Patti Callahan Henry

by When Light Breaks (v5)

  “I ruined her party?”

  “Yeah. The arrival of the ambulance marked the pinnacle of her fit. She didn’t want them on her newly pressure-cleaned driveway.”

  I threw my head back and laughed. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “Nope.” Deirdre put her hand on my forehead. “You do know you have to live with this woman for the rest of your . . . married life.”

  “No, I’ll be living with Peyton.”

  “You get everyone in the family.”

  I closed my eyes. “Then what happened?”

  “They took you off in the ambulance, and you know the rest. You woke up then.”

  “It’s all kinda fuzzy—the hospital, and then just sleep and weird dreams. How’s Daddy?”

  “He’s all right. You know how he gets when he has no control over things. He’s irritable.”

  “You know, we’re going to have to find someone to help him after I leave. Just little things like groceries, laundry, and cooking.”

  Deirdre turned away from me. “I was thinking I’d move back in after you go and . . . do all that.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s not exactly a pleasure being in my little home alone. Just because Bill left me the damn, empty house doesn’t mean I want it.”

  I stretched my back and shifted in the bed, and through the fog of half sleep and fever asked my sister the question I’d never asked before: “What happened between you two? You seemed so . . . in love.”

  She stared at me for a long moment. Her gaze traveled over my nose, my cheeks, then rested above my head. “He doesn’t believe I love him.”

  “What?”

  “Shit, forget it,” she said.

  I let a long time pass in silence, hoping to hear more from her, but she had shut down.

  I sank back on my pillows. “I think I’ll try and get up now . . . thanks for all you’ve done in the past few days . . . checking on me, checking on Daddy. I appreciate you taking care of me.” I leaned forward and hugged my sister, a rare show of affection.

  I thought of work and the thank-you notes I’d have to write for presents I still hadn’t opened. I also wanted to stop by Verandah House to visit Mrs. Mahoney. Her stories and admonitions had been ebbing and flowing with my fever. Whether the flu or something far different caused my preoccupation, I knew for sure that I wanted to see her, hear more of her story.

  Spring moved deeply into Palmetto Pointe with the blooming of azaleas and camellias, the daffodils lifting their faces to the sun. The sweetgrass along the sandy paths swayed as if in a dance to the arrival of warm weather. I hurried along the sidewalk, cursing the lack of parking along Palmetto Drive leading to Verandah House. I passed Marshall’s Garden and Antique Store, and glanced in the front window. Mrs. Marshall had owned the store for generations, and the family name was written in curved, gold letters that had been there for seventy-two years. The s winked at me, missing its middle section. I smiled—the s had been like that for as long as I could remember. I turned my head when a statue caught my eye.

  I stopped, walked toward the window and stared at the miniature statue. It was two feet tall at most: a concrete garden angel, aged and cracked. The wing I could see was spread wide, her face tilted upward as if waiting for a kiss or for someone to tell her something—expectant either way. There was something about the angel that touched that spot inside me that always searched for Mama. I leaned closer—the angel knelt. I pushed the door open, and a small bell announced my arrival.

  Mrs. Marshall looked up from where she stood behind the glass display case, holding a magnifying glass. “Well, lookee here. It’s Kara Larson. My, my, what brings you through my door on this beautiful day?”

  I smiled. “Good morning, Mrs. Marshall.”

  “I heard you were sick . . . fainted right there at a party, did you?”

  “Not one of my finer moments. But yes, I did.”

  “I heard you scared your mother-in-law to death, making her think you were pregnant and all?”

  I lifted my eyes to the ceiling. “Nothing secret in this town? Nope, not pregnant. Just the flu.”

  “Did you come to check on those urns and trees you rented for the wedding? They’re all taken care of—ordered and confirmed.”

  I nodded toward the front of the store. “No, I was wondering about that angel in the front window.”

  “The concrete angel? Oh, she’s just for show. No one wants her—her wing is missing.”

  “It is?” I tilted my head and walked toward the front of the store. “I didn’t notice that.”

