The Christmas Violin (2 page)

The Old Woman remembered her first time eating at the soup kitchen. She was in her late teens. Raised by a procession of foster families who cared more about the money she brought in each month than her, she skipped town the first chance she got. She didn’t care where she went; she just wanted to get away from the filth and stink that her life had become. She copped a ride from a trucker in Florida who was headed north, and eventually ended up in this southcentral Pennsylvania town. She thought about leaving from time to time, but she liked the cemetery and caring for the graves. She felt a sense of purpose, and it was the only place where people didn’t look at her like she was a rabid dog, the only place where she could talk to herself and no one gave a damn or thought she was crazy.

“Good morning,” said Charlie Shue, greeting the old woman at the door. Charlie, who was neck and neck with the old woman in age but looked a good fifteen years younger, had been running the soup kitchen for the past ten years. And in all that time, the old woman never returned his cheerful greetings. Some days, she barely looked at him. But that didn’t stop cheerful Charlie from trying. He was determined that one day she’d look him straight in the eyes and shout, “Good morning!” It just wasn’t today.

The old woman found a spot at the end of a table near the large plate glass window that looked out onto the busy downtown street. She liked watching the business folk bustle about with their brief cases and arms loaded with manila folders she was sure contained top secret information.

Sometimes, though, if she was having a particularly bad day, she was sure the manila folders contained information about her. She thought that everyone on the street was out to get her. On these days, she stayed at the cemetery, trying to shush the voices that roared inside her head, telling her to hurt herself – or worse yet, hurt others.

She had never hurt anyone, but staying in the cemetery where people were already dead made it less likely she would. So that’s what she did. On days when the voices boomed in her pin-size head, she ate the packs of crackers she had swiped around town and coated them with ketchup from the packets she had collected.

Sometimes, if she was lucky enough to find a jar of peanut butter in the trash that wasn’t scraped clean, she had a real feast. She noticed that most people didn’t wash their peanut butter jars before discarding them. Too much work, she guessed. But not for her. If she didn’t have a plastic knife, she used a stick to scrape the jar clean and spread it on her crackers. And if she didn’t have any crackers, she’d eat it right off the stick, sometimes eating a little bark along with it.

Peter

Peter boarded the plane and took an aisle seat about half way back. It was a full plane and the two-hour flight was on time. He’d be there by noon.

An older couple stopped at his seat.

“Are those seats taken?” asked a white-haired man with large ears and thick glasses.

“They’re all yours,” said Peter, standing to let the older couple in.

The man sat at the window and the woman, a foot shorter than the man but hair just as white, sat in the middle.

“Going to Tampa on business?” asked the woman, stuffing her oversized leather purse under the seat in front of her.

“Yeah,” Peter said. “And you?”

The woman coughed and wiped her mouth with a white linen hankie trimmed with lavender lace. “Excuse me. I’m not used to this cold weather.” She buckled her seatbelt. “We live there. We used to live here but we moved to Tampa when we retired. Warmer, you know. These old bones can’t take the cold anymore.”

“You don’t look old at all,” said Peter, the compliment rolling off his tongue as easily as the Lord’s Prayer.

The woman patted his arm, which lay on the arm rest. “You dear, sweet young man. We just celebrated our sixty-fifth anniversary.”

“Sixty-five years,” Peter said. “Congratulations.”

“Are you married?” the woman asked.

Peter shook his head no. “My wife passed away a couple of years ago. Brain cancer.”

“Oh, you poor boy,” the woman said. “I’m so sorry.”

The pilot came over the loudspeaker. “At this time I’m going to ask you to fasten your seatbelts.”

Peter checked his seatbelt and turned off his iPad. The old woman settled back in her seat and opened her paperback. Peter glanced over and saw it was a romance. Something about Amish, and it was in large print.

Peter thought about the last time he had flown. He and Camilla went to Disney World. She wanted to see it one last time. He tried to be upbeat during the trip, but he found himself inside the men’s room time and again swallowing his tears. He wanted the trip to be perfect for Camilla. He even arranged for them to renew their vows at the Wedding Pavilion. It was the highlight of the trip. He smiled, remembering how happy Camilla was that day.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked as they got off the monorail at the Grand Floridian Resort.

