All for a Song

by Allison Pittman

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Kathleen says, and the food is whisked away. “Will she be able to eat the cake?”

  “I think so. We’ll have to watch and see if she needs any help.”

  “Maybe we should do the candles now, so we can all eat whatever, whenever.”

  “Sounds good,” Penny says, and once again Lynnie is in motion, coming to a stop in front of a half sheet cake. The icing is white, with streams of colored frosting strewn down the sides. In the center, the words Happy Birthday, Dothy are piped in red.

  “I’m sorry they misspelled your name,” Penny says. “I couldn’t decide if I should put Dorothy or Lynnie or Dottie or what. . . . That’s the last time I order a cake over the phone.”

  “It’ll taste the same,” Roy III says, contributing his first wisdom to the gathering.

  “That it will,” Penny says, obviously hoping her cheerfulness will energize the room and gather them all in its warmth. “Now, Great-Aunt Dottie, we wanted to put on all 107 candles, but we were afraid the fire marshal wouldn’t approve.” She allowed for the unenthusiastic, obligatory laughter before continuing. “So I thought we’d each put a candle in the cake and take turns giving you a birthday blessing.”

  While Penny speaks, Kathleen is dutifully handing a tiny candle to each person—young and old—all of whom look bewildered to be in possession of such a thing.

  “Uncle RJ? You’re the oldest, so why don’t you start.”

  The birthday candle looks silly in the old man’s hand—undignified, somehow. He stares at it, as if seeking inspiration, then says to Penny, “I don’t know what you want me to do.”

  “Just say something nice about your aunt Dottie. Something she’s meant to you.”

  Her answer seems unhelpful, and he shifts his gaze to Lynnie, studying her.

  “What’s your favorite memory?” Penny prompts.

  “She taught me to sing ‘Glow-Worm,’” he says finally. “She played it on her guitar and taught me the words.”

  Lynnie remembers that day and can almost see the young boy behind the old man’s carefully groomed face. She taps a rhythm on her lap and hums the tune, pleased to find the occasional note escaping to her audience.

  “That’s it,” RJ says, then clears his throat. “‘Shine, little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer . . .’”

  The two of them—he aloud, she in silence—sing the song through its first jaunty verse. For a moment, it’s a summer’s day and she can smell his sweaty head tucked against her arm, fascinated as her fingers find the chords. Her eyes rim with tears at the memory, and in the midst of the smattering of family applause, RJ takes her hand in his and brings it to his lips.

  “You were as wonderful a mother as our own,” he says, and it’s the first moment she has ever truly loved him.

  “Now, put the candle in the cake, Uncle RJ,” Penny says, her own voice choked with emotion. “Daddy? You’re next.”

  RJ, however, does not put the candle on the cake. Rather, he hands it to Penny and takes himself back to his table to wait.

  “Our mother loved you very much,” Darren says. He places a dry kiss on the top of her head, hands his candle to Penny, and joins his brother.

  “You’re not doing it right,” Penny says, exasperated as she wedges the candles into the cake. “Roy?”

  RJ’s son looks lost and uncomfortable. Finally, he says, “I wish I’d known you better,” before handing his candle to his cousin and joining the other men.

  “Well, this is not what I had in mind at all,” Penny says. “This sounds more like a funeral than a birthday party. I mean, look at this woman. One hundred and seven years old! That’s more than a century! Imagine the things she has seen, how the world has changed.” She kneels beside the wheelchair. “I’d give anything to hear the stories locked up inside that head of yours.”

  “You had fifty years to hear them,” Roy says. “You should have asked her back then.”

  “When I was a kid,” she says, directing her comments to the children, who appear to have no intentions of listening, “I didn’t care about the exploits of some old woman. And now it’s too late.”

  “Wouldn’t have mattered,” RJ says. “Mom wouldn’t let her tell them. Neither would Grandma. I remember hearing them up late at night right after Margaret was born saying what happened in California wasn’t anybody’s business.”

  “What happened in California?” Kathleen says. She has a Ritz cracker piled high with cheese cubes and pops the whole thing into her generous mouth.

