The Lyre and the Lambs

by Sydney Avey

  “But to answer your question, yes it should, but for all kinds of reasons it’s not happening. And, the kinds of people who are stepping into the void to help these kids find themselves are a mixed bag.”

  Roger pushes aside the fresh drink he has barely touched. Mike has hit a nerve with him as well, the remote control parent who struggles to connect with his son. “How exactly do you approach these kids?”

  Arrivals and Departures

  Arrivals and Departures

  The hostess drops a dessert menu on our table and we decide on New York cheesecake. Mike leans on the arm of his chair, considering Roger’s question.

  “I could pick any number of passages from the Bible. Here’s one. Saint Paul wrote to a group of people in Galatia who were being told by their leaders that they had to follow a lot of requirements on top of what Jesus said. Our kids understand requirements. Their parents survived the depression and the war. They have worked hard and have high expectations for their kids.”

  “Nothing wrong with that.”

  “No, but on top of that, people they look up to have a lot of what I call gottas. You gotta rebel, man; you gotta open your eyes, do your own thing, try these drugs.”

  “I see that.”

  “Paul teaches that Jesus is the one to follow. As these kids experiment all different ways, trying to discover the meaning of their lives, Jesus stands in front of them, just like he stood in front of Paul on the road to Damascus. He says, ‘I’m it, I’m the plan. Follow Me.’ That changes the focus.”

  “Do the kids listen to that?”

  “Most don’t, some do. The ones who are willing to ask the next question put their foot on the path. That’s all I’m here to do. Help them get a leg up.”

  I know Roger well enough to know he doesn’t want to appear ignorant, so I jump in.

  “And the next question is ’how do I follow Jesus?’”

  Mike nods his head. “That’s it. And then we pray, and then we go to God’s Word for an answer, and that’s my ministry.”

  The cheesecake arrives. The touch of creamy, sweet, lemony coolness on the tip of my tongue is heaven. While Mike fills Roger in on encounter group training he is adapting as a format for the youth group, my focus is temporarily on the feel of silky cheese on my palate and the aroma of blossoms that fills my nose. I jab my fork in the direction of the fast disappearing wedge of cake, “Mmmm,” is all I can manage to say.

  Roger continues to quiz Mike. “So, you were a high school teacher, and then you were a priest, and now?”

  I need to pay closer attention to this conversation. What on Earth caused me to get so carried away by the dessert when Mike is pouring his heart out? I’m a rotten, lousy friend.

  “Well, I’ll always be a priest, but I’m beginning to wonder if I might have more freedom to influence the way young people think outside the classroom and away from the pulpit.”

  Mike pulls fifteen dollars out of his pocket and slaps it on top of the tab. Roger protests, but Mike waves his hand.

  “I’m no poor clergyman, Roger. Got my rainy day savings and some prospects I’ll tell you about later. It’s not money I need, it’s space.” He looks at me.

  “Ahhhh, like in a house?”

  “Yes. A large house, with a big living room, in a cozy neighborhood.”

  This is exactly the kind of thing Valerie would love.

  “Would any of those young people happen to be unwed mothers?”

  R

  Back at the Glass House, Roger and I discuss the evening’s revelations while we are getting ready for bed.

  “Laura and Mike seem tight, don’t they?”

  “Hmmmm.” He seems distracted. He’s sitting on the end of the bed wearing the silk pajamas I’ve already given him as an early Christmas present, a tradition we established some years ago.

  Roger stands and sidles up behind me, slipping his arms around my waist while I’m trying to wiggle out of my slip. He pulls my hips back to meet his and whispers in my ear, “I have a gift for you.”

  “I feel that you do,” I breathe in my most sultry voice. The silk of his pajamas feels warm with the heat of his body. I twirl around, put my arms around his neck and he falls back on the bed, taking me down with him. He rolls over on top of me just as Andy’s car pulls into the driveway.

