by Jan Karon
“Maybe we should turn it over to the authorities, let Social Services be the go-between.”
“With three marriages an’ a drinkin’ problem, I’ve had all the go-between I can choke down,” said Buck. “Sometimes I think we should let sleepin’ dogs lie. Jessie was a baby when the kids were split up, she doesn’t remember Sammy or Kenny, and Poo hardly remembers them, either. Things are settled with us, runnin’ pretty smooth.” Buck looked at the tabletop, then at Father Tim. “But there’s no way we can’t try an’ pull this family back together. No way.”
“If it all works out, you’d want Sammy to live with you?”
“We’d want to give him the option,” said Buck.
“The boy could have serious behavior problems.”
“We understand that. It would mean a lot just to know he’s all right—and if he wants to live with us, if we could get it through th’ courts…we’ll give it our best shot.”
“When I went to Holding the other day, I did it without thinking. I don’t know what I hoped to accomplish, perhaps it was just to see him, to remind him of his brothers and sisters, to look over the circumstances—maybe he wouldn’t have been home, or maybe it would have set his father off in some way that—”
“Let’s just find him, then take it from there. We’ve both got a pretty good idea how he’s livin’, an’ as far th’ courts go, it wouldn’t stack up against th’ home we could give him.”
“You’re doing a fine job with Jessie and Poo.”
“It’s been good tryin’ to be their daddy, I couldn’t ever have kids…an’ when you think about th’ road I’ve been down, that’s prob’ly th’ best. I try to do right by Dooley, too, but I know he looks on you as his dad an’ I’d never want to mess with that.”
“The first time I saw him is etched in my memory like an engraving—a little redheaded guy with freckles, mad at the world, old before his time. It hasn’t been easy, but it’s been rich…and I’m thankful.”
“I admit I’m real uneasy about what could come of this….”
“Dooley’s afraid it could be a powder keg.”
“But I’ve been prayin’ about findin’ th’ boys since we got married. So has Pauline. And I know you’re prayin’.”
“Have been, will be.”
“So…” Buck finished his coffee and set the cup down firmly.
“Why don’t you an’ me plan a time to run down th’ mountain? I’d like to start from scratch with Pink Shuford an’ ’is buddy.”
“Father Tim!”
He turned and saw Father Talbot trotting toward him from Happy Endings, in his running gear.
“Wait up!”
It wasn’t easy, thought Father Tim, to have been succeeded at Lord’s Chapel by a man who, though only a few years younger, had all his hair, ran daily, worked out, used a rowing machine, and wore top-of-the-line Nikes.
“Henry! Glad to see you!” And he was glad.
“Just going down to the office to ring you,” said Henry Talbot, huffing. “You’re looking terrific, very trim and fit!”
In truth, he was so drained that he was headed home instead of to Sweet Stuff for fruit tarts. “Pushing along very well, thanks. How are you and Mary getting on?”
“Planning our trip to the Bahamas for ten days, a surprise anniversary gift from our kids. I’m hoping you can supply for me at Lord’s Chapel next month. The, ah, let’s see…” Henry Talbot fetched a small planner from the pocket of his running shorts, and flipped the pages. “The eighth and fifteenth. It would make a lot of people happy, I daresay.”
Lord’s Chapel! Something like fear pierced his heart. Was he rusty? Was he up to it?
“Yes!” he said. “I’d like nothing better.”
Hessie Mayhew dodged into the handkerchief garden between the Collar Button and the Sweet Stuff Bakery and stood, frozen, by a bed of dahlias, hoping Father Tim would not spot her as he passed.
She clutched a brass vase chock-full of multiflora roses that she’d just cut from her arbor and was taking to the office building next door to Sweet Stuff. It was a forty-dollar arrangement and worth every dime, but she suddenly felt like a common criminal. To think of all he’d been through, and now, at last, he was out and about, no doubt to pay tribute to those who’d sent food and flowers through the long weeks, while the absence of a single, solitary word from Hessie Mayhew pained him like a sore and festering thumb….
