In the Emlyn Springs graveyard there are other women who have been named for virtues: Patience, Temperance, Grace, Modesty. Their names are not used so frequently in everyday conversation, they don’t routinely appear in headline news: MISSING SOLDIER’S FAMILY CAN ONLY WAIT AND HOPE, ANGER SURFACES AS HOPE FADES, VICTIM’S MOTHER HOPES REMAINS WILL BRING CLOSURE, NEW DRUG THERAPIES OFFER HOPE TO PATIENTS. Bonnie has noticed over the years that the people responsible for headlines like to pair variations on the word hope with variations on the word tragic: TRAGEDY TURNS THE TIDE FOR OLYMPIC HOPEFUL, HOPES BURIED IN TRAGIC MINE DISASTER.
Perhaps, is the way Miss Elfyn usually answers Bonnie’s question. Sometimes she replies with an unequivocal no, just to be contrary, Bonnie suspects. But this answer is less cruel than the one Miss Elfyn makes only rarely: Yes, of course I’ve seen Hope.
Where? Bonnie demands on such occasions.
That is for me to know and you to find out is one of Miss Elfyn’s typical responses.
Or, at her most infuriating, You will find that which you seek only when you stop looking. Bonnie hates that Zen hogwash.
Or, more accusingly, What does it matter? Why do you care? How would it change things if you knew?
How indeed? Pastor Mutter laments quietly from beneath Bonnie’s kneeling, laboring form. Several other dead fathers nod their heads and murmur in agreement. Bonnie does not hear them.
Today, Miss Elfyn replies, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.”
Sometimes Bonnie gets angry with Miss Elfyn—especially when she is purposely obtuse, like today—and stomps away before they’ve had a change to discuss other matters. But what good does it do to be angry with the dead?
And to be sure, the dead know the answer to Bonnie’s most pressing question—She’s close! they long to shout, so close, just over there!—but, bound by a stringent code of ethics, they are strictly prohibited from divulging the exact whereabouts of the missing. It’s for the best, really. The living have to learn to work these things out for themselves.
I love Emily Dickinson, Miss Elfyn says. Don’t you?
Bonnie sighs. Yes, Miss Elfyn, she replies, understanding that this constitutes the end of today’s conversation about Hope. I love her, too.
An hour later, after Miss Elfyn has exhausted herself by reciting what would seem to be the entire Emily Dickinson canon and then fallen asleep, Bonnie mounts her bike and departs. She needs to get to the juice stand and start chopping up organic celery, apples, and broccoli, snipping flowerets of parsley and blades of barley grass. Mr. Norris is always her first customer of the day, and she likes to have his Green Ginko Power Smoothie ready for him when he arrives at 9:00. Old people’s time is so precious.
Business is slow. To Bonnie, it matters little either way: If business is good, she is able to tithe more of her income for projects that are dear to her heart—the Emlyn Springs Cemetery Restoration Project, for example, or the Welsh Heritage Museum—and if business is bad, she can go out on the bike and look for artifacts. It’s a win-win situation.
After Mr. Norris comes and goes, a couple of city cyclists show up asking where they can get a latte; Bonnie sends them back to Beatrice. Maybe she should consider investing in an espresso machine; the promise of fancy coffee is a big draw for city people. She’ll think about it.
The Labenz boys take a break at 10:30 and amble over for their drinks: Strawberry Surprise Smoothie for Al, Green Apple Pie Smoothie for Pete, and Orange Crush Smoothie for Dylan. (Bonnie worries about them; they drink Coke and eat junk food all day, so unbeknownst to them she always spoons protein powder into their drinks.)
Blind Tom shows up around noon. He’s one of Bonnie’s occasional customers. She’s never quite sure when he’ll stop by since his work schedule is erratic and sometimes takes him out of town.
“Hi, Tom,” Bonnie says.
“Hi, Bonnie.”
“Your usual?”
“Yes, please.”
Bonnie takes great pride in her work. Her standards are high, and it’s not usual that she makes what she considers a perfect drink. But she makes one this morning for Blind Tom.
“Thanks.” Blind Tom sips his Sunny Clime Smoothie. “I, uh …” He hesitates. “I have to tell you something.”
