Songs of Willow Frost: A Novel

by Jamie Ford

  “I’m blind, William,” she said. “But I see what’s happening all around me.”

  “I’m sorry, it’s just …”

  “He’s coming back tomorrow,” she said. “I’m to pack my things.”

  William didn’t understand—none of this made sense. His ah-ma was Willow Frost—she was a movie star and he wasn’t allowed to be reunited with her, let alone see her. Charlotte’s only living parent was a convicted creep who’d been sent away for five years. Now he’d shown up with a two-bit haircut and suddenly he was father of the year.

  “We should just take off again,” William said. “Go someplace where they won’t find us. It wasn’t so bad the first time …” Minus the bedbugs.

  “They’ll find us. Sister B knows exactly where you’d be heading. And I’m too easy to recognize. I don’t exactly blend in,” she said. “I get along fine here because I know every inch of my cottage. I know the exact number of steps from building to building, from classroom to classroom. But out there … I’d just slow you down.”

  “I’ll talk to Sister Briganti. I’ll find a way to make this right.”

  “It’s too late, William. What’s done is done. My father is coming back and there’s nothing I can do to change that. I’m sorry.”

  “What do you have to be sorry about?”

  “I’m sorry that I won’t hear your voice as often as I’d like,” she said.

  William reached across the table and took her hands. He didn’t care who might be watching or what the girlish gossips would say. He looked into her pale blue, haunted eyes, watching them quiver. If she were capable, he knew she’d be crying right now.

  “You’re my best friend, William—my only friend—the one who’s never judged me. You’re the best person I’ve ever known. You’re kind and generous and thoughtful and you’ve always given my heart a soft place to land … and … I guess what I’m trying to say is that …”

  I’m going to miss you.

  She squeezed his hands and then let go. “I hope you see your mother again.”

  WILLIAM SAT IN Sister Briganti’s office. He’d blazed through his chores and shown up early and refused to leave, waiting for two hours until she arrived after teaching class and attending to other meetings. She walked in and set down a large stack of papers.

  “Ready for more truth telling, Master Eng?” she asked. “More stories? More answers? I knew you’d be back. Boys are always drawn to the macabre …”

  William’s head was still reeling from Charlotte’s kind, anguished, heartbreaking confession. He’d never felt that type of endearment from anyone except his ah-ma—more than fondness or friendship or the pleasure of another’s company—this felt real, and true, and now nothing seemed the same. Suddenly the gray clouds had a pinkish hue that wasn’t there the hour before; everything smelled better, even the rain. Music sounded richer, as though every high note was written with him in mind. He couldn’t wait to fall asleep now, because he looked forward to dreaming of him and Charlotte in a better place, someplace with hope and possibility. But he also couldn’t bear the thought of waking up to a school where her desk would be occupied by another girl, or where her porch swing sat vacant, rocking in the lonely breeze.

  “It’s about Charlotte,” he said.

  Sister Briganti paused as though recalibrating her thoughts. “What about her?”

  “You know her father did something to her.” William said those words as a statement of fact, not a question. “You can’t send her home with him …”

  “William, I don’t place my faith in gossip. But I do believe that families are complex and that times are hard. I also know that a single father raising a blind daughter is better than the care she would find in most places. I know that you have concerns and she has expressed these concerns as well. But.” The conjunction hung in the air between them, like a guillotine about to fall—in front of a mob of urchins and wayfarers who waited for the outcome they knew was inevitable. “There are degrees of evil, William. And as much as I wish the world were a more heavenly place, I, on occasion, and with a heavy heart, must choose the lesser of those evils. In this case, Charlotte is not of age to make her own choices. She has a living parent who, unlike your own, obviously wants her. He has served a great deal of time paying for his past misdeeds, and has assured me that he has nothing but the most benevolent of intentions. And she’s almost old enough to marry, should she choose, so hopefully when she’s sixteen she’ll find a suitor and be on to a better life.”

  And what in the meantime, should she just suffer in silence? “He’s just using her. For money,” William said.

