Heart and Home (7 page)

Eight years without prayer,
and suddenly I was on some kind of involuntary binge. Almost defiantly, I
opened my eyes just a little and glanced around at all the lowered heads.

Amber sat near the front
beside her husband, whom I didn’t recognize and wondered if he was from one of
the neighboring towns. Her mother was there, the children nestled in between
them watching Pastor Crane and fidgeting impatiently. The whole scene was
familiar, reminiscent of my youth, but altered by the fact that I wasn’t one of
those squirming children anymore.

I looked to the left, into
next row of pews and for the first time I spotted Troy Kepner. His mother’s
walker was positioned at the end of the aisle beside him. He had one hand
curled around the back of the pew in front of him, head slightly tilted, but I
soon discovered his eyes were open when he lifted them to meet with mine. A
flutter of nerves tickled from the inside out when his mouth drew slightly
upward, and he shook his head. I grinned and shrugged my right shoulder just a
little before I resumed proper prayer position just in time for my father to
reach over and take my hand. The notion of being caught in the act of avoiding
prayer widened my smile in reminiscence of my youth.

Pastor Crane went into the
Lord’s Prayer, and I mouthed over the words, “Our father, who art in heaven...”
as everyone else, even my father beside me, seemed to speak them with
conviction.

I wondered then if Troy was
praying too, and though a part of me wanted to sneak another glance at him over
my shoulder, I didn’t dare. Not even as the service drew to a close, and the
congregation began moving around to socialize, could I bring myself to look
back at Troy. It wasn’t until Dad finally thanked the last well-wisher that we
turned in Troy’s direction only to find that he and his mother disappeared.
Inside, dismay mixed with relief as Dad looped his arm through mine and finally
escorted me out of the church.

We drove twenty-five minutes
into Milton to have brunch at the truck stop there, something he explained he
and my mother did almost regularly for the last five years. “It’s a nice
place,” he noted, as our waitress navigated through the Sunday afternoon crowd
with our order.

I folded my hands and leaned
across the table. “All right, Dad. I’m dying to know,” I started. “Since when
did you start going to church?”

His face lit up a little as
he shrugged his left shoulder upward. “Oh, just after you went off to college,”
he admitted. “Your mom didn’t like going off to service alone, so I started to
tag along.”

“And now?”

Cheeks flushed as he
shrugged in closer to himself. “I don’t know, habit?”

I nodded, and leaned back
into the booth. “I guess it’s good though, it’ll keep you involved.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, “I
suppose.”

“It’s not going to be easy.”
I’d really meant to think those words, rather than say them, but they’d already
slipped out. “I mean, you know, now with Mom gone.”

His head bobbed up and down,
but I didn’t really think he processed my meaning. We were silent and
thoughtful until the waitress reappeared with a steaming pot of coffee to pour
into our upturned mugs. I immediately began shaking out sugar packets to pour
into my mug, but Dad sipped at his black. As he replaced it to the saucer, he
looked at me and then looked away again.

“When do you plan on heading
back to the city?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“I should probably start back tonight, tomorrow morning at the latest. I can’t
really put off work much longer, even under the circumstances.”

“Well,” his voice was quiet
as he stared down into his coffee like he was searching for answers in the
surface. “It may not feel quite like it should, but I suppose life goes on.”

I wanted to believe that,
but the pain and shock still throbbed inside of me like a raw nerve, and I
imagined it was the same for him too. He’d have to get up and go back to work
tomorrow morning himself, follow a broken routine in hopes the pain he was
feeling would heal itself in time.

“If you want me to stay for
a couple of weeks, just until—I don’t know whatever, just say the word. I
can use my vacation time.”

“No,” he shook his head.
“No, you’ve got to go back to your life and live it, Jannie, and so do I.
That’s what your mom would want us to do.”

There was a momentary
flashback to the night before when I’d been in the bath and the steam revealed
those letters on the mirror. YATS... what if getting back to my life wasn’t
really what my mother wanted for me at all?

He started talking again, a
short lecture on how doing her proud the way I’d always done would be what
she’d want, and then he reached across the table and took my hand. “She was so
very proud of you, Janice. Her daughter, the big shot journalist. Not a day
went by that she didn’t brag about you to someone.”

