Small Blessings (13 page)

The kitchen table was littered with rose petals from Rose Callahan's bouquet. It struck Agnes that of all the detritus left in the wake of Marjory's sad existence, those roses were the one thing that didn't make her either sad or angry. Agnes reached out and touched one. It felt soft and cool and
calm,
somehow. After the funeral tomorrow, she and Tom would be drowning in floral arrangements, but Agnes didn't expect to be calmed by any of them. Not one of them would really be about Marjory. She and Tom had asked for contributions to the college scholarship fund in lieu of, but that meant nothing. Other people
knew
when you sent flowers to a funeral. And around here, what other people knew mattered much more than any scholarship fund. And much,
much
more than Marjory.

“Here you go!” Tom placed the mug of coffee before her using two hands, as though it might be inclined to follow the chicken into flight.

Agnes took a tentative sip and sighed with satisfaction. Very hot, very strong, just the way she liked it. She watched her son-in-law pour his own mug, dilute it with hot water from the sink (he was
such
a coffee wuss), come back to the table, and take his customary seat directly across the table from her. Not, Agnes thought, that it would ever occur to him to take any other seat. Routine was life to Tom Putnam, sweet, dutiful, loyal guy that he was.

“L'chaim!”
Agnes raised her mug.

“L'chaim!”
Tom raised his mug in return. But then he put it back down on the kitchen table. “The thing that really worries me,” he said, “is that I'm now part of Henry's future. I'm not sure I can handle dealing with someone who needs to be opened up, instead of, you know,
contained.
”

Ah yes! The Big Switch. Tom was concerned about being able to convert from the caretaker of a damaged adult to the caretaker of a small boy. But then who, in Tom's unpolished shoes, wouldn't be? What man could mutate smoothly overnight from custodian into daddy?

Agnes took another swig of coffee. “Henry got any other options in the dad department at the moment?”

“Well, no, of course not. But what—what if I screw this up? I mean, he's lived ten whole years of life and suddenly I'm his
father.
It makes me think about all the important, necessary things my father did for me. And did so well. Just because he was my father and he had these fatherly instincts. And I'm not sure I have any of those at
all.
”

Agnes badly needed a cigarette. “Well, what about me?”

Tom looked startled. “You?”

“Yes, me. I didn't do so hot in the parenting department, did I?”

“You mean because of Marjory? But you were
wonderful
with her. You never stopped trying. You did the very best you could.”

“Exactly,” Agnes said. “And that's all any of us can do.”

It took, she thought, almost a full minute for Tom to get her point.

*   *   *

Although it was only 6:20 on Monday morning, the Charlottesville Amtrak waiting room was already half full of people waiting for the 7:08 train. They banged away on laptops and yakked away on cell phones, as though the whole rest of the world were awake and wanting to hear from them.

She and Tom went together up to the ticket window. “Excuse me,” Tom said, addressing the large, round caricature of a railroad employee who beamed out at them from behind his grate. “Can you tell me if the
Crescent
's still on time?”

“The
Crescent
's on time, doing fine!” the round man sang out. “How
ya'll
doing this beautiful morning?”

It was Agnes's opinion that if this oppressively cheerful gentleman would bother to
look
at them, he'd see how they were doing. They were tired and nervous and sad.

“Fine, thank you,” Tom said politely.

“So, who you got coming to visit you?” the man asked. His face, Agnes decided, was really too small for his features. There was very little space left, once you crammed in the man's extra-large eyes, nose, mouth, and sprouty eyebrows.

“A little boy,” Tom said.
Not,
Agnes noticed,
“my son.”

“A little boy, huh? Like a nephew or something?”

“Or something.” Tom's politeness was unwavering.

“How old is he?”

“He's ten.”

Concern clouded the round man's eyes. “Only ten? He got someone traveling with him? Like his mother?”

“No,” Tom said. “I don't believe he does.”

Worry was now writ large on the man's face. “Well, don't you think that's a bit young for a boy to be on the train by hisself? Where's he coming from?”

