When Mockingbirds Sing (9781401688233)

by Coffey, Billy

  Tom took a breath and tried to calm down. He didn’t think Leah and Allie could hear them from so far a distance, but he didn’t want to test that theory. And he was tired. In the end, that’s what everything came down to, the reason for every problem that tangled his life—the simple weariness of trying to fix things that were forever broken.

  “We moved here for a new start,” he said.

  “No, for a new life. Because our old one was broken. Because you spent so much time trying to keep your patients from losing themselves that you lost yourself. I was losing you. And you made me a promise that it wouldn’t happen again.”

  Tom left the window and sat on the bed. He took Ellen’s hand and kissed it. Her skin was smooth and smelled of lavender. Blond hair swept down over her shoulders to the neckline of her T-shirt. And those eyes.

  “You won’t lose me,” he said.

  “Then talk to me. Tell me who she is.”

  He let go of Ellen’s hand and asked, “Who who is?”

  “Saturday with Reggie? Today with me? I thought the only thing they had in common was Leah. But there was something else, Tom. Both of those days were days after you worked. So tell me, who is she? Or is it a man this time?”

  “Yesterday was a two-bag day,” he said. A two-bag day and Meagan Gladwell, that woman with the faith of a child and the good sense of a rock. Who loved her God so much that she didn’t care if she got the hell beaten out of her on a daily basis. Or if her unborn child did too. Tom took Ellen’s hand again, squeezed it, looked at her (those eyes) and wanted to speak, wanted to tell her everything, because then she would know and she would understand. He said, “You know that’s all I can say about that.”

  “No,” she said. “Not this time, Tom. I want to know.”

  “Why? Why do you want to know, Ellen?” The words came out with heat behind them, shooting them forward too fast for Tom to think. “Do you really want me to tell you why we moved here? You need me to remind you?”

  She laughed. It was a short sound, light on the ends but heavy in the middle—the chuckle you hear when laughter is expected for something not funny at all. “No, Tom, I don’t need you to remind me. You remind me every . . . single . . . day. But go ahead. Tell me. Get it out already, because I’m so tired of this.”

  “I confided in you,” he yelled, and at that moment Tom Norcross didn’t care who heard. “Lilly was in trouble. She was hurting. She was on so many drugs that she wanted to kill herself, Ellen. I just needed someone to talk to, and I wanted to talk to you. And what did you do when I did, Ellen?”

  Tom waited, would say nothing more until Ellen answered, because he wanted to hear her say it, needed for her to confess. That she already had didn’t matter, not then and maybe not ever.

  “I didn’t know it was Lilly,” she said.

  It wasn’t a confession, but it was near enough. And Ellen was right, she hadn’t known the drug-addicted suicidal woman who’d sat on Tom’s office sofa three days a week had been Lilly Wagoner, one of Stanley’s most prominent citizens. He had only given Ellen generalities, nothing more, but when they’d attended one of the Wagoners’ famous weekend soirees and Ellen had found herself with Lilly at her left hand and a bottle of wine at her right, those generalities became tinder. Lilly Wagoner’s insatiable desire for gossip and Ellen’s insatiable need for acceptance? That was all it took.

  Let me tell you about this woman Tom is seeing, she’d said. Poor woman’s so hopped up on drugs that she swears she’s going to hang herself. She’s driving Tom absolutely crazy. Could you imagine?

  It had been chance, nothing more. But it had been enough for Lilly to threaten Tom’s license and enough for Tom to widen that wall between his family and his work—widen it so that no one could ever get in again.

  “It doesn’t matter that you didn’t know,” he said. His voice was still raised, but it had lost its edge. “That’s what I need you to see, Ellen.”

  “You think I don’t? I do, Tom. I do. And what I need you to see is that you spend most of your time telling people to give someone else another chance, but you won’t give that chance to me.”

  Tom had no answer to that.

  “Fine,” she said, and the way she said it made him feel as if it truly might be fine this time. “Don’t tell me who it is this time. Maybe that’s what I deserve. But there’s something else. Something about this . . . person . . . that’s spilling out on me and Leah. I might not have a right to know about your patients, but I have a right to know about this because it’s affecting our family.”

