Down by the Riverside

by Jackie Lynn

  Perhaps, I thought, as I rested against the blessed tree, a steady breeze still stirring from the earlier storm, the stars flickering in the dark, velvet sky, the river a stream of dreams and memories hurrying past, perhaps she is busy watching over the little girl at the hospital or perhaps she is attending to the needs of the recently deceased. Perhaps she has other children to comfort or dead men to deliver. Perhaps the angel wasn’t meant for me anyway.

  Maybe, I thought, after tasting the wet, sticky air, my neck starting to ache a little from looking up, maybe the angel is only for sick children and depressed undertakers. Maybe the angel, no matter how long I waited at the exact location of her prior visitation, reciting Catholic petitions I learned from Luz and her sister in fifth grade and singing old Baptist hymns I memorized from going to church with my grandmother, maybe this angel, or any angel, doesn’t just show up when somebody is curious or expectant.

  Maybe the angel, like God’s good mercy, comes only when you need her.

  And yet, as I sat under the tent of birch leaves and summer stars, alone and displaced, it certainly seemed as if I needed her. I had just walked away from the only life I had ever known. I had just said good-bye to family and neighbors, coworkers and friends, and to the places I counted as home. I had packed up and given away everything I owned except for one suitcase of clothes; two cotton towels; a few matching washcloths; a set of sheets; a hand-sewn quilt from my parents’ bed; my grandmother’s silver cross necklace; a cigar box of a few family photographs; my mother’s wedding band; a pair of crystal earrings that I had won at the state fair; and a set of wine goblets, hand-blown glass ones from Williamsburg, Virginia, sky-blue with red-orange flecks that reminded me of morning.

  I sorted and threw out and dismissed and let go of all my trinkets and toys and childhood wishes, my honeymoon pictures and my anniversary gifts, my full insurance coverage and the security of everything, I mean everything, I had thought would hold me and keep me and love me until I died.

  I bundled it all away in nice neat packages, sending them to thrift shops and secondhand stores. I laid it down at the cemetery, in the chapel at the hospital, and at the doorstep of my husband’s new home. I packed my life up and left it, signed it all away, and headed west. And as I waited on that summer night, I figured if I ever needed an angel, ever had room in my life for one, it was there at the banks of the muddy Mississippi.

  But need her or not, she did not come. But still I waited. The yellow moon rose and steadied. The breeze slipped by. And while I waited, while I counted lights across the river and the things I left behind, I considered what I would ask of the heavenly messenger if she did, in fact, drop by.

  I knew that she brought Jolie comfort and Clara confidence. I recognized that she brought the dead man some reason to sing, but I wondered, in the splendor of my summer night, in the flight of my loosed wishes, what gift, what spiritual knowledge would she bestow upon me?

  I thought she might bring me clarity in where I needed to go next, wisdom in choosing the correct direction, peace to go along with the notion that I was right to leave my home, right to go searching.

  I decided that she would see that I needed strength and courage and insight, that I needed instruction as to where and what I should do next. But even as I named all the spiritual gifts I could use at that particular moment in my life, I realized that if the angel was doing the choosing for what I needed most, if she was selecting the thing that was missing in my spiritual life, then I couldn’t be certain that I knew what I would receive. I could not name her imaginings.

  But what I did know, what I was fully aware of on that bright, starry summer Arkansas night, that if I could choose, if I could make my own heavenly request, then there would be no doubt as to how I would name the one certain desire of my heart.

  Give me back my mother.

  Funny, I know, that a forty-one-year-old woman would still long for someone who had been missing from her life for more years than she had been in it, but I did. Strange, I’m sure, that of all things I could pray for, all the things I could use in my life to fortify me, educate me, cultivate me, or illuminate me, that I would ask for that. But I would.

  The same thing I have asked of God the Father in brightly lit churches, of his only son, Jesus, while standing on mountain-tops at sunrise, of Mother Mary, Divine Virgin, when I walked by the ocean at dusk, of the Holy Ghost when I knelt at my bed, of saints while I drove in my car, and of all the angels I could dream up as I bowed my head before meals. What I have wished on shooting stars every time I saw one, the same thing I have prayed every day since I was thirteen years old. Give me back my mother.

  Give me back the mornings of coffee and half a cup of milk and two tablespoons of sugar, of toast topped with sweet cinnamon, browned with too much butter. Give me back those lazy summer days of picking marigolds and sunflowers and black-eyed Susans, filling the shelves in every corner.

  Give me back the simple days of working in her garden. Hoeing and raking and pulling weeds. The two of us side-by-side, walking in the long green rows. The sun on our faces, the dirt under our fingernails, the eager moment when I held up a new bean or a tiny wisp of a vine, the way she would smile at me as if I had made it happen.

  Give me back the afternoons down at the creek when we threw off our shoes and slid down rocks to walk in clear blue water, when the forest was shady and alive, when she would take me by my arms and swing me up around and around, until dropping me, gently, into a wide soft bed of leaves.

