Another Homecoming (9 page)

“There.” Joel pointed at an empty spare peg, and the black felt settled with a gentle rocking motion. The two boys surged

ahead to pass through the classroom door, just as Mr. Murdoch stretched out a hand to close it against latecomers.

Joel slid into his assigned seat. The new boy stood silently by the door. As Mr. Murdoch turned to address the new student and assign him a place, the two boys’ eyes connected. Some sort of communication passed between them, though Joel was not sure about the message.

It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to fall into step with each other after school. They walked in silence for a moment before Joel finally asked, “Want to go to the soda fountain?” Instantly he regretted it, for this young man in his strange clothes would not be comfortable there. But the fountain in People’s drugstore was a gathering point for almost the entire school.

“No, I think,” the boy said. He had an accent as strange as his clothes.

Joel thought a moment, then asked, “Want to go see my model planes?”

That met with instant approval. “Yes. I will like to.”

Simon was the boy’s name. Simon Miller. After giving his name to the teacher at the beginning of class, he had said scarcely a word the entire day. Yet both times the teacher had called on him, Simon had offered the correct answer without hesitation. Joel had spent much of the day observing Simon out of the corner of his eye. There was an unusual stillness about him, attentive yet reserved.

“What are you doing here?” Joel asked. “I mean, it seems kinda funny, starting school a month before the year’s over.”

“My father has diabetes. Last year they took his leg from—here.” He pointed to a spot just above his own knee. “They gave him a make-pretend leg, but sometimes it hurts much.” There was a calm acceptance to the way Simon spoke. “Now there are more problems yet, circulation this time. He has to come down and be near the hospital.”

Despite the matter-of-fact way Simon spoke, Joel could not help but feel a lance of sympathetic understanding. “Hey, that’s tough. My dad has a problem with his leg, too.”

“He is diabetic?”

“No. He got hurt in the war.”

“I am sorry. Hard it is to see much suffering.”

“How come you talk like that? You sound like you’re reading off a page.”

“I am Pennsylvania Dutch,” Simon said simply, as though that was all the explanation required.

“A what?”

“Pennsylvania Dutch. Cherman. You have never heard of us?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Papa will explain. He calls us the people apart.” Simon grinned at the thought. “You think I talk funny, you wait. Papa did not learn English until he was a full-grown man. He talks English fine, but he thinks Cherman.”

Further questions were cut off by turning onto Joel’s street. He knew a moment’s qualm. His father should still be at work. He rarely came home from the middle shift before six. But what would Simon think of his home or his mother? He had never brought a friend home before. Joel’s pace slowed as he reflected how odd it was to have suggested this stranger accompany him home.

“Something is the matter, Choel?”

“No.” He hoped he was telling the truth and led Simon up the walk to his front door. Cautiously he opened the door and called out, “Mom?”

The house was silent in reply. Joel gave a relieved sigh and said, “She must be at the market. Come on.”

He led Simon up the stairs and into his bedroom. The boy followed him into the room, holding his hat before him with both hands. Joel saw him looking around and said, “Just drop it on the bed.”

Carefully Simon set down his black felt hat and took off his coat. His eyes grew large as they took in every aspect of the display—from the suspended airplanes that gently fluttered near the ceiling to the simple shelves lined with painstakingly constructed models. “Ach—so nice,” exclaimed the boy.

Joel grinned, his eyes following the eyes of his guest. It was the first time that he enjoyed pride in sharing his hours of work.

“Ach, they are some beautiful! Never have I seen anything like this!”

“They’re models. I made them myself. I’ve got a paper route. Most of the money goes into my savings. I need to save all I can, if I’m going to go to college. But I buy some models, too.”

“They are some beautiful.” Simon lowered himself to the floor rug and let his eyes wander up and over each plane above his head.

Joel squatted down beside him. It was the first chance he had to closely examine Simon’s clothes. The shirt had neither collar nor cuffs. The fabric was coarse, the stitching broad and even. Even the suspenders looked homemade, fastened to the trousers by pairs of buttons. “Does your mother make all your clothes?”

Simon nodded, his eyes still focused on the planes. “We do not buy from the store anything we wear, except the shoes.”

