by Amy Sorrells
“Da-aaaaad! Why’d you let go-oooo?”
“Oh my!” Mattie gasped.
“Here, son, let me help you.” Jakob kept one hand on his walker and stretched his other hand toward the boy, ignoring his creaking knees.
“Jakob, careful now—” Mattie cautioned.
“I’m fine.”
The boy didn’t seem bothered by Jakob’s spotty, veined hand, and grabbed on tight as his father came up behind him and scooped him into his arms. Soon the boy’s wails turned to sobby sniffles.
“Thank you.” The young father nodded.
Jakob found the man’s Chicago Cubs shirt endearing, but his khaki shorts, fringed all along the bottom, could’ve used a good hemming. Jakob supposed that was the style, but he didn’t have to like it.
“How old is the boy?”
“Four. About to turn five. Learning to ride his new birthday bike. Figured we’d give it to him a bit early, nice weather and all.”
“Four, eh?”
The boy was small, baby fat still visible on his thighs and around the knuckles on his small hands. He studied Jakob, his walker, and his jowly face as his dad gave him the obligatory parental talk about getting back up when you fall down.
After his father set him down, the boy swung his leg over the bike and looked over his shoulder as his dad grabbed hold of the back of the bike seat. “Don’t let go, Daddy.”
“I won’t, buddy.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Only then did the boy put one foot on the pedal and then push off with the other foot, a trickle of blood running down his pudgy, unsure leg. The two of them headed away, the young dad hollering wahoos and yahoos and attaboys.
“What a cutie. Too bad about his knee,” Mattie said as she pulled the mail out of the mailbox.
The boy pedaled pretty well, smiling even as he headed back their way again. His father still had hold of the seat, as promised.
“I think you can let go now, Daddy,” the boy hollered.
“You sure, buddy?”
“I’m sure!”
The father gave a little extra push, and the boy was off on his own. He grinned ear to ear, though his knee still shone siren red.
“That’s a way!” Jakob clapped his hands to applaud, and Mattie joined him.
Four years old—the same age he’d been during the raid in Chudniv—with a father who kept holding on.
Jakob and Mattie walked back up the driveway to where David stood taking stock of the roofing supplies and plans for the day.
“Let’s go sit on the back deck awhile,” Mattie suggested to Jakob then turned to David. “Care to join us for a bit?”
“Thanks, but you two go on. I’ve got my hands full here and want to get as much in as I can before the rain they keep talking about settles in. S’posed to pour for a week.”
They walked around the side of the house, past the rounded and newly mulched beds outlining the home’s foundation, past the oak tree sheltering Nel’s bedroom window, past the rounded beds of knockout roses and hydrangeas, the beginning mounds of hyssop and coneflowers, lupine and foxglove. In front of the viburnum and chokeberry bushes stood a pedestal topped with the crazy blue gazing ball Catherine had insisted they purchase at a patio show a couple years back. Only now it wasn’t crazy as much as it was endearing, as most things become that belong to someone who’s passed on.
“Only a few more yards, and we’re there,” Mattie said, encouraging him.
“I see it, I see it.” Jakob feigned more annoyance than he felt. Mattie had been hypervigilant with him ever since he came home, and he knew the help she’d given him and Nel was a big reason why he hadn’t kicked the bucket yet. He pushed himself up the incline of the ramp leading to the deck and settled himself onto the bench he and Mattie’d sat on most often since he’d come home.
“Look there.” Mattie pointed out at the lake. “I think they caught something.”
Jakob’s distance vision was about the only part of him that hadn’t failed him completely. The eighteen-foot aluminum Tracker bobbed softly in the slow-rolling tide near shore. Two men gathered at the front of the boat, one of them reeling hard against an acutely bent rod. At last he yanked the fish onto the boat deck, and even from where Jakob sat he could see the reflection of the fish’s golden scales.
“Got themselves a nice yellow perch.”
