by Jan Karon
It was as if he hadn’t quite seen the street before, or had seen it a very long time ago. Everything was clarified, as after a washing rain.
The driver opened the car door and he stooped and looked inside.
Irene McGraw.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘Come in. And thank you.’
He climbed in, feeling foolish, as if this might be a joke and he the butt of it. He sat at the extreme end of the leather seat; the driver closed the door with a subtle click.
‘Who am I, Father?’
‘Why . . . you’re Irene.’
‘Irene who?’
‘Irene McGraw. I don’t understand.’ The voice, the clothes, the jewelry . . . not Irene, and yet . . .
She looked at him with an odd gravity. She was somehow more Irene than Irene; he was profoundly struck by her beauty. ‘This is life-changing for me. You have just acknowledged . . .’ She drew in her breath. ‘. . . something I’ve tried to confirm for several months—all my life, really. It is a great shock.’
He became aware of an insinuating fragrance—jasmine, perhaps—the interior of the car was infused with it.
‘Such a deluge of feeling,’ she said. ‘One wants something so fiercely, and when it comes . . . I’ve spent most of my life giving expression to the emotions of imaginary characters, now I must feel all this, own all this, for myself. It’s overwhelming.’ She bowed her head and put her hands to her face, weeping, yet silent as stone.
He was stunned by having moved from the airy vault of the bookstore into a confined space shared with someone he knew and yet didn’t know at all, only to be jarred awake by this hushed and visceral suffering.
What appeared to be an open script of some sort lay on the facing seat with a copy of this week’s Muse, a few magazines, a box of chocolates, a blow dryer . . .
‘I’m sorry, Father.’ She rummaged through a large bag. ‘My tissues . . . I don’t know. I’ve surely called you out of something you need to be doing.’
‘Not at all. May I ask . . . who you are?’
‘I’m Kim Dorsay.’ She extended her hand, and he took it. ‘From Los Angeles. Thank you for your kindness. I’ve been reading about you in your newspaper.’
‘Not that!’ he said.
She smiled a little. ‘I’ve been a subscriber for several months, since we found information that led to Mitford. I’ve even thought how I’d love to live here, how peaceful it must be. I’ve been seeking peace for a very long time.’
She searched again in the bag. ‘Do you know Irene well?’
‘Not well, but for some years.’
‘Is her husband Raymond or Chester?’
‘Chester. He died last February.’
‘Chester! All the pieces of the puzzle have come together, then.’ She closed her eyes briefly. ‘All the pieces. Do you have time . . . to talk?’
‘My time is yours.’
‘I was twelve days old,’ she said, ‘when my father gave me away.
‘My mother died when I was born. The woman who took me in was Norma Hudson, my father’s secretary. Norma was a girl who came out to Hollywood from Idaho in the forties, to try and make it in that treacherous world.
‘She was very beautiful, but by her own account had no acting talent—a minor role with Gregory Peck was the great highlight of her career. My father was a famous casting agent, the only child of immigrant parents from Warsaw. He rescued Norma from near-starvation, and she repaid him with ferocious loyalty. She would have laid down her life for him, really. Instead, he asked her to raise his daughters. There were two of us, you see.’
She tried to say more, but could not. She looked away, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
‘I thought all the tears might be gone, Father. But they are never gone.’
He reached into his pocket and withdrew the handkerchief. She took it, surprised, somehow, and grateful.
‘My mother hemorrhaged to death giving birth to twin girls. But Norma couldn’t raise two children—she could scarcely take care of herself. I was older than my sister by four minutes. As much as Norma wanted to please my father by taking us both, she chose the firstborn.
‘Our father consented to letting Irene go, you see. Norma called our mother’s brother, the only family we had, and he and his wife came for her when she was two months old. Norma didn’t tell them that Mother had had twins. She said no one knew, really, our parents had few friends—Father did all his socializing away from home.’
The uniformed driver stood by the limo, hands behind his back, a minor spectacle that caused traffic to slow.
‘I didn’t know I had a sister until just before Norma died in March. I was stunned by this news. Devastated, really.
‘There had been a barrier between Norma and me all those years, I felt it keenly. I think now it was because of her guilt for taking part in separating us. Norma’s life had been all about separation and grieving, and she passed that along to others.’
‘Your father?’
‘Daddy provided a great deal of money. I had everything the other girls in our convent school had, but something was missing, always missing. All my life, there’s been a kind of ache, a void of the worst sort. I thought the yearning was for my mother or for God, or a marriage that might actually work or the children I couldn’t have.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Or all the above.’
There was the oddly distracted look that he had seen in Irene.
‘Didn’t Norma tell you how to find your sister?’
‘She didn’t know. There was no contact with my uncle all those years, and when we searched the phone books in Illinois . . .’ She shrugged. ‘Nothing. As it turned out, they had moved to La Jolla when I was fourteen. Irene was living just two hundred miles from me.’
She pressed the handkerchief to her eyes.
