Reflection (39 page)

Michael went home in the late afternoon, and Rachel, bravely, went to the church to help sort through the donated clothes and blankets scheduled to be sent to the refugee camps. Celine was there, along with two other women. The four of them worked in one of the rooms in the basement, sorting the items on long tables. Rachel worked quietly, listening to the women talk among themselves. They had little to say to her. One of the women talked about her college-aged son, and Rachel considered telling them that Chris was arriving the following day, but they didn't seem interested in including her in their conversation, and she kept her thoughts to herself.

Celine talked about the small camps the Mennonites were operating in Zaire. The volunteers were building latrines and shelters, she said, and providing both physical and emotional support. A few volunteers were escorting people back into Rwanda. Rachel could picture the scene vividly, the people and the need. But she couldn't bring herself to share the images with the other women in the room. She was aware of her guilt. She had slept with their minister. She was no longer innocent.

Michael returned to Gram's house for a few hours that night, but he was clear that he didn't want to make love. “I have to deliver a sermon in the morning,” he said, by way of explanation. He and Rachel were sitting on the porch swing, sipping tall glasses of iced tea. “I'm going to talk about forgiveness again, even though I addressed that topic a few weeks ago. This time it's for me, though. I'll be preaching to myself as much as to anyone.”

She took a few sips from her tea before responding. “You mean, you feel as though you need to forgive yourself for what you've done?” she asked.

“What? Oh, no.” He slipped an arm around her. “I know that what you and I did would be considered a grievous offense in the eyes of my congregation, and I'm still certainly…conflicted about us. But I'm through with the guilt. I have nothing to forgive myself for.”

The words relieved her. “So you're talking about your desire to forgive Katy and Drew.”

“My
need
to forgive them,” he said. “Forgiveness is the only way to put an end to suffering. It's not the same as condoning what they did. It's not a denial that something hurtful occurred. But it's a way to be done with it, once and for all.”

She knew he was talking about Katy and Drew, but she was thinking of herself and Reflection.

“It's freeing for all concerned,” she said.

“Exactly.” He lifted her chin with the tips of his fingers and kissed her, his lips cool from the tea. “And now I've got to get home to my son.”

CHRIS WAS THE FIRST
passenger off the plane at the Harrisburg airport and Rachel couldn't get her arms around him fast enough. His hug was brief but enthusiastic.

“You're getting skinny,” he said as he let go of her.

“Yeah, well, I've been working on it,” she said, pleased.

He had a carry-on suitcase, his laptop computer, and an electronic keyboard. “I'm traveling light,” he said. “I hate waiting around for luggage.” He sounded as though he traveled often, and although she knew that wasn't so, his words added to her sense of him as someone she no longer really knew. It had been only six weeks since she'd seen him, but the distance she felt from him these days had little to do with time or geography.

She wanted to get reacquainted with her son before sharing him with anyone else, and so she'd told Gram she planned to take him out to dinner on their way home from the airport. Excited though Gram was to meet her great-grandson, she supported Rachel's idea. Gram had been very agreeable this weekend, ever since she'd spotted Michael emerging from Rachel's bedroom on Saturday morning.

Rachel carried the computer in its soft-sided case as they walked toward the exit of the airport and out to the car. They said little, and she wondered how she was going to make Chris understand all that was going on in her life.

“So, this is the Pennsylvania Dutch country,” Chris said as they began driving through the patchwork of farms.

“Is it like you imagined?”

“I feel like I've been here, you've got so many picture books around the house.”

She did. Every time she saw another coffee-table book containing pictures of this part off the world, she bought it.

“Oh, cool!” Chris's eyes widened as he spotted a horse and buggy on the road ahead of them, and Rachel made a conscious effort to forgive his tourist-like gawking.

“Remember, this is their home and you're a visitor, Chris. They just want to go on about their business,”

“I know that.” He sounded annoyed, and rightfully so. She had told him about the Amish, read him stories from the time he was very small. Chris was a stranger to Reflection but not to the ways of its people.

“Tell me about your summer,” she said, carefully passing the buggy. To his credit, Chris didn't even turn his head to look at the driver.

“It's been the best summer of my life,” he said. He launched into a description of the band, how good they'd gotten, how successful their gigs had been. They had a female vocalist now, and one of the guys was writing some music of his own. They'd be playing one of the new songs for the first time at a party when he got back.

It was as if she'd unleashed his tongue, and she knew he could talk about the band all day if she were willing to listen. Her arms stiffened on the steering wheel.

“Look, Mom—” He suddenly interrupted his own chatter. “I was serious about not going back to school. I know you've been hoping I'd change my mind, but it's definite. I mean, registration for classes is next week, and I'm not going.”

She opened her mouth, but he rushed ahead to block her attack. “I'm learning so much more about music by playing it with the band. Maybe I'll go back someday. Probably I will, so don't freak out. But right now, this is what I really want to do. And I can make some money at it. It's not like I'm just wasting time.”

Rachel couldn't speak. She had the terrible and overwhelming feeling that his life was over, that he was about to ruin it. “We can talk more about it over the next few days,” she said.

“Well, we can talk about it, but it's not going to change my mind,” he said.

They were quiet as they drove. Rachel's head filled with images of Helen's house, of the inescapable music, the pianos, the books about composers. Chris would have a week in that house. A smile formed on her lips and she tried to keep it in check.

Turning onto Farmhouse Road, she wondered how much of a tour to give Chris on his first day in town—and how much she should tell him. She decided to begin with Winter Hill to show him the breathtaking, almost aerial view of Reflection.

Once she'd reached the peak of the hill, Rachel pulled the car to the side of the road, as she had done on her own nearly six weeks earlier.

