Return to Harmony (8 page)

“They won’t let me go in to her,” Jodie finally whispered. “I don’t understand. I was the one who got her into bed. Why can’t I be with her now? What if she needs me?”

Bethan did not know what to say, so she said nothing. She just sat there, holding her friend, sharing her heartache.

There was a long silence between them, then Jodie turned to face her friend. In a voice soft but filled with anguish, she said, “I don’t remember how to pray.”

“Of course you do,” Bethan replied softly.

Jodie gave her head a tiny shake, barely a shiver. “I’ve tried and I’ve tried. But I can’t find any words inside me.”

Bethan reached out her other hand, took both of Jodie’s. They felt like ice. “Then I’ll say the words for you,” she whispered.

FIVE

JODIE’S WORLD BECAME ANCHORED
on Bethan, the only reality that kept her from flying apart in a million tiny pieces. She knew her friend would be there just after dawn, and stay with her through each day of endless sameness.

Jodie was not allowed in the sickroom, which was an agony beyond belief. She followed the course of the illness through Doc Franklin’s terse reports. She came to know two more new words, but this time she would have given her very life itself never to have heard them.

Bulbar poliomyelitis.

When the afternoon sun slanted around to the back of the house, Jodie and Bethan climbed onto the second-story gable, settled themselves into the angle of the roof, and gazed in through the white veil curtains. The soft light bathed her mother’s bed and turned the waxed oak floor into a golden pond, upon which Louise drifted in and out of dreams. With each passing day her eyes seemed to grow larger. And darker. As though pain and sorrow were pooling in her gaze, along with her helplessness and her awareness of what was soon to come.

Louise seldom spoke. Her breathing was harsh and labored. Whenever she was awake and alert, she would turn her head and simply lie there, watching her daughter. It hurt Jodie’s heart to hear her mother struggle to breathe. But she would not leave her perch until the sun’s shadows lengthened, and her mother’s wan face was no longer visible. Bethan stayed with her throughout each long vigil, silent and still.

Her father, distraught, had never felt so helpless. “All my life I’ve spent mixing potions and helping people,” he repeated over and over to each new visitor, often more than once. “Then what happens, my own wife gets ill and I can’t do a thing for her. Not a thing! I feel like my whole life has been a waste!”

By the third day, Doc Franklin no longer had the heart to keep Parker away from his wife. Instead, he quarantined off the upstairs. Moira set up a camp bed for Jodie downstairs in the back parlor and came over twice a day to take a tray to the top of the steps, then return to stand over Jodie and make sure she ate her own food.

The evening of the ninth day Jodie did not come down from her perch at all. In the way of country folk, the neighbors also knew it was time, and gathered outside on the front lawn. The pastor was among them. Jodie sat on the gabled porch eaves, not aware she was holding Bethan’s hand, much less squeezing it so hard the fingertips were turning blue. She watched through the curtains as Doc Franklin entered the sickroom and set the lantern down by the bedside. Jodie looked at her mother lying there. It truly was her mother, though her face was changed beyond all recognition. Illness had reshaped her mother in just nine short days. No, not short. Jodie felt that the rest of her life would not be as long as those nine days.

Doc Franklin fed Louise another spoonful of medicine, then took her pulse. He listened to her chest, then straightened with a long, low sigh. Parker watched his movements in numbed silence.

“The Lord be with you, Louise Harland,” the doctor said quietly and shuffled from the room.

Louise accepted a drink from her husband, then turned toward the open window. In a hoarse whisper, she called, “Jodie?”

It took the girl a moment to find her own voice. “I’m here, Momma.”

“You are my heart’s delight,” her mother said, the laboring breath making every word an effort. “My love will always be with you. Always.”

Jodie forced her voice to make the words. “I love you too, Momma.”

Her mother was silent for a long while. When she spoke again, her voice was clearer and calmer than it had been in days. “I’m tired now, Parker. I have to sleep.”

The matter-of-fact tone broke him to pieces. “Don’t go, Louise. I beg you.”

“I must.” Simple, direct, clear. “It is time.”

Harmony’s undertaker was Mr. Timmons, a tiny figure of a man who scarcely weighed as much as his somber black suit. His house was situated next to the rectory, which was convenient; with a minimum of fuss people could file from the funeral home to the church to the cemetery. The Timmons’ place was double-fronted, one door opening to where the family lived, the other to the hall where the deceased was laid out for the final gathering. Bethan sat there now, her hand holding Jodie’s, and remembered all the times they had joked over how it would be to live next door to a funeral parlor. As she sat and watched the townsfolk pass by the sealed coffin, she reflected that she would never be able to look at this home and smile and joke again.

People filed solemnly by, stopping first by the coffin, touching the edge, looking down, many offering a simple prayer. The women held handkerchiefs crumpled to their trembling mouths. The men carried hats up close to their hearts, faces uncomfortable with the task at hand. Even those who saw Parker Harland every day were reduced to fumbling formality when they stopped before the griefstricken man and offered him their hands. Some he took, clinging to them with abject brokenness. Others he did not see because of his unchecked tears.

