A Light in the Window (12 page)

“I’m fine. Top-notch. Stop drumming up business.”

“Let me see you next week. I haven’t looked at you since Ireland.”

“If you insist.”

“I saw the story about your neighbor.”

The rector gazed at him steadily and smiled.

“So, what’s the scoop?” Hoppy asked.

“The scoop? If there’s any scoop, J.C. already got it.”

“You know what I mean. Are you seeing her?”

“A bit difficult since she’s living in New York.”

The doctor ran his fingers through his hair. “Rats,” he said with feeling.

They heard the first shattering boom on the hill, as if a jet had just broken the sound barrier.

“What an opening!” said Hoppy, as the slender, dark-haired Olivia appeared on the terrace in a swirl of cream-colored chiffon.

“Ta-daaaa!” She was wearing a wide-brimmed hat that tied under her chin with a sash of limp organdy. The hat, once white, had turned a soft ivory color and was adorned with velvet roses. “This fetching number,” she announced, “was worn to country picnics and often graced lawn parties at Fernbank.”

Hoppy stood and applauded. “Bravo!” he crowed.

“And now,” said Olivia, gesturing toward the French doors, “Miss Sadie Baxter, wearing a scarlet felt with leghorn feathers, so perfect for motoring to Wesley in one’s town car ...”

Another thundering boom as Miss Sadie strolled happily onto the terrace, wearing a hat that engulfed her head and left only her mouth and chin visible.

Cheered on by the applause, Miss Sadie bowed low, sending her hat rolling into a perennial border.

“And now,” she said in her warbly voice, “Louella, my best friend and lifelong companion, in a smart panama straw, which Mama wore to summer services at Lord’s Chapel!”

Louella called loudly from the bedroom, “Miss Sadie, do I have t’ do this foolishness?”

“You most certainly do, Louella! It’s the entertainment!” Clutching her handbag, Louella stomped out in a hat smothered with silk lilacs, which were mashed flat with decades of lying in a box.

“Slavery done been over all these years,” she grumbled to the rector, “an’ some folks act like it still goin’ on.”

“Poshtosh,” said Hoppy. “You should see yourself. You look terrific.” He nudged the rector for a comment.

“Sharp as a tack!” he blurted.

“You mean it?”

“Would we lie to you?”

“Well,” Louella said thoughtfully and broke into one of her huge smiles.

“More! More!” Hoppy shouted, beating on his tea glass with a spoon. Six more hats were exhibited before the models began to protest and thumped down in chairs in Olivia’s bedroom.

After Hoppy left, they sat and talked, the conversation punctuated by explosions on the hill.

“I hope the noise won’t be too much for you, Miss Sadie,” said the rector. “It’s mighty close to Fernbank.”

“Oh, no! I like a little something going on for a change.” She sighed contentedly. “I don’t know when I’ve had such a good time. Certainly not since Father had his dinner party last spring.”

Olivia went to the double closet behind her chaise and pulled out a garment bag.

“While I was rearranging my closets to make room for your mother’s wonderful hats, I came across something precious to me, something I’d like to share with just the three of you. It was my grandmother’s.”

She unzipped the bag and took out a child’s red velvet coat with white fur collar and cuffs. A white fur muff, stuffed with tissue paper, was tied around the neck of the padded hanger. Smiling, she held it up for all to see.

An odd sound escaped Miss Sadie; perhaps it was only the word, “Oh.”

Louella sank into a chair by the bed, as if her knees had given way.

“Long ago, an aunt told me that my grandmother was born out of wedlock. She never lived with her mother. She grew up in the home of a very kind woman. But her mother visited her each week, never letting it be known who she was. She always brought lovely things, I’m told, and this little coat was one of them. Isn’t it beautiful? My aunt said Grandmother treasured it more than anything else.

“I’ve just finished going through Mother’s things, where I found it. So many years have gone by, I feel at peace about sharing this old family secret with friends.”

Miss Sadie gave a shuddering sigh, while Louella sat frozen in the chair.

“Miss Sadie, are you all right?” Olivia went to the old woman, who had closed her eyes.

“Father,” said Miss Sadie, “could you come and hold my hand?”

He pulled the vanity bench close and did as she asked.

“It’s done, now,” moaned Louella, who had turned an odd, gray color.

Miss Sadie’s eyes remained closed. Then, she spoke slowly, as if something inside were winding down.

“What ... was your grandmother’s name?”

“Lydia Anne. But that’s all I know. We’ve never talked about it in the family all these years. My aunt said I should never discuss it. But it’s all so long ago that surely ...”

Miss Sadie opened her eyes and looked at Olivia. “I’ve seen that little coat before, my dear. I found it in a box under my mother’s bed and thought she had bought it for me. It was a trifle large, and I remember thinking I would grow into it. It was the prettiest thing I ever saw. Several times, I took it out of the box and put it on when Mama was out of the house.”

There was a long silence in the room. Olivia looked stricken.

“Christmas came and went,” said Miss Sadie, “and the little red coat did not appear. I crawled under her bed to look for it, but it was gone.”

The rector held her hand and prayed silently.

“Olivia, dear,” said the old woman, “I have every reason to believe your grandmother was my half sister ... and that you are my grand-niece.”

