Home Another Way (32 page)

Beth wanted to call Jack, to have him come and join our discussions, insisting he would be able to offer more complete explanations and, unlike her, wouldn’t have to fumble through the concordance to find reference verses. “I think he has the entire Bible memorized,” she said.

“I’m just not ready to see him yet,” I said.

Occasionally Beth jumped up from the table and darted down the hallway to the bathroom, one hand pressed over her mouth, the other on her stomach. I’d hear retching, flushing, running water, and Beth would return to the kitchen with an apology.

“Comes with the territory,” I said after one of those trips.

“Did you—” she began, then stopped. “Uh, where were we?”

“You were asking if I ever had morning sickness.”

“Sarah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine. Yeah, I got sick every day, starting at nine weeks, until I was about five or so months along. Be thankful you have a nice clean toilet to puke into. Most days I had my face in a garbage can in the New York City subway. You can’t imagine the disgusting stuff I saw.”

“I don’t want to,” she said. “Do you . . . I mean, did you know if you were having a boy or a girl?”

“No. We both thought it was a girl, though. David and I. My ex-husband, that is. And it was.”

“Can I ask what her name was?”

“Allegra,” I said.

“That’s pretty,” Beth said. “Dom and I aren’t going to find out. We want to be surprised. But we already have our names picked.”

“You two work faster than any couple I’ve ever met.”

She giggled. “I guess it’s easy when you know what you want. If it’s a boy, he’ll be John Luke. Both our fathers are named John. And Luke. . . Well, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“And, if it’s a girl, we’re naming her Sarah. Sarah Danielle.”

“Stop,” I said, sniffling. “It’s not fair. I’ve cried more the past two weeks than I have my entire life.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

“I don’t think so.”

By lunchtime Wednesday, my brain was saturated with chapters and verses, doctrine and doubts. I told Beth I felt like Nicodemus, hiding on the roof in the darkness, utterly confused.

“You may not understand it all now,” she said, “but where was Nicodemus after Jesus died?”

Still, I had to stretch my legs, get some new air in my lungs—the inn air had gone stale with my searching. I also needed to make several last visits. I promised to have one more supper with Beth and her mother the next evening, then drove to Memory’s home.

The door was unlocked, of course.

Another family would be moving in soon. I didn’t know who, or when. Memory would have wanted someone to get use out of the small house, but people being as proud as they were around here, no one would take it for nothing. So it would be sold well below market value—five thousand dollars, I think Maggie said—and that little money would be put in trust for her son. Doc, however, told me he didn’t anticipate Robert living much longer; since Memory’s death, his organs had begun to shut down, and no life-saving measures would be taken. Doc thought the problem stemmed from the several days Robert went without food, but I knew better. He was dying from a broken heart.

The empty hospital bed seemed so much colder, more clinical, without Robert’s cozy blankets draped over the shiny chrome rails. Otherwise, the house looked just as Memory had left it, except for the filmy layer of dust collecting on everything. Memory wouldn’t have stood for that. She had wiped her rag, damp with olive oil and lemon juice, over her furniture each day, and used a feather duster on every other solid surface. I told her once that all she did with those bright purple feathers was sweep the dust into the air, where it floated around until landing on something else, and she’d just have to get rid of it again tomorrow. She remained unconvinced. “My mama used ’em, my grandmamma used ’em, and any-which-way, they wouldn’t make ’em if they didn’t work,” she’d said.

It still hurt to think of Memory. Not the blinding, allencompassing pain I’d had immediately after her death. This was a subtle bittersweetness, a skirmish between all the pleasant recollections of her, and the sad realization I didn’t have her here on earth, with me, anymore. I couldn’t say I absolutely knew she was in heaven, but I could almost
hope
she went there. I chuckled each time I pictured it, Memory’s fat body wrapped in a white sheet, like a cherub—tiny wings glued to her back, flapping frantically to lift her bulk off the clouds—despite Beth’s assurance that humans did not turn into angels when they died.

I wanted to take some rag rugs to Rabbit. I knew Memory wouldn’t have minded, so I stacked a dozen on the coffee table—all different sizes, round and oblong and square—rolling the smaller ones inside the larger. I reached down next to the sofa, where Memory kept her rags, to find a strip with which I could tie the rug bundle together. Instead, I found another rug, and as I pulled, it unfurled over the arm of the couch.

It was my rug; I recognized the greens and browns, the yellow I hesitated to take. But Memory hadn’t simply wound the cloth in a spiral design, the way she’d shown me, the way she’d made all the others. She wove a picture into this rug, like a tapestry. Three lofty evergreens grew from the lower right corner, a mountain towered in the distance behind them, and the sun—that vibrancy, that life I’d been so afraid of—shone down from a multihued blue sky.

I refused to cry again. I grabbed a handful of rags and found one long piece to tie Rabbit’s rugs together. Then I rolled my own and, gathering all of them in my arms, went to leave, listening to each croak of the plywood beneath my boots. But I stopped with my hand on the front doorknob, taking one last look around the house.

“I won’t forget,” I said.

The Harrisons were both outside when I arrived. Ben hunkered on the ground, back against the woodpile, whistling, his rifle aimed toward the treetops. Rabbit had cleared any remaining snow from her garden area; she tilled the soil—half ice, half mud—her bare, stringy arms bulging with each forkful.

