by Peggy Webb
The preacher finally finished and the choir got up to sing “Amazing Grace.” Up front Miss Anna Lisa swooned and when a woman big as a hydrangea bush got up from the opposite aisle and started fanning her with one of those paper fans on a stick that bore a big printed advertisement for the Crazy Horse Casino, Taylor’s daddy snatched it out of her hand and threw it so hard it landed in the baptismal fount.
“Let her grieve in peace,” he said, and Elizabeth understood what he meant. Sitting in the back with no one even knowing her connection, she at last made her peace with Taylor.
In life Taylor had been self-centered and spoiled, but in death he could be anything she chose. And someday when her son asked about his father, she would tell only the good things she remembered. She wouldn’t make him a saint but she could make him more appealing, for she knew this to be true: every child needs to think of his father as a hero.
While the choir crooned, “I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see,” Elizabeth slipped out the side door unnoticed. And as she headed north toward Memphis what she saw was not the past, tarnished and worn, but a long shining highway that led to the future.
BOOK TWO
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne
back ceaselessly into the past.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
from The Great Gatsby
Chapter Fifteen
Thomas was sitting on the park bench talking to Fred about Paris, when this perfect stranger walked up to him and started asking nosey questions. If there was anything in this world Thomas despised more than a nosey question, he didn’t know what it was.
“Is that little boy your great-grandson?”
That’s the first thing the man said without so much as a howdy do. The last time Thomas had any dealings with a stranger in the park, it had led to all kinds of problems, even if it did all turn out right in the end.
“It’s none of your business,” Thomas told him, right off the bat.
His answer like to tickled Fred to death. He was sitting down there on his end of the bench guffawing, not caring the least bit who heard.
“You are Thomas Jennings, aren’t you?”
“What are you, the IRS?”
“There’s no need to get upset, Mr. Jennings.”
“I’m not upset. Do you see me gettin’ upset, Fred?”
“He ain’t upset,” Fred said. “If he was, you wouldn’t be standing there flapping your mouth. You’d be nothing but a greasy spot on the grass.” Fred waved his hand impatiently at the man. “Move over. You’re blocking my sun.”
“The boy is your son?”
“No, you crazy fool,” Fred told him. “I said sun. Get out of the sun and go pester somebody else.”
“Look, there’s no need to get hostile.”
“You ain’t seen hostile till you get me riled up. Me and Thomas here ate men like you in the war.”
The man was getting more upset by the minute, which made Thomas proud to call Fred his friend. He was getting too old to deal with these situations all by himself. It helped to know that he had somebody on his side.
“Who are you?” the man asked Fred.
“Who’s asking?”
The man told his name so fast it sounded like he was speaking in tongues. Thomas studied him so he could remember every detail when he told Elizabeth. If he told Elizabeth. Maybe he wouldn’t. She had enough on her mind, what with Nicky’s daddy being dead and gone for two weeks now and that meeting about the loan from David Lassiter hanging over her head.
With his dark skin and slanted eyes, the man looked foreign, but for the life of him Thomas couldn’t make out his nationality. His age was hard to determine, too.
The only thing Thomas could tell for sure was that the man had on a navy blue suit with a bright red necktie which meant he was probably a bachelor. Lola Mae would have died before she’d have ever let Thomas out of the house wearing a red necktie. He’d tried once, but she said it made him look like a horny old rooster in a yard full of setting hens, and that was the end of Thomas’s adventures in the world of high fashion.
He was just getting ready to tell the man to leave, when Fred beat him to the punch.
“Well, Mr. Kitsnjammer...”
“Kirkinhammer...”
“Whatever your name is, go on and leave us alone. Me and Thomas’s got important things to discuss and don’t want you horning in on our time. Now get out of here. Scram.”
The man high tailed it out of there so fast you’d have thought Fred was after him with a shotgun. Thomas and Fred laughed till tears ran down their face.
“What country do you reckon he’s from?” Thomas said.
“India?”
“I was thinkin’ maybe South America.”
“Naw. He’d a been wearin’ a mustache.”
“I don’t see how you figure that, Fred.”
“Ain’t you ever seen them coffee commercials?”
“What in tarnation do coffee commericals have to do with Mr. Krackenweiner?”
“Kitsnjammer.”
“That’s what you said the last time, Fred, and he said Krackenweiner.”
“Naw, he didn’t.”
“Yes, he did.”
“You gonna argue, ain’t you, Thomas?”
Thomas glanced over at Nicky splashing in the puddles left by yesterday’s rain. He was beautiful, perfect in every way. The sun was shining, his family was safe, and he was with a good friend.
“No,” he said. “Life’s too good to waste arguin’ over a stranger.”
“Ain’t that the truth?”
They both sat with their faces to the sun for a while then Thomas felt the urge come over him to talk about the old days.
“You remember that little cafe by the Louvre, Fred?”
“Like it was yesterday.”
“I wonder if it’s still there.”
“I sure would like to go back and find out.”
