Sing Them Home

by Stephanie Kallos

  “Who wants vegetarian?” Gaelan yells.

  “Not me!” Jon yells back.

  Bonnie sets her jaw, looks at Larken coldly, and delivers a line that Larken senses she’s been rehearsing. “I’m not comfortable with the two of you.”

  “You’re not–?”

  “You might have fooled everyone else about who he is,” she whispers ferociously, “but you haven’t fooled me.”

  Gaelan sighs. “I’m gonna step out on the porch for a minute,” he says, fumbling in the pocket of his sweatshirt. “Call me when you’re ready.”

  “I’m not trying to fool anyone,” Larken says.

  “He’s your neighbor, isn’t he? The one with the little girl?”

  “Bonnie, you don’t know anything about the situation.”

  “I know he’s married.”

  “Yes, and you’ve been flat-out rude to him all week,” Larken says. “And to me. What is your problem?”

  Bonnie’s face crumples. “What’s my problem?” she shrieks. “I haven’t got any problems! My life is just fine! My life is perfect! At least I’m not a slut! At least I’m not shacking up with some married man in Dad’s house!”

  She storms out onto the porch. Larken follows.

  “And you!” Bonnie says to Gaelan, as she mounts her bike. “You’re turning into a drug addict!”

  Larken and Gaelan watch her speed away and then share a few tokes.

  “She really is becoming an old maid before our very eyes,” Larken observes.

  Gaelan shrugs. “I can see her point.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s just, well, I worry about you, being involved with a guy like that.”

  “‘A guy like that’? That’s just great, coming from you.”

  Gaelan’s expression is hurt. “Here,” he says quietly, handing her the joint. “You and Jon can finish this. I better go after her. Make sure she’s okay.”

  So she and Jon spend the last night of their honeymoon smoking a joint, eating two large pizzas, and watching a science-fiction movie about the end of the world. They fall asleep without fooling around.

  * * *

  Sunday morning, they pack up the car first thing and then drive to Viney’s to say good-bye.

  Gaelan is still in bed.

  “You should go upstairs and wake him,” Viney says. “He’ll be sad if you leave without seeing him.”

  Larken knocks on his door. “Gae? It’s me. Can I come in?”

  “Yeah,” he says, his voice groggy.

  The state of his room—cluttered, messy, pungent—makes her realize that there really is something wrong. “I’m sorry about last night,” she says. “I want to hear more about … well, everything, so call me, okay?”

  When she emerges from the house, Jon is across the street, pacing back and forth, listening to his cell phone, his face grim. She waves to him, gets in the car, waits. It’s another five minutes before he joins her.

  “Everything all right?” she asks.

  “Yeah. Fine,” he says, buckling in. “Let’s go.” His voice is reassuringly full and decisive.

  They’re really going now, back to their real lives, their real selves. With great relief, Larken starts speeding north.

  “I had a funny dream last night,” she begins, conversationally. “It was about Mia. She was—”

  “Don’t,” Jon cuts in sharply. His tone is unequivocal, punitive, reproving—the voice of an angry Old Testament God. “Please don’t speak about Mia.”

  Larken is terrified, so terrified that she has no idea how many miles go by before he speaks again.

  “Sorry,” he says more gently. “Let’s just talk about something else.”

  And yet, even though they’ve always been able to speak fluently on any number of subjects besides Mia, Jon’s reprimand has stolen every ounce of breath from her body.

  They spend the trip back in silence.

  They spend the night fucking loudly.

  Hope’s Diary, 1974:

  Women’s Lib

  Funny thing happened today.

  Viney and L. and the children were up in Lincoln for a football game. (I really can’t bear going anymore, the noise, the crowds, the heat. I enjoy staying behind in my quiet, temperate house, sitting on the sofa wearing my red cardigan and watching the games on TV, Bloody Mary in hand. Viney doesn’t really like them that much either, but she goes for L.’s sake. She told me that she’s perfected a way of leaning forward into her hand and taking cat naps without L. knowing!)

