jodie stepped out of the way. “No, ma’am, you go right ahead on in.”

  “Thank you,” she said frostily. She turned to the youngster and held out a hand. “Come along.” The door opened and closed, swallowing them up and leaving Jodie alone in the entrance.

  She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the shop window. Her floral-pattern dress, so nice in Harmony, looked cheap and tacky here in the big city. Not to mention her pair of hair-combs, or her scuffed high-button shoes. Jodie took a tighter grip on her purse and pushed her way through the big doors.

  Once inside, she had to stop and get her bearings. She had never imagined a store so big. Long aisles filled with every imaginable item stretched on and on. People walked around, calmly inspecting the merchandise, looking as though they knew just exactly what they were about. Jodie’s feet seemed rooted to the floor.

  “Can I help you?”

  She swallowed her startled squeak, spun about, and faced a girl about her own age. Only this one was more done up than the lady outside—hair perfect, clothes new and shiny, and lips painted. Jodie noticed the badge on her lapel and couldn’t believe her eyes. This was a salesgirl. She worked here.

  The young lady’s eyes swept over Jodie’s clothes and her awkward stance, and she assumed an air of vast superiority. “Did you wish to purchase something?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Jodie’s voice had shrunk to just above a whisper. “I was only looking for pens and papers and such.”

  “School supplies are up the stairs and to the left,” said the clerk tersely, turning away with a barely perceptible sniff.

  Jodie was almost ready to retreat empty-handed when a male voice said, “Don’t let her snippiness get your dander up.”

  She turned and looked up into a smiling face. For some reason the friendliness in his eyes only made her feel more out of place. “I… I don’t belong here.”

  “Sure you do. The secret is, don’t ever let any of these big-city folk spook you, and if they do, don’t let it show.” He grinned in conspiratorial fashion.

  He had the fresh-faced look of someone raised on the farm. His dark red hair was cut in a style she had already seen around the school that morning while registering, slicked down and parted in the middle. The color perfectly matched the freckles peppering his features. Friendliness and intelligence shone from sky blue eyes.

  “You should have seen me my first day last year. I came in here for supplies and had some uppity woman give me what-for, and I still don’t know what I did wrong. So I sashayed on out of here, didn’t show my face back downtown for a month.”

  “You’re over here at State?”

  He nodded. “Only thing that’d ever have gotten me to the big city.” He pointed with his chin. “The section you want is right up there.”

  “I’m going to be studying at State too,” Jodie said, still awed by the fact. It wasn’t her normal manner to talk with strange young men, but she had never felt so alone and at loose ends in her entire life. “I just arrived this morning.”

  “Welcome to the big city. I’m Lowell Fulton.” He climbed the stairs beside her.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Fulton. I’m…” Jodie reached the top step and stopped cold. “Oh my,” she said as she faced another enormous room full of aisles and merchandise.

  “Don’t let it worry you. Another week and you’ll have this whole place down pat. Now, what was it you were after?”

  “The usual school supplies.” For one moment Jodie hesitated, then plunged on, feeling that this kind young man would be safe to confide in. “And a slide rule.”

  Lowell gave a quick laugh. “You want what? A slide rule?”

  Jodie nodded. Thankfully her father had finally relented and offered to help her with expenses not covered by the scholarship. As soon as she heard the news, she knew what her first purchase would be. She had wanted a slide rule for years.

  “I’m going to be studying chemistry, but I want to take some mathematics too. I want to be able to handle statistics, and…” She realized the young man beside her had stopped. Jodie looked at him, then asked, “Is something the matter?”

  “Chemistry?” he said, his voice as flat as his eyes. Jodie did not understand, even when he continued coolly, “You’re that Harland girl, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. How did—”

  But he cut off her question. “Slide rules are down at the end of that aisle,” he said, then turned on his heel and retreated quickly down the stairs, not even giving Jodie a backward glance.

  Jodie watched him depart, her mouth open in astonishment. Suddenly the fact that Bethan was not there, not near to help her laugh it off and talk about the strangeness of city ways, nearly overwhelmed her. Such thoughts had been hitting her all summer long, striking when she leas
t expected it, leaving her hollow and aching. And now here she was, on the verge of realizing one of her biggest lifelong dreams, but lonelier than she had ever been in her entire life.

