The Music Box

by T. Davis Bunn

  Angie had to stop and ease the tension in her chest. “My husband went berserk. There is no other way to describe it. I was already wounded beyond pain by the fact that I could not have children. To have my own husband verbally attack me left me absolutely shattered. When he left two weeks later, and died four months after that, well, to be honest, I didn’t have much feeling left by then.”

  She stopped a moment to gaze out the window, then added, “Later, when the feelings came—the pain and even guilt—I sometimes wondered if it was my fault that he died. You know, his deep distress at the medical diagnosis. . . .” She turned to face him again.

  Carson Nealey leaned back in his seat, examining her with a totally new expression. As though the words had enough force behind them to actually open him up, push him beyond the emotions of his own heart.

  But Angie was not finished. More needed to be said. “Whether it is birds or hyacinths or butterflies, in springtime everything is preparing for the joy of nesting. Everything is urgently focused toward that most important thing—new life. All else is subordinated to the need to create and nurture their babies. To make the nest, have the eggs, protect and feed the young. Feed the children. The power of the creative instinct is everywhere. It is the most complex thing in life, but also the simplest, the most natural. And here I am. The most sophisticated living thing in God’s creation, and I cannot perform this function. I cannot act on that instinct. And I do have the instinct, Mr. Nealey. It gnaws away at me inside.”

  There was no longer the power to deny what was welling up inside. The heat of her words burned their way up from her heart, through her throat, poured forth with the message. “I feel so jealous sometimes. I envy how the rest of creation, everyone but me, can have offspring. I ache with the desire to do what I cannot.”

  Her hands were both damp and cold, clenched so tightly they felt incapable of ever unfolding. And yet, and yet in the midst of the pain of speaking what had gone so long unsaid, there was a sense of rightness. A sense that all had a purpose, even this, even here. “You must be wondering why I am telling you this. Melissa told me that you had turned away from your faith after your wife died. I have shared my sorrow with you, Mr. Nealey, because I need to tell you how wrong you are to do so. Not to have acted so then, but rather to abandon your faith now. And the only way I have a right to speak to you, I feel, is by showing you that in my own way I understand. I truly understand the temptation you faced and the reasons you turned away. Because I have faced them as well.”

  The man seated before her looked as though he had turned to stone. His frenetic movements had stilled. His gaze was fastened upon her, the gray eyes deep and open, as though it were not his ears that were hearing her, but his heart.

  “In the darkest of my hours, I felt the Bible was of little comfort,” Angie continued. “That is a confession I have spoken to no one else, but you need to understand just how deeply I feel for what you have faced.

  “All through the Scriptures there is the command to be fruitful and multiply. But I cannot do this. And the inability to do this cost me my marriage. I am a barren woman. In the Bible, Sarah, the barren believer, ends up becoming pregnant. This is the way God dealt with barrenness in those holy pages. It leaves me with a mixed feeling, hope on one side, and disappointment on the other. I still hope, Mr. Nealey, I still pray for a miracle, I will not deny this fact. But I also know the medical facts. I am barren like another person is crippled and bound to a wheelchair. Jesus made some cripples walk, but nowhere in the Gospels does it say that He healed every cripple. He raised Lazarus from the dead, but He did not end pain and suffering and death forever. Does it mean that every believer should be healed and protected from suffering? I cannot answer this, not now. Perhaps in time, but not now. All I can say is that I pray about this as well.”

  Carson Nealey opened his mouth, closed it, swallowed, then found the strength to say, “And still you kept your faith.”

  “There was one day, a Sunday just like this one,” Angie remembered aloud. “It came several weeks after my husband’s funeral. I was in church because it was Sunday. I was going through the motions of a life. Almost without thinking. You must know what that is like.”

  “All too well,” he murmured.

  “When it came time to bow my head in prayer, I felt like I was falling. I do not know how it was possible to sit there in the pew and yet know I was falling. But it was as real as this chair I am seated upon. And everywhere was darkness. I felt as though I had passed through this endless chasm and out beyond sorrow entirely.”

  He gave a single slow nod. “As though there was nothing left to feel. Nothing at all.”

  “And yet,” Angie went on, “there in the depth of my utter despair, I found God waiting. Not with an answer. I did not need answers then. I needed comfort. And that is exactly what I received. I felt the Lord enter my life and felt Him be with me there. He shared with me my sorrow, just as He shared with me my sin upon the Cross. He was there, and He has stayed with me through my long return. He gave me the strength to return to school and finish my degree. He accompanied me back to this town I love so, and He gave me classrooms of bright and eager children I can love and teach and help to grow and learn. God has been with me every step of the way. And He is with me still.”

  Angie waited a moment, as though offering him a chance to turn away, to refuse to accept what he must have known was coming next. But Carson Nealey’s gaze remained fastened upon her, open and yearning. So she said, “That is why I have shared all this with you. Because you need to turn to the Lord and let Him be with you in your sorrow. You need this, and your daughter does too. You need Him to guide your footsteps, as He has done mine. No matter that He does not offer you the answers you would like to have. No matter that you are still in sorrow, even despair. Trust Him. That sounds so simple, but doing so will profoundly affect your life. He will give you peace.”

