Sparrow Road

by Sheila O'Connor

  “We’re from Sparrow Road,” Josie said to everybody. “The artist retreat. Raine writes. Me, I sew fabric art from scraps. Quilty kinds of things.” For some reason, the quilting part put most folks at ease. The ladies talked to Josie about their own quilts they were sewing; a couple of men asked about my stories. Everyone we met took a few odd looks at Josie. “Reuse and recycle,” Josie joked whenever someone stared too long at her dress. Still, I could tell they liked the happy gap between her teeth and the kind way she offered everyone our terrible rhubarb taffy.

  We sat down at table after table, and at every table Josie invited strangers to our Arts Extravaganza. In just one day, the Arts Extravaganza had turned real. Real, but Viktor still didn’t know. Mama either. I was glad they sat far enough away that they couldn’t hear Josie’s plans.

  “So you’ll come?” Josie asked at the end of every conversation. “We can count on you?” Most folks didn’t seem eager, but everyone was too polite to say so. The Comfort folks were a distant kind of friendly—nice enough, but not in any hurry to have you to their house. Not Josie’s brand of friendly.

  Whenever Mama caught my eye, she’d pat the empty seat beside her. She already had Diego, Lillian, and Viktor, but I knew it was me she wanted close in case Gray James suddenly appeared. Mama wanted me to sit, but I just couldn’t. We still had our research to get done.

  “Did you know any of the orphans?” I asked a man who looked as shaky old as Lillian.

  “Well, no,” he rasped. “I can’t say that I did. Although they came to church on holidays, of course. A few hitched rides on the highway when they tried to run away.”

  “Run away?” I asked.

  “I suppose to get back to where they came from. They weren’t original to Comfort. Never were. We’re not a town of orphans. Children here have parents. We’re a family kind of place.” He squinted at the sun. Across the lawn a group of kids played a game of rhubarb toss.

  “Good invention,” Josie said to me. “Rhubarb toss. We’ll need good games at our Arts Extravaganza.”

  “You know.” He tapped his cane against my leg. “There may be one orphan. A lady in Spring Valley. Married to a Lutheran preacher. I believe she settled in these parts.”

  “A lady in Spring Valley?” Josie jumped out of her seat. “Any chance you know her name?”

  “Nope,” he said. “I can’t say that I do.”

  When I turned back to Mama’s table she was gone. Viktor too. There were people crowded everywhere, families gathered on old blankets, but Mama wasn’t anywhere in sight.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said to Josie. Mama’s sudden absence made me certain something strange was going on.

  “Where’d Mama go?” I asked Diego. “And Viktor?” I had a hunch Gray James was at this picnic and Mama was somewhere at his side.

  “How’s the research going?” Diego joked like he hadn’t heard my question. “I think you and Josie better plan to run the world.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a purple bead. “My big find so far at this picnic. Must be left over from a Sunday school project.”

  “Oh, Sunday school.” Lillian pointed toward Good Shepherd. “Our children never go to Sunday school in town. But of course we always pray.”

  “Diego?” I interrupted.

  “More rhubarb tea, sweet Lilly?” Diego picked up her empty cup.

  “Is he here?” I asked Diego. Everywhere there were men in Sunday suits. Men in ties. Men in sport shirts and long sleeves. Men in baseball caps and glasses. Somewhere out there Mama was talking to Gray James. I knew it in my heart. “Tell me.”

  “He was.” Diego finally nodded. “But I believe your mama asked him to go home.”

  23

  That night after the social, I pestered Mama with my questions. Even though she said Gray didn’t see me at the picnic, I couldn’t escape the feeling that I’d missed him by a minute. The answer to a question I’d wondered my whole life. He’d been there in the crowd, then he was gone. A man I could have met by accident, and all of my decisions would be done.

  The little Mama told me—how he grew up in a trailer in Missouri, how he made records for a living, how his melancholy songs went straight to people’s hearts—she told me in a hurry, like Gray James was a subject she couldn’t dwell on for too long.

  Did you think about your father’s face? I wrote Lyman the next morning. Lyman knew the feeling of having someone gone. Wonder what he looked like? I closed my eyes and imagined Lyman sitting right beside me, the two of us just talking at Viktor’s turtle pond. The white sun waving in the water. The timid turtles sunning on the rocks. Turtles were the perfect pets for Viktor.

