Light From Heaven (5 page)

They had prayed their Lenten prayer, eaten their modest supper, and made the pie—which would doubtless improve by an overnight repose in the refrigerator.

Now, they drew close by the fire, to the sound of a lashing March wind; she with
Mrs. Miniver
and he with
The Choice of Books,
a late-nineteenth-century volume he’d found in their bedroom. He was vastly relieved that she’d made no more mention of his hair, what was left of it.

“Listen to this, Timothy.”

Cynthia adjusted her glasses, squinting at the fine print. “ ‘It’s as important to marry the right life as it is the right person.’ ”

“Aha! Never thought of it that way.”

“I considered that very thing when I married you.”

“Whether I was the right person?”

“Whether it would be the right life,” she said.

“And?”

“And it is. It’s perfect for me.”

His wife, who preferred to read dead authors, put her head down again.

“How dead, exactly, must they be?” he had once asked.

“Not
very
dead; I usually draw the line at the thirties and forties, before the mayhem began setting in like a worm. So ... moderately dead, I would say.”

He tossed a small log onto the waning fire; it hissed and spit from the light powder of snow that had blown into the wood box by the door. A shutter on the pantry window made a rattling sound that was oddly consoling.

“And here’s something else,” she said.

“‘This was the cream of marriage, this nightly turning out of the day’s pocketful of memories, this deft, habitual sharing of two pairs of eyes, two pairs of ears. It gave you, in a sense, almost a double life: though never, on the other hand, quite a single one.’”

He nodded slowly, feeling a surge of happiness.

“Yes,” he said, meaning it.
“Yes!”

He awoke from a dream in which he felt a frantic impulse to deliver Russell Jacks’s bimonthly treat of livermush.

Russell had watched for his visits at the door of Betty Craig’s little house, as eager as any boy for his two weeks’ worth of livermush sandwiches on white loaf bread with mayo. But Russell Jacks was dead and gone, never again to entertain a hankering for “poor man’s pate.”

Miss Sadie, about whom he often dreamed, was also gone. And then there was Absalom Greer: “Gone to glory!” as the old preacher might have said.

Gone . . .

The thought of loss gave him a hollow feeling.

He wasn’t, however, afraid of dying; he knew where he was going. Of course, he wasn’t going there because he had been “good,” however nominally, but because he had long ago committed his heart to God, made known through the One who had died in order that he, Timothy Kavanagh, might have eternal life.

Strange. The anomaly of livermush seemed far odder than the extraordinary fact that Jesus Christ had chosen to sacrifice Himself for a small-town parson.

He would be seventy in June, a truth that he considered often these days. Seventy! He had no ability to effectively process this fact; it was beyond belief. But no, growing older hadn’t made him fearful of death—hadn’t Thomas Edison said, “It is very beautiful over there!” and Cotton Mather, he’d always liked Mather’s last words: “Is this dying? Is this all? Is this what I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh, I can bear this! I can bear it!”

What he feared, instead, was leaving some crucial work undone, thereby failing to complete his mortal mission. This fear had nagged him for much of his life as both an active and now-retired priest.

It brightened his spirit, then, to remember that Dooley was asleep in the next room, his own mortal mission to be hammered out.

What if God hadn’t sent Russell Jacks’s eleven-year-old grandson to his door, like some precious special delivery that must be opened quickly and handled carefully, lest it perish? Indeed, in the ten years since Dooley had become his charge, he’d learned to love him as his own flesh.

As might be expected, some said that he’d “saved” Dooley’s life. The truth was, Dooley more likely saved his. At the age of sixtysomething, he had gone from an inward-looking bachelor to an outward-striving father. And then, of course, Cynthia had moved in next door. A double miracle if ever there was one.

He rolled toward his wife, slipped his arm around her, and felt the deep, drowning mystery of sleep come upon him.

After the Morning Office, he prayed with Cynthia, then came to the kitchen and went about the business of laying the fire.

He squatted on the hearth and placed a loose network of cedar kindling in the still-warm grate above the coals. After adding three sticks of well-seasoned oak and striking a match to the fatwood, he watched the flames lick up, and listened eagerly to the crackle and snap of the cedar.

He stood then, content, warming his backside until Cynthia joined him in her favorite, albeit threadbare, robe, to begin their team effort over breakfast.

“So tell me the truth about the oven fries,” she said, buttering the toast.

“Good. Very good,” he said, poaching the eggs.

