A Robin Redbreast in a Cage

by R.P. Burnham

Martha looked up from the envelopes she was addressing and peered at Charlie, who was stuffing one of the printed wedding invitations into each envelope after it was addressed. Charlie, who had just returned home from her second year at the Bible college, was slow to feel her cousin’s eyes, but when she did and looked up she saw Martha looked troubled.

  “Did Father allow you to go to your mother’s for supper?”

  Charlie smiled wanly. “Reluctantly, but yes.”

  “Because they’re living in sin. That’s his objection.”

  “I know. Would you like some tea?” They were alone in the house. Uncle Edward had taken the boys to the church where they were overseeing some repairs and Aunt Cora was doing her usual Saturday grocery shopping for the week.

  “No thank you. Have some yourself, though.”

  Charlie got up from the dining room table where they were working and went into the kitchen to put the tea water on. From across the counter, she asked, “Do you think he was right?”

  Martha’s soft eyes looked uncertain. “Yes and no. He’s right to disapprove of their living arrangements, but she is your mother.”

  “And the reason for the supper is to plan the wedding party. Soon she’ll be legally married.”

  Again Martha looked troubled.

  “It’s the ‘legal,’ isn’t it? It’s not going to be a church wedding like yours.”

  “Yes, I wish Aunt Tris would become Christian.”

  “Well, remember she has issues with her brother—your father—and I now think it’s very unlikely she ever will.”

  “Doesn’t that make you sad?”

  The tea kettle was already whistling. They’d had a cup of tea when they began their chore an hour ago, and in the high heat of a beautiful May day the water hadn’t cooled much. Pouring hot water into her cup and getting a tea bag from the jar on the counter, Charlie said, “It would have a year ago. Now…” But she didn’t want to think of that now. Walking carefully so as to not spill her tea, she came back to the table. “I’ve learned that she has to lead her own life. I can’t control her.”

  That was a safe thing to say and seemed to satisfy Martha. She did look down and think about it a little too long, though. The safest thing would be to change the subject. “How long do you think Matthew will stay mad at me?”

  Soon after her arrival home yesterday, Matthew had proudly showed her an essay he wrote for Mrs. Pogue. The assignment was to write an argumentative paper; instead he had written a sermon against abortion. To her eyes it was rather intellectually weak and grammatically and stylistically even weaker. There were comma splices: “These people only want to indulge themselves, they are dedicated to sin.” He used “effect” when he meant “affect.” There were misspelled words and ungrammatical punctuation. But the biggest fault of all was the logical one of begging the question: he assumed the other side of the argument had no validity whatsoever. Abortion was murder—period. Charlie was familiar with the issues because she had written a paper against abortion in her English class last fall. Her teacher, though a good Christian, was very intelligent and sophisticated and had worked with Charlie to make the paper stronger by allowing the pro-abortionist position to be fairly stated before refuting it. When Charlie had suggested ways to make the paper stronger, however, Matthew had simply bristled.

  “He thought that in criticizing his paper you were being pro-abortion,” Martha said. There it was again: that troubled look in her eye. Was she sensing something different about Charlie? Catching a hint, perhaps, at some underlying dissatisfaction?

  “No, that’s not it. I was trying to get him to see that in college writing—and in debating too—it’s most important to understand your opponent’s argument and subject it to analysis. He didn’t do that, so it wasn’t an argumentative paper. That’s why I called it a sermon.”

  “That’s what he was writing, I think.”

  “Yeah, but probably even a sermon should use those techniques when they’re arguing a point. Different writing requires different techniques. That’s why I’m taking the course in journalism at USM this summer.”

  “Well, it’s beyond me,” Martha said. “I never had to write one for Mrs. Pogue.”

  “It’s because of those state guidelines for home schooling. Mrs. Pogue told me last Christmas time she had gotten a letter from the state.”

  “Can they do that? Interfere with religious instruction, I mean?”

  “You mean tell a school what to teach? I don’t think so. They can tell you what to cover in the curriculum, though.”

  “We don’t need their interference. I heard Father say that.”

  Now the safe topic was getting dangerous. “How many more envelopes do we have to do?”

  “About a dozen. Just about the whole church is invited. At least those guidelines don’t affect me much. Teaching the little ones is pretty much reading, writing and arithmetic.”

  “You love teaching, don’t you?”

  Martha’s eyes brightened. “Yes, but…”

  “Will Tom allow you to continue?”

