No Dark Valley (60 page)

At church, too, the thought was repeatedly driven home. All those verses comparing life to a vapor, to the grass that withers, and so on. And all those hymns declaring that traveling days would soon be over, eternity was drawing near, shadows were falling. He thought of the one they had sung last Sunday—“Softly and Tenderly.” He had heard the song years before he had started going to church, but only the first stanza of it. It was in a movie, one that he had bought for his video collection,
The Trip to Bountiful
, which he loved for its fine atmospheric detail and its simple linear plot that could be summed up in one short sentence: “An old woman goes home.” But the movie hadn't included all the words of the hymn, like those in the third stanza. “Time is now fleeting,” it said, “the moments are passing,” and “deathbeds are coming.”

He had felt like a cold hand had touched him when they sang that last one: “Deathbeds are coming.” He remembered noticing the tempo and dynamic markings at the end of the chorus. He knew just enough about music to know what
rit
. and
pp
meant—slower and very soft. Like someone's dying breaths. He thought of his father, with his hearty laugh and good looks, wasting away to a skeleton before all the suffering was done. He thought of his mother, so pretty and full of life before his father's illness, but turning into a shrew and dying before she was seventy. And his grandmother—holding out till she was ninety, dying in her wheelchair right in the middle of a
Matlock
rerun.

Oh sure, heaven sounded like a great place, and he planned to take up residence there someday, but right now he happened to be living on earth, and wasn't it true that God, like the father that he was, wanted Bruce Healey to be happy? So what was with this idea of his that he had to deny himself the pleasures of earth in order to be fit for heaven? You couldn't punish yourself forever for past faults. Well, okay, you
could
, but you shouldn't.

God didn't operate that way. Hundreds of times he had visualized the concept of grace as a mighty river, sparkling clear, gushing through the open door of his heart and carrying away with it all the dirt and debris of his past transgressions. He had opened that door himself, by a ready act of his will, the second time he had gone to church with Virgil Dunlop. So why did the picture keep blurring? Why was he still trying to secure his salvation by withholding from himself good things he felt he didn't deserve?

Not that this particular woman—this strangely sad little person who lived next door to him—was anybody he should ever get mixed up with romantically, but maybe they could at least be friends someday. Maybe God wanted him to help her in some way. Maybe she could meet one of his friends and then she could introduce him to somebody she knew, and the four of them could do stuff together.

Maybe it was time to let that whole thing in Montgomery be swept away by that river of God's grace.
A home and a family
—maybe he should actually dare to set them as goals.

So all that was what was swirling through his mind during the time it took Celia to throw his paper napkin into the trash can, walk a few steps to the couch, and lift the quilt off Madison so Bruce could pick her up.

And then something happened and everything was upside-down again. As quick as the flip of a switch, Bruce found himself holding Madison on the porch stoop outside Celia's front door staring out at the black night and wondering if his mind was playing tricks or if he really had spent several companionable minutes sitting in Celia's living room eating cookies and drinking cider.

Maybe he shouldn't have tried to ease himself out the door with small talk. Maybe he should have left silently with a friendly wave of gratitude. But no, he had started talking again, had thanked her for keeping Madison, had thanked her for the cookies, had even felt compelled to thank her for the cider he hadn't finished. And then he ran out of things to thank her for, but he wasn't quite out the door yet, so he had added lamely, “Speaking of cider, by the way, did you ever see that movie
The Cider House Rules
?”

And suddenly everything had changed. He couldn't remember what her answer to his question had been, if she had even answered. All he knew was that he was now standing outside her door, which had been firmly closed as soon as his heel had cleared the threshold.

He looked down at Madison, still sound asleep on his shoulder, then stood for a moment looking up at the stars through the treetops. Then stepping out into the backyard, he headed for the break in the hedge. At least one thing was still certain, he thought: Women were indeed a mystery. There was no hope of ever figuring them out.

