A Light in the Window Page 17

  For this alone, I must love you.

  My dearest,

  You would be amused if you knew how long I have sat and looked at the two words just above, words that I have never written to anyone in my life. Can it have taken more than six decades for these words to form in my spirit, and then, without warning, to appear on the paper before me, with such naturalness and ease?

  Even for this alone, I must love you.

  I've come across a letter from Robert Browning to EBB, in which he says:

  "I would not exchange the sadness of being away from you for any imaginable delight in which you had no part."

  To this sentiment, I say Selah.

  I also say goodnight, my dearest love. You are ever in my prayers.

  Timothy

  Timothy,

  I understand. I really do. I could feel the intensity behind your typed note. At one moment, your horror of this place makes me laugh. At another, I wonder what on earth I'm doing here myself!

  I feel we should go on as we're going and try to enjoy, somehow, this process of working and waiting. I know there is wisdom in that! But it keeps escaping me, like the flea I picked off Violet this morning.

  Can you imagine? Forty stories up, in the dead of winter—and a flea? Certainly, she did not get it at Bergdorf's. Which leaves only one consideration.

  Palestrina!

  I shudder to think what I should do when her next social invitation arrives in the letter box!

  I must get something ready for the pickup service that comes at five, so I'll dash,

  with love and understanding,

  Cynthia

  Dearest Timothy,

  When I reached into the letter box yesterday morning, I somehow missed your wonderful letter written on Monday evening. How very odd that I didn't feel it in there yesterday, but odder still that I would have looked in there again this morning, knowing that today's mail had not yet arrived.

  I so needed your letter with Mr. Browning's words to Elizabeth and the tender things you spoke to me from your heart. Because, though I honestly do understand your refusal to come, it made me sad that you will not.

  I had hoped we could be together here, as free as children from everything familiar. Most of all, I wanted to share what I know of this strangely compelling city and take you 'round and show you off!

  But you have called me your dearest. And that is worth any windowshopping at Tiffany's or tea we might have sipped at the Plaza.

  More than that—it fills me with happiness that you were able, for your own sake, to speak to me so.

  It wasn't easy for me to tell you what I shall not do—it was very hard to know when to say it! So, perhaps you can imagine how comforting it was to learn that we agree in this sacred thing—and to find that you are just as silly and oldfashioned as your neighbor.

  When Elliott and I were divorced eleven years ago, the first thing my friends did was "fix me up."

  Oh, how I hated being "fixed up!"

  Practically the first man I went out with said, "Hello, blah, blah, blah, cute nose, I'm wild about your legs, let's check into a hotel."

  I wish I could tell you that I poured scalding coffee in his lap! But all I really did was curl up inside in a tinier knot than I'd curled up in before! I refused to go out with anyone again for nearly three years.

  The secret truth, dearest, is that I cannot bear dating. I find it absolutely ghastly. I am so glad we have never ever dated and never ever will! You are just the boy next door, which I find to be the most divine,, providence since Erance was handed over to Henry the Fifth.

  But please don't think our friend Andrew Gregory was anything less than lovely. He is a prince! Yet, among a variety oj other sweet incompatibilities, he is too tall. Yes! When he kissed me on the cheek, he had to practically squat down to do it, which made me laugh out loud every time! Poor Andrew. He deserves Jar better.

  You and I, on the other hand, are the perfect size for each other. As we're very nearly the same height, we're just like a pair ofbookends.

  I close with sleepy wishes for a riveting sermon at Lord's Chapel on Sunday. Please make a photocopy at Happy Endings and send it to me. I shall be sitting on the gospel side at the little church around the corner.

  Love and prayers, Cynthia

  P. S. My work is simply pouring through. I am thankful beyond telling. James writes from France that my zebras fairly leap with life. There's not a pair of pajamas in the lot.. Pray for me, dearest, I shall be home sooner than we think. Love to Dooley. Here's a bit of a drawing I did of him from memory.

  from the office

  dear bookend,

  i'll have you know i stand 5 feet 9 in my loafers, while you are a mere 5 feet 2. that leaves 7 whole inches waving around in the breeze above your head, and i'll thank you not to forget it.