  “I don’t know. He thinks a woman’s place is in the home.”

  Charlie, remembering the times Tom had chastised her for showing an independent spirit, thought it was unlikely that he would allow his wife any freedom, even the freedom to help the church by nurturing their young. The thought distressed her, and Martha must have come to a similar conclusion, for they both grew quiet as they finished the envelopes.

  The wedding was scheduled for mid June, less than a month away. Last summer after making a few more ineffective attempts to get Martha to reconsider, Charlie had given up the effort and accepted the marriage as inevitable. For Martha she felt awful. Not being able to express her true feelings in turn made her feel awful. It was yet another reminder that no where and with no one could she be totally honest. Her life was becoming more restricted, not less. Without Martha the Harris household was going to be more estranging, more alien. She feared rather than loved her uncle; she had little love for the boys, and she knew Matthew actively disliked her. Only Aunt Cora had a warm and loving heart, which in this family was allowed little scope for expression. Nor did she have any friend at the college with whom she was close enough to open her heart. The boy who last year had expressed disillusionment with the college had not returned for his sophomore year. She had tentatively approached a few others who showed signs of having doubts or of thinking differently than the official way, but one had been angrily shocked that she verbalized a doubt about the inerrancy of the Bible and the other one became frightened. She seemed to fear that questioning even a pebble in the seawall of faith threatened the wall’s destruction and death by drowning. The boy who had tried to kiss her last year had had some kind of conversion experience in the summer, for he returned to the college fanatically devoted to the evangelical cause and clearly went out of his way to avoid Charlie.

  The result was that everything in her life was “the same old same old,” as she used to hear kids at Courtney Academy say about the routine in their lives. In plain English, nothing had changed for the better and much had become worse. She continued living a hidden life, with war between heart and mind her inner reality and the schizophrenic split between what she thought and what she said governing her confrontations with the world. Even having Jesus in her heart was not always enough. He couldn’t give her a faith strong enough to lead to peace. He couldn’t make the feeling that she was different go away. He could do nothing about the isolation and estrangement of her life. Nor could He, when she was alone deep in the night, keep her thoughts safely away from sex and the hunger in her loins. Her projected career as a spokesman for the church, the one thing that had given her self-confidence and promised future fulfillment, turned to dust when in April Rev. Charles Hamlin, the national leader of their church and a man who was frequently in the media speaking for the evangelical position, paid a visit to the college. His attitude towards women in general was a revelation, and his demeaning t
reatment of her in particular made her question not just her faith in God but herself. Now more than ever she needed to talk to someone. With no one in the evangelical community capable of understanding her doubts and fears, the only person in the whole world, she now realized, who would listen to her sympathetically was her mother. Last night she had made a brief visit just to say hello to her, and her mother had invited her for supper so that they could talk about the arrangements for her wedding in two weeks. Ted was going on a fishing trip with his son for the whole day so that her mother and she would be alone for hours. If her courage didn’t fail her, there was going to be plenty of time to talk.

  The rest of the afternoon dragged on. Aunt Cora came home, and they helped her put the groceries away, after which they also helped her bake some pies. Uncle Edward returned in a good mood, the repairs to the front stairs of the church where water damage had led to punky wood having been successfully completed. Matthew and Mark were allowed to shoot baskets in the yard so that even potential nasty remarks from Matthew were safely avoided. Any spat, any sign of disharmony in the house, could make her uncle lose his temper. Still, Charlie was uneasy until Uncle Edward, after looking through the mail, went downstairs to his office to work on his sermon. It was now unlikely that anything could occur to make him change his mind and forbid her to go to her mother’s.

  Occasionally as she helped with the pies and took part in the conversations, a contrary thought would sneak into her mind and she would find herself hoping somehow that the visit would be forbidden. It made her feel foolish and ashamed of herself until after thinking about it she saw that it was just nerves and uncertainty. First she was uncertain how she was going to bring up the subject of her confused life with her mother. Then, too, the conversation itself could also become very dangerous. The apprehension she was feeling was the recognition that once the topic was broached it might lead anywhere. She wanted her life to change at the same time the thought of change terrified her. She lived under oppressive restrictions and rules at home and at college, but at least they were familiar. Did she want to have this conversation with her mother or did she need to have it? Even of that she was not sure.

  All this fear and expectation and need was safely kept bottled up, however, and she was quite sure Martha and Aunt Cora didn’t notice any of her inner agitation. Once when she stopped in front of the refrigerator and became lost in thought, Aunt Cora did ask her if something was the matter, but her explanation that she was always nervous before visiting her mother seemed to satisfy her aunt. After that she was more careful to keep her thoughts hidden away.