By the time they got through reminiscing Thomas had completely forgotten his encounter with the foreigner.
o0o
David had been standing at the window for the last five minutes with his telescope trained on the park. McKenzie joined him.
“Are you looking for another recipient, David?”
“No.”
“Then what’s so interesting down there?”
“I was just checking on Nicky. He’s doing great. Take a look.”
The child was spinning round and round in a puddle, his arms spread out like wings. McKenzie could almost hear the sounds he was making. Airplane sounds. Or bird sounds. Or maybe he was being Superman.
With his fair hair and rounded pink cheeks, he looked like a cherub, a very muddy cherub.
“I wonder what Elizabeth is going to say about all that mud?” McKenzie said.
“She’ll laugh.”
It wasn’t what David said but the way he said it that caught McKenzie’s attention. She studied her brother covertly. There was something different about him-- a softening about the mouth, a faraway look in his eyes, an expression on his face that for want of a better word she called yearning.
“The child’s surgery must have gone well.”
“It did. You should have seen him at the hospital in those big bird pajamas.”
“You saw him at the hospital?”
David hurried away from the window like a little boy who’d been caught stealing cookies. He always sat behind his desk when he didn’t want to confront a personal issue.
McKenzie called it hiding. “You didn’t answer my question, David.”
“What is this? Twenty questions?”
“No, but I’d sure as heck like to know what made my brother, the recluse, all of a sudden pay a visit to a four-year-old in the hospital. I hope it was the boy’s mother.”
David rearranged the pencils in his pencil holder then moved a stack of files from one side of his desk to the other before he answered her. McKenzie couldn’t have been more please
d. Was the thing she’d wanted most for her brother finally happening? Was he finding someone to share his life? And without her interfering touch?
“I knew it,” she gloated. “It’s Elizabeth.”
“She’s merely a child.”
“You’d better go back to that window and take another look. She’s not only a full grown woman, but one of the loveliest I’ve seen in a while.”
“That’s beside the point.”
“No man is an island,” she said, pushing him, goading him.
“John Donne wouldn’t have written that if he’d lived in the age of electronic social media. I have the world at my fingertips. There’s nothing more I need.”
“You’re wrong. Reading lips through your telescope has given you a God complex, David.”
All of a sudden the spark went out of him. McKenzie was sorry to see it go, and even sorrier that she was the cause.
“Is that what I’ve been doing all these years, McKenzie? Playing God?”
“I didn’t mean that, David. What you’ve been doing is helping people who couldn’t help themselves and who fell through the cracks of the government agencies. That’s a very good thing, and don’t you forget it.”
David fell silent, which was sometimes McKenzie’s cue for slipping away. He could stay that way for hours, silent and introspective, often brooding and moody. But something told her to stay. Something told her this time it would be different.
“It has always been simple before,” he said, finally. “I’ve always been able to provide what they needed, then move on. Somehow, I can’t get past Elizabeth and Nicky Jennings. Even the grandfather.”
He moved back to the window and watched for a while, sans telescope.
“Just look at him down there. An old man without a penny to his name. And yet, he conducts himself like a king. He’s full of vigor and pride and courage. And love.”
He turned from the window and crossed to the credenza where he hefted a marble bookend in his right hand.
“Maybe that’s what makes the difference, McKenzie. Maybe having someone to care for is the thing that keeps him going.”
“You’re making me cry.”
“Don’t cry. Go out and buy yourself a pretty new dress.”
“Why would I want a new dress? The animals don’t care what I wear.”
“You’ll want something new for your weekend in New York.”
“Who said anything about New York?”
David reached into his desk and pulled out airline tickets. “You need a break. Have a nice weekend.”
“What did you do, all of a sudden just run out of something to do and start meddling around in my life?”
She tried to look fierce and angry, but she knew she couldn’t fool her brother. New York was one of her favorite cities, and truth to tell, she did need a break. Also a prod. She was like a tree, putting down roots so deep it sometimes took a bulldozer to get her to budge.
David laughed at her. “I’m the one who likes to play God. Remember?”
o0o
Outside the little house on Vine Street the rain pounded so furiously it was like something trying to get in at the door, but on the inside where Elizabeth sat in a circle with Papa and Nicky and ate popcorn from a blue bowl, the feeling of peace was so strong it was like magic. Nothing bad could ever come through her door again. That’s how she felt.
Nicky was whole, her family was safe and her life was full of promise. After all, she was only twenty-four and a long future stretched before her. She could learn from her past mistakes, couldn’t she?
Maybe that was the whole point of life, that we pay attention to what our troubles are trying to teach us and that we listen with our hearts to the songs the universe sings.
With her hands dipped into the blue bowl Elizabeth was acutely aware of the butter-slick on the tips of her fingers and the fluffy grains of corn. The dirt smudges on Nicky’s face were beautiful to her, and the age spots on Papa’s hand. Little things. Ordinary things.
And she thought, I will always treasure the simple things of life. I will let nothing make me forget them, ever again.
Possibility flowed through her like a river and the smell of promise was so sweet she almost swooned. She felt connected to the rug she sat on and the bare bulb shining above her head and the sound of rain. She felt alive and real in ways she’d never noticed.
