The Sleeping Night (21 page)

“Is there more?” Angel asked, and, without waiting for an answer, headed back through the door. She fetched a stack of white bread and a bowl of home-fried potatoes. When the food was all arranged, they sat down, Mrs. Pierson and Gudren at either end, with Angel and Isaiah between.

Mrs. Pierson reached out for the hands on either side of her. “Isaiah, will you bless the table?”

Angel glanced up in time to catch his eye over the platter of golden chicken. He grimaced and then dutifully bowed head. His prayer was perfunctory, muttered, and short, but Mrs. Pierson simply said, “Thank you, young man,” and began to pass around the food.

For a few moments, Angel found it odd to be eating at the same table with Isaiah, and from the way he kept his head bent, it was a little strange for him, too. She was pleased to see he had good manners—manners she had not expected of him. He held his fork properly and didn’t lean on his elbows or shovel his food in. Gentlemanly, and not like he was trying to remember how you did it, but like it was natural.

Thinking these things, she was ashamed. Why should she expect less? Disturbed, she frowned and concentrated on the food in front of her. Why should she have worried about his being on the roof, now that she thought about it? Or afraid when she was alone with him in her kitchen, or even—and this last was the most disturbing of all—ashamed when she imagined kissing him?

Covertly, she glanced at him over the table, seeing his familiar dimple as he smiled at something Mrs. Pierson said. He passed a bowl of potatoes with his graceful hands, and looked up, catching Angel staring. For an instant, he held her gaze, his smile fading slowly. Then his expression hardened and he picked up his fork, shutting Angel out.

She bowed her head, flushing without knowing why. When had life grown so complicated? Everything, everything, was turned upside down lately. She felt like somebody had thrown her into an unfamiliar room, given her single glance of the furniture, then turned off the lights. All she was left with was a general idea of where she might bump her shins, but who could tell in the dark?

One thing she did know, and that was how little time she ever got to socialize. It would be a shame to waste the evening brooding about Isaiah. Lifting her chin, she joined the conversation.

The four of them talked
about things that didn’t matter very much—the gossip from town, the weather, crop rotations that some of the farmers were trying this year. Things in Gideon were better than they had been for a long time and it showed. People were building and planting and whistling in the streets. No more telegrams were being delivered, bringing news of husbands or sons or brothers killed in action. No letters with reports of cousins or uncles or friends wounded. The war shortages had begun to ease, though it was still impossible to get stockings.

After dinner, Angel helped carry dishes into the kitchen and brought out the coffee. Now it was Gudren who seemed filled with nervous energy and tension. She paced the edges of the room restlessly, pausing briefly to look out the window to the darkened garden before she paced on. She held her arms wrapped around her, as if she were cold.

Isaiah, perched on the edge of the sofa, spoke quietly. “Why don’t you play something for us, Gudren?”

His voice carried tenderness, and Angel looked at him, wondering again at the relationship between these two. Had Isaiah grown to love Gudren as he had waited for her to heal, as they had traveled the long miles between Europe and Texas? She was beautiful and warm and articulate, the kind of woman Isaiah would like. The thought gave her such a pang it was like something nicked one of her lungs, making her feel breathless.

Gudren paused in her restless circling for a moment. “Oh, I am sorry,” she said, distractedly smoothing a palm over her short hair. She eyed the piano and, without flourish, sat down and opened the cover, resting her fingers lightly on the keys.

Suddenly her hands crashed down and the dark heavy cords of a classical piece flooded the room. Angel found herself sitting up to listen. The music was powerful and sad, filled with the sounds of storms and war and death, much too large to be played by such a small, slender woman. Angel stared at Gudren’s hands as she played, amazed at the agility in the delicate white fingers. Her whole body joined in the playing—her head adding emphasis to hard crashes of notes, her shoulders lifting through more gentle passages.

It seemed to ease something within her, for after a little while her pinched look faded, to be replaced with a winsome smile. Ending the piece with a crash of power and sound, she leaned back, her hands falling to her lap. To Isaiah, she said, “Thank you for reminding me. “ She turned toward Angel. “I sometimes remember at dusk—how things were. The music helps.”

“I’m glad,” Angel replied. “You play so well.”

“Gudren was trained as a concert pianist, “Mrs. Pierson said proudly. “I keep telling her it is not too late to find that dream again.”

“And I thank you, Aunt.” She ran her fingers over the keys playfully. “But tonight, I think we will do other things, yes? Do you sing Angel?”

“Sure she sing,” Isaiah said, grinning. “Loud, too.”

“At least I can carry a tune!”

Mrs. Pierson stood. “There is a hymnal under the seat, Gudren. If you will play from that, I would much enjoy it.”

Angel looked at the old woman, remembering her father’s love of singing, and the way he had whistled hymns at all times. Impulsively, she began to sing one of his favorites:

“Open my eyes, that I may see

Glimpses of truth Thou hast for me,

Place in my hands the wonderful key .
 . .”

She had never been shy about singing. It felt too fine and sweet to worry about what other people might think of her voice. As she reached the second verse, Gudren had managed to pick out the tune on the piano. Isaiah sang fumblingly at first, more surely as the words of the old hymn came back to him. His voice had richened and ripened over the years and, even to her own ears, their voices were beautiful in combination—her airy lightness dancing through the lower booming of his. He sang like a gospel singer on the radio.

“Silently now I wait for Thee

Ready my God, Thy will to see,

Open my eyes, illumine me, Spirit divine!”

They finished on a flourish, with Gudren playing behind. Mrs. Pierson clapped enthusiastically at the end. “Oh, please! Sing some more.”

“What was that one you used to sing all the time, Angel?” Isaiah asked.

