The Solace of Leaving Early (25 page)

AMOS

In the weeks that followed his wedding, Amos lay awake at night trying to remember every detail. He went over it in his mind step by step: the hot August breeze, the walk to the church, the murmuring in the room off the vestibule where Langston dressed. He had waited in the wings just like a groom, adjusting his tie and pacing, while the minister who would marry them, John Wagner, his mentor and old friend, talked easily with Walt. Amos had heard the Schubert begin to play on a borrowed stereo, and then felt certain he couldn’t go through with it, that his life was proceeding as if in a dream. He couldn’t go through with it. There was a water fountain just outside the Fellowship Room and he walked to it feeling dizzy. He was a man who lived alone, a disciplined man, and the last time he heard the same song he had been drinking red wine and composing his resignation; he was a man who lived alone. He took a drink of water and thought of all the things he wasn’t. The water was cold, and he remembered listening to the song as he fell asleep that night, and awakening to Langston’s cries, the brightness of the moon, she called for him and he rose right up as if he’d never been asleep; he could see her again as she looked that night, breathing hard and leaving a trail of blood, the light in her gaze. He took another drink of water, unable to go through with it. What would he say to Walt, to AnnaLee, to John Wagner, to the girls? How would he ever face her again?

And then he heard Walt walking down the hallway toward him and Amos turned to face him. There were a few things about Walt, things Amos was unable to articulate. He kept imagining Walt with the shotgun, raising it first at ashen Derrin, and then firing it, unblinking, into the chest of the dog Strife. Because it was Langston. Because Langston was in danger. And it had been Walt who called the police and turned in his son; Walt who had awakened in the night and given Taos enough money to leave; Walt who watched Taos drive away; Walt who took down the barn. Now he placed his hand firmly on Amos’s shoulder.

“Are you ready?”

Amos nodded.

*

He remembered walking to the front of the church, behind John Wagner and before Walt, as the aria from
Figaro
began, how it soared into his body and reminded him again that he couldn’t go through with it, and how he was running out of time to say so. Because he could listen to this particular piece of music alone, he could listen to it as he failed to write his sermon, or as he failed to save someone else’s marriage, but he couldn’t listen to it with another. It simply wasn’t possible. And especially not with her. Because when he looked into her eyes he saw
her
in there, an extravagant soul, and there was no chance she wasn’t listening, and all that was most moving to him was in that song and she would hear it, too. It was one thing to be moved, lying alone on a back porch on a summer night, drinking wine and composing an unsent letter. But it was another to be seen.

And then the girls started down the aisle, Epiphany first, wearing her pink robe and her pink hat with the trailing ribbons, carrying a little basket of red rose petals which she dropped, six or seven here, none there, a dozen in another spot, as she made her way to the front. She smiled at Amos all the while, and not just because he gave her gum, but because she’d lost her first tooth, right in the front, and she loved the way the breeze blew into her mouth.

Immaculata was next, in her lavender robe and her hat with the trailing ribbons, carrying a basket of white rose petals which she dropped with a mathematical precision, her face so serious, her blonde hair pulled back into a braid just like Langston’s. Amos watched her and decided that if he ever needed anyone to run his company, Immaculata was the one. Or if he needed a Chancellor for his university, or a Secretary of State, he’d call Immaculata first.

Now
, he had thought.
Now I will simply say that I made a mistake; we should all go home and forgive ourselves later, or not at all
. AnnaLee was sitting in the front row with Marjorie Wilkey and Beulah, all of them crying and patting each other on the knee, and she must have practiced, Langston must have practiced when she would walk through the swinging doors into the sanctuary, because just as the aria began its ascent she stepped inside and Amos saw what she had done. She was wearing an ivory robe just like the girls, made of the same inexpensive, durable fabric, and an ivory hat with streaming ribbons, and she carried a single white orchid. That was the moment he remembered with the greatest clarity, the moment he realized that she was the last woman he would ever love; that every storm between them would be a confection, that their bed would be his grave.

I will
, he had said, and he meant it. He meant it.

