Duet for Three Hands (9 page)

L
ydia

A
t dawn Lydia Tyler
dressed in a ratty flannel shirt and a pair of William’s old pants, cinched at the waist with his leather belt she’d gotten in the habit of wearing after his death. She braided her hair as she slipped her feet into his work boots, pausing only long enough to start a fire in the kitchen’s woodstove before going out into the March morning.

At the chicken coop, she tossed some feed to the squawking masses that reminded her of gossiping ladies flocking outside church after Sunday services. She both despised the chickens with their beady eyes that looked at her from either side of their lumpy heads and revered them at the same time, knowing how reliably they gave her eggs and how the fryers fed her and many of her neighbors.

These protesting, pecking chickens were the only animals she raised on her place now, having long ago decided the pigs and milk cow they’d had when William was alive were too much trouble, given their yield and her needs. It was enough, the hundred chicks she bought every spring and raised into chickens: a dozen layers, the rest fryers. She sold the eggs every Friday; her customers knew to stop by before nine to pick up their allotment for the week. After her paying customers, she had just enough for her family and several neighbors who had come on hard times.

Lydia gathered the eggs, placing them carefully into a tin bucket. After setting the eggs near the gate, she went back into the barn, looking for her old cat Piggy. He came out at night to catch mice and then usually fell asleep on a bale of hay. Sure enough, there he was, reliable as always, curled in a ball, his white paws tucked under his black coat. She called to him, but instead of stretching and yawning disdainfully to jump from his perch to rub against her ankles, he didn’t move. “Piggy,” she called again. “Breakfast time.”Again, nothing.

She placed her hand on his back. Stiff. She stepped back as a sob came from her chest. “Piggy,” she whispered.

She scooped Piggy into her arms, placed him in the wheelbarrow, and grabbed a shovel, wheeling out beyond the fence to where a wooden cross was forever above Lady’s grave. In life Lady had been an orange and white striped mouser and was actually a boy. But Birdie, only four when they found him wandering down the dirt road, refused to believe it, insisting they call him Lady.

Lydia dug into the soft ground next to Lady’s grave until she had a hole big enough for Piggy. She placed him inside and quickly covered him with dirt, patting the mound with the back of the shovel. She gathered a dozen rocks in various sizes and placed them over the grave to keep predators away. If Birdie were here, she would give Piggy’s eulogy. But she wasn’t, Lydia thought, pitifully. The girls were out of town visiting Lydia’s father and his wife. They wouldn’t be back for another week. She would have to give the eulogy herself.

It was still today, no breeze or rain. Just a thick cloud layer that felt close. “You were a good cat, Piggy,” she said out loud. “You never gave up, even when you were old and could’ve spent your days sleeping. Instead you just kept along, killing mice like a young cat, which is to be admired. I’ll miss you.”

She went inside the house and sat at the piano. Most days she played three hours in the morning and another two in the afternoon, but now she could not focus, thinking instead about William. Every death, whether a cat or a neighbor down the road she hardly knew, brought grief to the surface.

Around nine, there was a knock on the front door. Startled, Lydia dried her eyes and opened the door. It was Midwife Stone. “Mornin’, Mrs. Tyler. Just coming from the Warrens’. She had them twins this morning.”

Midwife Stone was nearing sixty, scrawny, with gnarled hands and several missing teeth, known to smoke a corncob pipe on the porch of the general store. She’d helped almost every poor baby in Atmore come into the world. She looked Lydia up and down. “You having yourself a cry, Lydia Tyler? That ain’t like you.”

Lydia smiled, feeling foolish. “My old cat Piggy died.”

“That ole mangy cat? I thought evil lived forever.”

Lydia laughed. The last time Midwife Stone was over for a visit he’d hissed and snarled at her before running like something possessed out the door and into the barn, appearing hours later with an accusatory stare in Lydia’s direction. “He just didn’t like you. He was a grand judge of character. Come on in now, and I’ll fix you something to eat.”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

In the kitchen, Lydia set some biscuits, butter, and honey on a plate in front of Midwife Stone. “I’ll fix you up a couple of eggs.”

“That’d be mighty fine. I came by to see if you’d fry up a chicken for Mrs. Warren. She’s feeling poorly, and her kin is surely about to starve to death. These twins make six kids. Nary a crumb of food in that house as far as I can see.”

The Warren family lived a ways down the road from Lydia in a two-room shack, trying to make a living growing cotton on a small, overused piece of land. “That’s a shame. I’ll send them up some eggs, too. And I’ve some canned beans and peaches I can spare. We don’t eat nearly what we did when William was alive.”