  “That’s because I have the marble birdbath placed just so.”

  “Where did you get her?” I stopped and turned toward Mrs. Marshall.

  “My junker found her in Savannah. No one wants an angel with a broken wing. I believe she came from a garden.”

  “Well, I want her. How much is she?”

  “Now why would you be wanting a broken angel?”

  I reached into the display and lifted the angel, held her up to the light. “She’s beautiful. Something . . . I don’t know.”

  “I agree with you, but she’s broken. I couldn’t sell her to you.”

  “How much do you want for her?”

  Mrs. Marshall rolled her eyes. “You can have her.”

  “Thank you.” I hugged her.

  The concrete angel wrapped and stuffed under my coat, I headed down the block to Verandah House.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Hello?” I leaned over the front desk and called into the space behind it. Silence met me. I walked out into the hall to the high-pitched calls of nurses and doctors barking orders. I recognized the tone and the words—there was a code red occurring down the hall; they were attempting to revive a resident.

  I moved in slow motion toward the noise, toward Mrs. Mahoney’s room.

  Lab coats flapped up and down the hall—unwelcome and menacing in their import.

  “No,” I whispered. A nurse scurried by, her face somber and tight, a clipboard held against her chest. She looked up and stopped when she saw me. “May I help you?”

  I motioned down the hall. “Did she . . . ?”

  The nurse pressed her lips together. “Are you a relative?”

  I shook my head in quick motions, which made me dizzy again. I pulled the concrete angel closer. “What happened to her?”

  The nurse looked left, then right. “If you’re not family . . . I can’t.”

  I nodded. “Okay.” Now I’d never find out what happened to Richard on the other side of the sea, to his brothers. I’d never discover where their love had . . . gone. I groaned and watched the nurse round the corner. Why did it matter what happened to an unknown man from 1920s Ireland with a woman I barely knew? But for some reason it did matter and, in fact, seemed desperately important.

  I went down the hall toward the front desk, where a cluster of people in white coats stood talking in hushed, urgent voices.

  The chaotic whirlwind of noise from inside my thoughts stilled now as surely as the eye of a storm. Inside this quiet was a hum, a white noise. My heart calmed, my eyes closed. Even in my sickness the last two days, as my body screamed Stop!, my mind had continued thinking in a flurry about all the things I needed to do and do and do again. I’d thought about all those balls I’d dropped, all those people who wouldn’t approve of my “down time” to get better.

  Now even those thoughts stilled, and I heard only the sounds of the nurses and secretary making necessary arrangements. No one even noticed me as I sat on the bench facing the desk. I had the sensation I’d shrunk to a child’s size.

  What had drawn me here when it wasn’t my day to visit? I didn’t understand my own motivation beyond the need to know the end of the story, to understand the truth it contained. Something about real love. A lump rose in my throat. Yes, love. Maeve had seemed to know it, and the need to understand grew within me, to find out what she knew about love that I didn’t.

  The lump dissolv
ed and tears fell.

  I opened my eyes. Four people were staring at me: a man with nose hairs, a woman whose lip liner covered only the left half of her mouth, and two nurses whose brows were scrunched together in concern.

  A nurse with red hair squatted in front of me. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded; my heart beat faster.

  “Did you know our mother?” the man said, and took a step toward me.

  I jumped up. “You’re her son?”

  He nodded, his double chin jiggling and catching in the top button of his shirt.

  Words tumbled out. “I’m Kara Larson. I’ve been visiting her . . . talking to her. I really wanted . . . I brought her . . .” I stopped.

  “Mother never mentioned you.” He wrinkled his nose at me.

  The nurse touched my arm and motioned for me to follow her. I nodded at the man. I had so many questions to ask him. Was Richard his father? Did they end up together? Did Maeve really want me to find him?

  I followed the nurse around the corner to an empty hall. She pinched her lips together in a thin line: a woman’s face of disapproval. Growing up with only a father, this was not a look I was accustomed to, and it was one I would have liked to think Mama would never have used. Daddy scrunched his eyebrows together and tilted his head down, or just turned away in reprimand.