*

Langston stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking at her watch. “Ragamuffins! Problem children! The Jesus Train is leaving the station in five minutes!” Upstairs the girls were singing some ridiculous song about learning to tell time. Immaculata was insistent that her sister be able to read a clock before she finished first grade, to which Amos replied, Fat chance. Epiphany didn’t even realize time was passing; he’d seen her sit on the back step with Germane an entire hour without moving, the two of them just staring out at the garden.

Amos washed his hands at the sink, after cutting some flowers for the kitchen table. Langston gathered the breakfast dishes and began to stack them in the dishwasher.

“After I drop the girls off at school I’m going to do some home visits, then I’ll be in my office all afternoon with counseling appointments, then I’ll go back and pick them up again. Is there anything you need today, anything I can do for you?”

Langston thought a minute. “Oh! yes. Take this audio book to Beulah. She’s exhausted all of her others from the library and refuses to let me read Proust aloud to her. She’d die before we finished
Swann’s Way,
she claims.”

“Probably true.”

“Undoubtedly. And she’s also craving deviled eggs. I explained that preparing such an item does not fall within my purview, and so Mama made some. Just ask Beulah if she got them, and if they were to her liking. Mama can be heavy-handed with the nutmeg, or whatever that brown powder is.”

“Got it.”

“And lunch? Shall we?”

“Absolutely. I”ll meet you here at noon. What are you up to today?”

She drank the last swallow of her coffee. “Editing.” She was reluctant to talk about the book:
Apostrophe,
or
Letters to a Missing Person,
but Amos had seen the manuscript grow in height daily on the edge of the desk.

The girls thundered down the stairs, skipping the last two steps, then lined up, so Langston could inspect them. Their school uniforms seemed to be in order; the white button-down shirts with “Sacred Heart Academy” stitched in green above the pockets; their khaki shorts; white socks, and tennis shoes.

“Do you have all your books?”

“Yes,” Immaculata said.

“Yes,” Epiphany said.

“Do you have your lunch money?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

Langston knelt down in front of Epiphany. “Sweetheart, where is your lunch money?”

Epiphany stared at Langston, breathing noisily through her mouth, but didn’t answer.

“Look, no look at me, it’s right here in this little zippered pocket— Epiphany, look at me, sweetheart, not at Germane. Germane! for heaven’s sake, how rude. Emily Dickinson’s dog would never—Epiphany? Where’s your lunch money?”

“In the little zipper.”

“In the little zippered
pocket
.” Langston sighed. “You’re going to starve. You’ll develop scurvy and trade your kingdom for a lime. In the meantime,” she leaned over and kissed the top of Epiphany’s head, that wavy miraculous hair, as soft as a baby’s, “in the meantime I love you, I’ll miss you, have a good day. And you, Miss Immaculata. I’ll go over the study guide you left me and hang your new poster. Let me just say now, in front of these witnesses, that there is nothing so perfect, and I’m talking about in all God’s creation, than a fourth-grade girl. You should be the president. You should be Queen of the World.”

“You said that yesterday,” Immaculata reminded her.

“All the same.”

“Go on, then,” Amos said, pushing them both toward the door. “Get in the car, and I’ll be right out.” They ran out the door, fighting about who got to sit in the front. Immaculata won. Amos turned and looked at Langston, who was standing at the foot of the stairs, one hand on the newel post, one resting on top of Germane’s head. Her posture reminded Amos of AnnaLee, moving like a ship through calm water. “Do you know?” he asked. “Do you know what moves me most about you today?”

Langston shook her head, then narrowed her eyes at him.

In his mind, Amos ran through the list of all he might say to her: How her hair at night, undone, trailed across her pillow like a sheet of black silk. The way she read so fast. The quality of her attention, the birthmark on her back, her long, long stride. The way she met him like this, unblinking. “Today, what moves me most, is just the
slope
of you.”

And then she blinked, that slow, languid look she had that no one saw but him, and took a step toward him, pulling open his shirt between buttons, kissing his chest.