  I wait for the click of their shoes on the tile down the hall. I don’t need to hear right now about the city council meeting they attended this evening, but the noise and the worry is a distraction. You never know what the downside of a living situation is going to be until after you’ve signed on.

  Roger is doing all sorts of delightful things to keep me engaged. I give in and focus my attention to where he directs it.

  The next morning I tell Roger my plan to take Laura to the San Francisco airport where she will fly out for the promised Christmas visit to her family.

  “I volunteered to keep Goldie here with us while she’s gone. I hope that’s okay.”

  “Sure, but if Mike’s not going back to North Carolina with Laura why wouldn’t he keep Goldie?”

  “Whoa, Roger. You talk as if they are a couple. Fred has only been dead three months.”

  “And Mike has waited a lifetime for a girl like Laura. He doesn’t seem the type to let grass grow. You said yourself they seem tight.”

  “Well, I didn’t mean it like that.” But I did. “Anyway, Mike left this morning to drive to Chicago to spend the holidays with his family.”

  “That’s a long drive for him. Why didn’t he fly?”

  “Laura said he has a lot to think about, and driving helps him think.”

  “I’ll bet he does.” Roger wiggles his eyebrows and gives me a saucy wink. I sock him in the shoulder.

  I’m still in my flowered housecoat, drinking coffee, leaning against a modish pillow tucked into the chair I claimed for myself. Amid tangled tree branches, crewel-embroidered owls, teal, brown and orange, wink at me from adorable gold eyes. Roger thinks they’re silly. He is rummaging around in his desk looking for the mail he picked up yesterday. I watch him pick up stack after stack of letters.

  “You ever hear of the ‘touch it once’ theory of mail sorting?”

  He gives me a yeah, yeah smirk and then pulls one of the letters out of the pile and holds up between two fingers, like it’s the trick card in a magic deck. “I forgot to tell you about this.”

  It’s the par avion envelope I gave him at our old apartment over a month ago.

  “David is coming for a visit in January. He thinks he may want to stay in the United States for a while and go to school here.”

  “What? Why didn’t you tell me? We should have talked about that before we agreed to move here!”

  Roger’s face freezes. He comes over and sits down in his chair.

  “Where is he going to stay?” I pull my voice back down out the top of my head.

  “I didn’t think about that.”

  How could a man who ran GE’s International Finance Operations not think about that? I know the answer. It’s a domestic detail that flies under his radar. He is only picking up on his opportunity to contribute something more than money to his son’s upbringing.

  David is very bright. I’m sure we can get him into Stanford. I don’t know what his academic interests are, but now that Roger has retired he will welcome the opportunity to guide this young man in any career he chooses.

  “Well, if he’s going to go school here, chances are he will want to live at the University. I’ll talk to Valerie and see if she wouldn’t mind letting him use the guest room until we figure it out.”

  Roger looks contrite. I reach across the small table and take his hand. “We’ll just have to try and communicate better.”

  “By the way,” he gets a foxy look on his face. “When are you expecting Danel?”

  Now it’s my turn to squirm. In the chaos of cleaning out the rental, hauling our recently acquired second-hand furniture back to the thrift shop for resale, and acquiring a fe
w just-right pieces that work in what amounts to a studio apartment with no kitchen, I totally forgot.

  “Uh, he’ll be here next week, on Christmas Eve.”

  “How long does he plan to stay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You and Valerie better go shopping for bunk beds for that guest room.”

  R

  Bright sunshine breaks through the morning fog on the 101. I ask Laura how she’s doing, and she describes the roller coaster of emotions she’s been experiencing since Fred died. For the most part her anger has abated. Anger has never been a primary color in Laura’s palette of emotions. Neither has sadness, but the way Fred chose to die dug a hole of sadness deep into Laura’s soul. Her only solace has been the tight circle that has formed around her: Father Mike, Goldie, whose allegiance to Laura is fierce, and me.

  “Are you going to be okay?” I ask her.

  “You mean visiting my family?”

  “Well, that too, but I was thinking beyond that.” It’s very delicate, asking someone about their finances. I might as well just be direct. “Did Fred leave you enough to live on, Laura?”

