Mary came out of the Babcock Towers and paused on the street. She was right back where she’d been when she first arrived in Chicago—broke, and needing a job. Today’s the day we’re gonna find a job, Jack! She shook her head at an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. I’ve got only three dollars, though. . . .
She searched windows of the businesses she passed, hoping to see a Help Wanted sign posted on the glass. A trash can held a discarded newspaper, and she reached for it to check the classifieds. She noted the headlines first—“Millions Visit New York World’s Fair” . . . “Battle of Britain—R.A.F. on Offensive” . . . “Concert in Lincoln Park Free to Public” . . . “Circus Boy Sleeps With the Lions.” She looked at the picture under the last headline. The sun must be hitting the page and playing tricks. . . . She angled the paper out of the glare and stared at the photograph. A little boy with a dark fringe of hair across his forehead. Wide, dark eyes that looked into the camera without giving away what he was thinking.
“Jack . . .” she whispered. Her legs would not hold her, and she clutched at the edge of the trash can for support. He’s alive—he’s really alive! She held the paper close to look at every detail of the picture, then quickly devoured the short article under the picture.
Circus . . . Chicago’s South Side . . . Limited engagement ends tonight. . . . Hurry, hurry, hurry!
Mary nearly ran through the bustling midway toward the entrance to the Bixby Brothers’ Spectacular Show. She could hear music and applause wafting out of the big top and looked around wildly. Where to start? How to find him in this mass of people?
She spotted a man seated on a tall stool behind an ornate ticket window. “How long till the show is over?” she asked breathlessly.
“Judging by the tunes, ma’am, I’d say another fifteen minutes or so,” he said. “You’re in time for the grand finale—the boy who sleeps with the lions.”
Jack, Jack—he’s talking about my Jack!
“Here,” she said, sliding a quarter through his window.
“You sure you don’t wanna wait and see the whole show? We do it again in three hours—”
“No—I’ve waited long enough.” She snatched up the ticket stub and dashed through the entrance.
Her eyes began searching the second she entered the arena, but there were so many people—so many faces. I need to be high enough to see everything. . . .
She found a seat midway up in the grandstand, right in front of the center ring. The clowns were just ending their act. The crowd applauded enthusiastically, and the clowns took several bows.
Mary opened the paper again, just to be sure, and stared at the picture. Jack . . .
A hawker selling large pink clouds of cotton candy on paper cones moved along the row below her, and she had to crane her neck around him to see the ringmaster step into the center ring.
“And now!” A thunderous drumroll, then, “The Bixby Brothers’ Spectacular is proud to present our grand finale—the pièce de résistance of our show—Boris and his jungle cats. And”—another drumroll— “the lionhearted boy who sleeps with the lions!”
The crowd erupted into enthusiastic applause. Mary felt as if her heart was trying to leap from her chest. She leaned forward as Boris came through the performers’ door brandishing a long whip that produced loud cracks in the air. Behind him came a train of three cages on wheels—each holding a huge lion. Behind them, four clowns in tuxedos carried a platform balanced on long bars across their shoulders—and seated on the platform was a boy looking around in wide-eyed wonder at the spectators. He was dressed in a suit with a red jacket and tan pants, and he wore a small top hat. The crowd was clapping and chanting, “Lionhearted, lionhearted!”
Her world stopped, the crowd disappeared, and the only thing she saw was Jack! Her son was alive and well! She was terrified it would turn out to be a dream, a trick of her own mind. She did not take her eyes off him as his clown entourage circled the big top with their precious cargo.
She shakily stood and stumbled over spectators’ feet, knocking over a box of popcorn to get to the aisle and the steps downward. She finally made it to the sawdust floor under the grandstand just as the clowns carried Jack out a flap at the back end of the tent.
She shot through the same back-end flap and ran smack into the chest of a large man, arms crossed over his chest. He put big hands on her shoulders and physically moved her backward. “Whoa there, missie. This area’s off-limits.”
“I have to . . . see someone,” she insisted, craning her neck around him. She glimpsed Jack being drawn into a group of performers congregating outside another tent and saw a tall, thin man reach out and ruffle his hair.
“You can’t go over there,” the man said firmly. “If you want an autograph or something, you’ll have to wait on the midway with everyone else.”
“You don’t understand. The . . . the lion boy. He’s my son!”
She tried to move around him, and he grabbed her by the arm. “Yeah, and I’m the giant that lives at the top of the beanstalk.” He hauled her back. “You’re not losing me my job ’cause of some daffy—”
“That isn’t necessary, sir. Let her go.”
Mary’s breath caught. She turned and saw Charles just a few feet away. Their eyes met and held for a long moment. He offered a small smile and held up the newspaper. She let out a choked laugh and held up her own.
“Get outta here—both of you,” the man growled.
“You need to let her pass.” Charles stepped closer.
“Nope. Can’t do it.”
“She’s not lying about her son,” Charles said. “I’m sure you don’t want to be part of a kidnapping charge.”