30

All His Jewels, Precious Jewels

It was a Thursday, exactly a week before Thanksgiving, and Bruce was driving Kimberly and Madison to the Purple Calliope, a restaurant in Derby that advertised itself as having a “family atmosphere.” Besides C. C.'s, a barbecue place, and Juno's, which was where all the retirees ate, the only other decent sit-down restaurant in the area was the Field Pea over on Highway 11 in Filbert, unless you drove all the way into Greenville, which Bruce didn't want to do on a school night.

He had told Kimberly that Madison would like the Purple Calliope, which supposedly had an actual purple calliope on display, along with several other unusual musical instruments hanging on the wall. They also provided crayons and paper placemats with pictures on them for children to color. Virgil Dunlop had recommended the place to him, said it was good for kids.

“So how does it feel to reach the big four-o?” Kimberly said. They were in her van, and she reached forward to adjust the temperature. These days she was always complaining about being too hot.

“No different really than the big three-nine last year or the big three-eight the year before that,” Bruce said, not altogether truthfully. The fact was, he had thought about being forty years old all day, had tried to walk with an even sprightlier step at school, and had worked hard at being especially good-natured with his students and the other teachers so as to prove to himself and everybody else that he still possessed all his youthful vigor. But it did seem to him that it had taken a little more effort to act spry and happy today than before.

Kim pulled out an old road map from the glove compartment and started fanning herself with it. “Just wait till you're carrying around thirty extra pounds.”

Not to mention the extra twenty or thirty you were already carrying around, Bruce thought but wisely didn't say. Kimberly could be a knockout if she'd trim down to what she used to be before she got married. She had thick dark hair, which she wore long and loose, and a pair of “fine eyes,” as Darcy described Elizabeth Bennett's eyes in
Pride and Prejudice
, a movie which Bruce actually had in his video collection in spite of the fact that he knew most men would consider it one of the dreaded so-called chick flicks. Their grandmother had always said Kimberly was the spitting image of Mary Ann Mobley, who had won the Miss America Pageant as Miss Mississippi in 1959. In her trimmer days, others had said she favored Vivien Leigh in
Gone With the Wind
.

“Hope this place we're going to has good steaks,” Kimberly said. “What else did your friend say about it?”

“‘Of all the gin joints in the world, I have to pick this one,'” he said. He also had
Casablanca
in his video collection, had watched it so many times he could practically recite the whole thing from memory.

“You're not funny,” Kimberly said. She was used to his quoting lines from his favorite movies. She flipped her visor mirror down and adjusted it so she could see Madison in her car seat behind her. “How's my pumpkin doing back there?” she said. Madison, usually so full of chatter at home, was always quiet in the car, her little eyes wide with wonder as she took in all the sights and sounds along the way.

“Speaking of pumpkins, you really ought to toss that jack-o'-lantern sometime soon, you know,” Bruce said. In spite of its facial imperfections, it had been a big hit with Madison, so much so that it was still sitting in Kimberly's bay window, and every night Madison insisted on lighting the candle inside.

Kimberly laughed. “Maybe before Christmas.” She was in a very good mood tonight, and it was clear that she wasn't having to pretend. Of course, being only thirty years old, it was easy for her to be so perky, Bruce thought.

Though he doubted that his parents had given much thought to the concept of family planning, his mother had had her three children almost exactly ten years apart. It was one of those odd patterns kids accept about their families without thinking. Kimberly's thirtieth birthday had been last month, and Suzanne's fiftieth was coming up in December. Which meant the three of them hadn't exactly been best buddies growing up. They had one photograph of Suzanne in her cap and gown at her college graduation holding Kimberly, who was two, with Bruce standing beside them, a gangly twelve-year-old.

A year later in another photo, one of Suzanne in her wedding dress—her first one, which had barely been dry cleaned and stored in a box before the marriage fell apart—Bruce was all spruced up as a junior groomsman, and Kimberly, the flower girl, was wearing a lacy pink dress and holding a basket of rose petals. Except for the fact that all of them had the same dark hair and eyes, “the same incredible good looks,” as Bruce was fond of saying, no one would guess they were siblings. People did sometimes mistake Suzanne for Kimberly's mother, however, especially when they saw the way she bossed her around.