“New Orleans. At least, I think that's where he boarded.”

Worry galloped toward alarm. “From
New Orleans
! All that way by
hisself!
A ten-year-old
boy
? That's against company policy!”

Agnes could stand it no longer. Politeness was not going to cut it in this situation. “He's a Katrina orphan,” she said, stepping forward. “We're taking him in.”

Tom gasped. Without looking at him, Agnes knew he was staring at her openmouthed. What an innocent Tom Putnam was. If she hadn't cut in and lied decisively, who knew what hassles Henry would have been subjected to by this righteous arm of Amtrak? The words “Katrina” and “orphan,” however, were magic; an instant free pass for her and Tom and Henry to get away with anything.

The round man beamed. “God bless you both!” he sang out, loud enough for the entire waiting room to hear. Around them was a blur of movement, as people briefly disconnected from their e-worlds to check in on this one. “Praise Jesus,” the ticket window man said in an even louder voice. “Praise Him, who said suffer the little children to come unto me! Thank you, Lord, for putting these two good people before me on this earth, and God bless them and their poor little orphan boy!”

“Amen!” said several people.

For once, Agnes was unoffended by a public display of religiosity. She figured that she, Tom, and Henry—especially Henry—could use any blessings any deities cared to send their way.

*   *   *

The
Crescent
arrived ten minutes late.

So,
Agnes thought,
the world has turned and Henry has arrived
. Outside this building there was a small boy who needed her time, her efforts, her
heart,
for God's sake. She stood up and her insides did what felt like a swan dive. A wave of dizziness followed, and she was forced to clutch Tom's arm to keep from having to sit down again. Agnes had never in her whole life experienced anything like this. Had she kept going through her husband's and Marjory's deaths and all that had happened in between, only to be felled by Henry's arrival?

Tom's arm felt surprisingly steady as they moved slowly toward the platform. He patted her hand and snugged it up against him, smiling down at her and murmuring sotto voce, “Heeeeeere's Henry!” in a bad imitation of that man who used to introduce Johnny Carson on
The Tonight Show.

A fine clear morning greeted them outside. Mr. Jefferson's small, smug city, Agnes thought, could not have done itself any prouder. If she were the one arriving, she would have taken heart from the brilliant blue skies and the distant Blue Ridge Mountains. But then she was not the one arriving. Who knew what shape Henry's ten-year-old heart would be in, after a day and a half on a train chugging away from everything and everyone he knew.

The
Crescent
was still in the process of huffing to a stop as they stationed themselves on the platform. It seemed to take several centuries for the long beast to finally and completely settle. Then it took another hundred or so years for the porter to climb down, position the steps, and hand down passengers. Agnes watched as eight people got off: two couples, three women, one man.

That was it. No one else got off the train.

Tom stepped forward, as assured as anyone in the world. “Excuse me,” he said to the porter, “but we're here to meet a boy named Henry, who is from New Orleans.”

“Oh,
Henry,
” the porter said, shaking his head, climbing the steps, and disappearing back into the train.

The porter reappeared a few minutes later half guiding, half carrying a very small boy clutching a large blue backpack. He was neatly dressed in blue jeans, a checked shirt, and boy-sized Nike basketball shoes. This small boy and his backpack were all the way down the steps, being guided toward them, before it registered on Agnes that this must be Henry. And that Henry was years younger than ten and most definitely a person of color.

Agnes moved forward to stand beside her son-in-law. Tom's eyes, fastened on the advancing boy, were calm and confident and
welcoming.
Whatever there was of steel in him had taken him over. For better or for worse, Tom Putnam was ready for Henry.

*   *   *

They were late, but it was not really her fault. Rose had allowed fifty-five minutes for the trip, which was her customary drive-time to Charlottesville. Ray, however—after spending most of yesterday silently pouting and last night sleeping on the couch—had insisted on talking during the drive about their
issues.
Having to explain the inexplicable, i.e., herself, had slowed Rose down.

Why, Rose wondered, had she not driven him to the car rental place at the Lynchburg airport yesterday? Why had she come up with the cockamamie idea that Ray should take the Monday morning train back to Washington?

