The Language of Sycamores (9 page)

I chuckled at her. “I think Rose is ready to go. Bye-bye, Rose.”

Rose responded with another furious round of “ba-ba, ba-ba, ba-ba” and nearly wiggled out of her mother’s arms.

“Looks like she’s another river baby,” I said. “A future mermaid.” That was what Grandma Rose had called Kate and me, because we spent so much time at the river.

Kate laughed at the old term. “Guess we’d better get going.” Bending over, she turned Rose upside down so that Rose squealed with delight. “You silly girl, are you a mermaid?” Kate cooed, placing noisy kisses on Rose’s bare stomach when her shirt flipped up. There was a look of pure joy on their faces, and I felt a pang that I couldn’t describe, deep in some forgotten part of myself. When Kate stood up, she gave me a guilty look, as if she saw that pain in me. “Guess we’d better go,” she repeated, seeming apologetic for engaging in a moment of mother love where I could see it. “When James gets here, y’all come on down to the river with the rest of us, O.K.?”

I blinked at my educated, Boston-raised sister and repeated, “
Y’all come on down?
You’re starting to sound like Grandma Rose.”

Kate grinned sheepishly. “Oh, Lord.”

“Oh La-wd?”
I repeated in my best Southern accent. “That
really
sounds like her.”

“You hush!” Kate stomped a foot impatiently, starting to laugh.

I pointed a finger at her. “See, that’s Grandma Rose all over the place. We’re going to have to do an exorcism on you.”

The two of us laughed together. “Go on,” I said finally. “Y’all git on down to the ree-ver.”

Shaking her head, Kate walked out the gate with Rose still waving furiously at me, hollering, “Ba-ba, ba-ba, ba-ba!”

I waved until she was out of sight, then settled back in my chair. Closing my eyes, I drifted slowly, my thoughts floating into the summer evening, into the soft sound of the spring lilies strumming the old iron fence, and the muted whisper of the trees overhead. Their voices were familiar, and in my mind I was a little girl again, walking by the river with Grandma Rose on a warm summer day when I was eight. All around me, I could hear music—the gurgle of the water and the hush of the breeze, the faint crackle of broad sycamore leaves fanning the afternoon air, the low groans of the branches, heavily laden with summer growth. If you listened, it sounded almost like murmurs, like the whispering of something old and wise.

I knew Grandma heard it. When I turned to her, she was gazing into the canopy of leaves, her face damp with tears, her mind far away. “Sadie Marie, you come down from there,” she whispered, and I wondered what she was talking about.

I tugged her hand, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Grandma, who are you talking to?”

She startled, her mind coming back to the present. “Oh, no one, Sweet,” she said, giving my hand a squeeze. “I was just listening to the sycamores. Each type of tree has a sound all its own. Have you ever noticed? Sadie used to say that was the fairies running through the leaves.”

“Who’s Sadie?” I asked.

“No one you know,” she replied in the stern voice she used when we weren’t to question.

“I don’t believe in fairies,” I told her, trying to sound very mature. “They’re a myth. They don’t exist.”

Grandma raised a brow, the pleated line of her mouth lifting. “My, so grown-up this year.” Lightly, she cupped my chin in her hand. “Is this the same girl who thought she could wish upon a star and get a pony last year?”

I huffed, “I’m
eight
now.”

“Oh, I see.”

“I don’t believe in
Santa Claus,
either.”

“Well, that’s a shame. I’ll tell him not to be leaving things for you under the tree this year.”

“He’s a myth.”

“If you say so.”

“Isn’t he?”

She smiled and bent down in front of me, her face aged and leathery from years in the fields, her eyes the twinkling blue of a little girl’s. “Don’t be so quick to let go. Some things, when you send them away, never come back again.” Sighing, she straightened and turned away. I wandered down the riverbank, searching for fossils and throwing in stones. When I checked back, Grandma was gazing into the sycamores, listening again. . . .

