Not a Sparrow Falls

by Linda Nichols

  “Will there be anything else, then?” she asked.

  “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” Lorna blurted out. “I was wondering … I mean, would you like to join us for dinner?”

  Bridie’s face burned, and she felt as humiliated as if she’d been caught with her hand in the till. Now she understood. Lorna was feeling sorry for her. She answered, hearing her own voice over the wet slush of the pulse in her ears. “Thank you, but no,” she said. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”

  Lorna’s sweet face looked as though Bridie had dashed a glass of cold water into it, and suddenly it was she who was feeling sorry for Lorna.

  “Oh, I see,” Lorna said. “Of course. You probably have other plans.”

  Bridie didn’t say one way or the other. “Good-bye,” she said, feeling miserable.

  The other two sisters looked back. They had gotten as far as Carmen’s check stand and were waiting, obviously impatient.

  “Lorna,” Winifred called to her sister, annoyed. “Let’s go.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Lorna said brightly, compounding Bridie’s misery by giving her hand a little pat, as if to show there were no hard feelings. “I’ll leave you the telephone number just in case you change your mind. You can leave a message here.” She tore off part of the grocery receipt, scribbled something on the back, and pressed the scrap of paper into Birdie’s hand. Bridie was just opening her mouth to say she was sorry, that she hadn’t meant to be rude, but Lorna turned and was gone. Bridie stared after her for a minute and was tempted to go chasing after the sisters.

  “I’d love to come to your house for supper,” she wanted to say, but she knew inside with a hollow finality that that would never happen. She fingered the paper. She would never go inside the houses of decent people and eat at their tables. She would stay right here at the Bag and Save and tend to her business. That was all she could expect. That was the best life had to offer, she thought, shoving the receipt into the pocket of her smock. She turned to the next customer, gave him a greeting, and began to scan his groceries. That was the best life had to offer, she repeated again. For the likes of her.

  ****

  Carmen Figueroa glanced across the check stand toward Bridie working in the next lane. It was hard to believe it had been a year, and she still remembered how different Bridie had looked the first time she’d seen her. Skinny as a rail, in a dress that had to have come from the thrift shop, a bad dye job, nails chewed down to a bloody quick, and if that had been all there was to her, Carmen probably never would have made the offer. But something about the new checker’s eyes had snagged the quick once-over. They were big, china-doll blue, and not exactly pleading. That would be saying too much. But when she’d come up to Carmen and spoken in that soft voice of hers with the accent that stretched out all the middles of her words and rounded off the ends, her eyes had lit up with hope like somebody striking a match in a dark room.

  “Are you the one who posted the notice in the lunchroom about needing a roommate?” she’d asked.

  Carmen had sighed. “Yeah, that’s me all right.” And that was how it had happened. A year ago. Huh. Now the pretty hair, which Carmen could tell from the roots would be a very light blond, was still covered with brown, but a light golden brown, and Carmen had talked her into a rinse instead of permanent dye. And Bridie had finally put on enough weight so that it didn’t hurt to look at her anymore. Last month she’d told Carmen she was going to quit biting her nails, and she did, just like that. They’d had manicures to celebrate, even though Carmen had had to talk her into it. Bridie never spent anything on frills. Carmen even had to convince her it was okay to buy a new outfit every now and then.

  Carmen still itched to give her a makeover. She had such a pretty smile, and with her pink cheeks and creamy skin she’d be gorgeous if she let her hair go back to blond. An easy job with a little help from Clairol number 87. But no matter how much Carmen argued, she couldn’t convince her. Bridie’s mouth would clamp shut, and her eyes sort of hooded over like Carmen’s cat’s.

  “No,” she’d say, and the way she said it, you’d think Carmen had suggested being launched into space instead of just coloring her hair. Weird. Anyway, that was just one more piece of evidence. Something was hinky somewhere. She couldn’t say exactly what or even why she thought so. Just that somehow Bridie’s insides and outside didn’t seem to match.