“Awesome!” Chris said as they got out of the car.

Rachel smiled. He'd always had a sense of wonder, an appreciation of everything. She'd forgotten that about him. She and Phil had taken his scout troop to the Grand Canyon when he was ten, and while the other boys roughhoused and spit pieces of hot dogs at one another and told dirty jokes, Chris had sat awestruck on the edge of the canyon by himself for over an hour. She'd talked to Phil about it, a little worried that he was not like other kids.

“That's right, he's not,” Phil had said. “He's extremely special.”

She saw a shadow of that same awe in her son now, and she stepped next to him on the crest of the hill.

“This is the view that inspired your great-grandfather to write
Patchwork
,” she said.

“I can believe it,” he said. “It's like this incredible example of what God and man can do when they work together, you know?”

She put her hand on his back. She had never heard Chris mention God before; he'd grown up in a rather God-deprived home. But his description of the scene in front of them was perfect.

She pointed toward Huber Pond, where the reflection of the Mennonite church lay still and clear in the water. “There's probably going to be a change soon, though,” she said. She told him about the proposed development of the land adjacent to the pond. “There's going to be a hearing tomorrow night, and we're hoping a lot of people will come to make their wishes known. It may be too little too late to do any good, though.”

Chris shook his head as though personally wounded by the thought of harming that patch of green. “Greed,” he said. “People don't think, sometimes. They just go after the money.”

They drove through town, following the same route she had taken when she'd first arrived. She showed him the triplex where she and Luke and Michael had grown up and the statue of Peter Huber, which he said gave him goose bumps. She loved this boy. This young man. She wished he were not so intent on throwing his future away.

She had planned to take Chris to a restaurant outside of Reflection for dinner, but he spotted the Brahms Cafe on their drive through town, and she knew they were doomed. Inside the cafe, they were seated in the same booth she and Michael had shared. Although there were only a few vegetarian items, it took Chris a long time to decide what to order, because he had to read the descriptions of all the entrees to see how they related to the composers after which they were named.

While he was studying the menu, Rachel said, “Your great-grandmother loves this game where I play a few notes from a classical piece on the CD player and then she guesses what it is and who wrote it. You could probably give her a run for her money.”

Chris smiled at her. “You know, I still love classical music, Mom. Don't get scared or anything that I'm gonna limit myself. I love the music I'm playing with the band, but I know where my roots are.”

She nodded. She wouldn't push him. She just might push him away from the music he was meant to study.

Chris decided on the Puccini Pasta; Rachel, the Chicken Verdi. They closed their menus and waited for the waitress to take their order, but the woman—the same one who had waited on her and Michael—steadfastly walked past their table, looking straight ahead as if they weren't there. Rachel had no doubt that she was the cause of the poor service. The waitress tossed her blond ponytail and began taking the order of a table of diners who had arrived after them.

“We were here before them,” Chris said to Rachel. “She acts like she can't even see us.” He raised his hand when the waitress walked away from the newcomers' table. “Excuse me?” he said. “We've been waiting a long time to give our order.”

The waitress wore a sullen expression as she walked toward their table. She said nothing as they gave her their orders, nothing as she turned and headed toward the kitchen.

“I thought you said this part of the country was so friendly,” Chris said, too loudly. “She's a bitch.”

“Shh,” she admonished. She looked down at the table, then up at her son. “Chris, I have some things to tell you. Some things about me, and about your father, and about why that waitress is treating us like she wishes we would disappear.”

Chris frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Rachel rapped her fingertips lightly on the table. “I don't know where to begin,” she said. “And I don't think that now, when we're trying to enjoy a meal, is the time to do it.”

“Well, you've gotta tell me now that you've started,” he said. “So either tell me here, or let's cancel dinner and go outside.”

She looked at him for a moment, then rose and approached the waitress. “Please cancel our orders,” she said, turning away before she could see the expression on the woman's face. She looked at Chris, nodded toward the door, and he rose to follow her out of the restaurant.

It was a relief to be outside. Rachel stood on the sidewalk and looked toward the circular park in the center of town. “Let's walk over to the park,” she said.

They walked the block to the park in silence, and once they'd reached the circle of green, she pointed to one of the weeping cherries.

“See these cherry trees?” she asked. “They were planted here around the time I left. There are ten of them.”

“Is that significant?” he asked.

“Yes, it's significant.”

They walked through the wooded circle until they came to the memorial. She sat down on the bench, and he joined her.

“What's that?” He pointed to the graceful wall of stone.

“That's part of what I'm going to tell you about. I should have told you long ago, I guess, but I never knew how, and I didn't want to harm your father's memory. But you can't be here and not know the truth.”

Chris waited, and she felt his apprehension as well as her own in the still air around them.

She began talking. She told him about Luke going off to Vietnam, while she and Michael went to Rwanda. He had heard her mention Michael before, but she knew he had no real knowledge of who Michael was and what he had meant to her. Even now she couldn't comfortably tell Chris how she had loved Michael back then, only that their friendship had been deep and caring. She told him about the change that had taken place in Luke during the war, how different he had been when he returned. She skipped the part about the inflammatory letter from Michael but described Luke's bizarre visits to the school. Chris frowned as the plot thickened.

“I'm not sure I want to hear more,” he said when she described Luke's fascination with his weapons. “He didn't hurt anyone, did he?”

She nodded. “Yes, honey, he did.”

Chris looked at the memorial. “Hurt, as in killed?” His jaw was tight.

“Let me finish.” She told him about her last day in the classroom, about seeing Luke outside the window, about trying to stop him from entering the school. “But I couldn't,” she said. “I missed him somehow, and—”