  Finally four o’clock arrived, and it was time to go. Reflectively Aunt Cora reminded her that she needed to be home by eight o’clock. Promising that she would, she left and walked the six blocks to where her mother lived on the other side of Main Street in a three-story apartment building incongruously in the middle of a street of single-family homes. The street was much nicer than the one she grew up on. Most of the houses had flowers and ornamental bushes in the front yard and were all neat and well maintained. Already she was starting to feel calmer.

  As she walked up the stairs, still trying to decide how she would open the conversation she needed to have, her mother opened the door and greeted her with a wide smile and a hug.

  “Heard you coming up the stairs,” she said as she enveloped her in loving arms. The hugs had started last Christmas and now were the usual practice whenever she arrived and departed. Charlie, who had hardly touched another human being since she began living with her aunt and uncle, loved them. She could feel her mother’s love as a warm, protective presence that put her instantly at ease. Along with the love she could feel came a trust and calmness that put to rest her unease. Somehow their conversation was going to happen, and it didn’t matter how she broached the subject, nor did it matter where the conversation led. Here she was loved for herself. Her sudden sense of trust and well-being was reinforced by the cheerful ambiance of her mother’s pleasant apartment. The light coming through the two living-room windows separated by a bookcase imbued the place with a golden glow, which was reinforced by the walls painted the same color, and the shadow of a tree outside swaying in the soft spring breeze danced and swayed across the red carpet.

  “Did Ted and Mike leave as early as they planned?”

  “Yes,” Tris said, her hand still lightly touching Charlie’s back, “they were driving away a little after five o’clock. By the time they get home it’s going to be dark and they’re going to be very tired being in that boat on the ocean all day with the sun beating down on them.”

  “Tired, but happy, I bet,” Charlie said. “Whose boat was it anyways?”

  “The man Ted is building an addition for. He’s so happy with Ted’s work they’ve become friends, and last week when he found out Ted loved to fish he invited him to take the fishing trip.”

  “Wow! He must do good work.” She thought of his son Mike. They’d met last Christmastime and had become friendly. She knew him well enough to get the sense he was not an outdoorsman like his father. “But what about Mike? He’s not really a fisherman, is he?”

  Tris shook her head and smiled. “No, but he does love his father. Being with Ted will be his fun. Mike likes you and thinks you’re nice, by the way.”

  She said this in a way that made Charlie blush. She thought of Mike as a brother and not in that way. “How did he do at Worcester Polytech this year?”

  “Pretty good. He got three A’s, a B and one C. The C was in English—he’s not good at that like you are.”

  “Well, Mom, are you getting excited now that the wedding is almost here?”

  “No, not really,” she said, then smiled broadly, aware that that was not the expected answer. “And there’s a reason for that. We already love each other and have been together now for almost ten months. So the wedding is just an occasion to celebrate the love we feel with those family and friends we love. Does that make sense?”

  Charlie thought of Martha’s loveless marriage and the hundred strangers who would witness it and felt strangely elated to understand her mother. “Yes, I think so. You’re saying a marriage is made with love. It isn’t a ceremony.”

  She nodded. “That’s it!

  Charlie looked at the new dining room table behind her mother. “You’ve made the place even nicer. The dining room table is beautiful. I saw it yesterday but didn’t have time to ask you about it. I remember last Christmas you said you were planning to replace the old one.”

  They’d been standing by the door, but the mention of the new table drew them towards it for a closer inspection. With her eyes shining brightly, Tris ran her hand across the table. “You should have seen it when we bought it at a barn sale. It was painted but chipped and nicked all over. Guess who finished it?”

  The pride in her voice gave away the answer. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

  “Ted taught me the techniques and our landlord let me use the garage to do the work. I must have spent forty hours all told on it, but it came out perfect. It was worth it.”

  “And you got a new dresser too?”

  “Yes, but it’s not worth seeing. It was store-bought,” she said with the pride of a craftsman.

  They went into the kitchen where Tris had water already hot for tea. As she was pouring the water, Charlie looked at the new photos on the wall. They were 8 X 10 blowups of photos of her and Ted’s two kids. The photo of her was taken last Christmas when she was excited about her future career and feeling good about herself. The distance she felt from that photo was a reminder of her mission. As Tris poured the tea, she asked, “Mom, what do you think of feminism?”

