Coming Home

by Julie Sellers

  Near the end of the song, the band made a sun formation on the field. At the end of the song, the band members all pointed to the center of the sun, on the middle of the fifty yard line where Jonathan knelt on bended knee. The entire stadium was silent when he brought the powered megaphone he used to call marching drills to his face and said, “Lillie, I love you. Will you make me the happiest man in the world and be my wife?”

  Lillie ran down the bleachers, tears running down her cheeks, and launched herself into his arms, nearly knocking the ring box out of his hand in the process. She buried her face in his shoulder and whispered, “Yes…oh yes!”

  Jonathan yelled over her shoulder and into the megaphone. “She said yes!” The crowd broke into cheers and the band began to play, “Here comes the Bride.”

  Jonathan looked around the empty stadium. He wasn’t sure how long he’d sat there, but it had been long enough the sun had sunk behind the visitor’s side grandstand. He’d been so lost in the memory he was almost surprised to find himself alone.

  Not that it was unusual these days, to find himself alone, especially back in LaSalle. It was more difficult here to forget. The memories bounced off his skull, twenty-four/seven.

  In Minnesota, it was easier. He could go hours, even days, without thinking of the past. He could form relationships, make new friends and even consider a new romance.

  He hadn’t done anything but consider, up until now. But Jon had grown weary of being alone. He wanted to be a part of something, have a family, someone to share his dreams with, his successes and if he were brutally honest, his bed. He had always believed that person would be Lillian, but life didn’t listen to his hopes or pay attention to his plans.

  For years he mourned the life he walked away from. He worked insane hours, seldom taking breaks or time for himself. He fell into bed or more often his bedroll in his tent, so exhausted he’d fall into a dreamless sleep. Even then, she’d sneak into his dreams, foiling any rest he’d hope to find that night.

  But time passed, and the dreams became less frequent. There were times he could almost pretend it never happened. But that had been before he’d seen her again. Touched her. Kissed her. Now he wanted her as badly has he ever had. He just had to figure out what to do about it.

  * * *

  At the first shriek, Lillie leapt to her feet and headed towards the children’s room before her eyes fully opened. The second scream startled her awake, and her heart raced as she crossed the hallway. Her foot found a wayward Hotwheels car, and she favored the sore foot as she limped across the room to her son.

  Lillie knelt by the side of his bed and pulled him toward her while struggling to free him from the blankets on his bed.

  When she twisted his little body free of its constraints, she gathered him close to her and carried him, curled up in a ball, still screaming to her bedroom.

  Her calm voice belied her still racing heart. She sat on the bed cradling him close and kissed his temple while she rubbed his back.

  Lillie spoke calmly. “I love you, buddy. Momma’s here…Momma’s here.”

  At the sound of her voice, he uncurled himself from his tight ball and clutched his mother and his blanket with equal fervor. After several minutes, his screaming became sobs and his sobs eventually became soft hiccups, then soft sighs.

  When her son stilled at last, Lillie took a deep breath and closed her eyes. It seemed she wasn’t the only one unsettled tonight.

  It didn’t happen often and the children’s pediatrician felt he would eventually outgrow the night terrors that aged Lillian by a decade each time he screamed.

  The terrors seemed the most severe during times of change or influx. Preparing to move him from the only home he could remember was more than likely the catalyst, but Lillie had concluded, the root cause was something different.

  Alex had been six months old when brought him home from Russia. She believed somewhere in his tiny subconscious he remembered the time he’d spent in a state run orphanage.

  Panic surged in every molecule of his little body. The terror that he was lost, alone in the dark. Frightened and hungry with no one to come. The ladies at the baby house did their best, but there just weren’t enough hands.

  If the babies awoke in the night they were left to cry themselves back to sleep, lest they become accustomed to attention during the night. So some cried anyway, but most drew into themselves. Crying did nothing but expend the energy their little growing bodies couldn’t spare. So, most lost the mechanisms so important in building trust in exchange for self-preservation. Even three years later her boy still felt the effects of his stilted beginnings.

  Lillie watched Alex sleep in her arms for a few more minutes before gently lifting him. She paused for a few seconds and held her breath. Her light-sleeping son snuggled closer to her but did not wake. Lillie walked across the hallway so stealthily she could have been balancing china or a Ming vase on her head.

  Despite her best efforts, Alex’s eyes slid open as she laid him on his bed. She held her breath and froze like a cat burglar caught in the Smithsonian.

  “Can I have some milk?”

  Lillie’s breath expelled in a rush. Her shoulders slumped in defeat. It would be a race now to see which would come first—Alex back to sleep or dawn. Still, it wasn’t her son’s fault his mother was attempting to get by on decaf.

  “Sure, buddy.” She smiled in spite of her awake-in-the-middle-of-the-night irritation. “Stay here; I’ll be right back.”

  Lillie yawned into the back of her hand as she made her way, by memory, through the darkened house, miraculously avoiding the furniture, toys, book bags…all of the accoutrements of children that no matter how hard she tried, littered their little house.