  Anyway, L. took the kids out for ice cream after they all had dinner and Viney went to the university bookstore. She’s my book-buying emissary; I reimburse her whenever she finds something new and noteworthy.

  Standing in line with Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth in hand, something caught her eye.

  “You know the way magazines are overlapped,” she said later, “so you can only see the title? I was about to check out when I spotted this. I couldn’t believe it. ‘Hope will be so interested,’ I thought. ‘A whole magazine devoted to MS!’”

  We laughed so hard we cried.

  “I might not have bought it,” she said, “except right then Welly and the kids found me and Welly got this sour look on his face” (she demonstrated this perfectly) “and grumbled, ‘You’re not gonna get that, are you?’ And so of course I did.”

  God love her.

  The two of us had a gay old time filling out subscription cards: one for each of us, one for Llwelyn’s office, and (anonymously, as a gift) one for Estella Axthelm. Viney joked that she’d love to lurk outside her house every day at mail delivery time for the next few weeks, just to see the look on her face.

  It was good to have a laugh.

  MS Magazine.

  In truth, I can’t imagine anything duller or more depressing than a magazine devoted to this damn disease.

  There is a way in which one can know a person intimately for a long time, love them, and then something happens, it needn’t be life-shattering, just some little thing, a face they might make at an odd moment, a look of impatience that is never even given language but reveals an underside they haven’t shown—not to you anyway.

  Viney is in love with Llewellyn.

  It was just a moment: I saw her looking at him in a certain way. I’m not saying that she’s aware of being in love with him—I don’t think she is—or of L. reciprocating. Two more morally upright people don’t exist, and although my husband is guilty of sins against me—just as I’ve wronged him—an adulterer he is not.

  Sad to say, the thought that came to mind was this: “Alvina Closs is a tramp.”

  This must be what people mean by the presence of the Devil. What else could have put such a thoughtin my head?

  Chapter 25

  The Last Artifact

  Bonnie awakens one morning in April knowing that a storm—a really big one, one as dangerous as that one in the 1800s they still talk about, the children’s blizzard, because it caught unawares and killed so many little ones—is moving into southeastern Nebraska.

  She puts on snow boots and steps out of the woodshed. The sky is laundry-softener blue, infused with sunshine, cloudless. No wind. Temps in the low fifties.

  After a snowy, subzero winter, it will feel so warm to the kids that some of them—especially the teenagers—will leave their jackets at home. Never mind hats and gloves.

  Bonnie closes her eyes, gets quiet, sniffs.

  An hour. Maybe an hour and a half. That’s when it will start to change.

  They are hers, all of them, even if she did not give birth to them. Why else would she have this gift, this painful sensitivity to the wind and the weather it foretells, if not for this: to protect the embodiment of her town’s hopes from harm?

  Quickly, she gets dressed. She checks on the Williams girls and lets them know that they shouldn’t worry if she doesn’t get back to the woodshed tonight; a snowstorm is coming and she may end up staying the night at the shop.

&nb
sp; “Goodness!” Hazel says, looking up. “Do you really think it’s going to snow? So late in the year?”

  “I’m sure of it, Miss Williams,” Bonnie says. “Do you have everything you need in case the power goes out?”

  “Oh, yes,” Wauneeta says. “How about you?”

  “I’m fine, but I’m wondering if you have any extra warm hats and gloves I could borrow?”

  “Certainly. Get a bag from the kitchen, will you, Wauneeta?” Wauneeta waddles down the hall while Hazel opens the hall closet and starts pulling out numerous scarves and hats and gloves and mittens. The Williams girls are big knitters. “What do you need them for?”

  “I’m on my way over to school. If the weather does turn, have a feeling that some of the children might need them.”

  “Oh! Of course!”

  Wauneeta returns with a big plastic garbage bag that the three of them stuff to capacity. Bonnie slings it over her shoulder. “Diolch yn fawr!” she calls.

  “Croeso!” Hazel and Wauneeta reply.

  The Emlyn Springs K–12 School is several blocks away. Weighed down with the large bag of woolens, Bonnie moves more slowly than she expected, so when she passes through downtown, she stops at the grocery and asks Gwilym Moore if she can borrow a cart.