“Why not?”

“It is the Mennonite way,” Simon said simply.

“Mennonite?”

Simon nodded. “That is what we are.”

“I thought you said you were Pennsylvania Dutch—or German or something.”

Simon lowered his gaze and laughed good-naturedly. “Pennsylvania Dutch—yes. That is our background. Cherman—that is our tongue. Mennonite—that is our belief—our faith—our whole way of life.”

Joel frowned. It seemed a lot to keep track of. He really couldn’t understand it all.

They sat there for quite a while as Joel explained about the models and how one had to have the sheet of instructions and carefully unfold it so that the creases would not be damaged, and then follow each step, using the sharp razor blade to shape each section from the paper-thin balsam wood. Later came the gluing and finally the painting and decals. Simon listened with the same quiet attention he had shown in class.

Finally he rose reluctantly to his feet. “I must go. I have chores, and Mother will worry.”

“Okay. I’ll walk you home.” Joel led his new friend back downstairs, then together they started down the street. As they walked, Joel found a strange sense of pressure building up inside his chest. As though all the thoughts and feelings he kept hidden from all the world suddenly demanded release. He found himself saying quietly, “My father isn’t happy.”

Simon stopped at the corner. His face seemed to mirror Joel’s own sorrow. Joel had never before known this in someone his own age. Doc Austin could do it from time to time, sharing the hurt even though something in his gaze said he did not really want to. But Simon just stood and listened and
absorbed
. The pressure continued to build inside Joel, as though all the words and feelings he had tried not to think of must suddenly come out.

“He was injured in the war, like I said. He had to leave the army, and he wanted to stay in. I
think
he wanted to, anyway. He doesn’t ever talk about it. But there are a lot of little things.”

“Signs,” Simon offered. “You watch and see them.”

Joel nodded, wondering at how it was possible to be so comfortable with someone he hardly knew. “I guess a lot of what he thinks is about what he never had.”

Simon nodded slowly, as though something this important needed to be taken down deep inside. They walked down several more blocks before he finally said, “The book of your name says it is only in the day of the Lord that all God’s purposes for man will come true.”

The strange words were so confusing that Joel did not know which question to ask first. “Which book?”

The question stopped Simon a second time. “It is in the English as well as the Cherman. Your Bible must say it.”

“
My
Bible? I don’t have a Bible.”

“Well . . . your Family Bible. Your father must read—”

“He never reads it.”

The words astounded Simon. He stared at Joel for a moment before he spoke. He sounded puzzled. “You have a name like Choel and your folks did not choose it from the Bible?”

“Joel was my grandfather’s name. I’m named after him.” The boy thought a moment. “I think there’s a Bible in the house somewhere. But I’ve never seen anybody reading it.”

Simon seemed at a loss to know what to say. Finally he turned and pointed. “This is my house, Choel. I will not give you welcome now, because Mama is still making empty the packing crates. But come home with me soon next week.”

“Sure, that’d be swell.”

“You will come and have dinner with us,” Simon said, almost as though he was talking to himself. “You will speak with Papa over all these things. He will know what to say.”

That night Joel lay on his bed, utterly tired, yet not ready to sleep. He felt as though he were floating on a cloud. The day had been so good, better than any day he could remember in a long while. And yet there was nothing really grand, no tremendous earth-shattering event. It was just that he had made a new friend. Someone utterly different from anyone Joel had ever known. And something more. Joel laced his fingers behind his head and smiled up at the unseen ceiling. There was definitely something more to this strange young man. Something very, very good.

7
 

Making herself enter the church
for her father’s funeral was the hardest thing Kyle had ever done.

It was not all the eyes watching her, although there must have been a thousand people facing her as she moved forward. It was not that the family came in last or that her mother had organized a little procession up the church’s central aisle. Nor was it the heat, though the July morning was sweltering and its warmth was trapped by her veil and made each breath steamy. It was not even the coffin with its beloved contents that left her feeling so helpless as she slowly walked alongside her mother.

What filled her with dread was all that lay beyond this day and this ritual. The prospect of a life without her father’s booming laugh, his hearty voice, and his love left her legs so weak they felt scarcely able to carry her.

