Reflection (9 page)

He smiled. “Have you gotten chubby?” He tried to picture her with some weight on her slender frame and felt the thoroughly unexpected stirring of an erection. He shouldn't see her. Not with Katy gone. It would be a mistake.

“Chubbier than I should be,” she said. “The main reason I'm calling—or I guess one of the main reasons—is that my grandmother has some trees she needs pruned back to let light into the garden and she said you sometimes do that sort of work in the summer. Would you have time?”

“Sure.” His mind raced. That would be best. He would see her in the safety of Helen's house, Helen's presence. “I can come over Saturday morning.”

“All right, great. I'm looking forward to seeing you.”

“Rachel?” He squeezed his fingers around one of the bottles on the counter as he plowed headlong into dangerous territory. “Look, I don't want to have to see you for the first time in twenty years while I'm pruning trees. Were you serious about tomorrow? Can you get away for a bit late in the afternoon? Could we meet someplace?”

“Yes.” She sounded as if she'd been waiting for the suggestion. “Where?”

“Spring Willow—” He stopped himself. She would not know what he was talking about. “Huber Pond?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, her voice rich with nostalgia. “On the grassy part where we used to hang out?”

“That's right,” he said. “How about four-thirty?”

“I can't wait,” she said. “I'll see you then.”

He got off the phone, uncapped the bottles of club soda, and walked into the family room.

Drew looked up at him and set the petition on the coffee table. “What put that grin on your face?” he asked.

Michael handed him one of the bottles. “Guess who's in town?”

Drew shrugged.

“Rachel Huber.”

Drew sat back in his chair. “No joke,” he said. Michael recalled that Drew had moved to Reflection in his twenties and so had not known Rachel personally. Of course he would know about her through rumor, though. Through legend.

“We were so close.” Michael sat down and took a swallow of club soda. “We did everything together as kids. And we were in the Peace Corps at the same time. Lived in these old cinderblock shacks. Well, actually,
mine
was a shack. Hers was a little better. They figured that, since she was a female, she should have the more substantial building to live in.” He was rambling. He looked down at the bottle in his hand. “If she hadn't been married”—he shook his head—”things would have turned out differently.”

There was a crease between Drew's eyebrows. “You'd better watch it, Mike. I mean, with things being rocky between you and Katy, you're ripe for getting yourself into trouble, wouldn't you say?”

Michael had told Drew—and only Drew—about the problems between himself and Katy. Anyone else in that tight little town would have been shocked to know that all was not well with the preacher and his doctor wife.

“I'm only going to pay a visit to an old friend,” Michael said.

“Well, have a good time, then.” Drew stood up abruptly, his soda untouched, and he slipped the sheath of petitions under his arm.

Michael looked up in surprise. “You're leaving?”

“Yeah. I forgot I have some things to do at home.” His jaw was tight, and with the ferocity of a punch to the stomach, Michael remembered that Drew had indeed known Rachel Huber after all.

He stood up to touch his friend's arm. “Drew, I'm sorry. I just realized. I completely forgot about Will.”

Drew shrugged away the apology. “Hey,” he said. “It was a long time ago. Rachel was a very green, brand-new teacher then. I'm sure she's grown up by now. I'm not the type to hold a grudge forever.”

Michael followed him to the door, silently berating himself for his insensitivity. Drew made his good-bye brief, turning his head away quickly but not before Michael saw the pain in his eyes. Drew never spoke about Will. It made it easy to forget he'd ever had a son. For the first time Michael realized that, while the past twenty years might have dulled Drew's pain, they had not killed it.

He closed the door and could hear the radio playing in Jason's room. He straightened the pile of papers on the coffee table, then walked down the hall to spend some time with his lonesome son.

THE RUMBLING WAS FAINT
at first, so faint that Helen managed to convince herself it was something other than the ominous growl of distant thunder. She sat in her library, trying to read, wishing Rachel would get home from her run to the grocery store. The store closed at ten, and it was after that now. She couldn't be much longer.