At the time, it had seemed to her that another twenty-four hours together might defuse the tension between them, get Ray used to the idea of their not being together. In the 20/20 vision of a clear Monday morning, however, it was clear to Rose she'd been off her rocker to think any such thing.

The train—
hallelujah!
—was still there. Rose gunned her Honda directly up to the station entrance. Ray flung open the passenger door, grabbed his bag from the backseat, and sprinted into the building with nary a backward glance.

“I'll park and come in,” she yelled after him.

Ray's response was a dismissive wave, which Rose knew was meant to send the message that he would prefer to see himself off. To hell with that. Mavis had drummed manners into her, and manners declared it rude to dump someone out at the station and drive away.

Rose parked the Honda some way from the squat brick building and impulsively inspected herself in the rearview mirror. She looked as she always did, only more tired.
Oh, what are you afraid of?
she asked herself angrily.
Another scathing glance from another former lover?

The station waiting room was deserted by the time she entered. Rose pushed through the swinging doors to the track platform. Ray wasn't there either; but Professor Putnam was, coming toward her in the company of Agnes Tattle and a small brown boy whom Rose had never seen before. The three of them walked hand in hand, the boy in the middle. He was hunched under the weight of an enormous backpack.

“Hello!” Rose sang out, waving as vigorously as though Tom, Agnes, and the small brown boy were just dots in the distance.

Agnes waved back and kept walking, while Professor Putnam stopped and stared. The small brown boy, caught between the moving woman and the stationary man, yelped, “Please! You're
stretching
me!”

Agnes immediately dropped the boy's hand, while Professor Putnam stepped forward still grasping the one he held. The child, obviously very sleepy, moved forward with him. They stopped a few feet away from Rose. “Henry,” Professor Putnam said, “I'd like you to meet Rose Callahan. Rose is a friend of your grandmother's and mine from the college.” He smiled then, not at her, but at the top of Henry's head, and Rose thought his smile was simply grand.

“Rose Callahan,” he said, looking now at her, “I'd like you to meet my—my son, Henry Putnam.”

Behind the professor, Ray's train had begun slowly lumbering northward. Rose, however, couldn't bring herself to care. Trains came and trains went, but surely smiling fathers and their small brown sons were eternal.

Rose held out her hand. Henry stared at it briefly with his great blue eyes; then, as though pushed by some unseen adult urging him to mind his manners, he stepped forward and shook it. “I'm very pleased to meet you,” he said, not quite looking at anybody.

 

chapter 8

“So,” Tom said, standing with Henry in the middle of the guest room. “This is your room for as long as you're here.”

Henry looked around at the stodgy furniture and limp curtains and said nothing. Which was pretty much what he'd said since he'd announced to Rose that he was pleased to meet her. Henry, as Tom put it to himself, was choosing to stand mute, as any smart prisoner would who didn't have a clue what was going on.

The one thing the boy had volunteered had been on the ride home. Out of the blue, he'd piped up from the backseat and said, “I know you're not my real father, but my mother said you're nice and I have to be with you because she can't take care of me, because she knows she's going out.”

And then he'd gone mute again.

That was the moment Tom had realized that biology had nothing to do with the right and wrong of this situation. If Henry wasn't biologically his, he was still his in the sense that homeless kittens were his. All his life, Tom had taken in homeless kittens, fed them, had them checked over by vets, found them good homes. It might take him a while to figure out what constituted the equivalent treatment of Henry, but just turning him over to the SPCA—i.e., taking him to social services—was out of the question.

A sigh drifted up from around his knees. As Henry making any sound was big news, Tom hitched up his trousers and squatted down to look him in the eye. The boy's eyes were large, long-lashed, and astoundingly blue—perhaps the one stamp his mother had left on him, although Retesia's eyes had been much, much paler. Henry's froth of tightly curled brown hair might need to be cut or might need to be left alone.
Oh dear,
Tom thought.
Three months of responsibility for the length of this child's hair.