The House on Malcolm Street (21 page)

“You don’t make it easy, do you?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Talking. Ditch gets dug faster with two shovels going at it.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Never mind.” He shifted his weight and leaned back again on the banister post. “Aunt Mari thinks I should tell you about Rosemary. You – um – you don’t object to me calling her Aunt Mari do you?”

“Not if she doesn’t.”

“Thanks. Some people would. Petunia’s family sure does.”

“It wouldn’t be my place to say,” I assured him. “Or anyone else’s either. Marigold has every right to claim whomever she wishes to claim.”

He smiled again. “And she likes to claim the needy or alone whenever she can. She calls it her ministry to the world. You’ve benefited by that a bit yourself.”

“Yes,” I acknowledged, my cheeks feeling suddenly warm, though I knew I shouldn’t be embarrassed to admit the obvious.

“She told me she first began doing things for Mr. Abraham when he moved in years ago because he was a widower living alone and she just wanted to show him the love of Jesus. But he started doing things for her right back, and now there’s only one way they could ever be closer. You know what I mean?”

“Yes.”

“She sends me with food to the Kurchers’ every week. Whether or not she’s got plenty here. She gives more than anybody I know through the church’s aid society too. And that’s just the beginning. Tramps passing through know where to stop for a meal, that’s for sure. And I couldn’t tell you how many people she’s put up in the boardinghouse here without getting so much as a nickel.”

“Like me?”

He looked at me sideways. “Couldn’t say yet. Remains to be seen whether you’ll pay her eventually. You might.”

I couldn’t tell if his words were a judgment on my situation or not. “Why did she want us to talk?” I decided to ask him directly.

He took a deep breath. “I was hoping to ease around the corner to it a little,” he said. “But there’s really no use to that. Something that’s hard to say will still be hard to say whether it’s five minutes into the conversation or thirty.”

I couldn’t imagine him having trouble talking about anything. He liked to talk. Very plainly so. But it occurred to me that his skirting the real point for a while was rather like his chatter walking over here the night we got off the train. Maybe covering over the silence between us was more important to him than the words themselves.

But I wanted to find out whatever it was that Marigold thought I should know and then be done with this whole conversation.

“What did you need to tell me?” I prompted, hoping I wasn’t asking for trouble. “Who is Rosemary? The woman in the picture in your room?”

He looked like I’d struck him. “When . . . ? Why were you looking at my things?”

“I didn’t touch anything,” I explained quickly. “I wasn’t really looking. Marigold sent me up to fetch your laundry, remember? And I happened to see it.” His visible angst made me very nervous. “I didn’t mean to offend you in any way,” I added quickly, my stomach feeling like a leaden lump and my cheeks now burning.

“It’s all right,” he said with a sigh that made his tone just a little sour. “I suppose you couldn’t help it, and if I’d remembered to carry my own laundry down, it wouldn’t have happened anyway.”

He looked over at me squarely, and I wished I could avoid his eyes. But it probably wouldn’t be right to hide from them completely.

“No harm done,” he said. “I just didn’t feel comfortable thinking of someone else in my room. I don’t suppose you’d like it if you found out I’d been in yours.”

“No,” I emphatically agreed. “I wouldn’t.”

“Don’t worry. I haven’t been.”

We were both silent for a moment. I heard a sound from the direction of the kitchen and wished Marigold would come in here, or that I’d chosen to walk back there before sitting down.

“That was Rosemary you saw.” He finally answered my question. “A great picture, don’t you think? I wish I had a hundred more.”

“She’s very pretty,” I agreed.

“She was,” he said sadly. “I don’t know if folks are still considered pretty up in heaven, do you?”

The question seemed more like something my daughter would ask than a grown man. “I don’t know why not,” I tried to answer him. “I’m sure in the perfection of that place, no one could possibly look less attractive than they did here on this earth.”

The words were somehow painful to both of us, and I wished I hadn’t said them. But he persisted at the idea. “It just doesn’t seem right though, you know. Like if some people are all that pretty, there must be others that aren’t, even in heaven. And that’s a pretty odd idea.”