The birthday meal tonight had been Kimberly's idea, and she also had a present for Bruce afterward, she had told him. The biggest reason she was so cheerful, though, had nothing to do with his birthday or her age. Matt, her husband, was coming home from Germany in five days and would be here through Christmas and for two months after that before he had to go anywhere again. He would be at the table for Thanksgiving dinner, he would help decorate the Christmas tree, and best of all, he would be here when the baby was born in late January.

Though the Purple Calliope wasn't crowded, the hostess seated them right next to a table of five people who were finishing up their dessert. Bruce almost asked to be moved but didn't want to come across as old and crotchety on his fortieth birthday. Besides that, the five people presented a challenge. He sometimes liked to make up stories about the people he saw in restaurants, but this little group wasn't exactly a typical set. He had a feeling he had seen the man somewhere before, but the real challenge was in sorting out the relationships among the five people.

The old woman was easy. She had to be the mother of either the younger woman or the man. He was tempted to go with the man at first because this old woman, like the man, was on the large side, but something about the way the younger woman kept leaning over to her, touching her arm and speaking confidingly, made him change his mind. Daughters were more likely to act that way than daughters-in-law. So the old woman and the younger one must be mother and daughter, he decided, though they surely didn't look it. Adoption—that was the answer. The old woman, unable to bear children because of a rare genetic disease, had taken the girl in as a foster child and then later adopted her. And now she lived with the family in a split-level—had her own bedroom and bath.

And the baby, not quite as old as Madison—she must belong to the younger woman and the man, which would of course make the old woman her grandmother. But the ages weren't exactly right since the baby's mother, if that's who she was, looked to be in her late forties and also older than the man by several years. But Bruce could make this work—okay, the couple had married late and had a baby right off. Both had lost their first spouses in sudden, untimely deaths, then had met at a monthly meeting of PLATA, People Living Alone after Tragic Accidents. This matched with the attentive, courteous way they were treating each other—they couldn't have been married long.

So that left the boy, probably eighteen or nineteen, who, in spite of the fact that he should be slouched down in his chair, looking bored and sulky at having to waste an evening in a restaurant with his family, instead looked all scrubbed and respectful, sporting a collared shirt and a trim haircut no less. But Bruce could fit him in somehow—he was good at this.

“ . . . anything you want,” Kimberly was saying. “You only turn forty once, you know.”

Bruce laughed. “Well, that's true of every age, isn't it?” he said. “I don't remember turning twenty-five but one time.”

“Doggie,” Madison said, pointing to the picture on her place mat.

The boy must be from the woman's earlier marriage, Bruce reasoned, and he was maybe a little socially backward, having grown up without a father during his adolescent years. An avid amateur magician, the kid spent hours mastering new tricks, his current one involving a green parrot, a yellow scarf, and three decks of playing cards. His new stepfather was trying to bond with him, but with the new baby and the mother-in-law, it was slow going.

Bruce turned his attention back to the man—not exactly fat, but definitely stout. The more he looked at him, the more certain he felt that he knew him somehow, had seen him more than once. He must work somewhere that Bruce frequented. It was often hard to place a person out of his normal context.

“I apologize for my brother,” Kimberly said. “He's very shy in front of women he doesn't know. Just bring us both sweet tea. And a glass of milk for her.” She motioned to Madison.

Bruce looked up to see a waitress leaving their table.

“Hey, what's wrong with you?” Kimberly said, waving her menu at him. “You look like you're in a trance. Are you sleepy already?”

Bruce shook his head. “No, not yet. My bedtime's not till nine.” Though he followed up with a laugh, he knew he wasn't exaggerating all that much. It had actually started to worry him a little lately that he was going to bed so early, earlier in fact than Madison most nights. If that wasn't a sign of growing old, he didn't know what was. A few short years ago he was staying up regularly till past midnight, then bounding out of bed ready to go at six the next morning.