He brought over his sandwich with the apple cut in slices, and the almonds and raisins, and laid it all out on the children’s book table with two cups of water, then helped himself to a chair several sizes too small, and passed her the half sandwich on a napkin.
‘Since we’re in the Children’s section,’ he said, ‘I’ll ask a child’s blessing.
‘God our Father, Lord and Savior, thank you for your love and favor, bless this food and drink we pray, and Irene who shares with me today. Amen.’
‘Amen.’
‘I learned that from my first-grade teacher, Miss Sanders—I don’t recall if she was married, we thought all teachers were Miss, devoted to us exclusively. We prayed in school back then, saluted the flag, all sorts of wonderful stuff we can’t do anymore.’
‘My mother was a schoolteacher,’ she said. ‘She wasn’t my birth mother, she was an aunt by marriage. My mother died when I was born.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Though I never knew her, I miss her very much.’ She gazed beyond him, grave, then looked at him and said, ‘How is that possible?’
He considered this. ‘I suppose there’s a sense in which you did know your birth mother—she carried you close to her heart for many months, you inhaled and exhaled her amniotic fluid, which provided everything you needed for life and good health. Most important, she’s how you got here in the first place and began making a valuable difference in the world. All of that, it seems, forges a pretty close relationship, much to be missed.’
She looked at the sea of books, unable to speak.
‘Perhaps you could give me a tutorial,’ he said. ‘I’m old at book loving, but new at bookselling. Would you be willing to explain why you choose one book and not another?’
‘These,’ she said, ‘are the ones I like so far. All the open ones are under consideration. And that stack is definitely not making the cut. Where shall we begin?’
‘Let’s begin with the books you like,’ he said, interested.
• • •
BY THREE-THIRTY, gone from the window were The Secret Garden, Sense and Sensibility, and all twelve volumes of the obscure classic Swallows and Amazons.
He called his wife to come give him a hand with the O window. Got the answering service. Huffed a wing chair to the window. Thumped the stuffed cat onto a rug by the chair. Installed a floor lamp. Screwed in a bulb.
With Irene McGraw’s help, he unrolled the October banner. Placed a book on either end to flatten the thing for the next thirty days. Looked up and waved to whoever pecked on the glass.
One by one, he distributed O titles. Stacked Of Mice and Men and Oliver Twist on the table by the chair.
Went looking for a title to place on the cushion of the chair.
‘One Hundred Years of Solitude,’ suggested Irene.
Did that.
Displayed O Pioneers! by the cash register, with a 15% OFF sign.
Washed his hands at the coffee station.
Done.
• • •
AT FOUR O’CLOCK, Irene left with twenty-one books, ranging from picture to young adult. She had, in every sense of the term, made his day.
‘Guess!’
‘I don’t know,’ said Hope. ‘After all you did last week, I’m afraid to think it. Four hundred and . . . maybe ten dollars?’
‘Four hundred and ninety-nine dollars and twenty-seven cents. Plus I found some loose change under the wing chair cushion in Poetry, and put that in to make an even five hundred.’
Tears. Not hers. His.
• • •
HE TORE OPEN THE BOX in the garage and dug through the Styrofoam peanuts.
Beautiful. He was thrilled.
He grasped the butt with his right hand, and laid the shaft across his left palm. Giving the cue a slow turn, he examined the workmanship of the inlaid forearm and its striking design. He looked at the collar, the ferrule, the tip. Definitely a pro stick as far as he was concerned.
• • •
AFTER THEIR EARLY DINNER on Friday, he sat with Cynthia in the kitchen.
‘I’m just going to love him.’
‘That’s the hard way,’ she said.
‘With God’s help, I want to be something like grace to him. I don’t know how the shrink stuff works and I don’t want to pretend to know or try a bunch of fashionable strategies. So, if it works, it works, and if it doesn’t, maybe he and I will both learn something in spite of ourselves.’
‘You know he’s frightened of attachment, of any real closeness. It’s what he wants most from you, but he’ll keep trying to push you away.’
‘I’m not going away.’
‘Let me pray for you.’ She took his hand, rested her shoulder against his.
‘Lord, you know how crucial this time with Sammy will be. Open his heart, we pray, to your love and to Timothy’s. I ask you to give Timothy your words, and to anoint all that he says and does to draw Sammy into the circle of your astonishing grace. May it be a tender time, somehow transforming in ways we can’t know. We ask all this, believing, but ask this far more—that your perfect will be done in Sammy’s life and in the lives of his siblings. Thank you, God, for second chances, for without them, I wouldn’t be here tonight to lift this petition. In the marvelous name of Jesus, we are thine own forever.’
He kissed her hand. ‘You’re my best deacon.’
‘Flu season this year is terrible. I know we had our shots, but a lot of people who had a shot are sick as cats. I do not have time to be sick.’
‘If I get sick,’ he said, ‘I’ll quarantine myself.’
‘Where?’
‘I’ll sleep downstairs with Barnabas.’
‘In that case,’ she said, ‘maybe I’ll just get sick with you and we’ll finish off the soup.’
She took the ladle from the drawer and bent to her task at the stove. ‘This may be Puny’s best chicken soup ever. I’ll put it in three containers. Give them my love, and please use a sanitizer before you go over, and be sure and wash your hands when you come back. Also, it might be good to hang your clothes on the peg by the side door and have a really hot shower first thing.’
The fire crackled and spit.
‘One more thought,’ she said. ‘I’ll put wipes by the door. Could you please wipe the doorknobs when you come home—outside and inside?’
Florence Nightingale was alive and well and living in Mitford.
• • •
‘LORD HELP, REV’REN’, I’M HALF KILLED.’
‘You look it,’ he said to Harley. He stood in the doorway of the tidy basement bedroom next to the oil burner. ‘Cynthia sends her love, and to prove it, she sends hot chicken soup. Interested?’ Starve a cold and feed a fever? Or was it the other way around? He could never remember.
He lifted the lid from the container; Harley sniffed the air.
‘Are they any noodles in it?’
‘Sure thing.’
‘Yessir, I’ll have a shot right out of th’ jug, thank ye.’
Harley drank soup and lay back on the pillow. ‘Boys howdy, that ought t’ do it.’
‘Where are your teeth?’
‘Law, I don’t know, I ain’t even thought about ’em in two or three days. Maybe on th’ kitchen table.’
‘Let me pray for you.’
‘Yessir, an’ pray for our boy in there, he’s been sick as a houn’ dog. An’ pray Kenny don’t git it, some of us has t’ work f’r a livin’.’
‘Will do.’
‘An’ pray f’r th’ furnace man t’ git th’ rattle out on Monday mornin’. Ever’ time it starts up, it rattles an’ bangs ’til a man could jump out th’ winder buck-naked.’
‘Here we go,’ he said, bowing his head.
• • •
SAMMY SAT FACING THE WALL on the far side of the bed, his back to the open door.
Not knowing what to say, he knocked.
‘What?’ said Sammy, not turning around.
‘Cynthia sent hot chicken soup.’
‘I don’ want n-nothin’.’
He made the sign of the cross. Your words, Lord.
‘I have something for you.’
‘I don’ need n-nothin’.’
Sammy’s shoulder blades as sharp as wings, the vertebrae delineated. So young, so old. He stood transfixed by the sight of Sammy’s bare back and its articulation of despair.