Homefires (33 page)

“Just a minute.” From my closet I grabbed the cloak-sweater, a seventies mainstay, threw it over my flared jeans and gossamery hip length blouse and hastily finger brushed my shag-do as I joined him at the door. On the drive, I absent-mindedly glossed my lips from one of Heather’s cast-off tubes.

Our first stop was to see Tillie Dawson and her four-dayold daughter, Raquel, an adorable little replica of her mom, from her pixie thatch of ebony down to her tiny pink toes. Tillie already moved agilely about, reminding me of a Disney flea with big amber eyes framed by sooty lashes thick enough to dust furniture with.

“Do you miss the office?” I asked Tillie as I nuzzled Raquel’s sweet jowls and delicious talcum-powdered neck.

“No.” Tillie burst into irrepressible, non-apologetic giggles. “Sorry, Pastor,” she slapped petite fingers over her lips in mock horror, then slid them up to peek through them. “I cannot tell a lie.”

Kirk rumbled with laughter. “That’s okay, Tillie. I’m
tough.”

“Enjoy your baby,” I said, shifting Raquel to my shoulder and caressing her swaddled, old woman’s back. “They’re not this little very long before – ”

“They change,” Kirk finished my sentence, I think because he saw the sadness returning to my eyes and I sense, was afraid of where the conversation was going.

“I know,” Tillie bunny-wiggled her nose, “like
Toby
.” She adored our son, doted on him, in fact, and so, her remark was truly funny for its honesty.

From a flea-market, elephant-shaped bowl, Tillie fed us home-baked chocolate chip cookies, “compliments of Mama,”
she confessed, eyes rounded tragically, “definitely not
my
creation
.
Sorry, I don’t have coffee made, Pastor.” Seeing Kirk’s relief, she burst into her brand of laughter, sorta like a donkey’s jerky bray. Tillie’s reputation as a cook was as tarnished as any I’d ever witnessed, as was her taste for funky clothing and off-the-beaten-path home decor. All of which, quote Tillie,
proved
hubby Rick’s love for her was gen-u-ine. What Kirk missed in the office was her upbeat humor that refused to let anything heavy set down where she happened to be. Yet, he admitted, Callie possessed some of those same qualities.

Our next stop was Ralph and Sarah Beauregard’s ranch-brick home. Sarah was, as her husband Ralph was prone to admit, a mite
peculiar
at times. Subject to moods and temper. So I made it a practice to walk softly around her and keep practiced up on my pastor’s wife smile.

Fact was, everybody walked on egg shells around Sarah.

Today, Sarah’s mood was conciliatory, even warm, no doubt because of our recent loss.

I gazed forlornly at Kirk’s back as he ambled on ahead to the den to speak to Ralph, who watched The Price Is Right almost as faithfully as he attended Solomon Methodist services, while Sarah hugged me and expressed condolences again.

“Wait here just a minute,” her brown mules swished together as she disappeared into the kitchen, leaving me standing in her living room that boasted of Victorian influence with its wingback sofa and matching chairs and whose air smelled faintly of mothballs. When she returned, her small ebony eyes glimmered with ebullience below beauty parlor blackened and frizzed hair. Her small, slightly hooked nose, set above thin, hard-set lips, lent her a mildly sinister look.

Today, however, the ruby-red mouth smiled as she approached, gripping two glass Mason canning jars in her hands. And my heavy heart lifted a mite as she stopped, almost touching me, gazing up from her short stature – even beside my fivethree – to whisper, “these are crowder peas.”

“Oh,” I smiled and spontaneously reached for them, “How sweet – ”

“No.” I felt the cold glass abruptly withdraw from my fingertips. Her brows drew together as she stage-whispered, “these are for
him.
”

My face refused to accommodate my pastor’s wife smile, so I simply nodded and awkwardly clasped my hands together while my heart plunged to its former lackluster status.
No problem
, I thought, knowing Sarah’s propensity for obtuseness. I trailed her as she entered the den and ceremoniously presented the pastor with her gift while Ralph hugged me hugely and complimented me on my ‘sweetness,’ and I marveled at the
opposites-attract
chemistry as he plied me with concerned queries as to the Crenshaw’s well-being during that difficult time.

All the while, Sarah tittered and fawned over Kirk’s effusive delight at receiving his “favorite” country food.

I had the last silent laugh, however, at her territorial presentation, knowing that therein lay her reward: the pastor’s recognition. From that moment on, the peas were mine to do with as I doggoned well pleased. I’d long ago decided to regard insensitive parishioners like Sarah as weaker vessels and love them anyway.

I vowed anew to do just that. Even if it killed me.

The next morning, I returned to school and sat through the nine o’clock Government Class in a stupor, its normalcy augmenting the emotional distance between me and students who flanked me on all sides, breathing the same air, laughing and joking about last week’s test and Friday’s rock concert, reminding me their worlds remained intact while mine was irrevocably altered. My limbs didn’t seem to belong to my body, whose lungs refused to pump out completely my shallow intake of air.

Everything was the same except me. The last five minutes seemed forever as I choked back dark pathos. The bell rang and I sloughed like a druggie toward my next class.

