Any Minute (19 page)

Now Sarah knew who’d dressed her in the nightgown—it suddenly made perfect sense. Annie had been the one to take care of her, even before her mother had finally married Harold. When Sarah was little, whenever this woman had come to visit, Annie had been the one to lift her from the sofa when Sarah was left watching television and had fallen asleep alone. This woman had been the one to whisper, “Sarah, sweetie, will you wake up a little bit? Let’s get you into bed,” as she tugged the shirt over Sarah’s head. “Can you get your arm in here for me?” as she helped work an elbow through small pajama sleeves.

Still, Sarah wasn’t one to get sidetracked by sappy memories. “Wherever we are, I don’t have time to be here. I have to get back.”

Gone was the fine silver hair Sarah remembered so well. In its place, lacquered yellow curls jutted forward like a finch’s nest ready to topple from a tree. She was a lot younger, but it was Annie all right. Sarah would have known Annie at any age.

The woman narrowed her eyes and shook her head with the same spunk that would continue to serve her kindly over the decades. “Oh, you’ve got everything all scheduled for yourself? You have the plan figured out, do you?” Annie stood before Sarah with her knee cocked and her mouth in a dubious pucker. “All I’ve got to say to you is this, young lady.” She brandished a paring knife and attacked another apple. “You’d better be careful what you pray for. Otherwise you might just get it.”

“I haven’t prayed for anything in thirty years,” Sarah said.

“Actually you have,” Annie reminded her. “You told God you couldn’t go on anymore the way you were. And anything you say to God is a prayer.”

Well, Sarah hadn’t thought of that.

Apple skin peeled off in one perfect, red spiral. Annie met her granddaughter’s eyes with such intensity, Sarah worried Annie might slice her thumb. “I have prayed,” Annie said. “And so has Joe. And that’s the reason I’m here now.”

“Joe prayed?” Sarah asked. “You’re here because of
Joe
?”

“No.” Annie retrieved another shiny McIntosh, polished it against her apron, and turned it in her fingers. “I’m here because of Jesus. Because he loves you and has a plan for your life. One that you have been totally missing.”

Sarah’s grandmother scrabbled through a drawer and came up with an extra blade. “I was beginning to think you might sleep until sunset. How about some help paring these apples?”

But Sarah wasn’t one to be diverted. “If we’re in heaven, we don’t have to go through all this, do we?” she asked. “Couldn’t we just get it over with? You could take me by the hand and walk me right up and you could introduce me to Jesus, couldn’t you?”

On the shelf above Annie’s head stood a small ancient clock, “Enfield” written in script on its face, with its crystal missing. When Annie saw that its hands weren’t moving, she eyed it disagreeably and gave it one good
whump
. Still, its hands didn’t move.

“Don’t you see? That’s what I did every day of your life from the day you were born until you turned eleven and I got taken on to Glory—I tried to introduce you to Jesus, but maybe this time I get to introduce you to yourself as well.”

Annie felt amiable enough to banter back and forth with the fellow who kept appearing at the window, but Sarah felt anything
but
. She felt afraid every time he came around. The knife shuddered every time she sliced an apple. She shot countless furtive glances in his direction, trying to figure him out.

There had been bushel baskets of apples to peel, core, and pare. Each of Annie’s peels came off in one perfect, single whorl. Sarah’s came off in a pile of stubby, short slices because her nerves made her clumsy. Sarah nicked herself again and, with a sharp cry of pain, sucked her thumb.

“Are you going to tell me who that man is and what he’s doing here?” Sarah asked, letting the knife clatter to the counter. With the knuckle of her injured hand, she swiped at her hair-plastered forehead. “Is he a friend of yours or something?”

“Who? Wingtip? A friend of mine?” Annie pressed her hand against her apron sash and gave a hearty laugh, which didn’t make Sarah breathe any easier. “Of course he’s my friend. In this place, we’re all friends.”

Sarah commented, “His name really is Wingtip,” her voice dry.

As if mention of his name had caused him to spring forth, Wingtip appeared in the open window again and crossed his arms on the sill. “Sure it is.” He shot Sarah the same broad grin she remembered from the clothing bin in Chicago. He lifted a foot so she could see the wingtip. “Guess the Heavenly Father thought it’d be cute to name an angel after his shoes.”

So
that’s
why Annie had teased him about living in eternity.

Some other person might have accepted this angel information with awed reverence. But not Sarah. She searched her mind, rifling through the details from that day on LaSalle Street. She accosted him with the same vigor as an attorney defending her rights. “Why were you following us that day? Are you what they call a guardian angel? Why would you think I’m someone who needs looking after?”

“In God’s kingdom, we don’t get to order up our own duties. The way it works, we all do what we are asked and we do it with great joy.”

Well. Maybe she hadn’t expected
that
answer. Sarah gave every ounce of her attention to the McIntosh in her hand. She set it down hard on the counter and, with one flash of the knife, sliced it in half. “I don’t believe you.” The apple fell in two, revealing a core and seeds.

“That’s your problem, Sarah,” he responded. “You don’t believe in anything except what you can see and touch and accomplish by your own effort.” He paused before continuing on. “I tell you, that kid you got, Sarah, he’s something special. You ever notice his rally cap punched inside out? The way he pumps his fist at those come-from-behind runs? Now, how cute is that? Your kid knows how to enjoy life, that’s for certain.”

“Well, of course I’ve seen all of that. He’s my son.”

“Kid bites his tongue every time he keeps track on his scorecard. You noticed that?”

