A Light in the Window (55 page)

He couldn’t remember being so sick.

For three days, Dooley fetched and carried through the hedge, ran to the drugstore and The Local, heated soup and delivered it upstairs, and generally made himself useful.

Timing is everything, thought the rector, who was getting plenty of mileage out of Dooley Barlowe’s recent indiscretion.

A new and virulent strain of flu, complicated by sinus infection, said Hoppy, who made a house call wearing a mask and gloves. His doctor looked down his throat, listened to his breathing through a stethoscope, thumped him like a melon, and darted through the hedge to do the same to his neighbor.

Apparently fearing contamination, his cousin came out only at night, like a cockroach. She was rustling so many books from his shelves that he once heard her make two successive trips downstairs. On the last trip, he groaned loudly, making sure he could be heard beyond his closed door.

Dooley came in the next morning, looking pale. “I heard you hollerin’ in here last night like you was dyin’. Are you dyin’?”

“No such luck,” he said, feeling his sinuses drain like pipes.

“Well, try t’ hold it down in here if you don’t mind—you like t’ scared me t’ death.”

“Speaking of being scared to death, wait ’til I get well, buster. You haven’t seen anything yet.”

Dooley turned paler still. Good! He needed to be scared. Getting himself thrown out of school like so much wastepaper, breaking the blasted law, shooting himself in the foot ...

“You want ginger ale or tea?”

“Tea, thank you, and ask my dog to come in here while you’re at it,” he said darkly. “I know he’s sleeping on the foot of your bed.”

“Cynthia was sick as all get-out when I seen her last night.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Ol Vi’let eat a mouse that got in while she was in New York City. Dropped it right on Cynthia’s bed. Gross.”

“I thought she liked mice.”

“Not half eat, she don’t,” said Dooley, who appeared to know.

“When you bring up the tea, I’d like you sit in the chair under the lamp and read to me.”

“What d’you want me to read?”

He might as well reach for the moon. “Shakespeare.”

Dooley pointed a finger down his throat. “Gag.”

When the boy went downstairs, he dialed her number, but it was busy.

Dooley delivered the
Muse
to his chair in the study, along with a fried bologna sandwich. “You want mustard or catsup?”

“Mustard.” This was living. Or it might have been, if he weren’t still nearly dying.

There was that blasted photo on the front page, as if nothing else was going on in this town. Why did his nose look like the bulb of a tulip? And that smirk on his face—is that what he looked like when he was smiling? If he never saw another picture of himself, it would be too soon.

“Here,” said Dooley, “it’s time for your medicine. I hope it makes you better. I’m about give out.”

“If you’re going to be a vet, you’d better get used to caring for the sick.”

“Can I go to Tommy’s after school?”

“Are you out of your
mind?”

Dooley rolled his eyes.

“In case it hasn’t occurred to you, you’re grounded. Big Time. We’ll talk as soon as I can manage it. Now, onto other matters. That was a grand reading from
Hamlet.
We’ll have Dickens tonight.”

“Who’s Dickens?”

“Only one of the finest storytellers in the English language, but long-winded, so eat your Wheaties.”

“Man,” said Dooley, wishing he were back in school.

“And I’d like to have a look at that English composition you’re writing about my dog.

“He ain’t ... isn’t ... just your dog. I live here too, y’know.”

“Yes, well, and who feeds and brushes and bathes him?”

“I could brush ’im. An’ I could feed him sometime ...”

“There’s a thought. Go to it.” Why had he mistakenly assumed that a ten-day suspension was all bad?

He made his usual search for J.C.’s way with words but found only one gem:

Hessie ended with a quote from John Clare:

The timeline for planting, May 15, was also the Grill’s timeline.

He let the newspaper drop to the floor. How had the days passed so quickly? For there was the shock of hearing the news, which took its own kind of time. Then, the brainstorming sessions and Edith’s trip to Florida, and now he was sick.

Unless a miracle happened, they were looking at God knows what—a stroke for Percy, a strange job for Velma, and no way to get a decent cup of coffee, except by standing straight up at a shelf that ran along Winnie Ivey’s bakery wall.

It was more than the probable loss of a landmark. It was, he concluded, a violation of ordinary lives made larger by continuity and connections.

He went to the sofa, uttered a brief but loaded petition, and dialed her number.

“Hello-o?”

“Edith?”

“Hello, Timothy. Magdolen has just gone out to The Local, so I’m my own social secretary.”

“I’m sick ... ”

“Yes, I’ve heard. So sorry.”

“That’s why I haven’t called sooner ...”

“Not since your house help hung up in my face ...”

“Something wrong with the phone lines, no doubt.”

“What are you proposing, Timothy? And oh, you may as well know that I have no intention of seeing you while you’re contagious, even if you are my priest.”

“I should be completely over it in a couple of days. What about lunch in Wesley on Thursday?”

“We’ll see,” she told him, in a tone that said she had no intention of seeing.

His cousin still refused to accompany them to church. In reply to the note he left under her door, she left a note for him on the kitchen table:

He couldn’t help but notice she’d left the lid off the pickles.

“Hello.”

“Hello, yourself,” he said, noting that the receiver felt like a barbell. “Feeling better?”

“Better than what?”

“Better than if you’d been pushed from a tall building.”

“Only slightly. And you?”

“Rotten, if the truth were known.”

“The truth is seldom known, Timothy.”

He moved quickly. “The truth is, Edith Mallory is involved in something I didn’t have a chance to tell you about, which is why she called and invited me to dinner, and if Cousin Meg is a raving beauty, I am Michelangelo’s David.” There. He hadn’t meant to sound so angry about it, but he was angry, he suddenly realized. Why was he having to report his personal life to Cynthia Coppersmith?

Clearly, she didn’t want to talk about it. “Thanks for sending Dooley over. You’ve no idea how it’s helped.”

“Actually, I do have an idea. He’s a boon to me, as well. Couldn’t get out of bed the first two days. What did Hoppy say?”

“I have everything you have.”

Bookends, he wanted to say, but didn’t.

“Everything, that is, except a sinus infection, thanks be to God.”

“There is a balm in Gilead.”

“I’m making soup with the ounce of energy I got from eating a cracker,” she said. “May I send some over?”

“Wonderful! I told Puny not to come in ’til the germs die down, so we’re pushing along on our own over here. What time do you want Dooley to make a pickup?”

“Around five,” she said, “and I’ll leave out the carrots so he’ll eat it. Now, with or without a cream base?”

“Without,” he said.

“With or without a thin, golden-crusted little morsel of cornbread hot from the oven!”

“With!” he exclaimed, not feeling angry anymore.

Edith Mallory wanted him crawling on his hands and knees. All he was prepared to do, however, was call her again—just as soon as he went to the drugstore for Dooley’s prescription.

Dooley had eaten a vast bowl of Cynthia’s soup, cleaned up his share of the cornbread, crumbs and all, and fallen on the sofa, unable to move.

“You’ve done worked me to death,” he said, his teeth chattering from the chill that raced through him.