  Sure, Lyman said. I saw him in my mind. And other times when I looked into the mirror. I liked to think I saw his face in mine. But who knows, he might not have looked like me at all. But you’re a girl, he said. A girl would take after her mother.

  I know my mother, I said. And we don’t look alike.

  Then I guess you take after him. Lyman ran his fingers through the water. It was too slimy green and murky for me to ever touch. But you’ll see that for yourself when you meet him face-to-face.

  Three days had passed since I learned about Gray James, and still I didn’t know when or how or if the two of us would meet.

  You think we’ll really meet? I asked.

  Sure, he said. If I were you, I’d want to meet him now.

  It was late that afternoon when Viktor found me in the tower. He reached his pale, skinny arm up through the trapdoor and without a word left a wrinkled envelope beside me on the floor. Sealed, so I knew he hadn’t read it. In blocky penciled letters on the front someone had written RAINE O’ROURKE. All capitals, just like every word printed in the letter.

  DEAR RAINE,

  I BET YOU THINK IT’S LATE FOR ME TO COME KNOCKING AT YOUR DOOR. I CAN ONLY SAY IT’S SOMETHING IN MY LIFE I NEED TO SET RIGHT, AND I’M SORRY FOR MOST THE THINGS I’VE DONE. THE THINGS THAT HURT YOU ESPECIALLY. I COULD GO ON AND ON HERE ABOUT MISTAKES AND LIFE, ETC., BECAUSE I AM SUPPOSED TO HAVE A GIFT WITH WORDS, BUT I DO BETTER WHEN I’M PUTTING THOUGHTS INTO MUSIC. BETTER STILL IF IT’S NOT MY OWN HEARTACHE I’M TRYING TO GET ON PAPER. I AM HERE IN COMFORT, NOT FAR FROM SPARROW ROAD. YOUR MAMA SAYS YOU’LL SEE ME WHEN YOU’RE READY. I AM READY WHEN YOU ARE.

  YOUR FRIEND, Gray James

  Only his name was signed in messy cursive. Gray, he wrote, not Dad, which felt exactly right to me. Gray James—who would be ready when I was.

  I must have read that letter fifty times at least. I read it in the tower and underneath the willow, alone out in the meadow, on the dock down at the lake. I read it by the moonlight, before I fell asleep. Gray James. It was a voice I’d been missing for so long. Him. My whole life mystery. And here he was knocking at my door. Saying he was sorry. The secret hope I’d carried in my heart.

  24

  The day after Gray’s letter a record came for me.

  I was tucked under the willow writing all of this to Lyman, every mixed-up feeling, when Viktor lifted back the leaves and asked to see me in his office.

  Inside the old infirmary, a dusty phonograph was set up on his desk. Viktor held up a faded record album jacket. “Gray asked me to deliver this to you.” Then he slid the record out, set it on the phonograph, put the needle down, and left me listening alone.

  In my dream you are a lost night, Gray James sang.

  I picked up the cardboard cover and stared down at a scruffy sort of cowboy in the back end of a truck. A cigarette in one hand, a bottle of beer held up in the other. His ragged jeans were ripped and stained, his old white T-shirt wrinkled. His cowboy boots were crusted thick with mud. His shy eyes were brown like mine, his straight black hair hung loose around his face. He looked a lot like me. A lot like me.

  Lost Time was written on the bottom.

  Lies are lies even when I tell them. Gray James’s voice was gravelly and lonesome; I could see why he was famous in some circles for his melancholy songs. Every sad
word was a man missing something he couldn’t name. A lost man walking down a highway. Whatever home was, it ain’t home now.

  For a long time, I sat in Viktor’s dusty office staring at Gray’s face and listening to him sing. The hurting ran so deep his music almost made me cry. Song after song stirred some kind of horrible sorrow in my stomach. It made me think of Lillian and Lyman. All the orphans. How long they waited for their parents. But most of all, it made me ache for Grandpa Mac.

  I lifted the needle from the record, picked up the phone, and called Grandpa Mac collect.

  “Raine?” Grandpa sounded frantic. “Is everything okay?”

  “I know about Gray James,” I blurted out.

  “So I heard,” Grandpa Mac growled. Mama must have talked to Grandpa Mac. I didn’t think the two of them had spoken since the day we left Milwaukee.

