Small Blessings (15 page)

Agnes stood up. “That's enough for today. Henry's okay, we're okay, the money's okay, and I'm going to bed.” She reached for the backpack. “I'll take this back up to Henry's room. We don't want him thinking we're nosey or anything.”

“Could I look at it first?” Tom asked.

“Look at what?”

“The money. I think this would all seem more real if I saw it.”

Agnes, being Agnes, understood. “Sure,” she said, sitting down again. “Take all the time you need.”

Tom got up and pulled the backpack toward himself. He unclicked the front straps and folded back the covering flap. The clothes and the teddy bear were on top. He removed them carefully and stacked them on the table in reverse order.

Underneath the clothes was what looked like a large blue nylon lunch box encrusted with appliquéd dinosaurs. Tom pulled it out.

Years ago, just out of Amherst and briefly considering writing fiction for a living, Tom had produced one good short story, based on his mother's experience as, of all things, a freedom rider in the early sixties. On a whim, he'd sent it off to
The New Yorker,
and wonder of wonders, it was accepted. The result was a check in the mail for five hundred whole dollars.

Tom had never had that much money at one time before, and the prospect of lots of cash made him giddy. He'd taken the check to the bank and asked for all one-dollar bills. The teller, well versed in the quirks of human nature, had unquestioningly done as he'd asked. Tom had taken those five hundred one-dollar bills home and put them in a shoe box. For a couple of days, until the rent was due and he'd needed some of the money, he had taken out that shoe box, looked at those dollars, and felt irrationally optimistic about everything.

Gazing down now at Henry's money, Tom realized that five hundred one-hundred-dollar bills in a lunch box looked the same as five hundred one-dollar bills in a shoe box. Which, to him, seemed both strange and wonderful.

He didn't bother to look for the cashier's check. If Agnes said it was there, it was there.

*   *   *

The phone rang a few minutes after eleven. Tom, alone again at the kitchen table, made no move to get up and answer it.

In due course, the ringing stopped, and Tom's voice requested that the caller leave a message. There was pause, a click, and Rose Callahan began speaking. “Hello, Professor, Agnes, and Henry, this is Rose Callahan. I'm sorry to call so late, but—”

Tom had gone from immobile to picking up the receiver in one and a half sentences. “Hello? Hello, Rose, is that you?”

“Oh, so you
are
there,” said Rose, laughing. “Yes, it's me.”

“I'm here,” said Tom, simultaneously noting Rose's flawed grammar and wondering if she could hear his pounding heart. “How are you? No ill effects from your Egg McMuffin, I trust?”

“None at all. And I didn't have to eat again until the middle of the afternoon. Whatever that cheese stuff is they put on those things really hangs around.”

Tom gloried in her laughter and the hint of Texas twang in her speech. They made him feel less pressure to be
sensible,
which was a relief. “It was a great pleasure to have you join us.”

“I sure enjoyed myself. Listen, I'm sorry to call so late, but I've only just had an idea.”

“Oh? And what idea is that?” Might this mean she'd been thinking about him? Tom wondered. Although it was more likely she'd been thinking about Henry.

“Well, it occurred to me that it might be easier for you and Agnes if you didn't have to take Henry with you to your wife's funeral tomorrow. But then I thought, as Henry just got here and seems a bit shy, you might not want to leave him with a strange sitter. So, since he and I are sort of friends already, I thought I would offer to look after him tomorrow while you and Agnes take care of what you need to take care of. I've already checked with Mr. Pitts and gotten his okay to take tomorrow off. So, anyway,” she finished in a rush, “I'm available to take care of Henry tomorrow if you'd like me to.”

Tom was so flooded with gratitude he had to sit down. Henry hadn't known Marjory at all. And funerals were so weird, once you stopped and thought about them; putting dead people in boxes and lowering them into the ground while everyone stood around getting emotional. “Thank you so much, Rose. That is so kind.”

“It is? Oh, good. I'm glad there's something I can do to help.”

Tom could
hear
her smiling.

“What time should I come over?”

Marjory's funeral was at two o'clock in Charlottesville. “Shall we say noon?”

