Small Blessings (40 page)

Tears and wonder shone in Rose's eyes. She reached up and touched his shoulder with just one finger, as though needing to prove he was really there. “Oh, Tom,” she said, whispered so softly he could only just hear. “God help me, but I think I must love you. I really think I must.”

*   *   *

Mr. Brownlow took himself off to the College Inn shortly after two in the morning. Standing at the open front door and watching the little man trundle down the front walk, Agnes impulsively called out an invitation to come back for breakfast.

Mr. Brownlow turned back. “Thank you. I'd be very pleased to breakfast with you.” Then, with a brief wave, he was on his way again.

Back inside, Agnes poured herself one more Scotch, her third, and took it upstairs. On impulse, she poked her head into her son-in-law's room and was surprised and pleased to see his empty bed. Tom's absence could only mean one thing: He'd gone to Rose Callahan. Tom Putnam, man of muddle, had mutated into Tom Putnam, man of action!

Agnes raised her glass in a silent toast.

Henry's door was also open, and she checked on him as a matter of course. The boy slept on his side under the watchful gaze of Albus Dumbledore and the rest of the Hogwarts crowd. His soccer ball sat beside his shoes on the floor, ready to roll with Henry through his second day at school.

Agnes smiled down at the sleeping boy. He would be done a great wrong by the probably well-meaning Mr. Brownlow if he decided to whisk Henry back to Mississippi. Which, despite her legal bluster, Agnes knew might well be possible. For a time, anyway. The estate could simply sue Tom into bankruptcy and give him no choice but to cave.

Would she, Agnes wondered, be willing to bankrupt herself for Henry's sake? Now, there was an interesting question. And, wonder of wonders, the answer wasn't a definite no.

The boy was, in her opinion, adapting to his new surroundings and his new people with remarkably good sense. For the most part, Henry seemed to trust Tom, which was a smart move on his part. After all, she, who trusted almost nobody, trusted Tom Putnam. Once that man took people on, he took them on for life. At supper, Henry had talked on and on about play period and how he'd read aloud to the other children (only the
good
readers got to do that), and about what the other children had brought in their lunch boxes.

Agnes was still amused that Henry had traded his slice of apple pie
and
his banana for two Double Stuf Oreos. Eventually he'd gotten around to asking her (shyly) if she might buy him some Double Stufs at the grocery store. If, that is, he'd added hastily, it wasn't too much trouble, and if Mr. Brownlow didn't mind paying for them—and
only
for them—out of the money that Henry had given back to him.

He'd also several times referred to Sam Driskell at dinner as his “best friend,” which Agnes thought was probably a bit premature, but still, it was nice that Henry had enough social gumption to claim a best friend.

Agnes impulsively reached down and touched the sleeping boy. Just a touch, no more. Just to try on how it felt to think this child might be within reach for the rest of her life. Henry stirred, then rolled over on his back, dragging his covers with him. Agnes bent over him and carefully undid the tangle, just as she'd once done for Marjory, who'd been a restless sleeper until medication had begun conking her out.

Henry had come to them trailing so many unanswered questions. How old would he be before he realized what remarkable people his grandparents had been? When should they tell him his mother was dead? And above all else, why had he been sent to them? Why had Serafine Despré picked Thomas Marvin Putnam to be her son's guardian and hope? The two had never met, as far as Agnes could tell, and Tom wasn't exactly someone people in Mississippi would have heard about. Mr. Brownlow might be able to figure out why Serafine had picked Tom to raise her child, but asking him to try would mean admitting publicly that Tom was not Henry's biological father. Which, Agnes suspected, Mr. Brownlow had probably already guessed, but for some reason had chosen not to talk about. For the last three hours, she and Mr. Brownlow had tap-danced around admitting what was what with Henry while, at the same time, supposedly working out what to do with his money.

The idea they'd come up with was quite wonderful, Agnes thought. It was a way to counteract what Mr. Brownlow had termed the sad digitalization of community while incidentally saving Rose Callahan's (and so Tom's) bacon. This life thing was so strange. Today at breakfast, no one in the Putnam-Callahan-Tattle household had laid eyes on Mason Brownlow. Tonight they were going to bed with a big chunk of their collective fate in his hands.