The wind went silent, and my memory faded as the trees grew still. My mind returned to the present with an elastic snap that threw me into a grown-up body and a modern world, with all its modern problems. I jerked upright in my chair, wishing I could go back. I hadn’t thought about those old times with my grandmother in years. I probably never would have if the sound of the leaves hadn’t taken me back. Strange how a memory could be tied to such an insignificant thing.

If only I had asked more about Sadie. Would Grandma have told me of the secret glen and the sister trees? Would she have remembered her sisters and decided to make contact with them before it was too late? Did she ever try in the years that followed, or did she carry her resentments to the grave?

I didn’t want it to be that way with Kate and me. I wanted us to be sisters, the way sisters were supposed to be. What point was there now in hanging on to whatever was wrong between us in the past?

The sound of a car coming up the drive punctuated the question. Standing up, I walked around the corner of the house just as James was parking his rental and climbing out.

I met him at the gate and opened it so he could get through with his suitcase. He looked good in his pilot’s uniform—tall, dignified with his thick hair prematurely gray at the temples. “Hi, hon,” I said, and gave him a quick kiss. The usual greeting, a comfortable hello. As if nothing were out of the ordinary. “Good trip?”

“Not bad,” he replied, his hazel eyes a weary brown in the afternoon light. “Rough weather around Denver. Made for a bumpy landing, but that was about it.”

“Oh.” I led him around to the little house and opened the door. “We’re staying out here. Kate wanted to boot Joshua out of his room, and I told her not to.”

“Anything’s fine with me.” He groaned, stretching his neck side to side. “I just need a place to lie down, and a little chow. I don’t think I’ll be very good company this evening. I’m wiped out.”

I wondered if that was his way of telling me he didn’t want to talk tonight. The idea of waiting, of just having a nice time together at the farm, was tempting.

He sat down on the couch. “So, anyway, what’s up? How’s the visit going?”

I knew he was giving me the opportunity to say whatever I needed to say. “It’s been a good visit,” I said, glancing at the piano as I sat down next to him. “The most amazing thing happened. I mean, it was just like in the movies. You know Kate’s little neighbor Dell?”

“Sure. She’s my catfishing partner,” he said, and I was once again struck by the fact that James had a whole life here I knew nothing about.

“Well, she wanted me to teach her some things on the piano, so I started showing her a few notes, and then a few more notes, and then she started picking out tunes on her own—things she’d heard on TV and so forth. I’m telling you, it was amazing. No one would have believed it without seeing it. . . .” I went on telling him about Dell and our lessons, and what an amazing musical talent she possessed. I recounted my discussion with Kate about piano lessons, and the disconcerting appearance of Uncle Bobby. “But seeing her at the piano was amazing, and oh, God, what a feeling to experience it,” I finished, reliving the rush of excitement I’d had when Dell and I were at the piano. “It was like . . . she was filled with music, and I was the one who came along and unlocked the door.” I couldn’t believe I was telling him all of this, and even more, I couldn’t believe he was interested.

“That
is
amazing.” He watched me as if I were someone he’d never
seen before and he liked what he saw. “You know, a couple of months ago, I took her to the pickin’ and grinnin’, because Kate and the kids were sick, and Dell was just sitting out on the porch with nothing to do. Every time I come now, she hints around about going to the guitar playing, but I just thought it was because she was bored. I had no idea she was interested in music.”

“I don’t think anybody did,” I told him. “That’s what makes it so incredible. I don’t think she has any idea that it’s unusual to have a talent like that. She just thinks it’s something everyone can do.” I laughed, remembering her and Joshua at the piano. “She can’t understand why she can’t teach Josh to play in an hour like I taught her.”

James laughed with me, and for a minute it felt like we were on one of those comfortable vacations, where both of us were loosened up and we’d left the work worries at home. “She’s a good kid. Doesn’t say much, but she’s a good kid,” he said.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’d been . . . well, I don’t know . . . mentoring her, or whatever?”