  Sister Briganti nodded. “That may have been a contributing factor to his renewed interest in his daughter. He tells me otherwise, and I can only do my best to be the judge of the outside of a man. It’s not my responsibility to judge the intent of a man’s heart—only God knows the sincerity of Mr. Rigg’s motives, and only God can judge His children.” She droned on and on.

  Who are we not to judge? William anguished. We’re taught to obey, to follow, to walk on the path illuminated by those older—wiser, experienced, more faithful. But what about parents who leave us—do we, as children, judge them? Am I supposed to regard the empty space in my heart as my own failing—my own inability to stop the bleeding caused by my mother? You can’t expect children to sew their own gaping wounds without leaving a terrible scar.

  Sister Briganti was still lecturing him as he walked out. She called his name and was saying things in Italian that he didn’t understand, nor did he care to.

  WILLIAM HAD NO appetite as he waited for Charlotte in the crowded dining hall. The children buzzed about Charlotte’s father coming for her—their chatter became a spiteful, jealous chorus. William felt the urge to silence the boys across from him, but she wasn’t here yet and surely they’d refrain once she arrived. She was blind, but he knew that she heard all too well, especially the snickering and sarcasm, the biting laughter of children whose only joy came from stealing happiness from others.

  William waited and waited, until the last child had been served. And when Charlotte still hadn’t appeared, he shook his head, imagining the tragic folly—the audacity of a blind girl running away. He gave what was on his plate to Dante and then went outside, where he picked wildflowers—fawn lilies, camas, and other flowers that purpled the hillside leading to Charlotte’s cottage. He hoped she’d be there, sleeping, packing—doing something. Anything was preferable to an empty room, without a goodbye, and her taking to the streets, a sightless girl, all alone. She couldn’t see how beautiful she appeared, especially to desperate strangers in the crowded, beguiling city.

  Her cottage was silent when William gently knocked on the door, flowers in hand.

  She left already. She ran away.

  He wasn’t ready to let her go. He was ready to plan—to find a way to catch up to her in Pioneer Square when he made his next escape—before or after finding his mother, he didn’t know, he didn’t care. But he had to see Charlotte. He had to speak with her, to let her know that he wasn’t forgetting her, wasn’t giving up on her. She might not be able to keep her promise, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t promise her something more. She’d been wanting, wishing for something that he’d been too blind to recognize.

  He called out her name and knocked again, then looked around the courtyard, the garden, the tiny orchard with Italian plum trees, barren of fruit. He peered down toward the grotto. He looked up at a large blackbird that sat atop the cottage, crowing as though mocking him. The bird cocked its head and cawed again, staring at him, then flew away with a loud beating of its wings.

  Nervous and hesitant, William opened the door and peeked inside. It was hard to see in the dark interior, but slowly he began to notice Charlotte’s things—her balls of colorful knitting yarn, her toys and glass curios—everything remained in place, unpacked, even her shoes. He saw them, her favorite pair—her only pair, patent leather, well worn, with tarnished silver buckles
. The shoes were together, dangling inches above the floor. He fell to his knees as he noticed the upturned footstool and the shoes—the tiny shoes that swayed back and forth so slowly it was almost imperceptible. He stared at their quiet, pendulous motion, as though her feet were hands on a clock that had wound down, the gentle ticking, like a heartbeat, stopped, the clockworks frozen, lifeless.

  “Charlotte,” he whispered in the darkness, dropping the flowers. Why couldn’t you keep your promise?

  Her shoes, her leggings, her dress, the figure of sweet, blind Charlotte, hung from the rafter above, the rosary wrapped around the wooden beam and around her slender neck and around William’s broken heart.