“I need to sleep on it, Ms. Tattle,” Mr. Brownlow had said, standing at the front door to say good night, “and do a bit more research before I'm certain it can work, but right now it seems clear to me that what I've tentatively proposed fully meets the Després' requirements. The language of the trust is very clear. There's that chunk of money set aside to provide for Henry's raising, but the bulk of the twenty-five-million estate is to be held intact for Henry until his twenty-second birthday. Until that time it is to be ‘invested in ways that will do real people some actual good.' I did encourage them to be more specific about ‘real people' and ‘actual good,' but they refused. They said they trusted my ability to know ‘real people' when I saw them, and ‘actual good' when it presented itself.”

Mr. Brownlow had looked steadily at Agnes while he'd said this, then held out his hand.

She'd shaken it, and much to her amazement (Agnes found herself smiling as she remembered this) Mr. Brownlow had held on for a moment longer than necessary before wishing her good night.

Agnes reached down now and gave Henry's covers a final straightening tug. Then she turned and crossed the hall to her room, leaving both her own and Henry's room doors open since her love-struck son-in-law was not available and the boy might need something in the night.

 

chapter 19

A bird woke Iris, shrieking away in that annoying, bright-eyed, early morning way birds have. And then what sounded like a tractor rolled by.

Her brain immediately registered whispers of alarm. Her cabin was too far out in the woods for any tractors to be rolling by; ergo, she wasn't in her cabin.

Iris lay there for a moment with her eyes squeezed shut, trying to figure out her location from the feel of whatever she slept on. Had she been on a really bad bender and had another blackout? Was she still drunk? She didn't
feel
drunk or hungover, just weird.

Then, with the force of Superman's punch—
Zowee! Blam! Kaboom!
—reality was back: She was completely sober. What's more, she'd been completely sober for almost four days and had been told by several doctors, her counselor, and Dean Eagle to think hard and long before she ever drank again.

The goddamn bird shrieked again, and Iris's entire being cried out for alcohol. Or Valium. Or better yet, for both. She opened her eyes to see if any mood-altering substances might be handy, only to discover that it was still mostly dark.

Where the hell
was
she?

Wherever she was, she was lying on her back. Iris reached out tentatively with one hand and felt nothing but emptiness. She reached out with the other and felt a vertical wall of puffy upholstery.

Was she on a couch?

Whose couch?

Could she have blacked out from habit?

Iris swung her legs around and sat up, unconsciously bracing herself for a wave of nausea followed by engulfing pain in her temples. Neither occurred. Well,
that
was certainly different.

The first strands of real daylight had begun wandering about. The room Iris was in was smallish, rather jumbled, its walls entirely covered either by bookshelves or framed photographs. There were three open windows that she could see; one directly across from her looked out on a small front porch. The goddamn bird had started shouting again, now joined by a disgustingly energetic choir of other birds. No two of them sang the same notes; it was, in effect, a blab school of tweets. Why had so many poets gone on about this racket for so many centuries? Iris vowed right then that she would never again teach any poet who'd written as much as a phrase in praise of birds!

The day was strengthening rapidly, light flouncing into the corners of this funny little space. Iris had a sudden, vague memory of a woman sitting in that chair over there, looking up from her book to smile at her. The woman had a lot of dark hair and was badly dressed. Nothing she'd worn matched, and she'd kept hiking her cowboy-booted feet up on the coffee table so her face appeared to sit on top of a couple of pointy-toed boot soles.…

Rose!
Rose Callahan had been the woman sitting in that chair.

That was it; she was sleeping on the couch in Rose Callahan's living room.

All of last night came scampering back to Iris. She was here because she'd been worried that if she went home, she'd drink. She'd gone to Tom's office to ask for help (possibly for the first time since she'd learned to tie her own shoes), Tom had taken her home for dinner, and then Rose had brought her here. It appeared that alcohol and drugs had reduced her, macho Iris Benson, to uncomfortable dependence on the kindness of others.

