"Ravioli, meatballs, salad and the usual. I thought I'd bake a ham, too. And Jessie will be bringing homemade cheesecake for dessert."
I was starting to salivate, so I gulped down the glass of water and went back to the outdoor lights. I wanted to do a good job of it, so I wouldn't feel guilty when I wrangled an invitation for Wood and me to stay for dinner tonight. Whatever Max was serving would be better than the Rice-a-Roni I'd planned to stir up for us.
We did stay for dinner that evening and were invited back for all our dinners until Woody flew back home four days later. I even managed to be civil to my brother-in-law, but it was only for Maxine's sake. It would be a long while before I'd care to socialize with him on my own account. Talmadge and Max seemed to be getting along fine, at least, and that made me feel better. Tucker was being civil to his father, a welcome change for which I credited Sister Grace. My niece, Madeline brought another girl home for a dinner on one of the nights, and that put all of us on our best behavior, so it went pretty well.
When Woody was gone, my place seemed kind of empty, so I went back to my schedule of walking at the track and even braved the madness at the Coralridge Mall, where I did some Christmas shopping. I tried to read, but I wasn't in the mood for anything I picked up.
I still felt bad about the mayor's suicide and kept replaying the final scene in my head, making it come out with a more satisfying ending. In my best effort, the baby had really died right after it was born but that was as far as I could get with it. If Petrick had lived and had been exonerated, he would still have had to live with himself and his memories of that night. I was aware that human nature or the human spirit or however you think of it, is able to conquer a lot of things. But it was still a mystery to me how people ever got past really big losses and pain, like losing loved ones in the Holocaust or having a child kidnapped and never found. Those events are so intense as to almost kill a person's spirit, it seemed and I didn't know how they went on and ever laughed or loved again.
Now, the mayor would never know if he could have risen above the truth of what he'd done so many years earlier. Keeping it hidden all those years hadn't been a solution. Petrick's guilt about his dead son hadn't diminished, no matter how much he did for the community, or for unwed mothers, or for their babies. I knew what he had done, but still, I felt bad for him for some reason. On the other side of the scales, I couldn't see that the world was any worse off without the likes of Melanie Goodwin and Charlie Wilson walking around. I didn't understand any of it, and I was in no mood for C.S. Lewis, or anyone else, to offer any insight.
A week or so before Christmas, I drove down to Iowa City and visited the pawn shop that I'd called a few weeks earlier. I explained to the manager that I'd have been in sooner, but had found myself in a sort of a rut. It had really been more of a drainage ditch, but I liked the sound of my own pun enough to overlook the misnomer. He examined the ruby pendant and he offered me four hundred dollars, which was about twenty five percent of what I'd paid for it fifteen years earlier. Jewelry, it seemed, was not a sound investment. Leaving the pendant, and maybe a piece of myself, on top of the glass showcase, I pocketed the money and walked out.
Late that night, I folded a sheet of paper around the eight, fifty dollar bills and slid them into a business envelope. I printed Sister Alex's name and the address of Saint Martin's Convent on the outside and pasted two stamps in the corner. I walked the ten blocks or so over to the new post office near the highway, where I dropped the envelope in the box outside the door. It started snowing when I was walking back home and I looked up, letting the cold flakes land on my cheeks and melt away.
I took the long way home, circling around Chestnut Street. The cold air felt fresh and invigorating. The yellow of the street lights showed brightly through the thickly falling snow, and seemed like a picture on a Christmas card, or a miniature snow scene.
I remembered the last Christmas that I'd spent with Caroline, when I'd given her the ruby pendant. It had been snowing that night, too. Maybe, I thought, Sister Sarah was right. Maybe there was a higher calling that Caroline had been drawn to. I wondered if any of the sisters at Saint Martin's had ever been in love. I supposed it was possible.
I'd been clinging to the memory of love as if it were the love itself, instead of just a frozen frame of time, unaltered by the passing years. People do change, day by day and sometimes moment by moment. We couldn't go back and we couldn't start over. There was no more "Rudy and Caroline." It was a bittersweet realization, though, and I can't say I welcomed it.
As I walked past a small white house that was loaded down with colored lights, I heard singing. Among the many brightly-lit lawn decorations, was a set of three plastic carolers, propped up near the edge of the walk. A recorder must have been hidden somewhere nearby, because a tinny sounding version of "Winter Wonderland" filled the air. I found myself singing along under my breath as I walked by. Then, bending to scoop up a handful of snow, I pressed it into a ball and nailed the stop sign on the corner, dead center.
Tomorrow, I decided, I'd call my sister and see if she'd thought to invite her friend, Jessie, for dinner on Christmas Eve There was no point in letting her sit home by herself. I tried to remember what color Jessie's eyes were. I was pretty sure they were green.
I whistled "Jingle Bells" the rest of the way home, as swirling snowflakes fell to earth and blanketed the streets of Oak Grove, Iowa.
The End
Breaking Point Page 24