My eyes stung and I blinked
rapidly to keep tears from falling. I’d managed to go the entire morning and
all through the church service without crying, but the record shattered as a
tear managed to escape down my cheek.

“But who’s going to take
care of everything now, Dad? Who’ll make you dinner and wash all your clothes?”

An incredulous look spread
over his face. “Is that what you’re worried about?” He chuckled a little.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m a grown man more than capable of taking care of
myself.”

“So that’s it, is it? Now
you’re trying to get rid of me,” I wrapped my fingers around the warm ceramic
mug and brought the coffee to my lips.

“You can stay around as long
as you want,” he said. “In fact, if you decided tomorrow you wanted to move
back home you’d be more than welcome, but don’t you toss out your life plans on
my account. I’ll manage.”

“But you’ll be lonely,
Daddy.”

“I’m sure I will from time
to time,” he admitted. “Don’t you get lonely in that big city?”

I twitched my shoulders just
a little. “I don’t know. I keep busy, most of the time. I mean, if you wanted
to come and stay with me. . .”

“Now, that’s not even an
option,” he shook his head. “I have spent my whole life in that town, and the
better part of twenty-nine years living in that house with your mom. I belong
here.”

His certainty was
comforting, but it also disturbed me just a little because for the first time
since I’d left Sonesville I was starting question my own place in the world. I
thought Pittsburgh was right for so long, but one conversation with my dad and
I just wasn’t sure anymore. As I thought about my answer to his question,
didn’t I get lonely in that big city, the truth rumbled dangerously under the
surface of my reply.

I did keep busy, and from
time to time I went out with colleagues, but I hadn’t had a real friend since
I’d become super-journalist and Erika went all Indiana Jones. The last guy I
dated turned out to be incredibly hard to get close to, and it sometimes seemed
like escaping my mundane existence took away any chance for real relationships
and friendships.

Dad was still holding my
hand when the waitress brought our brunch to the table. As he withdrew, I
forced a smile and tucked into my food, but in the end I mostly just pushed it
around on the plate while I tried to make sense out of the course my life had
suddenly taken upon my mother’s unexpected death.

“I
should
probably head back tomorrow,” I sunk my fork down into the
layers of pancake on my plate. “But if you don’t mind, Daddy, I think I’d like
to stay another week.”

“Like I said, you stay as
long as you need. You’ll always have a place at home.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I reached
across the table and patted his arm.

I was so wrapped up in that
whole end of the conversation that I completely forgot about the face I’d seen
in the window. By the time we reached home, the incident itself faded as I
realized I would have to face my boss, Cal Rogers, and try to make him
understand why I was taking another week off. He’d been on me all week, calling
at least once a day to prod me for news on my return. Most of the time I let it
go straight to voicemail and felt guilty when I listened to the message later.
The last time I actually spoken to him, I’d all but guaranteed him that I would
be back in the office by late Monday morning.

I could already hear Cal’s
patience with my situation evaporating before I dialed his cell phone. A week
for parental death was already like asking for Christmas in July. Telling him I
needed another week could be career suicide, but I had no choice. Something in
me felt compelled to stay on another week.

“Jan,” he picked up on the
third ring. “You better be calling to ask me to pick you up at the airport or
something.”

“Hi Cal,” I stared out my
bedroom window into the fog-laden afternoon. “I know it’s short notice, but I’m
actually calling in vacation for this week.”

“Wasn’t the funeral
yesterday?”

“Well, yes, but things have
been a little off around here nevertheless, and I need to stay just a little
longer.”

“Don’t do this to me,
Janice. Replacing you this last week hasn’t been easy, but week two might be
enough to convince me that you are expendable.”

I squeezed my eyes together
tightly, a sick feeling between guilt and disgust roiling in my gut. “Cal, it’s
not like I called in some lame excuse that my fifth grandmother twice removed
died. This was my mother.”

“And I understand that, Jan,
but what’s it going to be next week? Getting back into the routine is
therapeutic. You want to heal? Come back to work.”

“I’ll get back into my
routine next week,” I said. “I just need a little more time here.”

“You’ve already made up your
mind,” he noted.

