There was a crease between Drew's eyebrows. "You'd better watch it, Mike. I mean, with things being rocky between you and Katy, you're ripe for getting yourself into trouble, wouldn't you say?"
Michael had told Drew—and only Drew—about the problems between himself and Katy. Anyone else in that tight little town would have been shocked to know that all was not well with the preacher and his doctor wife.
"I'm only going to pay a visit to an old friend," Michael said.
"Well, have a good time, then." Drew stood up abruptly, his soda untouched, and he slipped the sheath of petitions under his arm.
Michael looked up in surprise. "You're leaving?"
"Yeah. I forgot I have some things to do at home." His jaw was tight, and with the ferocity of a punch to the stomach, Michael remembered that Drew had indeed known Rachel Huber after all.
He stood up to touch his friend's arm. "Drew, I'm sorry. I just realized. I completely forgot about Will."
Drew shrugged away the apology. "Hey," he said. "It was a long time ago. Rachel was a very green, brand-new teacher then. I'm sure she's grown up by now. I'm not the type to hold a grudge forever."
Michael followed him to the door, silently berating himself for his insensitivity. Drew made his good-bye brief, turning his head away quickly but not before Michael saw the pain in his eyes. Drew never spoke about Will. It made it easy to forget he'd ever had a son. For the first time Michael realized that, while the past twenty years might have dulled Drew's pain, they had not killed it.
He closed the door and could hear the radio playing in Jason's room. He straightened the pile of papers on the coffee table, then walked down the hall to spend some time with his lonesome son.
–6–
The rumbling was faint at first, so faint that Helen managed to convince herself it was something other than the ominous growl of distant thunder. She sat in her library, trying to read, wishing Rachel would get home from her run to the grocery store. The store closed at ten, and it was after that now. She couldn’t be much longer.
Outside the library window the woods were suddenly, briefly illuminated, every leaf drawn in perfect detail, and Helen gasped. There were too many windows in this house. Too much glass. She knew the rules: Avoid water. Don't use the phone. And stay away from windows.
She closed her book and stood up slowly, on guard against the black curtain that often fell over her vision when she rose too quickly from a chair. Favoring her ankle, she walked out into the little hallway between the library and the living room and leaned against the wall of that small haven. No windows here. Yet she could still see the flickering white light as it ricocheted off the walls around her.
She folded her arms across her chest, feeling very foolish. A fearful old woman, that's what she was. Her body had changed on her completely in the last few weeks. It was no longer reliable. She ached when she got up in the morning, staying stiff for hours. The pain deep in her muscles was constant some days, intermittent on others, but always close enough to remind her of her frailty, her vulnerability. She could fall asleep instantly, any moment of the day, although her sleep was void of dreams, like death. She was constantly thirsty. Jumpy, too. Her body jerked to attention each time a twig snapped outside the window. Her wrist was improving, but it still throbbed from time to time, and she feared she would never again be able to play the piano, never again be well. Was this how she would spend the rest of her days?
She'd been reading about lightning. She'd never been superstitious in her life, but she'd asked Rachel to buy some potted herbs for her to grow on the kitchen windowsill: rosemary, Saint-John's-wort, opine. They would protect a house against a lightning strike, the books said. She didn’t tell Rachel why she wanted the herbs, and the girl, unable to find opine on her first try, substituted thyme. Helen sent her out again, this time to a nursery in Lancaster, fabricating some plausible reason why she needed opine. She couldn’t tell Rachel the truth about such silliness.
She jumped at the sound of the front door opening.
"I'm home!" Rachel called out.
The thunder and lightning had joined forces now, occurring in unison, and Helen could barely bring herself to leave the sanctuary of the windowless hallway and walk into the kitchen.
Rachel was already unpacking the two bags of groceries.
"You're soaking wet." Helen averted her eyes from the light show outside the window.
"Feels good." Rachel was still wearing a smile. No doubt that smile had not left her face since the phone call to Michael an hour or so earlier.
"What are you doing, still up?" Rachel asked.
"Reading." She wanted to say she would go to bed now, but her feet were frozen to the floor. She wondered how Rachel could seem so unaware of the riot of light and sound going on around them.
A sudden crack of thunder exploded above their heads, and Helen let out a cry. She stepped back against the wall, her cheeks hot with embarrassment.
Rachel had been about to put a box of cereal in the cupboard, but she stopped her hand in midair. "This storm's terrifying you, isn't it?" she asked.
Helen could only nod. There was a soft tickle of tears in her eyes.
Rachel set the package of cereal on the counter. "Let's go to my room," she said. "We can close the blinds in there and get cozy." She stepped forward and put a gentle arm around Helen's shoulders, turning her toward the door. Helen forced her legs to move, feeling like a small child in the protection of someone far stronger, far braver.
Once in the guest room, she sat down on the bed while Rachel closed the blinds and turned on the night-table lamp.
"I feel so foolish," Helen said. "I used to adore sitting out a storm. The wilder, the better."
"Anyone who's been struck by lightning would be crazy if they didn't have a healthy fear of storms, Gram."