“That what got you boohooin’ here in the broad daylight?”

Lydia smiled as she tied on her apron. “I guess. Just feeling mighty sorry for myself. It’s embarrassing.” She scooped some lard into a frying pan. “My mother always told me if you’re feeling bad to do for others.”

“Good way to live, surely.” Midwife Stone chewed the biscuit on the left side of her mouth, where she had more teeth. “All them Warren kids need shoes. Anything you could do for ’em?”

“I can put it on our list at church.” Lydia cracked two eggs into the frying pan, hot lard spattering over her clean stove. “Sometimes we can scare up some money from a few of the wealthy folks.”

“Those same ladies that pray for me?” asked Midwife Stone.

Lydia laughed and flipped the eggs. “Well, you’re quite scandalous. Rumor has it you’re making voodoo dolls out of corncobs.”

“Don’t seem to recall that when they’re sending for me to birth them babies.”

“You’re giving them something to pray for,” laughed Lydia. “They don’t have a thing to do without praying over some misguided soul.”

Midwife Stone buttered another biscuit and chewed noisily for a moment. “You should find yourself a new husband. Someone to keep you company.”

“I’ll do it the minute you do.”

Midwife Stone chuckled and sliced into the eggs Lydia set in front of her. “No need for a husband if you can take care of yourself.”

“I can’t imagine living with another man. William was my one love. I was lucky that way. Most women don’t even get that.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” Midwife Stone scooped up the rest of the egg yolk with her biscuit. “Look at me.”

Lydia sat in the chair across from Midwife Stone. “Truth is, I’ve been wondering what to do next. I hate feeling so useless. I can’t just be Widow Tyler, the Methodist church piano player and Emma and Birdie’s mother for the rest of my life.”

“People in town think other things about you, too.” Midwife Stone’s eyes twinkled.

“I know people think I’m odd.”

“In here all day playing your piano.” She slapped the table with her hand and grinned her half-toothless smile. “It gives ’em all fits.”

They both laughed. Lydia poured them both a cup of coffee. “What do they expect? For me to just sit here waiting to die?”

“Well, it’s true that someone’s always being born or dying. I guess it’s in the years between we have to do something that either helps others or makes us happy. You got a few good years left in you. I feel sure of that. Just keep doing something. Play that piano. All good things come when you do something you love.”

N
athaniel

F
rances’s labor
pains began in the early morning hours on the second day of March. Nathaniel remembered nothing of the journey, but somehow they arrived at the hospital just ten blocks from their apartment in New York City. Frances was whisked away, and his long wait began. He paced the floor for hours, more anxious than he’d ever been in his life. Finally, a nun beckoned to him, her face grim. “Follow me, please, Mr. Fye. The doctor wishes to speak with you.”

They walked down a long hallway until they came to the doctor’s office. The doctor, whom Nathaniel had never met, sat behind the desk. He looked up when they came in and pointed to one of the chairs. “Please sit. I’ve some distressing news.”

Nathaniel suddenly couldn’t feel his feet. The nun steered him into the chair. His heart beat wildly. His stomach churned. Behind the doctor’s head, the clock ticked off the seconds, one by one.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Fye, but there’s been a complication.”

“Are they all right?” Nathaniel said.

“Frances is fine. She lost a lot of blood and needs to rest.”

“And the baby?”

“It’s a boy, but I’m sorry, Mr. Fye, he isn’t going to make it.”

“Isn’t going to make it?”

“He won’t live for more than a few hours. He weighs only a couple of pounds and, well, he was born with severe abnormalities.”

“Abnormalities?”

He spoke in one note, methodical, like reading from a textbook. “An oversized head, which usually indicates excess fluid, and clubfeet. We don’t know what his insides look like; we only know from the past that these kinds of babies don’t live longer than a couple of hours.”

“But why? I mean, how?”

“It’s just something that happens. We don’t understand it. A freak of nature, so to speak.”

A freak of nature? On the wall behind the doctor’s head was a painting of Jesus on the cross. “May I see him?” That was all. He wanted to see him. To hold him, no matter the outcome.

“We don’t recommend it.” The doctor moved a medical journal from one side of the desk to the other.

“Why?”

“He’s deformed, Mr. Fye. It’s a shock to most people. Something you don’t want in your mind when you try for the next baby.”

“But he’s alive?”

“Yes.” He nodded. A concession.

“Then I want to see him.”