‘Norma said my uncle despised my father, who was a man for the women. When they took Irene, he promised legal action if Daddy ever tried to intervene in any way. Norma told me that Daddy was relieved, though he did offer financial help. Financial help was refused, and so Daddy left it alone. I think he quite forgot about Irene, actually, as if she never existed.’
He wondered if his father had forgotten about Henry . . .
‘Norma felt that Irene may have lacked for a great deal when she was growing up. My uncle had more pride than money. It’s another reason I’ve felt unsure about doing this. How would Irene feel if she knew I was chosen for the so-called good life?’
‘I see.’
‘And would it be frightening for her if I showed up out of the blue, starved for family as I’ve always been, and perhaps wanting too much? Or what if she’s somehow known about me all along and decided not to make contact?’
Henry had alluded to feelings like these.
‘Coming to Mitford a few weeks ago was as much a hunch as it was a strong lead. I’ve had a team of investigators working on this for months—we didn’t know whether my sister was permitted to keep the name our mother chose—Irene Elizabeth. And when we finally got the lead to McGraw, we found quite a few Irene McGraws. That took a lot of time to sift through, and we were confused by the several addresses—the home in Florida, a property in Montana, the home here, and no pictures of Irene on the Internet. All we could find were of Chester in his many philanthropic activities, and only one of his wife, who had turned away from the camera.’
And there was a customer going into the bookstore, someone thin and slightly stooped.
‘I was out running a couple of weeks ago,’ he said, ‘and saw your car head down the mountain. You seemed in a hurry.’
‘My director had just died. We were very close; I did four films with him. I felt I was really getting on to something in Mitford; we had stopped by your house when the call came. I was relieved, in a way. I felt I was close to the truth at last, and it frightened me.’
‘I understand that.’
‘I thought about calling Irene from L.A., but that seemed impersonal, like news from a government agency. I wanted to see her face when she learned the truth—and if we were really sisters, I wanted us to experience the joy at the same moment.’ She smiled at him now. ‘Just the thought of it takes my breath away.’
‘And mine, too, I have to say.’
‘So when the Muse ran the little piece about her return from Georgia, I decided to come again.’
J.C.’s labors in the publishing vineyard had wrought a cup of good wine.
‘In reading about your generosity to others, Father, I thought perhaps you would help me with this. Perhaps you could arrange a meeting somehow?’
‘Of course.’
‘Because I can’t simply show up at her door. I mean, what would you do if you found after so many years that you had a brother?’
He laughed, astonished. ‘Funny you should ask.’
• • •
‘GOTTA GO. I won’t ask what you were doin’ in that limo. Aren’t you glad I’m not nosy like everybody else in this town?’
‘Very glad,’ he said. ‘Sorry to be so long. Who came in?’
‘A professor from Wesley. Grumpy as heck. Somethin’ about a book you gave his son. I told him you were out for a few minutes. He said he’d go across to the Local an’ stop in later. Anyway, I did it, I read some poetry.’
‘That’s what comes of secluding yourself in that section.’
‘It was Billy Collins.’
‘An Irishman! A very enthralling fellow, once our poet laureate.’
‘Poetry always scared me,’ she said.
‘It can be scary, all right.’
‘I remember in school we had to memorize a poem about an urn. Somebody wrote an ode on an urn, or maybe it was about an urn with an ode already on it. In my understanding of urns, it is a flowerpot. Why would you write an ode about it?’
‘Beats me,’ he said.
‘But this Billy Collins, he writes like we live.’
‘There you have it.’
‘Although I don’t know about flying around a room.’
‘Sailing,’ he said. ‘Sailing, I believe it was.’
• • •
‘WAIT ’TIL YOU HEAR THIS, KAV’NA.’
‘I know, I just got around to reading the Muse. You didn’t tell me you have a hundred and twenty-five votes. And Coot has seventeen! This is fun.’
‘Irene McGraw has a twin sister.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve just talked with her. It’s Kim Dorsay—the film star Irene is said to look like. Remember the limo a few weeks back? She’s here again. In Mitford.’
‘The little girl in the paintings!’
‘It looks that way.’
‘Does Irene know she’s here?’
‘Not yet.’
‘I have chills.’
‘Me, too,’ he said. ‘And I need you to do something right away.’
• • •
THE AFTERNOON LIGHT WAS BEHIND the man as he came through the door. Tall, thin, hunched, a kind of Ichabod Crane in silhouette . . .
‘Kavanagh?’
‘Yes. And yourself?’
‘Professor McCurdy.’
McCurdy laid the Wordsworth paperback on the counter. ‘I’m returning your book.’
‘Hastings! Who saved his money!’
‘Hastings McCurdy is my son.’
‘But I meant for him to keep it. It’s a gift—though much used, as you can see. A fine and curious boy, your son.’
‘The margins are littered with references to God.’
‘Well, yes, I am prone to scribbling in margins. I study the books I especially care for. This was a favorite in my seminary days.’
‘Why did you find it necessary to speak of God to him?’
‘I spoke of God?’
‘I find such a reference completely unnecessary in a commercial enterprise, particularly involving a child who can’t discriminate for himself.’
