Small Blessings (46 page)

He, Tom, and Rose sat at the kitchen table. Henry was bouncing around the room like a Ping-Pong ball; Agnes stood at the stove smashing grilled cheese sandwiches in an iron skillet.

“Some, probably,” Tom said. “I hope just enough to force him into, you know, getting appropriate help. It'll be up to the president, I guess. And she's able to understand his situation better than most. I'm hoping her main interest will be in making it clear to Russell that he has to face up to what's bothering him if he wants to keep his job.”

They were speaking in a kind of code, as Henry was around. It was not a time to resurrect his mother's struggles by talking about such things as “alcoholism” and “treatment.”

“Iris certainly seems to have taken Russell in hand,” Mr. Brownlow said.

“Yes,” Tom said. “Perhaps they'll be good for each other.”

Agnes marched over from the stove, carrying the skillet. “Here you go,” she said, shoveling a grilled cheese sandwich onto Rose's plate.

“Eat, Rose!” Henry commanded from her elbow. “Grilled cheese is good for you!”

Rose looked up to find Tom smiling at her from across the table. She looked down at her plate. The sandwich was impossibly huge.

Wonderland's Alice spoke up inside her head:
I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, Sir, because I'm not myself, you see.

For a book Rose had never much liked, it did seem to haunt her. Perhaps, in this instance, it was because she didn't feel much like herself either. Could she possibly have taken up residence in someone else's life?

Agnes was making the rounds with her skillet. “Come here, Henry,” she said, depositing a sandwich on his plate. “Sit down and eat your supper.”

But Henry was not finished with Rose. He threw his arms around her in what was more tackle than hug. “I'm so glad my dad rescued you,” he crowed. “Now we can all live happily ever after.”

Henry's words seemed to come at Rose from a great distance. From another galaxy, perhaps, one that was far, far away.

Anyway, she was way too removed to notice that Mr. Brownlow, rude as it was, suddenly blew his nose into his napkin.

Agnes, however, missed nothing. “Okay,” she said. “Let's have it.”

“I can't do it,” Mr. Brownlow said, wiping his eyes.

Everyone at the table, even Rose, even Henry, knew what Mr. Brownlow meant. What he couldn't do was take Henry back to Mississippi.

“I shall monitor the situation closely, of course,” said Mr. Brownlow with a snuffle, “because things are a bit, shall we say,
unconventional.
But, you know”—and here he turned to look directly at Agnes—“I quite like it here myself. Everyone seems to care about everyone else so very much.”

Tom turned toward Agnes, expecting some tart reply, but she was too busy doing something Tom would have bet the Putnam family fortune she'd never done before in her life.

Agnes Tattle was blushing.

*   *   *

Finally Tom had succeeded in stowing the overexcited Henry in bed under the watchful eye of Albus Dumbledore. Rose, who was very tired and wanted nothing but to sleep for days, had been about to leave when she and Tom were summoned to the kitchen table by Mr. Brownlow and Agnes. Now she sat there while an avalanche of what others seemed to take as very good news tumbled around her. The two of them, Agnes and Mr. Brownlow had gleefully explained, were to be cochairs of a new nonprofit corporation funded by Henry's millions. Their mission would be to save endangered bookstores that were deemed culturally essential to their communities. And the first bookstore to be saved would be hers.

The idea for the corporation had first popped into Mr. Brownlow's head when he'd met Rose on the stairs in her sheet and heard about the community relations part of her job. He'd spent every spare minute of his time at the college talking about the Book Store with college faculty, staff, students, and administrators who did not report directly to the VP of finance. And he had not talked to a soul, Mr. Brownlow said, even the president (with whom he'd wangled a half hour), who didn't see the Book Store as an integral part of what made this college
this college
. It was the only place on campus where the pecking order disappeared; the only place where, as the president put it, she could be who she
was
instead of what she
did.

Tom sat there, clutching Rose's hand, saying over and over, “I can't believe it. I can't believe it.”

