Suncatchers (36 page)

Cal had guffawed afterward, then quickly sobered. “I can laugh about it now, but it sure wasn't funny back then. I was so mad that—”

“That you vowed not to make the same terrible mistakes your parents made in bringing their kids up,” Perry had interrupted. He regretted his words instantly. How could he have been so thoughtless? Cal's children were the great disappointment of his life. Perry felt mean. He had stabbed his friend—with the truth, to be sure, but a stabbing nevertheless. It had always annoyed him, though, that Cal griped incessantly about his upbringing yet had failed so abysmally to improve upon it with his own family. One of his sons had been arrested numerous times for drug possession, the other one was presently in a rehab program for teens with suicidal tendencies, and more recently his seventeen-year-old daughter had left home with the bass guitarist of a rock group called Fields of Dung.

Perry read the opening sentence of the new chapter once more, then shoved back his chair and reached for a folder. He hadn't told anyone about his new filing system, but it had worked beautifully. On the double bed in Beth's guest room were spread out all his manila folders, fanned out in groups of eight or so, like oversized playing cards. Beth would have a fit if she saw how he had taken over this room. He had been delighted when she had called in August and said she wasn't coming home as she had originally planned but was spending her summer break instead with a friend at Cape Cod, a woman who, according to Beth, was writing test bank questions for graduate courses in statistical analysis.

He selected the folder labeled
SEPARATION
and began riffling through his handwritten pages. What he needed was in here somewhere.

Now that his book was progressing and he was actually writing drafts of chapters, Perry had begun reading what others had written about fundamentalists. In the early stages of a study, he liked to observe and record without the clutter of other people's research in his mind, but once the project was taking a clear form, he found it valuable to compare his findings with those of others. When the term
legalism
kept appearing, he had concluded that it wasn't just a pet word of Cal's and had confronted Brother Hawthorne with the issue in one of their private talks.

There it was. Perry removed from the folder a sheet of ruled paper and read through it front to back. On it he had written categories, then had left space after each one to record Brother Hawthorne's responses:
MOVIES? SLACKS? DANCING? DRINKING? MUSIC? HAIR LENGTH? DATING? HOMOSEXUALITY?
Looking over the sheet now, he was surprised at how little he had written down. He would have to check the cassette tape to see if he'd omitted anything significant.

He had just typed the first three words of the next sentence when the telephone rang.

“Perry, I need your help.” It was Jewel.

“Sure. Where are you?” He realized that in all the months he had lived here, he had never heard Jewel's voice over the telephone. It sounded soft and charmingly southern, like Melanie Wilkes's voice in
Gone with the Wind
.

“I'm at school,” she said. “I've got five minutes before the last class of third graders comes in, and I just now realized I forgot my recorder and left it at home along with the lesson I'd planned out for today. I don't need it for another half hour or so, but that's what I'd counted on doing with my fourth graders this afternoon, and—”

“You want me to bring it to you?” Perry said. “It won't be any problem. Where is it?”

“Well, first, you'll need the key. Mama's not home, you know. It's her day to work at the G.O.O.D. Store. I dropped her off on my way to school. But there's a spare key to the house hanging on a little string inside the storage shed right by where the badminton racquets are. You know how to—”

“Yep, I know how to get into the shed, and I think I can get past the monster in the backyard. Where's the stuff you need in the house?”

“Well . . .” Jewel gave a frustrated laugh, “that's the problem. I
know
I left it at home, but I'm not sure exactly where. I was sitting at the piano practicing the recorder last night after church, remember?”

“Right.” Perry remembered clearly. He had watched the two of them closely, Jewel swaying slightly as she played and Willard sitting beside her flipping through the pages of the hymnbook for songs in the key of C. He remembered staring at the slender legs of the piano bench, worrying every time Willard shifted his weight forward to point to a new hymn.

“Well, I
think
I set the recorder down on the piano when we stopped, but I might have carried it back to the bedroom later and set it on the dresser. I just can't remember. We ate right after that, you know, and then I didn't play it anymore.”