“Is there something wrong with it?”
“Oh, no. This is delicious. The best ever. It’s just … I get nervous when you do that thumping thing.”
“Thumping thing?”
“With the blender.”
“Oh!” Bonnie cries. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about your hearing being extra … sensitive.”
“No no, it’s not that. What I mean is, it could be dangerous.”
“I’ve been doing it for ages. If I don’t thump, the ingredients don’t all get to the bottom.”
“It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing the manufacturer would have had in mind.”
“I keep my hand on the lid,” Bonnie offers reassuringly. “It’s perfectly safe.”
“Have you ever tried doing it differently? Maybe putting things in one at a time?”
“You have to put the liquid in with the nuts. Otherwise the engine overheats.”
Blind Tom smiles.
“I mean the motor,” Bonnie adds.
“Maybe you could try grinding the nuts beforehand. I’ve got a coffee grinder, and I was thinking something like that would grind almonds.”
“But then how would you grind your coffee?”
“I could grind it in advance and then freeze it.”
“That’s really nice, but—”
“Or I could grind the nuts for you.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Bonnie considers. “There would be something wrong about you doing the work for me.”
“I wouldn’t be doing the work. I’d just be helping.”
Bonnie frowns. She’s starting to feel irritated.
Blind Tom goes on. “All I’m saying is that I’d like to help you with your nut problem.”
“I don’t have a nut problem.”
“I’m just wondering if there’s a way to do it that isn’t so hard on you.”
“It’s not hard on me!” Bonnie says harshly, and then immediately feels terrible. Being snippy with a blind man has to be the kind of thing that sends Catholics to confession. “Really, it’s no trouble,” she amends.
“Okay,” Blind Tom says, sounding not at all wounded. “If you say so. I’ll see you later.”
Bonnie busies herself slicing fresh strawberries from the Williams girls’ garden. If no one else shows up by 1:30, she’ll close up and take a longer ride, maybe east this time, toward Holmesville or Wymore. She cannot let a day go by without trying to acquire something for her archives.
Chapter 4
The Myth of Protection
Larken arrives at the campus art gallery and ducks into the ladies’ restroom before she can be spotted. She is almost ready to make her entrance, but like even the best-rehearsed actor, she has a few remaining preparations to make before she can emerge from the wings and step onstage fully in character.
There are full-length mirrors in the bathroom, but Larken avoids these; she stands at one of the sinks, where the mirrors afford a neck-up view.
She is stunningly accessorized: A beaded burgundy velveteen shawl is draped over her shoulders and she wears new earrings. Her face is beginning to perspire; luckily though, she found metered parking on the street in front of the gallery. If she’d had to endure a long walk in the heat, her face would have slid off. As it is, there’s just a bit of shine to contend with, easy to remedy. Her eye shadow and blush are still intact; she only needs to press a cool dry powder puff to her cheeks, forehead, upper lip, and forehead.
With a paper towel, she dabs cold water under her arms and on her wrists. She inserts two minty pellets of gum into her mouth and masticates furiously until she’s convinced that
all lingering fast-food aromas have been eradicated. She reapplies her new lipstick (“Raspberry Truffle”), perfects the drape of her shawl, takes a deep breath, and then heads toward the gallery lobby, confident in her looks, sated in her appetites. It is precisely 3:37, early enough to register reliability, late enough to negate any hint of desperation.
Larken has spent the past two hours purchasing this confidence and satiety at a cost of just over $300: the scarf was $175, the makeup $70, the earrings $60, and the food around $15. Larken doesn’t consider this spendthrift behavior. These purchases are necessities. They’ve made it possible for her to survive the imminent hell of a university-mandated schmooze.
The main floor of the gallery is an airy, open place, notable for the two-story glass wall on one side, the imported Italian marble that covers many of the interior and exterior surfaces. Light-colored—like cappuccino meringue—delicately veined, speckled, and pockmarked, the marble has always been Larken’s favorite thing about the gallery.