“Yes they did.” Mattie smiled, holding on her head the hat that the breeze seemed determined to blow away.
Papa Stewart came to Jakob’s mind, and the days he devoted to Jakob while they stayed at the lake house when Peter was sick in the sanatorium. Papa Stewart worked in Chicago during the week, then came to join Jakob and Mama Stewart, who lived there full-time, except when school was in session. Papa Stewart had taught Jakob how to make his own rod, and they sat on the shore whittling and shining the slender wood, wrapping the metal eyes in place with colored thread, even notching out a ruler to measure whatever they caught. As the last step, Jakob had painted his name on the base: JAKOB STEWART.
“Have you spoken to Nel yet about your past?”
The discomfort of another one of Mattie’s well-intentioned lectures approaching tightened like a knot in Jakob’s chest. “I have.”
“Good.”
The fishermen on the lake continued to catch and release several more fish.
“So?”
“So what?”
“What’d she say?”
“She was glad, I suppose.” He turned toward her with a grin so abrupt and wide and exaggerated Mattie startled. “Satisfied?”
Mattie threw her head back and laughed heartily, and soon Jakob joined in, holding his belly and praying his parts wouldn’t leak.
And in that moment, his hardened marrow shifted like the sun lighting on the yellow perch’s side, a creature held firm in the fisherman’s hand and let go just when it thought it might never breathe again. More memories—good ones—surfaced like a buoy held under currents and finally let go. Memories of his sisters and frogs and honeysuckle. Of leaning against the curve of Mama’s soft breast as she rocked him and sang prayers of thanksgiving in the mornings and evenings; of Papa finishing his stones and letting Jakob help polish them with his own piece of cheesecloth; of crystal white snow on white birch branches in patches of forest around Chudniv; of Galya’s strong withers; of the taste of milk fresh from the milk cow’s udder; of Sasha the priest, Russie and Chaim, Luda, Zsófia and Makár; of Papa Stewart warming a quilt by the stove and wrapping him in it and carrying him up to bed; of Mama Stewart praying outside his bedroom door; of the first time Catherine and he made love; of lunch hours spent laughing with the guys at Brake-All; of fishing; of sunflowers.
Later that evening, David brought in a catch of his own perch he’d caught with some friends that day. Jakob’s hands, still steady enough to scale a fish, rubbed the edge of an old spoon backward over the iridescent flesh, the tiny, razor-like pieces flipping all across the counter. He remembered a nun from Saint Stanislaus, wrinkled face framed by the white hood of her habit, as she recited the story of Saul on the road to Damascus, how he became blind when he met his Savior, and how the scales finally fell from his sightless eyes.
CHAPTER 33
“Hey, Dad. David.” Nel hopped off her mom’s bike that she’d cleaned up and walked it toward where Jakob sat in a lawn chair under a tree in the front yard. He hadn’t seen her yet, and she slowed her pace, taking in every bend, curve and wrinkle of his aged form. He lifted a cup of coffee to his mouth and dribbled half of it down his chin without seeming to notice. Nearly ninety-five and yet when she lost him, she knew it would still be too soon.
“Find anything good?” David hollered from his spot on the ladder.
She pulled off her glasses and cleaned them in an attempt to be discreet about wiping the tears off her face
, then she cleared her throat and waved up at David. “Got enough rhubarb to make a couple of pies, a bunch of mixed greens, brown eggs, and a new hosta I don’t think’s represented yet in our garden.” She pulled the hosta out of the bike basket and set it in front of Jakob.
David pried another piece of rotten trim from the second-story eaves. He let it fall, and it splintered into dozens of soggy, mildewed pieces on the ground. He climbed down the ladder.
Nel helped him gather an armload of debris and toss it into the large, steel waste container they’d rented.
David brushed his gloved hands together, shaking away the rotten flakes of wood. “Whadda you say we go fishing later on?”