Neither could she. The conversation floated around her like so many bubbles. Rose knew intellectually there was a reason to celebrate, but all she felt was dull and creeping outrage. This was
her
life they were messing with, these two tiny, elderly fairy godparents. Of course, Henry's corporation would do a lot of good for other people as well, but the good it did for her was not a good she'd ever asked for or contemplated. It felt more like a
complication
than a blessing.

Mavis had always maintained that “Thou Shalt Not Meddle” should be the Lord's Eleventh Commandment. According to Mavis Callahan, “I was only trying to help” described one of humanity's most destructive impulses. What these people were doing, Rose realized, was cutting her off from the familiar course of her own life. They'd
bought
her baloney that she was only moving on for professional reasons.

But then, Rose realized, until this moment, she'd mostly bought it, too.

The Animals sang tinnily at her from out of the past about getting out of this place if it was the last thing they ever did. Their rebellious Vietnam-era anthem had been another of her mother's favorite packing ditties.

*   *   *

Rose hesitated, standing there on her mother's front stoop beside a pot of bronze chrysanthemums. Once Mavis Callahan was involved, there would be no more pussyfooting around. Her mother would support her no matter what she did, but she would have to do
something.
Mavis would not approve of running away when it worried other people.

Come to think of it, Rose didn't approve of that kind of running away either. It was one thing to move on; another thing entirely to worry a six-year-old boy who'd just lost his mother—and didn't even know it yet.

Rose lifted her hand and knocked.

Mavis opened her front door holding a ball of yarn, which she dropped when she saw her daughter. The yarn scuttled over the doorsill and rolled down the front porch steps. Rose bent to retrieve it.

“Never mind about that, Rose,” Mavis said. “Tell me what's wrong.”

Rose picked the yarn up anyway. She felt compelled to pretend, at least to herself, that
nothing
was wrong, that everything was
fine,
just as it been fine for the first thirty-some years of her life.
You're okay, so I'm okay,
had become her new mantra. Which she'd repeated to herself as she'd watch other, bona-fide-ly fine people pumping gas along I-81 and I-78 on her way to Williamstown, Massachusetts. In fact, she was so okay, she'd made the trip in just under eleven hours, which was something of a personal record.

Mavis snatched the yarn out of her hand and chucked it through an open doorway off to her right. “You look terrible, Rosie,” she said, drawing her daughter into her house. “You need to come and sit in the sunroom and tell me what's going on.”

“Is—” Rose began, looking around.

“Don't worry. Nobody's home but me.” Mavis took her daughter by the hand and led her through the old, comfortably cluttered New England saltbox to the sunroom. This was the old back shed, tapped for renovation because of its southern exposure. Three walls of windows let the sun in throughout the day. Fall, Rose noticed, was much further along in Massachusetts than it was in Virginia. Brilliant maples ringed the bright green back lawn.

“Sit!” Mavis pointed to a saggy, overstuffed armchair, shrouded with afghans.

Rose sat. Mavis pulled a footstool over so that she could perch in front of her daughter and take her hand. “Now, Rosie, let's hear it.”

Rose stared out the window at the maples. What would it have been like to grow up here, watching those same trees turn every fall? How would it have been, going to school with the same friends, getting to know them through and through, becoming known through and through? She'd always felt it would have been beyond boring to stay put, but now she was no longer sure.

The truth was that she, intrepid Rose Callahan, was scared. Which was why she'd jumped in her car and driven north lickety-split in the predawn hours. But what, exactly, did she expect her mother to do—make all her fears go away? This wasn't some imaginary bogeyman nibbling at her heels, this was real life.

Rose picked at an afghan with her free hand.

“Take your time,” Mavis said. “Stu's away at a conference till tomorrow around lunch. So there's nobody here but us chickens.”

The phone rang. “Let the machine get it,” Mavis said, her eyes on her daughter.