  RJ shrugs. “Never asked. All I remember is that she ran off right before her wedding.”

  “But she came back, didn’t she?” Penny is still holding her candle aloft, not quite finished with her birthday blessing.

  Lynnie listens to all of this with her heart full of unspoken secrets. No wonder she is a stranger to these people. How harmless it all seems now, hardly worth a lifetime of supposed scandal. Flesh and blood they may be, but Kaleena could have wheeled any old woman down the hall and parked her in the celebration room, and no one would have been the wiser. Not one person has mentioned seeing her on the Today show, and nobody has even a single picture to pass around and share memories. They could take a lesson from that Charlotte Hill. Her and her gadget with its pictures and songs.

  The celebration room has a window that looks out onto the hallway, and, seized with a longing for someone familiar, Lynnie cranes her neck around Penny’s frothy mass in response to the feeling that someone on the other side is looking in.

  There she is, the familiar pointy face and unnaturally black hair. She stands against the wall, arms folded, watching. Lynnie lifts one shaking hand, intending to beckon Charlotte inside. She, after all, holds the answers to all their questions. Her slouchy satchel holds the evidence of that secret time. Charlotte can clear her name and free her conscience, deflating whatever infamy Darlene’s progeny have imagined.

  But her hand is captured between Penny’s soft, frosting-smudged ones.

  “My birthday wish for you,” she says, her mouth wide in a clownish smile, “is that we can all gather here together just like this next year. And that God will somehow touch your mind so you can realize just how much we all care.”

  There’s no escaping the embrace to come. Lynnie’s face is impaled on a hard bit of plastic—part of the autumn-themed embellishment on Penny’s sweatshirt.

  “Somebody take my picture,” she says, her voice loud in Lynnie’s ear. “Use my camera.” Then Penny twists around, making the two of them cheek-to-cheek. She can smell the woman’s face powder and imagines a smudge of makeup will be left behind when this ordeal is over.

  Kathleen stands ready and says, “Say cheese,” which one of the children thinks to protest as being cruel, given that the old lady can’t talk.

  “Penny can talk enough for both of them,” Roy says, and the flash erupts in a moment of genuine laughter.

  “Ah, that’s nice,” Kathleen says, walking over. She shows the image to Penny, who furrows her brow and claims to look fat before bending to show the picture to Lynnie.

  She doesn’t want to look, not while the young woman in the red dress is still so fresh in her mind. Penny, though, ever forceful, brings the camera around to invade her line of sight, and there they are—the essence of Darlene and the old woman she wouldn’t live to become.

  Her hair reeked of cigarette smoke; her pillowcase was smeared with black. The red dress lay in a heap on the floor in a silk puddle around her shoes, with stockings, garters, and underthings strewn nearby.

  She paused briefly, staring at this evidence while her sluggish mind began to knit together the memories of the woman she’d been the night before.

  Champagne—that much she remembered, three glasses to start with. And something called shrimp cocktail, and other lovely foreign nibbles that Roland continuously foisted upon her, saying, “Eat something, sweetheart.”

  Dancing—her feet and her body fully engaged in frantic, unfamiliar steps.
Soft-shaven cheeks pressed against hers, masculine hands touching the bare skin of her back—and lower, sometimes—before Roland-the-gentleman offered rescue.

  Slurring tirades against Brent, and Sister Aimee, and boorish, repressive moral regimen.

  Finally, fresh, cool air, downright icy as they drove. Where was the shawl? Telling Roland, “We have to go back. I’m freezing. Take me back,” but still he drove on and on, his words lost in the roar of air between them.

  A lopsided walk through the Alexandria lobby. A single foot trailing in the carpeted hall. The rough texture of the wall—more reliable than her spine. A key opening the lock.

  Roland saying, “Okay, baby. I think you’re done,” before his lips were silenced by her own. Her fingers in his hair, her feet off the floor, her body encased in his arms. His protests as she reached for him.

  And then, the protests silenced.

  His touch behind the damp cloth that soothed her fevered face. His final words landing on her pillow as he tucked her away, soft and safe, long hidden from the mercies of a new day already on the cusp of dawn.