  Give me back the late nights of The Secret Garden and Little Women, of stories of brave men who ran mountains and sailed rivers, who knew the languages of bears and fish and antelope, of women who made baskets from river reeds and wool blankets from tight, twisted yarn, so colorful it hurt your eyes.

  Give me back the way I used to fall asleep near her, hearing the softness of her breath. The touch of her hand resting on my head, the easy way she reached for me, pulling me into her, how she always smelled like rain.

  Give me back the thoughts of a girl who was never afraid and who never thought of death and who never, ever expected to be left alone in a house with a violent, angry man, in a place that bore no loveliness.

  There was no doubt in my mind as I rested on that late Arkansas night along the banks of the muddy Mississippi, dreaming of, waiting for, looking to find some Kentucky child’s angel; the only real gift from heaven that I would ask for, the only one I would dream of, hope for, dare to say, would be to know once more how it was to be loved by my mother.

  That was the only angel for whom I had ever longed, the only one worth waiting for.

  I rose up from the edge of the river, gently sweeping my fingers across the rough birch bark, leaving behind my memories and wishes, my thoughts of heavenly visitors and my unloosed prayers, watching them glide away in the night wind, and I walked. I walked without light or good shoes or a thought or idea in my mind.

  And he was waiting for me. Easily, without expectation. And he smiled when I closed his screen door behind me, opening his arms for me as if I were heaven-sent. He welcomed me as if he had known I was on my way and almost there.

  We did not speak. We stood in the dimly lit room, holding each other and listening to the sounds of the night, then he led me to his bed. Just before we lay together, standing by his open window, I thought I caught a glimpse of something, a small, gentle thing.

  Down by the river, dancing just above the earth, I thought I saw the hem of a garment, a dress, a piece of white wedding silk, the slightest edge of lace. It floated right along the whitecaps of river waves, drifting slowly, such an easy thing to miss. He turned to me and I watched her disappear.

  THE

  THIRD

  DAY

  I know he say to trust her

  I know he say it fine

  But I can see the way she tease

  She taking all that’s mine.

  I know he say he coming

  That she bring him down to me
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  That she take me and my babies

  Somewhere we finally free.

  I know he say she brown like us

  Strong pulse, crooked arm

  But I see how she mocks us all

  I see she meaning harm.

  I know he say be patient

  I know he say she fair

  But I don’t feel no peace for her

  I don’t think she care.

  I know he say to trust him

  I know he say it right

  But everyday, another day

  Sliding dark into the night.

  TWELVE

  I awoke to the sounds of his reading. He was beside me in the bed; somehow rising without waking me, finding the book and the page he wanted me to hear. I smelled freshly brewed coffee and I heard the sound of his voice just as morning dawned.

  “ ‘The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands.’ ”

  I lay silently. I was trying to recall exactly what brought me to this place, to this man’s side. I recalled the events of the previous night, remembering the talk with Clara and the ache for angels, and how I sat beneath the tree waiting for one to appear. I remembered the strong desire that pulled me from the bank and down the path by the river and into this bed.

  Still, I did not speak. Registering my emotions and going over the event, I was letting the peace and the surprise and the delight and the awkwardness all mingle inside me and wash across my spiderwebbed mind. I lay quietly, counting back through those dark hours, the gradual climb to the golden dawn, remembering his wide, tender hands and the arch of his strong, bare back.

  I recalled how easily I opened to him, how unafraid and clear I had been as I moved across the shadows of the late summer night, from the tree to the path to his doorstep to his bedroom. I lay next to him listening to his river words and I hardly recognized the woman I was.

  “ ‘Even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats.’ ” He continued to read. His voice was easy, his pace slow.

  Two and a half days from 1420 Pinewood Drive, and already I had taken a different last name, parked my belongings in a place I had never heard of, and was waking to the sounds of a man I had just met.

  Rose Burns Griffith, wife, cardiac nurse, timid and orderly, had disappeared somewhere over one of the three state lines I had just crossed and even if I wanted to, I doubted I could call her back to myself.

  “ ‘It was not always dry land where we dwell.’ ”

  I fumbled with my guilt and embarrassment. I had never slept with another man other than my husband before or since the marriage. I had not been in bed with anyone else since I was a child and my friend Shelley invited me to her house for sleep-overs. It was strange waking up to somebody I didn’t really know, strange feeling so vulnerable, so intimate, so small.

  And even though the papers filed in the Nash County Courthouse clearly read DIVORCE on them, and even though we had said our good-byes, made our peace, I had not lost the feeling of being tied and belonging to Rip Griffith.

  I still felt married and even though I did not regret sleeping with him, it still seemed like a betrayal being in Tom Sawyer’s bed, even if I had been the one who was first betrayed. I realized, lying there next to such a slow-talking, kindhearted man, that making love to someone else didn’t break the bonds that held me to Rip, that it would take me some time to unloose myself from the wedding bindings.

  “It’s Thoreau,” Tom said, realizing I was finally awake and not quite sure how to greet him. “From Walden.”

  I had not yet opened my eyes, but I could feel him watching me. A breeze blew across us. I heard the river noises, splashing water, the low, soft rumble of a boat engine.