  I had obviously done something wrong, so I mumbled the words, “I’m sorry,” although I had no idea what I was sorry for. There were immediately many things I felt sorry about : that I hadn’t heard more of Maeve’s story, that I’d been too busy to notice any emotion beyond urgency in months. I was sorry that I’d lost touch with Jack Sullivan.

  I noticed the nurse was talking. “Pardon?” I looked up from the checkered linoleum floor.

  She spoke low. “Mrs. Harbinger’s family does not know who you are and they are in deep grief. I suggest you—”

  “Mrs. Harbinger?” I focused my attention fully on the nurse now. “It’s Mahoney.”

  Then the nurse’s tight lips separated into a wide smile; her middle left tooth was turned to the side. “Oh, dear.” Her face softened; the lines around her eyes diminished. “Mrs. Mahoney isn’t . . . she’s not the one. It was the woman next door. Maeve is still with us.”

  I grabbed her arm, hope rushing up at me like small, fragile bubbles.

  “Maeve is . . .”

  The nurse nodded. “But I wouldn’t suggest you go in and see her just now. It’s kind of chaotic. A lot of noise and people confuse our residents sometimes.”

  I nodded, but just as I had as a child, I did the complete opposite of what I’d been told. I turned with my angel tucked under my coat and walked down the hall, and pushed opened the door to Maeve’s room.

  She sat up in bed, her hair splayed out on the pillow, her head back, with snores coming from her open mouth.

  I stood next to her bed, and her eyes popped open in a wide-eyed stare. She spoke before I could. “Why did you stop braiding my hair? Bloody hell, you took my hair down.” She pulled at either side of her tangled tresses. “And then left because? Because?” She waved her hands in the air.

  Confusion clouded her face. Such innocent confusion on an old face—a juxtaposition that gave me the briefest splinter glimpse of the tenacious thread between newborns and older patients. I sat in the chair next to her bed, pushed her water glass to the side, and took her hand. I wanted to take care of her, but in the inadequacy of my knowledge, all I knew to do was hold her hand. “The woman in the room next door . . . passed on. I guess everyone got quite busy.”

  Maeve turned her face away. “That is why they send us here, is it not? This is what waits for me? That is why I want you to find him before . . .”

  “You have to tell me who he is before I can find him, Maeve.”

  “Oh, I will. I will.” Her eyes opened wider. “They took him, they did.”

  “Who took him?”

  She leaned back against her pillow and closed her eyes, yet they flickered back and forth beneath her eyelids. It was like watching the schools of minnow beneath the calm sound between the tides.

  “The garda took him because he was the youngest—the only one who needed a home. Oh, but I looked for him. Souls bound together can’t be forever torn apart by distance and neither by death. The sea may separate us in body, but not in soul. The edge of the sea is where happiness lives, where we feel and know things. Soon we’d be on opposite edges. . . .” She opened her eyes and stared at me.

  She whispered now, “Our souls do fuse, combine, you know. But I know you know that, dear. I can see below the pale blur of your green eyes. You do know that. Circumstances, distance, busyness nowadays with you young. It is the busyness. As if you can prove how worthy your life is by how busy it is.”

  Maeve spoke in the singsong voice of a younger woman. “ ‘I’m so busy. I’m so overwhelmed. I’ve got so much going on. I don’t have time . . . I don’t have time.’ I hear it from my grandbabies, from all of you running through these halls. You young wear it like a badge of honor, like soldiers of the IRA wore their scars from fighting in the Easter Rising. Foolish. All foolish—it is only a way to avoid feeling.”

  I squeezed her hand, then changed the subject. “Who took him? How did you find him? Did you marry him?”

  She released a long breath. “There you go—rushing and rushing and rushing like the dumb sheep running through the open gate on the fair green meadows only because someone opened it and the dog circled. There is so much before the end of the story, so much before I found him or even lost him. No one wants to take that journey through the story. Only directly to the story.” She released my hand, patted the angel still in my hands. “What is that?”

