A Light in the Window (36 page)

“What do you think?” asked Esther Cunningham.

They were standing in front of the freshly painted sign in Miss Rose’s front yard. They might have been looking at Monet’s water lilies.

“Beautiful!” said the rector, meaning it.

“Have you ever in your life? Why, they don’t even have a town museum in Wesley! You mark my words, this’ll bring their TV station runnin’!”

“As well it might. When do we see the statue?”

“Oh, law, that statue! It looks to me like his head’s too big. I hope it’s just me. But all in all, pretty nice-lookin’ and costin’ a fortune. Now, listen, Father, I know how you hate to raise money ...”

“Esther ...”

“Just this once, you could do somethin’. And I’m not talkin’ about bakin’ pies. I’m talkin’ big money.”

“Big money, is it? Why pick on me? What about the Baptists? What about the Presbyterians? They could auction off another Cadillac.”

“Shoot, they didn’t raise the price of a used Subaru. All those people just swarmed in there to eat Esther Bolick’s cake.”

“Aha. Well, about raising money, here’s my answer ...”

Her eyes gleamed.

“I’m not going to do it,” he said, standing his ground for dear life.

Esther laughed uproariously. “For a minute there, I thought I had you.”

“Your eternal optimism is part of your charm. You persist in thinking you’re going to nail me to the wall.”

“Oh, and I will,” she said, grinning. “One of these days, I will.”

Lent would soon be over and the fresh hope of Easter upon them. Cynthia would be home, and the forsythia in Baxter Park would be blooming. He heard the Lord’s Chapel bells toll ten o’clock when the phone rang.

“Hello?”

He couldn’t precisely identify the sound at the other end.

“Hello?”

There was a long silence, then a sort of squeak. “Tim ...” It was Cynthia, and she was crying.

“It’s OK,” he said. “Take your time. I’m right here.”

He could hear her muffled sobbing, as if she were holding her hand over the phone.

“I’m right here,” he said again, his heart hammering. Was she ill or in some kind of peril? Please, God.

“I ... ,” she said, then another pause. “I can’t stop,” she said. “I’m OK, it’s just that I ... can’t stop.” She didn’t hold her hand over the phone now but wept unabashedly, as if the weeping were a language of its own and he would understand it.

“I’m so glad ... you’re there,” she said. “I just can’t do this anymore. It’s too hard ...”

“I understand. I do.”

“I think I can’t bear it any longer that you’re there and I’m here, and all there is, is work, work, work and this ... this horrid longing. And I know it’s going to be over soon, but right now, it seems it will never end. And James absolutely hated the last pages of the book. I’m so angry with him. Why was he so busy careening around Europe if he’s so vastly picky about it? Why isn’t he here, giving me the kind of direction he’s so good at dishing out at the final hour? And I know its wrong to say it, Timothy, but oh, I want to say it, I must say it, Timothy—I’m so very, very angry with you!”

He heard the fresh storm of weeping and knew it was coming from a place he had never touched or known in her. There was an intimacy in the way she bared herself to him, something so oddly intimate that he felt his face grow warm.

“Cynthia ...”

“Don’t ... don’t even speak. I knew I shouldn’t have called. I knew I would be hysterical when I heard your voice. I know this is going to take until the end of April now. I won’t be able to come home in March.

“Oh, Timothy, why aren’t you here? Why aren’t you here for even one weekend? Why must you be so tight and controlled and peevish about riding in a taxi or getting mugged or something? I think it is horrid of you, just horrid, horrid, horrid!”

“How long have you worked today?” he asked.

“Twelve or fourteen hours—I don’t know.”

“Have you eaten?”

“I ate some cottage cheese,” she said. He thought she sounded exactly like Gillian Murphy, the day she clung to him and cried because her mother had missed the Sunday visit.

He felt utterly helpless. What could he say, Go wash your face, get some rest, and you’ll be fine? He felt the agony of the distance between them in a way he hadn’t felt it before. He knew he had denied it. He had never once really faced her absence. He had numbed himself to it. When he missed her, he had simply made himself busy.

“Blast,” he said softly.

“What did you say?”

“I said that I love you, though I know you don’t believe it.”

“No, I don’t! I don’t believe it at all. I think you like the idea of being in love as long as I’m far away and can’t be any trouble to your feelings.”

“Cynthia ...”

“There. I’ve hurt you. I knew I would somehow hurt you if I made this call.”