Five rings later, Mavis's voice invited the caller to leave a message. “This is Tom Putnam,” a male voice said. “I'm a friend of your daughter's, Miss Callahan. And I was just wondering if, by any chance, you'd heard from her?”

“Should I pick up?” Mavis asked.

Rose, dumb with misery, shook her head. “No. Not yet.”

“He sounds worried,” Mavis said. “Is he that professor who was giving you fits because you liked him?”

“I might love him,” Rose whispered, leaning her head forward so that her words came out from behind the curtain of her hair. “It's all so fast.”

To her surprise, Mavis threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, honey, it always
is.
I had to talk myself off the
ceiling
when I figured out I was in love with Stu.”

Rose peeked at her mother through her hair. “You did?”

“Yes. I was scared to death. To
death,
I tell you!” Mavis reached her free hand out and lifted Rose's chin. “We Callahan gals do like to pretend a lot.”

“We do?” Rose stared into her mother's eyes. Was that what she'd been doing all these years? “Pretend what?”

Mavis stroked her daughter's cheek lightly with the back of her hand. “Oh, you know, that we're invulnerable. That no one's going to slow
us
down, even though we don't have a clue where we're going.”

“Really? You were scared of Stu?”

“To death,” Mavis said again. “I mean, how could I have gotten myself into a situation where it really
mattered
whether some man was around or not?”

Rose sat up. “That's it. That's what I've done.”

“Well, there you go!” Mavis patted her daughter's knee.

“I guess.”

“So, are you on the lam from that man who just called?”

“Yes. I guess I am. And from his kid and his mother-in-law and from my job, and from everything and everyone at that college.” Rose started to cry.

Mavis drew her close. “Oh, child, are you worried if you let yourself settle down with this fella and his entourage that you'll wake up one day to find your little magic kingdom's jumped in the toilet?”

“Yes,” Rose wailed. “I am.”

Mavis put her hands on her daughter's shoulders and gently pushed her away so as to be able to look her in the eye. “See here.”

Rose sniffed. “Yes?”

“The thing is, that could happen. But the other thing is, that's not the point. The point is, do you love this man?”

Rose caught her breath. “Yes! Oh, yes! At least I think I do!”

Mavis waved this away. “Thinking, schminking. What does your gut say?”

Rose bit her lip. “It says I do.”

“There you go! The only advice I can give you, Rose Callahan, is the advice I gave myself nineteen years ago when I married Stu. After years of chasing a vague dream of freedom, I woke up one morning thinking about how much I'd loved being with Stu yesterday and the day before, and how likely it was that I was going to love being with him today and even tomorrow if I stuck around. And that was that. One day at a time, I've been sticking around ever since. Some days with Stu have been better than others, but they've mostly all been better than they would have been without him.”

“But you married Stu. That's not just hanging around one day at a time. That's commitment. That's … that's
trust.
”

Mavis fingered her wedding ring. “Well, Stu's traditional and kept asking me. And at some point, I said to myself, ‘Mavis Callahan, get
over
yourself. Admit you love this guy with your whole heart, he loves you back, and your wandering days are over.'”

Rose involuntarily held out a hand to push Mavis's words away. So much of who she thought she was had always been tied to movement.

Mavis chuckled. “The thing I had to learn to trust, Rosie, is that every good day I get really
is
a good day. I don't have to enjoy it any less just because yesterday wasn't so hot and I don't know what tomorrow will bring. We do get to just enjoy ourselves, you know.”

Rose thought of Henry; of how when the boy was kicking a soccer ball around, he was so
there
, unburdened by all the things that
weren't
there. It seemed to her that being like that took either great courage or great faith. “So what should I do, Mama?”

Mavis took both her daughter's hands in hers. “Do what you
want
to do, Rosie. Just don't shoot yourself in the foot because what you want scares the pants off you.”

Rose smiled. “Can I hide out here for a couple of days?”

“Of course. But don't you think you better let that nice man know you're all right?” Mavis grinned. “Well, maybe not all right in the head, but at least you're still in one piece.”