"I suppose." She felt far better already. The drawn blinds barely let in the flashes of light from outside, and the sound of the thunder was beginning to recede. Her eyes lit on a photograph propped up against the books in one of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases. "Is that…?" She pointed to the picture, and Rachel followed her gaze.
"Oh." Rachel picked up the photograph and sat down next to Helen on the bed, holding out the picture for her inspection. Sure enough, it was the old picture of her jumping into the swirling Delaware River. "I meant to ask you about this," Rachel said. "When I was looking through the cartons in the attic, I accidentally opened one of yours first and found this picture. Is this you?"
For a moment, Helen couldn't answer. Rachel had been in her boxes? How much had she seen?
"Yes," she said, struggling to give the picture her full attention. "It was taken on my eighteenth birthday. We had a picnic at a park near our house in Trenton, my sister Stella and a few girlfriends and myself. And it was hot. So I decided to cool off."
Rachel laughed. "Fully dressed?"
"I had a wild streak in those days. I wasn't afraid of much." She'd had no sense of limitation in her youth and no fear of risk. At the age of twelve she'd driven a friend's car down the steep, icy hill in their Trenton neighborhood; at fifteen she'd beaten a neighbor boy swimming across a narrow point in the river. And as often as she could get away with it, she'd sneak into New York against her parents' wishes and finagle her way into Carnegie Hall, through back entrances accidentally left open or by telling tall tales to the ushers, in order to hear her favorite musicians perform.
Rachel took the picture from her hands and rested it on her own knees, studying it closely. "I know so little about you," she said quietly. "I didn't even know you'd lived in New Jersey. What was your family like?"
Helen leaned back against the wall. "My father—your great-grandfather—fancied himself a writer," she said. "He was a bright man, but brilliance doesn't put food on the table, unfortunately. He wrote a great deal, primarily philosophizing about the politics of the time. Very dense reading. But he never sold a thing. I don't think he cared, though. He just had to get it all
down." She looked at her granddaughter. "He was crippled, you know."
"No, I didn't know that."
Helen nodded. "His legs were mangled in an accident when he was a boy. So there wasn't much he could do in the way of work. My mother played the cello and the piano. She came from money, but her family disowned her when she took up with my father. She cleaned houses. That was how we got by."
Rachel was leaning forward, listening intently.
"Our dinner-table conversations centered around politics and music. Mother taught me to play the piano. I adored it and longed to study music myself, but I could read the writing on the wall. My mother's arthritis was bad and getting worse by the day, my father couldn't work, and I was the oldest of four children. Once I got out of school, I knew I was going to have to find a job to support my family."
"So how did you ever meet Grandpa?"
"I'm getting to that," Helen said. "I found a job in New York doing secretarial work in the school of music at Columbia University. I was determined to be as close to music as possible. They gave me a room on campus, and I sent the little pay I made home to my family."
"And Grandpa taught at Columbia, right?"
"That's right. He'd studied composition in Paris, and I was fascinated by him and tormented him with questions." She recalled following him around campus, making a nuisance of herself. Peter Huber had had many admirers. His good looks had been arresting and elegant, but it had not been not his physical attributes that had attracted her. She'd been drawn to his talent, to his wealth of knowledge about composition. He'd finally invited her to have dinner with him. They'd talked through the entire meal, barely touching their food, and she'd felt a deep and enduring friendship taking root.
"He took an interest in me," she continued. "Not a romantic interest, but he could see how much I loved music, how keen I was on learning, and he thought I should have that chance. And so—" Helen thought carefully about what she would say next. "Your grandpa's family was quite well off."
Rachel nodded.
"And so he offered to put me through school."
"He did? I had no idea."
"Well, I couldn't take him up on the offer because of my family's needs, so Peter took care of them as well."
Rachel frowned. "You mean, he—"
"He sent money to my family every month. He bought my father braces for his legs and saw to it that he had the best care available. He made sure my mother didn't have to work and could stay home and take care of the family."
"Why?" Rachel asked. "Why would he do all of that?"
"Because he was the world's most generous and kindhearted man." Helen's lower lip trembled and she felt her eyes fill with tears.
"He must have loved you very much." Rachel rested her hand on Helen's arm.
"He thought I had talent," Helen said. "That I was worth the investment. Anyhow, we were married a year or so after that."
"Was he much older than you?"
"I was nineteen, he was twenty-seven. He was only beginning to make a name for himself. He was thoroughly wrapped up in music, as I longed to be, and we also shared a commitment to social issues, which had been ingrained in me from my father."
"I'd forgotten about that." Rachel set the photograph on the night table. "What year did he win the Nobel Peace Prize?"
"It was in '63. The only accolade he ever showed up to accept."
Rachel smiled.
"He was not too popular with the government back in the fifties, though. 'An inconvenient artist,' they called him. They balked at giving him a passport because they thought he was affiliated with Communist organizations." Helen smiled sadly. That had been a difficult period, in many ways. She had been suffering from the deepest depression of her life. She wondered if Rachel had any memory of the sad, quiet, distractible grandmother she'd been during the girl's early years.
