The Fragrance of Geraniums (A Time of Grace Book 1) (12 page)

“Hey, well, just
talk to him at rehearsal,” suggested Paulie with an encouraging smile.

This time, Grace
couldn’t refrain from letting her own lips respond by turning up tentatively.

“Here, can I
carry your books for you?” Paulie offered, reaching out for the four-book stack
piled on Grace’s desk. “The choir meets in the auditorium.”

Grace paused in
the act of pulling her thin cardigan from the back of her chair. No boy had
ever asked to carry her books before now! She tucked a stray strand of hair
behind her ears with a trembling hand, her throat as dry as chalk. Should she
let him carry them? But she wasn’t going to rehearsal!

She didn’t need
to worry about giving Paulie a reply. When Grace didn’t give him an immediate,
“no,” he picked the stack right up. “Is this all you have?” he asked.

Grace shook her
head and opened the top of the desk, where she stored her pencil case, tablets,
and a few other textbooks. She gathered them together in a neat little pile
with the pencil case topping it all. Paulie added that accumulation to the
stack in his arm. Then Grace reached beneath the desk chair and retrieved two
more books. Paulie reached for these as well, but Grace hesitated. “These are
my library books,” she explained, feeling a little more shy. She hid the
emotion by tucking the two books under her arm quickly and looking Paulie
straight in the face like she didn’t care what some boy thought about her being
a bookworm.

No matter how
charming his cheek indentations were.

But Paulie’s
smile didn’t fade. In fact, it just grew wider. “Okay,” he said. He gestured
toward the classroom door. “Shall we?”

S
he wasn’t scary
at all. Paulie wondered why he’d never had the courage to talk to Ruth Ann’s
friend Grace before today. Well, that wasn’t true. He and Grace had gone to the
same school together for two years, so they must have said
something
to
one another at some point. But, of course, Paulie meant really
talk.
Like he was doing now, walking down the school corridor at Grace’s side,
letting his lips flap about who-knew-what.

She was
certainly quiet; that much was obvious. Hurrying so they wouldn’t be late for
rehearsal, he noticed how Grace kept her head bowed a little, not really
looking where she was going. More staring at her feet than anything else. He
wondered what went on inside her head, beneath that sweep of golden hair, every
last strand combed into place. Except for that one lock that she continued to
twist and tuck behind her small pink ear.

“So, what books
are you reading?” he asked, smiling down at her from a full ten-inch advantage.
He expected it would be some female-in-distress romance or a Nancy Drew – which
would be worse.
She is, after all, Ruth Ann’s friend.

She shot a
glance up at him. “Tennyson,” she answered, almost defiantly. “
Idylls of the
King
.”

Paulie’s grin
widened. “Hey, you’re a girl who knows how to pick out a book,” he complimented
sincerely and was glad to see her wary countenance relax a little – a very
little – bit. “I love Tennyson,” he offered as they reached the auditorium’s
double-doors.
Maybe it’ll bring another smile to her face.
“I thought I
was the only one who liked it when we read
In Memoriam
in Mr. K.’s class.”

Grace’s eyes
grew large in surprise, and they paused before the doors, Paulie’s fingers
closing around the door handle. “Oh, no. How could you
not
love Tennyson?
His poems are so… so wonderful,” she finished, red blushing over her face like
a McIntosh apple in the autumn.

“Agreed.” Paulie
pulled open the door, letting out the sound of chatter from the students
already gathered in the auditorium. Wow, a lot of kids had showed up. They
filled the front two rows of the large room, stretching across from left to
right. Mr. Kinner sat at the piano up front, apparently looking through some
music before they began to rehearse.

Paulie began to
stride down the center aisle. Suddenly, he realized Grace hadn’t continued at
his side. He turned to see where she’d gone and found that she lingered near
the entrance. Her pale face with its large unblinking eyes stood out in the dim
entryway lighting.

“Hey, you
coming?” asked Paulie, backtracking a few steps.

Grace’s gaze
flickered from Mr. K. at the piano to Paulie. “Uh… I think… I have to use the
lavatory.” The words stumbled out of her mouth.

“Oh, sure.”
Paulie smiled and placed her stack of books on one of the auditorium’s back row
seats. “I’ll set your books here for you.”

“Thanks.” But
she didn’t sound grateful at all. Just preoccupied. With what, though? This was
the first rehearsal of the new choir! Girls. You couldn’t figure them out.