  Tears

  (1934)

  William had been to only two funerals that he could remember, and both had been at Sacred Heart. The first was for a sister who died of old age at eighty-eight. The other was for a toddler who had wandered outside, fallen into a fountain, and drowned. William remembered that both of those services, like the one for Charlotte, had a distinct smell of pine, from the lowly casket, hastily fashioned out of seasoned wood hewn from the forest that surrounded the orphanage. As William looked out the window toward a large stand of evergreen, he imagined the trees closing in around all of them, the orphanage as one giant coffin, their existence contained within an open casket for all to see. He wished that the lid had been closed on the vessel that contained Charlotte’s body. He didn’t like seeing her that way. He couldn’t help but regard her lifeless body and recall all the times he’d imagined his mother’s funeral. As a little boy he’d feared losing her—feared being alone. Now his ah-ma had returned and yet he’d never felt such loneliness. He never realized it was possible to mourn someone who was still alive.

  As he walked by Charlotte’s casket to pay his respects, he noticed the black and purple rings around her neck, the indentations where the beads had broken the skin and soft tissue, the damage covered with a thin veil of talcum. Her eyes were half-open because Sister Briganti refused to leave coins on her eyelids to keep them closed. She’d been afraid someone would steal them. As William glanced at the slivers of milky blue, he realized that Sister Briganti was probably right. Lots of kids felt sorry for Charlotte, but she had no friends. Just me.

  “I’m sorry, Willie,” Sunny said as he followed him past Charlotte and down the steps to the nearest pew, where a group of boys was sitting.

  William didn’t say anything. He just stared past Father Bartholomew as the stodgy old priest offered a homily about parents and children. William looked past the man in his robes and vestments, through the stained glass behind him, at the shapes of the trees that swayed in the wind, casting shadows on the translucent panes.

  “I heard she cried,” Sunny whispered.

  William nodded. Blood. The thought made him grimace as he remembered Charlotte telling him about her inability to shed tears. He wished he could forget looking up at his dear friend, watching dark lines run down her cheeks from the corners of her bulging eyes. The pressure from hanging had ruptured her seared tear ducts.

  As William listened to Father Bartholomew, he looked about the chapel. Charlotte’s father sat across from them, next to Sister Briganti, who was kneeling reverently, head bowed, hands clasped around her rosary. The closest she ever got to something akin to happiness was during prayer. William stared at her, offended by her serenity. Look at me. Let me see your eyes, he wanted to shout. He needed some unspoken confirmation that she felt something for her part in all of this—that she acknowledged some small responsibility, a token of remorse. But the more he swelled with anger, the more that acidlike emotion spilled back onto him. Because William felt lost as well, as though he were floating in the moral backwater between sins of commission and sins of omission.

  “Her father looks like a ghost,” Sunny said.

  News of Charlotte’s unspoken relationship with her father had spread about the orphanage, and in the course of hours William had learned new words like debauchery, molestation, and incest—too many words that struck too close to home. But if there were any doubt about the veracity of Charlotte’s story, it had been answered by her death. And no one could help but stare at Mr. Rigg. Not because of the horrible things they imagined him capable of, but because he didn’t look like a monster. He looked toothless, defanged, and baleful. He was no kind of decent father, he was barely a parent, and now Charlotte would be put into the earth alone, orphaned forever.

  “I can’t believe he’s here,” William said. “She hated him.”

  As though the man were encumbered by the condemning stares, he stood, wiped tears from his eyes with a handkerchief, looked at his daughter’s body once more, without a smile, without a frown, and left without a word, just as the choir in the balcony began to sing.

  “I’d love to get my hands on him,” Sunny said, shaking his head. “Afterward they’d call me Sunny Sevenkiller.”

  As the chapel doors closed with a hollow, empty thud, all eyes turned to Sister Briganti; even Father Bartholomew seemed to be addressing her and her alone. Everyone watched as she sat like a statue in her pew, staring ahead stone-faced, regarding the blank space in front of her as though looking for comfort or absolution.

  William thought about Willow—his ah-ma. He couldn’t conceive of any parents utterly abandoning their children. If anything, meeting Charlotte’s father had clarified a painful reality—that even monsters can miss their children. Because the uncomfortable truth is that no one is all bad, or all good. Not mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, or husbands and wives. Life would be much easier if that were the case. Instead, everyone—Charlotte, Willow, Mr. Rigg, even Sister Briganti—was a confusing mixture of love and hate, joy and sorrow, longing and forgetting, misguided truth and painful deception.