I didn’t feel qualified to comment on heaven at all, but I wasn’t sure I could get out of it now that I’d started. So I tried to say what I supposed I should. “The only thing ugly to God is sin. And there isn’t any of that in heaven. So everything and everyone there must be beautiful, I’m sure.”

“Are you really sure?” he asked. It was almost like a dare.

“No,” I said, looking down at the floor again.

“You surprise me,” he said then. “I can tell when someone’s just spouting the right words. But I didn’t expect you to be honest about it.”

As insightful as his observation may have been, it felt like a personal attack. “Who was Rosemary?” I asked him bluntly, hoping once again to get this conversation over with.

“My wife. My love. She was killed in an automobile wreck almost three years ago.”

I hadn’t expected that. Not at all. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. But there’s no need for you to say anything. I know you understand grief. And yours is even more recent.”

I nodded, realizing that I’d misunderstood at least some of what Aunt Marigold had told me earlier. It wasn’t John that the grief of yesterday’s funeral had Josiah thinking about. Rosemary was the one he mourned, vehemently. Still.

“Marigold wanted me to tell you about my loss because she thinks we should be friends. She thinks we can help each other.”

Somehow the words frightened me, and I did not react well. “I – I don’t think . . .”

He rose to his feet. “That’s fine. Her ideas don’t obligate you any.”

“I – I only meant that I don’t think I’d be very good at helping anyone.”

“My thoughts exactly. About myself, I mean.” He smiled, much to my surprise. “If we cordially agree to not be friends and to not even try at the helping part, she can’t argue with that, can she?”

I didn’t know what to say. Did he feel as inadequate as I did? Or was he simply telling me he wanted nothing more to do with me now that he’d fulfilled Marigold’s request? “I don’t know what she’d think.”

“I know what you mean,” he said immediately. “She doesn’t always see that other people just aren’t like her. I’m not. I’ve got nothing – ”

He suddenly stopped, as if the words caught in his throat. He stared at the wall beyond me for a moment, collecting his thoughts. “There’s no reason to think that just because we’ve both lost a spouse and child that we could help each other make peace with it all.”

“And child?” I asked, my curiosity now prompting me past the pain I could see in him.

“She was with child,” he explained. “Less than a month from her due date.”

My eyes filled with tears, and I could see that his did too. Despite the length of time it had been, the wound was still raw in his heart. Would I be that way in two more years? Or even worse? It was hurt I could see in him, but only hurt. Not the bitterness and anger all too often alive in me.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I told him softly.

“I’m sorry for yours,” he echoed. “John should have lived to be an old man. And any son of his should be sliding down drainpipes and playing Catch the Can with the best of them.”

He turned his eyes to the wall again, and I knew it was in an effort to keep me from seeing all that was in them. I was glad, because he wouldn’t be able to see what surely would show itself in me.

“Do you ever get angry at God about it?” I ventured without thinking. Maybe I was hoping he’d say that he did, just so I wouldn’t feel that I alone entertained such faithlessness.

“At God?” He turned his back on me. “You think I’m gonna blame him for the utter stupidity in this world? For my own evil choices or that of the next guy?” He seemed to choke up. He brought his hands to his face, though his back was still to me. I couldn’t respond. I was afraid, though I wasn’t sure why, to make a sound.

It took him a while to speak again.

“I don’t know how you look at what happened to John. It’d be pretty tough to reconcile a God of order with such a senseless accident. I understand that. But I can’t question him when it comes to Rosemary. I could never think it was his fault. I’m the one who took that drink. Even though she asked me not to. I’m the one who thought I was such a man that there was no way a little liquor could ever affect my reflexes. We hit a truck, and she was thrown to the ditch. Broke her neck on impact.”

He turned around. “There you have it. Josiah Walsh killed his own family. The truth’s out about Mari’s other charity case. Most of it, anyway. I went half loony for a while. Did a lot of damage getting drunk and trying to forget what I’d done. Marigold took me straight from the jailhouse to board, and there were a lot of people who thought she was making a big mistake. So you see, I’m not really good friend material for you anyway.”

Speechless, I just watched him run his hand through his hair and turn his eyes toward the hall leading to the kitchen.

“So do we have an agreement?” he asked.