‘I’d be interested to learn what I said to your son.’
‘You said, God bless you. Leading him to question the meaning of such a remark. Should his class come in again, I would ask you to refrain from religious allusion in future.’
‘I will honor your request as far as Hastings is concerned. Beyond that, I can’t promise to keep the lid on when it comes to the mention of God.’
The man appeared to be trembling. Nearly imperceptible, but yes.
‘Do you always wear a collar to administrate the workings of a bookstore?’
‘I do.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I am a priest, bookstore or no.’
‘Must you push it in one’s face?’
‘It shows there’s a place to run, if need be.’
‘Many have run to the collar with disastrous results.’
‘That’s not my affair, Professor.’
‘It seems a cliché to wear it outside the pulpit . . .’
The collar was clearly a sticking point with the professor, who stood before him in the cliché cardigan with elbow patches.
‘. . . unless, of course, you’re using the bookstore as your pulpit. A clever notion, but I am not charmed.’
‘This is who I am. There’s nothing to be done about it—I belong to God.’
‘While I, sir, am my own.’
‘George McDonald called that notion the guiding principle of hell. Have you read McDonald? He was a great influence on C. S. Lewis.’
Yes, the professor was trembling. McCurdy turned abruptly from the counter and walked toward the door.
‘Just curious, Professor McCurdy—are you Irish?’
The door jangling open, then closing.
• • •
HE SAT ON THE STOOL, depleted, his dog at his feet.
‘Thank heaven for you, Buddy.’
He remembered a fragment of an epitaph written by a fellow named Hobhouse, for his dog.
‘“. . . one who possessed Beauty without Vanity,”’ he said aloud to Barnabas.
‘“Strength without Insolence, / Courage without Ferocity, / And all the virtues of Man without his Vices.”’
‘That’s you, my friend, and God bless you for it.’
He went to the yellow backpack and pulled out a dog biscuit. The Old Gentleman took it with great delicacy.
He needed to run. He needed to visit Louella. He needed to get in touch with Coot about a cleanup. He needed to get after the privet at Children’s Hospital—this was the last and best chance for pruning. He needed to rest. He needed a car. He needed to work on his Latin.
As much as anything, he needed a break. Any break would do.
He left a message in J.C.’s voice mail and called Mule. ‘How about checking out breakfast at Feel Good in the morning? Eight o’clock. Be there or be square.’
• • •
CYNTHIA ARRIVED with a shopping bag from Village Shoes, to buy a birthday card for Olivia Harper.
‘The economy booms when you come to town,’ he said.
She gave him a hug. ‘Irene said Sunday after church would be best for her. I told her it isn’t Children’s Hospital business, there’s somebody who’d like very much to meet her. Somebody special, I said. It was hard to find the right word.’
‘Special definitely works.’
‘She didn’t seem crazy about the idea of meeting a perfect stranger—Irene is shy. Anyway, two o’clock. And we can’t meet there, she said, because her house is given over to ladders and drop cloths. I think we should do it at Happy Endings, on neutral ground.’
‘Good.’
‘I’m jittery. What if this doesn’t work? I’d hate for us to be the ones . . .’
‘“For God has not given us the spirit of fear,”’ he quoted from Timothy, ‘“but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”’
Because he was feeling anxious himself, the scripture was mostly for his own instruction.
‘You’re worn out, Timothy. I don’t like this.’ She stood next to his stool and rubbed his back. ‘You had your shot this morning?’
‘I did. I’m fine. Don’t worry.’
‘I love you.’ She looked down at him with that small pucker of her forehead; he felt wasted, somehow.
When she left, he remembered he hadn’t turned on the music today. He selected something from Mozart’s ‘light and happy pen.’
The thought of calling a movie star on her private line made his knees weak. Realizing that he couldn’t do it standing, he went to the Poetry section and dialed her cell number from the wing chair.
• • •
‘TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN DOLLARS and ninety-five cents.’
Why weren’t the receipts better, especially with the O Sale in effect? What did they need to do to get paying customers in here?
‘You sound weary,’ said Hope. ‘I think I should pray for you.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘That would be good.’
No balm in Gilead.
From the window by his desk in the study, he saw Harley’s truck lights bob into the driveway. In the gathering dusk, he could see that Harley was alone in the cab. Good. He had no stomach for a surly Sammy Barlowe.
‘Yo, Harley!’
Harley, he reckoned, would rather not see him. Harley felt responsible for Sammy, was shamed that he couldn’t manage the boy’s behavior.
‘How about if I borrow your truck tomorrow? I’ll pay your rental fee, of course.’
‘You won’t pay no rental fee, I can tell y’ that. It’s yours all y’ want.’ Harley took a deep breath. ‘What you gon’ do, Rev’rend?’
‘Prune a hedge, put down a little mulch.’
‘Nossir. About Sammy.’
Harley was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
‘Nothing.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I need two pruning shears with your sharpest blades and three yards of mulch. Can I get three yards of your best stuff?’