A
nun took
him to the nursery. Four or five healthy babies in bassinettes were lined up in neat rows. His son was in the corner bassinet, set aside from the rest, like something discarded. My God, Nathaniel thought when he leaned over to get a better look at him, he’s no bigger than a kitten, his face shriveled like an old man, and his eyes scrunched shut. Should he touch him? Was it all right, or would it hurt him? He was so still, so small. But wait. Was he breathing? He felt panic rising in his chest. “Is he alive?”

“Yes.” The nun made a sympathetic sound with her mouth, like the cluck of a hen. “It’s shallow, but see there, how the blanket moves.”

He fought tears, gulping down air to try and stop them. “How could this be?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Fye. Many newborn babies don’t make it.” She hesitated, and when she spoke her tone sounded regretful. “I’m sure that’s no comfort to you.”

It was not. He didn’t care about those other babies. He didn’t care about the statistics. He cared only about this mite in front of him. His son. Whom he loved. Whom he had loved without knowing him in the flesh for the months he formed in Frances’s body. He’d lived an entire imaginary lifetime with his son when he daydreamed at the piano and as he walked the streets of New York and even when he was awake in the night. In those invented moments, he’d taught his son to play piano and listen to music, carefully like a musician, on the gramophone. They’d walked together through every color of fallen autumn leaves in the Maine woods near his mother’s home. Later, they’d caught lobster, and he’d told him stories of his grandfather in heaven. He’d taken him to the lake house and watched Clare bounce him on her lap and read him books. They’d sat with Whitmore on the dock and put their poles in the brown water, swatting at mosquitoes, waiting for fish to bite and talking of nothing and everything at once. He’d walked behind his son and Whitmore as they held hands crossing the yard and into the house where Cassie fried up catfish while his boy grinned and stuffed biscuits into his mouth with pudgy fingers. He’d imagined Frances rocking him in the early morning hours, her face peaceful in the dim light of dawn. And now his son was before him, not his imagined fair-haired boy, but just his sweet soul delivered into the wrong body.

And yet, how he loved him. Beyond anything he’d imagined—this love that he had not fully understood until now. He loved him regardless of the way he was made. Regardless of the fact that he would not live. He understood for the first time: this was how his father had loved him.

An image came to him of his father’s red, chapped hands folded on his lap in the evening firelight. “Play just one more for me, Nathaniel.”

“I’m naming him John,” he told the nun. “After my father.”

“Do you want to hold him?” She had a round face and wore thick glasses that made it seem as if her eyes protruded unnaturally.

“Will it hurt him?”

“No, Mr. Fye, it will only give him comfort as he waits to meet our Lord in heaven.”

He felt a helpless sliding under, like a drowning man. “I don’t know how.”

“Sit in the chair here and hold out your arms.” He did so, and she picked up the baby from the cradle and put him in Nathaniel’s arms. He peeked under the blanket. John’s scrawny body was purple, like he was bruised. The nun had put a tiny diaper on him. His legs were no bigger than the width of Nathaniel’s thumb, and his poor, misshapen feet twisted inward. After a few moments, he looked up to find the nun gone. It occurred to him that Frances hadn’t seen the baby. He must tell the nun. They must go to his son’s mother. He rose from the chair, wandering out of the nursery and down the hall, meeting the nun on the way. “My wife hasn’t seen him.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Fye. I’ve just been there. She doesn’t want to.”

“Are you sure?”

“She doesn’t think she’s strong enough.” She held out her arms. “Let me take him for a moment. You can go see her. She needs you.”

Frances was in the bed, her eyes closed. She opened them when he took her hand. “Nate, did they tell you?”

He nodded. “I’ve just been with him. He’s fragile but alive. Do you want me to bring him?” His voice cracked.

Her eyes burned with a strange light, like someone with a fever. “I came to from the ether, and no one would look at me. The doctor was making notes in a tablet. I asked about the baby, and they all shuffled their feet and looked at the floor, but I wanted to know the truth so they told me he’s deformed and won’t live, and they’ve taken him away to die and that a mother shouldn’t look at him.”

He borrowed the phrase from the nun. “Frances, they’re wrong. He needs his mother to hold him before he goes up to heaven.”

She turned to her side, facing the wall. “No. I can’t. Go, and let me sleep.”

He stumbled back to the nursery and found himself in the chair holding his son once again. He wept, tears falling upon the blanket. He sang a lullaby. He whispered loving words. He said the Lord’s Prayer. And when baby John took his last breath, Nathaniel breathed it with him, until it was done and he had to let go.