Wishes (23 page)

“Very much.” ’Ring, unlike Charles, didn’t seem in the least bothered by the noise of eleven children and fourteen adults. In one corner of the room Pamela Taggert was loudly playing the piano while Jace and his mother were practicing a Christmas duet for church that evening. “You’re flat on that note, son,” ’Ring said over the heads of four dirty-faced children.

How in the world he could hear anything Charles didn’t know. An hour ago Charles’s lovely wife had excused herself and gone upstairs to lie down. Charles wished he could join her.

“Should those children be eating that?” Charles asked.

’Ring looked at the three toddlers in the corner, two of them Kane Taggert’s kids, one of them the pig farmer’s. “A little dirt never hurt any kid as far as I can tell, but Hank,” he said to his twelve-year-old nephew, “see what those kids are eating.”

Hank grimaced at having to leave the side of his cousins, eighteen-year-old Zachary and the nearly-adult twenty-one-year-old Ian Taggert. Hank was at the age where he wasn’t quite adult and wasn’t quite a child. Dutifully, Hank took three bugs from the hands of the toddlers, and all three kids started wailing.

“Take them outside,” ’Ring said, making Hank groan.

“What are you two laughin’ at?” Kane said to his son Zachary and his cousin, Ian. “Get outside and take care of them kids.”

The boys stopped laughing at Hank, and each picked up a child and went outside.

“Now what were you saying?” ’Ring asked Charles.

“The house should be ready in a few months, but—” He broke off at a loud guffaw of laughter from Kane and Rafe Taggert and John Tyler, who were standing together by the foot of the stairs.

“Johnny, honey,” Terel said from a corner of the room where she sat lounging on an easy chair, “I believe I’m thirsty. Do fetch me a glass of lemonade.”

Charles watched as John Tyler and three of his dirty kids tripped over themselves to go to the kitchen to get Terel whatever she wanted. Terel’s marrying a penniless pig farmer had bewildered Charles until he saw them together. The poor, illiterate Tyler family felt honored and privileged to have Terel in their family and treated her as though she were royalty. She lounged about, eating what they cooked for her, wearing what their work paid for, and now and then bestowing a radiant smile upon one of them. It seemed to be enough to satisfy all of them. John and the kids didn’t seem to mind that they wore torn, worn-out clothing while Terel dressed exclusively in silk. Charles had seen Terel reward a child by letting him touch her skirt. It didn’t make sense to him, but the Tyler family seemed to be quite happy.

Charles gave ’Ring a bit of a smile as if to indicate that further talk was impossible.

“How’s that?” Jace called to his father when he’d finished another song.

“Still a little flat on the fourth bar, but better,” ’Ring said. He looked at his wife, his eyes, as always, full of love. “You, my dear, were perfection.”

Maddie blew him a kiss, then put her music down on the piano. “I believe my grandchild is crying,” she said to her tall, handsome son, nodding to the crib that held two babies, each only a few months old.

“That one’s mine,” Kane said, and he scooped up a baby and expertly nestled it on his shoulder.

“I think the one you took is mine,” Jace said as he picked up the other child, who had also started yelling.

Kane pulled the child from his shoulder and looked down the front of its diaper. His third child was a girl, and this one was a boy. He and Jace exchanged kids.

Maddie laughed, told Pam thanks for playing the piano, and went into the kitchen. Nellie, Houston, and a young girl, Tildy, were up to their elbows in flour and turkey dressing.

“Want to help?” Houston asked, smiling at her husband’s cousin’s wife.

“Absolutely not,” Maddie said, giving a delicate shudder. Maddie had cultivated the image of prima donna for so long that one could almost believe that she’d never seen the inside of a kitchen.

Nellie, looking radiant and as happy as she was, said, “Then you must sing for your supper.”

Maddie laughed. It hadn’t taken her but minutes to fall in love with her daughter-in-law. “All right. What shall it be? ‘Silent Night’? Or something less seasonal?” She took a cookie from a basket and ate it.

Nellie and Houston looked at each other with liquid eyes. A woman with one of the greatest voices of all time was offering to sing just for them, anything they wanted.

Houston took a deep breath.
“Lakmé’s
Bell Song,’ ” she whispered, knowing that Delibes’s beautiful aria would best show off Maddie’s exquisite voice.

Maddie smiled at Houston, then softly said, “Jocelyn, I need you.”

Jace put his head into the kitchen, his eyebrows lifted in question to his mother.

“Houston and your wife would like to hear the ‘Bell Song.’ ”

Jace smiled. “Good choice.” He looked at his mother. “Where is it?”

“In my bag.”

Jace handed his son to his father and within minutes returned with a flute. Nellie watched in wonder as she saw this new aspect of her husband, saw a man who had been surrounded all his life by music. Jace put the flute to his lips and began to play, just enough to accompany his mother’s voice.

The “Bell Song,” meant to show off the range and variety of a coloratura’s voice, began slowly—no words, just a voice, but a voice of such heavenly sweetness that it made one gape in wonder. Maddie’s voice played with the notes, trilled them, caressed them as she sang the song, imitating the bells, echoing Jace’s high flute notes.

Nellie and Houston stopped working, and the girl Tildy, who had never heard such a voice in her life, stood transfixed.

In the other room everyone grew silent, and even the babies stopped crying as Maddie played with each note, holding it, loving it, until her listeners had tears of joy in their eyes.

When she finished there wasn’t a sound in the house until one of the pig-dirty Tyler kids, gaping at the back door, said, “Damnation, ain’t never heard nothin’ like that afore.”

