Small Blessings (22 page)

The wave of concerned people swept past him toward the parking lots behind the chapel. The president had disappeared. A few packs of chattering students had come out of the dorms and were heading for the dining hall.

Tom began walking toward home again, the thoughts in his head as disordered as the papers in his briefcase. It had been years and years and years since so much had happened to him, and he couldn't seem to sort any of it out. His brain had been dulled by two decades of trying
not
to think while, at the same time, finding the energy to do his duty and get through another day. And now there was Henry, who so obviously
needed
him. What did people
do,
exactly, that made them good parents?

“Hi, Professor Putnam!” Tom did not have to turn around to know he was being hailed by Susan Mason, the freckled second-year who'd had such interesting things to say in class about
Othello
.

“Hello,” Tom said. “You on your way to the dining hall?”

Susan Mason shook her head. “Not yet. I'm trying to get to the Book Store before it closes to buy my little brother a college bill cap.”

Tom was instantly attentive. “You have a little brother?”

Susan beamed. “I sure do. And he thinks it's very cool to have a big sister in college. He wants the hat so he can impress all his friends in second grade.”

“Oh, he's in second grade.”

“Yes!” Susan said happily. “Doesn't that make him the same age as your son?”

*   *   *

Hanging up the phone, Agnes wondered if the world might not be tilting as well as turning. How else could she explain her son-in-law's announcement that he was bringing Rose Callahan and a student home to dinner?

During their short conversation, Tom had raced through some loopy tale of going to the Book Store to buy Henry a hat with a student who had a little brother just ten months older than Henry. Rose Callahan had been working, and he'd impulsively—and who knew Tom Putnam
had
impulses—invited both her and the student to dinner. His thought was that Henry might enjoy the crowd, and that he and Agnes might pick up some tips from the student with the little brother on how to relate to small boys. So was this all right? And was there enough food or should he pick up some fried chicken?

When the phone rang, Agnes had had to force herself to come inside and answer it; force herself to leave Henry and his Tonka dump truck on their own for five minutes. Who knew hovering was addictive? Then, when she'd hung up and turned around to go outside again, there was Henry standing three feet away from her, truck tucked under one arm, regarding her soberly. Perhaps hovering was a family disease—if, indeed, they were a family.

Agnes folded her arms and regarded him soberly right back. “It seems we're having company for supper. You up for that?”

Henry blinked but otherwise didn't move.

“That's exactly how I feel,” Agnes said. “But there you are. Shall you and I go get some potatoes from the pantry so we can start peeling them?”

Henry nodded solemnly. Well, surprise, surprise! Surely that counted as almost speaking. Agnes held out her hand, something she hadn't done to another person in probably twenty years.

Surprise, surprise again! Henry took it.

*   *   *

Supper was over, and something strange and wonderful had happened.

Henry, wearing his new hat, sat at the kitchen table playing Go Fish with Rose and Susan Mason. “Go
Fish
!” Henry screamed, hugging his cards and shaking with glee.

As far as Tom could tell from where he stood washing dishes at the kitchen sink, Rose Callahan really was a witch. A good witch, to be sure, but a witch all the same. Her powers had pried Henry open just as surely as they'd pried him open.

When Tom had given Henry his new hat, Henry had just stood there staring at it. Then Rose, the Good Witch, had stepped up and said, “Hi, Henry. I'm back. Wanna go play in your room?” and that was that. Henry had studied her briefly, slapped his hat on his head, taken Rose's hand, and headed for the stairs.

For the next half hour Tom had made distracted conversation with Susan Mason while listening to what could only be termed a ruckus coming from upstairs. Then, when Agnes had sent Susan upstairs to announce dinner, there had been a great clattering and the newly bespelled Henry had come sliding into the dining room in his sock feet, shouting, “I win! I win!”

Yes, Rose Callahan was a witch. She'd waved her roses at him and given Henry her hand and a couple of hugs, and
shazamm!
Both of them were
back!
Resilience, Tom had read somewhere, was first and foremost a matter of feeling safe, of feeling that just because things were different didn't mean things were dangerous. Was that Rose Callahan's gift? Bestowing a feeling that in her presence, whatever everything was, it was okay?