The big man scoffed and shook his head. “I ain’t some First of May who doesn’t know the score, mister. People’ll say all kinds of things to get into the backyard of a big top.”
Even though Charles was half his size, he grabbed the big man’s arm. “No one is going to stop her from getting to her boy—not you, not anyone. Run, Mary!”
While the two men scuffled, Mary sprinted past.
Jack was standing beside the tall, homely man, and she stumbled to a stop just in front. She ached to hold him, to pull him close and never let him go again, but she made herself wait. Jack stared at her with those beautiful eyes, the ones she had thought were closed forever. She looked for any sign in his gaze that might convey any recognition, any sign that said he’d forgive her for being away for so long.
“Hey, lady. You can’t be here,” the tall man said.
She took a step closer, and he put a hand on Jack’s shoulder and drew him back.
“Hey, Felix! What’s going on here?”
“Where’s Boyd? Ain’t he on security?”
“Somebody haul her outta here.”
“She’s scaring the kid.”
Mary struggled to find her voice, to get out a single coherent sentence. She looked at the tall man someone had called Felix. “I’m— his—mother!” she finally said. “His mother.”
Jack hadn’t moved a muscle.
“Felix here would know his own kid’s mother, lady!” someone nearby yelled scornfully.
Tears welled in Mary’s eyes. “They told me he was dead,” she said through trembling lips. “They told me at the Rock River Poorhouse that Jack was . . . dead.”
Felix’s jaw dropped, and he stared into her face as she inched closer.
Boyd, the big security guy, barreled toward them with a gash above his eye and his lip already starting to swell. “Listen, lady! I already told you—”
But Felix had his hand up. “Hold on,” he said. “Give her a minute.”
She nodded her gratitude to Felix, then saw that Charles had come to stand just a few feet away. He was holding a handkerchief to his bleeding nose, his lip was split, and his shirt torn, but she could see the joy radiating from his eyes.
Mary turned back to Jack as Felix moved his hand from the boy’s shoulder and stepped away. She held her breath, cros
sing the last few feet and dropping to her knees in front of her son. This is real. This is Jack. I’m not dreaming. . . . I’m not crazy. Thank you, God, thank you, God, thank you. . . .
“Oh . . . Jack,” she said, tears flowing down her cheeks. He stared at her, and she pulled off her right glove. Slowly, she reached out and touched the tip of his nose, ran her finger up the bridge and formed a heart around his face.
“I love you, little man,” she whispered.
She saw it then. The light of recognition in his eyes that told her more than words could ever say. He smiled—wide, joyful, and stepped into her arms.
Mary nearly collapsed with happiness, relief, gratitude, and profound thankfulness for this wonderful gift she held tightly against her. She looked over his shoulder at Charles, on his knees, weeping tears of joy right along with her.
THERE ARE MOMENTS IN ALL OUR LIVES that live forever— moments so pure that while they are recalled, we are actually transported to that very time to relive the emotions all over again. The realization that the beautiful woman kneeling before me was my mother was such a moment for me. I can recall exactly how her hair smelled and the rough skin of her finger drawing a heart around my face; I can feel her quick, emotional breaths against my neck and feel the blanket of love that dropped over me . . . and stayed over me for the rest of my life.
The set of circumstances that brought Charles and my mother together were the same set of circumstances that made it difficult at first for them to admit they were in love. Like all of us, they were both broken people—souls who had lost their trust in God and who needed healing from deep inside before they could find a life together. After I was found, they both entrusted their secrets and sins with Pastor Martz. He slowly and carefully led them back to that place of grace, where forgiveness was theirs for the asking. My mother eventually was able to forgive my father. After their divorce was final, he remarried, and we never heard from him again.
Charles and Mother discovered their own new beginning with hand-holding and whispered endearments, dreams shared and fears abandoned. I was eleven the spring my mother married Charles, and the three of us began a new journey as a family.
It turns out that Agnes had been right about three things: There are providential moments in life if we will only learn to recognize them; the big house on the shore of Lake Michigan could be gotten for a song; and it would turn out to be a wonderful place to live.
My parents’ marriage was dedicated to God, our family—and to service. Mother and Charles never forgot what they saw the day they visited the Rock River Poorhouse, the children who had been left there to exist in a place devoid of love. They made it their mission to shut down the children’s ward and bring to justice the staff who had violated the trust of those children.
The idea to provide a place, a true home, for the unwanted and unloved children like those who had been all but forgotten, grew from something the pastor said to my mother: “This gift is much bigger than anything you’ve ever dreamed.” They bought the house on the shore—Mother had learned there was no deed in her name as Agnes claimed—and poured their energy into restoring it back to the beautiful place it had originally been. Charles practiced enough law to pay the bills, and my mother finally found what she believed was the true purpose of the gift—a way to “see” the children who yearned for love and needed a place to be their special selves. When she found them she gathered those children close and brought them home. Over the course of my life, I have played with more children than I can count; watched my parents shower love on the unlovable; and held the skeins of yarn while my mother knitted countless stockings for the big mantel in the living room she had envisioned at Christmas.