He drew back, surprised by the word. “Well, it’s not a big deal. She’s just bored a lot of the time, you know. Kate and Ben are tied up with the kids, and Dell’s hanging around looking for something to do. When I’m here, I have time. I like to fish. She knows where the fish are. I wish I’d known she had all that musical talent. I’d have had her teach me some new guitar licks, because the old guys at Shorty’s pretty well put me to shame.”

“That’s another thing.” I felt a pang of separation, a reminder of his hidden life. “Why didn’t you tell me about that? I haven’t seen you pick up a guitar in years—well, except to dust the ones on the rec room wall.”

He shrugged, embarrassed. “Geez, you act like I’ve been keeping secrets or something. It’s just something to do for entertainment when I’m here. I play sometimes when I’m home—it’s just that you’re usually gone.”

The comment hit me like a sudden slap, a reminder that we were living mutually exclusive lives.

He seemed to sense it, too, and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, letting out a long sigh. “So, why don’t you tell me what’s going on, Karen? Why the sudden visit to the farm?”

Chapter 9

I
sat staring out the window for a moment. James rubbed his hands together nervously as he watched me. His arms were tan from some layover near a beach.

My heart raced into my throat and fluttered there as I measured out words in my head. Why did I feel like losing my job was some sort of personal failure? Why was it so hard for me to admit to failure?
Pride,
my grandmother would have said,
too much pride
. But it was more than that. There was also the fact that I hadn’t told James anything about the problems at work these past months. I wasn’t sure why, except that by the time I came home from work each day, I was exhausted, with nothing left to give. His thoughts were focused on the airline’s recent financial problems and the resulting layoffs and difficulties with flight schedules. When we were together, we were content to wander around the house in decompression mode.

Outside the screen door, a breeze whispered through the sycamores, and my mind wanted to go back to childhood, to forget. . . .

“Karen.” James’s voice cut into my thoughts, his tone impatient, demanding, authoritative, like he was talking to one of his flight crews.
No time for fooling around. Let’s get this bird off the ground.
“Tell me what’s going on. Why are you at the farm? I asked Kate, and she didn’t
seem to know. She said you’d been acting strange ever since she talked to you on the phone Friday night.”

“You talked to
Kate
about me?” I spat out, picturing them on the phone trading theories about what was wrong with Karen. No doubt they hadn’t come up with job layoff and possible cancer. “Great, James. Thanks.”

He waited a moment before answering, trying to keep his cool. James didn’t like to fight. He preferred that everything remain on an even keel, at a constant altitude, steady airspeed, no turbulence. “I called this morning to talk to you, and I got Kate. We spoke a minute. It wasn’t any kind of conspiracy. I was worried. That’s all.” His hazel eyes turned slowly my direction, his gaze steady and pointed. “Let’s get back on the subject, shall we?”

I nodded, regretting the fact that I’d gone off. A fight wasn’t what we needed right now. “Something happened Friday at Lansing,” I said slowly. “I found out in the management meeting that they’re closing down the custom-networking business.” I turned to him, searching for his reaction.

He didn’t move and his expression remained guarded, as if he sensed that I was testing his reactions. “What . . . does that mean for your department, exactly?”

“Laid off.”

“And for you?”

“Same thing.”

He exhaled a long puff of air, looking down at his fingers. “This is kind of sudden, isn’t it? Last thing I heard you had that big homeland security contract in Portland. What happened to that?”

“James, that was over a year ago,” I snapped, even though it was as much my fault as his that we were out of touch. I took a deep breath, reining in my temper. It wasn’t him I was mad at; it was the management at Lansing, and the slow economy, and some nebulous sense of persecution I couldn’t put a name to. “We’ve been having problems at Lansing for a while now. Six months ago, the earnings reports didn’t add up, and when that became public knowledge, the stock tanked, Patterson resigned, and Vandever moved in as interim president. Three
months ago, they cut twenty percent in the administrative departments, and then Friday they cut again.”