  9

  In the weeks following, there was no response from Carson Nealey. Angie decided he either hadn’t understood or could not accept the truth she had shared with him. But all of life seemed held by strange and unexpected currents that year. Even the seasons were out of kilter, coming more slowly than anyone could remember. The first snowfall did not arrive until two weeks after Christmas, a Christmas which Angie had spent at her parents’ seaside cottage, and which had held more bustle and talk and even laughter than she had known in years and years.

  There had been snow flurries during much of December, quick little storms that painted brush-strokes of white across the upper reaches but did not touch the valley. Christmas was white only for the uppermost hillfolk and for those who hiked their way up slopes, made steeper by their frosting, to cut special trees and carry them home. But the second week of January, the clouds gathered as they can only do in the higher reaches. They closed the sky tight with frowning gray beasts of burden, their loads so heavy they drooped down to rest upon the peaks. The air turned still and cold, and everyone knew that winter had finally arrived.

  School was closed for three days, a long time for a valley town accustomed to winter storms. But the snow fell so heavily that poor visibility made it hard to walk, much less drive. It was not until Friday that the town managed to reclaim the streets. Which meant that on Friday the students were nearly impossible.

  “Three days of a world turned into a giant playground, followed by one day of school, followed by a weekend.” Emma huffed her disgust at such bureaucratic decisions. She followed Angie through a lunchroom just a half-breath away from utter bedlam. “Only somebody sitting in an office ten miles from the nearest classroom would ever think that made sense.”

  Angie walked determinedly to the window table where a dozen teachers pretended not to notice what was going on around them. She put down her tray just as someone said, “What I don’t understand is how they can eat and make so much noise at the same time.”

  “They’re not eating,” Emma replied, taking the place next to Angie. �
�They’re foraging. Jungle beasts circling the kill.”

  The principal rose wearily to his feet. “As head animal trainer, I suppose I better go make the rounds.”

  “Speaking of noise,” Emma said to Angie. “I had a little surprise this morning.”

  “So did I,” Angie replied. “One of my students slipped a bullfrog into my top drawer.”

  “Don’t tell me you let something like that get to you.”

  “Not until it jumped about thirty feet straight up and came down in my hair,” Angie said grimly. “Then I proceeded to put on a little show I am positive will keep them talking for years to come.”

  Emma smiled with the rest of the table. Then she said in a voice that could only be heard by Angie, “You remember that little girl I couldn’t get to sing?”

  “Melissa? What about her?”

  “Nothing really,” Emma replied, her tone overly casual. “It’s just that I finally got a peep out of her. Since she’s the only one in the class who knows the difference between musical notes and hieroglyphics, she’s been turning the pages for the pianist. Then all of a sudden this morning she started singing.”

  “After five months of no sound at all, and you call that nothing?”

  “Look at Little Miss Eager here.” Emma obviously was delighted at Angie’s interest. She squinted in the direction of the window. “So. Think we’ll get the second helping of snow this weekend?”

  “Emma, I have been looking to throttle somebody ever since my shimmy with the frog this morning. Now, tell me what happened.”

  Emma’s smile broke through. “It was something, honey. I wish you could have seen it. There we were, a roomful of children doing their best imitation of two dozen cats caught in a burlap sack. And I’m standing there on my little podium, waving up a good breeze with my baton and stomping my foot like a pile driver.”

  “What were you singing?”

  “Oh, some hymn.”

  “Emma Drummond, you are choosing the wrong time to test my patience.”

  “Amazing Grace,” Emma conceded. “I thought a few of the old-timey hymns might calm them down. All of a sudden, this new sound chimes in. It was a shock, pure and simple. For a minute, I thought an angel had gotten lost and slipped inside our class.”

  Angie pushed aside her tray and leaned closer. “She has a nice voice?”

  “You’ll have to hear it to believe it.” Heavy shoulders bounced at the memory. “I kept waving my baton for a time, slower and slower, on account of the fact that one by one every voice in the room had gone quiet. Could have heard a pin drop.”

  “Is this the truth, Emma?”

  “Absolutely. You know those little silver bells, the ones that sound so pure you’d think they were fashioned in heaven? That’s how she sounded. This tiny body, her head cocked over to one side, eyes closed, standing there beside the pianist who’s the only one with enough sense to keep going but missing some of the notes on account of her eyes are on Melissa and not the keys. And she just keeps on singing, flying off somewhere and carrying us all with her.” Emma’s smile had a wistful quality. “Yes, ma’am, I do so wish you had been there to see it happen.”

  ****

  Angie was not sure whether she should say anything when her last class came bounding in. The little form slipped through the door, keeping to one side so as not to be caught by the boisterous revelry. But instead of heading for her desk, Melissa gave Angie a smile and walked over. “Good afternoon, Miss Picard.”

  “Hello, Melissa.” The girl’s evident happiness spurred her to say, “I heard something interesting about your music class this morning.”

  “It’s been a special day,” Melissa replied, slipping an envelope from her notebook. “This is for you. It’s from Daddy.”

