Home Another Way (25 page)
He was angry with himself about how he’d acted last night at the skating pond with Sarah. Or wanted to act. After they’d fallen in the snow, as Sarah’s face inched closer to his own, he thought about kissing her seeking lips. More than considered. Longed for it. And that longing stayed with him as the sun poured into the night sky, like cream in a cup of black coffee, blanching it.
He tried to convince himself that the kiss would have been for Sarah; he’d simply be speaking her language, telling her in a way she could understand that, yes, he did care for her. But Jack had never been good at self-deception. He knew darn well that he missed feeling a woman’s body beside him. His own fault. People couldn’t miss what they didn’t know.
And he knew.
Sometimes, in tired, wobbly moments when shame wrenched his gaze from heaven to earth, he wondered if he would be alone until he died—his punishment for prior indiscretions. Then he’d take out his Bible, as he did right now, opening to the back cover where he’d taped a list of verses nearly seven years prior. Verses for these times.
Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.
Jack looked up each one, twenty-five of them, even though he’d committed them all to memory a long time ago. He repeated them, prayed them, trusted in their truth. Then he’d remind himself, yet again, that God didn’t whack his children with a giant flyswatter each time they sinned. That was what grace was for.
The truck skidded through the trees, snow crunching under the tires. I gripped the steering wheel, leaning forward to wipe the condensation from the windshield. Patty clung to the armrest.
“Careful, you might break a nail, holding on like that,” I told her.
“You drive like a maniac,” she said.
“It’s not me; it’s the ice.”
I parked close to Zuriel’s house. Patty pulled on the door handle.
“That door sticks,” I said, getting out. It had been that way since my crash into the ditch on Christmas. Dominic said he could fix it, for two hundred bucks. I passed; no one used that door. Except today. “I have to open it from the outside.”
I yanked on the passenger door, and Patty nearly tumbled into the snowbank. I didn’t tell her about the rotted second step. She put her foot through it, the broken boards scraping at her leg. “Ouch. My pants ripped. Shoot, look at this, I’m bleeding. If I get tetanus, you’re paying the bill.”
Ignoring her, I went inside. “Zuriel, I’m here,” I shouted over her radio.
The music stopped. “Sarah, did you bring the polish?”
“That, and better,” I said, walking into her room, Patty limping behind me. “This is Patty, and she’s here to play your piano.”
The old woman’s heathered eyebrows quivered with delight, and she clapped her hands, once, needles clinking together. She stood, set her yarn on the seat of the rocker, and shuffled to me, fumbling over my arms before taking both my hands. “Child, child, you do have the perfect name.”
I squeezed back quickly, pulled away. “I’m just going to run this cloth over the piano. Then we’ll have a little concert.”
Patty watched as I sprayed Endust over the thirsty wood. “That’s a square grand,” she said.
“A what?” I asked.
“A square grand piano. That’s what it’s called. They stopped making these over a hundred years ago.”
“You’ve played one before?” Zuriel asked.
“No. I’ve only seen pictures,” Patty said. “It’s supposed to sound like a harp, sort of. May I?”
“Oh, yes. Please,” Zuriel said.
Patty opened the keyboard—it was offset, more to the left than right—and played several chords. “It’s wonderful. And only a little out of tune. Amazing.”
I tilted the polish can toward her, coating her fingers with the lemon-scented foam. “Oops. Sorry,” I said.
She glared at me, and glad Zuriel couldn’t see a thing, I squatted and wiped the leaf carvings on the legs, twisting the corner of the cloth to fit into each crevice.
“These pianos were very popular during the Victorian era,” Patty went on. “When the regular grands and uprights were made, no one liked them at first. They thought they sounded too harsh because they were so used to these and melodeons.”
Show-off.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I can read,” she said. “Is there a bench?”
“It broke years ago. When I was five, I think,” Zuriel said. “Sarah, get your friend a chair from the kitchen.”
I did, and Patty sat, testing the pedals and cracking the knuckles in each finger beneath her thumbs. “So, what would you like to hear?”
“ ‘Amazing Grace,’ ” I said. “If you know it.”
“Of course I know it. It’s one of Reverend Watson’s favorites,” she said, and began to play.
Zuriel sat in the rocker next to the piano, her palm resting on the top, feeling the vibrations. “Do you sing?” she asked.
“Not me,” I said.
“I will,” Patty said, and added words to the music. She had a strong, clear voice—nothing remarkable, but on key and pleasant. Zuriel joined in, her harmony patinaed with years, a verdigris of time and wisdom.
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.
’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed!
Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.
The Lord has promised good to me,
His Word my hope secures;
He will my Shield and Portion be,
As long as life endures.
Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, Who called me here below,
Will be forever mine.
When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’d first begun.
They finished, and Patty asked, “What’s next?”
Zuriel exhaled, the satisfied sigh of someone who had just breathed in the top of her freshly bathed baby’s head, smelling tearless shampoo and talc and innocence. “That’s more than I could have hoped for,” she said. “Thank you. Both of you.”
She was spent, weary from the singing and the joy it brought her. I said I’d see her next week. She embraced Patty, touched her cheek. “You keep playing like that. For God,” she said.
“I will,” Patty assured her.
We drove back to Jonah in silence. We’d come that way, too, but this silence felt different. Full. I sensed Patty’s thoughts swashing behind her brow bone; what she thought about, I hadn’t any idea. Her head listed to one side as she stared ahead, eyes empty, tapping her index finger against her thigh. I watched it. There was no rhythm, no pattern that I could tell. Just the soft, soundless beat of flesh against stonewashed denim.