Henry obviously thought so. And Tom
felt
so. Sadly, he was too old to confuse feelings with reality. Still, while rinsing plates, he'd begun humming “Tecumseh Valley,” an old Townes Van Zandt song he'd once plunked out on the guitar while dreaming of his ideal woman.
Her ways were free and it seemed to me that sunshine walked beside her.

“Would it be rude to ask what song you're humming?” Susan Mason asked from the doorway.

The world jerked back into the here and now. Which was actually, Tom realized, quite a pleasant place to be. He rinsed the soap off his hands and turned to Susan. “Oh, just an obscure ditty by a singer-songwriter who drank and drugged himself to death years ago.”

“How sad,” she said.

Is it sad?
Tom wondered.
Should you shed tears for someone who dies a bit young, but still manages to leave some truly grand songs behind him?
“I guess,” he said, reaching for the hand towel Agnes kept on a hook planted within easy reach of the sink.

That was that. The dishes were done.

Susan was holding the Book Store bag that contained her little brother's ball cap. Tom made a mental note to search that boy out when Susan graduated and shake his hand. If it weren't for him this lovely evening would never have happened.

“I want to thank you for a lovely evening,” Susan said.

“Are you leaving us?”

“Yes. I'm afraid I have to. I told a friend I'd meet her at the library to study for a French test tomorrow.”

Tom put down the hand towel and gave her a little bow.
“Bonne nuit, mademoiselle,”
he said.

Surprisingly, Susan Mason, the gawky eager beaver, dropped a perfectly acceptable curtsy. Especially considering she was wearing jeans.
“Bonne nuit, monsieur.”

“Let me see you out,” Tom said, offering her his arm.

*   *   *

He'd just shut the front door behind Susan when Henry—the new, verbal Henry—marched into the foyer from the living room and parked himself between Tom and escape. The child was still slight, still froth-haired, but he'd shaken off whatever voices from his past had been telling him to sit still and stay quiet. “Can Rose please spend the night with me?” he asked.

Tom's pedantic mind automatically noted with approval that Henry had said “please.” Retesia appeared to have trained the boy well in the use of small courtesies. Only then did Tom move on to the question itself:
Could Rose Callahan spend the night?

Some long-sleeping part of his heart woke up and banged hard against his chest, making it pleasantly difficult to breathe. Tom reminded himself sternly that this was Henry's idea, not his. He leaned over and picked the little boy up. Henry stiffened slightly but did not protest. Tom noted with pleasure that the boy's cheeks were flushed with outdoor rosiness, and that freckles were threatening to break out along the bridge of his small, straight nose. “Where would Rose sleep?”

“In my room. I got a big bed.”

Tom felt deeply pleased that Henry had referred to the newly redecorated guest room as his room. And he was looking up at him as expectantly as
any
child would while asking permission of his father about something important. “Have you asked Rose if she'd
like
to spend the night?” Tom asked.

Henry shook his head vigorously. “Ask you first. Then ask Agnes.
Then
ask Rose.”

Rose appeared in the foyer. “I think it's time for me to go. Thank you both for a lovely evening.”

“
Can
she?” Henry hissed urgently into Tom's ear. “Rose is my friend.”

Tom looked into Rose's eyes and everything he'd ever held sacred about convention flew away. “Henry would like to ask you to spend the night with him.”

Henry wriggled violently to be let down. Once ambulatory, he scooted over to Rose. “Please, please,
please,
Rose. You could read Harry Potter to me.”

Tom felt a stab of disappointment. Henry had asked someone else to read to him. Rose, however, did not miss a beat. “Henry, that is so nice of you. I haven't had a friend invite me to spend the night in years.” Then, abruptly, she blushed and dropped her eyes. “I mean invite me for a sleepover,” she corrected. “But tomorrow is a workday, so I better sleep at home tonight.”

“I'll read Harry Potter to you,” Tom said quickly.