“Is that all you do all spring and summer?” Sweat trickled down her neck and the small of her back as she shielded her eyes from the morning sun already blazing. David’s Michigan State T-shirt clung to his sweaty chest and accented his broad shoulders, and she found it more and more difficult to look him in the eyes when his mouth was always slightly upturned, as if he were waiting to kiss her. She used her arm to wipe the sweat off her own forehead.
“It’s a bad habit, that’s for sure. Don’t you like to fish?”
“I like it plenty. Could probably out fish you, in fact.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“Do you want it to be?”
“This afternoon. Black River. I’ll pick you up around four thirty. You can use my rods.”
“I have my own, thank you.” She was proud of the fact she not only knew how to fish, but she could hold her own against most any man, most any day. No matter that she hadn’t been in awhile. She’d been fishing since she was old enough to hold a rod.
“Four thirty, then.”
“Sounds good.”
Nel pulled her fishing rod off the rafters where her dad stored all the rods in the garage. She ran her finger over her name and fishing measurements notched in the wood, still shiny and smooth after all these years. She’d chosen pink thread, which Jakob had helped her wind perfect and tight around the metal line guides to keep them in place.
“You ready?” David said, leaning against the front of his truck.
“I’m ready. The question is, are you?”
The drive to the Black River Bridge wasn’t far, just across Interstate 196 along the Kal-Haven Trail. They passed an occasional chippy, clapboard house that gaped at them, cracked and dingy windows sighing at the unusual sight of a car passing by. Many of the rolling hills and fields were striped with rows of blueberry bushes, many fully blossoming, and Nel breathed in their sweet scent through the open windows of David’s truck.
Once they arrived at Kal-Haven, they found a side trail leading to the river, and David spread a blanket out along the shore, where they laid out their gear and a basket of snacks. Nel’s thoughts wandered as she attached a new hook and sinker to her fishing line and baited the hook with the worms they’d stopped to buy, then cast it far into the middle of the river. As her line grew tight floating along with the current, she grew silent.
“Penny for your thoughts?”
“Wow, who even says that anymore?” Nel chuckled.
David shrugged.
“I’m not thinking of anything, really. Sometimes it’s nice to think of nothing.” She watched her bobber sway with the current and felt for a nibble on the hook, then pulled back hard on her rod as something yanked her bobber beneath the surface. The tip of the rod bent as she began to reel, until the end of the line came near the shore, and she saw that the line was empty. “Stole the bait.”
“Stripped it clean too.” David headed for a patch of grass where they had set up their tackle. “Mealworm or night crawler?”
“Night crawler. Thanks.”
Nel folded the long worm onto the hook and cast it back out into the river. “You wouldn’t want me, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
Nel focused on her bobber again, determined not to look at David. “I know we’re beyond the point of being ‘just friends.’ That you want more from me. That’s why you trusted me with your story, and I’m so, so grateful that you did. But trust me, you don’t want me.”
“You’re being pretty presumptuous.” David shook his head. “I can’t have more of someone who won’t give me a chance.” He threw his line into the river as well, closer to shore, near a clump of fallen trees. “You know what I think?”
Nel spun the reel, not answering him.
“I think you’re afraid.”
She stopped spinning her reel and glared at him.
“You are, aren’t you? Beautiful, brilliant, talented girl like you … never married …”
“You think you know so much, do you?”
“I know those same tendencies in other people, same as mine were for a while, especially after the accident. I didn’t want to let anyone close to me. I didn’t deserve to have anyone close to me. And they certainly didn’t deserve me.”
“Well, you’re wrong. About me, anyway.”
“Whatever you say. You don’t have to tell me anything.” David’s rod bent severely, and he reeled back hard against the fish pulling at the end of his line. He landed the fish, dark green with a speckling of pale-yellow spots, and orange front fins. He held the fish in his hand, smoothing back the fins, and worked the hook out of the side of its mouth before throwing it back. “A fine example of a brook trout.”