“No problem,”
Paulie replied. “Hey, don’t be too long. Mr. K.’ll probably be starting soon.”
Sure enough, just then, Mr. K. rose from the piano bench, climbed the short
stair to the stage, and walked to the center of it. His footsteps echoed on the
wooden flooring, shiny with wax. Paulie watched the teacher for a moment before
the sound of the auditorium door clicking shut caught his attention. Grace had
slipped back out to the corridor to use the lav.

“Paulie! Paulie,
over here!” His chum Elliot Krieger stood up in the second row, beckoning to
him. “Got an empty seat for you, buddy!”

Paulie glanced
one more time at the closed auditorium door before shrugging off Grace’s odd
behavior and moving with quick steps to join his friends.

G
race scurried
through the corridor, looking over her shoulder to see if Paulie had followed
her.
Why should he follow you, Grace? You’re paranoid! He just thinks that
you’re using the lavatory.
And she would visit the lavatory, too, because
she didn’t want to commit the mortal sin of lying, after all.

As she came up
to the creamy-tiled girls’ restroom, Grace caught her breath as she realized,
I
already did lie. I forged Mama’s name and told Mr. Kinner that she had given me
permission to join the chorus.
The guilt rose as bile from her stomach. Now
she would have to receive the sacrament of Confession as soon as possible. Mama
always told Grace and the other kids about her great-uncle who had lied about
something and hadn’t gone to Confession before he died. Mama still prayed for
her great-uncle’s soul, but she said she had doubts regarding whether it would
do any good, seeing that he had committed a mortal sin.

Grace entered
the lavatory with slow steps. She could see two high-heeled feet below the
stall dividers, but she couldn’t say for sure to which teacher the feet
belonged. Before the occupant could emerge, Grace ducked into the other stall
and latched the door, leaning against the green-painted metal. The girls’
bathroom smelled heavily of bleach and ever-so-lightly of smoke.
Some of the
bad girls must have been lighting up cigarettes in here today.
She was glad
that the teacher in the next stall – whoever she was – had come into the
lavatory first and so couldn’t suspect Grace of smoking.

The toilet
flushed in the stall beside her, and Grace felt the tremor through the metal as
the door unlocked and opened. The high-heels tapped their way over to the sink.
Grace listened as the woman washed her hands and dried them. Then more taps
came, and Grace could be sure the woman had left the lavatory.

Slowly, Grace
unlatched her own stall door and came into the silent bathroom, like a scared
rabbit hopping oh-so-gingerly into the twilight surrounding his burrow. She
walked over to the smeary mirror, reflecting the bathroom’s glaring light, and
stared at her own face.

I wish Mama had
said yes.

That would have
prevented all these problems, after all. The priest surely would excuse her
forgery because she had not willfully misled Mr. Kinner. Now, Mama had denied Grace’s
request, and so Grace’s falsification of Mama’s signature appeared an outright
falsehood, something she’d meant to do.

Why did I sign
Mama’s name, anyway?
she
wondered, looking at her own large eyes in the mirror.
I could have just
asked her if I’d thought she would say yes.

And the answer
came to her: In her heart, she’d known that Mama would say no.

And I didn’t
want to face that. I… I want to be in this choir so bad.
The tears
bubbled up and over the rims of Grace’s eyes. Trying hard to stop them, she
crossed her arms over her chest and bit her lips.

But it was no
use. The tears wouldn’t stop but merely increased at her attempts to stem the
flow.
Stop! Stop!
Her mind screamed it but for once, Grace knew herself
unable to force her emotions to bow the knee to her will.

I want this,
she realized,
thinking of the auditorium with its brightly-lit stage; the popular, nervy kids
practically bouncing excitedly out of their front-row seats; Mr. Kinner
standing there, exquisite as one of the heroes in Grace’s books; and even
Paulie shining his welcoming smile at her. “Don’t be long,” he’d grinned before
she fled to the lavatory to try to figure a way out of this mess she’d gotten
herself into.

Mama has no
right to take this away from me.
The thought popped into her brain
suddenly and with a force that knocked the breath out of her heart. She saw her
mother scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing the kitchen floor on calloused knees;
operating that clunky antique washing machine twice a week; baking and cooking
constantly for her thoughtless kids and her unappreciative husband.
That’s
how I’m gonna end up,
thought Grace.
That’s how Mama wants me to end up.
Her fists clenched into balls at her sides. She remembered her mama’s mocking
words that morning before Grace had left for school, and she knew she was
right.
I won’t – I won’t – I won’t!
Grace stared hard into the mirror,
watching as her eyes turned to ice.