  Bridie must have felt Carmen’s eyes on her back. As soon as she finished bagging up the church ladies’ order, she turned around and flashed Carmen a smile.

  “Are you going out with Newlee tonight?” she asked, her voice casual.

  Carmen gave her a sharp look. Bridie smiled back, all innocence.

  “Dinner in,” she said. “But you don’t need to be gone. Stay and eat with us.” She tossed out the invitation, half meaning it and half just wanting to see what Bridie would say.

  “Oh, that’s all right,” she answered quickly. “There’s a movie I’ve been wanting to see.” She turned away, and Carmen couldn’t see her face.

  “Suit yourself,” she said to Bridie’s back, but she wasn’t fooled. It was just as she figured. This had nothing to do with any movie. Bridie made herself scarce whenever Newlee came around. Something about him gave Bridie the bejeebers, and Carmen was pretty sure it was the fact that he was a cop. In fact, she thought, grinning just at the idea, if she didn’t know better, she’d swear that Bridie was on the lam.

  She frowned and stared into space. She’d been joking, but what if? Huh. Bridie had all the marks. Showed up out of nowhere. Talked all the time about the old home place but clammed up whenever you asked for specifics. There was the way she’d looked at first, as if she’d been chained in a closet for the last year. Put that together with her freakiness around Newlee, and it fit. Who knows, maybe she’d robbed a bank or something.

  A forty-pound bag of dog food crashed onto her conveyor and snapped her to attention. It was the big biker dude. “Hey, Larry,” she greeted him.

  “Hi, Carmen,” he nodded. “I’ll take a carton of Camel hard-packs, too.”

  “Coming up,” she said, locked her till, and went to the cigarette case, glancing at Bridie on the way.

  Nah. No way she’d robbed a bank. She was just weird. After all, Winslow, a store manager without a kindhearted bone in his body, would have checked her references. A big-eyed look wouldn’t have cut it with him. He said Bridie’d been a checker at some grocery store in the sticks—one of those places where they have to bring in the mail on horseback. But, then again, maybe Winslow hadn’t checked her references. Bridie had shown up the week two other checkers had quit, and they’d been pretty desperate for help. Winslow probably would have hired anybody who could work a cash register and had a pulse.

  Carmen got Larry’s Camels, totaled his order, then closed her lane behind him. It was time for her break, and she headed out the door for a smoke, giving her roommate a wink and a smile on her way out. Whatever.

  There was something wrong with this picture, but it wasn’t her job to figure it out. She pulled out her cigarettes, checked her watch, and calculated how long until she got off, putting the matter of Bridie’s past out of her mind. If something about her roommate was out of whack, the truth would come out eventually. It always did. She lit up and started thinking about what to fix Newlee for dinner.

  ****

  Bridie hung her smock in her locker and, for no reason she could think of, transferred the paper with Lorna’s telephone number to her coat pocket. Somehow just feeling her fingers around it reminded her of who she had been once upon a time. She punched out and went down the narrow stairs from the lunchroom. She was glad, for once, that Carmen had a date with Newlee. She didn’t feel like talking to anyone. She would have to find somewhere else to hang out for a few hours, but that was all right. She supposed she could go to the movie like she’d said. She headed out of the Bag and Save, then just stood there for a minute. The brick sidewalks were slick with rain, and a few of t
he cars splashing past her on the narrow streets had turned on their lights.

  She liked Alexandria. It wasn’t home, but it was nice. Old and pretty. Everything was orderly and square. Gardens were neatly contained behind the wrought-iron fences, shops tidy, and everything built of solid, red Virginia brick. The old-fashioned streetlights made glowing circles on the street.

  She started walking. She looked at the shop windows as she passed them, glanced into Le Gaulois, the snooty French restaurant, passed its garden where tables were set under a grape arbor that would be leafy and romantic come summertime. She went by the bar and grill, the stationery shop, the fancy boutiques. The trees, neatly boxed into squares of brick-lined earth, were bare but would be covered with pretty twinkling lights in just a few weeks. There were dogwood, redbud, flowering magnolia, and cherry, all asleep now.