And my thoughts—I was afraid Zuriel would die that night.
During the song, after the song, she’d had this glow in her face, like a Madonna statue, all bathed in golden light and peaceful. As if she could go to sleep and, content in having heard her favorite song on the prized piano one last time, simply decide she was done being old, and blind, and not good for much of anything.
If Patty hadn’t been there, I would have told Zuriel—No, I wouldn’t have said anything. But I was counting the hours until I could check on her.
Stopping in front of Patty’s house, I handed her a white envelope. “Here’s your money,” I said. “I’ll get the door.” I left the engine grumbling and ran outside, around the truck.
My gloves slipped from the door handle. I took them off and pulled with both hands. Patty pushed on the window from the inside. The door flung open.
“Well, thanks,” I said.
She nodded. “If you ever want me to go play again, just let me know.”
“Right. You’ll do anything for fifty bucks.”
“Just about,” she said, her tone not sarcastic, but sober, pensive.
I jumped back into the warm truck. Patty had left the money on the seat. I stretched across the armrest and cranked down the passenger-side window. Far too much exertion for someone I couldn’t stand, I thought, as I waved the envelope in the waning daylight. “Hey. Your money,” I shouted.
She heard me; I know she did, because she looked at me from the front stoop of her trailer. Then she turned, unlocked the metal door, and went inside.
I went to see Zuriel the next day, and the next—every day for a week. She chuckled at my concern. “You don’t have to worry about me. The Lord has my days numbered. Your coming here isn’t going to hasten or lengthen my time on earth,” she said. “I do enjoy your company, though.”
I started to believe she’d outlive me.
Several days later, Doc asked me to take double groceries to Ben and Rabbit. A huge storm approached so I might not be able to get there again for two, maybe three weeks. I packed the extra food in the truck and drove the winding mountain roads, anxiously expecting a deer—or worse yet, a moose—to dash in front of me.
The heater seemed not to be working properly. I cranked it up as hot as possible, and still I couldn’t stop shivering. It hurt to move my eyes, too, and felt as if I had a kitchen grater on the underside of each eyelid, zesting my corneas with each blink.
Finally there, I managed to lug all five bags out of the truck at one time, squeezing them against my chest. But I couldn’t see over them and tripped on a log that had fallen off the woodpile. I fell, packages of sausage and heads of lettuce cartwheeling into the snow.
Dropping to my knees, I dug around for the food and, since Memory wasn’t in earshot, used every variation of all the indecorous words I knew.
“Need help there?” Rabbit asked. She stood in the doorway, snuff-colored hair shiny and loose around her.
“I think I found everything.”
She came outside, a pair of too-big men’s work boots on her skinny legs, unlaced, flopping as she picked up three of the bags and went into the cabin, leaving the door open. I followed her with the rest of the groceries.
I latched the door and stood against it, wind knifing through the rough, gray wood. The entire shed shifted, groaned. Rabbit separated the food—meat in one bag, vegetables in another. She stacked the jars and boxes on a shelf.
Ben slept on the mattress. I heard snoring under the blankets, saw his bandaged foot propped up on a stack of clothes.
“Want some coffee?” Rabbit asked. She pointed to an enamel pot on the stove. “Made it fresh this morning. It’s chicory.”
“I really should go. There’s a storm—”
“I smell it. It’ll be here in two, three days.”
“Well, I won’t be back until the roads clear,” I said. “Maybe a couple weeks. But there should be enough food for you both until then.”
“Hold up.” She took two jars off another shelf, pickles and some strange fuchsia chunks floating in syrup. “Doc said them hair things, they was from you. I don’t take no charity, so that’s to pay for thems.”
“Sounds fair,” I said.
She nodded. “See you, then. Next time.”
I couldn’t open my eyes. At first, I thought I was caught in the tail end of a dream, those last moments before consciousness, when I wanted to move my arms, to sit up, but my body refused to obey my brain. Finally I realized I was awake and brought my hands to my face and felt my eyelashes crusted together with sinus drainage.
This had happened to me once before, as a child. I remember my grandmother pressing a damp, warm washcloth over my eyes until the mucus loosened. I kicked out of the sleeping bag and rolled off the couch, onto my hands and knees. I crawled in the direction of the bathroom, one arm flapping in front of me, until I bumped into the wall. Then I stood up and inched to the bathroom door.
I yanked a hand towel off the bar, drenched it under hot water, and put it over my face. After several minutes, I rubbed the towel over my left eye until it came unglued. I looked at my reflection, right eye coated with yellow crud, and pinched my upper lid between two fingers. Pulled. It opened with a jellied snap.
My throat felt itchy, sore, probably from sleeping with my mouth open in the dry heat. I said, “Ah,” and tried to peer down it in the mirror, but saw only the back of my tongue, bumpy and smeared with thick, white fuzz. My head hurt, too, a deep drumming pain. I wanted to go back to sleep, but it was Sunday; Memory expected me. So I swallowed a few dry Tylenol, got dressed, and drove to her house.
I pounded on Memory’s door. She opened it. “When you gonna quit that knocking, girl?”
Shrugging, I butted past her. “I forgot my violin.”
“That ain’t all you forgot,” she said. “You’re white as a blizzard in a snowstorm.”
“That’s not how—” I leaned against the wall, took a deep breath. “Everything’s spinning.”