“Yes, I have.” I stood that
plot of firm ground that usually made Cal praise how good I was at not taking
no for an answer. My legs were shaking, but I didn’t budge, not even when I
heard him sigh on the other end of the line.

“Well then, there’s nothing
else I can say. I just hope that by next week there’s still a place for you
here.”

I could feel my molars press
down hard against each other as my jaw clenched tighter. “And if there’s not,
it’ll be your loss when I take up a position at the
Post-Gazette
. Goodbye, Cal.”

I turned my phone off before
he had a chance to add another layer of guilt and confusion to my already
frazzled mind. Of course, I’d never considered my mentor, Cal Rogers, a friend,
but his callousness seemed to reaffirm everything I’d been thinking while
having brunch with my father. It was like a void lifted away, exposing all the
ways in which my life was either seriously lacking or completely damaged.

I dropped my phone into the
soft bottom of my purse, and then flopped back onto the bed. The headache from
earlier that morning still throbbed in my temples, and called into question
everything I felt. I turned onto my side and drew my legs up, then snuggled
into the quilt. Maybe a nap would help me make sense of things again, but I
doubted it. I closed my eyes and started to drift away, but several times
before I actually fell asleep, I jerked awake due to the flash of that blurred
face in the window of my mind.

Chapter Seven

After taking the entire week
off of work, I had to convince myself the choice was the right one. As messed
up as I felt inside about my mother’s death, part of me wondered if maybe Cal
wasn’t right, and the real way to get over the grief was to just dive back into
work.

Since I’d already made the
decisions, I planned to spend my time going through my mother’s things and
packing them up for my father. I could almost hear my mother urging me on in
the back of my head, insisting that there were women in need of her clothing
and the library would be happy to have any books we might want to pass on to
them. I woke up Monday morning determined to get straight to work, but as soon
as I finished breakfast I didn’t even know where to begin.

As organized as my mother
was, the fact remained that no one is ever really prepared for their own death.
Despite twenty years of paying life insurance, eating healthy, exercising
regularly and maintaining a spotless driving record, death was probably the
furthest thing from my mother’s mind. The evidence was in the aftermath, and my
mother left behind a monument.

Everywhere I turned there
was some project left undone.

There were needlepoint
projects tucked into a basket on the left side of her chair, and a plastic tub
full yarn and knitting needles rested on the right. Inside that tub were a
half-knitted baby blanket and an assortment of hats and scarves she’d obviously
started knitting for the homeless. The dining room was littered with piles of
scrapbooking materials, articles and pictures half hanging out of the
overstuffed scrapbooks. It was almost like she’d planted it all that way to
make sure I didn’t forget about her.

As if the world itself
wasn’t already groaning from the great void she’d left behind her.

I lifted the first scrapbook
cover and studied the title page. “The History of Us” was spelled out in fancy,
curling letters, and underneath them were two bedecked, black and white
photographs. The photograph on the left was a little boy, his white blond hair
in defiant tufts and his grin unforgettable. It was the same grin that still
made my Daddy one of the most handsome men I’d ever known. On the right was a
freckled little girl who looked like she was about to come twirling out of the
photograph swinging the hem of her skirts with her hands. I walked through
their youth page by page and into their teen years.

I’d seen all those pictures
before. My father’s senior prom, his date a toothsome brunette. On the opposite
page was my own mother, starry eyed and gazing up at her incredibly tall prom
escort. There were pictures of my father from his time in the military, and
then their wedding photos. They traveled all over before I’d come along, and
the following pages were a tribute to their carefree days in Venice, France,
Ireland, Norway and Scotland. Near the end of their trip to Spain you could
just see my mother’s pregnancy beginning to show.

Funny how the furthest we’d
ever traveled after I’d been born had been Canada. Even after I moved out they
traveled within the states, but it seemed all of their great adventures were
already taken. I closed the scrapbook and rested my hand on the cover. Did she
ever miss the early freedom she and my father knew together? Had my coming
along put a damper on their carefree days? She’d never said as much, but they
spent many a dinner talking about the year my father spent stationed in Japan and
the unforgettable trip they’d taken to the Orkney Islands.