Her connection extended beyond the moment: it reached backward and forward at the same time, for over the years Papa had built a bridge with his stories linking her past with her future. Although she knew them all by heart, she wanted to hear them again, and to have her son hear so that as he grew up he wouldn’t be adrift as so many people are: he would have his own history to guide him, a map with all the important points clearly marked.
“Tell us a story about Mae Mae, Papa,” she said, and Nicky clapped his buttery hands, shouting, “Yeah!”
“Did I ever tell you about the time I got drunk and she whipped my butt?”
He always started his stories that way, and as he launched into the tale that was a familiar to her as her own skin, Elizabeth leaned back against the sofa and Nicky leaned against her thigh.
“It was right after the war,” he said. “She was waitin’ for me like I’d never been gone, hadn’t changed a bit, still the prettiest woman in Mississippi, and the best. I was the one changed. I’d been to the bad place and seen the devil, and I couldn’t get it off my mind. I just couldn’t forget, no matter how hard I tried.”
Nicky was beginning to nod so Elizabeth pulled him onto her lap and rested her chin in his soft hair.
“The dreams got so bad I bought myself a jug of moonshine and went out behind the cow shed and got drunker than a skunk. Lola Mae didn’t say a word when I came reelin’ into the house. She just turned back the covers of the bed. Well sir, I went out like a light, never suspectin’ a thing, but when I woke up all bedlam broke loose.”
For once Nicky didn’t interrupt with a dozen questions. He was almost asleep.
“I was tied up in the sheet, and there stood Lola Mae with a corn stalk long as a broom handle. She commenced to whuppin’ me for all she was worth. Lordy have mercy, was that woman mad. ‘What’s goin’ on?’ I asked her and she didn’t say a word, just kept on slingin’ that stalk over my backside. When it was all done she threw the stalk into the corner and said, ‘Don’t you ever let me catch you drunk again, Thomas Jennings. You face your problems like a man.’ And I’ve always tried to. Ever since.”
“Thanks, Papa. That’s one of my favorite stories.” Elizabeth shifted her sleeping son so she could stand up. “I’d better put this little soldier to bed.”
When she tucked him into bed she heard the telephone ringing in the kitchen and wondered who would be calling them in the middle of a storm. Maybe Fred, lonely and wanting to talk.
“It’s for you.” Papa was standing in the doorway and she’d grown so used to bad news over the years, Elizabeth put her hand over her heart. Then she made herself breathe. She made herself remember the smell of mint after a rain and the sound of Nicky’s voice as he sang I found my pill on Blueberry Hill.
“Who is it, Papa?”
“David Lassiter.”
She knew she was standing in the middle of a cramped bedroom in a shabby house in the midst of a rundown neighborhood, but all of a sudden it seemed to her that she was special among all the people of the world, chosen somehow to have a grandfather who was the rock she stood on, a son who made life a shining thing and a caller who made her feel safe just with the mention of his name.
She picked up the receiver in the kitchen and said, “Hello, David.”
“I’ve called to set up a meeting with you.”
The fact that he’d called for business reasons didn’t dim her pleasure one bit.
“When?”
“Is tomorrow night okay?”
“Yes, that’s fine.”
Thank goodness Quincy was her night boss and not Celine. Elizabeth ne
ver had to worry about asking Quincy’s permission to juggle her hours.
“I’ll send the limousine.”
“No ... thank you. I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”
“It’s no trouble. Besides, Edwards likes escorting you around.”
“Well, I like Edwards, too, but I’m not about to get accustomed to being treated like a queen. I’ll come in my own car, thank you very much.”
“The streets at night aren’t safe for a woman alone.”
“I’ve been taking care of myself for a number of years, now, and I’m not about to start being a Blanche DuBois.”
“Depending on the kindness of strangers?”
“How did you know?”
“I read, too.”
“Oh. I didn’t mean it that way. I’m sorry, Mr. Lassiter.”
“David. And you forget. I’m not a stranger. You know my name.”
“And where you work. I’ll come to your office tomorrow night under my own steam. And that’s final.”
Thank goodness, he laughed.
“All right then. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
o0o
Any minute now Elizabeth Jennings would step through his doorway, and David would conduct his final interview with her. He had postponed this meeting as long as possible, and he knew exactly why. After they had finished discussing the terms of his loan, he would have no further reason to contact Elizabeth.
The idea saddened him beyond all reason. Of course, he would see her and the child from a distance. All he had to do was walk to his window and train his telescope on the park.
He looked around his room, his dark room. Never had it seemed more empty, more lonely.
Suddenly Elizabeth was standing in his doorway, and the whole room seemed more inviting.
“Hello, David.”
“Hello, Elizabeth. Won’t you come in?”
He flipped a switch and she sat in the spotlighted chair. He’d chosen one nearer the desk this time. But to make certain he was in deep shadow, he’d closed the curtains so that not even a sliver of light showed through.
“Did you have a pleasant drive, Elizabeth?”