  She had a point. Tom looked out the window to the hill. Leah and Allie had crawled out to wall up their secret place with pine needles.

  “It’s Leah,” he said. “The way she’s been acting since the party. It concerns me. A lot.”

  “I get that. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t concern me too. But, Tom, she has a friend now. She talks to people. Okay, maybe not a lot, but more than she ever has. The only other person she’d ever be around besides us was Mabel, for crying out loud.”

  “She talked to Mabel because Mabel wasn’t a threat.”

  “Exactly. We’ve been beating our brains trying to come up with a way to get her out of her shell, and she’s finally doing it on her own. That concerns you?”

  “No, it’s the suddenness that concerns me. This sort of thing takes time in a person, Ellen. It’s small steps. With Leah, it’s like someone flipped a switch.”

  “Maybe someone did, Tom. Or something.”

  Here we go, he thought. Tom didn’t think they could talk for long without getting to the heart of the matter, which was part of the reason he’d kept his distance in the hours since Ellen and the girls had returned home. There was no getting around it now. But Ellen was right. Their options were either to talk or to let things slide back into the hell that had taken them two months and a new home to get out of.

  “You mean this imaginary friend she has?”

  “What if he’s not imaginary?” Ellen didn’t look at him. Tom thought she was thinking much the same as he—Here we go. “What if he’s real?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Her paintings, Tom. They’re not what a little girl does. They’re not even what most adults do. And then there’s Barney and his numbers.”

  “Barney’s good fortune had nothing to do with Leah,” Tom said. “You said that yourself. I’ll give you that something’s happened to her, but you saw that painting. There weren’t any numbers there.”

  “But there are in the new one.”

  “Yes, Ellen, there are. And that’s why I didn’t want you and the girls taking it down there. What do you think is going to happen when everyone gets a look at that painting? How many people in this town are going to go right out and buy themselves a ticket, thinking they’re going to end up like good old Barney? And what’s going to happen when those numbers don’t pan out? How are people going to treat her then?”

  Ellen looked down at her hand, and Tom thought she knew exactly how people would treat Leah. She hadn’t thought of that. She’d been so caught up in possibilities—however far-fetched—that she’d been blinded to the reality in front of her.

  “Our daughter sees imaginary people,” he said. “You said that was a common thing. But even if it is, she’s nine. Doesn’t that seem a little too old for that sort of thing to happen all of a sudden? That’s what’s been bothering me. That this rainbow man, this thing in her head, is a crutch because Leah’s given up trying to walk on her own. That’s why I reacted the way I did this morning. And as for Reggie, I just think a notion of God is another crutch. Maybe a worse one.” Tom took Ellen’s hand and spoke low and slow to signify the fuzzy line he was about to cross. “It’s one that I’ve seen for a long while now at work, including Friday and yesterday.”

  Ellen nodded. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. She smiled a thank-you.

  “I don’t want my daughter limping through this life, Ellen. I want her to stand tall and
big and make her own way. You’ve always been able to see the bright side of things. You’re so quick to believe and so slow to doubt. I’m just the opposite. And I think that’s fine, because it helps both of us see another side of life that might stay hidden. But I just want us to be on the same page with this, for Leah’s sake.”

  “Okay,” Ellen said. When she nodded, tears spilled out of her eyes. “But, Tom, you go looking for monsters in every corner. That’s your job. Maybe in this case there aren’t any. I want you to at least consider that. Maybe there’s just some strange beauty here. If there is, I want you to be a part of it. Barney wants us to bring the girls over tonight. He says he has something special for them. Please come. For me, and for Leah.”

  Tom smiled and said, “Okay.”

  He wiped the tears from her cheek and let his hand linger there against lavender skin. Ellen took his hand in her own and kissed it, kissed him.

  As Leah and Allie spoke of Higher Things beneath the pines, Tom and Ellen Norcross offered themselves to one another. It was just like those Sunday mornings long ago.

