by Jane Langton
He brushed past her, heading for the stairs. “I can’t,” he said coldly, “I’m going out again.”
“Can’t it wait? I’ve got to get out, Sonny, just for a little while. Helen, she’s driving me nuts.”
“No, I tell you. I’ve got to meet someone.”
“Well, my God, when can I get out of here? You never think of me, trapped in here all day and all night with these two!”
He ran up the stairs impatiently, then leaned over the railing and spoke to Helen, who was looking up at him with glowing eyes. “How is she?”
“Better,” murmured Helen.
“Better!” broke in his mother angrily. “I don’t know if you can call it better, when all she does is whine about her kid.”
“Well, for Christ’s sake, why don’t you call that woman? Try again.”
“You try” shouted his mother. “Why is everything always left to me?”
He slammed his bedroom door.
No sooner did Mrs. Barker walk into her office than the phone rang.
She said, “Damn,” and dropped into the chair at her desk. “Department of Social Services, Mrs. Barker speaking,” she said wearily, unbuttoning her coat.
“Oh, Mrs. Barker, my name is Pettigrew, Mrs. Sharon Pettigrew.”
“Yes, Mrs. Pettigrew?”
“I’m a volunteer at the—you know—the Home for Little Wanderers. We need to find one of the kiddos transferred to your department.”
“Which kiddo?” said Mrs. Barker warily.
“Its name is—” There was a pause, as if Mrs. Pettigrew were consulting a list. “Hall, Charles Hall.”
“Oh, no, not Charley Hall, not again! Well, what is it? What do you want him for?”
“His cousin wants to see him, with an eye to possible adoption. His first cousin, just returned from—ah—abroad.”
“Oh, is that so? Just a minute.” Mrs. Barker put down the phone, pulled Charley’s file out of a drawer, and riffled through it. “I’m sorry,” she said triumphantly, picking up the phone again. “That child has no living relatives but a couple of great-aunts, and they are both childless. Get lost, sister.”
CHAPTER 19
The Holy Spirit is a fierce thunder-clap against the proud.
Martin Luther
Alan felt like a fool for letting the great Harold Oates slip through his fingers. Why had he let him go? He should have run after him when he walked out of Trinity Church. Alan suspected it had been some kind of unconscious snobbery on his part, Oates had looked so sleazy and weird.
He had to be found. Alan tried the phone book, but of course it contained no entry for Harold Oates. He sat on his bed and stared at the telephone. There were now two voids in his life. Rosie Hall and Harold Oates.
But next day Oates turned up in the Church of the Commonwealth while Alan was experimenting with one of the newly voiced ranks of pipes in the Great division, the four-foot Clarion. He had set up a voicing machine in the balcony, a shelf of slots with a keyboard, so that he could sometimes work without a partner.
He set the smallest pipe in one of the holes and listened to it. Was it out of tune? The whole rank was apt to go sour in wet weather.
Fortunately the winter had continued to be cold and dry. People were complaining about the lack of snow. Ski resorts were desperate, farmers were afraid of an entire winter without moisture, nurserymen dreaded the drying out of their stock.
Alan romped through the merry allegro from an organ concerto by Handel. The Clarion sounded fine, a little strident and nasal the way it should. When he rollicked through the last measures, he heard a dry clapping from the floor below. He turned to see Harold Oates looking up at him.
“What else can it do?” said Oates.
Alan wanted to cheer, but he was afraid to spook the elusive master. “Come on up and take a look.”
Oates came. He looked worse than ever in a too-large overcoat and a too-short pair of trousers. But his clothes were not the problem. Oates could be fitted out by Louis or Brooks Brothers, and he would still look gross. His face was a study in decrepitude. Twenty years of heavy drinking had dulled his small eyes and sunk them into their sockets. The skin of his face drooped in swags and pouches. Even his balding forehead looked odd, flushed with patches of color as red as his nose.
Alan wanted to kneel at his feet. He merely slid over casually on the bench as an invitation.
For two hours they experimented with the new organ. Oates muttered and said little, but his eyes glittered, and his combinations of stops were clever, startling, a revelation.