The gallery prides itself on its contemporary acquisitions, and most of the art is not to her liking. There isn’t even one painting in the collection that represents the focus of her area of scholarship: the Virgin as portrayed by the Flemish masters. Plenty of Christs, of course, no end to the saints, but not a single Northern Renaissance Mary. So when Larken is required to visit the gallery, she takes comfort in the marble, its highly reflective surface, its glassine smoothness. She wishes that she could walk the museum in bare feet. At a certain time of day—late afternoon—if the sky is heavy with rain, but there is still enough light seeping through the clouds, the floors have the look of a frozen pond.
There are maybe seventy-five people here, half students, half faculty and admin types. The students ring the edges of the group, within easy access of the catering tables, their plates piled high. Mostly they talk with one another, and who can blame them? No sign of Drew—one of the few people she’d enjoy talking to at an event like this. No sign of Misty Ariel Kroger either, thank God. A jazz trio is playing in one corner of the gallery. Kris (who has changed her clothes, Larken notices, and wears a carnelian-colored backless sundress) is embedded in the center of the room, deep in conversation with the only other woman on the art department faculty, Dr. Mirabella Piacenti.
There’s Arthur and Eloise, arm in arm as usual. Part of a foursome, they’re smiling and chatting with someone Larken doesn’t recognize, a man who must be the new dean. He is squat and balding, rosy of complexion. Larken is dismayed to see that the current chairman, Richard Edgerton Gaffney, completes the quartet: toothy, scarecrowish, wearing one of his Armani knockoffs, taking up too much space as usual, flailing his big hands around, talking and gesticulating like some parody of a wealthy Florentine intellectual (she can almost hear his ersatz British-accented speech) instead of the Southern cracker he really is. Larken has no desire to join this group; Richard holds her in contempt, she is sure of it, so she avoids him whenever possible. She’ll get a drink, wait for him to move on, and then do her duty.
Larken approaches the bar. “Do you have something white? Not too sweet?” she asks the bartender, smiling. His view of her, she knows, is much like that she just saw in the bathroom: a tightly circumscribed view that does not include her body.
“I’d recommend the soave,” the bartender replies.
He’s gay, Larken can tell at once. He’s in good shape, moderately buff—but not so much as to be intimidating, like Gaelan—and has bright hazel eyes, dimples, dense black corkscrew curls—and pinned to his crisp white shirt is a name tag that reads David. Larken wonders if he wears a yarmulke when he’s not pouring wine at dull university functions. He’d look good in a yarmulke.
“I’ll take a glass of that then, please.”
It’s clouding up outside, the light is changing, cooling; oranges and yellows and reds all over the gallery are receding, softening; blues and grays advance. Larken half turns and sees that Richard has moved on and is now holding court with a group of grad students.
Larken picks up her wineglass and takes a sip. “Mmm, this is lovely.”
“Glad you like it.”
Larken is grateful for the refuge of the bartender’s nonjudgmental, asexual male company, his kindness. She wishes she could spend the party here, leaning on the bar, presenting her face and nothing but her face. She’d slip out of her shoes and socks. David wouldn’t care. She’d savor the feeling of cool smooth marble against her feet, marble that came all the way from Italy, and talk with him about anything but university bullshit: art, politics, poetry, movies, music, fiction, religion, grief. Maybe he could introduce her to a nice rabbi.
But Arthur and Eloise have spotted her; they wave in unison, and Arthur gestures her over.
Larken sighs. “I’m summoned.”
“Too bad. Enjoy.”
Larken begins making her way across the room. She knows what is required of her at this event. She knows how to get through this kind of public obligation, painful as it is. She must convince anyone with whom she interacts that they are far more important that the hors d’oeuvres. She has thirty seconds after the introductions to distract the dean from her appearance (clothes and makeup can only do so much) and force his focus elsewhere. Half a minute to banish what will be his first thought, supercede his immediate impression, erase the word she assumes he will be repeating inwardly—fat—and replace it with words like brilliant, charming, insightful, witty, phrases like asset to the department, unique perspective on Marian scholarship, ideal candidate for the chairmanship.
Larken draws closer to Eloise and Arthur and the new dean, mentally readying her first remarks. She walks smoothly, gracefully, as if she is someone well used to navigating a narrow runway, a woman who has won accolades and worn the crown and weighs no more than one hundred and ten.