  4

  Barney could barely summon the energy to turn the sign in the window from AHOY, OPEN! to BLIMEY, CLOSED. He hadn’t put in a full day of work in twenty years, and not even during the glory days had there been a day so full that the door remained open past dark. Blessing upon blessing, Barney thought. His day had come, and it was about time.

  But of course all blessings carried with them a bit of cleanup in the end. Barney had no idea just how many people had traveled in and out of the Treasure Chest over the past twelve hours. Scraps of paper littered the floor. Lincoln Logs were mixed in with the building blocks. Signs had been knocked down and trampled upon. An errant knee had cracked the side of one of the dollhouses. Several of the smaller items in stock—toy cars and trucks mostly—were missing despite Mary’s assurance that she’d sold none. Barney wondered what else had been stolen in all the busyness, and he wondered how much of that pilfering had been done by people who weren’t from Away.

  Mary had volunteered to stay over and straighten up, but Barney had sent her home with a hug, a word of thanks, and a request to remind Allie to stop by later. He would clean up, he said, and it would be a pleasure. He swept the floor and righted what his energy would allow. The rest would have to wait until tomorrow, which promised to be just as busy. Blessing upon blessing. Mabel sat in her wheelchair by the cash register. The day had been even harder on her than it had him. Her head was bent down and to the right so that her chin touched near her armpit. She’d been like that since Mary left. One of the pins holding back her silky hair had loosened, spilling a strand over her ear and into her eyes. Barney resisted the urge to both fix it and make sure Mabel could wake. She needed the rest.

  Doc March would come calling in a while to check on her cough and prescribe something for the fever. Those pills would be paid for this time. Barney patted the chest pocket of his overalls and heard the crinkle of his ticket. Yessir, he’d pay for them. He’d pay for them and maybe buy the whole dad-gummed pharmacy while he was at it. But in the meantime, he’d carry Mabel up the stairs and boil some Ramen noodles for supper.

  Barney was about to wheel her to the steps when he remembered the cash register. It wasn’t that he needed the money (another pat and crinkle reminded him of that), but he thought it proper to empty the drawer of its cash and checks anyway, if only because it would be full again tomorrow.

  He cranked the lever and winced as the bell rang and the drawer slid open. Thankfully, Mabel continued her rest. Barney looked twice to make sure what he was seeing was real. He made one quick count of the money and then a slower one, careful to make sure that in all the rush Mary hadn’t accidentally slipped a few hundreds and fifties in with the ones.

  No. She hadn’t.

  The drawer held thirty-five dollars in cash and a little over seven in change. In the slot where the hundreds and fifties should have been, there was only a thick stack of white slips of paper.

  In his two days of being the most blessed man in Mattingly (a fact Barney reminded himself that Leah said would carry on, he and Mabel would be fine now, fine like Job, who got blessed even more in the latter of his days than he’d been in the former), that was the first moment when Barney Moore considered that something was wrong. That perhaps Reggie had been right. He pulled the slips from the drawer and laid them out onto the counter.

  He counted one hundred and fourteen of them.

  “No, I don’t believe it. That can’t be. There’s gotta be something else.”

  He said that to himself, to the God of Blessing, to Mabel. None of them answered. Barney’s words echoed through the empty store, only to return to a hollow place deep inside himself. The outline of the mockingbird on Leah’s painting reached through the page, as if its eye had been turned inward to Barney rather than outward down Second Street.

  “No matter.” He nodded his head to convince himself and found it helped take the sting out of the lie. “Ain’t no matter at all, Mabel. Reckon I can’t blame ’em, it bein’ so close to the news conference an’ all. It’ll be okay. ’Sides, it ain’t like we need the business anymore. Maybe I’ll just retire for real this time. Do it on my own accord instead of havin’ it forced on me. We gonna live in style now, Mabel. We can find us a vacation place down Carolina way along the shore an’ finally get you to the ocean. That sound good to you?”

  Mabel didn’t say.

  Barney stacked the slips and left them on the counter, leaving the money in the drawer. He walked to Mabel, disengaged the brake on her chair, and guided her to the steps. One of the wheels rolled over a missed Lincoln Log, lolling her head forward. Barney stopped and walked around to her.

