A Light in the Window (34 page)

“He’s workin’ on his sermon right now, Esther. Can he call you back? He said he has something goin’, for a change. He’ll call you, or I will. I know it’s important. Thirty minutes. Bye.”

He could hear her drumming the desktop with her fingers, waiting for him to put the cover on the typewriter.

He swiveled around in his chair. “Well?” he said, pleased with what he had accomplished in less than a half hour. “What did Esther want?”

“You know that big Presbyterian car thing at the Legion Hall on Friday night?”

“Vaguely.”

“They asked Esther to do the cakes.”

“That was smart,” he said, calling up the memory of the cake that had nearly taken him home to glory. Her splendid orange marmalade cake was famed among all the local churches.

“Well, she wants to do something’ in the triple chocolate category, for a change, something’ called Better Than Sex Cake. But she’s nervous as a cat about makin’ a change ... torn, she says.”

“Aha.”

“She wants to know should she come out with a new cake and throw over the old one that’s made her famous? She was wantin’ to get your answer by eleven, when she has to start bakin’.”

“I have an answer, all right.”

“What is it?”

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

“Amen!”

“Tell Esther I vote for the orange marmalade, hands down.”

“That’s what I say! Besides,” she said, peering over her glasses,

“what could be better than sex?”

He thought he was the last person on earth who should be asked such a question. Nonetheless, he had an opinion. “Certainly not a cake.”

“I’ll call her back,” she said.

He was putting on his jacket to leave when the phone rang.

“Timothy?”

Her voice gave him a fine chill, something like that produced by chalk scraping over a blackboard.

“I’m so glad you’re still there,” said Edith Mallory.

“What can I do for you, Edith?”

“I think it’s what I can do for the Children’s Hospital,” she said mysteriously.

“And what is that?”

“Remember how you urged me to get involved? Well, you were right, of course. Absolutely right, as always.”

“Aha.”

“Guess what?”

“I can’t.”

“Oh, Timothy, do loosen up a weensy bit. I’m calling with good news!”

He couldn’t help but notice that when the phone rang, the sun had disappeared behind a cloud. “Fire away.”

“I’m going to give ten thousand dollars to the Children’s Hospital!”

He wished his heart might have leapt at the thought. Ten thousand would help enormously, but words seemed to fail him.

“Oh, all right!” she said, peeved at his silence. “Fifteen!”

He had never before raised five thousand dollars by keeping his mouth shut. “Wonderful, Edith. You’ll never know how desperately it’s needed and how thoughtfully it will be used.”

“I’d like you to take me there to find out, firsthand.”

“You mean, you’d like to look around?”

“Of course, meet the director, talk to the doctors. I’d like some personal contact, after all.” She sounded petulant.

“What’s your schedule?”

“Could we do it right away? Monday, perhaps? Or Tuesday? Which shall it be? Ed can drive us over. Perhaps we’ll have lunch.”

The very thought gave him a knot in his stomach. “Monday, I speak at the ECW luncheon about Hope House. There’s a long meeting on Tuesday with the building committee. How about Wednesday or even Thursday?”

“Impossible.”

“Well, then.”

There was a frozen silence. She was waiting, he knew, to be courted and cajoled. Perhaps he should break over a little for the Children’s Hospital. Maybe Ron Malcolm could fill in with the ECW

“Oh, Timothy,” she crooned, suddenly thawing. “Why argue over a day or two when children’s lives might be in danger? I know how busy, busy, busy you are—of course we can make it Wednesday.”

“Thanks for being flexible.”

“Flexible? Me? How sweet of you to say that.” He heard her take a deep drag on her cigarette.

“Well, then, Wednesday. What time?”

“Ten would be good.”

“Let me call the hospital, and I’ll get back to you.”

“Perfect!” she said.

It wasn’t a word he would have chosen.

Ever since Christmas, the thought of the amethyst brooch seemed to hover in his thoughts. Where was it, anyway? He felt a mild distress that he might have lost it. He hadn’t seen it in-how long? Had he seen it since he moved here? Yes, he remembered thinking it should be taken to a jeweler and cleaned.

He closed his eyes, trying to visualize where he had put it. Why hadn’t he come across it from time to time, if it weren’t altogether lost?

He dug through the top left-hand drawer of his chest, where he kept things he didn’t need but didn’t want to toss out, either. Not there.

He opened his closet door and peered at the top shelves. Maybe. He took the chair that stood by the blanket chest in the hall and set it inside the closet. He took down several of the smaller boxes and put them on the floor by the bed.

Little puffs of dust rose up as he opened them, one by one. Christmas decorations from his last parish. He had searched high and low for these. What were they doing up there?

Buttons. An entire box of buttons. All emptied out of his mother’s sewing-machine drawer. He would set them aside for Puny.

Then, the box of his mother’s monogrammed handkerchiefs, her silver vanity mirror, a beaded evening bag, a lace collar, a hat pin with filigree work. There, too, was her gold wedding band, with a ribbon slipped through it and tied firmly. She had tied the ribbon herself, he suspected, when she had to remove her ring toward the end.

With the scent of age and mustiness, he also smelled her special smell; perhaps it had been gardenias. So faint, so elusive, it was scarcely there.

“Mother ...” he said aloud, feeling an odd comfort in the word, the old familiarity of it.

He thought of Miss Sadie coming across the little socks and the certificate. Her departed loved ones seemed bent on speaking to her down the years.

Nearly six decades ago, Willard Porter had carved a message on a crossbeam of the home he hoped to give Sadie Baxter as his bride. Last summer, Miss Sadie had asked her rector to go look at the beam and tell her what was carved there. The legend he found was full of Willard’s passionate belief that they would marry and that peace would reign in their lives at last.

Now, Miss Sadie’s mother had spoken, helping her find Olivia. In his opinion, Rachel Baxter meant for her daughter to discover the certificate soon after her death. Why would it have been placed so casually in a dressing table, where a daughter would surely look when going through her mother’s effects? Clearly, Rachel Baxter had tried to say, Run and find your sister!

What would his own mother say if she could speak to him now? He looked at the lace collar that she had prized, that had been so beautiful on her.

He realized his leg had gone numb, that he’d been sitting among the boxes for a long time. Yet, he hadn’t found the brooch. He slid the boxes under the bed and got up, feeling as if his mind had gone away on a short trip and returned to find the surroundings oddly unfamiliar.

He got out of bed on Wednesday morning, feeling the same dread he might feel over an impending root canal. Two root canals.

At the Grill, he was inspired to order a treat that might help him go on with this aggravation.

“Two eggs, scrambled-with bacon and a side of hash browns.” Percy inspected him as if he were a sack of onions. “You sure about this?”

“Dead sure. I’m fed up with eating right.”

Percy frowned. “Well, but just this once.”

It was a terrible thing when you couldn’t watch your own diet without the whole town jumping in to watch it too.

What he’d really like to have was a half-dozen of Winnie’s fresh doughnuts, three chocolate-dipped and three glazed, which would leave just enough room to squeak in a napoleon.

“What’re you dreamin’ about?” Mule slid into the booth, looking dapper in a salmon-colored sport coat, which he had found last summer at Evie Adams’s yard sale. Knowing that her dead husband was his exact size, he had appeared at Evie’s door at six a.m., well before the crowd, and bought everything Barney had owned, with the exception of his shoes that were triple f
^\
s.