  “Why, thank you.” Angie held the envelope and watched Melissa move down the aisle to her desk at the room’s far corner.

  She should have called them to order. She should have started the class immediately. It was the only way to handle such a situation. But their mood was infectious, and her own curiosity overwhelming. Angie lowered the envelope below the level of the desk and tore it open. What she read made her read it a second time. She looked up only when the noise level threatened to shatter the windows. She spotted what looked to be a key perpetrator and raised her voice, saying, “Mark Whitley, stand up, if you please.”

  The oversized youngster did so, struggling to tuck his grin back out of sight. Angie stared at him for a moment, then said, “Define ‘decorum’ for me, please, sir.”

  “ ‘Decorum’ means, ah, proper behavior, Miss Picard.”

  “And that is exactly what I expect from all of you,” she said, trying for sternness. “Is that clear? Very well, you may sit down.”

  The young man made a chore of slipping back into his desk. While his head was bent over and his face out of sight, he gave a remarkably realistic imitation of a very large bullfrog.

  Angie then made a fatal mistake. She laughed.

  Two of Mark Whitley’s best friends actually fell out of their desks, they were laughing so hard. Angie tried to call the class to order, but she couldn’t stop chuckling long enough to do so. And every time a student looked her way and saw her grin, their mirth rose another notch. Fearing the principal would come in and complain, Angie rose to her feet, which brought the din down a fraction. She raised her hand and demanded in as severe a tone as she could manage, “Mark Whitley, was that bullfrog your idea?”

  “No, ma’am,” came the reply. “But I surely do wish I’d thought of it first!”

  She let them have another moment, then said, “It sounds like you all have heard about this morning.”

  Perhaps this was what gave the sense of a special place with her students, she thought as she observed their glee. Having the ability to share with them such things as a smile. Was that special? She raised her hand once more and said, “I think the wisest thing to do would be to consider that we’ve accomplished all that we can today. I’m going to let you all go early. Have a nice weekend.”

  There was a chorus of gleeful shouts, and as the students piled out, she stopped the tall youngster to say, “That was a funny-once sort of prank, Mr. Whitley. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I think so.”

  “I would be most grateful if you would speak to the perpetrators on my behalf,” Angie went on, signaling for Melissa to remain where she was. “Please inform them that my poor heart would not stand the strain a second time.”

  When the boy had taken his leave, Angie walked back and eased herself into the desk next to Melissa. She listened to the excited commotion of youngsters reveling in thirty additional minutes of unexpected freedom, made sweeter by the fact that all their fellows remained imprisoned. Before she could speak, the door opened and the principal demanded, “What on earth was that all about?”

  “I have admitted defeat,” Angie replied. “I could not abide their presence one minute longer.”

  He started to protest, then nodded acceptance. “I suppose I’d better do it for the whole school or risk mutiny.”

  His progress down the hall was greeted with a rising crescendo of unbridled joy. Angie smiled and found her heart twist at the sight of the sweet face beside her, beaming in response. Melissa’s shoulders hunched up, as though the pleasure of smiling was almost too much to bear. Angie asked, “Do you know what your father has written to me?”

  “Daddy wants to go to church with you and then have you come over for Sunday lunch at our house,” Melissa replied breathlessly. “Can you come?”

  “I would be honored. Can you tell him that, or should I write him a note?”

  “Let me tell him, please, please.” Her face shone with pleasure. “There’s something else, Miss Picard.” She had to pause for another breath before announcing, “We’ve been praying together.”

  “You and your father?”

  “Every night. And sometimes in the morning, we’ll read the Bible, if he’s n
ot already busy thinking about the factory. Daddy says he needs to do it more, too.”

  Angie opened her mouth, closed it, and then tried a second time. “That’s just wonderful.”

  “I think so too. This was Daddy’s idea, having you come. He says it’s time we found us a church home. He asked me what I thought about asking you to take us. Know what I said?”

  Angie just shook her head.

  “I said I thought it was the best thing I could think of.” Melissa slipped from her seat. “Daddy is going to be real excited to know you can take us. I just know it.”

  Angie watched the girl move to the door, returned her wave, and only when she was alone in the room did she realize she had forgotten to ask anything more about Melissa’s singing.

  10

  Not even hosting visitors was enough to stop Angie’s treasured ritual of walking to church. Especially not on a day when all the world was held in the silent white of winter’s grip. Clouds had gathered again overnight, sealing the valley from above, making the stillness even more complete. The winter morning was a million hues of gentle gray. The occasional passing car seemed an affront to the Sabbath’s peace. Her steps scrunched softly, and her breathing seemed loud in her ears. Here and there, tiny snowbirds appeared, their cheeps like chimes in the crisp air.

  As she rounded the final corner, Angie spotted Carson Nealey emerging from his car. She hurried over. Melissa saw her and waved with such enthusiasm that her petite form seemed ready to take flight. Angie smiled and wished them both good morning.

  “I am most grateful for your letting us join you like this,” Carson said in a rush, the words rehearsed. “I have learned at the factory how closed this community can be to outsiders, and I was concerned that we might face this here at church.”