  She squinted against the sudden intrusion of the refrigerator light and reached for the large plastic jug. She held open the door with her hip and opened the adjacent cabinet and found Alex’s favorite mug by touch. She filled it half full and returned the near empty jug to the refrigerator shelf.

  She picked up the marker tethered to the white board on the door and wrote, MILK, before she turned and made her way back to her son.

  “Here you go, buddy,” she said as she extended the mug toward Alex. He sat up in bed and reached for the cup, careful to set his favorite stuffed animal, Pig, on his pillow.

  “Thank you, Momma,” her polite boy said with a white, milk mustache on his upper lip.

  Alex swept his sleeve over his mouth and the mustache vanished before Lillie could get a word out to warn him not to wipe his mouth on his sleeve. She sighed as she sat down on the edge of his bed. Lessons in manners could wait for another day, she supposed.

  “Settle in now.” Alex slid down the headboard and laid his head on the pillow. She pulled the covers up to his chin, then tucked the blankets around him burrito style.

  “Don’t go yet!” he screeched in panic when she rose to head back to her room. He grabbed at her hand and pulled it to his cheek.

  “Shhh, baby,” she rubbed his back and settled back on the bed. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  He looked up at her with his big brown eyes, through lashes his sister would kill for in a few years. The single tear that hovered on the end of one lash spilled over and ran down his cheek.

  Lillie wiped the tear away with the edge of her own pajama top and leaned over to kiss the top of his head. She started to hum as she rubbed his back, hoping to ease him toward a few more hours of sleep.

  “Tell me the story of me,” he asked on a yawn.

  Lillie scooted over on the bed and leaned against the headboard, making herself more comfortable. “Well,” she paused dramatically, “once upon a time, there lived a sad, sad, Momma.”

  “Cause she was all alone…” Alex added.

  Lillie nodded and continued, “The lady knew just what to do.”

  “She said a prayer…”

  “And wrote a letter to the ladies at the baby house, far, far away in Russia to see if they had any
babies there who needed Mommies.”

  “So she got on an airplane,” he said on yawn.

  “And flew over the big, blue ocean to find Hope waiting to come home.” His eyes were half-mast, a glimmer of hope shined through that she’d see her pillow again that night, so she continued.

  “The Momma made many wonderful friends in Russia and a few years later, they called her to let her know a new baby waited for her who needed her as much as she needed him…”

  Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness.

  ~Thomas Carlyle

  Chapter Five

  Six years earlier…

  Jonathan stood at the kitchen window, feet shoulder width apart, hands on either side of the sink. He looked out into the growing twilight, his gaze straight ahead to where Lillian sat, wrapped in a blanket in the Adirondack chair her father built years ago. She’d walked by him and out to their back yard over an hour ago. He’d been tempted to follow her, but since he didn’t know what good it would do, he’d remained inside. Out of ideas about how to reach her, he didn’t want to try anymore. He’d grown frustrated and today, for the first time, frustration had bred contempt.

  Lillie’s eyes, their warm brown turned vacant and cold, haunted him. She didn’t see him anymore—didn’t see anything but her own pain. He couldn’t reach her and he’d grown tired of trying. He closed his eyes and breathed, trying to calm his pinging nerves. He had to get out of here. He couldn’t stand being in the house a moment longer.

  He opened the back door and trotted down the steps. “Hey, Lil. Let’s go pick up mom and Molly and go to the Blue Moon for ice cream.”

  Despite the warm spring evening, Lillie pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and curled her feet into the chair. “I’m not dressed.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll wait. Jump into the shower and let's go.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Lil, you didn’t touch lunch or dinner. You’re going to waste away to nothing.”

  “Jonathan, please. Go ahead without me.”

  “Lillie, get up. It’s been weeks since you’ve seen Molly. Normally you spend time with her two or three times a week.”

  “I said go, Jonathan. Do you understand English?”

  He felt the slap in her tone and recoiled. He opened his mouth to respond, to lash back at her, but stopped just short of throwing his own verbal barb. It wouldn’t help Lillie to bear the brunt of his frustration right now. Not that she’d actually notice. She wrapped her pain around herself like she did that god-forsaken blanket. She couldn’t see or feel anything else.

  He hurt, too. His chest constricted and the pain sliced though him. Those babies had been his children, too. His sons as well as hers. Their family. Their dream. Not that she’d noticed that either. Lillian kept her own council, and she grieved alone.

  “Lill—’’ he began, but then gave up. It didn’t matter. His shoulders slumped in defeat. He considered just going to bed, but when he glanced at his watch it read barely seven o’clock. He could stay home and toss and turn in a bed too big without her or he could go.

  Instead of trying to reach her, he turned on his heel and walked toward the driveway and his open-air jeep.

  He stomped on the clutch and threw the jeep into gear. The gravel on the driveway flew as he backed up, but his wife didn’t even turn around.

  Jon left their residential street and drove out onto Lincolnway, the main thoroughfare of LaSalle. He drove aimlessly for a while and eventually found himself near Dick’s Bar. He pulled to the curb in the downtown business district and found a parking place in front of a line with antique shops, a men’s clothier and several gift shops.

  As her reached the front door of the bar, something in the window of the store next door caught his eye. The sign on the façade read, “Norma Lou’s Birdseedery” and in the window were several kinds of birdfeeders.

