The Sleeping Night (30 page)

Mrs. Pierson reached for her hand. “You love him very much, our Isaiah.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I do. And I’m so afraid and—” She took a breath. “He was a good solider, you know that? I was so scared that he’d get blown up or shot or tortured.” She sniffed. “I’m not making any sense, am I? Going in circles.”

Mrs. Pierson put her arms around her. “Oh, but you are. I love you as my daughter, Angel Corey. And I am so proud of you. You’ve grown into a fine woman.”

“We need to go away. Soon,” Angel said. “Will you find someone to run my store?”

“Better yet,” the old woman said, “you must let me purchase it for you. I will find someone to take care of my investment, and then you will have money of your own, which is always important.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t—”

Gudren came over, putting her hand on Angel’s arm. “Be wise, my friend. He loves you, but life can be capricious. He could die,” she said simply.

Angel looked from old woman to young, women who had suffered unimaginable trials. “Yes, you’re right,” she said, and kissed Mrs. Pierson’s hand. “Thank you. It is a generous offer, and I accept.”

“The condition is that you must go within a day, or two at most. I can feel the danger.”

“Yes,” Angel said. “Of course.”

“I will speak to my banker by phone this afternoon. Come see me in the morning.” She touched Angel’s face. “Now, you and Gudren should go to town and behave like the young girls neither of you could be. Drink chocolate sodas and read movie magazines.”

Angel laughed. “That sounds wonderful.”

“It makes you strong.”

The two of them walked the few blocks into town, passing tidy frame houses ringed with hedges and thick lawns. A handsome Labrador looked up from the porch at one house, wagging his tail hopefully as they passed, then settled his head back on his paws when they didn’t come up the walk to his place. Two little boys on bicycles raced by in the quiet street, headed for the river. An old woman, Mrs. Unwin, who’d been a teacher for thirty-five years before retiring, worked in her flower garden. A floppy straw hat covered her white hair, and she wore a pair of men’s trousers to protect her knees. As the women passed, she waved a gloved hand merrily.

“That’s the kind of old woman I want to be,” Angel said.

“Because she’s still working in her garden?”

Angel shrugged a little. “Not just that. I want to be strong and independent and enjoying myself. She’s eighty years old, and doesn’t give a hoot about anything anybody says about her.” Angel grinned. “She used to wear the strangest hats to school all the time, with flowers or some wild scarf wrapped around them. It was wonderful.”

“So perhaps we age in the pattern in which we live, no?”

“I suppose so.”

“It seems a great blessing to grow old at all,” Gudren said. “But should I gain that age, I would like, perhaps, to be calm.”

“Yes. And wise,” Angel added. She had a vision of Gudren at 80, elegant and patrician with a wreath of hair woven around her head. “I think you’ll have many grandchildren by then.”

She squeezed Angel’s hand. “Perhaps.”

They reached the main drag in town, called elsewhere Main Street, but here in Gideon, it was Drake, after one of the town’s first mayors. There was a lot of foot traffic. The fabric store was bustling, and the barber shop. Usually Saturdays were the busy day, mostly no one came to town much except for then. The numbers out today served to emphasize Angel’s outcast status.

A handful of people nodded and spoke—not everyone was out to get her, after all, she thought. But a majority walked by as if Angel were invisible, even some she’d known since youngest childhood. When Eula Hart passed by, her eyes carefully trained away, Angel almost stopped and stomped her foot over the sharpness of the rejection. Eula had made for Angel the prettiest, lacy dresses for Sunday School every year—had once brought her a doll with blond curls and a dress to match Angel’s.

She lifted her chin.

By the time they reached the drugstore, she felt as if she’d been in a parade. Had it been like this the other day and she’d just been too wrapped up in her anger and fear to notice?

The druggist, Hubert Cox, was a tall man with gray hair that sprung around the bald spot on top of his head like a brush. He wore a white apron over his starched shirt, upon which he wiped his hands as Angel and Gudren came in. “Hello there, stranger!” he called, peering over his half-glasses.

Angel smiled in relief. “Hi, Mr. Cox. How are you?”

“I’m doing fine—and you look pretty as a sunrise, as usual.”

“You old sweet talker. “ Angel turned toward Gudren. “Have you met Mrs. Pierson’s niece? This is Gudren Stroo.”

“Howdy!” His bright gray eyes sparkled. “How do you like us so far?”

Gudren smiled, and as always the expression completely transformed her thin face below its cap of severe hair. “It is—er—very different.”

“You got that right! “ He laughed, “Wait a week or two and you’ll see mosquitoes so big they can stand flat-footed and box a turkey.”

Angel laughed. “I’d love to tell you he’s exaggerating, but he isn’t. Not by much, anyway.”

“You ladies in the mood for something special, today?”

“As a matter of fact,” Angel said, “I want a double chocolate soda. Gudren?”

“Strawberry, please.”

“Coming right up. You two pretty young ladies go find yourself a seat and I’ll fix you right up.”

There were few customers in the long room. A mother with three children occupied one of the forward booths, and a knot of teenage girls hovered over the magazine rack. At one of the back tables sat a young colored man with a girl a little younger who learned forward to listen to his quietly murmured words. They had empty sundae glasses before them.

Gudren and Angel slid into a booth about midway down. “This is wonderful!” Gudren exclaimed. “He is a nice man.”