  Dooley laughed at your drawing and must have liked it for he took it to school today. That someone would make a drawing of him was a marvel he did not take lightly. Puny thought it pure genius, and i promised to make her a photocopy when i copy the sermon, which, by the way, was less than riveting, though Miss Rose, to my great surprise, pronounced it stirring.

  she refused to wear the slingback pumps that Uncle Billy ordered out of the almanac. She put them on the mantel in the dining room, instead, as a kind of display. She was arrayed in her Christmas finery. Uncle Billy was wearing a new shirt and held himself so stiff and erect i suspect he had left the cardboard in.

  Things are back on schedule on the hill and i could hear the hum and buzz of the equipment as i walked in this morning, emma wanted the week off, so i am quite alone here, halffreezing one minute and roasting the next, as the heater has developed a tic and goes on and off at odd moments.

  You sounded strong yesterday, so glad Miss Addison invited you for that swell Sunday tea and that you brought home no fleas.

  Again, i enjoyed your books more than i can say. i seemed to find all sorts oj meaning between the lines.

  Love, Timothy p.s. Dooley says hey thnxfor telling me when you were born, though I forgot, as usual, to ask where. So there'll be no forgetting, i have written your birth date on the wall beside my desk, my first graffiti—except of course for the legend, TOMMY NOLES LOVES PATTY FRANKLIN, that i once chalked on the cafeteria door and which nearly cost my life at the hands of the principal, not to mention Patty Frnkln.

  Perhaps you entered the world in maine? or was it massachusetts? You are definitely a Yankee, no doubt about it

  Here comes harold

  Dearest Timothy,

  I've been very sleepless recently. I wish I could call you now, but a ringing phone at such an hour stops the very heart. It would also set Barnabas "to barking" and Dooley "to fussing." So I shall have to be consoled with talking to you in this way.

  I've read something wonderful. "Deep in their roots," Roethke said, "all flowers keep the light."

  My mind went at once to my tulips, frozen into the black soil of the bed you helped me dig. My imagination burrowed in like a mole and saw, in the center of a frozen bulb, a green place—quick and alive and radiant and indefatigable, the force that survives every winter blast and flies up, in spite of itself, to greet spring.

  I am keeping the light, dearest. But sometimes it grows so faint; I'm frightened that I shall lose it entirely.

  Why am I not doing the things I should be doing? Going to the library and the bookshops, seeing plays, hearing concerts, looking at great art?

  The answer is, there's scarcely anything left of me after bending over the drawing board for hours, and so I send out for Chinese or make the quick walk to the cafe and am in bed before the late news, only to find I cannot sleep!

  I am, however, going faithfully to confirmation class at the little church around the corner, every Thursday evening—and liking it very much.

  I pray for us to have long walks together, to dash out into the rain and jump into puddles! Would you jump into puddles with me? I think not, but it's a hope I shall cherish, Jor i
t makes me smile to think ojit.

  Now that I've gotten out of bed, and located the stationery, and rounded up the pen and filled it with ink, and fluffed up the pillows, and adjusted the lamp, and told you I can't sleep, I'm nodding off!

  Life is so odd. I can't make heads or tails of it. I'm glad you're a parson and can.

  Lovingly yours, C

  My dearest C,

  Have been pondering our dinner here before you vanished into the sky in that minuscule plane. I can't seem to remember what I fed you, when or how I prepared it, nor even discussing the order with Avis. Though I was sober as a judge, I think I was in a kind of daze—the most I can recall is that we danced, I asked you the question that was so infernally difficult, and you were tender and patient and full of laughter.

  This recollection should be more than enough, yet I'm astounded at such a lapse. Something was clearly going on that had little to do with either dinner or dancing and causes me to consider the wisdom of Aiken's poem:

  "Music I heard with you was more than music,

  "And bread I broke with you was more than bread..."