  He surprised himself when he reached for the door handle and pulled open the door. Instead of a bell, a bird trilled as the door swung inward. He crossed the threshold and found himself in an incredibly tiny shop, no bigger than their living room at home.

  What the store lacked in square footage it made up in inventory. He kept his hands at his sides in order to not brush too closely to any surface. They were all covered with bird feeders, birdhouses or gift items featuring some kind of bird.

  “Hello there,” chirped a diminutive woman as she parted the curtain and emerged from the rear of the store. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “I’m just looking, I think,” Jonathan answered. He didn’t know why he’d come inside in the first place. He’d meant to be half way through his first beer by now, but he reached out and touched a delicate birdhouse hanging from the ceiling. He traced the tiny gingerbread adorning the miniature Victorian “painted lady” with the tip of one finger. The elaborate decoration represented the period down to the smallest detail.

  “Where do you get these?” he asked the tiny lady whose nametag identified her as Norma Lou. She stood behind a small desk situated on the rear wall of the room.

  “I make them,” she answered.

  “Wow. It must take a lot of time.”

  “A bit, but I enjoy it.”

  “Is there a big market for birdhouses in LaSalle?”

  “I have some steady customers, but I do the bulk of my sales on-line.”

  “On-line?”

  “Yes, I have a web page,” Norma Lou said as she gestured to a laptop on the desk in front of her. Go figure. This grandmotherly lady was more Internet savvy than he was. Just last week, Lillie had given him a rudimentary lesson, and he’d learned to surf the web. His students insisted he was hopelessly out of date, so he’d asked Lillie for help. Like a turtle in a whirlpool, she’d grudgingly given him a few pointers before retreating back into her shell.

  Jonathan walked further into the shop, all the while conscious of the tiny works of art around him. He continued to shop, and Norma Lou busied herself hanging bird Christmas ornaments on a small tree in the corner.

  “Excuse me. I think I’d like a bird feeder for my wife to hang in our garden.”

  “Wonderful!” the diminutive lady said cheerfully. Her snow-white hair was piled on top of her head in a casual bun and bobbed when she spoke.

  “Do you know what kind of feeder you are looking for?”

  “Not really. My wife likes to spend a lot of time outside.” His words trailed off near the end of his reply, his gaze fixed on the birdhouse in his hand and his mind focused far away.

  The sales lady looked at him with her head tilted to one side and her brows knit together. Jonathan’s gaze eventually came back to her face and continued, “I think she would like something that attracts different kinds of birds.”

  “Over here,” she said with cheer. Norma gestured to the back wall of the shop. “We have our multi-purpose feeders. You can change the seed depending on what kind of bird you want to attract.”

  “That would be good, I think.”

  “Finches like thistle, Blue Jays and Cardinals like sunflower seed or you can go with this seed,” she pointed to a bag on the shelf near the floor, “that will attract all three.”

  Jonathan scanned the rows of feeders until his eyes lighted on one fashioned as a log cabin. It reminded him of their honeymoon, and he reached up and removed it from the shelf in order to study it more closely. He ran his finger over the rough-hewn bark roof and small log walls. The details were extraordinary and the feeder came complete with a long canoe stored on the sidewall and a fishing pole propped next to the front door.

  Jonathan held out the feeder to the smiling clerk. “I’ll take this one.”

  “Great, shall I wrap it for you?” she asked.

  “Not necessary, thank you. I’m going to hang it from a tree branch and surprise her.”

  “Then you’ll need a branch loop in addition to the bag of seed?”

  “Sure, thanks,” he replied as Norma effi
ciently packaged the feeder in a shopping bag and Jon handed over his credit card.

  Within minutes, he was back on the sidewalk shouldering the twenty-pound back of seed. He flipped his purchases into the back seat of his open topped jeep and climbed behind the wheel.

  He looked longingly at Dick’s Bar and wished for the momentary oblivion he’d find there. For a moment he considered retreating to the comfortable interior not even for the alcoholic amnesia, but for the atmosphere. At home, waited a listless wife and a myriad of problems he couldn’t solve and failures he couldn’t fix.

  The neighborhood pub patrons would welcome him and not look to him for answers he didn’t have.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, hand poised on the key in the ignition and exhaled. He squared his shoulders and turned the key.

  * * *

  Lillie shivered as the sun slid behind the pines bordering the rear of the yard. She rubbed her upper arms with her chilled fingers and picked up her fallen blanket from the grass. It surprised her to find it dark outside. She could scarcely believe the afternoon had waned and evening had arrived full force.

  She climbed the back steps and opened the door. The interior was too dim for an occupant. She glanced through the kitchen window to the empty driveway.

  At least she was off the hook for dinner, not that she’d made having a hot meal on the table a priority in quite some time. She felt a pang when she tried to mentally calculate the last time she’d provided her husband a meal or even groceries enough to make himself a sandwich.

  Well, he knew where the grocery store was as well as she did. Lillie wandered into the living room and shivered again. The damp cold sank into her bones during her hours in the yard. Not even the ever-present blanket warmed her now.