Small Blessings (39 page)

His final “but” hung in the air. But what? But everything that had happened since Marjory had sailed off Route 29. Rose and then Henry and all they'd brought with them, everything that had colluded over the last two weeks to flood his own being with … with
life!

Tom touched one of Marjory's dresses, the fussy sprigged number she'd worn that afternoon in the Book Store when she'd so pleasantly shocked him by inviting Rose Callahan to dinner. Now that he thought about it, Marjory was the one who'd set everything in motion. If Rose hadn't shown up that Friday night for supper he never would have invited her to join them at McDonald's; she and Henry might have never become friends; he and she would probably never have had a relationship outside the Book Store; most likely, his long-cramped soul would never have found the courage to fly free again.

“Thank you,” he said to Marjory. Not, surely, for dying—Tom could not bring himself to believe he was grateful to her for that—but rather for that one moment in the Book Store when she had dared to live more completely than either of them had in a long time.

Suddenly Tom Putnam was a man in a great hurry.

*   *   *

Iris was finally asleep, curled up on the couch around a pillow like a baby around a binky.

Rose got up from the chair where she'd been keeping vigil and went into the kitchen to check the time. Ray's clock sat in its place on the pie safe, shrouded under a quilt. Iris had complained about its ticking. “That sound is making me crazy!” she'd said.

Crazier,
Rose had added to herself.

Bang! Bang! Bang!
went the clock as soon as Rose liberated it.
Tempus fugit-ed
, as it always did, twelve forty-eight heading lickety-split for twelve forty-nine. Rose had set her bedside alarm for six thirty. This meant there were less than six hours to go before it was time to wake Iris up, yet Rose still didn't feel sleepy. Instead she felt a strange, precarious, tilting sensation that she might or might not want to know the cause of.

Perhaps, if she just waited awhile, it would go away.

Moonlight flooded the kitchen linoleum, calling to her to—to what? Rose went over to the window, opened it, and stuck her head out. The last of the summer insects sawed away; an owl hooted, a whippoorwill answered. The moon, a huge, round, mottled silver plate, floated above her in its vast sky, showering earthbound humans with mad and wondrous possibilities, theirs for the risking.

Risk. That was it! In a flash Rose understood: Risk for her involved staying put, not moving on. She wasn't the fearless maverick she'd always thought she was; instead, she was just another scaredy-cat. Perhaps, deep down, she didn't feel anyone would
want
her around long-term. Except, of course, Mavis. But then Mavis was her mother, not some regular person she'd happened to bump into like Henry or Mr. Pitts or Agnes, or—or Tom Putnam.

“I love you, Tom Putnam,” she said into the night, trying out the words.

“What?” a man's voice said.

Rose immediately pulled her head back in the window and slammed it shut. Feeling a desperate need to clutch, she snatched a cookbook from the shelves below the window and clutched that. She felt dizzy with fear, the way she'd felt in her second Shakespeare class, only more so; not because she didn't know who was out there, but because she did.

Tom Putnam peered at her from the other side of the window, dressed in jeans and a pajama top. His almost handsome, overwhelmingly dear face hung there, separated from her by a pane of glass.

“Open the window,” he mouthed, flapping his hands upward to sign what he meant.

Rose clutched the cookbook harder. The question came to her like a gift: WWMD?
What would Mavis do?

Mavis would open the window, of course, reasoning that opening a window meant nothing more than opening a window. Mavis did not carry actions far into the future, did not turn simple decisions into complicated ones she might never have to face. Mavis would remind her daughter that just because she might love Tom Putnam, it did not automatically mean that she had to stay with him forever. It didn't even mean that Tom Putnam loved her back.

Oh dear. There it was. Her Big Fear, revealed at last:
I'm afraid that, I, Rose Callahan, am not truly lovable.

Tom flapped his hands again.

Rose put down her cookbook, leaned forward, opened the window, picked up her cookbook again, and clutched it to her chest like a shield.

Tom Putnam, Romeo in a pajama top, wasted no time. “Did you just say you loved me?”

