Duet for Three Hands (4 page)

“Tell me about your life in New York, Nate.” Her fingers played with the curly hair on his chest. “I belong there, I’m sure of it.”

“It’s busy. More people than you can imagine. Never quiet. Even at night there are shouts and laughter, honking and car engines, streetcar noise. I wish for quiet there, much of the time.”

“Quiet? Oh, it’s dreadfully quiet everywhere I go. I long for excitement, for people, for a less conventional life than Atlanta has to offer. There are so many rules here, mostly invented to keep a girl like me from having any fun. Georgia’s god-awful. So backward and stifling. I spend nights just dreaming of how I might escape.” She looked up at him with eyes the color of smoke. “But I’m a southern girl. I don’t get to make decisions for myself. I have to hope that a man will marry me so that I might move from my father’s house to his, destined to be unhappy like my mother.”

“The right man, perhaps, could make you happy?” He said this lightly, hoping to sound merely playful instead of desperate, which is what he felt at the moment—absolutely desperate that she choose him.

“A man like you?” She stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray before rolling to her side and propping herself up to look him fully in the face. Her cheeks were flushed pink, and her hair was in wild curls around her face. Was it possible she’d grown more beautiful in the last five minutes?

He smiled. “Yes, a man like me. Will you let me try?”

“I’ll be here when you return.” She kissed him lightly on the mouth. “I should get back before Mother wakes and finds me gone.”

She slid out of bed and stood, picking up his right hand, which lay limp on the bed cover. Pulling on his fingers one by one, her forehead crinkled as if pondering a deep mystery. “These fingers are awfully powerful on that piano.” She placed his hand on her bare chest, just above her breasts. “I could grow quite accustomed to them on my body every night of my life.” She kissed the palm of his hand and then let it fall onto the bed. “Please call me when you return. I’ll be waiting. Don’t fall in love with anyone else while you’re away.”

“Impossible.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Good night, Nate.”

“Good night, Frances.”

He collapsed against the bed pillows, miserable and delighted all at once. Everything in him screamed for her to stay. Why had he met her right before he left for months? Framed in the doorway, she slid her dress over her pale skin and then turned to him, blowing him a kiss and fluttering her fingers. It reminded him of a scene in a play or a moving picture, like he was merely a spectator instead of a participant. Then she was out of the frame, disappearing from his view. The door creaked and shut with a bang. And then there was nothing but the beating of his faint heart in a hollow chest.

L
ydia

B
y late afternoon
the flowers had wilted and smelled of death. The sickly sweet scent of their dying permeated the parlor of Lydia Tyler’s farmhouse and drifted among mourners eating cake and drinking coffee from her wedding china. Geraniums, sweet peas, and lilies from her garden covered the coffin the men from Sam’s barbershop, her husband’s friends, had cut and constructed from local pine. Only weeks from summer, the late Alabama spring was warm, and they hadn’t much time to wait for burial. News of his death ran swiftly through their small town of Atmore, and Midwife Stone had come at once. There were no babies born that day, only death for William. Lydia could not help but think of the days her daughters were born, delivered by Midwife Stone, as William paced the floor of their parlor. The happiest days of his life, he often said, while telling the girls the stories of their births.

Midwife Stone had prepared him for burial in their very own bedroom, but Lydia had stayed away, lining the newly constructed coffin now in their parlor with their best set of sheets; Lydia had made them only last month from the finest cotton. Every night William had commented on how soft they were as his foot wandered to her side of the bed to stroke her bare calf.

When William was readied, some men came to place him inside, next to those sheets. Lydia had taken one last look before closing the lid of the coffin. His features had softened in death so that he appeared peaceful, as if taking a Sunday afternoon nap after one of the minister’s particularly long sermons. She touched his face one last time, expecting him to wake any moment and ask for a glass of sweet tea. Then she turned away, wanting to remember him in motion, in life, not this static sleeper. But it didn’t matter, really, if she looked or not. Grief blinded her eyes like blots of black ink on paper, and she saw only the image of William, as if he’d been captured in a photograph during the last seconds of life, waving to her as he came up the driveway for his midday meal. When she told Midwife Stone this truth, the wizened old woman smiled and patted her hand. “That there is a blessing.”

As she greeted the mourners, Lydia thought more than once,
if only he might wake
. It seemed everyone in town had come, making the parlor smaller: friends, neighbors, William’s customers at the bank. She nodded her head while accepting condolences and pressed back when hands pressed hers, but their voices were dim, like a glass window separated them.
He was a good man. Taken too soon. We’re sorry for your loss. Such a shock for you and the girls, but he’s with God now. He was fair to us, always.

Her silent shouts to her husband overshadowed all.

Please sit up, darling. Declare it all a terrible mistake.

And in answer,
I’m feeling right as rain, Lyds. What’s for supper? I could eat a small horse.

