Firebird (The Flint Hills Novels) (10 page)

Despite his exposure to more cosmopolitan tastes at Yale, Ethan had never been able to overcome his prejudice against classical music. Once returned to his native soil, he felt no more compunction toward pretense, and he grew stubbornly reactionary in his tastes. It was undoubtedly a long-overdue response to all those moments of forced appreciation of something he was just not akin to.

Ethan's change of heart came in an odd and unexpected way. His attic office looked down onto the house of the Winegarner family, whose boy had been severely burned by fireworks in a Fourth of July accident. After two years of painful plastic surgery and rehabilitation, the boy could just begin to use his hands and arms. He was still confined to a wheelchair. On sunny days his mother, who had taken over his education as best she could, wheeled him into the backyard, where she read to him and helped him with lessons made out for him by a teacher who came in from Council Grove once a week.

One Friday in late November Ethan noticed Mrs. Zeldin entering the house with her violin. She returned the following Friday at the same time and left, as before, an hour later. The next morning Ethan ran into Mrs. Winegarner in the hardware store. Mrs. Winegarner, although younger than Ethan, had always reminded him somewhat of his own mother. This was perhaps because he often watched her hang her wash on a clothesline strung across the backyard as his mother still did, or perhaps because of her stoic silence and refusal to complain of life's hardships. He hesitated to ask about the visit from "that Frenchwoman," as the town had taken to calling Annette. To his surprise, Mrs. Winegarner brought up the subject herself.

"She's giving Matthew violin lessons," she said quietly. Her mouth looked as though it wanted to smile. Ethan had rarely seen her smile. "I'd heard she was giving lessons. I didn't think she'd be any good with kids. I'd seen her around town and she always seemed so unfriendly."

She looked through the trays of wing nuts as she spoke, trying them on a bolt she had taken out of her handbag.

"Here. Let me help you with that," said Ethan.

She watched in silence as Ethan fitted the proper size for her.

"And is it working out?" he asked.

She looked away, trying to hide the emotion on her face.

"You know what she did?" She looked back at Ethan; tears glistened in her eyes. "The first time she came, she just talked to him. She told him about a famous violinist who's in a wheelchair, I don't recall his name..."

"Itzhak Perlman."

"That's it, Perlman. And she told us about how he's so loved and admired by everyone. But that wasn't what—" She stopped and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. "She brought her violin along. And she played for him." Mrs. Winegarner looked up into Ethan's eyes as though she were trying to articulate the most profound secrets of the universe. "It was..." She stopped.

"Go on," said Ethan gently.

"Oh, it sounds silly."

"Tell me."

"I'd never heard anything so beautiful in all my life. I've never heard anyone play the violin like that before. And when I looked over at Matthew, he had this look in his eyes that I've never seen. I can't describe it... it was like he was... in heaven. Listening to the angels."

She took a deep breath and then went on.

"You know what he said after she left? He said, 'Mama, this music makes me want to live.' "

She was desperately trying to hold back her tears, and she looked around her to see if anyone was watching, then dug into her handbag for a tissue.

"She brought him a violin, one she'd rented for him. And she taught him the names of all the parts and how to care for it, and the names of the strings." She turned away from him to blow her nose. "Well, I shouldn't go on. I must be boring you."

Ethan laid his hand on her shoulder. "No, you're not."

"I was very wrong about her. She's awfully patient. And she seems to strike just that right note with kids. You know what I mean?"

She took a deep breath and smiled. "We bought Matthew a new CD player. He can't seem to get enough of his music."

Ethan walked her to her car and with uncharacteristic spontaneity she hugged him. She laughed and said she hoped Katie Anne wouldn't mind.

The following Friday Ethan had it in his mind that he would run some errands in the late morning, and he thought he just might time his departure to coincide with the end of Matthew Winegarner's violin lesson, but as Mrs. Zeldin was on the front porch saying good-bye to Mrs. Winegarner and he was hastily pulling on his coat, his phone rang. He ignored it and rushed down the stairs, but Bonnie caught him at the reception to tell him it was Mrs. Peters, who was in hysterics after learning that her husband, deceased as of Thursday evening, had donated his body to the medical center at K.U. Ethan's good sense got the better of him, and he returned to his office and took the call. From his window he watched Mrs. Zeldin walk down the street, her violin case in her hand.

December was a tumultuous month for Ethan. The foundation for his house was laid, and because the weather had continued to be mild, with only a few cold spells and one brief snow, he was able to start construction. Katie Anne set the date of their wedding for April 23, and the preliminary guest list totaled 430 guests. Ethan tried to stay out of it as much as possible, but whenever there was a disagreement between Katie Anne and her mother, he was dragged in to cast the deciding vote. At first he tried to give his honest opinion on things, but he soon learned the best strategy was to side with his fiancée. However, all this was no more than petty and worrisome; Ethan's real tribulation began one evening when Paula called from California just as he was leaving the office to say their son, Jeremy, had run away from home.

When he got home, he found Katie Anne on the telephone in a heated dispute with the wedding planner. Even after hanging up she was so self-absorbed that he couldn't bear to open up to her Jeremy. So he began grilling the steaks and had a few beers while she made more calls, and only when they sat down to dinner did she notice his mood and ask if something was wrong. When he told her what had happened, she paused, holding her fork in midair, and said sweetly, "Oh, honey, I'm so sorry. But you know he'll come back. It's just a phase," and went on to ask him if his sister would be able to come in from Abilene for the wedding shower.