“Noon it is. Bye now.”

Click
and she was gone. Tom put the phone down carefully as though this could maintain a connection between the two of them. Or, more accurately, among the three of them. Whatever tenuous connection he'd had with Rose before this morning now had Henry squarely in its middle, which somehow, in some complicated way Tom could not begin to parse, planted Rose Callahan much more firmly in his heart.

 

chapter 9

“I'm here!” Rose said when Tom opened the door a little before noon the next day.

And so she was, in jeans, clogs, and a white T-shirt.

“Yes, you are.” Tom, solemn as a backwoods preacher in his darkest suit, gestured for her to come in. “Thank you again for offering to do this.”

“Oh, heavens. I'm happy to.” Rose held up one of the two plastic bags she carried. “I brought burgers, milk shakes, and fries from Sid's for lunch.”

The phone rang. Would it
never
stop?

“I'll get it,” Agnes yelled from upstairs. “We've got to get a move on.”

Rose headed for the kitchen. “Go do what you need to do. I'll be in here,” she called over her shoulder.

“It's Russell, for you,” Agnes announced loudly from the top of the stairs. “I tried to head him off, but he insists on talking to you. Better make it snappy.”

Tom trailed Rose into the kitchen, which had already begun to smell like fried food.

Sid's was a fabled burger joint on Lynchburg Road. Years ago, for some reason to do with last-minute shopping, Tom had ended up there for a quick solo dinner on Christmas Eve. The place had been deserted except for two teenaged brothers. Tom had eavesdropped shamelessly as the older one carefully explained the intricacies of a cheap plastic watch he'd bought his brother for Christmas. The younger boy had seemed to listen with his whole
being.

Tom picked up the kitchen phone. “Hello.”

“Tom. It's Russell.”

“I know. Agnes told me.” The smells around Tom were distinctly counter-funereal.

“I just wanted to check in and be sure you and Agnes didn't need a ride or … or anything else.”

Tom smiled. Russ had phoned with the same question yesterday. “No, thanks. It's very nice of you to offer, but Agnes and I feel we should be able to operate independently. She has a lot of Charlottesville friends, you know, that she might need to pay attention to.”

“Oh, yes, of course. I just thought I'd ask.” Russell cleared his throat. “Well then, you're sure everything else is okay?”

“Everything's fine,” Tom said. “It's nice of you to be concerned about us, Russ.” He had yet to tell Russell about Henry. It had simply been too much to talk about so soon after Marjory's death.

“Of course I'm concerned.”

There was a pause. Tom imagined his friend gathering himself to say what he'd really called to say. Simple sincerity didn't come naturally to him.

“I'm really, really sorry about Marjory,” Russell said eventually. “Not just that she's dead, but that she had such a struggle. I … I admire the way you stuck it out with her. I certainly wouldn't have done it. I … I'm much too…”

Tom lost the rest of what Russell said as Agnes marched in, dressed from head to foot in rebellious peacock blue. “Time to go,” she announced, barely acknowledging Rose with a nod. Cantankerousness was Agnes's customary fallback emotion.

“I'm sorry, but I have to go now, Russ,” Tom said, interrupting Russell, who was still going on about Marjory. “We'll see you at the cemetery. Thanks again for the offer of the ride.”

Russell was still talking as Tom put down the phone. “Okay,” he said, turning around, clapping his hands, “let's get these doggies rolling! ‘Delays have dangerous ends!'”

Agnes scowled at him.
“Henry the Sixth, Part One,”
Tom said, thinking it was because he'd lapsed into Shakespeare.

The scowl deepened. “Aren't you forgetting something?”

Tom's mind felt unwieldy as a turning battleship. “What?”

“Henry?” Rose prompted.

Henry!
Tom sprinted toward the door into the hallway and almost ran the boy down. Henry had been standing just outside the kitchen door, neatly dressed in Gap jeans, another plaid shirt, and his Nikes. Henry's hair, however, was
not
neat. Somehow, this gave Tom hope.

“Well, Henry,” Tom said, way over-the-top heartily. “It's time for Agnes and me to get a move on. Rose is here to stay with you, and she's brought lunch. You remember Rose, don't you?”