They moved on. Another halt, this time in front of Jodie.

She stared at the coffin, even when the view was blocked by people stopping in front of her. The hand Bethan held was as cold and blank and lifeless as Jodie’s eyes. Many of the women bent down to hug her and whisper a few words into her ear. Jodie neither responded nor looked their way.

Later the two girls walked the short distance to the church together, and it seemed to Bethan that all the town was there to stand and do homage to Louise Harland. No one seemed to think it odd that Bethan was there with the grieving family throughout, leading Jodie up the endless aisle and into the front pew, one hand still holding hers, the other arm now wrapped about her shoulders to offer both strength and guidance. For it was clear to all who looked their way that Jodie was going nowhere this day on her own.

Afterward they left the church and waited as the pallbearers brought out the coffin. Together the silent procession walked the short distance to Louise Harland’s final resting place. Bethan’s brother, Dylan, walked strong and straight, the coffin’s front right handle upon his shoulder, setting the pace for the other pallbearers, though it was hard to imagine how he could see to place one foot in front of the other for the tears. Parker Harland made it down the lane and through the gates and up to the open grave site between the pair of great oaks only because he had a strong man on either side, hands gripping his shoulders and keeping him upright.

Jodie’s gaze remained upon her mother’s coffin, blind to everyone and everything about her. Bethan guided Jodie forward, willing her own life and warmth into her friend. As together they passed between the cemetery’s stone gates, Bethan thought it was uncommonly strange how even the normally joyous church bells could toll the day’s sorrow, how even the overcast sky could draw a veil across the sun’s sweet springtime brightness, as though the whole world were pausing in its steady turning to bid a soft farewell to a fine country woman.

SIX

THE AFTERNOON AIR
felt so thick and heavy with heat that Bethan imagined it tasted salty to her tongue. Maybe it was the perspiration that moistened her skin which made her think of salt. She wasn’t sure. Nor did she really care. It was too hot to even think straight.

She glanced over to where Jodie sat rocking silently beside her. Almost three months had passed since her mother had died, and still Jodie spoke scarcely a word. Sorrow blanketed her as heavily as the heat. Bethan was left with a feeling of helplessness and frustration that she could not do something for her beloved friend.

The porch swing squeaked as it rocked back and forth. Bethan listened to the protest of its worn hinges, to the hum of the honey bees in the bougainvillea. Nearby, a pair of hummingbirds disputed the rights to the hollyhocks, darting back and forth to challenge each other, neither gaining much from the sweet nectar.

Bethan brushed dampened hair back from her forehead. “Would you like to—”

Jodie shook her head before Bethan could complete the question.

“Go see Sherman?” Bethan persisted.

Again Jodie indicated no.

There was silence as the swing squeaked on. “Would you like some cold lemonade?” Bethan finally ventured.

Jodie looked about to decline one more time, then nodded her assent.

“Do you want to come to the kitchen, or shall I bring it out here?”

“Here,” was the terse reply.

Lemonade seemed like a trivial thing at such a time of grief and longing, but Bethan was glad for something to do and for the response from Jodie. She hurried in and was soon back with two tall glasses, their sides already frosted from the cold contents. The hummingbirds chose that moment to call a truce and share the hollyhocks, though they stayed some distance apart, each feeding from opposite ends of the patch.

“Did you know hummingbirds are very… very territorial?” Bethan observed, glad she could use the word and hoping to engage Jodie in
something
.

Jodie nodded.

“I’ve seen them have some real scraps,” Bethan went on. “It seems so strange. They are such little creatures, and so beautiful, you’d expect them to be sweeter—nicer to each other.”

Jodie stirred restlessly. For the first time her eyes came to life, but not with her usual interest in the world. Rather, the eyes flashed with angry bitterness. “Things are often different than they seem.”

Bethan glanced uncertainly at her friend over the edge of her lemonade glass.

“The preacher is always saying that if you are good, God will take care of you. Isn’t that so?”

Bethan gave a hesitant nod. Those were not the exact words she remembered, but maybe something like that had been stated. And at least Jodie was talking again.

“Well, it’s not true,” Jodie went on. “Momma was good all her life.”

“I know she was,” Bethan quietly agreed, understanding where the dark thoughts were headed.

“So why did—” Jodie’s emotions made her voice tremble, but she began again. “Why did she have to leave me?”

Bethan set aside her glass of lemonade and reached a hand out to Jodie. “You miss her very much, don’t you?” she said, her own voice full of emotion.

Jodie did not even bother nodding her agreement.

“Momma was talking about it the other day,” Bethan continued. “She said your mother was one of the finest women she had ever known. She said it’s hard to understand why someone like her had to go so early.”