  She inspected the windows of the flower shop, the city office building, the courthouse, Gadsby’s Tavern, the old inn where everyone ate sitting at the same table. She pulled her coat around her chin, and without even being aware that she’d given the order, her feet took her toward the old church. She turned onto Fairfax Street, away from the bustling traffic, past the brick row houses with their shuttered windows.

  There it was, rising up in front of her, stark and beautiful, stately and peaceful. Established 1788, said the plaque on the sidewalk in front. She didn’t know why she loved that old church, but the square angles, the solidness of it made her feel safe and protected. Since the first day it had been a refuge.

  She didn’t go inside right away. Instead, she slipped around the side of the building. She followed the narrow walkway that led to the churchyard in the back, went past the hollies, under the arbor of winter-dead cherry trees, past the mounded and mulched flower beds. The bricks under her feet were so old they were stained almost black.

  She stopped. Stood still for a moment, just looking. There they were. The graves. Some were crypts, others strange-looking tablelike tombstones sitting up above the ground. The grass was neatly trimmed around them.

  These were people, she realized, people who had lived and breathed and loved, and now they were gone. Their lives were finished, time closing over the space they’d left, filling it in, only these stones remaining.

  She stopped in front of her favorite marker, not even needing to transpose the strange f’s into s’s, as she had at first. She almost knew it by heart, she had read it so often.

  Erected to the memory of Eleanor, wife of Mr. Daniel Wren, who departed this life on the Day of April 22 in the year of our Lord 1798, aged 32 years.

  “And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.”

  Revelation, XIV Verse XIII.

  She loved that part. About resting from their labors and having their works follow them. How nice that would be. To have good works that would follow you into a sweet eternal rest instead of memories that tore at your heels like angry dogs.

  This stone was placed over her by order of her disconsolate husband, who was left with two children to lament her loss, John and William Wren, three years old… .

  The rest was worn away. She stood there for a moment, savored the sweetness and felt the pang of loss. The disconsolate husband, the tender children. She blinked. It was cold, and her feet were growing numb. She turned and went back to the church’s front door.

  She opened it, stepped inside, and closed her eyes. She smelled the years, the faint musty aroma of old hymnbooks and Bibles. She opened her eyes. Took in the visitors’ table, the little books and pamphlets: “Save our Organ,” “About Knox Presbyterian Meeting House.” A bulletin board hung on the wall beside the table. It was decorated with a picture of a bird falling from its nest, and scraps of paper in odd shapes and sizes, written by different hands, were tacked beneath it. “Not a Sparrow Falls to the Ground Without Your Father Seeing,” said the caption. Bridie read a few of the notes. “Pray for my mother’s biopsy,” one said. “My husband has been out of work for six months,” said another. “I would like to see my father before he dies. Pray he can forgive me.”

  Bridie’s throat tightened. She sniffed and stepped inside the now familiar sanctuary. It was starkly beautiful. Its wood floors were burnished to a high gloss and covered by a threadbare crimson runner. Simple rectangular box pews with swinging doors and wooden trim had been painted white so many times the finish was glossy and thick. The windows were made of shimmery old glass, and on each sill sat a hurricane lamp. One day while she had been sitting here, the caretaker had come inside and lit them with a long wooden match. It had made her happy for a moment to see the flames glowing, their reflections twinkling in the windows, remembering how they had cheered her on that first lonely day. She exhaled a long sigh of air now, swung open the door of her pew—the one on the far side in the back of the sanctuary. She entered it and sat down. She closed her eyes and wasn’t aware of how much time had passed. In fact, she might have drifted off to sleep for a moment or two, but her eyes snapped open when she heard the door in the narthex open and close.