That's when the nagging began to come back. The same uneasiness that had stayed with him for so long after the death of his father. He recognized it instantly, like an old injury that flares up with a sudden change in the weather, but this time he had nothing to hide behind. He remembered the way Katie Anne had treated his father's illness and death as a minor disturbance, and his instinct told him to expect little depth of understanding where his son was concerned. She was no longer a distraction for his pain but neither had she become a balm.

Ethan sat up late into the night watching basketball on cable. He called Paula twice to see if she had any news, but the second time she was so angry and full of hurtful accusations that he didn't call again. He got online and checked flights but didn't book anything. He hated his indecisiveness and came to the conclusion that he was not only an absent father but a downright bad one. That all he was really good for on earth was raising cattle and drawing up deeds.

The next day, Ethan had to drive into Wichita to take care of some business at the courthouse. He was lost in his thoughts, rehashing old arguments with his ex-wife, and he missed the turn onto Third Street and ended up on Central. The avenue took him past Saint Mary's Cathedral, where he and Paula had been married and Jeremy had been baptized and had taken his first communion. He hadn't driven past the Cathedral in years, and the fact that he'd fumbled his way down here on the tail of all the present turmoil struck him as more than coincidence. Whatever had brought him here, whether destiny, God or just plain lack of attention, he was struck by the fortuitousness of the incident. He pulled over to the curb and parked.

His thoughts took him back to a letter his father had written him not long before he'd been diagnosed with cancer. He had written, "Ethan, I hope you'll find a way to return to the Holy Mother Church. I'd like to think you would do this in my lifetime. But you're a stubborn kid and I can't think you'd ever do anything like this because your dad asked you to do it. Besides, I really wouldn't want that anyway. You need to find your own way back."

Ethan had never answered the letter, and his father never mentioned it again. Sometimes Ethan thought that if he had answered that letter, perhaps this guilt wouldn't be bothering him now.

Looking up at the grand stairs and majestic portico, he longed to believe that there was something beyond those doors that could help him with the weight of the wrongness of his life, and so he got out of his truck and followed the sidewalk to the entrance.

The old familiar ritual seized him as soon as he entered, and as he dipped his fingers into the marble font of cool water and touched his forehead, he felt a stillness invade him. He genuflected, slipped into a row and kneeled, folding his hands in prayer the way he had done thousands of times as a child. As a boy he had often wondered how to pray in those silences. He used to drive one thought after another from his head because it was too selfish or not what he thought God wanted, until his mind had become tired with chasing away all those bad thoughts and he had given up and fallen into the cant, which always made it so much easier for him. But now there was no cant, no priest telling him what to pray, no words for him to climb up to heaven on, and he sat in the bright, sun-gloried silence, and let the calm steal into his mind.

He wasn't expecting answers, just a little peace, and he found it in those few moments on his knees in submission to something he didn't understand despite all his schooling. After a while, he said a little prayer of thanks and rose to leave. As he did so, a woman who had been kneeling at the front stood also. When she turned and came toward him, he recognized Annette Zeldin. She saw him and smiled warmly.

"Mr. Brown," she said as she approached.

"Mrs. Zeldin."

"Don't forget your hat," she said, smiling, and took it from the pew where he had left it.

"Thank you, ma'am."

Then she did an extraordinary thing. Instead of going on her way, she took his arm and gently leaned on him as they walked silently together down the long aisle toward the door.

Outside, at the top of the steps, they paused. She released his arm and Ethan turned to her and asked, "What's the daughter of a Methodist minister doing in a Catholic church?"

"I converted right after Eliana was born."

"Why'd you do that?"

"To annoy my father."

At first he thought she was serious, she had a dead-sober look on her face, then she broke into laughter. It was the first time he had seen her laugh.

She quickly changed the subject, asking him questions about his house and the wedding plans. She said she was in town to do some Christmas shopping and run some errands, but she was having trouble finding the repair shop where she had left her violin last week.

"I forgot to bring the address with me. I thought I could find it again."

"What's the name of the place?"

"Goldman's Antiques."

He led her to his truck and pulled out a chewed up telephone directory from underneath the seat. He flipped through the pages.

"Here it is. Three-twelve North Ellis."

"That's it."

"Hop in. I'll drive you. It's not far."

Annette couldn't make it into the truck with her tight skirt, and she laughed as Ethan hoisted her up.

"I'm just not made for this kind of life," she said as he closed the door for her.

"Sure you are," he answered as he got in. "The clothes are the problem. Not the lady."

* * *

A bell tinkled over the door as they entered the antiques shop and a voice from the back called out, "Be with you in a minute. I'm working with some glue right now. Can't leave it."

It wasn't really much of an antiques shop. There was very little furniture, only a buffet and a few worthless tables and chairs. Everything in the shop was covered with dust. Along the back wall were shelves filled with violin cases.

After a moment a very thin and grizzled old man with bent shoulders, whose skin and clothing were covered with the same gray dust that covered his shop, appeared from the back.

"Mrs. Zeldin!" he cried, and came toward her, wiping his hands on his apron. He spoke to her in a language that sounded to Ethan a little like German. He disappeared and returned with a violin case which Annette opened. She removed the violin, examined it, and after a brief exchange, she paid him in cash. He chatted away to her as he followed her to the door and held it open as they left.

"Was that German you were speaking?" Ethan asked as they walked away.

"Yiddish," she replied. "He's a holocaust survivor."

Ethan was ready with another question, but she sidestepped it and said to him brightly, "I'm starved. Have you had eaten?"

"I could do with some lunch. What sounds good?"

"Crêpes?" she teased. Then she added, "Just take me wherever you normally eat."

When they reached his truck and he opened the door for her, she hesitated and finally said, "I'm afraid I'll need a lift again." He offered his arm, and this time he made no attempt to avert his eyes from her legs when she stepped up.