Henry made what had to be his considering face. “Okay,” he said. “But I'd rather have Rose.”

Tom surprised himself by laughing. “Well, Henry, it looks as though you'll have to make do with me. Now say good night to Rose, run upstairs, put your pj's on and brush your teeth, and I'll be up in a minute to read to you.”

Rose knelt down and held out her arms to Henry, who moved toward her. She pulled him into a hug, then released him. “Thank you for a lovely evening, Henry. I hope I'll see you again soon.”

“Tomorrow?” Henry twisted around to look up at Tom. “Can Rose come over tomorrow?”

Rose smiled, first at Tom, then at Henry. “We'll see,” she said. “Now run upstairs and get ready for bed like your father asked you to, okay?”

“Okay.” That was that. Henry made for the stairs and ran up them. His clattering feet, Tom thought, was the best sound he'd heard in years. It was so boyish. For four days, Henry had made almost no noise.

He reached down for Rose's hand in order to help her up. Then, to the surprise of them both, he held it for a minute. “I don't know what magic you performed on Henry, but whatever it was has removed a very distressing spell from him.”

Rose looked up at him and made no move to take back her hand. “I think the magic is you and Agnes and time.”

“Really?” There was a sensation of something surrounding them as he held her hand that Tom had never experienced before. It felt as though he were living in two realities at the same time: the Regular World, which was rackety and confusing, and Rose's World, which was warm and calm. Tom felt the winds of enchantment blowing again. “Would you have dinner with me this weekend?”

“Dinner? With you? You mean just the two of us?”

“Yes,” he said,
not
dropping her hand, quite amazed at how confident he felt.

Rose, however, looked troubled. “I … I don't know. I'm not sure. I mean, your wife just died.”

“Ah!” Tom said. “Marjory. You're right, people might not understand. I guess the question is, how much should we care about that?”

That struck a spark. Rose was instantly defiant. “I don't care a fig about what other people think, but I do care about her. If I had dinner with you so soon after she died, I would feel disrespectful of her memory. I mean, she did her best, and don't both of us need to honor that?”

“Of course,” Tom said firmly. “But I'd also like to start living. And I'd like to do that by having dinner with you whenever you're ready.”

Rose's gaze drifted downward until she was looking at her hand, still surrounded by Tom's. “It could be that I'm so uncomfortable because I just broke up with my boyfriend.”

Boyfriend!
Tom dropped her hand immediately. It hadn't even occurred to him that Rose might have a boyfriend. But of course she would! She would have men lining up to bask in her sunshine. His confidence deflated like a punctured beach ball. “I'm sorry. I didn't know. About the boyfriend, I mean.”

Rose had begun rummaging in her hair again. “I don't suppose you'd like to shoot hoops with me for an hour tomorrow morning around ten thirty?” she said, not quite looking at him.

*   *   *

Henry lay under his new Harry Potter bedspread beside his newly Harry Potter–curtained window. A giant poster of Dumbledore and the Hogwarts Castle gang hung on the wall opposite his bed, carefully positioned at Henry height. Tom could
feel
those eyes as he read chapter two of
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
, trying his best to bring those fabled characters to life.
This,
he thought,
is fun.

It was ten o'clock by the time Tom closed the book; much too late for a six-year-old to be up, in his opinion, but as this was the first night Henry had actually
been
there in any way other than physical, Tom wanted it to last.

Henry was regarding him so seriously that Tom felt a riffle of panic. What if the boy only talked when Rose was around?

Oh well,
Tom told himself,
there's only one way to find out.
“Did you enjoy the book?” he asked.

Henry nodded. “Can we read some more tomorrow? Please?”

A feeling he thought was probably joy flooded Tom. “We certainly can!”

“When?”

Guilt immediately replaced joy inside Tom. He would be deserting Henry for an hour tomorrow morning to go play basketball with Rose. And, if she'd said yes to dinner, he would have deserted Henry again tomorrow evening. What had possessed him to try to have a life and Henry at the same time? He thought of Romeo, the president's greyhound, completely freaked out by options.