  “Sure, Bonnie. What’s in the bag?”

  “Scarves and hats,” she says, breathlessly. “Faint o’r gloch yw hi, Mr. Moore?”

  “Mae hi’n ddeg o’r gloch,” he says. “Maybe five past.”

  She slings the bag into the cart. “Diolch!” she calls, already hurrying away.

  “Pob hwyl, Bonnie!” he replies.

  Soon after, the sky begins to change color. The clouds materialize out of nowhere, as if they’ve amassed far above the jet stream and then been dropped over town: a gray, stain-mottled tent ceiling.

  The storm moves in with frightening rapidity after that; she makes it to school just as the blizzard starts to show itself for the blinding, malevolent threat it really is. The wind is knifelike now and willful; once inside, Bonnie has to lean into the door, driving her body sideways against it to get it closed again.

  As she heaves the plastic bag out of the cart and into the school office, she hears the school secretary, Carys Janssen, talking on the two-way radio. She’s speaking with Lars Gruffudd, Emlyn Springs’ bus driver. He’s on his way. The principal, Gareth Peterson, is on the PA system, announcing that school will be closing and students and teachers should get home as quickly as possible.

  “Bonnie,” Carys says when she gets off the two-way. “What are you doing here? This isn’t one of your tutoring days.”

  “No, I know; I was just worried about the kids getting home.”

  Carys looks puzzled. “Well, everybody’s folks have been notified and Lars is on his way. The roads aren’t bad yet, so it should be fine. You really oughta get yourself on home. These spring storms, you know how they are.”

  “I think I’ll stay in case you need another adult around.”

  “Fine with me, honey, but we’re gonna get everybody out of here as soon as we can.”

  Parents begin arriving; students and teachers start to leave. Bonnie stations herself and her bag of woolens at the main entrance, making certain that all exiting children are properly weatherproofed.

  Mr. Peterson rounds up the bus riders and herds them into the cafeteria. “Why don’t you head on home, Carys?” he says. “I know you’ve got a good ways to go.”

  “Oh, thanks, Gareth,” she replies with relief, and she’s in her coat and out the door.

  “I’ll start calling these kids’ folks,” Bonnie offers. “Let them know they’ll be late.”

  She goes into the office and pulls out a school directory. The phone rings just as she’s about to pick it up: It’s the police calling to say that Lars hit an icy patch making a turn off Bridge Street and slid halfway down the slope of the ravine. He’s okay, just a few cuts and bruises, but the paramedics are taking him to Beatrice.

  Bonnie heads to the cafeteria. The children are sitting around in small groups, faces flushed and shiny from being bundled up so long in the heat. Mr. Peterson is sitting on the edge of the stage floor with a couple of the older kids, playing cards. Bonnie catches his eye and signals him closer. His face turns somber when he hears the news.

  “That means we’ve got twelve children here who don’t have a way to get home tonight.”

  “I’ll take them,” Bonnie offers. “I’ll walk them over to the shop—it’s just a couple of blocks—and they can wait with me there until their folks come.”

  “Are you sure?” Mr. Peterson looks dubious. “I’d let them stay here, you know, but I still need to get over to Wymore and pick up my wife at work; we’ve only got the one car.”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  Mr. Peterson buttons coats and turns up collars. Bonnie distributes hats and gloves and mittens to those who need them. Then the adults begin tethering the children firmly to one another using the Misses Williamses’ woolen scarves until they form a long, colorful line. Finally, Bonnie lashes herself to the front—like the lead sled dog in an Iditarod.

  And so they make their way, heads down against the tantrum-throwing wind and the spitting snow. It takes them ten minutes to go two blocks.

  Bonnie ushers the children inside, cranks up the electric heater, and puts the kettle on. They’re safe now. While waiting for the water to boil, she massages cold hands and faces and feet.

  Blind Tom greets them and starts bringing in armfuls of felted wool piano covers for the children to wrap themselves in.