I will be in Mr.
Kinner’s choir. I’m nearly sixteen years old. Mama can’t stop me,
Grace asserted,
lifting her chin boldly and dashing away the rest of her tears. A weight seemed
to lift from her chest. She breathed in deeply and turned on the sink faucet.
The cool water refreshed her flushed cheeks. Grace wiped her face on a paper
towel and raked her fingers through her hair to neaten it. Hopefully, no one
would see the red rimming her eyes. Other than that, no visible signs remained
of her sobbing attack.

With a feverish
heart, Grace rushed from the lavatory. Her skipping steps brought her back to Mr.
Kinner and the chorus. She could hear the throb of voices in the auditorium,
warming up.

I
t was tough to
please two women at once.

Charlie put his
back into raking, scraping the ground with vigor, shoveling thoughts of
Gertrude and Sarah from his mind. The pile of dead leaves grew into quite a
mound. The front lawn looked pretty good; he’d go around to the back after
poking his head into the priest’s house to see if he couldn’t snag a drink. A
lemonade, at least. Though he
was
a priest; maybe he had some good red wine
available.

The church
building rose high and gray behind Charlie, giving him the shadow of its
blessing. As it should. The Picolettis had always paid their dues to God.
Charlie had seen the arrival and departure – some through death, others through
reassignment – of four priests during his lifetime in Chetham. The first priest
had baptized him and his two siblings. The second had administered Charlie’s
First Communion and confirmed him. The third had performed the Sacrament of
Marriage for him. Father Fredrick was number four. He hadn’t done anything for
Charlie yet, but maybe he’d bury him one of these days.

Setting his rake
to the side, Charlie had just determined he’d go inside and ask to use the
restroom or something when the Father himself appeared, smiling out the church
door at Charlie. Father Fredrick wasn’t a bad chap as far as church men went.
He kept to himself and let folks keep their business to themselves. Charlie
appreciated that kind of thoughtfulness in a priest.

“Looks like
you’ve got quite the pile here,” remarked Father Fredrick. He hadn’t quite
reached his fifties, yet he had a full crop of hair as white as confectioner’s
sugar. His eyes bulged pleasantly as he talked, joining with the priest’s
stocky build to remind Charlie and the other parishioners of a polite, pious
bulldog. “Do you think you’ll finish by dinner?”

It was already
three o’clock in the afternoon. Charlie started to give the priest an odd look,
but then he remembered that the priest had come from a snooty background. The
religious man called “supper,” “dinner,” and “dinner” to him was “luncheon.” So
Charlie nodded. “Oh, I think so,” he said. “At the latest, by five o’clock.”

The priest
smiled benignly. “Good. You wouldn’t want your wife’s dinner to get cold.”
Suddenly, the cheerful expression fell from Father Fredrick’s fleshy, mobile face.
In its place, the priest attached a different mien: a concerned and somewhat
stern one. Startled, Charlie put up his guard, ready for whatever the priest
might say.

“You know,
Charlie, I’ve always seen you as a family man,” Father Fredrick began, his
well-fed jowls flapping a bit in the wind that whipped around the corner of the
church.

Warily, Charlie
nodded his agreement. “That I am, Father.” He wrapped both meaty hands around
the rake’s handle and waited.

Father Fredrick
held Charlie’s gaze, his bright blue eyes scalding.
You can’t intimidate
him, that’s for sure!
“Well, I’ve heard reports…”

The priest
seemed to be searching for just the right words to explain. His lips tightened
together, then released. He must’ve figured out how to say it. “A reliable
source tells me that you are not entirely faithful, Charlie.” The priest
glanced left and right, as if afraid someone might have overheard.

Faithful? What’d
the priest mean? Of course Charlie was faithful! He provided for his family,
didn’t he? Wasn’t he doing yard work right now, earning a pittance from the
parish to add to his weekly wages? His eyes narrowed in disbelief. “Faithful?”
he echoed aloud, cocking his head to the side.

“Yes, faithful
to your wife,” the priest clarified.