  “I don’t know yet. He did the budgeting and paid the bills. I’m still trying to figure it all out. I know the mortgage on the house is nowhere near to being paid off.”

  “Do you want to stay in the house?”

  “I don’t know that either. There’s so much I don’t know.” Tears come easily to Laura these days. She pulls a tissue out of her purse and dabs at her eyes.

  “Oh Laura, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “I know you didn’t. These are things I need to think about. I need to have a plan. I need to have it pretty soon too, because I know my parents are going to pressure me to move back to North Carolina. They are hard people to resist when they get a bug about something. Even James thinks it’s a good idea.”

  “How old are your parents?”

  “They’re in their eighties.”

  I can just imagine that her brother thinks it’s a good idea that his sister move in with their parents. It would take some responsibility off him if Laura were there to play nurse. Anger may not be part of Laura’s mix but it’s always been part of mine. Anger is a tiger that sleeps in a cage in my gut, but is quite capable of lashing out when disturbed. I find the idea that Laura should be typecast in a nursemaid role very disturbing.

  “Don’t you do it!” I growl at her. “Don’t move in with your parents. Don’t move back there.” Instantly I’m sorry. I have no right to tell Laura what she should do. Laura laughs.

  “Okay then, it’s settled. Honestly, I’ve become too much of a California girl to ever go back to the East Coast.”

  “It’s the weather.”

  “Well, that and other things.”

  We’re approaching SFO when I see my last opportunity to quiz Laura about Mike. I promised myself I would not do this.

  “Other things?”

  Laura pulls down the windshield visor, checks her lipstick and pushes a loose bobby pin back into place. Although she identifies North Carolina as the East Coast, I know her Southern woman heart. If she thinks I’ve crossed a boundary, she will not say so. She flips the visor back up and turns to me.

  “I started volunteering to help Mike out with the youth group so I could do something useful with my time while Fred was at work. There’s only so much Bridge a girl can play. Being around the kids is so much fun. They’re a noisy, rowdy bunch, bless their hearts, but they are great to be around.”

  I wheel into a parking space as close to Departures as I can get and turn off the engine. We are plenty early, so I keep talking. “What do you do with the kids?”

  “We’re just there for them, for when they need to talk. We go to their football games. I love that! That’s something I couldn’t do when Fred was alive, but Mike got me to go to one and I’m hooked. I always loved football. My brothers played, and it sort of makes me feel young again.”

  My goodness, Laura can talk when she gets going. She hardly takes a breath.

  “Mike asked me to work with the girls, so I do a Bible study with them. I hadn’t read my Bible for years, but this got me back into it. It’s been such a help to me through this terrible time. I just wish I’d been able to interest Fred in spiritual things. Maybe it would have made a difference.” Tears spring up in her eyes again.

  “And then there’s Mike. Oh gosh, I love that man.” The way she says this, I don’t know if she is talking about brotherly love or the other kind, but in one of those moments when time lengthens and you stand outside of yourself, I have a revelation. I don’t know if Laura is in love with Mike, has been for some time, or is just starting to fall in love with him, but this I know: Mike is deeply in love with Laura.

  I see myself holding this knowledge the way you would hold a baby bird fallen from its nest, gently and with care. This is a situation that is fraught with danger for both of them. If things go wrong, it will be devastating. If things go right, it could be new life for two lonely souls.

  I open the car door and help Laura pull her suitcases out of the trunk. I give her a hug, wish her Merry Christmas, and promise to take good care of Goldie while she’s away.

  A week later, I’m back at SFO to collect my nephew.

  Christmas

  Christmas

  Valerie and I had lots of fun furnishing the front room for our young guests. She declared bunk beds too childish, so we chose a sleek teak Danish modern twin-sized trundle bed. We added a pair of desks and dressers and two lounge chairs with good back support that could be pulled up to the desks, and we were done.

