The whole lot of them criticized Jane as if no one else in the meeting hall had ever gone astray or done anything wrong. How easy it can be to forget your own mistakes when you’re busy pointing a finger at someone else. Sarah stood by, powerless, as she watched her mother accused, tried, found guilty, and rejected before the entire town.
“How do I know this information for sure, Mr. Gregg?” the chairman asked.
The instructor gave a righteous chuckle. “If you take a close look, it is becoming quite evident and more so as each day goes by.”
Mr. Gregg’s voice grew shrill as he recounted the story. The girl had risen from her seat, he said, and he couldn’t help but wonder at her bulging silhouette as she’d worked the pencil sharpener. Just as he’d managed to convince himself this was no business of his—he must be imagining things, she’d dropped her pencil. As she stooped to retrieve it, her blouse hiked above the waist-band of her skirt. Before she could tug it down again, Mr. Gregg had seen the safety pin holding her skirt closed. The skirt had a button—he’d noted that too—so it wasn’t a case of laziness with needle and thread. The garment couldn’t stretch much farther. Its seams were ready to pop. The waistband alone was a good inch-and-a-half, two inches too small. Jane Cattalo was pregnant as all get out, and doing a masterful job of hiding it. And only three months before graduation to boot!
At the back of the room, Sarah gripped Annie’s hand. Sarah whispered, “Did you know the truth about Mama before this announcement?”
“I’d been wondering,” Annie said. “You know how it is when you have children. A mother sometimes just senses things. I think I suspected, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself.”
“I can’t believe they just… attacked her this way, Annie.”
“I was as shocked as everyone else to have it brought to light in such a public way.”
“It must have been awful. For both of you.”
“I didn’t want to think she would hide something so important from me.”
Sarah asked, “Even then, she was cutting people out of her life, wasn’t she?”
“I did everything to let her know that I’d be there to help, that even though she’d made a mistake, it didn’t change the way I felt about her,” Annie admitted. “But Jane’s disappointment, shame, and bitterness prevented her from being comforted in any way.”
“Oh, Annie.”
In the boardroom, the tension had grown thick. “Well, I believe we have some decisions to make, then, don’t we?” asked the chairman. Board members leaned across each other’s elbows and exchanged opinions. One by one they came up nodding, and the consensus was taken.
If Sarah had heard the story once from her mother, she’d heard it dozens of times. Stripped of her title as drum majorette. No longer allowed to enter the 4-H competition with her handiwork. No longer able to stand onstage and sing in South Pacific because “What sort of message would that convey?” No matter how hard she’d tried, Jane couldn’t hide a baby coming. When her belly began to swell, they’d made her drop out of everything.
Who was the father of the baby? Neither the school superintendent nor the rows of concerned parents nor the teachers thought it important to name him. Who had done this to her? No one thought to ask.
Although, of course, some names would get tossed about. There would be speculation. Rumors. The students would talk. But eventually some new tidbit, some other scandal would come along, some other girl’s reputation to defame, and the gossip would fade away. And Jane Cattalo would never tell.
Chapter Fifteen
Plenty of youngsters visited the friendly confines of Wrigley Field, scrambling over tiers of bench seats, shoving and climbing to find the best view of the ballpark, and Wingtip didn’t pay much attention to any of them. But this one blond kid with the claw, who kept jerking his dad’s sleeve and peering in every direction, who kept his little hand flat against the metal bench in spite of guys five times his size trying to convince him otherwise, well, Wingtip could spot a courageous young soul when he saw one.
Wingtip honored God. He’d served in the ranks and would be serving for all of eternity. The Heavenly Father had different assignments for each of his servants, and when Wingtip knew his he didn’t hesitate. He marched forward like a revolutionary soldier ready to go anywhere, anytime, and do anything the Father asked of him.
The Father had given him the address in a brisk, no-nonsense matter: 1060 West Addison Street, Chicago, Illinois. “The corner of Clark and Addison,” he’d added.