“Fucking thing’s got no bottom,” complained Oates.
“Most of the sixteen-footers are still in the shop. Wait till you hear the thirty-two-foot Contra Bombarde.”
“What’s this here?” growled Oates, putting a dirty finger on the knob labelled DIV INSP.
“Oh, that. It was Castle’s idea. Divine Inspiration. It’s just a joke.”
Oates uttered a sharp bark of laughter, which brought on a fit of coughing. He coughed and coughed. His coughs were terrible hacking explosions. In dismay Alan leaped up to find a glass of water. The man seemed to be expiring before his eyes.
But Edith Frederick stood at the top of the stairs, looking shocked. “Is he all right?” she whispered.
Oates stopped coughing. His face was purple, his eyes streaming. He glowered at Mrs. Frederick and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
“Oh, Mrs. Frederick,” said Alan nervously, “I’d like you to meet my friend Harold Oates, the—ah—distinguished organist.”
“How do you do, Mr. Oates,” said Edith. Her tone was frosty. It was clear that she had never heard of him.
Oates leered at her, then pulled out a couple of stops and played a deep blatting chord like a Bronx cheer.
Alan closed his eyes and Edith scuttled down the balcony stairs.
CHAPTER 20
We are gone from the clear fountain to the foul puddle, and drunk its filthy water …
Martin Luther
“Mama,” said Alan, holding Charley up in front of the picture of his mother on the wall. “Mama, Mama, Mama.”
Charley studied the picture with his usual gravity. The teaching session had become a ritual. Twice a week Debbie Buffington was sullenly willing to take a respite from minding somebody else’s baby. Twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, Alan took Charley for a ride in the stroller, whisking him across the Public Garden, ducking into the alley behind 115 Commonwealth and entering by the back door.
After the lesson it was lunchtime. Alan was experimenting with hard-boiled eggs and bits of apple. Charley opened his mouth willingly. His cheeks seemed pinker, his eyes brighter.
On the way back to Bowdoin Street Alan bought a bag of expensive peaches. When he gave them to Debbie, she dumped them on the table. She was excited about something else. Her eyes were alight. “Hey,” she said, “I got news for you.”
Alan plopped Charley down on the rug. “News? What kind of news?”
Debbie thrust a newspaper at him. It was the lurid front page of the Boston Herald. “Hey, did you see this? The kid’s mother, she’s burned up.”
“What?”
“Burned up in her car. It says here they found her burned to a crisp in her car.”
Alan couldn’t believe it. “Rosalind Hall? Does it say Rosalind Hall?”
“Right. Rosalind Hall, the organ player.” Debbie was taking a grisly pleasure in delivering shocking news. She read the article aloud.
Organist Rosalind Hall, missing since December 11, was found dead yesterday, a victim of the fire that destroyed her car. The ’92 Ford Escort was discovered this morning in a gully beside a sharp curve on Route 62 in the town of Hudson. The car was registered in Hall’s name, and her driver’s license was found in her handbag. Officials could give no reason for her December disappearance.
Alan’s eyes filled. He took the newspaper from Debbie and looked at the thousand gray dots of Rosie’s picture. It was the same one he was using to teach
Charley his first word.
“Hey, what do you care if she’s burned up or not?” said Debbie suspiciously. “I thought you like never even saw her. That’s what you said.”
Alan couldn’t speak. He picked up Charley, held him tightly, and sobbed twice.
“Christ,” said Debbie. “You never met her? Give me a break.” Little Wanda whimpered, and clung to her mother’s leg.
Alan went back to Rosie’s apartment, telling himself wretchedly that it didn’t matter now if he trespassed on private property, because it wasn’t private property any more, it didn’t belong to anybody. He went at once to the picture of Rosie and Charley and leaned on the desk and gazed at Rosie’s face, trying to get it through his head that she had died in a blazing car. What a horrible way to die! Yesterday, while he and Oates had been experimenting with the organ, or perhaps while he was lying in bed watching some dumb thing on television, Rosie’s car had gone out of control and spun into the ditch and gone up in flames, and she had burned to death, burned to death.