  “My, you girls are efficient.” Roger peeks in on his way to the garage, and watches us spread bright Madras covers on the beds. “This looks like a dorm room. If you aren’t careful, these boys will never leave.” He lopes on to the garage, which he’s fortifying with cabinets and workbenches. Workers are out back finishing a terraced path that goes down to the creek. Carlo’s eyes must be popping out, trying to take all this in through that little hole he cut in the hedge.

  Valerie has been all in a bother about how to set up the living room to accommodate Father Mike’s weekly T-Group sessions with the boys he has chosen for leadership training. I made the mistake of telling her about Laura’s work with the girls. True to form, she’s thinking the young ladies need their own T-Group and she’s just the person to organize it.

  Roger and I reflect nightly on how different our move to the Glass House is turning out to be. We expected that I would spend my days in the studio working on my collages. He would take up his golf game again and get involved with projects around the house. We thought Valerie and Andy would be gone much of the time. That’s not the case.

  Andy has moved his business to the Bay Area. He spends so much time meeting with clients at the dining room table he hasn’t even started to look for office space. Valerie has crammed the tiny fourth bedroom that separates their suite from ours full of fabric rolls, paint swatch books and decorating magazines, and dubbed it her hobby room.

  Between Valerie greeting interior designers at the front door, and Andy ushering clients in through the back door, it feels more like an open-air marketplace than a home. When I walk through the house, I feel like I’m at Stanford Shopping Center; something different catches my eye every time I enter a room because Valerie carts home new stuff every day. She is taking nest feathering to lengths I never imagined.

  R

  Two days before Christmas, I pull up in front of the house with my nephew and park the car in the driveway. I haven’t been able to park in the garage since Roger started his improvement project.

  “Gosh Auntie Dee, this house is amazing.”

  Valerie apparently hears us drive up. The wind has gotten up and her long hair whips around her face as she runs barefoot out the front door. Danel moves quickly toward his cousin, and gives her a bear hug that lifts her off her feet.

  “Valerie!” his voice booms.

  “Danny!
” She sings his name, holding on to the last note. And just like that, Danel Americanizes into Danny.

  When I saw my nephew last year at Moragarena he was twenty-four years old and still a bit of a boy, certainly not in stature, but in manner. He was full of crazy ideas. He wanted to start a business. He wanted to start a band. He wanted to run with the bulls in Iruna. A year later, he seems a bit more focused. He’s a stocky kid, well-muscled, with springy brown curls groomed into submission and eyes the color of root beer sparkling under heavy brows. He accepts a beer at cocktail hour, and is eager to join the men in a conversation about the American economy.

  After the dinner dishes are cleared, Valerie organizes us into a tree trimming party. Andy puts Bing Crosby’s White Christmas album on the record player, and we chat about nothing while we hang shiny red and gold colored globes on a silvery tinsel tree.

  For now, we carefully avoid any talk about why Danny has been sent to us. We don’t ask about Domeka. Valerie plugs in some newfangled color wheel she purchased when she bought the tree at Macy*s. As it rotates, the tree catches the light and changes color: red, green, blue and gold. I wonder how long this new fashion will last. Not long, I’m figuring, but I understand Valerie’s desire to try something new. Aren’t we all doing that?

  Goldie whines at the patio door, and Andy volunteers to take her for her nightly walk. As Roger and I and head off to bed, I look back to see Valerie and Danny sitting on the sofa by the used brick fireplace. The orange and rose reds, charcoals and washed out whites of the aged stone stands in stark contrast to the floor to ceiling glass. Radiant heat relieves the Ibarras from the hassle of burning wood in the factory-clean inner hearth. A fire log throws off a comforting glow, but not much heat. It seems appropriate. It’s comfort we are seeking this year.

  The cousins sit with their knees touching, hands in motion, trading stories of the passing year’s events; Valerie’s marriage, Danny’s travels through Europe after he graduated from University of Navarra in Pamplona, Valerie’s teaching, Danny’s decision to major in applied mathematics instead of religious studies.