Henry nodded but didn't move.

Then Rose was there beside him, holding out her second plastic bag. “I brought you something, Henry. It's something I wanted for Christmas when I was your age, but since I was a girl no one ever gave me one.

Henry looked first at the bag, then at Rose, then at Tom.
He's identified me as his boss,
Tom thought.
The one who has power over him.

Tom nodded. Henry took a step forward, and Rose handed him the bag. He squatted down on the floor, folded down the plastic, and uncovered a red Tonka dump truck.

Rather than reaching for it, though, he looked up at Tom again, the whole history of human longing in his eyes. Tom smiled. “It's yours, Henry. Rose brought it for you to have.”

Henry's hand hung in the air over the box. “Mine?” It was a question. But then he said “Mine” again, as a statement.

“Yes,” Tom said “It's yours. So what do you say to Rose?”

“Thank you,” Henry said, his eyes on the truck.

Rose squatted down in front of the boy, picked up the truck, and stuck it gently in Henry's lap. “Let's eat,” she said, standing up again. “I'm starving.”

Henry wrapped an arm around the truck and stood up. “Okay,” he whispered, allowing Rose to take his other hand.

*   *   *

Iris looked out at the seventeen expectant faces and thought:
I don't care if Tom is at his wife's funeral, why the hell did I ever volunteer to take his RemWrite class?

RemWrite stood for Remedial Writing. It was how the members of the English Department referred to the required course for first-years who'd demonstrated they'd yet to grasp the concept of the complete sentence. The class was gussied up in the college catalog by the appealingly vague name Creative Exploration, but no one—not even the students who were forced to take it—ever called it anything but RemWrite.

Tom, who alone among his senior colleagues regularly volunteered to teach a section of RemWrite, had e-mailed Iris late yesterday afternoon, explaining he was fine with canceling his Tuesday afternoon Shakespeare class, but he hated to cancel his Tuesday morning RemWrite. The students were so enthusiastic that it just didn't seem right to bail on them. Could Iris possibly take it for him? They were to turn in their first assignment, an essay on what they expected to get out of college. All she would have to do was have them read these in class and make suggestions for revising.

Reading Tom's e-mail, Iris, who'd bought two bottles of wine on the way home yesterday and was almost finished with the first, had been struck with a rare urge to help out. This, she knew, probably masked guilt, a feeling with which she was much more familiar.

How
had
she ended up in the Putnams' dreary guest room on Saturday morning?

Anyway, whatever she'd been feeling, she'd impulsively fired off a two-word e-mail back to Tom: No problem.

Except it
was
a problem. To begin with Iris felt fuzzy in the head, which would have been fine if the students staring at her had looked less full of expectations, less willing to prostrate themselves before the altar of the complete and grammatical sentence. Just the expressions on their faces made Iris want to shout, “Loosen up, will you! Complete sentences are
boring
!”

Iris cleared her throat rather savagely and stood tall in her red platforms. Why did innocence always irritate the bejesus out of her? Surely she'd once been innocent herself, expecting life to work out and other such nonsense.

The seventeen eager beavers continued to stare. Alcohol, Iris realized, had done it to her again. If she hadn't been almost through a bottle of wine when she'd read Tom's e-mail, she would never have chosen to accept this ridiculous mission.

Iris once again vowed to limit herself to two glasses of wine a night. Anything over that seemed to loosen her moorings. “Well,” she said, “I'm sure you're all surprised to see me this morning. My name is Iris Benson. I usually teach women's issues in American Studies, but I'm filling in for Professor Putnam today, as he has family issues to attend to.”

The seventeen heads nodded and smiled at her. First-years never,
ever
questioned anything or anyone.

Iris's head began to ache.

“Well,” she said, doing her best not to sound as despairing as she felt, “I understand you have all written essays about what you expect of your college experiences. Who would like to go first reading hers aloud?”

Five eager beavers raised their hands. For just a moment, Iris looked into the face of one of them, a serious, bespectacled young woman with piles of red hair, and thought she was facing her own, resurrected self.