Outside the library window the woods were suddenly, briefly illuminated, every leaf drawn in perfect detail, and Helen gasped. There were too many windows in this house. Too much glass. She knew the rules: Avoid water. Don't use the phone. And stay away from windows.

She closed her book and stood up slowly, on guard against the black curtain that often fell over her vision when she rose too quickly from a chair. Favoring her ankle, she walked out into the little hallway between the library and the living room and leaned against the wall of that small haven. No windows here. Yet she could still see the flickering white light as it ricocheted off the walls around her.

She folded her arms across her chest, feeling very foolish. A fearful old woman, that's what she was. Her body had changed on her completely in the last few weeks. It was no longer reliable. She ached when she got up in the morning, staying stiff for hours. The pain deep in her muscles was constant some days, intermittent on others, but always close enough to remind her of her frailty, her vulnerability. She could fall asleep instantly, any moment of the day, although her sleep was void of dreams, like death. She was constantly thirsty. Jumpy, too. Her body jerked to attention each time a twig snapped outside the window. Her wrist was improving, but it still throbbed from time to time, and she feared she would never again be able to play the piano, never again be well. Was this how she would spend the rest of her days?

She'd been reading about lightning. She'd never been superstitious in her life, but she'd asked Rachel to buy some potted herbs for her to grow on the kitchen windowsill: rosemary, Saint-John's-wort, opine. They would protect a house against a lightning strike, the books said. She didn't tell Rachel why she wanted the herbs, and the girl, unable to find opine on her first try, substituted thyme. Helen sent her out again, this time to a nursery in Lancaster, fabricating some plausible reason why she needed opine. She couldn't tell Rachel the truth about such silliness.

She jumped at the sound of the front door opening.

“I'm home!” Rachel called out.

The thunder and lightning had joined forces now, occurring in unison, and Helen could barely bring herself to leave the sanctuary of the windowless hallway and walk into the kitchen.

Rachel was already unpacking the two bags of groceries.

“You're soaking wet.” Helen averted her eyes from the light show outside the window.

“Feels good.” Rachel was still wearing a smile. No doubt that smile had not left her face since the phone call to Michael an hour or so earlier.

“What are you doing, still up?” Rachel asked.

“Reading.” She wanted to say she would go to bed now, but her feet were frozen to the floor. She wondered how Rachel could seem so unaware of the riot of light and sound going on around them.

A sudden crack of thunder exploded above their heads, and Helen let out a cry. She stepped back against the wall, her cheeks hot with embarrassment.

Rachel had been about to put a box of cereal in the cupboard, but she stopped her hand in midair. “This storm's terrifying you, isn't it?” she asked.

Helen could only nod. There was a soft tickle of tears in her eyes.

Rachel set the package of cereal on the counter. “Let's go to my room,” she said. “We can close the blinds in there and get cozy.” She stepped forward and put a gentle arm around Helen's shoulders, turning her toward the door. Helen forced her legs to move, feeling like a small child in the protection of someone far stronger, far braver.

Once in the guest room, she sat down on the bed while Rachel closed the blinds and turned on the night-table lamp.

“I feel so foolish,” Helen said. “I used to adore sitting out a storm. The wilder, the better.”

“Anyone who's been struck by lightning would be crazy if they didn't have a healthy fear of storms, Gram.”

“I suppose.” She felt far better already. The drawn blinds barely let in the flashes of light from outside, and the sound of the thunder was beginning to recede. Her eyes lit on a photograph propped up against the books in one of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases. “Is that…?” She pointed to the picture, and Rachel followed her gaze.

“Oh.” Rachel picked up the photograph and sat down next to Helen on the bed, holding out the picture for her inspection. Sure enough, it was the old picture of her jumping into the swirling Delaware River. “I meant to ask you about this,” Rachel said. “When I was looking through the cartons in the attic, I accidentally opened one of yours first and found this picture. Is this you?”

For a moment, Helen couldn't answer. Rachel had been in her boxes? How much had she seen?

