A Light in the Window (17 page)

She laughed. He loved the sound of any laughter, but hers was a laughter that ignited something in his spirit.

“Oh, Timothy, there are so many lovely things to do, aren’t there? I pray that we have hundreds of rains to walk in. I pray that I find out all your secrets and can do magical things for you, as you have done for me.”

“One of my deepest secrets is that I like tapioca,” he said, grinning.

“Tapioca? Gross! But I shall set my personal loathing aside, and you’ll have all you can eat for Christmas dinner.”

“Will you write?”

“Of course, I’ll write. And when you write me, will it be one of those notes you’d send to a distant relative, or will it be deeply personal and sexy and delicious?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, holding her hand.

“I hate to go.”

“I hate to see you go.”

“I loved your sermon.”

“Is there anything you don’t love?”

“Crow’s feet, age spots, and good-byes.”

“Kiss me, then,” he said.

He stood on the tarmac and watched her little plane until it became a speck in the sky. He prayed for her safety, her peace, her ability to complete her work, and her joy. “Give her joy,” he said aloud, turning back to the terminal.

In the car, he wondered if he should try to find Pauline, Dooley’s mother. She had lived in Holding for years, but when Dooley had run away to her last Christmas, and the police had searched for her and him, it had been in vain. She couldn’t be found, and not a word from her since. It was just as well; surely it was just as well. What could word from his broken, alcoholic mother do but tear Dooley apart all over again, after he had begun to reconstruct himself?

He wanted to help Pauline, but the way to do that, the only way he had available, was to help Dooley. Had he helped him? Perhaps. Certainly, he had grown to love him, to find even his aggravating ways familiar and comforting. Mush, indeed! His heart had clearly made its own mush for Dooley Barlowe.

An invitation from Edith Mallory arrived the following Wednesday.
Come for Thanksgiving dinner at Clear Day, she wrote. I hope I’m asking well in advance of any other demands on your schedule, and rest assured we shall have all your favorites.

What did she know about his favorites? He would have Emma reply that he and Dooley would attend the annual All-Church Thanksgiving, which the Presbyterians were hosting this year. Her monogrammed stationery reeked of some musky scent that fairly clung to his fingers after he read it. Why couldn’t she leave him in peace?

When he laid the note aside, Emma grabbed it and tossed it in the wastebasket. “Whang-do!” she snorted.

At a quarter ’til twelve, Puny rang. “Are you comin’ home for lunch?”

“I thought I’d have a bowl of soup with Percy.”

“If I was you, I’d come home,” she said mysteriously.

The dozen roses in a box took his breath away. Clearly, they were the finest specimens the zealous Jena Ivey could muster.

Cynthia had handwritten the card before she left:
With love from your neighbor, who misses you dreadfully.

Dooley helped himself to reading the card that evening. “Double mush,” he pronounced.

Two consecutive freezes downed the geraniums but enlivened the pansies in every border. Though mid-November had arrived, the curry-colored leaves of the oak refused to fall, providing a rich background for the remaining gold of the maples.

“A Flemish tapestry!” exclaimed Andrew Gregory, stirring a cup of hot apple cider with a cinnamon stick.

Percy Mosely sat on a stool at the Main Street Grill and declared he was glad to be rid of the tourists, so the locals could have a little peace and quiet. “Gawk an’ squawk. That’s what they do from May ’til th’ leaves drop. Feller in here last week squawked to me about th’ coffee, said it was s’ weak he had t’ help it out of the pot. That,” he concluded, darkly, “was a Yankee lie.”

“Winter!” grumbled J.C. Hogan, having sausage and eggs in the back booth. “I hate the dadgum thought of it.”

“What you need,” said police chief Rodney Underwood, “is a good woman to keep you warm.”

“I doubt he could find one who’d want th’ job,” said Mule Skinner. “He was such an ugly young ’un his mama had to tie a pork chop around his neck to get the dogs to play with him.”

At the first frost, Miss Rose and Uncle Billy Watson were rumored to have set their brand-new thermostat on seventy-five, and let the chips fall where they may.

Grocery man Avis Packard announced his excitement over the quality of collard greens and turnips he was getting from the valley.

Dooley moved Jack’s cage from the unheated garage to his room. The Chamber of Commerce, who had conducted a woolly worm festival on the school lawn, predicted a bitter winter, while Dora Pugh at the hardware designed a window display with snow shovels and had a plan-ahead sale on kerosene lamps and thermal underwear.

The vase of roses at the old rectory managed to last a very long time, as if defying what was to come. Before their petals fell on the polished walnut of the dining table, Puny decided to tie their stems with a string and hang them upside down to dry, figuring that, one day, they’d make a nice memory for somebody.