“Will I know it when I see it?”
“Oh,” God had assured him. “You will.”
And when Wingtip found himself at the entrance to Wrigley, he couldn’t believe what God had done! Here again was proof that the Father took a deep desire and, with it laid before him as an offering, used it to fulfill his good plan. Astonishing! Astounding! The Master and Lord over all creation remembered how much Wingtip had loved the Cubs and baseball in general and had chosen him to defend, protect, and watch over the Cubbies! That day, as Wingtip had shored up his shoulders and stepped through the cement portico, he felt awed God had trusted him with such a weighty responsibility.
Not every lineup was granted a team angel. Ah, but the Cubs! The Lovable Losers. The team with the long-suffering fans. It had been a long, long, long time since anything good had happened for them. Every time they made a run at the pennant, these guys couldn’t quite make it happen. They gave it all they had to give, carrying all the past failures and all the past successes and the expectations of four generations to the ballpark; they were just a bunch of kids trying to take it one game at a time. They hadn’t won a series for a hundred years.
Which could be quite a challenge for a member of the heavenly realm, if you stopped to think about it.
Not until Wingtip had noticed Mitchell in the bleachers, not until that boy’s innocent hope had tugged his heart harder than the rope tugged his arm when he strung up the flags, did Wing-tip start to think that, perhaps, the Heavenly Father might be using him for something more as well.
Wingtip had braced his elbow on the ledge and peered over the crowd, doing his best to keep Mitchell in view. Wingtip was so intrigued with him that if someone hadn’t hollered, “Top game! National League! Two runs in the seventh!” he might have missed posting the score altogether. Tenderness for this child chose Wingtip instead of the other way around. As he knelt for conversation with the Heavenly Father that night, Wingtip said, “Well, Lord. I guess you expect me to do something about that kid.”
“Ah.” The Father hadn’t seemed surprised in the least. “So you noticed Mitchell Harper.”
“I did. And I think he noticed me too.”
“Good job at that.”
“Thank you.”
“I want you to take care of him, Wingtip.”
“I will.”
“More than that, I want you to care for Mitchell’s family.”
“You know, Lord, I am always ready to do whatever you want me to do.”
“Yes, but this job might be more of a challenge than the Cubs.”
“Nothing could be more of a challenge than that, Lord.”
Which evoked a hearty laugh from the Heavenly Father, the Creator of heaven and earth, the Creator of laughter, the Creator of humor itself. After which he said, “Oh, I don’t know about that.” Even now, Wingtip could still remember how the Heavenly Father had smiled.
“I don’t want to see anything else. Please,” Sarah begged. The glaring lights of the meeting hall faded and in its place appeared a small, dark, melancholy house. How they traveled so quickly from the boardroom so jammed with people to this other place so forlorn and empty, Sarah had no idea. “I feel like I’m in a rendition of The Christmas Carol,” she said.
Wingtip shrugged. “Hey, it worked for Charles Dickens, didn’t it?” Which couldn’t help but endear Wingtip to Sarah even more. It felt so nice that God and his angels had a sense of humor.
The angel went to the
door and opened it. The door hinges creaked as if they hadn’t been oiled in years. Wingtip stood aside with his hand on the knob and gestured for Sarah and Annie to enter.
Inside the front room, an older Jane twisted sideways to inspect her waistline in a cloudy mirror. She scrutinized the belt around her middle and frowned with distaste. She stood taller, sucked in her stomach, jutted her bosom forward, and, yanking with the same single-mindedness as someone tightening a saddle around a horse’s girth, successfully cinched the belt one notch tighter. She smoothed the front of her dress with both hands, turned sideways to examine her midriff in the mirror again, and raised her chin higher.
A child, a little girl with dark curly hair and hazel eyes, no more than six years old, came bounding in with a fistful of dandelions, some with dirt still clinging to the roots. “I picked you a bouquet, Mama,” came the child’s voice, innocent as a chirping sparrow.