Please, climb out between the boards and those awful eternal pillows and tease me about Sunday dinner being late because I practiced too long on the piano and forgot to stoke that blasted old wood stove you refuse to replace.

Better to save than spend, Lyds.

William was frugal; no need for modern appliances, he often said. Regardless of the electric stoves most of her friends took for granted, he felt obliged to wait another year or two before purchasing one. Better to save than spend, he said at least once a week to his daughters. Spoken like a banker, of course, who had seen the near financial collapse of 1927 and predicted that something worse was soon to come.

William had been frugal. Past tense.

Finally the last horrid step in the ritual of burial commenced. The men of Sam’s barbershop, acting as pallbearers instead of playing checkers and smoking cigars as they normally would on a Saturday afternoon, took him out the front door like the coffin was an ordinary piece of furniture. The flowers were tossed aside, in various locations, their usefulness done. Later, she recalled nothing of the burial, but there was dirt under her fingernails and mud on the midsection of her skirt. She could not fathom how that had come to be.

When they returned home, her daughters each holding onto an arm because she could not walk alone, the sickly sweet smell of the flowers greeted them. Lydia gagged. Emma, her oldest at fourteen, guided her into a chair. Birdie brought a glass of water. At fourteen and twelve they were little ladies, taught in the southern style despite their northerner mother.

The women from church had cleaned up, but they’d left the flowers, perhaps thinking they would be a comfort. They were not. She hated them, every petal, every stem. They covered her beloved piano, the formal sofa her daughters weren’t allowed to sit on, the side table where letters often waited for the post. Had the flowers multiplied while they were away watching William being lowered into the ground?

She sent Birdie and Emma to wash up and put their nightgowns on. “I’ll be there shortly to tuck you in.”

They didn’t argue, knowing when to leave and when to stay, a quality they’d inherited from their father.

The silent conversation with William continued. It was softer now, without the other voices to interfere.
I need to play you one more hymn, William. Your favorite hymn.
But this time he did not answer. Already she was losing him. She collapsed onto the piano bench. But even here, the flowers mocked her. They occupied every inch of the keyboard’s closed cover.

She twisted on the bench; her gaze swept the room. Angry energy coursed through her until she was hot and damp. She rose to her feet. The flowers must be removed so she could breathe again. They could not, would not, stop her from playing one last hymn for her William. Every last flower was destined for the compost, if it took her all night. She stomped to the sewing basket and pulled out her scissors. They must be cut to bits, their perky buds slaughtered. They must suffer.

She turned and stumbled on the corner of the braided rug, the scissors like a sword in her hand. Wait. Where to start? The scissors dangled now from her index finger. William would know where to begin, but he wasn’t here. She closed her eyes, gripping the scissors.
Please no
, she begged the pain.
Please don’t come until I get through this day and into bed
. The pain heeded no pleas. It came in cruel waves, as if someone stabbed her with the benign sewing scissors, but worse because the wound was inside and could not be healed with ointment or pills.

William waving to her from the driveway. Chicken potpie in the oven smelling like love, like life. That grin he always had when he first spotted her, even after fifteen years together.

She’d come to greet him from the porch like most days, anxious to tell him of her morning, of the way the sparrows had seemed to sing harmony with her piano. First the wave, the grin, and then he collapsed onto the red dirt, inches from the green lawn, clutching his left arm. His last breath was of the red dust instead of the cool grass. Even that small comfort was denied her.

Not even two days had passed since that last moment. And now? The house smelled of death.

The flowers must suffer.

The doctor assured her that William hadn’t suffered. “Heart failure. It was instantaneous. Didn’t feel a thing. That should be a comfort to you.”
It
, she wanted to tell him nastily and with emphasis, was not a comfort to her; she knew it wasn’t true. His last thoughts would have been of her and their daughters. He clung to life, to them, even in those final seconds.

Now, the clock chimed eight. Four days ago William had read them a chapter from
The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle
. William thought the children should read all the Newbery Medal winners.

Emma’s voice from the bedroom startled Lydia from her thoughts. “Mother, are you coming?”

“Yes, right now.” Wake up, she ordered herself. Take care of your girls.

They stared up at her, snuggled together in the double bed they shared. Lydia forced a placid smile. No need to scare them with her plans to murder the flowers. She tucked a cool white sheet around their shoulders. Dark smudges under their eyes betrayed grief.

The house creaked, settling in for the night, as if shrinking back to size after holding half the town in its modest rooms. Birdie, still childlike, spoke with a sleepy voice. “Mother, stay with us until we fall asleep.”

“Yes. Close your eyes now.”

But Birdie’s blue eyes remained wide open, steadfast in the study of her mother’s face. “Do you think Daddy can see us from heaven, Mother?”

She felt scratchy, salty tears behind her eyes. “I do.”

Emma moved closer to Birdie in the bed.

“Are we poor now, Mother?” Birdie asked.