  She sighed and started down the long aisle. All the sunlight had drained from her day, even when she held the cherished slide rule in her hand.

  FIFTEEN

  THE NEXT MORNING, up at dawn, she had hardly slept a wink. It wasn’t that there was any lack of comfort to her new lodgings. Netty’s clapboard house was tidily kept. But the night had been full of strange sounds, and her thoughts had remained awhirl. So much newness. So little that was familiar.

  And so very much alone.

  She slid from the unfamiliar bed and began dressing. Though scrubbed until it was spotless, the washstand was rickety and scratched. The room’s only mirror was so old the silver had flaked away, leaving a scarred and pitted surface. Jodie gave herself a nervous inspection in what was left of its reflection.

  Her eyes looked frightened, her face pinched. Her hair was dark and fastened tight against her head, no modern curl to it at all. Her body was tall and lacking curves to soften the angular straightness. Jodie sighed and smoothed out the little lace collar on her blouse. Her first day of college, and she was so scared she doubted she would even be able to remember her own name.

  Jodie stopped before the wooden door with its brass number plate. The college building could have swallowed her little school at home with room to spare, and there were a half-dozen more just like it! There were more students, and more noise, than Jodie would have thought possible in one place.

  She felt her entire universe focusing on this moment. Before her dawned an entirely new existence. All her hopes and dreams lay waiting for her beyond that door. Still she hesitated, beset by sudden doubts. What if she was not good enough? What if she had only been fooling herself and Miss Charles? How would she ever bear—

  “You aim on standing there, Miss Harland, blocking the door all day long?”

  Jodie started and turned to face a familiar figure with hostile blue eyes. Lowell Fulton. Strange she would remember his name. “I’m sorry. I was just… is this Professor Dunlevy’s class?”

  “If you don’t know, maybe you don’t belong. You ever thought of that?” The challenge came from a second young man, as coldly antagonistic as the first.

  Lowell remained where he was. “Didn’t you tell me you were a first-year student? This here is sophomore Chemistry.”

  “I, that is…” Jodie swallowed to clear the tremor from her voice. “They told me to start with this class.”

  A flicker of something came and went in those blue eyes, so fast that if Jodie had not been watching carefully she would have missed it entirely.

  Another of his companions said, “Well, let’s just hope they didn’t make a mistake.”

  Jodie took a step back, watched as a cluster of six or seven young men shouldered past and entered the class. She overheard one of them say to the first, “That ought to set her straight, Lowell.”

  Jodie stood there a moment longer, shocked by the coldness of their attitudes. Then she sighed her way through the door and into the class, selecting a seat in the very back row. It appeared that hopes and dreams would have to wait.

  Professor Dunlevy proved to be everything she had been hoping for, a man who deeply loved his subject, and managed to share his knowledge and his passion with his students. He was just about the least attractive man Jodie had ever seen, with tufts of graying hair springing out from his head as though he had just applied a severe electric shock to himself. His eyes bulged slightly, and he had what appeared to be a week’s worth of lab work on the front of his formerly white coat. But once he started his lecture, all that faded into insignificance.

  As that first class session dispersed, he called from the front, “Miss, ah, let me see, what did I do with that slip? Yes here it is, Jodie Harland. I’d appreciate it if you could stay behind for a moment, please.”

  As the other students filed out, one of the young men passed her seat and muttered, “Leaving us so soon?”

  Jodie set her face in firm lines and raised her face to meet his eyes. “No,” she replied tightly.

  He tried to hold her gaze but could not. Looking disconcerted, he passed on. Jodie kept her face upturned, though it cost her. But to her surprise she did not meet the expected hostility from Lowell. Instead, as he walked by he simply studied her. Thoughtful, uncertain, something again flickering deep within his eyes.

  When the room had emptied, Jodie walked to the podium. Dr. Dunlevy waved at a nearby chair. “Have a seat there, why don’t you? Just wanted to welcome you properly.”

  “Thank you,” Jodie said, so grateful for the genuine warmth in his voice that the words came out a little unsteady.

  “I was there when you came before the scholarship board, but I don’t suppose you remember seeing my handsome face out front,” he joked.

  “I was a little nervous,” she admitted.