“Good morning, Hessie!”
She turned, humiliated, and looked into his beaming face.
“It’s great to see you, Hessie! How are you?”
Unthinking, she hastily closed the distance between them and thrust the vase of roses into his hands.
“There!” she blurted, sloshing water onto his shirtsleeve. Appalled at her grossly inept presentation, she turned and fled along the sidewalk.
Since he was standing at the door of Sweet Stuff, he decided to go in. It would, at the very least, be a place to sit for a few minutes before he began the long trek home. The vase of flowers seemed to weigh more than he would have thought. He went inside, thumped the vase onto a table, and sat.
“Water,” he said to Winnie, who gave him a concerned look.
“Where’s your car, darling?”
“Ah,” he said. “My car.”
“Yes. You know, the red Mustang with the rag top, the leather seats, the—”
“Oh, that car.” Blast! “Parked in front of the Grill.”
He thrust the vase into her hands. “There!” he said, not knowing what else to say.
“Oh, my! Lovely!”
“Happy birthday!” he said, recovering his wits.
She set the vase on the coffee table before the sofa. “Perfect! What a wonderful shade of pink! Thank you, dearest!” She plucked a small envelope from among the roses and smiled. “Let’s see what tender sentiment you’ve inscribed to me.”
He lifted his hands helplessly. He hadn’t seen an envelope!
She withdrew a small card and peered at it. “‘Happy retirement, Mildred…,’” she read aloud.
“‘Old bookkeepers never die, they just nickel and dime the rest of us to death.’ Timothy, what on earth?”
“Joke,” he said feebly. However, as the joke was on him, he told her the truth and was vastly relieved when she howled with laughter.
He lay across the bed, remembering what else he’d forgotten—the fruit tarts, the promised visit to Bill and Rachel….
Voices floated up from downstairs. Three o’clock. He must have fallen asleep after lunch. He was slightly disoriented; the morning had seemed an entire day in itself. Maybe he should see Hoppy tomorrow—but no, tomorrow was full….
He sat up on the side of the bed and gazed at the floor, unseeing.
“Timothy?”
“Yes?”
Cynthia stood in the doorway; the blanched look on her face alarmed him.
“Harley just brought this over.” She walked to the bed and handed him a sheet of paper.
“‘For labor and parts,’” he read aloud, “‘one hundred and sixty-eight dollars.’”
“For Miss Pringle’s car. Harley said you told him to repair the brakes and gas gauge and that you’d pay the bill.”
The tone of her voice made his heart beat heavily. “Come and sit down,” he said.
“I’m perfectly fine standing up. He said you noticed her car needed work when she…drove you down the mountain while I was away.”
He hadn’t told his wife everything. He had postponed the truth.
He would definitely be paying for this unfortunate mistake.
The pain he’d experienced over the last terrible weeks had been a dull pain. This suffering was sharp and hard. He looked at the closed door of her workroom; he had seldom ever seen this door closed….
In both cases, he’d hurt someone through selfish neglect. The accident had occurred because he’d neglected to follow doctor’s orders; he’d hurt his wife by neglecting to share the simple truth of what he’d
done. Hélène Pringle had made a gesture of sacrifice for him, and in return, he’d tried to do something he knew she needed and couldn’t easily afford. It hadn’t occurred to him that this act of gratitude might be a breach of Cynthia’s trust.
It was as if the earth had disappeared beneath him, and he was falling through a space both vast and cold.
Words cannot express the sorrow I feel for having…
He put the pen down and stared into Baxter Park.
This was his wife’s birthday, the day he was to take her into this very park for a picnic and give her the gift he’d planned so carefully all those months ago. They could not utterly lose this day, it was too important; indeed, it was crucial. One must not lose the day that belongs so especially to a loved one; birthdays must not be tossed about by every ill wind that blows….
He looked at his watch. Four forty-five. He had thirty minutes to throw himself on her mercy and get this show on the road.