  So glad you called last night. It was no disturbance at all, quite the contrary. I hope it's some comfort, however small, that you can call me anytime.

  Do you hear? Anytime. Please take this to heart.

  I've been in parishes where the phone might ring at any hour, from midnight to morning. Mitford, however, is a reserved parish, and I think the last late-hour call was from Hoppy's wife who was in the agony of dying and wanted prayer—not for herself, but for him.

  It occurs to me that I'm not only your neighbor and friend, C, but your parson, as well. All of which seems to make a tight case for your freedom to call me as your heart requires it.

  With fondest love to you tonight and prayers for sleeping like an infant,

  Timothy

  My dear Bookend,

  I've had a load of wood carted in and a more splendid firt you've never seen. All this seems to occasion a letter, though I just sent one to you yesterday morning.

  A meeting was canceled, thanks be to God. Dooley is spending the night with Tommy, and Barnabas is amused with scratching himself. Wish you were here. It is another night of jollity in our frozen village.

  I've just heard from Fr Roland in New Orleans, who complains that my letters to him have dried up like a pond in a drought. Can't imagine why.

  Am cooking a pork roast and a pot of navy beans, one more reason I wish you were here. I told Puny I needed to put my hand in again, so she did the shopping with Avis, and I'm handling the rest.

  The house is fairly perfumed with a glorious smell, which causes me to remember Mother's kitchen. She always added orange rind to a pork roast and a bit of brandy. Her strong favorite with any roast was angel biscuits, so named for their habit of floating off the plate and hovering above the platter.

  I can't help but think how my father never came to the table when called. He would sometimes wait until we were finished or the food had grown cold before sitting down without a word. I remember my mother's disappointment and my own white fury, which often spoiled the meal she had laid.

  Later, I could see it was his way of controlling the household, of being the emperor, far above the base need for eating, for loving, for feeling. I remember his refusal of anesthesia when he had an operation on his leg and again a serious abscess on his jaw.

  If my mother had not been fashioned of something akin to marzipan, my father's composition of steel would have been my very death.

  But why do I waste ink telling you this? It came into the room with the fragrance from the pots and would not let me be.

  Sometimes I consider not mailing a letter I've written to you, but you insisted that nothing should be struck through or torn up or unmailed, so there you have it.

  Someone has said again that I should work on the book of essays I've long considered. Perhaps when I retire, if I ever do such a thing.

  Stuart says I should be making plans for retirement—but his advice made me want to say, oh, stop being a bishop and let me stumble around and fall in a blasted ditch if that's what it takes.

  I am homesick for your spirit.

  With love,

  Timothy

  Darling Timothy,

  I've dried the lavender and tied it into small bundles that are tucked everywhere. Here are a few sprigs for your pillow. If that seems too twee, as the English say, perhaps you'll find a place for them in your sock drawer.

  I've plucked every petal from every faded rose and have two bowls filled with their lingering fragrance. I cannot let them go! I'm enclosing a handful of petals for you to scatter over the last of the snow.

  James says the new book must be a different format than the Violet books and even larger than Mouse in the Manger. "These creatures must have room to breathe!" he says, and I do agree. I'm going to the publishing house tomorrow afternoon and work with the designer. I shall be thrilled to have someone to talk with, though the lovely people who run the cafe do make the days go faster. I wish you could meet them.

  The weather is still terrible here. A water main froze and broke in the neighborhood, and the streets have been flooded for two days. I've bought fleecelined boots after weeks of tripping around in the footwear of a Southern schoolgirl!

  I got your letter mailed Saturday a.m. You must have given it wings/ Thank you for writing about your father. One day, I shall tell you about mine. Alas, there was no steel in him at all. He was constructed entirely of charm, French cigarettes, and storytelling. He was often sad, utterly defenseless, and I loved him madly. He was thrilled that I was a girl, once saying that he didn't know what he would have done with a little person who wanted to kick around a football or go fly-fishing.