The relatives followed behind them, a procession made up mostly of people Kyle had only seen once or twice before in her life. At the news of her father’s heart attack, however, they had started showing up, as though word had been passed by telepathy. But even as they had pressed her hand or hugged her close, they had remained strangers.

The whole church was full of strangers. Kyle kept glancing through her dark veil, searching for a familiar face. Occasionally she caught sight of someone she recognized from one of their many dinners, or one of her visits downtown. But most of them she had never seen before.

The church was huge, the grandest in all Washington, D.C. It had been her mother’s idea to hold the service here. Kyle had never entered before, and the chamber seemed cold and alien. Honey-stone walls rose to meet stained-glass windows depicting scenes quite foreign to Kyle. High above, the ceiling soared into a series of stone-vaulted arcs. The shining pipe organ poured out a colossal amount of sound. The choir stood and sang words Kyle could not understand even when she tried.

Once they were seated, the minister rose and spoke. His voice rolled out in sad tones, more words Kyle didn’t bother to hear. She did not know him, so how could he talk about what she was feeling? She sat there, still and silent, going through the motions set in place by her mother, just as she had been doing ever since the doctor had come out and announced to them that her father had slipped away in the night.

A man she recognized from visits to their house, Senator Allenby, walked to the dais. She asked herself against the backdrop of words she would not hear, why, why? Why did it have to happen now? Now, just as her father was beginning to talk with her as an adult. Kyle sat and pretended to be part of the rite, and remembered the last serious conversation she’d had with her father.

It had been three weeks earlier, on the occasion of her seventeenth birthday. By then the tradition had been well established. They had celebrated together, just the two of them, with a lunch in the boardroom. The preparations for yet another of her mother’s high-society parties was not even mentioned. That day, as Kyle and her father had been finishing their dessert, she had asked how he had started his insurance business.

“The telling is easier than the deed,” Lawrence had replied with an affectionate smile. “I can’t say I started with nothing. My family had enough money to give me a leg up, and the Crawleys helped even more.”

“What about Mother?” Kyle already knew her mother’s family had been wealthy.

Lawrence shook his head. “They were against it from the start. Abigail’s father, once he realized that Abigail had made up her mind that she was marrying me, wanted me to come in and take over his operation—he had no sons. But I saw insurance as the coming thing and wanted to give it a go. And between you and me and the gatepost, Abigail’s father had pretty much run the family business into the ground. Her grandfather was quite a businessman, an important wholesaler. But her father . . . anyway, they didn’t give me a penny, didn’t let me take on any of their own insurance work, not even when it looked like I might go under.”

“Did she ask them?”

“Your mother . . .” Lawrence stopped, waving it aside. “Abigail wanted a big house, and they gave us the money for that. They gave us that fancy car, even paid for our first servants. Couldn’t see their little girl going without.”

“That must have been awful,” Kyle said quietly. “Them not helping you with the business, I mean.”

“They had their reasons,” Lawrence said, cutting off that line of conversation. “In the end I made out all right.”

“You sure did,” she said, so proud of him she could burst.

He was quiet a long moment. “Beginnings can be terrible times, especially in business. Twenty hours a day, six days a week, living and eating and breathing it, and knowing if it didn’t happen, I’d never get another chance.”

“But it happened,” she offered.

“So slow it was hard to believe I was going anywhere but under,” he replied, his normal ruddy features grim with the task of remembering. “To be honest, I don’t even know when we actually turned the corner. But one day I forced myself to realize that I didn’t need to ask anymore whether we’d make it. Now the question was, how far and how high.”

He had looked at her then, a thoughtful, searching gaze. As though he was trying to decide whether to say something or not. Finally Lawrence coughed and told her, “Nobody makes it on their own. You ring up all sorts of debts, and the hardest ones to carry are the ones you can’t pay back in coin.”

Kyle felt her stomach freeze up. She dreaded what might be coming, more from his tone than his words.

“Your mother has been an asset. She is intelligent and shrewd and knows her way around the upper class. I’m wise enough to know that she has brought a good number of clients to the firm. And I appreciate that. She’s been good for me as well. Stimulating. I’ve not regretted my choice. But there may have been times, especially in the early days of our marriage, when
she
wondered if she had done the right thing.”