I got out of the truck and slammed the door. The trees shook above my head, and I watched several squirrels dart and cheep through the branches. Ben aimed, fired. When nothing fell to the ground dead, he picked up a small log and chucked it at me.

“You scared thems all away with all your racket,” he said. “If theys don’t be back, my woman and I have to eat slop for supper.”

“He means something from one of them cans you be bringing us,” Rabbit said. “He don’t like nothing, ’cept it be fresh.”

“And the Doc says it be two more weeks ’fore I can get out there and walk on this here foot. I keep telling him it don’t even hurt no more,” Ben said.

“You sees he’s been feeling much better. Can’t keep from carping ’bout nothing,” Rabbit said. She stabbed her hoe into the ground. “Doc says you going back to that city of yours real soon.”

“Yeah. Two days.”

“Good,” Ben said. “Then you won’t be coming ’round here, spooking off my chow.”

“Hush up, you old coot,” Rabbit said. “Pay him no mind. He’s got a tad bit of cabin fever.”

“I know the feeling,” I said. “It’s been a long winter.”

“It ain’t over, don’t think,” she said. “This old mountain, she got one or two storms left in her. But you ain’t come to talk snow, did you, now?”

“I wanted to bring you these.” I hoisted the rug bundle from the back of the truck. Rabbit opened her mouth to protest, but I said, “They’re a gift. A friend of mine made them, but she—She doesn’t need them anymore, and I thought you could find a use for them.”

“You mind if I be giving somes to a few others ’round these here parts?”

“As long as you promise to keep at least one for yourself.”

She took the rugs, nodded. “You be safe getting back home.”

I returned her nod, and drove away.

Zuriel sat in her favorite chair, knitting and rocking, rocking and knitting. Making baby hats, she said. The Bethel Baptist Church, where her great-granddaughter attended, planned to send boxfuls to a crisis pregnancy center in Buffalo.

“As long as I breathe,” she said, “I can still be useful somehow.”

“I’m here to say good-bye,” I said.

She put down the hat, sighed. “I knew it was coming. I didn’t want to think about it, though. Are you rushing off right now?”

“No. I can sit, for a little while.”

I dropped into the chair next to her, and we rocked without speaking and in unison—I concentrated on keeping time with Zuriel. She resuming her knitting, her needles dancing in the bright blue yarn.

“I’ll send you letters. On tape, so you can listen to them.” I said.

“You don’t have to take the trouble to do that. Your friend Patty asked Doc if she could visit, perhaps come play the piano. She can read your letters to me.”

“She’s not my friend,” I mumbled, possessiveness clogging every one of my pores.

Zuriel chuckled. “Ah. I see. I knew a woman, once, years ago, who wasn’t my friend like that. Her name was Selma Jackson. And his name was Ezekiel Carver.”

“I don’t . . . I mean, how—”

“When two women dislike each other, a man is most often the reason.”

“Carver, huh? I guess Selma Jackson won that fight.”

“It was more like a scuffle. And, no, no one won, thank the Lord. Ezekiel Carver went to California with just the clothes on his back, and he ended up marrying and deserting several women along the way. Selma found a lovely husband, and I had my Thomas, and we were both better off. We became quite good friends, too. She was at the birth of each one of my babies. All eight of them. So, you see, there’s hope for the both of you, yet.”

“Maybe,” I said.
But I hope not.
“Or maybe I just won’t have any kids.”

“Sarah, Sarah,” Zuriel said with an amused sigh, shaking her head. “Patty also told me you play the violin. Quite well, in fact.”

“She said that?”

“I believe ‘breathtaking’ was the word she used. I don’t suppose I’ll have the honor of hearing your music before you leave.”

“I would, really, but my violin . . . It’s out of commission right now.” Two tuning pegs had cracked when I threw the case into the closet, and the soundpost—the soul of the violin—was jarred out of position. The instrument couldn’t be played until a competent luthier made the necessary repairs.

“Well, then, I wouldn’t mind a recording of that. Perhaps, when you’re able.”

“I promise. One violin rendition of ‘Amazing Grace.’ ”

“How about something called
Chaconne
?” She pronounced it, improperly,
cha-cone
. “Do you know that?”

“There are quite a few chaconnes out there.”

“This one is by Bach, if my memory serves me correctly.”

“Yeah, he wrote one,” I said slowly, surprised not only that Zuriel knew any classical music, but that she knew
my
piece, the one I’d heard on the five-cent record when I was a child. I remembered the album sleeve—yellow and held together with crumbly masking tape, Heifetz’s name written in script across the cover, just above a small drawing of a violin. There had been two Bach compositions on the recording, but an ugly scratch ran through the first—his Sonata No. 1
—
and I was angry that I wasted my nickel. I pressed my index finger against my thumb and flicked it forward, bumping the needle to the next track, Partita in D Minor. At first, I could only listen, but as the German baroque dance suite progressed, I placed my hands on either side of the record player and felt the
basso ostinato
, the obstinate bass note pattern rippling up and down my arms. It would be years before I learned terms like
theme
and
variation
, but I had understood then that I was listening to the same four-bar phrase over and over again, played in different ways.