*   *   *

Agnes and Mr. Brownlow were seated directly across from each other at the kitchen table. Mr. Brownlow's briefcase sat beside his chair; Agnes's reticule hung from the back of hers. “I have an idea,” Mr. Brownlow said.

“Lay it on me,” Agnes said.

Surprisingly, Mr. Brownlow responded by holding up his Old Fashioned glass of bourbon and branch with no ice (a good southern gentleman, at least when it came to his drinking habits). “To Henry's happiness and well-being,” he said.

Well, there was certainly no harm in drinking to
that
. “To Henry's health and well-being,” Agnes echoed, raising her own glass of iceless Scotch.

They each downed a healthy swig and put down their glasses.

Mr. Brownlow looked around him appraisingly, as though whatever he saw in the Putnam kitchen could have real weight in his decision to say whatever it was he wanted to say. Agnes followed his eyes with her own, passing over Marjory's calendar, Henry's Harry Potter lunch box (waiting on the kitchen counter to be filled), a half-finished
Times
crossword abandoned by the toaster (which obviously had not been crumbed in several days), Tom's ancient and slightly muddy galoshes by the kitchen door, the well-worn deck of cards on the little table under the phone. As far as Agnes could tell, there was nothing to see except the unconscious litter of daily life. Nothing in the room was up-to-date (except Henry's lunch box); the floors and counters were respectably, but not spit-and-polish, clean. All in all, it was the kitchen of people who liked to eat together, perhaps enjoyed talking or playing cards around a table, but were massively unconcerned with décor.

Did it look like a good place for a smart six-year-old to grow up feeling safe and secure? It
was
a good place—Agnes was as sure of that as she was of anything in this weird old world—but that didn't mean it
looked
that way to a banker from Picayune, Mississippi.

Mr. Brownlow cleared his throat. “You do know that I really want to do the best I can by Henry, don't you?”

Did she? Agnes thought back to the parade of devastated and angry women whom she had shepherded through their divorces. She had certainly wanted to do her best by them. But that didn't mean that was what she'd done. How could this round little man really know how much—as suddenly and unexpectedly as they'd come together—Henry and Tom and Rose meant to one another? Separately, they would each be fine in the faltering, limited way lots of people are fine. But together, they had a chance to fly. “Mr. Brownlow,” she said, “all I can say is that you have the power to do great harm by trying to do what's right. I'm old enough, experienced enough, and have been through enough grief to know that it's rare for life to serve anyone as well as it's served Henry Putnam by washing him up here. I'm asking you to trust me on that.”

Mr. Brownlow held his bourbon up to the light and squinted at it. “I just can't,” he said. “Not quite. Not yet. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is.”

Agnes felt uncharacteristically—what? Helpless? Surely this round little man had lived long enough to know that the greatest things in life just happened? And that more often than not, people broke rather than fixed. “The last thing Henry needs is more yanking,” she said. “He's safe here; he's loved. What else could you possibly want for him?”

Mr. Brownlow chose not to answer. Instead, eyes still on his bourbon, he asked, “You done any nonprofit work in the state of Virginia?”

Agnes gave a huff of annoyance. “Of course.” What did that have to do with anything?

Mr. Brownlow put down his bourbon, leaned over, picked up his briefcase, placed it on the table, lifted its hinged lid, and almost completely disappeared behind it.

It occurred to Agnes she was beginning to like this little man, which was odd since he was still possibly—
probably
—the enemy, as far as Henry was concerned.

Mr. Brownlow came out from behind his briefcase and handed a folder across to her.

“What's this?”

“It's a folder containing the Després' will and the terms of the trust they set up for Henry. What I'd like is for you, as Henry's lawyer, to read it while I sit here and drink this excellent bourbon and do a little thinking.”

Well!
Agnes thought. And got no further. Well,
what
?

She opened the folder and began to read.