  Oh, God. What have I done?

  She made slow, unsteady progress to the bathroom, where she knelt with her cheek against the tub, aware of the porcelain changing from cool to warm as it filled with steaming hot water. When it was full, she climbed in and immediately submerged herself. She ran her fingers through the long hair floating loose. Then a panic set in as she felt a familiar bile rise within her. Heedless of the lakelike puddle she was making on the floor, Dorothy Lynn hurled herself out of the tub and was once again kneeling—this time at the commode as she heaved and retched, cleansing that much, at least, from within.

  She scooped water from the tub and rinsed her mouth, then got back in and scrubbed her hair, her face, and every inch, working furiously at first, as if doing so would bring back her innocence. Then, slowly. She closed her eyes, the lapping of the bath’s water reminiscent of the ocean’s tide and Roland’s voice reciting, Hitherto, but no further—sounding more like, “That’s far enough, sweetheart”—before leaving her stranded on the shores of sleep.

  Later, dried and dressed with her wet hair combed, braided, and pinned, she spied a folded sheet of hotel stationery just under her door. Whether or not it had been there before her bath she couldn’t say—she’d been in no shape to read it.

  D—

  Don’t know how you’ll be feeling this morning.

  I’m having sandwiches sent up at noon.

  Grins.

  —R

  Grins, indeed.

  As if the note itself were a summons, a knock sounded at her door and a fresh-faced boy stood on the other side with a rolling cart. She was digging in her purse for a dime when he lifted his hand and said, “Already taken care of, ma’am,” with such earnestness that she insisted, pressing the coin into his soft, cool flesh.

  “For an ice cream,” she said.

  Once again alone, she lifted the silver dome to reveal a tray filled with triangle-shaped sandwiches of all sorts. There was also a pitcher of cold water and a pot of hot coffee—both of which seemed far more appealing. Still, she nibbled as much as her stomach allowed, pacing the length and breadth of her room, stepping around the dress at each pass. Had she taken it off herself? Had he? She kicked it halfway under the bed and gulped down a glass of water.

  The note said nothing about when Roland would call on her today, but as surely as she knew that he would, she knew she couldn’t face him. Not here, at least. Not at the scene of the transgression.

  It was Sunday morning—well, Sunday afternoon. She should be in church. Not a theater, not a concert hall, but church. A place where she could meet with God, fellowship with him, praise and worship his name in the wake of grace.

  No. Not church. What she needed was air. Fresh and clear, and grass under her feet. She’d been away from home for more than a month, and it had been that long since she’d had an opportunity for either.

  The park, Pershing Square. She wrapped her sandwiches in some of the tissue paper from the lost shawl’s box and put them in the velvet drawstring bag that had held her shoes. After swallowing the last of the coffee in three big gulps, she stuffed her battered journal into the sack with the sandwiches, grabbed her guitar, and headed for the elevator.

  She stopped briefly at the front desk to leave a note of her own, lest Roland come looking for her later in the afternoon.

  Will be back before dark.

  —D

  Once that was complete, she took no notice of the people and heeded no conversations or comments as she walked straight through the lobby to the street. Working from memory of previous outings, she turned left, fully confident that she would find her way.

  It was a strange bit of forest to be growing in the midst of the city, as nothing about it seemed to have a direct connection to God’s creative hand. The grass was green—maybe too green?—spread out in a perfect, clipped carpet stretched between paved walking paths. There were palm trees and oak trees and budding shrubs throughout. Clearly, some had to have been transplanted from far off, but given the newness and vitality of the city, who could say which was at home and which was a guest in the California soil?

  Men and women in simple working clothes had shared Dorothy Lynn’s inspiration and sat on benches along the paths, taking wax-paper-wrapped food from buckets and boxes. The sight of them—such good, honest people—made her stomach pinch in guilt. She’d done nothing to earn the meal she carried.

  Unless she wanted to count her actions last night, which she didn’t.