Angel let her eyes flicker back to Mr. Cox and she frowned a little. “Yes. But I would have expected him to be one of the ones that didn’t speak much, to tell you the truth.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. He’s always been pretty active in town politics and such—he was county treasurer and on the draft board—mainline.” She shook her head. “I can’t figure any of it out. I honestly didn’t expect such a fuss over me keeping the store. When I found out people would—either because they think its unseemly for a white woman to be out there alone, or because they just plain think a woman oughta be doing something else—I had pretty much in mind who would be nice and who wouldn’t. But I’m wrong a lot.”

Gudren lifted her eyebrows. “Often, it is like that. We do not know who will be a friend and who will not until it is too late.”

“I guess you probably know a little bit about that.”

Mr. Cox delivered their sodas with a flourish, tall glasses nestled in tin holders. Whipped cream dusted with nuts was piled to an almost astonishing level above the glass. On Angel’s was a circle of maraschino cherries. She laughed. “You remembered!”

“Oh, now, it hasn’t been that long. You were still asking for extra cherries when you came in with Solomon.”

“Thank you.”

He winked. “You girls enjoy, now.”

When he bustled way, Gudren asked, “You came here with your husband?”

“Sure. We came to movies and got sodas on Saturday nights when he had money.” She sobered. “Everybody did the same thing.” She drifted away, remembering a night she had come in with her daddy and they’d seen Isaiah walking with his girl Sally. Now she smiled, remembering him last night, so—

“Angel,” Gudren said softly, touching her hand.

In surprise, she looked up. “I’m sorry, did you say something?”

“What is so different about you today?”

Angel flushed and stared down at her soda, feeling blood even at the tips of her ears.

“Oh!” Gudren laughed softly. She reached over the table to take Angel’s hand. “You are so in love!” she said softly. “I am so happy. It is so good, Angel, so good I cannot tell you.”

Blushing even more deeply, Angel opened her mouth to say something, and realized she had no idea what that might be. She closed it again.

“I did not mean to embarrass you.” Gudren squeezed her fingers. “So many times I hoped for this.”

“You did?”

Gudren glanced over her shoulder. The mother and her children were standing up, gathering small packages. Gudren sipped her soda, waiting for them to pass. When the bell rang over the door, signaling their departure, she leaned over the table and said very softly, “While I was healing, he came to sit with me. There was a beautiful garden on the hospital grounds, and it pleased me to be in the open with all those smells and sounds.”

Angel could see it, imagining the nourishment it must have offered after so many trials.

“It was a long time before he spoke of his home. And when he did, it was only stories of you that he told.” Again she looked around cautiously. “I did not understand the .
 . . trouble, then. But there was such a hungry sound when he said your name. I wanted for him what he most wished.”

“Thank you,” Angel said simply.

Gudren nodded, her eyes going deeply sober in an instant. “But now I say to you that you must never say his name in public, where anyone can see what I just saw. This place is strange to me, but even I know what will happen to you if you are not very, very careful.”

Angel bowed her head. “I know.” The heaviness of it all made her shoulders ache. After a minute, she picked up her spoon with determination. “We’re supposed to be acting like young girls today. No more serious talk.”

“O-
kay
.” Gudren pulled forth the word like a prize, her eyes glinting.

After they finished their sodas, they lingered awhile, talking about new dresses they wanted, which styles they thought would work for them. On the way out, they stopped at the magazine racks. On one of the movie magazines was a picture of a young man. Gudren picked it up, grinning, “I had a beau who looked like him,” she said. “He played duets with me and kissed my ears when my instructor wasn’t looking.”

Angel laughed. “He’s handsome.”

With an exaggerated shrug, Gudren put the magazine back. “They all were handsome,” she said. “And in love with me.” She shot a quick, amused glance at Angel. “But my great love was a man, not a silly boy: Mr. Vanzandt, my piano teacher. He was at least twenty-seven, and had the most soulful eyes I have ever seen.”

They headed toward the door. “And?” Angel prompted.

“Oh, he was married to a very rich and beautiful woman, but I was sure that he secretly longed for me.” She chuckled. “How vain we are at sixteen.”

The door opened, forcing the women to step back in the crowded aisle. Angel saw who entered and her heart squeezed in sudden and painful fear. She took Gudren’s arm. “Let’s go,” she whispered and made a move to go around the pair.

“Well, well, well,” said the first, a ruddy-complexioned man of thirty. He wore the war-weary look so many men had these days, his face hard-carved, eyes troubled. “Angel Corey.”

Angel forced herself to meet his eyes squarely. “Hello, Tom.” Her voice sounded calm and steady, even faintly polite. “Jacob,” she added, nodding at the thinner man next to him.

“The wife told me you been having a little trouble over at your store,” Tom said, faintly mocking.

“Did she?” Angel returned. “Well, thank her for her concern.”

Jacob stepped one foot forward, smiling. She found herself mesmerized by the yellow shimmer at the end of his eyelashes, and the pattern of freckles over his thin nose. “Too bad you ain’t gonna keep it.”

“Thank you for your concern,” she repeated, and tugged Gudren’s arm, moving toward the door, trying to get around them.

“Hold on, now, Angel. Aren’t you gonna introduce your friend here?” Tom let a bold gaze travel over Gudren’s slim frame. “Pretty skinny, but I reckon you’ll fatten up, won’t you, sugar?”

“Get out of the way, Tom. We have things to do.”

“Yeah, I bet you do,” he said, nudging Jacob. His eyes took on a speculative look as he shifted his gaze back to Gudren. “We heard what all you Jew girls did to get through the camps, didn’t we, Jake.”

Angel glanced at Gudren in alarm. The big black eyes were hot and snapping. She leaned close to Tom, and in a low, sexy voice, she uttered one of the filthiest insults Angel had ever heard.