“Here y’ go,” said Avis Packard, wearing an apron imprinted with the green Local logo. Father Tim stood at the front door and held out his arms to receive the picnic basket, packed to the brim. “Tell me what you think, maybe I’ll offer this as a reg’lar deal, maybe have a banner printed…First-Class Picnics, Fresh Daily, what d’you think?”
“I think it’ll work,” he said, backing away from the door. Avis was a talker and he didn’t have all day….
“A nice touch for honeymoons, anniversaries, or just takin’ th’ ol’ buggy for a spin on th’ Parkway, pull off to an overlook with your honey, roll out this basket, an’…” Avis rubbed his hands together, grinning.
“You’re a marketing genius,” said Father Tim, closing the door to within an inch of the jamb. “Thanks for the personal delivery. Put it on my tab.”
“Th’ goat cheese is from France,” said Avis, peering through the crack, “not th’ valley. I thought for your special occasion you’d want th’ French.”
“Right. Thanks a million.” He closed the door.
Avis knocked.
He opened the door.
“Your champagne…”
“What about it?”
“It’s from Champagne, France, th’ real thing, you said do whatever it takes. An’ oh, yeah, happy…what is it? Anniversary?”
“Birthday,” he said. “Got to run.”
“I’m havin’ a birthday next week, guess how old—”
“Catch you later,” he said, closing the door.
“Cynthia,” he implored, standing at the door to her workroom. “I have something important to say.”
She opened the door and looked at him, calm, unruffled.
“Will you come out to our garden bench?” he asked.
He gave her his arm. As she took it, his heart leaped with gratitude.
“When I asked you to marry me,” he said, “I failed to do all that you deserved.”
He stood before her, ashamed and naked in his regret.
“When I asked you to marry me, I went down on one knee. My very soul knew it wasn’t enough, but in those days, I didn’t heed my soul the way you’ve taught me to do. I heed it now.”
He sank to one knee, then the other, and took her hands in both of his.
“Forgive me, please, for shutting you out. I was going to tell you everything, I vow that I was.”
He saw a certain light return to her eyes, the light he had lived by, the light he could not bear to lose.
“Hélène remarked that she’d seen Dooley at the drugstore in Holding, and something in me knew it might be one of the boys. I didn’t have the strength to drive down the mountain, and she offered to take me. It was the most urgent thing I’d done in a long time, I had to go, I wanted to see whether it might be…” He swallowed down a lump. “We’ve all waited so long, and prayed so fervently…”
“Yes,” she said.
“And so we went, and it was a wild goose chase and Hélène’s car had very bad brakes, I tell you I was scared out of my wits the way she careened around the curves….”
She looked at him, silent.
“And her gas gauge wasn’t working, we might have run out of gas in the middle of nowhere…believe me, this was nowhere.”
“I believe you,” she said quietly.
“There is absolutely nothing between Hélène Pringle and myself except a mutual respect. Having her mother at Hope House is a considerable expense, I daresay she couldn’t afford the work on her car—I didn’t think twice about asking Harley to do it, she’d gone out of her way for me. I feel certain she helped us find Sammy.” He looked at her, imploring. “She’s a kind neighbor, nothing more.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Do you believe that?”
“I have always believed that, and ever shall. I don’t mind so much that you went down the mountain with another woman, or even that you footed the bill to have her crankcase greased—”
“Her brakes, it was her brakes.”
“Brakes, then! What I mind very, very much, indeed, is that you didn’t tell me. And such good news that you’ve found Sammy…but nothing, not a word to me. I’m more than a little sensitive, Timothy. Remember that I was married to someone who enjoyed the company of other women, and in the end, he chose them over me.”
The leaves of the dogwood by the bench murmured in a light breeze.
“These last weeks haven’t been easy, you’ve been so silent and dark, so unlike yourself. It has frightened me terribly to see you this way, to feel you might be moving away from me, drifting toward some other purpose—”
“Never!” he said, stricken that she would think this.