  I lifted it up. “A garden angel. She was in the window at my favorite antique shop.”

  Maeve touched the intact wing, then traced across the chest to the other side, where she ran her forefinger along the broken edges, slowly, deliberately, as if feeling for the bones and sinew of a live person. I held my breath as she did this.

  A small tear fell from her left eye. “A broken wing.”

  I nodded. “But I still think she is beautiful.”

  “She is,” Maeve said, her voice cracked but still melodic. “And that is how I felt when they took him. One wing. Who can fly with one wing?”

  “I can let her sit at your bedside if you’d like.”

  But Maeve didn’t hear me. She was gone into the land of story, to the place I longed to be.

  “They take him so fast I can’t react. Keening women, dirt in the road, cold on my feet, wool against my face. His older brothers, four of them, attempt to pull him from the police, but they hit those boys with their clubs.”

  Maeve stopped, stared at me, then past me. She ran her finger once again along the broken wing, the tattered edge of concrete.

  “After they come into the house and take him, Richard stands at the back of the cart. His hand rises to stop me from pushing against the police. The rain is on his hair, slick and dripping onto his face, onto a pain I have never seen on his features, yet I instinctually know it is a pain of a size I would now understand. All those thirteen years I thought pain was merely frustration or desire or delay, or even a cold hearth when Da came home drunk or . . . well, none of that was real pain in any way. Only now do I understand, and at that moment, in a darker, sharper world, I fall to the ground. The cobblestones are cold against my body, but not uncomfortable. I know where they will take him—to an Industrial School, the worst place for a young boy in Ireland—and they won’t tell me which one, they won’t tell me. . . .”

  Maeve’s eyes drifted upward, her hand fluttered in the air. I took her fingers, feeling I should say something, but I didn’t. There was a deeper need, hers or mine—I wasn’t sure, but it wasn’t about saying more; it was about saying less, about hearing more keenly.

  She squeezed my hand. “He comes to me and lifts me from the ground. His beautiful wide hands, which I touched only in dreams or saw chop the wo
od, now touch me. After all my years of waiting, of lying in my upper loft and imagining his touch, what his hands would feel like on my face, on my arms, now I know. This caress is more, so much more than I’d imagined. This is now and forever—the moment everyone must have, the moment that encompasses all other moments; now and before, now and after: all time.

  “He pulls me to stand and holds my face between his hands. ‘Maeve, I will find you,’ he says. The garda pull him backward, but in that moment, separate and true of time and space, they have no power.

  “He kisses me. Everything around us disappears: sight, sound, rain, pavement, cold. None of them exist as his hands hold my face and his lips touch mine . . . then the world rushes back in. Like a great sucking vacuum, the world and all its evil rush in. They grab me, pull me backward. Pain and noise don’t return in small pieces, but large: a bombardment. My mam screams, garda holler, his brothers shout obscenities in Gaelic, neighbors beg for respect for the dead.

  “Richard reaches down to the ground at the side of our lane, where we lived across from each other all our lives, the one with our clachan of homes, our thatched roofs and lime-washed homes, and pulls a mountain aven flower—white and pure with a yellow center—from the side of the road. It is a sole flower, which had forced its way through the broken cobblestones. These flowers usually grow in clusters, but only one grows at our feet that morning. He places it in my hands as they pull him away. He says again, ‘I will find you.’ ”

  Maeve stopped and closed her eyes. I patted her forearm. “Did he? Did he find you?”

  “For a long time,” Maeve said, “I saw him everywhere: in the waves, in the mountain aven, in the three brown sails of the hookers on Galway Bay. Everywhere. But he was gone.”

  I held my breath; she stared at me and spoke. “What happened to your Jack? Did you even bother to look for him, find him, or he you?”

  “This is your story. Mine is simpler. Next-door neighbor moved away. I’m in love now—getting married to the most wonderful man.”