Besides my parents and myself, there were several staff members who stayed in the house over the years, but the only other adult who ever called the place home was Felix.
He had become my mother’s friend for life when she’d learned his reasons for taking me from the poorhouse. He had held her hand while she cried over the things he told her—but she’d insisted on hearing them. He had confessed how much he loved me by then, how much he was going to miss me. Felix had done the best he could with me, and my mother was forever grateful. He retired from his life with the circus when I was a grown man and came to live at our house. There were times on the porch when I sat next to Felix—special moments when I could feel the bumpy ride of the train cars over the tracks and smell the roasting peanuts that we ate together in our tent. I loved Felix Stanhope and was there when he passed away nearly fifteen years ago, peacefully in a feather bed with a handmade quilt and friends around him.
Charles’s devotion to my mother was evident in everything he did and said—but we both knew there was a stone of sadness in his heart in the early years of their marriage. My mother understood it and gave him the gift of never discounting it by trying to talk him out of it. She knew all too well the pain of missing a child. We never spoke of it, of course, since speaking of things always remained impossible for me, but I knew instinctively what pure moment Charles held in his heart until the day he died—because I was there to witness it.
I had just turned twenty that summer. There were children playing in the yard, running and laughing and teasing my mother with worms they were finding in her garden. I was sitting by Charles, who was busy pruning some of the many hedges that made a natural fence along the side of the lawn, when a sleek car pulled up. Charles stopped and put a hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun, and the three of us watched as a beautiful young woman stepped out. She had long blond hair and wore a simple gray skirt and pink blouse. Charles took a couple of steps toward her, and though I couldn’t hear it, I know he whispered his daughter’s name. I saw the look that passed between my parents. No one knew better than I all the things that can be said with just one look—all of the love and fulfilled wishes and dreams that one partner has for the other. After years of writing letter after letter of apology, years of missing her birthdays and Christmases, Charles crossed the lawn toward his precious Stephanie. He took her on a tour of the house, let her see for herself the love that had been poured into the lives of other people’s children, even as he longed to see his own. The forgiveness that came from Stephanie took away the sad stone from his heart, and they spent years together making up for all those they had lost. My mother’s joy at his reunion with Stephanie was a moment I know she could and did recall until she passed away when I was already a man on the precipice of old age.
I grew up in a time when white gloves graced the hands of stylish women—those who attended teas and parties and fund-raisers. But the only real lady I ever knew to wear the gloves was my mother. The hundreds of white gloves she wore throughout her lifetime took on the daily routine she lived: They got dirty as she worked the soil, got wet when she dried a child’s tears, were stained red when she baked cherry pie, and smelled like the Jergens lotion that was always on the skin of her hands beneath the material that kept them from accidentally being seen by the world.
My mother never doubted that the gift of prophecy was from God, though she always regretted the way she’d allowed it to become distorted during that period in our lives when fear over my future took precedence over faith. Over the years there were others who found their way to the house on the lake, hoping to leave with a prophetic verse about their own future—but she told them all the same thing before she turned them away. “The gift isn’t meant for those who can ask for a chapter and verse—it’s meant for the children who don’t have a voice.”
It had never occurred to me that my mother wouldn’t be with me until the end of my life—but as she so magnificently demonstrated, it had occurred to her. The home I lived in had long since been paid for, and Olivia Edmunds had been instrumental in setting up a fund that had grown over the years to pay for the care of the children who passed through its doors to live with love. The caretakers of the house always came with a heart for the children. Stephanie Westerly was the first among them after Ch
arles went to join my mother in heaven.
I had chosen the round turret for my bedroom when I was just a boy; I couldn’t voice my preference, of course, but the act of moving a chair near the window and sitting down was all my mother needed. The view outside that window has been a panorama of passing time: new spring flowers pushing through the earth, summer days carpeted with children playing on emerald grass, winter snow that made everything gleam still and white—and glorious fall foliage that never failed to inspire me.
Thinking about sitting there, I recall another moment in my life with clarity—the last chapter and verse my mother and I ever wrote together. I was a grown man, and I know she saw the surprise in my eyes when she took my hand, pressed a pencil against my palm, and proceeded to guide me through the words of forty-six, thirteen, two: “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
For a while after my mother’s passing, a few still made the pilgrimage to our home, hoping to find answers in the form of a chapter and verse from me. But they always left empty-handed.
So, you see, I wasn’t able to tell them that the gift of prophecy had never been mine at all. It had always been my mother’s. As I said in the beginning, you should focus on my mother—she’s where the heart of this story lies.
God took me home one evening while I sat in my chair and watched the sunset. I slipped from this life to the eternal life, where not only could I look upon my mother’s ageless, beautiful face, but I could hold her perfect hands and finally say the words in heaven that she never could hear from me on earth . . . “I love you.”
The Silent Gift Page 30