“To Sarah?”
Charlie would have snorted at the humor of it, if he hadn’t been so insulted by
what the man insinuated. “’Course I’m faithful to my wife, Father. No man’s
more so. And if he tells you otherwise, he’s a lying Kaiser.” Charlie ground
those words out, turning them up and out of his mouth like fresh sod in a
flowerbed.

Faithful? Didn’t
he provide for Sarah? And all them kids? Hadn’t he given her six – no, seven
children? What further faithfulness did the priest require? Charlie knew that
he was loyal to Sarah in every way that could be expected – realistically, at
least.

Trying to keep
his anger down, he clamped his jaws shut so that the muscles pumped with blood.
He should not – he would not become angry with a priest, may his mother rest
quietly in her grave! To show his honesty, Charlie lifted his square chin up
and stared Father Fredrick straight in the eyeballs.
I’d love to see him
flinch.

But Father
Fredrick retained his calm demeanor, merely returning the gaze with his own
cool eyes. After a moment, he let the corners of his neat mouth turn upward
ever so slightly in what Charlie had come to see as the sign of the priest’s
benevolence. “Well,” the father said, “that’s good to hear from your own lips,
Charlie.”

Charlie nodded,
brows contracting into a cloud against his will. His hands throttled the rake
handle.
I’d like to find whoever’s been having a good time telling the
priest about me and thrash them good!

“Would you care
for some fresh lemonade? That’s very thirsty work you’re doing,” the priest
remarked, the same slight smile touching his mouth.

Suddenly,
Charlie’s desire for lemonade fled. “Uh, no, Father. I’m not thirsty at all.”
Without waiting for the priest to go back inside the church, Charlie turned
back to raking, lashing the ground with gusto.

G
race flew all
the way home. The tops of her shoes shook free from the soles; the rubber bands
had broken on the first block.
I’ll have to ask Cliff for some more,
she
thought, knowing that Cliff had lots of the cheap “ammunition” for his
rubber-band gun. Sweat began to run down her back, but she didn’t want to take
the time to stop, remove her cardigan, and tie it around her waist. She could
feel her blouse untucking from her skirt’s waistband.

I have to hurry!
Mama’s gonna be so mad!
Grace pumped her legs faster, not caring as much
about the people who saw her running as about her fuming mama, waiting for her
at home.

Oh, but the
chorus rehearsal had been glorious while it lasted! Grace couldn’t remember the
last time she’d enjoyed anything so much. Except for the occasional pang of
guilt she’d felt when she glanced at the clock or at the stack of permission
slips resting on Mr. Kinner’s piano, the hour glowed. Mr. Kinner had placed her
with the other sopranos, to the bottom right of the choir. They’d warmed up their
voices with challenging exercises, and Grace felt a thrill run up her spine at
the sound of all the other students singing up and down the scale together, all
around her.
If only it hadn’t ended!

There wasn’t
enough time to stop at the red-flowered house today, to just stand there gazing
at the hanging baskets’ flaming beauty. She dashed by it, not slowing down for
an instant. Yet Grace couldn’t resist peering out the corner of her eye at the
porch just to see that flash of scarlet that had glanced back at her for the
past month. After all, she hadn’t paused this morning, either, on her way to
school; she’d been too distraught over Mama’s refusal to grant Grace permission
to join the choir. So, now, at the end of the event-filled day, Grace stole a
glance at the porch with one straining eyeball.

But the red
flowers were gone.

Grace’s steps
slowed to a jog, and her head fully turned toward the white house. Her eyes
widened in disbelief. The baskets, too, were stripped from the porch without
warning. Grace came to a complete and dazed halt. To say the least, she’d not
expected it, and she felt now as empty as that porch, swept clean but lacking
anything to fill it.

That is your
punishment.
The thought startled Grace with its sudden clarity. Of course! She had
disobeyed Mama, had
lied
and kept that lie alive knowingly. So God had
taken the red flowers away from her, that bright spot of joy in her rather
dreary existence.
Even the piano doesn’t play,
she realized, noting how
the floral curtains blew at the partially-opened second floor window. Grace
swallowed, feeling the lump of guilt grow in her throat. With one more stare at
the pretty house with its hollow porch, she bolted toward home.

“Y
ou did what?”

Grace heard her
papa’s incredulous tone as she entered the kitchen. The guilt that steadily
wrapped itself around her brain caused her to think that Papa addressed her.
Holding the screen door as it shut so that it wouldn’t slam – something that
irked Papa to no end – Grace opened her mouth to explain her lie with trembling
words.