“I don’t know what to say. I ... am the one who’s hurting you, and I regret it.”

“Oh, poop! Stop regretting! Don’t fall into that bottomless mire of regretting. Just get up and do something, Timothy—I don’t know what!” She sounded exhausted.

He didn’t know what either.

He put the blue pouch in his breast pocket, though it made a slight lump.

The book Emma gave him for Christmas went in his briefcase, along with a change of socks and underwear and a fresh shirt, nothing more. If he looked like a hick, well then, so be it.

He told Emma he would be away for two days and turned his back on her before the grin even started spreading across her face.

“I’m going to see Walter,” he announced to the bookcase, which was true. He would pop into Walter’s Manhattan office for precisely five minutes, just to see the look on his cousin’s face. He would be only too happy to dial 911 when Walter slumped over in shock, unable to speak.

Of course, he was insane to make the trip. There was absolutely no question at all in his mind, especially with Easter only ten days away and the preparations that had to be made. But how often did he do something insane, after all? The last time was so far in the past that it was no longer considered insane—now, half the population was doing it.

The thought of arriving at the New York airport alone, with only her address on a slip of paper, gave him palpitations. But he must swallow it down like a dose of bitters and get on with it.

“My, my,” said Emma, her eyes glittering. She wasn’t sure she could put her finger on it exactly, but she felt suddenly proud of her rector. He looked handsome, even taller, and—she had never thought this particular thing before—very distinguished.

He stood at the sink, washing the supper dishes, consumed with plans for her happiness.

He would take her to one of those restaurants in the book, one with four stars, certainly. Yet, if there was anything he couldn’t abide, it was a snooty maitre d’—weren’t you supposed to give them twenty dollars just for letting you in the door, or was it fifty? The very thought made his knees weak.

He wanted it all to go smoothly, right down to hailing a taxi. When it came to that, he could whistle as well as the next one. Hadn’t he and Tommy Noles been world-class whistlers in Holly Springs, able to wake the dead a half-mile away?

He washed the hamburger platter and whistled as loudly as he could, just for practice.

He heard Barnabas hit the study floor running, scattering a braided rug to kingdom come. He skidded to the sink and stood on his hind legs, thrilled to be summoned.

“Here,” said the rector, proffering a tea towel, “I’ll wash and you dry.”

Perhaps he should have let her know; he should have called to say he was coming, but somehow, he couldn’t do it. He kept seeing her as she opened the apartment door and the blue surprise in her eyes, and he knew he wanted it this way.

That he made it to her apartment building intact gave him a great sense of triumph. He was trembling inside like a schoolboy as he took the scrap of paper out for the last time and looked at her apartment number, which, though he knew it by heart, he kept forgetting.

“May I help you, Father?”

It was the doorman, he supposed, all gotten up in braid and gold buttons. “I’m seeing someone on your tenth floor. I should have brought flowers ...” He looked up and down the street, as if flowers might appear at the curb.

“May I ask who you’re seeing on our tenth floor?”

“Miss Coppersmith. Miss Cynthia Coppersmith. I’m her ... priest.”

“Very well. I’ll buzz you up.”

They went into the lobby, where the doorman, inordinately well-dressed to be pushing buzzers, gave 10C a sharp blast.

They waited.

“Must be in the shower,” the rector said, helpfully.

“I’m thinking I saw Miss Coppersmith leave early this morning, as I was coming on. I can’t be sure.”

The doorman pushed again and waited.

“Has the volume up on Mozart, very likely. Do keep ringing.”

The doorman gave another long alarm. “I don’t believe she’s in, sir.”

He had what his mother always called “a sinking feeling,” as if some vital force went out of him, and he needed to sit down.

“Just once more, if you’d be so kind.” He hadn’t meant to sound plaintive, but there it was.

The doorman rang again. “Not in, I think. Perhaps having a bit of shopping.”

He felt for the brooch, as a child might feel for a blanket. Then, he looked up and saw an elderly woman in a dark fur coat leaving the elevator.

She walked with a cane and was accompanied by a man in a uniform, who carried an aging, long-haired cat of considerable size.

He waited until she nearly passed him.

“Miss ... Addison?”

She turned and peered at him, squinting. As rustic as he may be, he could tell that Miss Addison had enjoyed a number of face-lifts and was wearing contacts. Close up, she seemed at once forty-five and eighty-three.