  The question seemed to take Tris by surprise. She tilted her head and her eyes narrowed momentarily. “I used to think it was a bunch of bra-burning lesbians, but my psychologist is a feminist. To her it means women should have the same rights and opportunities as men.”

  “Do you think that’s right?”

 
Her mother thought for a moment. “Yes, I think I do. It’s just basic fairness, isn’t it? When I started working at the UPS depot years ago I was doing the same work as the men but making less. It wasn’t fair. Of course they don’t do anything so blatant anymore. It’s against the law. But why do you ask?”

  “Because of something that happened last month.” Then she related the story of Rev. Hamlin’s visit to the college. It was still so vivid to her that as she related the events she experienced the same emotions she felt when they occurred.

  The minister’s visit to the college had come in early April after Easter. When it was announced that he would be coming to the college to pay a visit and give a lecture on the Christian life, the whole college was excited. Rev. Hamlin was a famous and eminent man, often the national spokesman for the evangelical cause. It was regarded as a very great honor that such a man would favor the college with his presence. For two weeks he was virtually the only thing students, professors and staff talked about. For Charlie the prospect of the eminent man’s visit was even more exciting, for the college president, Rev. Achibald Sharpe, had personally asked her to write up a report on the visit for the local media as well as the school newspaper. It would be another step along the way in the career chosen for her, and quite the most important writing assignment she had had thus far. For the first time she became truly enthusiastic about her future and even daydreamed of flights into major cities, meeting important people, and being praised for her writing. She could hardly sleep the night before Rev. Hamlin was to arrive on campus, and as she had walked to the president’s office in mid morning, she found herself dry-mouthed in anticipation.

  The first thing she had noticed when he arrived was that he didn’t look like his picture. There he was smiling; in life he had cold eyes and a grim expression that was off-putting. Something about those eyes and thin lips had reminded Charlie of Uncle Edward. Rev. Hamlin also looked like a man who would be slow to forgive his enemies despite the Lord’s Prayer and swift to find fault. His dress and appearance had suggested a worldly vanity very far from the humble gentleness of Jesus. He was attired in a very expensive suit and bright blue tie with the Christian symbol of the fish as the tie-clasp. His shiny shoes had squeaked as he walked in short, mincing steps. His hands were flawlessly white and manicured.

  These impressions had flashed through Charlie’s mind before she had heard him speak. She was ashamed of them and berated herself for judging by appearances. Coming into the large outer office at the same time Charlie had arrived were several prominent members of the faculty and two trustees. While Charlie shyly had faded into the background, Rev. Sharpe had taken it upon himself to do the introductions. She had noticed that the smile she’d seen in the photo appeared on his face as Rev. Hamlin shook hands with and said a few words to each of the local dignitaries. But when the president had introduced him to Charlie and Mrs. Hunter, his secretary, he had merely nodded curtly and not offered his hand. Charlie, about to say what an honor it was to meet him (words she had rehearsed to herself last night), had felt herself flush at his discourtesy. She had stepped back and listened to the men chatting about the need for more troops in Iraq to crush the infidel terrorists. When they all had started into the conference room across from the president’s office where Rev. Hamlin was going to address the college leaders before his afternoon speech to the student body, Charlie had followed with Mrs. Hunter, only to stop when the eminent man had looked back at her and then said to Rev. Sharpe, “Excuse me, Achibald, but this girl is not needed.” Rev. Sharpe, clearly embarrassed, had said something about her duty to write a report on his visit, which explanation was waved away. “My administrative assistant always handles these affairs. He will tape my remarks.” Then looking at Charlie and Mrs Hunter, he had said, “You girls run along.”

  The full force of his demeaning dismissal had struck Charlie like a slap on the face. She had felt her jaw drop and had to fight to keep the tears from her eyes. “Oh my,” Mrs. Hunter murmured wryly, but it was obvious she too was hurt.

  By the time she finished telling her mother about the most humiliating experience in her life, both of them were crying. Her mother’s face while she listened displayed a series of emotions, beginning with curiosity as she heard how everyone at the college was full of expectation, then a certain fearfulness when the man was described, and ending with surprise, shock, anger, and outrage in rapid succession at his boorish behavior and finally an empathy so strong she was in tears for Charlie. At one point she had reached across the table and taken Charlie’s hands in hers and unconsciously begun squeezing them harder and harder as she felt Charlie’s pain.