Well, didn't that go along with what the treatment people had yammered at her all weekend?
You can't go back to alcohol, Iris, without destroying yourself and your life, and you can't go forward without help from other people.
Might this morning signify the start of, if not a
brave
new world, at least a
new
new world?

Iris was engulfed by a great yawn that began in her mouth and spread to the tips of her fingers and toes. She looked at her watch. Six fifteen. Much too early for any civilized person to get up, but the chance of her sleeping again in her present, unmedicated state was about the same as the chance of pigs flying.

Immediately a covey of tiny winged pigs flew across the room's ceiling.

Heavens, could this be the D.T.'s? Should she wake Rose up and ask if she had any Valium? Hadn't she read somewhere that people in danger of going into the D.T.'s should be put on a Valium drip? Perhaps it would be better if she just poked around Rose's bathroom to see if she had any suitable downers. There was always the chance that if she woke Rose up and asked for pills, Rose might misunderstand the medicinal nature of her request and go all moral on her and flush any stray downers she
did
have down the toilet.

Just at that moment Russell Jacobs walked briskly by the window that looked out on the diminutive front porch. A few seconds later, there was a tentative tapping on the front door beside the window. “Rose! Rose, open up and let me in! I must talk with you!”

Even sober, Iris was able to enjoy the prospect of discombobulating Russell Jacobs. She padded over to the door, assumed what was left of her hauteur, and opened up.

Russell Jacobs's horrified stare was everything she'd hoped for. “My God!” he said. “What are
you
doing here?”

“Having a sleepover with Rose,” Iris said grandly. “What do you want?”

Russell hesitated, giving Iris a moment to realize he was—there really was no other word for it—a mess. Russell Jacobs, Professor Natty, stood before her, greasy-haired, unshaven, with bloodshot eyes and a wrinkled white shirt that hung half in, half out of wrinkled khaki pants.

Iris frowned. She needed
her
world to change if she were to stay sober, not the
whole
world. Russell Jacobs looking insufferably spiffy was one of the maypoles around which reality danced.

She held open the screen door. “Why don't you come in, Russell? You look terrible.”

Russell's bleary eyes focused on her chest. “Well, you don't look so hot yourself,” he said, with a flash of his old self. “What are you doing in that T-shirt? I never took you for a groupie.”

Iris looked down to find she was wearing a large Dave Matthews Band T-shirt that must belong to Rose. She did not remember putting it on, but, as she rather liked DMB, it wasn't the tackiest thing she could be wearing. The band had, after all, played at this very college not so many years ago. Still, as Russell had obviously meant his remark as a dig, she needed to come up with a suitable rejoinder.

Didn't she?

Or should she just give it a rest?

Oh, what the hell! Iris opened the screen door a little wider. “Come on in, Russell. Rose and I have to get up soon anyway. I'm trying to get sober, and we're going to my house to clean out the whiskey bottles.”

Russell trailed bourbon fumes as he pushed past her. Wow! Professor Natty had fallen off the wagon with a big
clunk.
“Where's Rose?” he said, rounding on her from the middle of the room. “I need to speak with her.”

“Russell,” Iris said, feeling ineffective and silly, “you can't just barge into Rose's bedroom. She's still asleep.”

But Russell was already through the archway on the other side of the room. “Have to speak to her,” he flung back over his shoulder. “Up all night thinking. Need to relax.”

Iris trailed after him. “But Russell…,” she said, and stopped. But Russell, what? But Russell, Rose's job today is to keep
me
safe, not you.

Russell flung open the door to Rose's bedroom and stopped so suddenly that Iris bumped into him.

“Hello, Russell,” a man said groggily from inside the room. “You're up early.”

It took Iris a moment to realize that it was Tom Putnam who'd spoken, and that he, too, was having a sleepover with Rose.

*   *   *

One moment Rose was asleep; the next she was up to her chin in complexity, which, for her, was the deepest sort of trouble.