  Indian Summer

  (1934)

  William kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the soft bed of warm grass over the place where Charlotte lay buried six feet below. A groundskeeper had peeled up the sod for the funeral, rolling it back like a carpet. William drew his feet together, resting his hands across his lap as he tried to imagine the feel of a pine box surrounding him, the smell of seasoned timber, sawdust, and wood glue. He looked up at a pale blue sky, the color of Charlotte’s eyes. The sun had returned from its hibernation, and what few clouds William saw were stretched across the heavens like saltwater taffy in a pulling machine. William closed his eyes and felt the heat from the sun teasing his eyelids. But as he heard geese honking and opened his eyes, he saw birds flying south and knew this respite wouldn’t last. Charlotte’s darkness was permanent. William missed her. He knew this was as close as he’d ever be to her again. He struggled to accept her death, since she’d been holding his hand just a few days ago. He felt as though he’d failed her and that leaving her behind was a betrayal of sorts. Who would remember her? Who would tend her grave? But as Willow had once said, I didn’t have a reason to stay.

  William knew from reading The Seattle Star that his ah-ma would be in town for at least another week. But he didn’t know where she’d be staying, or who she was with, if anyone, though there was always the theater and the alley and the stage door. If not, there was Chinatown. That’s where he hoped he’d find her. Like Charlotte’s grave, he knew that neighborhood was where old bones, old skeletons were buried. He suspected that his ah-ma would be drawn there as well, to wallow in the memories, to drown in nostalgia.

  His mother’s stories had conjured dark thoughts of being seven years old again and waking up in the middle of the night to an empty apartment. He remembered how he used to open the window and sit on the cold iron grating of the fire escape, the breeze chilling his ankles where the feet of his footie pajamas had been cut off as he outgrew them. Back then he would wrap himself in a blanket to ward off the wintery Seattle night, when the wet air permeated brick and mortar, tile and wood, until his fingers and toes looked pale and grayish, translucent in the moonlight. He recalled those nights after the Crash, looking down i
nto the alley and seeing hobos buried beneath piles of coats—reeking men, huddled together, burning garbage for warmth.

  Strangely, he never felt alone on those nights, always confident that his mother would return. He’d sit and listen to beats wafting from the clubs and cabaret theaters below. He didn’t know what to call that kind of music back then, but he later learned that joyful noise was a piano and a scratchy trombone playing cakewalk and ragtime, and a local version of Tin Pan Alley. The songs would blare and whisper, crashing and receding, coming and going, reminding him of the sound from a Philco radio on a stormy night. As he grew older he realized that the strange rhythm was merely the doorman letting patrons in and out, releasing music into the night like smoke signals. Despite Prohibition, William would watch as men and women staggered into waiting cabs or ambled down the street, straightening their ties and hemlines, stepping to the beat with all the composure of Sunday churchgoers, but listing to the left or right as though the sidewalk were slowly shifting beneath their feet.

  He wondered if the clubs were still there. So many things had changed since then. So many places had been boarded up. Fortunes came and fortunes went. William couldn’t grasp the concept of health, good or bad, but fortune—that was easy to comprehend. He’d noticed their luck changing as his ah-ma began to receive gifts—bouquets of purple and blue flowers, potted plants, and baskets of ripe fruit. And pink boxes of food—oh, the delicious food. His mouth watered as he remembered the savory, chewy sweetness of wind-dried duck sausage, which to this day was the best thing he’d ever tasted.

  And his ah-ma’s clothing began to change.

  He remembered her blue dress, the one she used to wash in the sink and hang in the bathroom to dry every night—the one she wore every day—was suddenly replaced by a floral number with a lace collar. Then another. And another. And new hatboxes began to stack up in the corner, so high they seemed mountainous. So William would do what any sensible young boy would do; he’d climb them until they tumbled to the floor, then he’d turn them over and beat on them like drums, using his chopsticks.