Milkweed pods close before a rain. They are closing now as Bonnie passes them, like chorusing mouths reaching the end of a song.
Bonnie is reminded of a tradition, one she shared with Hope every August: They went gathering, just the two of them, seeking out wild and untended plants in the roadside ditches and fields: trampled milo, its clustered seed heads like black currants; feathery roadside grasses; sunflower heads, squishy but dry, like empty egg cartons or the vacated nests of wasps; dry verbascum stalks; great bunches of milkweed pods, which looked like sandpapery conch shells filled with swirling mists of silk. Bonnie and her mother arranged their finds in an old milk can that flanked the front porch door. She was the one—not Larken or Gaelan—chosen by Hope for this special task. Fall bouquets, Hope called them. Bonnie now reflects on this past ritual with dread: a gathering of plants that were dead or dying, desperate to shed their seeds onto ground still pliant enough to accept them. As a child, she felt anointed, special. Now, she feels cursed.
Having biked back up Cemetery Road Hill and offered mental salutations to the dead, she is taking an alternate route back to town because she has yet to see anything today, not even a bit of thread. The roads are desolate. Her pannier is completely empty.
The pods, once closed, are eerily still, as if they are waiting for applause. They seem frozen in that electrified moment after the last note is sounded, when the echoes of music still hang in the air. They continue to close, all along the road, as Bonnie passes; then they begin closing just ahead of her. Leading her? Where?
She follows in their wake, down a paved road, right at an intersection, onto an unfinished road that bisects some farmer’s cornfield. Bonnie knows from years of reading The Farmer’s Almanac that corn ripens as much by moonlight as by sunlight after Lammas Day; even so, the corn in this field is especially ripe, very tall indeed.
The procession of milkweed pods lining the road comes to an end; there are no more.
She dismounts, sets her bike down in the ditch. A single row of corn is bending in the wind, lowering all the way to the earth—what kind of wind, to move with such selectivity, such gentle force? The stalks hinge slowly away from her, forming an
other road, and Bonnie follows it. Her heart is quickening.
Up ahead she sees something, a small circle of light on the path the wind is making for her. She draws closer. It is an overturned lid, not half-submerged as an artifact should be, but resting atop the flattened stalks and reflecting the late afternoon sun like a mirror, as if it has been placed there recently, purposefully. A signaling device. A sign. Bonnie lifts it up—the metal is cooler than she expects—and gasps. Underneath the lid is a torn piece of paper—a list!—and a piece of floral-print cotton cut into a perfect circle. The lid is rusted, it’s been pierced in several places with a nail, the paint is partially flaked off, the lettering half-obliterated, but Bonnie knows what she is holding: It’s an old lid from a jar of mayonnaise. Hellman’s mayonnaise.
Bonnie presses these newest, precious artifacts to her heart and quickly retraces her steps, out of the field and back to her bike. The unbroken stalks slowly arise to their full height as she goes.
The rain clouds are moving up from the southwest, faster now. It’s time to go back. Bonnie secures the relics inside one of her bike panniers and heads home, careening down the hill in high gear, listening all the way to songs of thunder in the distance, milkweed in the ditch.
“She had multiple sclerosis,” Gaelan says to no one, in answer to an unuttered question.
It is 3:41, and the front door is closing. It is closing on Claudia, sad, pale Claudia, who fell into his arms three months ago, weeping, and is leaving now, notably dry-eyed, to try to patch things up with her cheating scumbag of a husband. Gaelan telephoned her from the gym, as soon as he finished his workout, and asked her if she’d like to meet him at his place. She stayed long enough to engage in a spectacularly slippery and vivacious farewell boff before announcing her reconciliation. Now she’s gone, no hard feelings either way. It’s a typical finale to Gaelan’s relationships with women. They come, they go, in near-exact accordance with the seasons.
“Don’t get up,” Claudia had said, turning to face him and suddenly looking very much like a lawyer. She reached out. At first he thought she was going to pet him; instead, she smoothed her hand over the rumpled quilt. “I’ll let myself out.” Then she picked up her briefcase and left.
Sing Them Home Page 7