Sarah gasped as realization flooded her. With one arm, Annie drew her close, holding her steady. “It’s me.”
“Don’t touch!” Jane swatted the child away and did a little dance step to keep from brushing against those filthy little hands. “Take those right back outside where you got them. You’ll get my dress all dirty.”
“That’s me,” Sarah said again, as if to convince herself as much as anyone.
“For heaven’s sake, Sarah, they’re just dandelions. Go wash up and let’s get out of here.”
“Dandy lions,” the little girl repeated. “They’re so pretty, Mama. I could get a jar for them.”
But Jane was busy gathering up her car keys and looping her purse over her arm. “Pitch those nasty things out and get in the car. I’d get to work on time if I didn’t have to drop you by the babysitter’s. I swear, Sarah, you’re so much trouble.”
And because a girl believes what she hears about herself, because a child at that age takes her mother’s messages into her heart as truth, the little girl stood still and thought, Iam. I’m certainly a lot of trouble.
“You’ll be at the babysitter’s late tonight.” Jane checked her reflection in the mirror. With her pinkie fingernail, she scratched a speck of lipstick from the corner of her mouth. “I have a date.”
This was exciting news. The little girl bounced with excitement. “Is he taking you out on the town, Mama?” She touched her mother’s skirt, loved the smell of her, loved the way her hair caught the light in colors of September. “Are you going someplace special? Are you wearing a fancy dress?”
Jane stepped away from the child’s hands once more. “No. None of that. I’m cooking him a nice dinner at our house.”
“Our house?”
“Yes.”
This took some consideration. “If it’s at our house, why do I have to stay at the babysitter’s? Why can’t I come too?”
“You? Come too? Of course you can’t. Then it wouldn’t be a date. Besides, no guy would be interested in me if he knew about you.”
And the little girl thought, Mama would be better off without me.
“Now, hurry up and get in the car. When we get to the sitter’s, you have to hop on out and march right on up to the front door by yourself because I can’t have you holding me up.”
As the child meandered her way down the walk with her head hanging and her fists rammed so hard inside her skirt pockets that she’d probably rip the seams, purposefully scuffing the toes of her Buster Brown shoes against the sidewalk (“What did you do?” her mama would shout, but it didn’t matter—she didn’t care), it was the second time that grown-up Sarah wrenched herself away from her grandmother’s arm and tried to follow. The child’s knobby elbows jutted sideways, her arms thin as kindling sticks.
“Can’t I do something to make her hear me, Annie? I’ve got so many things I need to say.”
“If she could hear you, what would you say to her?”
“That she isn’t responsible for how unhappy her mother feels. That it isn’t fair. She’s just a little girl.”
Sarah stared at her unlikely angel, who had changed numbers in Wrigley by hand ever since the scoreboard had been built. He’d been a huge Cubs fan all the way back to 1908 when they still played at West Side Grounds, the last time Chicago took the series. A hundred years and counting and he’d seen every sacrifice fly, every tag at the plate, every grand slam. And once he’d gotten appointed to the job at Wrigley, he’d accounted on that board for every run batted in since.
“Don’t you see?” he asked. “That’s what Annie was always praying for—that you would know it wasn’t your fault. That little girl is listening, only she’s inside your grown-up body now. You can still tell her what God the Father would like her to hear, that she is valuable and loved. You can still tell her that she isn’t responsible for her mother’s misery and that she was created in her mother’s womb by the hand of God, who created her carefully and who made her very special.”
As they watched the child head to the car across the trodden grass, the ancient Oldsmobile loomed tugboat-large in the driveway.
For goodness’ sake, Sarah thought, that car looks bigger than the ship they raised the bridge for this morning in Chicago! The little girl tried to open the door but, at the age of six, her thumb was much too small to manage the button on the massive chrome handle. She pressed it with both hands and still couldn’t get it. The third time, she bit her tongue in concentration. She pushed so hard that she twisted sideways and her feet lifted off the ground.