James blinked at me like I was an alien from another planet. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

“I don’t know. I thought things would work out. With all the stuff going on at the airlines lately . . . it didn’t seem like you needed anything else to think about.”

He nodded, his eyes darting back and forth, putting together the pieces of a puzzle. “So that’s why you’ve been so edgy these past few months.”

“Edgy?” I repeated, trying to think back.

“Oh, come on, Karen, you’ve been a basket case.” No supporting statements needed.
Karen’s been a basket case.

“You never said anything.”

He threw his hands up, standing and pacing the floor in front of the piano. “For heaven’s sake, Karen, I thought if you needed something you’d tell me.”

“Sometimes I
need
you to ask.” It was beginning to sound like an old argument that went back almost as far as our marriage. I wanted him to care enough to ask what was going on in my life, and he wanted to go on the assumption that if I had something to tell him I would bring it up while he watched me with one eye and
The Late Show
with the other.

“Let’s not go back to that old crap.” Obviously, this conversation was pushing his buttons. His skin was starting to redden along the patch of salt-and-pepper gray that had developed in his sideburns these last few years. It made him look dignified, mature, more in command than ever. “If you want to talk to me about something, all you have to do is tell me.” He threw his hands into the air. “Just because I don’t go around emoting all over the place doesn’t mean I’m not here. I certainly didn’t think you’d let something this big go on and never say a word. How long have you known about this?”

I winced. If anyone was in the wrong here, it was me. I was dredging up all of our old issues as a smoke screen, and I wasn’t sure why. “Six months, maybe a little more. I never thought it would lead to the
company going almost bankrupt and me being laid off. No one saw that coming. Even Brent didn’t see it.”

“Oh, well, if
Brent
didn’t see it coming . . .” James said sarcastically.

I rolled my eyes. If it hadn’t been such a serious conversation, I might have laughed. James’s latent resentment of Brent was more than ridiculous. It was a reaction to evenings James spent home alone while Brent and I were at the office eating take-out pizza and running late-night beta tests. “All right, now you’ve gone too far.” In spite of everything, the corners of my lips twitched upward. The idea of James being jealous of the world’s biggest techno nerd was more than funny.

“I don’t know.” James suddenly clued in to what he’d said, and in spite of the ongoing argument, his eyes started to twinkle. “We all know you love a guy in uniform. I think seeing him in his full Trekkie outfit might have pushed you over the edge.”

I slapped a hand over my eyes, laughing and groaning. We were doing what we always did—using humor to bridge the gap so we wouldn’t fight anymore. “Shut up,” I muttered.

He didn’t, of course. “Hard to resist a guy with such a big . . . bag of Bugles.”

“James, cut it out.” But I was laughing even as I said it. “I’m trying to be serious here.”

He sighed, his rare moment of angst obviously over. “All right, then, seriously. You should have told me about Lansing, but you didn’t. I didn’t ask, you didn’t tell. It’s done, so we move on and figure out the logical next step.”

The logical next step.
Exactly what I knew he would say. “No.” I groaned, keeping my hand over my eyes. “I know you’d like to, but I’m not ready to plot out the next logical step, O.K.? I don’t want to pick myself up by my bootstraps and dust myself off and march onward. I want to wallow in self-pity, and hate all my bosses, and obsess over the fact that this is unfair, and make board-of-directors voodoo dolls and stick pins in them. That’s what I want to do right now, all right?” I let my hand fall into my lap and hoped he would understand. This wasn’t a mature reaction to the situation, but it was
my
reaction. I hadn’t been
this pitiful in . . . well . . . ever, probably. My eyes started to fill with tears and my lips trembled.

He nodded, his mouth a straight, somber line, so that I couldn’t tell how he felt about my sudden descent into dysfunctionality. Leaning back on the couch, he reached across the space between us, and I fell into his arms, glad not to be alone.