He smiled and took her hand, leading her to the Wedding Pavilion, fringed with palm trees on Seven Seas Lagoon.

“Oh, Peter,” she cried. “I can’t believe you arranged this.”

He got down on one knee and proposed to her all over again. “Will you marry me one more time?” he asked.

Tears streamed down Camilla cheeks. “I’d marry you a million times.”

The pilot came back on the loudspeaker. “We’ve been cleared for take-off.”

Peter closed his eyes. He hated take-offs. He felt his heart race. The plane picked up speed and then lifted off, climbing steadily into the air.

Willow

Willow read the front page of the newspaper and scanned the other sections. She’d read the rest later when she had more time. She had an OB-GYN appointment across town. She hated going to the doctors, especially this doctor. It reminded her of what she no longer had and of the night that changed her life forever.

The affair had taken Willow by surprise. She didn’t plan on it; neither did Dan. But when it happened, they weren’t strong enough to overcome their attraction and aching need for one another.

He was older than her by twenty years, stuck in a marriage that had gone south almost before it began. He was lonely. She was lonely. Until they found each other one night at a hotel bar in Boston where she was performing.

He was a neurosurgeon, in town for a convention. He was drinking a Scotch on the rocks with a twist and she sipped a gin and tonic. They just started talking. Small talk at first. What he did. What she did. The sort of talk that usually fades into a handshake and a “Nice to meet you.”

Then they met the next night. Same two padded, mahogany stools at the end of the bar. Truth was, she enjoyed talking to him and had decided on a whim to have a drink before she retired to her room for the night. If she were lucky, maybe he’d stop by. She didn’t want to sleep with him. She wasn’t that kind of woman. But conversation with him came easy, like hitting eighty on the highway. You never feel the pedal depress until a siren shrieks behind you and you see a swirl of flashing lights in your rear-view mirror.

Willow sniffed. She never imagined that a chance meeting in a hotel bar would change her life in such a monumental way. She closed her eyes and the memories came into focus with such clarity and sharpness it startled her.

Willow smelled his woodsy cologne before she saw the stool move beside her. He slid onto the stool as though he were sidling up to an old friend.

“Hi, Willow,” Dan said.

She greeted him with a smile that seemed to swallow her creamy face.

“How was the concert?”

She took a sip of her gin and tonic. “Good. Full house. I could feel the crowd. How about you? How was your day?”

The bartender sat a Scotch on the rocks with a twist in front of him. Dan took a sip and licked his upper lip. “It was an interesting day. Spent a great deal of time discussing neurodegenerative disease with some of my colleagues. I head home tomorrow. Where are you headed?”

“West Coast for a few weeks, then home for a break.”

They talked for hours. He told her about his kids, all grown, and his dog, Rodeo. He told her stories from his childhood that he hadn’t thought about in years. He smiled and ran his hand through his thick salt and pepper hair.

“What are you smiling at?” asked Willow, taking another sip of her drink.

Dan shook his head. “It’s just that I don’t remember the last time I’ve shared such personal things with someone.”

“What about your wife?”

Dan chuckled. “Denise? Denise stopped talking long ago. And she stopped listening before that. After she got what she wanted – a big house and a fat wallet – she pretty much ignored me.”

“You don’t talk? At all?

Dan shook his head. “Not really. And, to be honest, I wouldn’t know what to say to her. We’ve grown so far apart that I’m not sure either of us knows how to close the gap or has the energy to try. So we go on pretending that everything’s fine even though it hasn’t been fine for a long time.”

Dan laid a fifty on the bar and walked Willow to her room. Maybe it was the alcohol or that Willow felt he needed her as much as she needed him. He bled loneliness, a feeling Willow was intimate with. Whatever the reason, Willow invited him into her room and they ended up in each other’s arms. It was one of the most tender, loving nights in Willow’s life. And in the morning, she found a note where he had lain thanking her for giving him something he’d lost long ago.