Here came her mother tramping down the walk, her sling-back pumps making little snaps of displeasure on the cement.
“I left the flowers for you in the grass, Mama. You told me to do that, and I did it.”
“Why aren’t you in the car yet?” Jane looked like she was about to cry. “Why don’t you ever do what I tell you to do? Can’t you ever do anything right?”
“I can’t open it. It’s big. It’s more than a little girl can do.”
The mother punched the button, yanked open the Oldsmobile door (“Nothing to it!”), and pointed inside. When the child hung her head in disgrace, the bone at the nape of her neck protruded like a drawer knob.
“Come on. What are you waiting for? Get in.”
I’ll never be good for anything, will I?
The three travelers watched those words hammer their message ever deeper into the little girl’s open, innocent heart.
I can’t do anything right. No matter how I try, I’m always going to be worth less than everyone else. If I hadn’t been born, Mama’s life would have been so much better.
When the car bounced out of the driveway and sped off in ripples of chrome, grown-up Sarah, the Sarah who had watched a child’s yearning face as it slipped away behind the window, was the one who began to cry.
Chapter Sixteen
The divers thought it was time to give up, Joe could tell. He could see it in the weary arcs of their arms as they stroked toward the platform, in their plodding climb as they mounted the ladder from the river, in the way their colleagues grabbed them beneath the armpits and hoisted them up, water falling from their sleek bodies like splinters of glass. The uniformed officers, Chicago’s Finest, thought so too. Some forty-five minutes into the search, Joe could see it in the way they pressed their radio mikes tight against their lips, fingers cupping their noses as they squeezed the Talk bar, their voices low and their eyes on him as they spoke.
Joe could see it in the rusty crane that stood at the rain-streaked waterfront motionless, its pulleys, cables, and hook dangling at half-mast.
He could see it in the medics’ crossed arms and extended legs, the way they talked among themselves with their heads turned sideways. He could see it in the whirling lights atop the city vehicles. Even the pulsing red-and-blue seemed to have slowed down.
Nearby, out of the corner of his eye, he even noticed Pete glancing at his watch. He saw Gail grab the cuff of his best friend’s sleeve and yank it down. Pete lowered his wrist.
Across the way where troopers had cordoned off
the street, the yellow tape—Police Line. Do Not Cross—hung in sodden ribbons.
“It’s okay, Gail,” Joe said without turning. “I know how long it’s been.” He speared his hands through wet hair. Joe couldn’t even feel the rain running down his collar anymore.
Joe didn’t know what he would have done without them. Gail and Pete had made it to his side in record time. They’d fended off reporters. They’d done their best to answer questions from the police, and when they didn’t know the answers, they relayed only the most pressing questions to Joe. Before she even arrived, Gail was the one who phoned Sarah’s parents and suggested they pick Mitchell up from school. Pete had kept his rope-of-an-arm snaked behind Joe’s shoulders and held him upright. Joe leaned on his best friend, too empty and shocked to speak, his only thought to overcome the dark dizziness that told him he might pass out.
All this time, all this searching, and Joe felt like he was the one drowning.
“Your nanny’s number? Do you have it, Joe?” Gail asked. “I think I ought to call again.”
Joe shook his head dumbly. He couldn’t think of it. Not only the number—he couldn’t even think of the woman’s name. “They’re going to stop, aren’t they?” he asked. “Any minute now they’re going to call off the search.”
Pete clenched his friend tightly around the shoulders. “Man, Joe. I’m sorry. This is tough stuff.”
For some brain-misfiring reason, while Joe couldn’t remember the nanny’s name, the date of Gail’s party popped into his mind. He sat down hard on a concrete barrier. “It’s your birthday, isn’t it?”
“I’m calling Sarah’s mother again too,” Gail said, ignoring him.
Any Minute: A Novel Page 15