She patted the bench beside her. “Come and sit, darling.”
His legs were beginning to notice what he’d done; they were as numb as tinned mackerel. “Not until I get what I’m down here for.”
“And what is that?”
“Your forgiveness.”
He was the blind beggar, he was the lame man at the pool called Beautiful, he was the woman with the issue of blood….
She gazed at him fondly, then leaned over and kissed his forehead. “There, dearest. I’m sorry I fretted so. I love you with all my heart.”
“I love you back with all of mine.”
“Of course I forgive you,” she said.
He looked into her eyes and found what he was seeking. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.”
She laughed, and stood, and held out her hands to him. He grasped them, noting that he couldn’t have gotten up without her help.
They had dined, they had toasted her nativity, they had lolled on the quilt in Baxter Park like rustics.
“Hurry,” he said, “before we lose the light….”
He took the box from under the park bench and handed it over; it was wrapped in blue paper and tied with raffia he’d found on her potting table.
She placed it in her lap, beaming.
“I ordered it months ago, it was made just for you.” He could hardly wait to see her face. He was nearly bursting with anticipation and relief.
She tore the paper off—his wife was not one to iron and save wrapping paper—and twined the raffia in her hair, laughing. She lifted the lid of the box that enclosed her gift, and found another box. Her initials, inlaid into the warm olive wood in brass, gleamed in the twilight.
She was hushed and silent.
“Look inside,” he said, touching her shoulder.
She lifted the hinged lid and saw fat pastel sticks fitted into the box, row upon row—indigo, violet, ultramarine, cobalt, yellow ocher, vermilion, carmine, purple, and all the hues in between.
“Timothy…” His chipper and talkative wife could barely speak.
“The box is from Italy. It was made by Roberto’s close friend, Marcello, from olive wood. Roberto included something wonderful in this little compartment. Lift the pull.”
She lifted the small brass pull and peered inside the Lilliputian box within the box.
“Seven of his grandfather Leonardo’s
pastelli,” he said. “Leonardo was the boy who helped paint the angel ceiling at Fernbank when Miss Sadie was a child. Roberto sends these with love.”
He found his wife’s tears of joy an odd pleasure, rather than the fright they’d been during their courtship. “There,” he said, holding her in his arms. “You once said you’d like to try pastels….”
“You are the dearest man I’ve ever known, there is none dearer than thee.”
“Regrettably, I’m vastly handicapped by selfishness, and I’d like to ask you to give me a gift.”
She looked at him and smoothed the hair over his left ear. “Anything, Timothy.”
“I want you to go on the literacy tour.” There. He’d said it, and his heart did not wrench. In truth, as the words came out of his mouth, a certain peace flooded in.
Uncle Billy Watson stood at the bathroom mirror, raking his bushy gray eyebrows with his wife’s pocket comb, and faced the terrible truth.
He couldn’t make up a joke if his life depended on it.
Every time he tried, he fell off to sleep and woke up with a blooming crick in his neck. If he couldn’t find a joke over at the Grill today, it looked like the preacher was going to have to make his own self laugh.
Puny had brought the girls this morning, as she was working only a half day. He was sitting in the study with his prayer book when Sassy came in and thumped down beside him.
She nestled into the crook of his right arm. “What’s wrong, Granpaw?”
“Wrong? Is something wrong?”
“You’re sad. Is it ’cause Miss Cynthy’s goin’ off on a trip around th’ world?”
“No, no. Not around the world. Around the country.”
“That’s th’ same thing.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. You’re right.”
He was at Sweet Stuff soon after it opened, to buy a half dozen fruit tarts. Then he walked to his car and zoomed up the steep hill to the Sprouse place, where, his nerves alarmed by the prospect of what lay ahead, he had a cup of coffee with Bill and Rachel, prayed with Bill, laughed his head off at Sparky’s replacement, and felt immeasurably better when he said goodbye an hour later.