Willow dabbed her eyes with a tissue and took another sip of tea. Dan had thanked her for giving him something he’d lost; Willow wished she had thanked him for giving her something she never had.

The Old Woman

The old woman jabbed her fork into her scrambled eggs, which she had smothered in thick ketchup. She followed the forkful of eggs with a bite of buttered toast and a mouthful of fried potatoes with onions. She liked when the ladies from the Catholic church down the street helped at the soup kitchen. They were good cooks, and they never ran out of bacon. She got the two slices she had hoped for.

She wrapped one slice of bacon in a white napkin and stuffed it in her coat pocket. She’d have that later. Maybe for lunch, along with the roll she had saved from the night before. She took tiny bites of the remaining piece of bacon.

“Never seen no one eats bacon like that,” the guy with big feet said.

He had annoyingly sat down near the old woman, something no one else dared to do. They all had learned to stay a good six feet away. It was no secret the woman was a little mean. She liked her space, and if you didn’t give her enough of it, she’d snap like a dog that had been cornered. And you didn’t want her to snap. Snapping led to biting and a bunch of other things. It could turn ugly fast and nobody wanted ugly. So they stayed away. Except Big Feet, who didn’t know any better.

The old woman peeled back her chapped lips and snarled.

“All right. All right,” said Big Feet, holding up his big, calloused hand. “But this is how you eats bacon.”

And he stuffed the entire strip in his mouth, smiling as he chewed and wiping the saliva that slipped down his chin on his shirt sleeve. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about. That’s how you eats bacon.”

The old woman had about six inches left before she would be off the bench, and she inched over to the very end, getting as far away from Big Feet as she could.

She was in the middle of a sip of coffee when a belch from Big Feet startled her. She jerked. The man was like a shin splint that came out of nowhere and interrupted her routine.

“That’s mighty fine eatin’,” he bellowed, licking his big lips with a tongue that looked like a giant rubber spatula.

The old woman wasn’t sure who he was talking to, but she didn’t want it to be her so she paid him no attention. She had other things on her mind. Like how tired she felt all the time. And out of breath. She hated the doctors, though, and hadn’t been to one in years. And she had no plans to go to one now.

She heard Big Feet say goodbye but she just stared out the window, trying to decide if she had enough energy to walk to the park and watch the pigeons. She decided to go to the library instead and find a warm corner to rest. If she was lucky, no one would bother her there.

Charlie Shue saw that the old woman was preparing to leave. He walked over to take her tray so she wouldn’t have to struggle returning it. He nodded and smiled. “Have a great day.”

The old woman half nodded and pushed her metal cart past him toward the exit. With a pace that would pain most people to watch, she lumbered down the busy street.

She tried to ignore all the eyes that locked on her like missiles on a target. Every half block, she’d stop to rest, sucking in deep breaths. When she got to the crosswalk, she waited for the walking light. She was never fast enough to make it across the street before the white light turned red. Today was no exception.

A young man in a blue Mustang leaned on his horn. It didn’t make her go any faster. She couldn’t. But he didn’t seem to understand that, or care. Everyone was in a hurry to go somewhere, the old lady thought. Except her.

Peter

Peter had dozed during the flight.

The woman beside him lightly tapped his arm. “We’re landing.”

Peter jerked awake, surprised that he had fallen into such a cavernous sleep.

“On behalf of the flight crew, thank you for flying with us and have a great day in Tampa,” the head flight attendant announced.

Peter grabbed his attaché case from the overhead storage compartment and shuffled off the plane behind a man who reeked of stale smoke and musk-scented aftershave. Peter’s interview was tomorrow, but he had decided to come a day early to scope out the area. He had never been to Tampa before.

Maybe he’d drive to Clearwater beach. He loved the beach. Camilla loved the beach, too. She loved it almost as much as Disney. He smiled, remembering their spur of the moment getaways to Assateague Island. Camilla loved watching the wild horses. One time while swimming in the ocean, they looked up toward their blanket and saw one of the feral horses with its nose inside her striped beach bag. They ran to their blanket, but by the time they got there the horse had taken off with a bag of pretzels.