He threw the fish back, then wiped his hands off with a rag from their pile of tackle. He walked to where she stood, put his arm around her tentatively, then strong and unyielding as he kissed her on the temple. “You’ve been through quite a bit since fall.”
“It’s not just that,” she said in barely a whisper, her voice quaking. “I can’t have kids.”
Instead of slackening his arm as she’d expected, he pulled her closer.
“It ends with me, Mom and Dad’s legacy. I can’t have kids.” She pulled away from him and walked to the edge of the river, tears falling freely. “All these years, I’ve been filling my life with my art, creating things that will outlast me, somehow, since no one ever will. Maybe I am afraid … afraid of what’s left for me in the future. Maybe that’s why Dad’s story, his past, matters to me so much.”
She told him everything, then, about Tom and the miscarriage and the subsequent hysterectomy. About her breakup with Sam and all the breakups before that. How she’d become so involved with her art, she’d lost track of what was most important, which was family. Family and home.
“Here’s your glasses.” David centered them on her nose for her after she’d taken them off to wipe her tears, then put his other arm around her and kept holding her, strong and consuming as the full moon cast long shadows all around them. Like gypsum, the alabaster that held Mary’s perfume, the moon gleamed, pouring out light as the cicadas sang and the river ran and the pain in Nel’s soul receded.
CHAPTER 34
The postman had tucked the shoebox-sized package between the door and one of the two matching pedestals of geraniums blooming crimson on the front porch. Nel almost didn’t see it in the shadows as she and David walked up to the front door later that evening.
“David, look.” Nel picked up the box and wiped away bits of potting soil stuck to the bottom. The penmanship of the address appeared stiff, as if the sender struggled to make each letter, compared to the return address written in flowing Cyrillic.
“It’s gotta be from them, don’t you think?”
“Maybe …” She hugged the box to her chest as if to quell the excitement rising inside her. “But I’m afraid to get my hopes up.”
They found Mattie sleeping on the couch with a Midwest Living magazine across her lap, and Jakob in his recliner snoring heavily.
“Shhhh.” Nel raised a finger to her lips as she and David tiptoed to the kitchen. She grabbed a pair of scissors from the junk drawer and cu
t through the taped edges of the box.
On top of the contents was a rag doll, pieced together with embroidered fabric, with ribbons on her skirt and shirt and a scarf around her head. The plain face was probably white once but was now yellowed and stained from age. She picked it up and startled.
“Where did you get that?”
Nel and David both jumped at the sound of Jakob’s voice. His eyes were locked on the doll, and his face was nearly as pale as the flat, empty cloth face.
“Jakob, what on earth are you doing? How’d you get past me?” Mattie tumbled into the kitchen behind him, bleary-eyed and pale herself, appearing frightened that she’d slept through Jakob scooting by her. She came alongside Nel and David.
“Dad, I … this box came in the mail today.”
He appeared more lucid than she’d seen him since his fall as he scooted toward her. He reached out and took the doll from her hands, then ran his fingers along the red cross-stitching of the blouse; the tiny, red, beaded necklace around the neck; and the tassels and stitching on the skirt; then he gently adjusted the scarf on the doll’s head. “Faigy,” he whispered.
“What, Dad?”
His eyes, puddled with tears, met Nel’s. “Faigy had a doll like this. And the sisters. All my sisters had dolls like this. But this one … Faigy’s was just like this.”
Nel pulled a stack of old and fragile photographs, several papers, an old bound book, and a large, white cloth with blue stripes and fringe on the edges out of the box, along with a note addressed to her.
Mattie picked up the cloth. “This is a tallis.”
“A tallis?” Nel asked.
“A Jewish prayer shawl,” she replied.
“Where’d this come from?” Jakob asked again, shifting his weight and approaching the box on the table.
“I know about as much as you do—that’s what we’re trying to find out, what this all means.” Nel unfolded the note and began to read. “Dad, I think you’d better sit down.”