  “Sorry about that, Mabel,” he said. He caught a whiff of rotten air and wondered how long she’d been that way. “Don’t you worry about that either. I’ll get you cleaned up proper once we’re upstairs. Okay, then?”

  Barney smiled. Mabel did not.

  “Mabel? Ready to go upstairs?”

  He touched her on the shoulder and shook.

  “Mabel, you with me?”

  Mabel did not flutter her eyes. She did not speak an ahh or eck, did not play the organ in her thoughts. She did not say I love you.

  “Don’t fright me, now,” Barney said. He tried to chuckle, hoping that would chase away the fear that had crept upon him. “These old bones can’t take much more excitement for one day. Come on now, Mabel.”

  He shook her again. Then he reached out two shaking fingers and felt her neck for a pulse. Felt harder. He had a sudden urge to both scream and loosen his bladder.

  Barney Moore called out for the God of Blessing, and the God of Cruelty answered. He ran for the phone in his shop. The only sounds were his lament and the hollow crinkle of the ticket in his pocket.

  5

  For the second time in as many days, Reggie ignored the BLIMEY, CLOSED sign in the Treasure Chest’s window. He’d brought along the spare key Barney had given him after Mabel’s stroke but knew it wouldn’t be needed. Barney likely hadn’t locked his doors in years. Why should he? To most, there was nothing inside worth taking.

  The door swung open with a push of his hand. Reggie paid no notice to the painted mockingbird that questioned him. As troubling as the events earlier that day had been, they paled to what was happening now. The town, the “magic,” shrank against the sudden reminder of life’s brittleness. Let the little girl paint all she wants. Let her say anything she wants. Because in the end, Barney Moore hadn’t called Leah Norcross or the Virginia Lottery or some imaginary friend, he had called his pastor. He had called his pastor even before dialing 911.

  The lamps were on, illuminating a clear path through the cluttered store. Mabel’s wheelchair sat askance by the staircase like an empty figure robbed of its soul. Reggie walked past it without looking. He took the stairs two at a time to the apartment above—the knee was better now, though it was ringed by a deep purple bruise—and gathered wha
t clothes he could find into a suitcase. A part of him whispered that he need not bother. But this was what his old friend had asked, and this was what Reggie would do. It was an act of faith. Reggie was trying to live the Word.

  He was halfway down the stairs when headlights flooded the windows. An engine stopped. Four doors closed. Reggie opened the wooden door of the Treasure Chest to order the wolves away and instead saw Tom Norcross standing in front of him. His knuckles were pulled back, ready to knock.

  “Reverend?” he asked. He looked at the suitcase in Reggie’s hand. “What’s going on?”

  Ellen stood behind him with Allie and Leah. Allie offered a “Hey there, Preacher Goggins” that Reggie couldn’t bring himself to return. Leah’s head cocked to the side. She reached for Allie’s hand.

  “Mabel’s at the hospital,” Reggie said. “I’m afraid she’s not well.”

  “Oh no,” Ellen said.

  “Barney called to ask if I’d run over here and pick up a few changes of clothes before I head over there. He needs me.”

  Tom asked, “Is there anything we can do?”

  “I don’t think so, but I appreciate that, Tom. I really do. I should get over there.”

  Reggie stepped through the doorway as Tom stepped aside. He was almost to the car when Leah said, “Wuh-we’re cuh-coming too.”

  Tom looked at her. “No, Leah. I think we should just go home and wait. Barney will call as soon as he knows something. Or the reverend. You’ll call, won’t you, Reggie?”

  “I will,” he said, thankful that Leah’s father had said what he did. It meant Reggie did not have to say it himself. A hospital was no place for a little girl. Besides, Barney had called him. “I promise you, Leah. I’ll call as soon as I talk to the doctor.”

  “Nuh-no,” Leah said. “We huh-have to cuh-come, Ruh-Reverend.” She tugged at Tom’s arm and pulled him down to her eyes. “We h-have to guh-go, Puh-Pops.”