“I’m looking for outstanding!” she said, pouring the juice. “Next time I’ll brine the water.”

“Reading
War and Peace
would be simpler,” he said, mashing the plunger on the French press.

They sat and ate by the fire, receiving its benediction.

“Does he seem taller to you?” she asked.

“Six-two.”

“When do you think you might tell him?”

“I’ve never enjoyed hauling around secrets. But something tells me to wait.”

“I’ve always trusted you to know when the time is right.” She sipped her coffee. “His Jeep is a mess; he needs a car.”

“Agreed.”

“You could use money from the trust to buy him a car.... You wouldn’t have to reveal the extent of Miss Sadie’s gift until you’re ready.”

“I’ve been considering that.”

“I feel he should have something he really wants, not another used vehicle with someone else’s troubles thrown in.”

“What if he wants a BMW?”

“Lace has one. He might like one, too.”

“BMWs are fast.”

“I think he would be responsible.”

“I mean
really
fast.”

“Timothy, I love the little wrinkle that pops between your eyebrows when you worry. It’s sort of . . . cute.”

Cute!
He’d never understood why others didn’t fret about the things that plagued him. Not only were BMWs fast, they cost more than some people’s houses; such a high-dollar car could give Dooley the big head; plus, the other students might hate his guts....

His wife leaned her head to one side and blasted him with the cornflower blue of her eyes. “‘Taste and see that the Lord is good,’ dearest, ‘happy are they who trust in Him.’”

“Preaching to me again, Kavanagh?”

“Psalm thirty-four,” she said, smiling at her husband.

He blew through the kitchen door from the woodpile, an icy wind at his back.

“I have some good news and some bad news,” she said.

“The bad first.” He trotted to the hearth, Barnabas at his heels.

“Joyce won’t be coming again for several months. Blockages in her arteries, she’ll need stents. The doctor says she shouldn’t be cleaning houses at her age.”

“Ah.” He lowered the wood onto the hearth. “I’m sorry to hear it. I’ll deliver a baked ham; we’ll keep her in our prayers.”

“Ready for the good news?”

“Always.”

“James just called. Everyone loved the watercolor of Violet looking out the window at the snow. I did it for a little mailing piece, and now they’d like to have twelve watercolors of Violet’s life in the country—for a wall calendar.

“Since I’m not writing a book these days, I thought it might be a wonderful idea. I’d give all royalties to the Children’s Hospital.”

“That’s a new wing on the building right there!”

“I didn’t give James an answer, yet; I wanted to see how you feel about it. I know you love it that I haven’t slaved over a drawing board since we came to Meadowgate. We’ve had such a lovely time out here in the sticks, with nothing pulling at us.”

He took off his jacket and tossed it on the window seat. “I want what you want, and I mean it.” He did mean it—even though he lost her for long intervals when she was working on a book. But this wasn’t a book.

“I’d like to do it,” she said. “I think it would be fun. Liberating, somehow.”

He sat in the wing chair and pulled her into his lap. “Violet chasing the guineas?”

“Wonderful! And how about Violet in the barn loft where we found the bantam nest?”

“Violet stuck in the chinaberry tree by the chicken coop!”

“Perfect!” she said. “Violet sunning herself at the smokehouse! Or better yet, perched on the roof of the smokehouse, peering out at the mountains.”

“Remember the time I had to fetch her down from your rooftop? While you went off to the country club to do the tango with Andrew Gregory?”

“The rhumba,” she said.

“So, how many months do we have so far?”

“January, February, March, April.”

“Terrific. Do it. Piece of cake.”

She smooched the top of his head. “It’s a dream come true, really. Doing watercolors, living in the country in a wonderful old house on a beautiful farm, without any responsibilities . . .”

“Walking the dogs,” he said, continuing the litany, “reading aloud by the fire ...”

“Hey.” Dooley stood in the doorway, in pajama bottoms and a tattered University of Georgia sweatshirt. He stretched and yawned hugely.

“Hey, yourself,” crowed Cynthia. “It’s twelve o’clock, you big lug.”

“Man, I never saw so many dogs piled on one bed, I had to get up and sleep on the couch in the library.” Barnabas shambled to Dooley, who gave him a good scratch behind the ear. “Hey, buddy, you’re in the doghouse for rootin’ me out last night.”

Cynthia trotted to the refrigerator and opened the door. “Breakfast or lunch?”

“Pie!” said Dooley.