Then Alan remembered Barbara Inch’s story about the two people who met only after the woman was dead, the ghost story by Henry James. He had to sit down and hold his head in his hands. Rosie Hall and Alan Starr should have met in life, everyone had said so. Now the only way they would ever meet was if she turned up as a ghost. It was a bitter joke. Pulling himself together, Alan called Homer Kelly and told him the news.
Homer’s voice on the line was sepulchral. “I’ve just been reading about it in the Globe.” There was a grieving pause. “I’m sorry.”
“So that’s it then,” said Alan, his voice flat.
“I wonder how it happened. It doesn’t say whether or not the car turned over. You don’t get a fire unless the gas tank ruptures and the fuel leaks out and meets a hot surface, like the exhaust manifold.”
“I don’t know what happened,” said Alan bleakly. “Cars burn up all the time. How did they know it was Rosalind Hall? Did somebody identify the body?”
“Credit cards, the paper said, in her pocketbook.” Homer was about to add that burned cadavers were often so unrecognizable that only a forensic pathologist could identify them, by examining the teeth, determining the age of the skull, and so on, but he thought better of it. “Well, there’ll be an autopsy. I’ll look into it.”
There was a final hollow pause, and then Alan said, “Well, thank you for all you’ve done. Don’t forget to send me a bill.”
“Relax. I’m not through yet. I’ll let you know about the autopsy.”
But the next time Alan picked up Charley at Debbie Burlington’s apartment, she gave him another shock. “She’s cremated already,” she said. “All the kid’s got for a mother is a pile of ashes.”
“Sshh,” said Alan angrily. “He can hear you.”
“Bullshit. He’s retarded, I tell you. He doesn’t understand a thing. Look at this.” Debbie held up another copy of the Herald. She seemed to enjoy gloating over depressing news.
Alan looked at the headline, MIXUP IN MORGUE, AUTOPSY FOILED. “I don’t understand.”
She explained as if to an idiot. “They cremated her by mistake. They got the papers mixed up. So there won’t be any way of identifying it. You know, like they look at the teeth, so they can identify the corpse, even when it’s all burned up. You know.”
“Look,” said Alan, controlling himself, “it’s cold outside. Charley’s going to need more clothes.”
Debbie gave him Wanda’s woolly hat and a thick blanket. Wanda whimpered, and tried to snatch the blanket back. Her mother slapped her hand.
“Sorry, Wanda,” said Alan. He knelt in front of her. “I’ll bring back some ice cream, okay?” Wanda stopped sniffling.
Outdoors the day was bright and clear. Rays of low winter sunshine slammed down on the steep sidewalk. A chill wind whistled down the hill. Alan pulled the knitted cap low over Charley’s face, and tugged the blanket up around his ears until only his nose was visible.
In Louisburg Square the windows of the Greek Revival houses glowed with soft lamps and firelight. Alan could imagine the prosperous and comfortable scenes within, so different from the sad frowziness of Debbie’s gloomy apartment. He trundled the stroller past the little park and plunged down Mount Vernon Street to Charles. In the Public Garden the cold breeze tossed the bare branches of the trees, blowing a couple of seagulls high above the roof of the Ritz Carlton Hotel. Charley giggled with joy, unaware that his life had been half-destroyed by the death of his mother. Alan wondered if a single man could adopt a child. Probably not. They’d give Charley to some rich married couple. Well, anything would be better than the tender mercies of Debbie Buffington.
The stretch of sidewalk between Arlington Street and Clarendon was empty of pedestrians. Alan galloped faster and faster. Charley shrieked with laughter. At the corner of Clarendon, Alan paused before heading for the alley behind the church. The sidewalk was thick with little kids, round blobs in puffy winter clothes. There were babies in pushcarts, mothers organizing a winter walk. It was the student body of the daycare center, all assembled. More kids were emerging from the church and toddling down the stairs. Music streamed from the open door.
Alan turned his head and listened. Somebody was practicing on the new organ. Probably one of Castle’s pupils. Everybody wanted to try it. Could it be James Castle himself? Had he come back without warning? Who else could play like that? Bach’s Dorian Toccata was flooding out onto the street, plunging like chariots, galloping like horses, racing like bloodthirsty cheetahs.
