A Light in the Window Page 21

  "That'd be cool."

  "In the meantime, what do you want for your birthday dinner? I'll step over to The Local and pick it up. You name it."

  "Steak."

  "What else?"

  "Ice cream."

  "Steak and ice cream. No bologna?"

  "I'm halfsick of baloney."

  "Hallelujah."

  "I wouldn't mind t' have some ol' cake or somethin.' If it was chocolate."

  "I wouldn't mind to bake you one after we eat."

  "Cool," said Dooley. "Can Tommy come for dinner?"

  When Tommy left, they walked upstairs.

  "Well, buddy, I'd like to congratulate you on becoming thirteen. Shake."

  He had folded the twenty three times. Dooley felt it against his palm.

  "Man!" he said, unfolding the new bill. "Neat!"

  He had become an outandout sucker for seeing a smile on that boy's face.

  The thought seemed to swim up from some dark grotto in himself, floating to the surface as he picked up the newspaper from the study floor.

  His mother's brooch was in the lockbox at the bank.

  As he carried it home in his pocket, in the blue velvet pouch, he knew at last why he'd been searching for it, why the thought of it had hovered around him for weeks. The truth was, he wanted Cynthia to have it.

  Site of the Mitford Town Museum "What do you think?" asked Esther Cunningham.

  They were standing in front of the freshly painted sign in Miss Rose's front yard. They might have been looking at Monet's water lilies.

  "Beautiful!" said the rector, meaning it.

  "Have you ever in your life? Why, they don't even have a town museum in Wesley! You mark my words, this'll bring their TV station runnin'!"

  "As well it might. When do we see the statue?"

  "Oh, law, that statue! It looks to me like his head's too big. I hope it's just me. But all in all, pretty nicelookin' and costin' a fortune. Now, listen, Father, I know how you hate to raise money..."

  "Esther..."

  "Just this once, you could do somethin'. And I'm not talkin' about bakin' pies. I'm talkin' big money."

  "Big money, is it? Why pick on me? What about the Baptists? What about the Presbyterians? They could auction off another Cadillac."

  "Shoot, they didn't raise the price of a used Subaru. All those people just swarmed in there to eat Esther Bolick's cake."

  "Aha. Well, about raising money, here's my answer..."

  Her eyes gleamed.

  "I'm not going to do it," he said, standing his ground for dear life.

  Esther laughed uproariously, "For a minute there, I thought I had you."

  "Your eternal optimism is part of your charm. You persist in thinking you're going to nail me to the wall."

  "Oh, and I will," she said, grinning. "One of these days, I will."

  Lent would soon be over and the fresh hope of Easter upon them. Cynthia would be home, and the forsythia in Baxter Park would be blooming. He heard the Lord's Chapel bells toll ten o'clock when the phone rang.

  "Hello?"

  He couldn't precisely identify the sound at the other end.

  "Hello?"

  There was a long silence, then a sort of squeak. "Tim..." It was Cynthia, and she was crying.

  "It's OK," he said. "Take your time. I'm right here."

  He could hear her muffled sobbing, as if she were holding her hand over the phone.

  "I'm right here," he said again, his heart hammering. Was she ill or in some kind of peril? Please, God.

  "I...," she said, then another pause. "I can't stop," she said. "I'm OK, it's just that I...can't stop." She didn't hold her hand over the phone now but wept unabashedly, as if the weeping were a language of its own and he would understand it.

  "I'm so glad...you're there," she said. "I just can't do this anymore. It's too hard..."

  "I understand. I do."

  "I think I can't bear it any longer that you're there and I'm here, and all there is, is work, work, work and this...this horrid longing. And I know it's going to be over soon, but right now, it seems it will never end. And James absolutely hated the last pages of the book. I'm so angry with him. Why was he so busy careening around Europe if he's so vastly picky about it? Why isn't he here, giving me the kind of direction he's so good at dishing out at the final hour? And I know it's wrong to say it, Timothy, but oh, I want to say it, I must say it, Timothy—I'm so very, very angry with you!"