There were two other
brimming books of memories tucked underneath it, and I remembered with an ache
in the back of my throat what Becky said about having a couple of the projects
Mom was working on still at her house. That she had taken great pride in
collecting articles and clippings of my work. Maybe Becky might even like to
have some of the loose scrapbooking odds and ends my mother left lying around.

The more I thought about it,
the more it felt like my mom’s life just stopped in mid-sentence. She’d left
piles of laundry and ironing, and a grocery list on the refrigerator that she’d
obviously spent about a week putting together. She had a personal calendar
marking all of her functions, and there were to-do’s written on post-it notes
stuck all over the house. As I started to sort through and try to organize
things in the dining room, her system eluded me. She always held everything
together so well, but how she managed it, I’d never know.

I thought for years that my
own meticulous need for order came from her, until one day she looked over my
research system for a term paper I was writing in tenth grade. “I never thought
I’d say this” she held a wooden spoon like a conductor’s baton,” but you’re too
organized, Jan.”

“That’s the most ridiculous
thing I’ve ever heard, Mom. How can a person be too organized?”

“Well, if you’ve got
everything all planned out, where’s the room for spontaneity, or even worse,
what happens when someone throws a wrench into the cogs?” Turning her attention
to the pot on the stove, I stared at her back and squinted, as though trying to
unearth the alien being lurking underneath.

“That is what planning is
for, Mom. It helps you prepare.”

“You can’t prepare for
everything.” She stretched up onto her tiptoes and into the cupboard for the
chili powder. I watched her reach, her fingers working it forward until she
finally managed to draw it out far enough to grasp it. She’d was barely 5’4”
with shoes on, but she’d never let that stand in the way of her getting what
she wanted. “No matter how much you prepare and organize, life has a way of
seeing to its own design.”

“Not my life.”

Even from the side, the
glance she shot me was both disbelieving and mischievous. “Not my life.” She clucked
and shook her head. “And just what makes you think you’re so special, Janice
Claire McCarty?”

I never answered her, but I
realized as hot tears dampened my face, that it was her. She’d told me every
day of my life, in one way or the other, that I was special. Even beyond that
moment, I’d believed her. Her belief in me was what drove me out of Sonesville
and into the city. I was special, different. I was too big for that crummy old
town with its run down grocery store and nosey neighbors.

“You can plan and prepare
all you like,” she went on, “but none of it will matter in the end. You mark my
words.”

The ringing of the telephone
brought me back to the moment, and I was almost grateful. I walked into the
kitchen and checked the caller id, but didn’t recognize the name. It occurred
to me during the third ring that my mother probably knew dozens of people I
didn’t, so I picked up and said, “Hello?”

“Oh, um, hi,” an uneasy
voice started. “Is that you, Janice?”

“This is Janice.”

“Hi, Janice, it’s Becky.” Before
I even had a chance to respond, she went on. “I wasn’t sure if you were still
in town, but I wanted to call and leave a message for someone. Your mom, she
ordered some stuff at my last scrapbooking party, and… well, it came in today.
I wasn’t sure what I should so with it, so I thought I’d give a call.”

More scrapbooking stuff? I
looked to the boxes of supplies cluttering the hutch and shook my head.

“It’s already paid for, so I
thought you might want it.”

At a loss for words, I tried
to hide the sound of my sigh. “Yeah, I don’t know what to do with it, but I
guess I can come and get it.”

“Oh, good!” She said. “Then
you can pick up the books I was telling you about and see what she was working
on. She was so excited about it.”

I had a hard time imagining
anyone getting excited over a scrapbook, but it was getting easier by the
minute with Becky. “I bet.”
 

“Well, I have to take my son
to the doctor at ten, but I’ll be home all afternoon.”

“Yeah, okay.” I glanced at
the clock and noted that it was only 8:30. “I have some work to do around here
today, but I guess I can come over after lunch, if that’s okay.”

“That’s great. I’m looking
forward to it.” She gave me the address and thanked me again before finally
hanging up.

It didn’t occur to me until
after I’d hung up that she’d said she had to take her son to the doctor, and
the notion of her being married brought a small grin to my lips. There was hope
in the world if Becky Raynard managed to find happiness despite the obstacles
Sonesville’s upper crust had thrown in her path.