Suddenly, mid-stride, without warning, grief, like an angry volcano, roiled and surged upward,
upward
. I ducked blindly into the empty ladies’ room, slammed my books on a bookshelf, where I planted my elbows and cradled my head, then erupted into convulsive weeping. It rode out on a crashing tidal wave, violent and unrestrained.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” a lady, who appeared from nowhere, asked.

I lifted my head, tears dripping from my cheeks and gazed into her kind eyes, feeling as stripped and emotionally naked as I’d ever felt in my entire life. Sorrow so completely consumed me in that moment, it smothered embarrassment or fear of rejection.

“I’m grieving,” I croaked. “I lost my little girl two weeks ago in an accident. The one on the trestle – in Solomon.” Recognition flashed across her stricken features and she simply wrapped her arms around me and wept with me. She could have been an older student or a staff member. I’d never seen her before nor have I since, but I shall never forget her compassion and I am convinced she was divinely placed that morning.

Again, I experienced that dual-plane existence, one of hellish torment, the other of holy favor. Somewhere in all the fog, I acknowledged anew that
love
– from everybody sent the Crenshaw’s way – kept us going.

I immediately made the decision to drop those college courses requiring memory and recall, such as mathematics, my old nemesis. So I spoke individually with my professors, who each in turn, waved away my apologies for copious tears and proceeded to mourn with me. No advice. No profound words of wisdom. Drying their eyes, each urged me to take as long as I needed to recover and assured me they would work to get me through the remainder of the semester.

As I left the campus and drove home,
aloneness
embraced me like downy swaddling.

Now, I knew the
why
.

It was a haven from the outside, where people untouched by tragedy reminded me I was no longer one of them.

Daily letters arrived from Dad, nurturing me with colorful anecdotes of my carefree childhood and teen years and offered me moments of respite from
now.
They acquainted me with a mellower father, a product, I quickly gleaned, of our mutual tragedy. Through the years, his heart keened more and more toward hearth and Anne and when, without fail, Anne’s little yellow VW pulled into our parsonage drive each Friday night, I knew the extent of Dad’s generosity in loosening her to sail like a porpoise to my side.

Sometimes, Dale came with Anne and my little sister Lynette; sometimes, he stayed home to assuage Dad’s loneliness. Cole, now dating, opted to stay home. My youngest brother, already turned twelve, spent much time at Krissie’s graveside.

“He’s having a hard time coming to grips, Neecy,” Anne told me on her third weekend journey to Solomon. “He cries a lot and can’t understand why it happened. You know they spent a lot of time together, listening to music and talking about sweethearts and sharing secrets – ”

“They were best friends.” I stared dully at Spanish moss dancing in the gentle February breeze, apathy still mercifully shielding me for long moments at a time. It ceased in a heartbeat and my eyes pooled with tears. “My greatest heartbreak, Anne, is that I’ll never see the
woman,
Krissie.” I gazed at her blurred features. “You know how she loved babies. She’ll never experience holding her very own baby – or romance, for that matter. Oh
God – there’s so much she won’t experience.
”

Anne moved to my side and put her arms around me, rubbing my back gently. We’d walked out to the graveside, hand in hand, and I knew it was okay to grieve. Anne was so
there
for me and I knew beyond doubt that her grief was as profound as her wisdom and sensitivity. Where Dad conveyed compassion through pen and paper from a distance, Anne showed up weekly on my doorstep, sleeves rolled up for a full weekend of hands-on care.

So apathy-steeped was I at first, I only vaguely noted her arrival, but as weeks passed, then months and her trek persisted, I found myself standing at the door, awaiting her appearance. It was always my call. If I wanted to talk, Anne listened. If I wanted to be silent, she walked or drove me places in contemplative quietness. She continually touched me, physically, holding my hand, hugging me, linking arms as we walked, rubbing my arm or back gently, knowing instinctively the healing in that contact. My stepmother never studied a course in psychology but she was and remains the most intuitive, kind-hearted woman I know.

Today, I needed to rail against the injustice of Krissie’s death and she murmured soothing assent and nodded understanding, tears riveting her fair cheeks and turning her periwinkle-blue eyes puffy and red.

“Oh Anne,” I sat down on the blanket spread beneath the tree, “I miss her
so.”

“I do, too, Neecy. It still doesn’t seem real.”

Perhaps the greatest of Anne’s gifts was that, through the years, she never stopped referring to Krissie as a part of now, providing the continuity denied by so many others. Without words, she
saw
inside me. She loved me still. Unconditionally.

Her long weekly pilgrimage to my door would continue for several months.

“Janeece!” came a chorus of shouts as the college choral group flocked to hug and welcome me on my first day back. Their love enveloped me like great, soft wings, and their “
We need you, Janeece. We’re so glad you’re back!”
said in at least a dozen different ways penetrated my world of foggy passiveness. On one level, I knew they could go on without me, yet, their avowals were not to patronize but to
give
of themselves to me. On another level, I realized somehow, corporately, they knew the magic, life-giving word was
need.
And in that moment in time, they wanted more than anything to help shoulder my grief
.
It was a phenomenon repeated over and over on that long, long climb from the valley.