Lydia brushed blonde hair from Birdie’s freckled forehead. “Your Daddy took care to make sure we aren’t. His daddy’s daddy owned this house and property, so we’ll always have a place to live. He had some money put aside for us in case anything ever happened to him.” Just last week, he’d suggested he teach her to drive, though most women in Atmore, Alabama, did not. She’d agreed, pleased that he would think her capable. Thinking about how carefully he’d planned for them, it seemed to Lydia as if he knew he might die young. There was money and a small life insurance policy, too, that he’d mentioned to her a year ago. She hadn’t listened carefully, believing they had many years left together. No one expected a healthy man to die of natural causes at age forty-five. Was there something in him that suspected he wasn’t long for this earth?

The worried look disappeared from Birdie’s eyes. “So we won’t have to move out of our house?”

“No, of course not. What made you think that?”

“One of her friends told her that when your daddy dies you have to move to the poor side of town.” Emma pulled her arms from under the sheet, clasping her hands together. “But Daddy took care of things, didn’t he?”

“He did. All he ever cared about was taking care of us. Since the moment I met him, he started looking after me.”

“You looked after him, too, Mother,” said Birdie. “He told us so.”

Lydia’s eyes brimmed with tears. She brushed them aside. “I’ve been a very lucky woman. Now go to sleep. This has been a long, terrible day.”

The girls nodded. Emma reached under the sheet and took Birdie’s hand. Their entwined fingers made a bump in the sheet in the shape of a heart. They closed their eyes, and Lydia watched until their grief-pinched faces turned peaceful in sleep.

Now, the flowers. She tiptoed out of the bedroom to the parlor and slipped her feet into her husband’s work boots for the first time. Only a size too big. Enormous feet and hands for a woman, she thought with disgust. How a man as handsome as William had ever overlooked her feet she had no idea. They were flat and wide, like a duck’s.

In the last of the evening light, she pushed the wheelbarrow close to the porch, filled it with flowers, then took the lot of them out to her compost heap near the chicken coop. As she walked, her feet moved up and down in the boots, rubbing against her toes and heels. William’s voice in her head:
You’ll get a blister, Lyds. Do you have to do this now?

She averted her gaze from the spot where he’d fallen. Once she reached the compost, she stopped, clutching both handles of the wheelbarrow. The flowers lay atop one another, their blooms bowed in repose, like dancers taking a final bow. They were benign. Of course they were. How had she thought otherwise? They were nothing but innocent flowers that she’d lovingly cared for. What was the matter with her?

She let go of the wheelbarrow and slumped against the side of the chicken coop; all the venom evaporated, replaced by awful pain. The last of the sun peeked through the pines at the edge of her property, making long, slanted shadows. How William had loved those trees. When they first met he’d regaled her with stories of running through the forest, playing cops and robbers and war and other little boy games. He’d spent most of his life looking at the trees sway in the Alabama breezes.

The old barn cat, Piggy, appeared, purring and pressing against Lydia’s legs. “Oh, Piggy, I hate this.” She knelt and then sat on the hard ground. Piggy climbed onto her lap, resting his rather large head (Birdie said he had the face of a pig, thus the name) on Lydia’s knee. Lydia caressed him absently. Piggy purred louder. Something scurried, probably a lizard or mouse, and Piggy jumped as if possessed by the devil and ran toward the sound. Sighing, Lydia rose to her feet and brushed the back of her skirt with her hands.

She left the flowers and the wheelbarrow and William’s trees, walking across the yard in his boots until she was inside and seated at the piano. She could play
How Great Thou Art
from memory. Her fingers knew it and so many other hymns, just like her legs knew walking. She didn’t sing along like she did when she played at church, but as she played the last refrain, William’s rich baritone seemed to fill the room.

Afterward, she whispered the Twenty-Third Psalm and walked over to the shelf where her special things were displayed: a silver vase given to her by her mother when Lydia graduated high school, framed baby pictures of the girls, her mother’s formal tea set, and the Tyler family Bible. She turned to the Bible’s front page, where William’s mother had written:

William Benjamin Tyler. Born December 10, 1882.

Using her best pen, she filled in the date of his death:
June 10, 1928
. She sat in the parlor as night swallowed the last of the light, gripping the Bible between cold hands, unable to think of a prayer to ask of God. She could think only, why, why, why? Then, William’s voice:

Sweetheart, go to bed.

She left his boots by the front door. In their bedroom, she slipped into her cotton nightgown and took the pins from her hair, letting it fall around her shoulders, shivering despite the summer heat. The feel of her hair about her shoulders always made her feel young, like the upstate New York farm girl she once was. She’d come to Atmore fifteen years ago to marry William, bringing with her nothing but the clothes in her suitcase and leaving behind the promise of a career as a concert pianist. She was eighteen when she married the thirty-year-old William Tyler. Who she was before she was his wife was a dim memory, like the faded photograph of her at sixteen, put away now in a neglected drawer.