Perry tried to recall if he had seen where she laid the recorder, but then he remembered that the smoke alarm had interrupted the concert, followed by Eldeen hooting from the kitchen, “Why, just looka here what I've gone and done!” And they'd all rushed into the kitchen to find her convulsed in laughter at having burned one of the grilled cheese sandwiches to a blackened crisp. Jewel had taken over and finished up, with everybody else pitching in, and then after they had eaten, they had sat around talking for about half an hour before they'd played a game of dominoes, which Willard had brought over. Perry didn't remember noticing the recorder on the piano when he left around nine forty-five.

“Well, I'll look around,” he said. “It can't be too hard to find.”

“And the lesson plan—I really need that, too,” Jewel said apologetically. “It was one I'd written out on Saturday. I think I set it on the desk in the hallway, but it might be on the nightstand in my bedroom, too, or maybe on my dresser. It's on a sheet of typing paper. I was looking at it again before bed last night.”

“I'll find it,” Perry said. “Don't worry. Is that all?”

“Yes. I'm so sorry, Perry. I don't usually do things like this, but lately . . . well, it must be from getting older.” She laughed weakly.

“It must be from getting besieged by Willard the Conqueror, you mean,” Perry wanted to say, for recently Willard had made his intentions quite clear with a flurry of public gallantries. Jewel seemed dazed by it all.

“I'll be there soon,” Perry said. “It's no problem, really, so don't feel bad. I needed to go out anyway.”

“I could've run home at lunchtime if I'd realized it,” she added. “But I never thought of it until a minute ago.” She had such a pretty voice—so fluid and light, like a pleasant tune. Perry almost wished he could keep her on the phone. “Thank you, Perry,” she said. “This is sure sweet of you.”

“Forget it,” Perry said. He could hear children laughing in the background as she hung up, and someone called out, “Hey, Miz Blanchard!”

Hormel rushed forward, yipping madly as Perry unlatched the gate to Jewel's backyard. Perry stooped and offered the dachshund an Oreo, the only thing he could find as a quick substitute for a dog biscuit. Hormel sniffed it suspiciously, then dispatched it in one gulp and wagged his tail at Perry. Perry smiled down at him. Of all Willard's gifts to Jewel, this was his personal favorite, although the sewing cabinet Willard had made out of a section of tiny drawers from the library's old card catalog was nice, too.

“Sorry, no time to play, hot dog,” Perry said to Hormel now, striding past him to the shed. He had no trouble finding the key and letting himself into the house.

He went in through the side door, and as he stepped into the kitchen he could still smell last night's burnt sandwich. He glanced at the table and at the bookcase by the telephone. No sign of the lesson plan or the recorder there. On the little chalkboard beside the refrigerator was written in Eldeen's uneven printing
CALL FERN TUES.! BIRTHDAY!
along with what must be a grocery list.
TUNA, RAISINS, DOG FOOD, TOILET PAPER, CORNSTARCH
. The box of dominoes was on the kitchen counter. Willard must have left them last night.

Perry went into the living room but saw nothing on the piano except the sheet music for a tuba solo Joe Leonard was working on. On the end of the couch where Eldeen always sat, next to the old radio, he noticed a new pillowcase in progress, stretched into an embroidery hoop. Half a lamb was already outlined in lavender. Beside it lay Eldeen's large Bible open to the book of John. At the large front window the suncatchers shone warmly, like mellow gems, in the early afternoon light of autumn.

He walked into the hallway and searched the top of the little metal desk crowded against the wall. There lay a stack of assorted magazines—
Modern Maturity
,
Reader's Digest
,
U.S. News and World Report
—along with a vitamin catalog, a telephone bill, an old issue of
Grit
, and a bank statement for a savings account in the name of Jewel R. Blanchard. Even while he was staring at the amount under “Current Balance,” Perry's mind was saying, “Don't look. This is none of your business.” But he had already seen it, and as he stepped from the hallway into Jewel's bedroom, he was wondering if $2,018.38 was the total sum of her lifetime savings or if maybe she had several accounts in other banks.