  “I haven’t met him yet,” I said. “But I guess he wants to meet.” I looked down at the shabby cowboy’s picture. His face was young-boy sweet, like he hadn’t grown up to Mama’s age. “I’m not sure if I should.” I bit my lip and waited. I wanted Grandpa Mac to say it was okay, to let me know he’d love me whatever I decided.

  “That makes two of us, sweetheart.” Grandpa Mac’s breath sounded worn out and long. “You’re still a little girl.”

  “I’m not little, Grandpa Mac. I’m going to be thirteen.”

  “Sweetheart, you could have gone your whole life without this yahoo.”

  Yahoo. When Grandpa Mac said it, the name seemed to fit Gray James. A drinking and smoking cowboy in the back end of a truck. I stared down at the picture. “Mama said that he was safe.”

  “Well, your mama thinks she knows,” Grandpa Mac said, like he thought Mama was wrong.

  “So do you want me to say no?” I knew Grandpa Mac would tell it to me straight.

  I waited through his heavy breaths. “I want you to come home,” he finally said. “Get it straightened out on this end. Not in Timbuktu with a bunch of kooky artists. Let that yahoo deal with me here. Your mother’s done her share of crazy things, but this—”

  “Don’t be mad at Mama. Please.” I didn’t want Grandpa Mac to hold Gray James against Mama, just like I didn’t want him to hold Gray James against me.

  “I’m not mad,” Grandpa Mac lied. “This just isn’t any way to raise a child. You’ve got a first-class family—your mom and I, Lord, we love you more than life. That ought to be enough.”

  “It is.” I felt worse than when I’d first picked up the phone. Somehow calling Grandpa Mac had only made my decision that much harder. “So will you be mad at me? If I decide to see him? ’Cause I don’t want you to be mad.”

  “I’m never mad at you, Raine.”

  “I know,” I said. But that wasn’t quite the same as saying that he wouldn’t be. I pressed Gray’s album cover to my chest. “He sings.”

  “Lots of people sing. That doesn’t make them saints.” Grandpa Mac put his hand over the phone. Through the muffle, I could hear he had a customer waiting to check out. “Sweetheart, have your mother call me, please. Will you do that for me?”

  My heart sank. Calling Grandpa Mac had only made the trouble between him and Mama worse. And Gray James was in the middle, just like me.

  “Sweetheart?”

  My throat hurt too much to speak. One word to Grandpa Mac and a flood of tears would be streaming down my face.

  Whatever home was, it ain’t home now. Gray’s sad song was already in my soul.

  “Raine?” Grandpa Mac’s voice softened just a little. “Come home,” he said. “We’ll get it all worked out.”

  25

  “That’s one wistful picture,” Josie whispered. “So much longing there. So much wishing on that page.”

  The two of us stared at Lyman’s drawing. Other artwork was taped up in the attic, but Lyman’s drawing was the one that always made us dream. Waves of stark white hills covered in a perfect sheet of snow. Not a single footprint. It had the forlorn feeling of a wish. The way I felt when I wondered about Gray.

  All of it was wistful: Lyman’s snowy hills, Gray’s music, the orphans’ empty beds, the single slice of moon outside the attic. My heart when I looked at Gray James’s album. My call to Grandpa Mac. Longing. I knew what Josie meant. “It’s like the sound in Gray James’s songs,” I said.

  “Really?” Josie kept her eyes on Lyman’s picture. “His songs are wistful, huh?”

  “Yep,” I said. “His record’s called Lost Time.”

  “Well, that’s one wistful title,” Josie said. “I bet Gray James had some trouble in his heart. Lots of folks put sorrow in their art. And art’s the perfect place to put it.” Josie dropped backward on the bed. “Maybe he was dreaming of the time he lost with you.”

  “No,” I said. “He could have come to see me. I was always in Milwaukee.”

  “Well, there must have been some reason,” Josie said. “If I had you as my daughter, I wouldn’t want to miss a minute.” She rolled over on her stomach and propped her chin against her fist. “But at least you’ll get to ask him.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t meet him. Grandpa Mac and Mama are my family. That ought to be enough.”

  “Sure,” Josie said. “But you got room for more. Everybody does. Like us. Already we’re a kind of summer family. The more family you let in, the happier you’ll be.”

  “But Grandpa Mac—” I thought about my phone call. The sick swirl in my stomach the second we hung up. “He definitely doesn’t want me to meet Gray.”

