Duet for Three Hands (34 page)

N
athaniel

T
he early evening
sun glinted through the window of Nathaniel’s office as he stood behind his desk telling Lydia of his conversation with Frances, including her asking for money for California. He came around the desk. “She wants to go to California, see about this actress thing.”

“Really?” Lydia bit her bottom lip, her eyes scrunched up as if she were contemplating the idea.

“Of course I told her no.”

“Why?”

He looked at her in disbelief. “She’s not well enough.”

“She isn’t? Are you sure about that?” She sounded a little like a schoolteacher explaining the concepts of algebra to a student she thought capable but lazy.

“I can see you have an opinion. Why don’t you tell me?” He watched her play with the collar of her dress. Outside the window he heard the buzz of bees drinking nectar from flowers. He spoke quietly, “Really, Lydia, what would you have me do with Frances?”

She shifted her feet, and he could see she was agitated. It almost amused him to see her struggling to keep her opinion to herself. “It’s really none of my business,” she said, clamping her mouth shut.

“No, say what you think. I’m asking you.”

She stared back at him, moving her hands to her hips. “You might consider letting her go. You could hire a companion for her—a woman to look after her out there. Like you would for a child, like a governess.”

“She’s not a child.”

“Nathaniel!” She threw her hands in the air. “You’re impossible.” She marched to his office door, as if to leave.

How dare she criticize his decisions about Frances? She hadn’t been here, hadn’t lived with her for all these years. His voice rose louder than he meant it to when he said, “She’s ill. I have to look after her.”

She swung back to look at him, her voice tight. “Of course you’re right.”

“A woman does not travel alone to a strange place.”

She turned to face him. “I have.”

“That’s different.”

“How is it different?” Her voice raised an octave, full of sarcasm. “I’m an old, dried-up widow, and your wife is young and beautiful? No harm could come to someone like me. Is that it?”

“It’s not the same. Frances is fragile.”

It surprised him to see the rims of her eyes turn pink, as if she might cry. But her voice was even when she spoke, “I’m sure you’re correct.”

“I know how to handle my own wife,” he sputtered. “And perhaps you’re right, it is none of your business.”

She flinched. Her eyes flashed and then glazed over with a coldness that changed her entire face. “I couldn’t agree more.”

“We didn’t ask for your help.”

She stepped back from him like he’d moved to strike her. “Do whatever you think is best.”

“My wife suffers, has suffered.”

“We all suffer.” Her voice was loud now as she gripped the back of the chair with both hands. “You have suffered, and I’m beginning to see it’s of your own making. When is it exactly, Professor, that you say, ‘Enough. I’ve had enough.’”

“It would be nice to have that luxury, wouldn’t it? To denounce God and country and family whenever they inconvenience us. But that’s not my way.” He felt his words choke at the back of his throat and put his fingers to his forehead, suddenly weary. “The truth is, I’m being punished.”

“Being punished? By whom?” Her face changed as the understanding of what he meant came to her. “You think God’s punishing you?”

He nodded. “I wanted to divorce her. I wanted nothing more than to go off on my own, pursue my career once again without the constraints of this woman I’d grown to despise. And God took my fingers away because of it. So, as you can see, I am quite clear about what God wants from me. He wants me to take care of Frances.”

She bit her bottom lip. “This is what you think of God?”

“It’s what I know, Lydia.” He closed his eyes and pressed at them with his fingers until he felt Lydia’s hand on his shoulder, her skirt brushing against his thigh. When he opened his eyes, her face had rearranged itself into something kind and tender.

“This is not the same God I know, Nathaniel.”

He breathed in her scent: lemons and violets. “Lydia, this can’t work.”

“What can’t work?” she whispered.

“I spoke with Howard Hanson. He runs the program up at Rochester.”

“I know who he is.”

“He’s agreed to take you as a student. Lydia, it’s the chance of a lifetime.”

“Rochester.” She jerked away, as if he’d just slapped her.

“Lydia, there are so many reasons you should go.”

“But I’m studying with you.”

His face contorted in pain as he reached for her, but then he pulled his hand away. “Lydia, you’re all I think about.”

She squeezed her eyes shut as if she were about to crash a speeding car into a tree. She said in a ragged breath, “Yes. Me too.” Her mouth trembled.

“I can’t trust myself.” He took a deep breath and went to the window, looking out. “It’ll be better this way. Howard said you could come this week.”

“So soon?”

“It’s for the best.”

“Yes, of course. For the best.”

He heard her crying and moved swiftly across the room and grabbed her in his arms. “Lydia, please don’t cry,” he whispered.

She drew in a long shaky breath as she gazed up at him, her hands on the top two buttons of his shirt. A strong warm current like swift water pulled him under. He leaned over and kissed her, hard and desperate. At first her breath caught, and he thought she might pull away, but instead she moved closer, pressing against him and parting her lips. Nothing else mattered, everything faded, except for the feel of her next to him.

Finally, he pulled away, wanting to search her eyes, to see what was there. It was more tears, dampening her cheeks and making her eyes a bottomless blue. “I’m sorry.”

She put her fingers to her mouth, shaking her head. “Please, don’t be. I’ve felt invisible for so many years. And then there was you, and suddenly I was alive.”

“All I want is to have you by my side.” He reached for her, pulled her tight against him once more. She cried, with little sobs that heaved her chest. He felt sick to his stomach, ravaged with remorse and tenderness and guilt. “Do you see why you must go?” He loosened his arms from around her waist. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she whispered. And then she fled, her footsteps fading down the hallway until he was alone, wrung out from shame and desire.