He had never been in any of the bedrooms, and he felt like an intruder as he stood at the doorway at the end of the hall and looked at Jewel's bed with its nubby white bedspread and high curved headboard. The furniture struck him as 1950s, maybe earlier. All of it was blond wood—big and chunky, with rounded corners and recessed drawer pulls. He saw some papers on top of the chest, but they turned out to be handwritten scripts for Peewee Powwow puppet shows. Jewel's bedroom slippers lay on a small dark-green rug beside the bed, and for some reason Perry's heart ached when he saw them. They were light blue terry-cloth slippers, the washable kind with elastic around the top and little pink rosettes. Lying there, they were curled up at the ends, the elastic puckered tightly. They looked like little empty pouches. He thought of Jewel lying here alone every night and rising every morning to get dressed and leave for school, and he felt strangely sad. He tried to imagine Willard in here, but the room seemed too small.

He turned his eyes away from the long pink nightgown hanging on a hook inside the open closet door. He even pushed the door closed a little. He found the recorder easily. It was on the dresser beside a black padded jewelry box, the top of which was open. Most of the jewelry was inexpensive—bright strings of colored beads, imitation pearl earrings, an old Timex watch, a bracelet of coppery links. Perry wondered where she kept the cameo pin Willard had given her. Maybe she was wearing it again today.

He picked up the recorder. The sheets of paper on the corner of the dresser didn't include the lesson plan. They appeared to be another piece of music Willard had arranged for the choir, this one titled “Manger Star.” He had told the choir yesterday that he had some ideas in mind for the Christmas program and they would start rehearsing soon. Perry wondered if Jewel had been singing the melody to “Manger Star” as she brushed her dark hair in front of the mirror before bed.

He turned to scan the rest of the room. Seeing a paper on the nightstand, he quickly stepped around to the other side of the bed to see if it was the lesson plan. He read just enough to see that it was: “Show students recorder—point out 8 finger holes. Play ‘Hot Cross Buns' to demonstrate sound. Play scale. Give brief history—use chart. Distribute student recorders. Introduce G.”

At the doorway he paused a moment and looked back into the room, taking in the whole scene—the thin curtains, mint green and ruffled, the kind you usually saw in kitchens or bathrooms, not bedrooms; the old picture above the bed of Jesus sitting on a hillside with the blue rooftops of Jerusalem spread out behind him in the twilight; Jewel's worn Bible lying on a white doily beside the electric clock; a snapshot of Joe Leonard in a tarnished frame on the dresser; the oscillating fan perched on a corner of the chest, aimed toward the bed; and, again, the small blue slippers beside the bed. The bed was situated close to the window. Perry wondered if Jewel ever lay awake at night, with the venetian blinds open and the curtains pulled back, gazing out at the stars, dreaming. What would a woman like Jewel dream about?

He glanced into the other two bedrooms as he passed through the hall. He thought the one with the poster of Tom Glavine on the wall was Joe Leonard's at first until he passed the other room and saw the music stand, the tennis trophy, and Joe Leonard's penny loafers beside the bed. The night-light was still on in the dark little bathroom, casting a rosy glow against the walls.

He was at Derby Elementary School exactly twenty-two minutes after Jewel had called. He remembered where the music room was from the spring program he had attended in May, and he walked toward it briskly, his sneakers making rubbery squeaks against the polished floor. Around the corner he encountered a group of older children, probably fifth graders, spilling out of a classroom and arranging themselves against the wall into a line of sorts. One boy, his hair sticking straight up in stiff spikes, grabbed the back of a girl's shirt and yanked. A loud snap followed, and the girl—a pretty brunette, the kind who would grow up to be a popular Mary Tyler Moore type—though she tried to act grossly offended, looked secretly pleased while the other children laughed and pointed. A short, dumpy teacher emerged from the classroom, and the laughter subsided a little as the line straggled off toward the rest rooms.

Perry stood outside the door of Jewel's music room and watched her through the small pane of glass. The third graders were singing “Oh, Where Have You Been, Billy Boy?” But these were stanzas Perry had never heard.

Can she pick a bale of cotton, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?