  A stricken silence of uncertain duration followed the narration; then Tris, speaking tremulously, said, “Oh, Charlie, that’s just awful what that man did. He’s a creep, arrogant and full of himself. I hope you realize it was more a comment on him than on you. He ought to be ashamed of himself.”

  Somehow without her being aware of how it happened, Charlie found herself standing and enveloped in her mother’s arms by the time Tris had finished speaking. For a long time she lost herself in the embrace and let all the hurt be cried out while her mother made soft cooing sounds. Emotionally she felt an enormous relief and comfort more like a little girl than a woman scorned by an arrogant man, but she could feel the love her mother was communicating as a source of strength that was far from girlish. She was not alone. She was loved. Now she knew what it meant to have a mother.

  When the tears finally stopped flowing, Tris showed that she perfectly understood the implications of what had happened. “Your career was going to be doing the exact thing that pig—excuse the expression but there is no other word for him—wouldn’t let you do. What’s going to happen?”

  “I don’t know. Dr. Sharpe was very kind to me the next day. He called me over to the president’s office and apologized.”

  “But that doesn’t change anything, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t. But what Rev. Hamlin did does change everything. What if it happens again?”

  “You wouldn’t be able to do the job, would you?” She looked into Charlie’s eyes as she gently stroked her cheek. “Charlie, tell me, has it made you start thinking about your church?”

  It did, of course, but she tried to anticipate where the question was going. She looked down, undecided. The old stupid fear was still there, making her want to be guarded. Then still feeling her mother’s eyes she raised her head. Her mother was too loving, too supporting, too motherly, to not be completely honest with.

  “It’s not just that, Mom. It really bothered me because it’s not the only time I’ve seen women treated poorly. In fact, Martha is also a victim. Next month when her wedding day comes she’ll be entering into a loveless marriage with Tom Johnson.”

  “What do you mean? How did Martha meet this man? He’s in your church, right?”

  Again Charlie hesitated, this time, though, only for a fraction of a second and only because she was slightly embarrassed. She had never told her mother the circumstances of the engagement. “She didn’t. It’s an arranged marriage.”

  “What!?”

  “Uncle Edward and Brother Johnson, the man’s father, they arranged it.”

  “I thought that just they did that in old books and movies. Couldn’t she refuse?”

  “Well, yes and no. Martha had to say yes to it, but…”

  “Did she want to marry this guy?”

  “I don’t think so. In fact, I don’t think she even likes him. He’s kinda creepy, arrogant and selfish, a real know-it-all and yet stupid.” These were unchristian remarks, but she didn’t consider that man a good Christian.

  “Then why in the world would she say yes?”

  Charlie nervously clenched her fist. “You have to know Martha. She’s a very sweet girl, very obedient, very devout. She told me she always knew her marriage would be like this. She said her true husband was Jesus, so it doesn’t matter.”

  Tris shook h
er head in disbelief. “Doesn’t matter,” she muttered to herself.

  “I know. I find it strange too.”

  Tris frowned thoughtfully, then took the teacups from the table to the sink to rinse. “How come you never told me this before?” she asked with her back turned.

  She sat down, suddenly feeling tired. “I was embarrassed, I guess. I was afraid you’d think they planned the same thing for me.”

  The teacups rinsed, Tris was leaning against the kitchen sink with her arms folded. “Will they?” She spoke anxiously.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would you agree if they did?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She unfolded her arms and began waving them for emphasis. “Oh, Charlie. Don’t ever do that. Love, human love, is the greatest gift in the world. If I’ve learned anything, that’s it.”

  “Is that what saved you from drinking?”

  “Yes and no. By stopping drinking I became capable of…even worthy of love. I was a terrible person when I drank. You know that.”

  “You were still my mom.”

  “But not a good one. But I still feel responsible for your…”

  She was going to say “situation” or “life,” Charlie could tell, which they both knew meant her life as an evangelical Christian.

  “You know, Mom, they already did something like that to me.”

  “You mean the college they sent you to. You weren’t asked where you wanted to go, were you?”

  She shook her head. “And I know why they chose the career I’m supposed to have. Brother Johnson has an air-conditioning business and advertises on TV. He was talking once about it and said that he’d found that pretty women in adds are the best way to get a lot of responses and bring in the business.”

  “So you think you’re the pretty woman in their plan. It’s true that you are pretty, but even I see in this context it’s insulting.”