“Yes,” she said, struggling to give the picture her full attention. “It was taken on my eighteenth birthday. We had a picnic at a park near our house in Trenton, my sister Stella and a few girlfriends and myself. And it was hot. So I decided to cool off.”

Rachel laughed. “Fully dressed?”

“I had a wild streak in those days. I wasn't afraid of much.” She'd had no sense of limitation in her youth and no fear of risk. At the age of twelve she'd driven a friend's car down the steep, icy hill in their Trenton neighborhood; at fifteen she'd beaten a neighbor boy swimming across a narrow point in the river. And as often as she could get away with it, she'd sneak into New York against her parents' wishes and finagle her way into Carnegie Hall, through back entrances accidentally left open or by telling tall tales to the ushers, in order to hear her favorite musicians perform.

Rachel took the picture from her hands and rested it on her own knees, studying it closely. “I know so little about you,” she said quietly. “I didn't even know you'd lived in New Jersey. What was your family like?”

Helen leaned back against the wall. “My father—your great-grandfather—fancied himself a writer,” she said. “He was a bright man, but brilliance doesn't put food on the table, unfortunately. He wrote a great deal, primarily philosophizing about the politics of the time. Very dense reading. But he never sold a thing. I don't think he cared, though. He just had to get it all down.” She looked at her granddaughter. “He was crippled, you know.”

“No, I didn't know that.”

Helen nodded. “His legs were mangled in an accident when he was a boy. So there wasn't much he could do in the way of work. My mother played the cello and the piano. She came from money, but her family disowned her when she took up with my father. She cleaned houses. That was how we got by.”

Rachel was leaning forward, listening intently.

“Our dinner-table conversations centered around politics and music. Mother taught me to play the piano. I adored it and longed to study music myself, but I could read the writing on the wall. My mother's arthritis was bad and getting worse by the day, my father couldn't work, and I was the oldest of four children. Once I got out of school, I knew I was going to have to find a job to support my family.”

“So how did you ever meet Grandpa?”

“I'm getting to that,” Helen said. “I found a job in New York doing secretarial work in the school of music at Columbia University. I was determined to be as close to music as possible. They gave me a room on campus, and I sent the little pay I made home to my family.”

“And Grandpa taught at Columbia, right?”

“That's right. He'd studied composition in Paris, and I was fascinated by him and tormented him with questions.” She recalled following him around campus, making a nuisance of herself. Peter Huber had had many admirers. His good looks had been arresting and elegant, but it had not been not his physical attributes that had attracted her. She'd been drawn to his talent, to his wealth of knowledge about composition. He'd finally invited her to have dinner with him. They'd talked through the entire meal, barely touching their food, and she'd felt a deep and enduring friendship taking root.

“He took an interest in me,” she continued. “Not a romantic interest, but he could see how much I loved music, how keen I was on learning, and he thought I should have that chance. And so—” Helen thought carefully about what she would say next. “Your grandpa's family was quite well off.”

Rachel nodded.

“And so he offered to put me through school.”

“He did? I had no idea.”

“Well, I couldn't take him up on the offer because of my family's needs, so Peter took care of them as well.”

Rachel frowned. “You mean, he—”

“He sent money to my family every month. He bought my father braces for his legs and saw to it that he had the best care available. He made sure my mother didn't have to work and could stay home and take care of the family.”

“Why?” Rachel asked. “Why would he do all of that?”

“Because he was the world's most generous and kindhearted man.” Helen's lower lip trembled and she felt her eyes fill with tears.

“He must have loved you very much.” Rachel rested her hand on Helen's arm.

“He thought I had talent,” Helen said. “That I was worth the investment. Anyhow, we were married a year or so after that.”

“Was he much older than you?”

“I was nineteen, he was twenty-seven. He was only beginning to make a name for himself. He was thoroughly wrapped up in music, as I longed to be, and we also shared a commitment to social issues, which had been ingrained in me from my father.”