  He heard the fresh storm of weeping and knew it was coming from a place he had never touched or known in her. There was an intimacy in the way she bared herself to him, something so oddly intimate that he felt his face grow warm.

  "Cynthia..."

  "Don't...don't even speak. I knew I shouldn't have called. I knew I would be hysterical when I heard your voice. I know this is going to take until the end of April now. I won't be able to come home in March.

  "Oh, Timothy, why aren't you here? Why aren't you here for even one weekend? Why must you be so tight and controlled and peevish about riding in a taxi or getting mugged or something? I think it is horrid of you, just horrid, horrid, horrid!"

  "How long have you worked today?" he asked.

  "Twelve or fourteen hours—I don't know."

  "Have you eaten?"

  "I ate some cottage cheese," she said. He thought she sounded exactly like Gillian Murphy, the day she clung to him and cried because her mother had missed the Sunday visit.

  He felt utterly helpless. What could he say, Go wash your face, get some rest, and you'll be fine? He felt the agony of the distance between them in a way he hadn't felt it before. He knew he had denied it. He had never once really faced her absence. He had numbed himself to it. When he missed her, he had simply made himself busy.

  "Blast," he said softly.

  "What did you say?"

  "I said that I love you, though I know you don't believe it."

  "No, I don't! I don't believe it at all. I think you like the idea of being in love as long as I'm far away and can't be any trouble to your feelings."

  "Cynthia..."

  "There. I've hurt you. I knew I would somehow hurt you if I made this call."

  "I don't know what to say. I...am the one who's hurting you, and I regret it."

  "Oh, poop! Stop regretting! Don't fall into that bottomless mire of regretting. Just get up and do something, Timothy—I don't know what!" She sounded exhausted.

  He didn't know what either.

  He put the blue pouch in his breast pocket, though it made a slight lump.

  The book Emma gave him for Christmas went in his briefcase, along with a change of socks and underwear and a fresh shirt, nothing more. If he looked like a hick, well then, so be it.

  He told Emma he would be away for two days and turned his back on her before the grin even started spreading across her face.

  "I'm going to see Walter," he announced to the bookcase, which was true. He would pop into Walter's Manhattan office for precisely five minutes, just to see the look on his cousin's face. He would be only too happy to dial 911 when Walter slumped over in shock, unable to speak.

  Of course, he was insane to make the trip. There was absolutely no question at all in his mind, especially with Easter only ten days away and the preparations that had to be made. But how often did he do something insane, after all? The last time was so far in the past that it was no longer considered insane—now, half the population was doing it.

  The thought of arriving at the New York airport alone, with only her address on a slip of paper, gave him palpitations. But he must swallow it down like a dose of bitters and get on with it.

  "My, my," said Emma, her eyes glittering. She wasn't sure she could put her finger on it exactly, but she felt suddenly proud of her rector. He looked handsome, even taller, and—she had never thought this particular thing before—very distinguished.

  He stood at the sink, washing the supper dishes, consumed with plans for her happiness.

  He would
take her to one of those restaurants in the book, one with four stars, certainly. Yet, if there was anything he couldn't abide, it was a snooty maitre d'—weren't you supposed to give them twenty dollars just for letting you in the door, or was it fifty? The very thought made his knees weak.

  He wanted it all to go smoothly, right down to hailing a taxi. When it came to that, he could whistle as well as the next one. Hadn't he and Tommy Noles been world-class whistlers in Holly Springs, able to wake the dead a halfmile away?

  He washed the hamburger platter and whistled as loudly as he could, just for practice.

  He heard Barnabas hit the study floor running, scattering a braided rug to kingdom come. He skidded to the sink and stood on his hind legs, thrilled to be summoned.

  "Here," said the rector, proffering a tea towel, "I'll wash and you dry."

  Perhaps he should have let her know; he should have called to say he was coming, but somehow, he couldn't do it. He kept seeing her as she opened the apartment door and the blue surprise in her eyes, and he knew he wanted it this way.