“What?”

“An agreement. We’ve talked. I already knew about your family. Now you know about mine. Nothing more to be said. No use being friends or pushing the subject with each other any further. You can’t help me anyway. And there’s no way I can help you or anybody else. I’m not called the way Mari is, despite what she wants to think. I just can’t. And there’s no sense in pushing you.”

I knew he wanted me to voice my immediate agreement. And though I had no plans to bring up this subject again, or attempt to engage him in conversation about anything, I couldn’t do what he asked. I’m not sure why not.

“Well?” he prompted. “Do we have an agreement?”

I took a deep breath, trembling inside. Marigold had been afraid for him today. I understood now that she was afraid he might go to drink again, that there might be something unpredictable, possibly even destructive, in him still. “Please forgive me,” I answered, feeling suddenly tiny and vulnerable. “But I don’t think I can agree with you.”

He shook his head. “You’re not asking to be my friend. And you know it’s ridiculous that either of us could help the other. So why not agree with me? Do you just have to be contrary?”

“It – it’s not that.”

“Then what?”

I almost couldn’t speak. I really didn’t think I was in danger from him, but I could scarcely form the words anyway. What was I saying really, and why was it so important to me when it would be so much easier just to tell this man what he wanted to hear?

“M-maybe it’s because I appreciate Marigold and what she tries to do for us,” I stammered. “Maybe it’s wrong for us to decide even the smallest piece of our own future like this, to close a door that might otherwise be open just a little. How do we know that something we do or say might not be some small help to one another, without us even realizing it?”

He didn’t answer me. He just turned his back again. I thought he would go upstairs, but instead he crossed the entry hall and without a word went out the front door and closed it behind him.

16
Leah

“Oh, Aunt Marigold, I’m afraid I upset him. I don’t know where he might have gone and I feel terrible.”

She sat in her robe and slippers at the kitchen table, rubbing warmed camphor oil into her knees. “Put on the tea water, dear. We may as well have a cup. Hopefully he’ll be back in a moment to join us.”

I knew he wouldn’t. Or at least he wouldn’t be joining
me
for a cup of tea any time soon. “I don’t know how to be his friend,” I confided in her as I rose to fill the pot and put it on to heat. “Especially since he has no desire for me to be that. But it just seemed wrong to pledge not to become a friend to anyone.”

“Of course it’s wrong,” she agreed. “It would be like telling someone you’re not ever going to extend the love of God to them, regardless of what the Lord might choose to do with your heart.”

“I didn’t expect anything like this.”

“Of course not.” She wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “But I’m afraid it’s more my fault than it is his.”

“Why?”

“I shouldn’t have been pushing him past where he’s comfortable. But I did. I tried to get him to see that he’s more than he thinks he is and the Lord will use him to comfort hearts and accomplish great things if he’ll let him.”

I could understand why all that would make anyone uncomfortable. “But you mean well,” I told her.

“Still, if he can’t turn off
my
expectations, I suppose the next best thing would be to get you to close the door.”

“What does he have against me that it would be so important?”

“Oh, dear, nothing. It’s not you he’s trying to shut out but the very idea that he could minister so directly to anyone else’s hurts. It’s all my fault, like I said. Because he thinks he has to live up to something he’s not ready for. Join me praying for him. I don’t think he’ll succumb to the temptation of drink again. I know his experience with Christ was real and he truly was set free. But he needs strength.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant by “his experience with Christ.” And I probably should have been honest enough to admit to her that I wasn’t comfortable praying, but I was too ashamed. So she prayed, and I bowed my head and nodded agreement as though I was as spiritual as she. Why had it been easier to admit my doubts to Josiah than to this trusting soul? Why was I so intimidated?

I’m not sure where Josiah went, nor how late it might be before he got back. Marigold and I had our tea and talked a while longer, then I went up to bed, mulling over his plight.

I could think of only one thing worse than losing a loved one, and that would be carrying the guilt of the death being your fault. No wonder he was still struggling with it. For a moment I wished I were so solid in faith that I could pray for him with real hope of benefit. That was what Marigold wanted and expected from me. Apparently she wanted it from both of us for the other.