With that, everyone broke into laughter, and all the adults, kids over shoulders, tucked under arms, held by the hand, crowded into the kitchen.

“Exquisite,” ’Ring said, pulling his wife into his arms. “I’ve never heard you sing better.”

“It’s the influence of the love in this house,” she whispered against his lips.

They all stood around the table that was heaped with food, each husband holding his wife.

“Is that what’s making me so happy?” Jace asked Nellie, pulling her close with one arm, his baby son in the other. “All the love in this house?”

“Yes,” Nellie said, tears in her eyes. “I never thought I’d know this much love or be this happy. I didn’t know this much happiness existed.”

Jace kissed her.

“Here!” Kane said loudly. “If we’re all so happy, how come everybody’s cryin’? Maddie, you know any
real
songs? How about ‘Half a Penny, Half a Bushel’? Or ’Ring Tailed Ringating’?”

“Kane,” Houston said firmly, “I doubt very much if someone of Maddie’s caliber knows—” She broke off as Maddie burst into a rousing song worthy of any saloon singer and, laughing, everyone began to sing with her.

“She ain’t a bad singer after all,” Kane said to his wife.

Nellie, singing along, looked at her husband holding their child, then at the other people around her. It was still disconcerting to see her immaculately groomed sister snuggled up to her perpetually dirty husband, but Terel seemed to adore him, and the children as well. Nellie looked at her father, his arm around his plump wife who had just joined everyone. Her ears sparkled with the diamond earrings he’d given her for Christmas, and Nellie knew that her dress bill for this month alone made Terel’s former expenses seem nonexistent. But again, she’d never seen her father so happy.

Nellie squeezed Jace’s hand and moved closer to his side. “I am the happiest person on earth,” she said softly, and he kissed her again.

Berni sniffed, then gave Pauline an embarrassed look. “I’m very happy for her. She deserves to have some good things happen to her.”

“You made everyone happy,” Pauline said, standing and leaving the room.

“I guess I did,” Berni said proudly as she followed her. “Although I meant for Terel to learn a little humility.”

“You didn’t really think she’d wash and iron, did you? Would
you
have?”

“Not on your life!”

They looked at each other and laughed.

“Okay,” Berni said, “so now I go to Heaven, right?”

“Not quite.”

“But I thought—”

“You really haven’t paid your dues yet.”

“Dues for what?”

“You haven’t paid your dues for living a completely selfish life on earth.”

“I helped Nellie.”

“Yes, you did. That was stage one, and you passed very, very well, but still you need to experience some of the things that other women experienced while they were on earth.”

“Such as?” Berni asked suspiciously. “I don’t have to become one of those athletic women, do I? Run? Climb mountains, that sort of thing?”

“No, nothing like that, just ordinary woman things.”

Berni wasn’t sure what she meant. It seemed to her she’d experienced everything a woman could while on earth. What else was there? “What are you talking about?”

Pauline stopped and looked at her, her face serious. “There’s something I think I’d better explain. There are levels to the Kitchen. Some of them are pleasant, but some of them are…not so pleasant. Level One, which you’ve been to, is to introduce you to the Kitchen and to cushion the blow of death. Level Two is…”

“Is what?” Berni asked.

“Level Two makes you very concerned about doing your job well—your earthly job, that is.”

“You mean I’m to be somebody else’s fairy godmother?” She thought a moment. “It wasn’t so bad. It was kinda fun, actually.”

“I’m glad you think so, because you must do it again—only the second time there is a bit more urgency.”

“You mean there’s a time limit?”

“No, not exactly. It’s just that most people are somewhat anxious to leave Level Two.”

The fog before them cleared, and Berni could see a sign. “Just as before,” Pauline said, “you must choose one room in which to wait.”

As they moved forward Berni could read the sign. “No,” she whispered, abruptly turning away.

Pauline caught her. “You must choose.”

“I can’t.” Berni buried her face in her hands. “They’re all too horrible. Couldn’t I just go to hell and be burned alive for eternity?”

“I’m afraid that’s the easy way out. You didn’t earn heaven while you were on earth, so now you must suffer as other women have suffered.” Pauline turned Berni around and made her look at the sign. “You must choose.”

Berni forced herself to open her eyes and look at the sign once again.

1. a trip across America in a sports car with three kids and a dog
   
2. backpacking and sleeping in a tent with your stepchildren
   
3. TV that runs only PBS pledge drive twenty-four hours a day
   
4. clothes shopping with a man
   

“Clothes shopping with a man?” Berni whispered in horror.

“It’s more horrible than you can believe,” Pauline said. “Before you leave the house he makes you tell him exactly what you want to buy, what color, what style, what fabric. In the store he folds his arms and glares at you and looks at his watch. Sometimes you have to shop with him for his own purchases. You search two hundred and seventy-one stores for exactly the pair of shoes he wants, you finally find them, and he says the stitches on the toe are one thirty-second of an inch too long.”

Berni’s face lost all color as she looked back at the sign.

• 5. dieting while raising three teenage daughters
  
• 6. at home with eight sick kids—or one sick husband
  
• 7. driving a car with a male passenger who keeps screaming and whimpering
  
• 8. trapped in an elevator with your husband’s ex-wife
  
• 9. a husband who retires and wants you to spend every minute with him
  
• 10. a boss who constantly makes passes at you
  

“No,” Berni kept whispering, but she knew she had no choice. She raised a trembling hand and pointed. “Just get me out of here quick,” she said to Pauline before the fog cleared away from the horror she had chosen.