  She stood and was preparing to dart out the back door, but she paused when she saw who had come in. She could see the person framed in the open doorway. A young woman. No, it was a child, a girl, thin, with long brown hair. And something about her expression was heart-achingly familiar. It was a combination of loss and forlorn despair. Bridie watched her pull a scrap of paper from the pocket of her coat and stick it on the bulletin board under the picture of the falling sparrow. She stood in front of the board for a moment. Her shoulders slumped downward, and Bridie almost called out to her, but something stopped her. Wasn’t everyone entitled to a little privacy? she asked herself. She was an interloper here, and besides, what did she have to offer the child? Whatever the girl needed was beyond her ability to provide. Still, her heart ached, and suddenly she was remembering the girl she had been, a girl who had watched her life and home unravel in ways she would never have predicted. For just a moment that girl from the past blurred into the girl before her.

  “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away and be at rest,” Bridie whispered to herself.

  The child couldn’t have heard her—that was ridiculous—but she lifted her head just as Bridie spoke. She looked into the dark sanctuary, then quickly turned and went back out the way she’d come, the door flapping loudly behind her. Bridie crossed to the window to see where she went. There she was. She cut across the piece of lawn between the church and a tall square of red-brick next door. The door opened, and a woman came out onto the porch. Bridie frowned and narrowed her eyes. Something about her was familiar. She was medium height, plump, and when she turned, Bridie felt a shock of recognition. The woman’s kind face was filled with concern. She said something, then ushered the girl inside and closed the door. Almost stunned, Bridie turned back toward the sanctuary. It was Lorna. And that must be the place to which she’d invited Bridie for dinner this Thanksgiving. That little girl’s home.

  Bridie fingered the receipt in her coat pocket, the one Lorna had written the telephone number on. She walked slowly toward the bulletin board, dreading what would come, but knowing she had to look. Afraid somehow that reading the child’s note would seal her fate. She couldn’t help herself, though. The defeated slump of the girl’s shoulders and the familiar sense of sadness she carried seemed to Bridie like a hand going up amidst churning waves. There was no way she could ignore it. She took a deep breath and stepped toward the bulletin board, located the piece of paper that hadn’t been there before. There it was. A piece of lined paper like children carried to school, the letters formed in neatly penciled cursive. “Help me, God,” it said.

  Bridie felt her heart sink. If it had been nearly anything else, some specific malaise, like God help me to pass my math test, or God please don’t let my kitten die, she could have whispered a quick prayer of agreemen
t and walked away. But this, well, this was something too vague and troubling to ignore. Help me, God? Why, that could mean anything, could take in any possibility from illness to abuse. Bridie heaved another sigh, stepped out of the church into the cold night. The lights inside the house next door were on, but barely. It had a cold, forsaken look that made Bridie feel sorry she’d come near here today. She turned and walked back toward the town center. She stopped at the theater, bought a ticket for the romantic comedy that was playing. She went inside and sat through the feature, but the plot was thin, and the laughter seemed empty. When the show was over she walked home. When she got to their apartment on the shabby back street, she was relieved to find both Carmen and Newlee gone. With a feeling of resignation, she went to the telephone before she had even hung up her coat.

  “Could I speak to Lorna?” she asked when a man answered, and she thought immediately of the stern face of Alasdair MacPherson.

  “Just a moment, please,” he said. Bridie heard a scuffling and then Lorna’s voice.

  “Lorna, this is Bridie Collins from the Bag and Save.”

  “Oh!” She sounded pleased. “It’s good to hear from you.”

  “Is the dinner invitation still open?” Bridie asked, more than halfway hoping Lorna would say no for some reason. Then she could hang up and go on about her business, conscience clear. She would have done all she could.

  “Oh, we would love to have you,” Lorna almost sang out in delight.

  “What can I bring?” Bridie asked, her doom decided.

  “Nothing but yourself. Dinner will be at two, but we’d love to have you join us for church if you’d like.”

  “That’d be fine,” Bridie said, suppressing a sigh. Lorna gave her directions she didn’t need, and finally Bridie hung up the phone. She had the feeling she had just tipped the first in a long line of dominoes.

  Seven

  Bob rapped sharply on the mahogany door and examined his gleaming cordovans while he waited.