You should tell him the rest. You should tell him about the doctor’s appointment.
Even though I knew it was the right thing to do, I couldn’t force myself to go through with it. Telling James, bringing it into the open, would make it as real as the job layoff—another disaster waiting to crumble our lives. This one would be harder for him. It would remind him of losing his mother. Even though he’d never admitted it to me when I had my first cancer scare, I knew that when he saw me in that hospital bed, he thought of his mother and her five-year battle with lung cancer. He thought of losing her, and his father’s depression afterward, and the years of trying to keep the family emotionally and financially together while his younger brothers and sister grew up. If I told him about the news at Dr. Conner’s office, it would bring all of that back. He wouldn’t react calmly or try to interject humor or agree with putting off the biopsy for a little while, until I could handle it.

If I told him, I would have to schedule the biopsy immediately, as soon as we returned. What if the test came back positive? I couldn’t face that and the disaster at Lansing at the same time. Surely, a few weeks, maybe a month, wouldn’t make any difference. In a few weeks, I’d have my feet under me again. If the test did come back positive, I’d be ready to handle it.

For now, it was enough just to be together, here in this quiet place, where the evening breeze swished through Grandma’s flower beds, and the long, slanted sunbeams were fine and golden. In a strange way, I was relieved that the situation at Lansing was finally over. I felt as if I’d been clinging to a lifeline for months, and James had just stepped in and grabbed the other end. It was good to be together, hanging on against a storm. If there is any reason to be grateful for a storm, that must be it: It reminds you of who you can rely on.

James drew a contemplative breath, his chin resting on my head. I
wondered if he was thinking the same thing—that it felt good to lean on each other, to need and feel needed.

“I have a question,” he said softly, his breath brushing my hair.

“Yes?” I muttered, the anxiety draining from my body.

“Do I get a Trekkie voodoo doll?”

I laughed, then smacked him in the stomach, and he let out a loud
Ooof!

“No, you do not.”

“Well, can I at least stick some pins in the board-of-directors dolls?”

“Sure.” I gave a rueful snort. “But don’t bother sticking them in the wallet. They’re pretty well padded there.”

“I’ll bet,” he muttered, and we sat there, united in a moment of mutual rage against the machine. It felt really . . . good.

Voices drifted through the screen—the sound of Kate and the rest of the family coming through the blackberry patch, reminding us that we weren’t alone.

“I don’t want to tell Kate.” I knew how that sounded. “I mean, I don’t want to tell anyone yet. I don’t want to spoil the weekend, all right?”

James squinted one hazel eye, then shrugged and said, “All right,” before both of us stood up and went to the yard to greet the family. James patted me on the shoulder as we walked out the door. “Don’t worry, hon. It’ll be all right.”

I hope so,
I thought.
I hope it will.

We sat in the kitchen over a late dessert, talking about James’s flight, Jenilee’s first year in premed, Ben’s work developing drafting software, and Caleb’s upcoming summer internship with the county hospice program. We talked about Kate’s volunteer work at church, Rose learning to walk, and Joshua starting preschool.

We talked about everyone’s work but mine. Kate thought that was odd. She kept glancing at me, waiting for me to bring up whatever big, new megajob my team was into. James caught the look a couple of times. He knew what she was thinking.
Something’s wrong. Karen’s not bragging about her job.
By the time dessert was over, I was ready to get out of there.

Ben suggested that we head down to Shorty’s to see if the Saturday night pickin’ and grinnin’ crew was still playing on the porch. “It’s only eight thirty, and they usually go until nine thirty or ten,” he remarked.

Kate frowned doubtfully at baby Rose, who was already starting to yawn and rub her eyes.

“Sounds interesting,” I said, a little too quickly, and Kate clearly sensed an evasive action. She wasn’t used to such blind enthusiasm from my side of the table.

“You gonna do Elvis if we go down there?” Caleb asked James.

James shrugged, a bit reticent. “Don’t know. I might embarrass my wife.”

“You do
Elvis
?” I said.

“He does a great Elvis,” Kate replied with an imitation grin that looked more like a grimace of pain.