  That he made it to her apartment building intact gave him a great sense of triumph, though he was trembling inside like a schoolboy as he took the scrap of paper out for the last time and looked at her apartment number, which, though he knew it by heart, he kept forgetting.

  "May I help you, Father?"

  It was the doorman, he supposed, all gotten up in braid and gold buttons. "I'm seeing someone on your tenth floor. I should have brought flowers..." He looked up and down the street, as if flowers might appear at the curb.

  "May I ask who you're seeing on our tenth floor?"

  "Miss Coppersmith. Miss Cynthia Coppersmith. I'm her...priest."

  "Very well. I'll buzz you up."

  They went into the lobby, where the doorman, inordinately welldressed to be pushing buzzers, gave IOC a sharp blast.

  They waited.

  "Must be in the shower," the rector said, helpfully.

  "I'm thinking I saw Miss Copperfield leave early this morning, as I was coming on. I can't be sure."

  The doorman pushed again and waited.

  "Has the volume up on Mozart, very likely. Do keep ringing."

  The doorman gave another long alarm. "I don't believe she's in, sir."

  He had what his mother always called "a sinking feeling," as if some vital force went out of him, and he needed to sit down.

  "Just once more, if you'd be so kind." He hadn't meant to sound plaintive, but there it was.

  The doorman rang again. "Not in, I think. Perhaps having a bit of shopping."

  He felt for the brooch, as a child might feel for a blanket. Then, he looked up and saw an elderly woman in a dark fur coat leaving the elevator.

  She walked with a cane and was accompanied by a man in a uniform, who carried an aging, longhaired cat of considerable size.

  He waited until she nearly passed him.

  "Miss...Addison?"

  She turned and peered at him, squinting. As rustic as he may be, he could tell that Miss Addison had enjoyed a number of face-lifts and was wearing contacts. Close up, she seemed at once forty-five and eighty-three.

  "Yes, and who are you?"

  "I'm a friend of Cynthia Coppersmith—my neighbor. Ah, your neighbor, to be exact."

  "Lovely Southern accent. You're that father she's told me about, I presume."

  He felt suddenly daring, expansive. "And what, exactly, did she tell you?"

  "Oh, just that you're wonderful, among other things." She smiled a very sophisticated sort of smile, he thought. "I do hope that being wonderful hasn't gone to your head, however."

  "Miss Addison, let that be the least of your concerns!" He had to restrain himself from giving her a hug.

  "You've come a long way, I should think."

  "Yes, very. Up before dawn!"

  "Well," she said, leaning on her cane, "I dislike exceedingly having to tell you where she is."

  His heart hammered. "Please," he said.

  "She's gone home to Mitford."

  •CHAPTER TEN•

  WAS HE EXPECTING YOU, FATHER?"

  "Not in the least."

  "May I give him your name?"

  "Just say it's one of his Irish cousins. It's a surprise."

  She smiled. "He hates surprises."

  "I know."

  "But I'll do it for the clergy."

  "Thank you."

  Walter opened his office door and peered out. "Good God!" he said, freezing in his tracks.

  "Ah, and He is good, cousin."

  "I can't believe it!"

  "I can't believe it myself."

  "In New York? Here? A country bumpkin, a bucolic rube...?"

  "A hick," he said, grinning.

  They embraced heartily, Walter kissing him on both cheeks, which he'd once learned in France and thought a splendid idea. "There was a lot of back-slapping and general punching about, like two boys," his secretary later told a friend.

  "This, Timothy, is New York!" Walter yelled above the clamor of the restaurant. He held up an enormous deli sandwich as evidence and bit into it with conviction.

  "Powerful attorneys eat like this? What happened to nouvelle cuisine?"

  "Completely out of fashion! Now, tell me everything. Why are you here? How long are you staying? I'll ring Katherine to take the Christmas ornaments off the guest room bed!"