*   *   *

Russell had another slug of Wild Turkey, then hunkered down at his kitchen table to contemplate the bottle's lovely label with its wild bird just taking off. It felt so good to be on a break from total sobriety, to let off some steam, to release some of the pressure that had been building, building, building—now, it seemed to Russell with a goodly dram of bourbon swimming around his veins—since he'd had his last drink years ago. Goddamn Tom Putnam with his sly attempts to co-opt Rose and Henry! Goddamn AA Lewis with his pious patience! Goddamn his students! Goddamn his job! Goddamn the college! Goddamn his parents! Goddamn everyone in the whole world except Henry and Rose Callahan!

Rose! What a wondrous creature she was. Imagine being the child of a bartender and just
telling
that to people. Where did she get the courage? He could never in a thousand years of sobriety and AA meetings develop enough honesty to puncture other people's assumptions about his past. Except, maybe, for Rose. He might, someday, be able to tell her who he really was, where he actually came from. She alone (except for Tom, who no longer counted) appeared to like him best when he talked about ideas or literature or his work. He'd even begun having ideas again, just to have something new to bring up in their conversation. But now rumor had it that Rose was leaving—resigning her job because the administration had a cash register for a brain.

Russell glanced at his watch—a Roven Dino he'd bought himself for Christmas two years ago. It announced the time to be one fifteen on Tuesday morning. There might only be hours left to get through before he'd be able to prove that he, not Tom Putnam, was Henry's father. Which would mean that, if he wasn't a real southern gentleman, he was, at least, a real
something
. He would demand custody of the boy, take him shopping at Eljo's in Charlottesville, send him to boarding school at Woodberry Forest and then to the university, where he would play soccer and join Kappa Sigma.

Russell took another slug from the Wild Turkey bottle and stood up. All the energy generated by years of pent-up outrage surged through him. All he wanted was what was rightfully his! Then he thought of Rose and immediately sat down again. Rose looked right through all his … his
guff
and still seemed to like him all right. When Rose was around, he almost relaxed. And wasn't that what he really, really wanted—to be able to relax in the company of another human being?

*   *   *

They'd had no choice but to go immediately to bed. After all, they were officially (tentatively?) in love; star-crossed, as it were—or perhaps, more accurately, moon-struck; brought together against all reason by dumb luck. This morning, sex had been sweet, perhaps a trifle tentative and polite; tonight, lying together under the enchantment of a full moon, they gave in to full-blown need and loved like Olympians. After all, Tom had climbed in a window and Rose had let him. Now they lay in Rose's bed, his front to her back, as close as two sardines.

“Are we in love?” Tom asked. He felt for the first time at one with the universe, as though he were as much a part of the natural order of things as a rock or a tree.

“Are you asking me if I love you?” Rose said.

“God, yes! Do you? Please say you do!”

It seemed to Tom she stiffened slightly. Had he asked too much, too fast? “Does that mean you love me?” she asked softly

“Heavens to Betsy, yes!” Tom held her even tighter. “Yes, yes,
yes
!”

“Yes, you
think
you love me, or yes, you
know
you love me?”

“Yes, I
know
I love you.”

Rose rolled over on her back and looked at him. There was something in her eyes he'd never seen before, something vulnerable. “What does being in love with me feel like?”

What did being in love with Rose
feel
like?

Instantly Shakespeare supplied a couple of possible answers.
I would not wish any companion in the world but you.

A heart to love, and in that heart, courage to make love known.

That's the trouble,
Tom thought,
I've never had words of my own.

Of course, he'd also never had anything quite so magical to talk about before. Surely he could find the right words now if he just opened his mouth and let them out. “It feels like being really truly alive, and really, truly safe, no matter what. It feels like something wondrous that will stay with me, sustain me, give me peace, and make me happy for the rest of my life.”

Rose bit her lip. The vulnerable look intensified. “Really? You
really
feel all that for me?”

Tom smoothed back the hair that framed her face with its usual rebellious frenzy. “Oh, Rose. I really feel all that for you. And a lot more that I don't know how to talk about yet. But please give me time to figure the words out. Please, say you love me.”