L
ater
, Nathaniel trudged across campus. The grounds were the same as yesterday, same flower blossoms, same old oaks that dipped romantically over green rolling lawns. But now he saw the flaws in the landscape: the unevenly trimmed hedges and the patches of brown lawn. It was all ugly to him. The air suffocating.

Somehow he made it to the front row pew of the empty Presbyterian church. With his eyes shut tight, he prayed as hard as he could to a God he doubted. After a time, he didn’t know how long, he smelled Pastor Ferguson’s scent of cinnamon and yeast and aftershave.

“What’s happened?” He placed a hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder.

Nathaniel leaned back in the pew, studying the cross on the wall behind the pulpit and raking a hand through his hair. “I’ve asked Lydia to go. To Rochester. To study there.”

Pastor Ferguson didn’t react except to nod and tug on his ear. As if musing on a philosophical question, he asked, “And what prompted this decision?”

“I can’t trust myself.”

“Yes, I see.”

Nathaniel studied him. “Have you ever lost your faith, Gillis? Has anything in your life ever caused you to think perhaps there is no God?”

The pastor hesitated, looking upward for a moment and then back at Nathaniel. “I’ve never questioned His existence, but my faith, once, was shaken.”

“When your daughter died?”

“Yes, I’m afraid the pain of the circumstance was such that I was blinded to His wisdom, to His love for a short time. It seemed my crisis of faith came in the form of questions. Why her? Why me? As you know, I would advise any of my flock that, here on earth, we do not always understand His ways, and the glorious reunion in heaven will wipe away all questions, all fear. But when you’re in the midst of the pain sometimes it’s not possible to remember these things.” He went on, “Five years ago when I lost Rose, after watching her suffer so, I didn’t falter in my faith, but the pain of missing her was all consuming. But with God’s help one can go on, you see.”

“When will it stop for me, Gillis? I’ve been without pity for myself. I began again. I’ve given to others through teaching. I’ve stayed married to a woman I do not love, all for the sake of pleasing Him. And now I’ve walked away from a woman with whom I might find some peace. I’ve been righteous, Gillis. And still I suffer. And I cannot help but ask why? Why did God turn away from me?”

“He never turns away, Nathaniel. It’s merely your perception.”

Just then they heard the sound of the red-bellied woodpecker pecking against the building. Both men were quiet, the only sound between them the rhythmic drumming of the woodpecker’s beak. After a moment, Gillis smiled in his tender way and gazed at the cross that hung on the wall behind the pulpit. “I’ve been wondering about that bird all these months, thinking of it merely as an irritant or interruption during my daily conversations with God. I imagined this bird was a sign the building was eroding with termites and that it would need repair with money we cannot raise from the downtrodden people of this congregation. Yesterday I did research on this bird, and do you know they eat mostly berries? They make their nests where sawdust already gathers, which means the hole he has slowly chipped away at was already there. He just made it bigger. I went up there last night to see this hole for myself. And inside were all these dried berries and acorns, food he’s storing for later, I suppose, when hard times come for him.” He stopped, smiling and scratching his temple. “It’s made me understand something. Something important. Sometimes what we think we know is not so at all.” He sat beside Nathaniel in the pew. “I have something I want to say to you. I’ve prayed on it for several weeks now, and I feel I can no longer be silent.” Gillis looked him straight in the eyes. “Son, sometimes we need to know when to let go.”

“What?”

Gillis’s eyes were gentle. “You’ve done what you thought God wanted, but perhaps you were incorrect. The answers to our questions to God are sometimes difficult to discern. I ask you this—is Frances worthy of your loyalty? Is there any question in your mind about that? If there isn’t, there should be.” He reached over and put a hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder. “Please give serious thought to what I’m saying to you now. You need to go home and ask your wife some hard questions about how she spends her time.” He turned his gaze back to the cross.

“What do you know that I don’t?”

“It’s not my place to say. I’ll say only this. Secrets will destroy you if you let them, but you must discover this for yourself. Go home, Nathaniel. Sort through your life and see it clearly without the constraints of the rules you’ve given yourself. Keep only that which is good, that which doesn’t threaten to ruin you. This is what God wants for you.”

“How can you be so sure?”

He smiled and rose from the bench. “Because He speaks to those who will listen.”

N
athaniel walked blindly
, not realizing he was home until he almost stepped on the neighbor’s tabby cat asleep on the sidewalk. At his driveway, he leaned against the back of his parked car, trying to muster the energy to go into the house. A cigarette. That’s all he wanted. Just one. Remembering a pack of cigarettes in the glove box, he took one and lit it, taking a deep drag and blowing the smoke into the sticky air.

The neighbor’s young son Homer sat on the steps of his front porch, tossing pebbles into a bucket. Nathaniel lifted his hand in a wave, and Homer waved back, grinning and yelling over to him. “Hey, Professor, I lost another tooth.”

“Good man.”

Homer’s mother appeared on the front porch, dish towel in her hand. Nathaniel nodded in greeting, but she stared through him. She said something in Homer’s ear, a stern look on her face. Homer shrugged and kicked the grass. Without a word they both disappeared into the house. Despite the heat, Nathaniel felt an ominous chill run through him. Stubbing out his cigarette, he headed around to the back of his house.