No, of course, it wasn’t Castle. It was Harold Oates, playing without permission. Alan turned to one of the mothers. “Would you keep an eye on him for a sec? I’ll be right back.”
“Sure,” said the mother, bending down to look at Charley. “What rosy cheeks!”
Alan ran into the church to take a look.
Charley sat in the stroller patiently, muffled to the ears. Under the blanket he held the grubby stuffed animal given to him by the man called Tom. Looking down at himself he could see the furry strands of his blanket standing up in the sunlight. Looking up he saw the tall shapes of women talking. A bird flew onto a tree and peered down at him, then flew away. Loud music curled around his head, then more and more of it in a big wave.
Looking along the sidewalk in front of him, he saw a man and a woman come out of a house and hurry toward a car. The woman was wearing a white hat.
Charley was electrified. He leaned forward in the stroller and called out his first word.
“Mama!” shouted Charley. “Mama, Mama!”
Alan came running back to him down the steps of the church.
“Mama, Mama,” wept Charley.
Alan looked up and saw a woman in a white hat in the back seat of a car. “Wait,” he cried, but the driver pulled away from the curb and drove swiftly down Commonwealth toward Dartmouth Street.
“Mama,” sobbed Charley. “Mama, Mama, Mama.”
CHAPTER 21
A man’s word is a little sound, that flies into the air, and soon vanishes; but the Word of God is greater than heaven and earth.
Martin Luther
Homer and Mary Kelly responded to Alan’s plea at once. They drove into Boston and parked in the alley behind Number 115. Homer shouted for Alan, who came out and unlocked the gate.
“What a nice place,” said Mary, admiring the harpsichord and the view of the garden.
Homer peeled off his coat. “It’s beginning to feel like home.”
Mary pulled off her gloves and ran her hand along the railing of the playpen. “Poor little kid, he’s an orphan now.”
“But maybe he isn’t an orphan,” said Alan eagerly. “I told you on the phone, he saw his mother.”
“Now calm down,” said Homer. He lowered himself into a chair. “Start from the beginning.”
Alan repeated it all patiently, his lessons with Charley in front of the picture of Rosie, the baby’s obvious understanding that the word Mama meant his mother. He went on to
describe the episode on the street, the woman getting into the car, her white hat, Charley’s insistence that this was indeed his mother.
“But why did she drive away from him?” said Mary softly. “And if she was really his mother, how could she have left her baby in the first place?”
“She didn’t leave of her own free will. There was blood on the floor, remember?”
“But what about this time?” said Homer. “Why did she drive away this time?”
“I don’t think she even saw him. He was sixty feet away at the corner, all muffled up in a blanket, just one of a crowd of little kids. And she couldn’t hear him because there was music pouring out of the church and the bells were ringing, that amplified carillon from the Lutheran church—and the traffic! You know what the traffic sounds like.”
Homer stared at the floor, Mary gazed at the ceiling. The dusk of early winter twilight filled the room. Alan couldn’t bear it. Impulsively he jumped up and went to the bookshelf and fiddled with one of Rosie’s tape recorders. “Listen,” he said. “Here she is.”
The cheerful counterpoint of Bach’s chorale prelude streamed over them, the jolly reed stops predominating, the ponderous pedal notes resounding underneath. Rosie’s presence came warmly into the room. They could all imagine her fingers frisking over the keys, her feet dancing on the pedals. Burned fingers turned to charcoal, blackened feet charred like logs.
“Suppose Charley was right,” said Alan loudly, waving his arms. “Just suppose he was right. Look at it his way. What if he really saw his mother? What if somebody else was burned up in that car? What would it mean?”
Homer and Mary stared at him. Then Homer looked solemnly out the window at the little yard, where a rag flapped in a tree. “If that’s true, if Charley really saw his mother, then she isn’t dead. And that would mean another person was burned in the fire, with Rosie’s credit cards in Rosie’s pocketbook on the seat of Rosie’s car. It would mean somebody’s trying very hard to make us believe Rosalind Hall is dead. Is that what you’re saying? That’s what you really think?”