  “Well, they did know I wrote well and was, you know, smart. But yes, I think they were thinking of those air conditioning ads Bother Johnson runs.

  Tris sat down and pulled the other chair close so that they could sit beside each other. She put her arm around Charlie’s shoulder. “I don’t want to interfere in your life if you don’t want me to, but let me ask: Do you believe everything Edward does?”

  That was a subject she had thought about a great deal. She knew the Bible wasn’t perfect. She knew Uncle Edward was not following the example of Jesus when in the Lord’s Prayer he instructs us to forgive our enemies. She didn’t think Jesus would be a warhawk. She knew evolution was an accurate account of reality. She knew her mother and Ted were decent, good people while her church believed they would be damned. She also had thought often of Ted’s belief that above all God wanted us to have good hearts and be decent people and believed on the whole he was right. She knew her own instincts for compassion and pity were closer to the teachings of Jesus than the hate that motivated many in her church. She believed it was unfair to force a young girl into marriage. The short answer was no. She said the word. The heavens didn’t part. The sky didn’t fall. The earth did not move.

  Her mother did not seemed surprised. In fact she said, “I didn’t think you did. Edward is no good for you, if you want my opinion. There’s no love in the man.”

  “He loves God so much, that’s why,” Charlie said, trying to be charitable.

  “You’d be happier here, though, Charlie.” She looked at her in silent appeal; then after a few moments passed, she said explicitly, “I wish you could live with Ted and me.”

  “I do too, Mom. But Uncle Edward wouldn’t like it one bit. Besides, I think he might have legal guardianship. He said something like that to me a few years ago.”

  Tris searched her memory, her finger tapping her lip and her eyes looking up. “I do remember after my bad behavior lost you, I had to sign a whole bunch of documents a month or so later. But would you really like our apartment to be your home? I know I would.”

  “Yes, I really would. It’s so much nicer here, so safe and bright and warm. At Uncle Edward’s there’s always tension. No one dares to say something that would displease him.”

  She frowned. “He’s always been a tyrant. You’re an adult now, you know. You can vote. Even if the documents said something about being twenty-one, you’re almost that age, and as I say, you’re really an adult already.”

  Charlie hesitated. Where she had been talking abstractly about the possibility of living with her mother, her mother was hinting that she could leave her uncle and live here right now. Why did she hesitate? Wasn’t that what she always wanted? She remembered the many nights as a girl when her mother found a man at a bar and left her to face the darkness alone. The sound of the downstairs front door opening would fill her with an agony of expectation; the creaking of the floor or walls when the building shifted would make her imagine all sorts of terrors. Then, alone and defenseless, ghosts and ghouls and bogeymen were real to her. Yet despite growing up with fear and hope for siblings, even when Mrs. McCade came on that awful night she still wanted to stay with her mother more than anything else in the world. To be orphaned and at the mercy of strangers was scarier than all the ghosts and goblins in her building. To never have hope of an opening door and a mother coming home closed off all continuity and sense of belonging in her life. That was the way she thought then, and she had never completely let go of desire to live with her mother like a normal girl or young woman. Now here with her mother offering that shelter from storm, that safe haven from the wrack and ruin of the world, fear and hope were still her reality, only now instead of bogeymen and doors opening it was an uncle’s stern and unyielding face she saw in her mind’s eye as she looked at her mother’s anxious face. For a moment the two wrestled for supremacy, then her courage failed her. It was too sudden. Charlie felt the panic rising and for a moment she even thought she might throw up.

  Her mother had been closely watching her eyes and saw the internal defeat. Not being willing to give up without a fight, she tried one more thing. “You could live here and go to school at USM. You could commute so that it wouldn’t even be all that expensive.”

  “I’ll think about it, Mom,” she said quietly and with downcast eyes.

  Her mother nodded grimly and in answer took her in her arms. “We have the summer,” she murmured.

  Safely in her mother’s arms, the panic passed. “I’m already going to take a journalism course at USM this summer. It could be a test. By the end of the summer when I’ll be close to twenty-one, then we could decide.”

  After that they spoke no more of escape and reunion. They had a quiet dinner of stir fried chicken and vegetables, cooking and cleaning up together and talking about pleasant things like finishing furniture and the kinds of clothes and colors that suited Charlie’s face and physique. The real possibility of making such pleasant evenings routine had passed into a future maybe.

  Only later did she realize that not once during the moment of decision or even during their conversations as they ate supper and cleaning up afterwards did she think of Jesus.

  The Kitten