Olivia sat down beside the rector on the vanity bench, clutching the coat. “I’m so sorry if I said ... if I did ...”

Miss Sadie’s voice trembled. “I’ve just learned that my mother had a little girl named Lydia Anne before she married my father. Every week for many years, I watched her go out with her basket for the poor and come home brokenhearted. How strange that I should find this out while collecting her hats to bring to you.”

“Oh, Miss Sadie!” Olivia slipped from the bench and knelt by the old woman’s knees, weeping with remorse and surprised joy.

Miss Sadie gave Olivia her other hand. “It’s all right, my dear. Just wait until you see Mama’s picture. You’ll think you’re looking in a mirror.”

“I can’t believe the little coat has given me what I long for most—family!”

“Family!” said Miss Sadie, letting her own tears come. “The sweetest treasure on earth. If I hadn’t had Louella ...” Louella came and stood by Miss Sadie, touching her shoulder.

In the room splashed with golden autumn light, they had drawn together, as close as eggs in a nest.

He was no wimp. Instead of writing, he would call her.

That he miserably dreaded the coldness he might hear in her voice was beside the point. The point was to establish contact, to see whether the path through the hedge might be cleared again for passage.

So what if she were cold to him? Hadn’t he faced glacial vestries and stony congregations?

He had always managed, somehow, to follow a canonized saint when he was called to a parish, someone who had worn a halo and been surrounded by seraphim, even when walking to the corner for a newspaper.

In his first parish, it had taken a full year to be forgiven his green innocence in the wake of a priest who, mellowed by age, was wise and all-knowing, not to mention full of truth and light.

Though he was again and again the leading choice among the candidates, the frost inevitably came as his congregations sized him up.

One parish had chosen him because he was unmarried but later wished he were married with children.

Another liked him because he was unaffected but decided he needed more charisma.

One search committee thought that being slightly under five feet nine inches in his sock feet was a characteristic that lent spiritual humility but changed their minds and wished he were taller.

What had he to fear, after all?

Absolutely nothing, of course. There was only one problem—he didn’t know where to call her.

He walked quickly to the library after lunch and looked up one of the Violet books. He sat down in the reading room and tucked it behind Tuesday’s
Wall StreetJournal.

Violet Visits the Queen
was filled with watercolors of the irrepressible Violet trying to make friends with garden rabbits under the queen’s rosebushes, leaping from a drawing room mantel onto a bird cage, and sending terrified corgis fleeing along dim passageways.

Violet only wanted a friend,
read one of the pages in the picture book.
But every time she tried to have one, she did something that chased them away.

He found the name of the publisher and entered it in his black address book.

He walked to the office, hearing a series of shuddering booms from the hill. His heart beat dully at the very thought of what he was about to do.

He sat in his swivel chair and prayed as simply as he knew how. Lord, if this friendship is not meant to grow, please close the door. If it pleases you, throw the door open wide, and give me the courage to walk through it.

“Bardzvark,” someone said at the other end of the line.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Moment, pliz.”

He was instantly dumped into the voice mail of someone who suggested he either leave a message or press star for the operator. He had no message to leave and could not, for the life of him, find a star on the telephone keys. He located what appeared to be an asterisk, which produced only an empty silence that he was paying for.

He hung up.

Perhaps he would humiliate himself and Cynthia, to boot. But he would go straight to the publisher, the president, the editor-in-chief, the blasted top.

“Bardzvark.”

“The president!” he said, reckless with anxiety.

Pitched into voice mail, he got a recording. “You have reached the office of Helen Boatwright. At the sound of the tone, please leave a message, or dial star for the operator.”

He hung up and dialed again.

“Bardzvarkholdpliz.”

He was nearly deafened by the music that came pouring out of the telephone. Mozart. Or was it Vivaldi? What a perilous thing it was to try and reach someone in the outside world.

“Who’re you holding for, pliz?”

He was glad he had never been troubled with high blood pressure. “The boss of the children’s book section, the publisher, the main ...”

The line seemed to go dead for a moment. “Argonaut.”

“May I please speak with the publisher?” he said through his teeth.

“Of which division?”

“Children. Juvenile. Young people.”

“This is the children’s division.”

“I’m trying to find one of your authors.”

“I’m sorry, we don’t give whereabouts or addresses of our authors. You’ll have to write a letter.”

“I am this person’s neighbor,” he said ominously, “and it is imperative that I locate her.”

“You may send a letter to our group office and we’ll forward it to her. Thank you for calling.”

He pounded his fist on the desk. The door appeared not only to have closed but to have slammed in his face.

“How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude.”

“Cowper.”

“A man cain’t hardly be a hermit n’ more,” said Homeless.

“Why’s that?” the rector asked, moving closer to the glowing wood stove. The door of the stove stood open, and shadows flickered over the walls of a dwelling that was smaller than the rectory kitchen.

“When I moved here a few years ago, I was about th’ only one on th’ creek. Now th’ place is crawlin’ with house trailers and squirmin’ with little doodad houses. You got dope and alcohol, wife beatin‘, shootin’ and stabbin’, you name it. Back along th’ creek is th’ same as everywhere else ... namely, th’ devil walks to and fro upon the earth ...”