“I have,” she lied.

“As a matter of fact, you don’t see most things that are really worth noticing and remembering. When he gets stats wrong on that card, he pushes his glasses up his nose and erases so hard he leaves a hole in the paper. Have you seen that?”

“Just stop it. Please.”

“When he swallows his gum, he—”

Resentment and pain sliced through her. “Please. I’ll picture it every minute of eternity that I’m gone from them. Please stop asking me what I’ve seen and not seen.” Now that Sarah had lost so much, she realized she’d never taken the time to be grateful for even the most basic things. She’d never even thought to be grateful for being alive. “I am very aware that I failed at being a good wife and mother.”

Anyone could see at that moment that Sarah cared about her boy.

“That kid of yours sort of gets me right here.” Wingtip thumped his chest right above his heart. “Come to think of it, he’s a little version of his mama. Quite the little math whiz.” He shook his head as if he’d just realized something. “Guess that means I’ve taken a liking to you too.”

Sarah Harper would go after a good argument any day. Here she stood, bursting with angry pain, raring to go at it. Just let him say she didn’t measure up as a mom. Just let him say she did everything wrong. She’d take him on about all of it!

But Wingtip’s gentle humor gave her pause. The care in his eyes disarmed her. As fast as the fight had flown into her, it seeped out again. “Can you see my family from where we are?” she asked with hope in her eyes.

Wingtip nodded. Yes.

“Are they okay?”

“They’re being looked after, just like you always were.”

Sarah pictured Mitchell with his cowlick sticking straight up after he showered and practically gnawing the end of his pencil as he worked a thorny math problem and plopping in her lap at the city swimming pool. Mitchell, who, Sarah realized, had told her Wingtip was a friend, only she’d been too terrified to listen.

In that one moment, Sarah missed her children so much that it seemed more than she could bear. Both of their precious faces were branded on her heart. The pain of losing them felt like a fist wringing out her heart. Why hadn’t she looked Mitchell in the eyes that day? Why hadn’t she heard what he had to tell her?

She said, “I don’t get the part about you spending time at the ballpark. For an angel, you sure know a lot about the Chicago Cubs.”

He stood mute for a beat too long.

“No. Don’t say it. You’re not the angel for the Cubs.”

Wingtip lowered his gaze at her and waited for her to make her own deduction.

“No. You’re telling me the Cubs have had an angel up in that old scoreboard all this time? And counting.”

“You told me not to say it.”

“You’re
not
,” she argued.

“Well, don’t you think they could use one?”

“If you’re an angel, then why were you pretending to be a bum on LaSalle Street?” She gawked at him, speechless, before she started shaking her head, fending off the idea.

“Would it be so bad,” he asked, “if the Cubs had an angel and that angel was picked by God to watch over you a little bit and show you around?”

You need help finding your way around?
A vagabond’s question from LaSalle Street. And her answer,
I don’t need you to show me anywhere. I’m not lost.

“You knew this was going to happen,” she said.

“Who knew?” he asked. “Who knew what choice you would make?”

“Annie?” Sarah drew a deep breath, turned toward her grandmother. “Where does my family think I am?”

Her grandmother had been in the process of carefully peeling off her silk stockings and gently kneading her vermillion-painted toes. But Annie’s fingers paused. Slow-motion like, her foot returned to the floor.

“They think you’re at the bottom of the river. So does everyone else.” She said it as matter-of-factly as if she’d said, “The soup is on the third shelf, the second row, at Boldt’s Grocery and Meat Market.” Which sobered the mood between the three of them considerably.

Sarah stared into the pot as if trying to see through the surface of the cold, tea-colored water that had closed over her head, the rippled surface she couldn’t quite get to, its shimmering dancing light. What was Joe doing right now? What was he thinking? Feeling? Was he frantically looking for her?

I didn’t mean to leave like this,
she wanted to cry out to Joe. And then the horrifying realization of where things had been left between them.
Suppose he thinks I did this on purpose.

Suppose he thinks I was trying to punish him. Or that I was trying to escape.

Sarah felt again the breathless loss, the hollow cramp of sorrow that had come unexpectedly as she watched him sleeping beside her, heard those light snores he made, that sharp mind-boggling emptiness she felt when she tried to imagine living without Joe. How she wished she had told Joe how much he meant to her. She wished with all of her heart she had told him how wonderful he was, how talented and creative, but all she’d done was find fault with him. Now it was too late.

She gripped the sideboard, her vision swimming, her head pounding. The noise behind her ears was deafening. Why had it seemed so important to beat those barricades this morning? What had she thought so important that she’d made such a reckless dash to the other side?

Annie’s voice came then, gentle and full of sorrow. “Sarah, I know how hard your life has been for you. Being resentful and feeling sorry for yourself hasn’t done any good. All you’ve been thinking about is trying to make yourself happy, and God wants you to understand that’s why nothing in your life is working. It is impossible to be both selfish and happy, Sarah.”

“Oh, Annie,” she whispered, and she might have been a little girl again, hearing the mournful way she sounded. She gripped her grandmother’s hand. “If I could just go back and do it all over again, I would do things differently.”

Annie shook her head solemnly, her voice measured. “Don’t you know most people think the same thing? Why would you be any different?”

Sarah sighed, feeling sufficiently chastised.

“Everybody wants second chances. And no one realizes that taking a really honest look at changing things isn’t easy. But if you genuinely want to change, God will help you. You cannot do anything about the way you got started in life, but you can determine how you will finish.”