  Oh, Timothy! I feel wretched. I cannot look at another zebra, another wilde-beest, and certainly no more armadillos! I am so very tired.

  I want more than anything to scratch through that last remark or start over, for that is what my mother always said. She always said she was tired, and I vowed never to say it, especially to you. But I am tired, and there you have it. I am exhausted in every bone.

  I should love to kiss you over and over. like at the airport. Our kisses made me feel I was flying, long before I got on the little plane. I am weary of having my feet on the ground, dearest. I should like to poke my head in the clouds!

  With inexpressible longings,

  Your loving bookend

  Dearest Bookend,

  Hang in there, i have just this moment heard a male cardinal singing. He is sitting on the branch of an icebound bush outside the office window. It is so reviving to hear his song i had to tell you at once. It has gone on and on, as if he can't bear to end it. His mate swoops and dives about the bush, expressing her own glad joy for the sunshine that is with us at last. Let this be a comfort, somehow, and a hope for us. Am off to Wesley with Dooley to buy a parka, as his was ripped on a fence when we delivered Christmas baskets. Know this comes with tenderest love and fervent prayer, and yes, my own longings.

  yrs, timothy

  •CHAPTER EIGHT•

  HE AWOKE WITH A START, CRYING OUT, and saw Barnabas looking at him with alarm.

  In the dream, he'd been standing on the site of Hope House, where Buck Leeper had been seriously hurt. The wound above Buck's knee lay open to the bone; blood soaked his pants and was spreading upward to his shirt.

  He rubbed his eyes, trying to wipe away the image of the nearly mortally wounded man whose face he had not seen but whose suffering had been palpable.

  He had never been one to try and sort out the meaning of dreams, as a dog might worry a bone. He wanted to put it out of his mind, at once.

  It was a half hour before the alarm would go off, but he got out of bed and took a hot shower, scrubbing his head more vigorously than usual, as if to drive out the image of the worst dream he'd had in a very long time.

  "I ain't seen you in a month of Sundays," said Percy, who looked up from the grill.
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  "I'm having breakfast with Dooley these days."

  "Th' boy gets you for breakfast, your house help gets you for lunch, an' I ain't open for supper, so there's that." Percy was hurt.

  He grinned sheepishly. If ever you got on the good side of Percy Mosely, he would make you feel wanted and needed, no matter how big a scoundrel you turned out to be. Why, indeed, had he stayed away so long when the Grill was his favorite medicine?

  "Where's Velma?"

  "Waitin' on your buddies over there."

  He turned and saw Ron Malcolm and Buck Leeper at the table by the window. The dark pall of the dream settled over him again. He noticed Velma was standing by the table like a stone, her order pad poised.

  "Howdy," said J.C., as he slid into the back booth.

  "How's it going?"

  "You ought to get you some of this gravy," said the Muse editor, who had ordered biscuits and gravy, sausage patties, two fried eggs, and grits.

  "And have a stroke before I hit the sidewalk? No thanks, pal."

  Mule came up to the booth and slapped him on the shoulder. "Where in th' heck you been? Slide over. I been lookin' through th' obituaries to see if I could trace you."

  "A lot going on. Glad to see you. How's business?"

  "Slow as molasses. How's yours?"

  "Steady."

  It was a comfort to be back.

  He could cook rings around Percy's eggs, but Percy's grits were another matter. While his own grits could be a dash watery, Percy's had a good, firm texture and were yellow with butter. He hadn't recently tasted anything so satisfying. And no wonder. For two mornings in a row, he'd weakened and had fried bologna with Dooley.

  "Hope you haven't been eatin' your own cookin' all this time," said Mule, who tucked into an omelet with a side of livermush.

  "Bologna two mornings in a row. The obituaries missed me by a hair. What's new?"

  "The Presbyterians are raffling off th' Cadillac this month, but they're doin' it at the Legion Hall, to keep it ecumenical," said J.C.