He seemed so solemn that it made Kyle shiver with foreboding. But because her father was the one talking, all she said was, “I understand, Daddy.”

“Do you?” He smiled then, but his expression was touched with deep sorrow. “Your mother . . .” He stopped, the internal argument working its way across his features. “Well, we both know your mother, don’t we?”

Kyle nodded. All her thoughts and fears were a huge ball in her throat. But this was her father. And he needed her help. So she forced herself to say, though it was the hardest thing she had ever done in her entire life, “Tell me what you want me to do, Daddy.”

He seemed able to see what she was feeling, because his ruddy features turned solemn. “You’d do it for me, wouldn’t you, honey?”

“Anything,” Kyle said miserably. “Whatever you want, I’ll do for you.”

“What I want.” The words sighed out with such force that all the breath drained from his body. “What I want.”

Kyle waited through the longest moment of her entire life. Even her heart seemed unable to beat, the atmosphere was so heavy with anticipation.

Then Lawrence straightened and drew in a breath that seemed to bring with it a new resolve. A strong new determination changed his entire demeanor, from somber and resigned to angry and obstinate. “What I want,” he said, measuring each word with force, “is for you to be happy.”

The pronouncement was so unexpected, Kyle drew back from the table. “Daddy?”

“Happy,” he repeated. “Is there anything so strange about that?”

“No, Daddy, if you’re sure—”

“I’m sure.” And he was. His eyes glowered as he stared through the door, out beyond the hall and the offices and the building, to whatever foe he saw in the invisible distance. “And I’m going to fix things so that you can do just that.” Then he abruptly changed direction, giving her a conspiratorial smile, and said, “Since it’s your birthday, I wonder if Chef might have another piece of banana cream pie for me?”

When the funeral service was over, and they had started back down the aisle, Kyle spotted Randolf Crawley standing two rows back looking appropriately solemn. Farther on was her father’s former protégé, Kenneth Adams. His eyes were held by the coffin, carried by six men just ahead of Kyle and her mother. Grief was etched in his face and expression. Kenneth chose that moment to look at her, and the depths of his gaze caused her to look away. His eyes mirrored all the pain and sorrow she held deep within herself. Nor did she allow herself to even glance toward where the coffin was being carried down the church steps. She could not do that and maintain her control. There would be time enough to give in to her loss once she was no longer on display. Right now, she was grateful for the numbness, the scattered thoughts.

In a strange way, it was reassuring to be thinking of little things, like the way the trees and shrubs looked as their limousine wound its way through the streets. Or the way a motorcade of police motorcycles cleared the road ahead. She concentrated on how the sunlight danced between the branches overhead, or how fresh the grass looked, as though someone had come out and scrubbed it clean just for them. It was comforting to have such thoughts, especially after last night.

She had accompanied her mother back from the funeral home, where Abigail had gone to take care of last-minute details. Kyle had not spoken a word the entire journey. She had known her mother had said things to her from time to time, but it had been too hard to even hear the words, let them take shape in her mind. Kyle had walked in the front door, knowing Maggie was there and saying something, but again there was nothing but a blur of sound. She did catch a sense of concern behind Maggie’s words. But she could not even acknowledge her friend’s loving anxiety.

Kyle had climbed the stairs and gone to her room and lain on the bed with her clothes still on. Her mother had come in to say something, then she had left. But Kyle had paid no mind. She had lain there and stared at the ceiling, watching the light from outside fade until the pale blue walls were a dusky gray, and then to black. And she had felt as though she had died with her father, only her body had not realized it yet.

Now, at the cemetery, Kyle allowed herself to be guided into a chair in the front row. She was grateful for the veil, as it helped to hide her face and her thoughts from all the prying eyes surrounding them. She kept her attention on the pastor, but only because it helped to avoid looking at the ugly hole in the ground, the one ready to take her as well as her father.

Did other people have such thoughts? As she sat and watched blindly as the ancient ritual concluded, Kyle wondered if she was the only one in the whole world who felt as though she did not belong anywhere or to anyone. Was there anyone as alone as she was? Had anyone ever felt so helpless, so utterly out of place?