  “No?” Josie frowned. “Well, some folks hold the things they love too close. Maybe that’s the case with Grandpa Mac. But from all the stories that you tell me, I’m pretty certain it’s your happiness he wants.” Josie pulled a rock out of her pocket and pressed it in my palm. “My heart stone,” she said. “Just hold it tight and listen. Then tell me what your heart is saying to you now.”

  I squeezed the cold stone in my hand; it felt smooth and round and sturdy. Then I closed my eyes and let the attic silence help me hear my heart.

  “I know I want to meet him,” I said finally. “Without anybody mad or sad. Grandpa Mac or Mama. Or trouble up ahead. Or my good life to be gone. I just want to know him. See him for myself. And have it turn out happy.” I stopped. I wasn’t going to cry right there in front of Josie.

  “So,” Josie said. “Let’s invite him to my barbecue this Sunday.”

  “Your barbecue this Sunday?” I opened up my eyes. Josie still hadn’t told Viktor about the Arts Extravaganza, and now she was planning a cookout? Josie’s wild mind was a mystery to me.

  “It’s just a small fiesta I’m hosting for our house,” Josie said. “We should probably get to work!” She sprang up from the bed like the cookout was today. “What’s summer without ribs and roasted corn and watermelon? And I’ll do all the fixing so your mom won’t have to fuss.”

  “Mama and Gray in the same place?” It hadn’t even been a week since Mama told me; I didn’t get the feeling she was ready for Gray yet. Or at least for Gray with me.

  “Sure,” Josie said. “And everybody else. Lillian, Diego. All of us who love you, Raine. So you won’t have to meet him by yourself.”

  “You really think he’d come here for a cookout?”

  “I do. I think that he’d be honored.”

  Together we made his invitation. Josie glued glitter on the paper, I asked Gray James to come to Sparrow Road. As soon as it was finished I gathered up my courage and knocked on Viktor’s door.

  “A barbecue this Sunday?” Viktor rubbed his hand across his tired eyes.

  “Josie is hosting it for everybody.” I hoped Viktor would stay in his infirmary; I hoped Eleanor would hide up in her room. “All of us. And Gray can come here, too.”

  “I’m afraid I hadn’t heard.” Viktor cleared his throat. “But I expect as much from Josie.”

  I held out the invitation. “I thought you could deliver it for me. Since you brought the things from Gray.”

  “But Molly?�
� Viktor said. “Does she know this invitation’s been extended?”

  “Sort of.” I was on my way to tell her, but first I had to hand it off to Viktor. “Mama said the decision was all mine.”

  When Sunday came, I couldn’t keep my hands from shaking. They trembled from the time I opened up my eyes. A flock of birds beat inside my chest.

  What kind of person would he be? What would we say? How would Mama act? Did she still love Gray James? And what about Diego? Ever since the Rhubarb Social, Diego had been at our cottage every night to sit with Mama on the swing. I wondered how he’d feel about a man Mama used to love.

  At five o’clock, I put on my favorite jeans and the flowered peasant shirt I bought for sixth-grade pictures. Josie told me I’d feel best dressed as myself. No fancy foo-foo. I left my dark hair long and straight. Looking in the mirror, I was suddenly afraid Gray James might have dreamed about a different daughter. A pretty red-haired miniature of Mama. What if I wasn’t the daughter Gray James had in mind?

  “You look nice.” Mama stood behind me in the mirror. “Very grown up.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “Me too.” Mama wrapped her arms around me from behind like she was cold. “A little bit, at least. I just hope this answers all your questions in the end.”

  26

  Outside the main house, silver Christmas tinsel sparkled in the branches and the weathered picnic table was covered in a velvet patchwork cloth that looked like Josie’s dress. We all had our own embroidered napkins; even G.J. had one now. A glittered WELCOME waited by his plate. All around the yard, tiny candles burned in clear glass jars. “My latest five-and-dime find!” Josie said. “Two hundred candles for three dollars. And all these old jars were just buried in the barn!”

  I was relieved Gray James wasn’t there yet. Eleanor either. Mama said that if we were lucky Eleanor wouldn’t come to the barbecue at all.

  Diego poured us each a cup of fruity punch. “Josie’s secret recipe,” he said with a wink. Strawberry bits floated on the top. “Be careful. She’ll probably put us all under a spell.”