  “ ’Course you were, ’course you were.” He stacked his lecture papers, or tried to, but a few of them managed to escape and flutter to the ground. Jodie helped him gather them up. “Thank you, Miss Harland.” He straightened and went on, “I was impressed with what you had to say. Gave me quite a thrill to hear how—well, I suppose impassioned is the proper word—you were about what you hoped to accomplish.”

  “It was genuine,” Jodie assured him. “Every bit of it.”

  “I believe you.” He settled himself down in the chair opposite her own. “I understand you’re from Harmony. I know it well. My own family is from Greenville, not thirty miles down the road. It was a grand little town as well. Everybody knew everybody. You couldn’t get away with anything, and didn’t much want to.”

  Jodie watched him stretch out those long legs of his and wondered what she was supposed to say. Nothing in her past had prepared her for small talk with a professor.

  “Tell me, Miss Harland, how has your reception been from our other departmental students?”

  When she did not reply, he said, “You can tell me honestly.”

  “Awful.”

  “Figured as much. There’s bound to be some resistance to our first female chemistry major. Especially one who’s both pretty and smart.” He leaned closer. “But I’ll tell you something about that group, long as you promise to keep it between us. Far as most of them are concerned, there’s a grand old difference between their expectations and their abilities. And none whatsoever between their retention ratio and their lapse factor.”

  She had to smile. “You mean they forget as fast as they learn.”

  Mobile features folded into an enormous frown. “Now what’s the purpose of all my work to become a scientist, if I’m still going to talk so everybody can understand me?” He examined her for a moment, then said, “Have you met Lowell Fulton?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Pity. I was hoping to get there before him. Lowell’s a special case. He’s from the western part of the state, out past Asheville. Good lad, intelligent, honest, hard-working. He was one of the scholarship winners from last year. Had a friend of his, best friend, actually. One of the finalists for this year’s scholarship.”

  “Oh my,” Jodie said.

  Dr. Dunlevy nodded. “Took it right hard, hearing how a late entry, and a lady to boot, kept his friend from joining him. The other boy’s gotten himself a job and intends to save enough to come next year, whether or not he gets the scholarship, so I guess he’s made of good stuff and doesn’t give up easily. Bright lad, but between you and me, he’s not in your league. Not by a mile.”

  Jodie thought about Lowell and recalled their meeting of the day before. “I had wondered why Mr. Fulton suddenly seemed so angry with me.”

  “He’ll get over it. He’d better. This time at college should be spent making friends and allies, not enemies. I aim on telling him that very same thing. Otherwise that kind of mess tends to have a real long tail. It can whip around and become
your noose without you ever knowing.”

  “You want me to give him another chance,” Jodie said, understanding him perfectly.

  “There, you see, I knew you were a smart one the second I laid eyes on you.”

  Jodie shook her head doubtfully. “I don’t know that he’ll be interested enough to try—”

  “Just give him a little time to get over his disappointment.

  Once he recognizes your real capabilities, he should come around.”

  Dr. Dunlevy rose to his feet. “I’d rather not have my two brightest students spend their years trying to tear pieces out of each other’s hides.”

  She thanked the professor and walked from the class, decidedly lighter in spirit than she had been when she entered. As she searched out her next class, she reflected to herself that perhaps college would not be so bad after all.

  The changes, when they came, were so surprising that Bethan might easily have attributed them to Indian summer.

  They started with Dylan whistling as he went about his morning chores. That alone was strange enough to draw Bethan from the stove where she was fixing breakfast. Dylan still disliked his chores around the farm, as pigs and cows never interested him as much as machinery. To have him whistle while he worked, especially before his breakfast coffee, left ethan wondering if perhaps he was running a fever.

  Then Moira appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Good morning, daughter,” she said as she moved stiffly into the room.

  “Mother!” Bethan could scarcely believe her eyes. “What are you doing up?”

  “Thought it was time to try and stir these old bones.” Moira held on to a chair for support, her other hand holding the quilted robe about her. She had lost so much weight over the summer that the robe hung on her. She kissed her daughter’s cheek. “How did you sleep last night?”

  “Me? Fine.” Bethan rubbed the spot where Moira’s lips had been. Such affection had not often been shown by her mother since the onset of her ailment. “How about you?”