I looked back in on the
dining room. The scrapbooks and the materials would all need to be organized
somehow, but it wasn’t something I wanted to do just yet. Combing through her
youth was strange enough, like I was outside looking in at the life of the
woman who raised me. Now that she was gone, she seemed foreign to me, almost
like she’d never really been at all. Maybe I’d consult with my dad before
tackling the scrapbook stuff. He might even want to help.

Instead, I decided to get
started with the three sorted piles of dirty clothes on the laundry room floor.
I arranged the first pile evenly around the agitator and opened up the cupboard
only to discover the reason they’d remained unwashed. The detergent bottle had
less than half a cupful. I turned the water off and hiked upstairs to check the
grocery list my mother started. Sure enough, laundry detergent was at the top,
and it was followed by bleach, dishwasher gel, toilet scrub and a host of other
cleaning agents.

Obviously, I was going to
have to drive over to the store if I wanted to get any of the housework done
before Dad came home from work. I ran a brush through my hair, and wound up
hiding the unruly mass under a blue bandana. I debated changing out of my
sweats, but in the end decided I wasn’t out to impress. It made no sense to
shower and get all dressed up if I was just going to come home and get dirty
again. If I ran into Amber Williams, my appearance could give her something to
gossip about at her next “Mommy & Me Gymboree,” or whatever it was she did
with her spare time.

In retrospect, I probably
should have thought beyond Amber in terms of who I might run into, because no
one was more surprised than I was when aisle three brought cleaning supplies,
paper towels and toiletries and Troy Kepner. I saw him before he saw me and was
just about to back out of the aisle to hide in the frozen food section when he
looked up and caught my eye. Realizing there was no escape, I swallowed the
rising panic in my chest and tried not to think about how awful I looked.

I pasted on my biggest smile
and tried to ignore the fact that to top it all off I picked the squeakiest
cart in the whole grocery store. Even if I tried to escape, the cart would have
attracted the attention of everyone.

“We meet again.” I reached
across the aisle and hefted a gallon of liquid laundry detergent into the cart.

“Funny how that keeps
happening.” Dimples shadowed his cheeks as he laughed. He was still dangerously
unshaven, the kind of stubble with the power to make even the most rigid man
seem casual and sexy.

“Yeah,” I leaned on the cart
in front of me. “I mean it’s such a big town. What are the odds?”

“Slim to none?” The full
force of his grin sunk into me, and I had to hold on to the cart to hide the
fact that it made my knees feel a little weak. “It must be fate.”

“Fate,” it was my turn to
laugh. “Good one.”

“How have you been doing,
Janice?”

My lips pursed together
almost involuntarily as I lowered my head in a stiff nod, “I’m hanging in
there.” I avoided his eyes when I added, “Thanks for asking.”

“Well, I wanted to ask after
you at church yesterday, but I had to get my mom home. She wasn’t feeling
well.”

“I hope it’s nothing
serious.” Nothing serious? The woman had multiple sclerosis. That was about as serious
as things got.

“Oh, no,” he shook his head.
“She gets headaches sometimes, has trouble with her vision. I tried to talk her
out of even going yesterday, but asking her to miss church is like asking
Monday not to follow Sunday.”

“My mom was the same way.”
Or at least she was when I was a kid, I thought. “She’d be delirious with fever
and chills as she huddled in her pew, and then she’d always be the last one to
leave.”

He turned a box of
dishwasher tabs over in his hands, as if the movement itself calmed him
somehow. I watched his hands, weathered and callused from years of working
outside, and for a moment I actually found myself thinking about how hands like
that might feel against my skin. A jolt of weakness shot straight to my knees.

“So, uh, how long do you
think you’ll be in town for?”

“Just the week.” I said. “I
really shouldn’t have stayed, but there’s still so much to do. I couldn’t leave
my dad with all of it.”

Troy nodded, “I know how
that is.”

“I’ll probably head back
next Sunday.”

“Nice,” he was still
nodding. “Maybe I’ll see you around again.”

“Maybe.”

“And you know, if you find
you need anything this week,” he started, and I wondered all the way down to my
knees just how he’d go about finishing that sentence. After a long pause he
added, “Anything at all, don’t be afraid to give me a call.”