"Anyhow," she continued. "Peter was very fortunate. His fame gave him the opportunity to have some political influence, and that was of tremendous importance to him."
"I've been prowling through his books." Rachel gestured toward the bookshelves. "Every one of them is either about music or politics. Except for the puzzle books."
Helen laughed. "Too bad he hated the military. He would have been an excellent cryptographer. He certainly loved his puzzles."
"So what about you, Gram?" Rachel asked softly. "Did you ever get to finish school?"
"No. I planned to, but I got pregnant with your father and that took care of that."
"Oh, but it sounded as though you really wanted to learn. You had promise."
"Well, I did continue to learn, though not in quite so formal a fashion. Peter taught me all he knew about music and composition. But we're talking about the 1930s, Rachel. There was little encouragement for women to be composers in those days, and tremendous pressure to be good mothers. So that's what I set out to be. A good mother."
Rachel shook her head. "Doesn't seem fair," she said. Then she scooted to the far side of the bed, leaning back against the wall to face her. "When did you and Grandpa move down here?"
"Well, Peter grew up here, you know that, don't you?"
Rachel nodded.
"At one time, his family owned a major part of the land around the town. They lost much of it during the depression. Their family home was over by the Jensen farm. Peter and I were living in New York, but we visited his family quite often. Even though I preferred the city at that time, I fell in love with this area down here, and of course Peter always had a soft spot in his heart for it. He needed that mixture—the stimulation of the city and peacefulness of the country. So in '33, his parents gave us this ten-acre plot, and we built this little abode on it."
"'Thirty-three!" Rachel exclaimed. "I never realized this house was that old. It seems so contemporary."
"Well, it's been remodeled a few times over the years, but back then people around here thought it was a bit out of place. They just chalked it up to the fact that Peter was an artist. An eccentric. He's the one who designed it, putting in all the glass. I've always loved the windows, how they bring the woods right into the house." She looked ruefully toward the closed blinds. "I'm not so thrilled with them anymore in the middle of a thunderstorm, though." The thunder was nothing more than a distant grumble now, and she could smile about it, shudder in mock seriousness. She sighed. "I missed living in the city," she said. "I missed the concerts and plays and museums and excitement. But I was a wife and mother. It was time to give up my wild streak."
"You gave up a lot for Grandpa," Rachel said, and there was a touch of indignation in her voice. "Your education. Your own career."
Helen looked down at her hands. For a moment she couldn't speak. "You and I are from different generations, Rachel," she said finally. "It makes it hard for us to understand each other, I guess. I would have given up anything for Peter. I could never have paid him back for all he did for me." With another sigh, she gripped the bedpost and got to her feet. The black curtain threatened her vision but lifted quickly. She smiled at her granddaughter. "Thank you for being so caring tonight."
Rachel looked up at her from the bed. "You're welcome. I enjoyed our talk. And I'm sorry if what I just said upset you."
Helen whisked away the apology with the sweep of a hand. Then she motioned toward the picture on the night table. "May I?" she asked.
"Of course."
* * *
Once in her own room, Helen felt very tired. It had been a long night, with too wild a mix of emotions. Fear, warmth, comfort, regret.
She put on her nightgown, crawled under the covers, and turned off the night-table lamp. In the darkness, Rachel's words came back to her.
You gave up a lot for Grandpa.
Helen reached up to turn on the light again. She lifted the photograph from the night table and examined it closely. She could see the excitement in the young woman's face, the love of life.
Rachel didn’t know a fraction of what she had given up.
–7–
/>
Rachel parked her car on Water Street and walked toward the center of town, past the Starr and Lieber Bank on the corner, past the old gingerbread-trimmed library, which looked as though it could use some new paint. She was beginning to perspire in her long-sleeved shirt and white pants. She'd originally dressed in shorts but changed her mind after seeing herself in the full-length mirror. Too much flesh for a meeting with a Mennonite minister.
She stopped in front of the Mennonite church. It was larger than she remembered it and very white and plain against the green backdrop of the woods. The narrow arched windows were clear-paned, and a tall steeple pierced the summer sky. A perfect reflection of the church was mirrored in the still water of Huber Pond. Rachel shook her head with a smile, still unable to grasp Michael's connection to the building.
She shifted her gaze to the small brick chapel next to the Mennonite church. United Church of Christ, according to the sign on the front lawn. Across the street, her old Lutheran church was low and broad, its gray flagstone and red door pretty and welcoming. The last time she'd been in that church had been for her wedding.
There were twenty churches in Reflection. The statistic from her childhood slipped into her mind as she walked past the pond toward the row of shops along Main Street. Twenty churches, three banks, three schools, and one exceptional bakery.
Halper's Bakery was still there, right in front of her. She stepped through the door, wondering if she would find the brownies of her childhood inside the old glass cases. Sure enough, they were there, looking exactly as they had when she was a teenager. She'd often stop here after school to buy brownies for the boys and herself. They were flat, dense, and dark brown, topped with a thick slab of chocolate icing. Pure decadence.
Reflection Page 7