  “You okay?” I felt his breath, hot against my neck.

  I rolled over and faced him. I opened my eyes. He was smiling. I nodded.

  “I’d like to fix you breakfast.”

  I nodded again.

  He waited.

  “Read me some more,” I said, dropping my face to his chest, sliding myself under his arm.

  He held up the book. “ ‘It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks which the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets.’ ”

  “I’ve never read him,” I said. “We were supposed to read it in high school, but I think I just made up something for the term paper. I never bought the book.”

  “Then you shall have this copy.” He stroked my hair.

  I stretched out my legs next to his, pulling the covers close around us.

  “I’d always heard that part of the reason he was able to make it out there on that pond by himself was because his sister brought him food, took care of him.” I swung my arm across him. “Is that true?”

  He leaned himself into me.

  “Behind every good man . . .” he said softly.

  I knew what he meant.

  We were silent again. I could feel his questions.

  “I think everybody trying to make it on a pond needs a little help,” I said.

  “I think you’re probably right,” he answered.

  We listened to the wind in the trees and the calls of birds. We listened to the sounds of our breathing.

  “You seem to have done fine without anybody’s help,” I said.

  “I’ve had help,” he answered.

  I waited for more.

  “I’m an alcoholic,” he said quietly, and then added, “with very good sponsors. I have a complete understanding about what it means to rely upon the kindness of strangers.”

  I lay there considering the life of an addict. The slow hard way through recovery. The three steps forward, two steps back of managing something so much bigger than desire. I thought about Thomas, his regrets, his untold secrets, and wondered from where it was that he had found his strength, from whom he had received care.

  “Do you believe in angels?” I asked, thinking about the previous night, about river trees and the edge of white floating in the dark sky.

  He was slow in his response, thoughtful. “I suppose I can believe that there’s all kinds of spiritual messengers.”

  I responded only with a nod, my face sliding up and down against his chest.

  His bedroom window was open and I heard the passing of another barge, the low purr of hummingbirds diving into his bed of flowers.

  “I’ve never been with anyone other than my husband,” I finally confessed, as if it was necessary, as if he had asked.

  He put the book down on the table beside us, took off his glasses, and pulled me closer to him.

  “Are you sorry about last night?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “No,” I answered and then paused. “It just seems odd is all.”

  I could feel the space opening between us.

  “You sleep with someone for most of your life, make love only to them, experience only the way they sleep and breathe and dream, what they like and don’t like, what they think you like and don’t like, the things you get used to, the things you expect. And then all that’s suddenly gone. The life, the love, the way you go to bed and get up every day.

  “It’s just strange is all.”

  “This was too soon,” he said.

  “Oh, no.” I lifted my head and faced him.

  “No,” I said again, even stronger that time. “If anything, it was too late.”

  I lay back down.

  “Rip’s been out of the house for two years. And it had been a year before that we had slept together. And it was even longer that he was gone.”

  I closed my eyes and thought about the way I had become used to feeling lonesome, those last months when we still slept in the same bed, how far away he felt to me as we lay together. He was close enough to reach, to touch, but he might as well have been in another room, in another house, in another town. Once I realized that he didn’t love me anymore, I recognize
d that he had left me long before he packed and moved out.

  “I’m just used to being by myself, I think, even though the divorce was just final.”

  “Getting used to being by yourself isn’t a bad thing,” Tom said, sliding himself up a little in the bed. “But it’s nicer sharing the ride, I think.”

  His fingers swept across my arm.

  “Why didn’t you ever settle down?” I asked.

  “I was waiting on you,” he answered in perfect timing.

  I smiled, and even though I doubted he was telling the truth, I liked it.

  I liked how it felt on the first morning after we made love. I liked the sound of it and the way he said it, easily and without hesitation. I liked the ring of it, the thought of it, the possibility of it; so instead of pushing for more or emptying the meaning out of it, I just let the answer rest between us. It was all I needed to pull myself through the early surprise of consummating our relationship.

  The rest of my time at Tom Sawyer’s was spectacular in the most ordinary way. We took showers and ate breakfast. We sat at the table drinking coffee and reading the paper that was left at his front steps. We hardly spoke again, naming only the things we wanted for nourishment.

  “Eggs?” “Yes.” “Butter?” “Thank you.” It was as if we had awakened together and eaten the day’s first meal together and greeted the day together for all of our lives.

  We were as attuned to how we do things, how we move into the light, how we start our mornings, as any old married couple I had ever known. It was splendid and not at all unusual, and it eased away my embarrassment and softened the clumsiness. It wasn’t until the siren of an ambulance blasted through the quiet that we were pulled away from the glory of such a casual hour.

  “Sounds like it’s close,” I said, as Tom lifted his eyes from the paper and stared out the window.

  He nodded. “They’re on First Street, turning this way,” he reported, sounding like a man who knew the town and the roads and the sounds and the traveled directions of folks in West Memphis like he knew his own schedule. “I think they’re coming to the campground.”