“Which one?”

“You know,” Isaiah pressed his lips together in concentration, bending his head to hum it quietly. “Can’t remember it all. Something about ‘all creatures.’” He frowned. “You know?”

Angel grinned and sang the Doxology from church. “That one?”

“Yeah. Can you play that, Gudren?”

“Oh, yes.” She did so, smiling. When they began to sing it, she joined in.

Mrs. Pierson moved in closer. “Page 254,” she said. When Gudren turned the pages and began to play, Mrs. Pierson began to sing quietly in her accented voice,
Just as I Am.
Angel and Isaiah joined her, but Gudren laughed, calling above their song, “What would the rabbi say, Auntie?”

Mrs. Pierson waved her hand, singing happily, her sightless eyes focused far away.

“That was another one your daddy used to sing all the time,” Isaiah said to Angel as they finished.

“Or whistle it.”

Isaiah nodded. “You know what I was thinking about yesterday? How he couldn’t do nothing without using his mouth.”

He pursed his lips and frowned in an exaggerated imitation of Parker, and Angel gave a delight hoot of laughter.

“He was a character,” Angel said.

“He was a good man.”

The now familiar sorrow plucked her belly. “Wish I could have got him to the doctor sooner.”

“It would not have mattered.” Mrs. Pierson patted her hand. “After your mother died, he used to come here and sit in this parlor, holding you in his lap. Many times he said that he wished he would have called the doctor, because then she mightn’t have died.” She paused. “I told him that there is no way of knowing our day or way of dying. God decides.”

Before he even spoke, Angel felt Isaiah’s instant and rippling anger. “God decides,” he repeated in a harsh, old voice. He seemed as if he meant to say more, but halted, swallowing as if to gulp the acid he wished to spit into their midst. His hand curled into fists.

From the bench, Gudren said lightly, “Would you like to learn to play piano, Isaiah?”

For a brief, startled instant, Isaiah stared at her. Then he laughed, opened his mouth and let it roll out, showing his beautiful strong teeth and the dimple in his cheek that he hated.

Angel forgot everything in her wonder at the sound of him laughing at himself, closing her eyes to listen, remembering Jordan High laughing on her daddy’s porch in the warm darkness of Texas nights. She remembered the feeling of God the sound gave her, a God with big black hands that held the world. Now, hearing Isaiah laugh, she felt the vast, infinite wisdom of God within her, spilling, filling, overwhelming. It seemed to last forever.

When she opened her eyes again, Mrs. Pierson was excusing herself. “I am very tired. I do not wish to be rude, but an old woman needs her beauty rest. Thank you for coming,” she said, bending to kiss Angel’s cheek. “And for singing.”

Still tingling with the moment before, Angel stood up and hugged the old woman. “My pleasure. Thank you for supper.”

“Isaiah, you may use my car to take Angel home, if you like. Just bring it back to me when you come tomorrow.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. I’ll walk, just like always,” Angel protested. She couldn’t bear the thought of the drive home with Isaiah brooding in the front seat while she rode in the back. “It’s a pretty night. I’d like to walk.”

“It is not safe for you, Angel,” Mrs. Pierson said. “Not anymore.”

Isaiah stood, “I’ll see she gets home.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Pierson said. Her face was drawn and tired. “Gudren will see you out.”

After she left the room, Angel waved Gudren back to the bench. “I can find my way to the door,” she said. Looking to Isaiah, she added, “And find my way home.”

“I know you can.”

She had somehow expected an argument, perhaps had even anticipated it. Since it didn’t come, she smiled at Gudren. “Thanks for coming to visit. I’ll see you soon. Good night, Isaiah.”

Humming beneath her breath, she let herself out and headed through the woods, as she had a hundred times over the years. The starry dark stretched over the trees and well-worth path. Something rustled beneath her skin, buzzed at the nape of her neck and down her spine. It hummed with the sound of Isaiah’s laughter. What would he and Gudren talk about, alone in Mrs. Pierson’s living room. Or would they talk at all?

A ragged bolt of jealousy shot through her belly. Fierce, painful, and not unfamiliar.

As a teenager, she had seen Isaiah more than once on the road to town with a girl, going to town for a soda or just walking on warm summer days. Women liked his big hands and good humor, his royal bearing and beautiful mouth. Walking through the dark, she thought of them, his girlfriends. There had been Vivian Peters, who left Gideon during the war to find a better place. Grapevine said she taught school someplace in New York and had married a doctor. There had also been for a time, Anna Hyde, who eventually married a preacher from near Fort Worth. But the worst had been Sally Reese, busty and smart and saucy. Isaiah had been with her for a long time, up until the time he had gone off to the Army, just after Christmas in 1940, well before the draft would have whisked him off.

Of course, Angel had always had Solomon. Steady, sweet Solomon who never had a new thought in his mind. Solomon who had doggedly loved her and courted her over ten years until she had finally caved in and married him when he joined the Army.

Always before, she’d blamed her jealousy of the women Isaiah had been with on the fact that those other women could spend time with her best friend. Could listen to his big dreams, while she was stuck with Solomon’s mild plans for a cotton farm. Those other girls got to listen to Isaiah talk about ideas, about the places he wanted to visit and the education he dreamed of achieving, while Angel yawned through conversations about insect prevention and the best way to plow.

Last night, she had dreamed of kissing Isaiah, and even the memory sent such a raft of emotion through her that she could barely sort it. Yearning and shame and embarrassment that he might guess what she was thinking. In the forest, alone, after an ordinary evening in his company, she halted and closed her eyes and let the kiss rise up through her bones. Isaiah’s mouth on her own. His hands on her arms. His breath on her face.