“Uncle Billy! How are you?”

“No rest f’r th’ wicked, and th’ righteous don’t need none!” he said, cackling. “Jis’ thought I’d call up to chew th’ fat, and tell you things is goin’ good up here at th’ mansion.”

“I’m always glad to hear that,” said the rector, tucking the receiver under his chin and signing the letter he’d just typed.

“I don’t know what you think about preacher jokes ...”

“What have you got? I could use a good laugh.”

“Well, sir, this preacher didn’t want to tell ’is wife he was speakin’ to th’ Rotary on th’ evils of adultery. She was mighty prim, don’t you know, so he told her he was goin’ to talk about boating.

“Well sir, a little later, ’is wife run into a Rotarian who said her husband had give a mighty fine speech.

“ ‘That’s amazin’,’ she said, ‘since he only done it twice. Th’ first time he th‘owed up and th’ second time ’is hat blowed off.’ ”

He laughed uproariously. “That’s a good one, Uncle Billy.”

“I can tell that th’ livelong winter. It’ll do me ’til spring. You’re th’ first to hear it, next to Rose.”

“Where’d you find it?”

“I like to get my jokes off strangers, don’t you know, so they’re fresh to th’ town. Come off a feller down at th’ dump, passin’ through from Arkansas. He th‘ow’d out a whole set of Encyclopaedia Britannica, good as new. We got ’em in th’ kitchen. It’s a sight f’r sore eyes what they do with drawin’s of birds an’ all.”

“Cynthia tells me she’s pushing her publisher to do something with those ink drawings of yours.”

“Well, sir, that’d be good. I got more than a thousand dollars in m’ mattress off that bunch of pencil drawin’s we sold at th’ art show. I hated t’ take it, since some of my beagles looked like coons.”

“What in the world will you do with a bankroll like that?”

“Set Rose up for Christmas, for one thing. It’s th’ most money I ever put my hands on. She thinks I’m rich. You ought t’ see th’ way she shines up to me since I got a little somethin’ put away. A feller can’t make that kind of money canin’ chairs and buildin’ birdhouses.”

“That’s a fact.”

“We’re goin’ to have us a Christmas tree, don’t you know, for th’ first time in more’n thirty years. An’ I’m goin’ to be Santy and give ’er a dress or two an’ some shoes I seen in a catalog—what they call sling-back pumps.”

“How about a suit for yourself, my friend?” Uncle Billy had turned himself out in his wife’s dead brother’s clothes for as long as he had known him.

“Well, sir, I don’t know about that.”

“You’re a good fellow, Uncle Billy.”

“I don’t think so, m’self, but I thank you, Preacher. Th’ same to you.”

When they hung up, he found he had a new zeal for his letter-writing. Uncle Billy Watson doeth good like a medicine, he thought, paraphrasing the Scriptures.

The door opened, but even before he saw who was coming in from the street, he felt a nameless dread.

“Hello-o-o,” said Edith Mallory, closing the door behind her.

She marched straight to Emma’s chair and sat down, as if it were her own. “I’m ravished!” she announced.

Not around here, you won’t be, he thought.

“I haven’t had a bite all day, except for the teensiest piece of toast for breakfast. Since you can’t come for Thanksgiving dinner, there’s the cutest new restaurant in Wesley, and I just know you’d love it. I’ve reserved a table for lunch, on the teensiest chance you can come. They have green tablecloths and green walls—I know how passionately you love green—and can you imagine, their dinner menu features elk and bison!” She peered at him with dauntless expectancy.

He did not love green, and anyone who would stalk and slaughter an elk or bison was a raving lunatic.

“Well? What do you think?” She opened her handbag and removed a compact. Looking into it intently, she twisted her mouth in a manner he found gruesome, then slathered it with a vivid orange lipstick. “Ummm,” she said, poking out her tongue and licking her lips. When she crossed her legs, he saw for the first time that her skirt was ridiculously short.

He rose from his chair so suddenly that the silver bud vase on the windowsill above him went flying across the room and skidded to the door.

“Blast!” he said. “I was just leaving. Dooley is feverish, a wound to the knee. Football, you know.”

He was stunned at the lie that came rolling out like so many coins from a slot machine. He fled to the peg and grabbed his jacket and was putting it on when she got up and came toward him. In one smooth, swift, gliding motion, she threw her arms around him and pressed her body against his.

“Timothy ... ,” she said, breathing onto his cheek.

He moved away from her, trying to wrench her arms from his neck. “Edith ...”