But Papa’s face
turned toward Mama. He didn’t even peep to see which one of his children had
entered the house. His jaw pumped heavily, like a boxer’s fist, and his eyes
barely blinked as they trained on Mama.

Mama. Her
defensiveness coated her vulnerability as she sat crouched at the kitchen
table. Her hands wrapped around her cup of black coffee like it threatened to
jump out of her grasp.

Trembling with
fear, Grace turned her eyes toward Papa. The china-thin silence gave her
thoughts time to ramble. What was this all about? Gertrude, again? But then,
why would Papa say that
Mama
had done something? She waited just inside
the doorway, frozen as one of the blocks that the ice-man brought.

“You. Had. No.
Right.” Papa spit out each word separately, bullets to pierce Mama’s head. Grace
could see his teeth bared like one of the feral mutts that roamed around the
neighborhood. “No right at all.” He stared down at Mama, eyes ablaze, nostrils
flaring with wrath.

Mama responded
by jutting her chin out, pressing her thin white lips together. “I had to do
it! And I have every right. I’m her mother.”

“And I’m her
father!” Papa roared, neck muscles bulging. Grace cringed as his hands cracked
down on the table. Mama’s coffee bounced and spilled out of the cup, running
over her hands.

“What do you
think you’re doing, woman?” His face lunged into Mama’s, but Mama barely
flinched.

The sunlight
filtered through the screen door, streaming by Grace, touching on Mama’s pale
face. “I did what I had to do, Charlie. And I don’t want to hear another word
about it.” Browned and wet from the spilled coffee, Mama’s hands kept their
grip on the cup. Her eyes stayed fastened on Papa, ignoring Grace’s presence.

Grace watched as
Papa’s lips curled into a smile of mockery. “Oh,
now
you don’t want to
hear another word about it? After you give away my daughter to your sister? Is
that how it is? Jezebel!” Without warning – though Mama should’ve known she had
it coming to her – Papa’s open-palmed hand struck hard, right across the side
of Mama’s head.

Mama hadn’t been
prepared for the blow. Her head reeled to the side, the graying brown hair
falling over her face. She wobbled on the chair but managed to regain her
balance. Then Mama surprised Grace by sweeping her hair back away from her eyes
and standing up, holding onto the table’s edge for support. “How dare you? How
dare
you call me that?” Mama hissed at Papa, using a voice Grace had never heard.
“I’ve given you six children. I keep up this house for
you!
I cook three
meals a day with that skimpy thing you call a paycheck for
you!
I wash
your clothes. I do your ironing. I garden. I churn butter.
For you, Charlie!
”

Grace watched in
silent wonder as Mama finished her outburst, bosom heaving. Papa stood
wordlessly as well, his jaw evidently taking a break from pumping, his eyes
staring hard at Mama.

Mama paused,
then stepped toward Papa. “I’ve put up with your runaround ways for twenty
years. I would’ve let you keep going with them, too, in spite of the humiliation
you’ve caused this family-”

“That
I’ve
caused!”
Papa interrupted, folding his heavy arms across his square chest, a smirk
growing on his face again. “What about you? Look at you! You think I’m proud of
a wife like you?”

The arrow went
straight to Mama’s heart; Grace would have seen that no more clearly if the
well-aimed dart had been visible. A red flush crept up Mama’s neck and face,
hiding in part the welt that grew near her hairline. Grace squirmed inside, her
heart throbbing in pity, tensing with the agony of seeing Mama appear so
pathetic.

Papa’s words had
silenced her. Red-faced, Mama bowed over, arms loose at her sides, the picture
of a beseeching captive whose plea for freedom the ruling monarch had denied.

“You make me so angry
sometimes, Sarah,” Papa’s tone softened just a bit. “And now you – or your fool
man-hating sister – is spreading lies about me to Father Fredrick. How am I
supposed to keep up our family’s reputation with you doing that? Huh?”

“Father Fredrick?”
Mama asked, regaining her shell of steely non-emotion. She picked up the half-full
coffee cup and carried it over to the deep sink with only slightly trembling
hands.

“Said he’d
heard
that I wasn’t so faithful to my family. Now where’d he get that from, I’d like
to know?” Papa stuck out his chin like a teenage boy looking for a fight. For
an instant, he looked just like Ben.