  The farther she walked toward the center of the park, the fainter the sounds of traffic from the surrounding streets. Soon she could hear the soft crunch of her own footsteps, and she longed to abandon the path, take off her shoes, and feel the soft grass between her toes. She kept her eyes open to see if anybody else would set such an example, but no one here seemed to carry the same compulsion. Instead, she forgot her feet and lifted her face to breathe deep, filling her lungs with air, soft in its canopy of green.

  A few more steps, a few more breaths, and her body fell into line. The pain that had been concentrated in her head began to dissolve, breaking up like the sugar cube in her coffee, infusing her muscles and bones with sweet welcome at its release. Her stomach came alive with hunger, gurgling so loud she feared she might disturb the young couple spooning on a bench as she walked by. It was time to find her own spot to sit and take in not only this surrounding bit of beauty, but also the collection of underappreciated sandwiches.

  As her path prepared to cross another, she saw a man in a white coat pushing a cart that advertised ice-cold lemonade for a nickel. Thankful that she’d thought to toss a few coins into her skirt pocket, she bought some, drank it down, and immediately bought another, this time vowing to keep it in its waxed cup to wash down the sandwiches. It was a precarious business, trying to keep her nickel’s purchase from sloshing over the sides while gripping the guitar case with her other hand and with the drawstring bag looped over her wrist, but she continued walking until, to her delight, her path opened up to a large, paved square with a fountain at its center. A wide, open spot seemed to be waiting just for her, and she headed straight for it.

  The sun shone warm upon her as she took a sip of the lemonade before opening the pack of sandwiches, which had held up well during their journey. One after another she stuffed the little triangles into her mouth, dissolving the last bite with the lemonade. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and unsuccessfully attempted to suppress a satisfying belch.

  She pulled her battered journal out of the sack and began to flip through the pages. So many verses, poems, songs—some she hadn’t thought about in months. Maybe years. Her familiar, messy handwriting filled some pages, while others were left with only a few sparse lines floating, unfinished. Bringing the notebook close to her face, she inhaled, catching the faintest whiff of her beloved woods surrounding Heron’s Nest. If she held it close, she could
almost imagine herself there now, the constant running of the fountain providing a more sophisticated substitution for the babbling creek that ran along the path between her clearing and home.

  How many hours were in this book? How much time spent feeling truly in the presence of God? And, more recently, in the company of Brent, his head in her lap as she ran her fingers absently through his sun-warmed hair, reading to him from these pages.

  The words blurred behind her sudden tears, and she pushed the memory aside.

  She set the book beside her and lifted her guitar from its case, strumming with one hand while the other turned the pages of her songs. Many of the tunes were lost to her memory, as she hadn’t known, or hadn’t bothered, to note the key or chords. Only the last song, the one performed on Sister Aimee’s stage, had been carefully recorded during one stretch of travel while she played, stopped, jotted, and sang for three solid, painstaking hours.

  She strummed the familiar chords and, with the assurance that the sound of the fountain would absorb her voice, began to sing the song that so many thousands of people had welcomed into their worship.

  Jesus is coming!

  Are you ready

  to meet your Savior in the sky?

  She closed her eyes and settled into herself, seeing not the vast audiences or white-lit stage, but one simple girl, here. Her heart lurched at every question sprung from her own lyrics.

  Are you proud of the way that you’re living?

  Is he welcome in the life you lead today?

  Questions she hadn’t considered last night as she donned la rouge, drank champagne, danced, and . . .

  So much of it a blur, which might be a matter of God’s mercy so as not to be tormented with shame.

  To combat the half-formed memories, she strummed louder, sang stronger, replacing silly melodies and profane jokes with her own reminder.

  No man knows the hour,

  and no man knows the day.

  But when he gathers up the righteous,

  will you be swept away?

  The sound of the fountain strengthened her, reminding her of Jesus, the Living Water, and the assurance that his grace cleansed her more than any bath ever could. Stray drops touched her face, blocking the way for any tears to descend, like God himself touching her with his forgiveness for her sin. For a while she heard nothing but the water and her guitar and her voice, until a sound, faint and unfamiliar, interrupted.