  He didn't have the heart to tell the truth—that he'd flown all the way to a place he never intended to visit, only to discover that the one he'd come to see had passed him in the air, hurtling in the opposite direction.

  "It's like this..." He couldn't think of a lie if his life had depended on it. "I came to see Cynthia."

  "That's the spirit!"

  "And she wasn't home."

  Walter suspended his garlic pickle in the air. "She let you corne all the way to New York—and she wasn't even home?"

  "She didn't know I was coming," he said, feeling miserable. "It was supposed to be a surprise."

  "And you got the surprise."

  Thank heavens, Walter wasn't laughing like a hyena. In fact, his cousin considered this piece of information very soberly.

  "She flew to Mitford this morning."

  "Rotten luck, old fellow. But Katherine will be thrilled to see you. You're staving the weekend, of course!"

  "I'm on my way to the airport, actually."

  Walter looked at him and shook his head. "I've known you for fiftysix years, and you never cease to amaze me."

  "What's so amazing?"

  "That you mustered the courage to come here in the first place—we know how disconcerting this sort of thing is for you. And that you came without telling Cynthia! Quite a romantic piece of business for a country parson."

  "Foolish would be the word."

  "Actually, I like my word, and I'm sticking with it. You've always been a slow starter, Cousin, but once you get going, stand back."

  "There's a rye seed between your front teeth."

  "You love her then?"

  "What do you think?"

  "Just answer my question."

  "Yes. She's...good for me."

  "In what way?"

  "Oh, gets me out of myself."

  "There's an accomplishment."

  "Makes me laugh."

  "Go on."

  "I trust her. She's real."

  "Like Katherine."

  "Well..."

  They both laughed then, with affection for the outspoken, salty-tongued Katherine.

  "Not like Katherine, exactly," said the rector, "but in that league."

  "The big leagues, then." After nearly thirty years, Walter still thought his wife the most compelling woman he'd ever known. "What are you going to do about all this?"

  "I've never understood why people think I should do something about it. Isn't loving her enough?"

  "Nope. That's the way it is with feelings like this. You've got to take them somewhere. They can't be allowed to merely dangle around in space. Ask
her to marry you."

  He felt his heart hammer.

  "Either you're blushing or your blood pressure is going out the roof," Walter said.

  "Sometimes I'm afraid to move forward, but I'm terrified to turn back."

  "There comes a time when there is no turning back. You'll know it when you get there."

  "Thanks for your understanding. Sometimes you can be rather..."

  "A cad," said Walter, finishing his sentence.'

  "I love you, pal."

  "And we love you, Timothy, and want the best for you. You know we pray for that."

  "And please don't stop. I've got to get out of here. Which side of the street should I stand on to hail a taxi for the airport?"

  "I'll walk you to the best place. Katherine will never believe you've been here. She'll think I'm hallucinating on the antibiotics I'm taking for a sinus infection."

  "Is there a store of any kind nearby? A shop?"

  "What are you looking for?"

  "A pink ribbon," he said, feeling brighter.

  When he turned the corner at Wisteria, he saw lights in Dooley's room but could see no lights in the little house next door. He had stood by for more than four hours, which he'd spent dozing in an airport chair, refusing to think of the precious time being wasted.

  He felt utterly exhausted. "Lord," he said aloud, which was both an appeal and a thanksgiving.

  It started to rain as he pulled the car into the garage. He could hear Barnabas barking wildly in the kitchen.

  After receiving a good lathering about the chin, he went with Barnabas to Dooley's room and found him sleeping, the jam box going full blast. He turned it off, covered the boy with the blanket, and went wearily across the hall.

  He felt the little bump in his breast pocket and removed the blue pouch and put it on the dresser. Then he unpacked his briefcase.

  Why were there no lights next door? Was she sleeping? Was she, in fact, safely home?

  He went to the window and looked out at her house. He saw a light come on in her bedroom, just before the Lord's Chapel bells tolled eleven.

  He hurriedly splashed water on his face, washed his hands, brushed his teeth, and combed his hair, regretting every moment it took to do it.