  Bonnie makes hot chocolate and Jiffy Pop. When a discussion about which video to watch leads to a standoff, Blind Tom makes an executive decision.

  “We’re watching Monsters, Inc.,” he proclaims. “There’s something in there for everybody.”

  By one o’clock, the worst of the blizzard is over; by two, the snow stops falling, and by three, Hal Sigurdson, city employee and operator of Emlyn Springs’ sole snow plow, is on the job and making his way down Main Street.

  “You know how to drive in snow?” Blind Tom asks.

  “Absolutely. My sister taught me.”

  “Let’s take these kids home, then.”

  Bonnie puts twelve-year-old Alyssa Critchfield in charge of getting everyone ready while she and Blind Tom go out through the back door and start digging out the van. He’s so competent that she half-forgets about his disability.

  They load up the children, head out on Main Street to the highway, and then follow the DOT snowplow that’s already clearing the highway.

  “This van drives nice,” Bonnie remarks.

  “You’re a good driver,” Blind Tom replies.

  By the time they deliver all the children and get back to the bike shop, it’s nearly seven o’clock.

  “Would you like to join me and Sergei for dinner?” Blind Tom asks.

  Bonnie finally notices what it is that is so different about Blind Tom tonight: He’s not wearing dark glasses. His eyes do not look like the eyes of a blind man. There is no distortion of the musculature surrounding them, no disfiguring scars. Blind Tom’s eyes are blue and perfect.

  “Sure,” she says. “I’m not in any hurry.”

  “Canned soup okay?”

  “You bet. I can make smoothies, too, if you like. I’ll just make sure the kids got everything out of the van.”

  “See you inside, then.”

  Children leave so many traces of themselves, and in such a short time: The seats are a mess of crumbs and unmated mittens and forgotten homework and gum wrappers. Wondering if there might be some cleaning supplies on board, Bonnie opens up the back of the van. She finds a broom and a dustpan and an empty box, which she converts to a “lost and found” bin.

  When she comes through the back door into the storage area, she finds that the shop is pitch black.

  “Tom?”

  “The power went out,” he calls out from somewhere in the building. “Do you mind having cold
sandwiches?”

  How would he know the power is out? Bonnie wonders. She starts feeling her way toward his voice. “Where are you?”

  “Keep coming.”

  In the dark, what was once a clear, navigable path connecting the storage area to the front of the store has become a minefield. Bonnie’s feet come down on what feels like blocks of wood; she turns an ankle. Her swinging arm collides against a table edge; she bruises a wrist. “Ow!” she cries. Rebounding against one unseen obstacle after another, a hapless human pinball, she finally comes to rest after bumping into a piano.

  Then she hears Blind Tom. His footsteps sound rushed, oddly urgent. “Wait!” he calls out warningly, the way one would speak to someone who’s about to step into the path of an oncoming car, or trod in bare feet across a floor littered with broken glass.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Just … wait where you are,” he says, his voice unsteady. “I’ll come get you.”

  And yet he doesn’t. He stays where he is. He sounds as though he’s close, just across from her. As the moments tick by, she begins to sense that his hands are on the piano, too.

  Using the keyboard to orient herself, she starts trailing her fingers across the keys, from the upper register to the lower. All ivories on this one. She can tell the difference.

  “Wait,” he says. “It’s not ready yet. It’s not finished. Please wait. I’m not—” and the quality of his voice has changed; it almost sounds as though—

  Wait.

  Wait.

  Her fingers retrace their steps. Where was it?

  Here?

  Here?

  No, here. This one.

  Bonnie closes her eyes.

  Hope is in the room.

  This key is called middle C, Hope says. It’s an important key on the piano and when we play, we put our bodies right in front of it. Right even with our belly buttons.

  Because it’s in the middle, Bonnie answers.

  Now, it’s true that you can find it with your eyes, Hope says—and Bonnie remembers studying it, noticing its relationship to the black keys, but that confused her—and you can find it with your ears—and Bonnie remembers Hope’s voice singing the note, but she cannot hold the sound in her head—but on this piano, we’re especially lucky, because there’s another way to find it.