He walked out the front door and headed for the car; it was just another Wednesday, nothing to it. And then she ran out the door after him, he’d forgotten Beulah’s tapes, and as he got in the car, adjusted the girls, checked seat belts, and drove off down Plum Street, she was still standing on the porch with her dog, her arms crossed over her chest, watching them, and he thought, as he thought many times a day,
Thank you, Thank you
. He couldn’t imagine how he earned this little piece of luck. She was just another possibility in the mind of God, one of many potential universes, and somehow, in a trick, a tug, she arrived. Love, Amos thought, didn’t always harvest the world’s riches. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes two people woke up, and they were home. And sometimes they just walked away free.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would first like to thank John Miller, who was one of my professors at the Earlham School of Religion, for reading this book in draft for theological content. He clarified and corrected my thinking with ease and graciousness. I will always appreciate this and other gestures he has made toward my betterment, including those he didn’t know he was making. All remaining errors are my own.

My godmother, Dorothy Kennedy, after listening to me bemoan the sad fact that I’d never write a doctoral dissertation on Alfred North Whitehead and the nature of grief, said, “You could always write it as a novel.” (Forgive her: she knew not what she said.) Thank you, Dorothy.

Thank you to the students, faculty, and administration of Immaculata Catholic School, for allowing me to spend a day observing.

The International John Donne Society welcomed me at their annual conference, although I was completely unknown and not even remotely a John Donne scholar. (Langston originally was, however, and the Society lent their expertise to her development.) John Donne scholars
rock
. Thanks especially to Judith Herz, Ernest Sullivan, Graham Roebuck, and Achsah Guibbory, as well as the incomparable Thomas Hester. In addition to being the king of all things Donne-related, it was from Dr. Hester I heard the idea about Faust’s ultimate flaw. And deepest thanks to Nate Smith, gentleman and scholar, who knows a Holy Sonnet when he sees one.

In the writing of this book—as in all other aspects of my life—I received the unqualified support of my mother, Delonda Hartmann, and my sister, Melinda Frame. As Donne said of his wife: they are the Most Beloved and Well Read. My babies, Katie Koontz and Obadiah Kimmel, sweetest and most lovely, never complain about the work I have to do, plus they are both really funny. I thank them from the bottom of my heart. Ben Kimmel has done so much for me I stumble in my gratitude, and the same goes for Don and Meg Kimmel, who keep all of us afloat and aloft, while also offering lessons in Living Really Well. My excellent neighbors, Ann Gleason and Gary Patilo, offered me every kind of support while I was writing this book, including soup. Thank you.

Thanks as ever to Tom Koontz, who shared with me his greatest treasures; Beth Dalton, an inspiration as a writer, a mother, and a friend. Thank you to the Adorables, Maia Dery and Senga Carroll, who came into my life like oxygen; my kind and
very
good editor, Amy Scheibe; Chris Litman, for all his help; my agent and friend, Stella Connell; Lee Smith, Keebe Fitch, Fred Neumann, Jesse Kimmel, Murray Wagner, Jay Alevizon, the good people at Grapevine Print and Design. Lawrence Naumoff, I hope someday to be half the writer you are. My dearest gratitude to James Baumann (it’s a novel of ideas, actually). Thank you to Eddy and Shirley Cline, and in memory of their daughter, Donita. Tom Milam lent me books on post-traumatic stress syndrome in children (thank you, Tom), and Noelle Milam was just the best at all things. Thanks to Jody Leonard and Lisa Kelley, proprietors of the Mast Gap Inn, who gave me a much needed weekend away. Thanks to Mary Herczog, Kindred Spirit, whose correspondence rivals Christabel’s own in grace and wit.

And thanks most especially, as always, to John Svara (rarest of creatures):
My ragges of heart can like, wish, and adore, / But after one such love, can love no more.

ALSO BY HAVEN KIMMEL

A Girl Named Zippy

PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY

a division of Random House, Inc.

1540
Broadway, New York, New York
10036

DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are trademarks of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kimmel, Haven,
1965
–

The solace of leaving early / Haven Kimmel.—
1
st ed.

p. cm.

1
. Women graduate students—Fiction.

2
. Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint—Apparitions and miracles—Fiction.

3
. Murder victims’ families—Fiction.
4
. Indiana—Fiction.

5
. Orphans—Fiction.
6
. Clergy—Fiction. I. Title.

PS
3611
.I
46
S
65 2002

813
'.
6
—dc
21

2001054810

Copyright ©
2002
by Haven Kimmel

All Rights Reserved

eISBN: 978-0-385-50730-1

v3.0