Send Me Down a Miracle
Read Send Me Down a Miracle Online
Authors: Han Nolan
 
Copyright © 1996 by Han Nolan
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work
should be mailed to the following address:
Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc.,
6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.
Scripture quotations taken from the
Holy Bible, New International
Version.
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible
Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House.
First Harcourt paperback edition 1996
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nolan, Han.
Send me down a miracle/Han Nolan.
p. cm.
Originally published: San Diego: Harcourt, 1996.
Summary: When a flamboyant New York City artist returns to the
sleepy, God-fearing Alabama town of her birth to conduct an
artistic experiment, the resulting uproar splits the community and
causes fourteen-year-old Charity to question many things that
she had previously taken for granted.
[1. Artistsâ
Fiction.
2. Christian lifeâFiction. 3. Self-perceptionâ
Fiction. 4. City and town lifeâAlabamaâFiction.
5. AlabamaâFiction.)] I. Title
PZ7.N678Se 2003
[Fic]âdc21 2002027478
ISBN 0-15-204680-1
Text set in Meridien
Designed by Lydia D'moch
GHF
This is a work of fiction. All the names, characters, organizations,
and events portrayed in this book are products of the author's
imagination. Any resemblance to any organization, event,
or actual person, living or dead, is unintentional.
For Brianâalways
Â
1And in loving memory of my aunt,
Helen B. Newton
I was fourteen the summer Mama took off for the Birdcage Collectors' Convention and we had ourselves what is now known in this town as the Adrienne Dabney Incident.
'Course the only reason Adrienne was blamed for everything was because she was a stranger in town and a New York artist to boot!
Sharalee Marshall's mama said that Adrienne had no need taking the huff the way she did 'cause a body wasn't anybody around here 'less they'd had an incident named after them, and really, if this town had any sense atall, we would have named it after my daddy, especially him being the preacher and all, and we should forgive him for his disgrace.
I know it was on everyone's mind to call it another Mad Joe Dunn Incident, but no one was talking about that. That part of the story's been erased, forgotten, a skeleton in this town's closet no one dares to bring out, except for me, right now. See, I got to, 'cause I know I was the one who started it all. I was the one who loved her.
The moment I saw Adrienne Dabney flop down in Mama's old wingback chair and prop her bare feet up on Mama's inlaid mother-of-pearl coffee table, I knew I was in love.
She arrived in town in the middle of June, the same day Mama took off, and law, it was the hottest, driest June anyone could remember. Already the grass had turned to straw under the scorching sun, and when we rode down the dirt roads on our bikes the red dust would rise like smoke clouds and we'd choke on it and our throats would burn like we were riding with the sun in our mouths. Then in walked Adrienne, into our tidy home, looking like some wild jungle woman with fat, frizzed-out hair, rings on her toes, and this long, brightly colored skirt that was practically seethrough. She was saying words like "creativity" and "stupendous" and "artistic merit," and it was like I'd found myself in a cool summer shower dancing and laughing and throwing my head back to catch the raindrops in my mouth. And every word she said, every gesture she made was like more rain washing over me, waking me up to somethingâsomething exciting and dangerous, but I didn't know what, I just knew I wanted it. But Daddy sure didn't.
Adrienne pushed aside one of Mama's birdcages with her bare foot and I saw Daddy's eyes move from the sandals kicked off beneath the old wingback to Adrienne slunk down in the chair so her legs could stretch to the inlaid mother-of-pearl, and then up to her hair, all long and frizzed-out with strands of silver running through it, and I swanee, I could see a shudder travel down Daddy's back and settle in his hiney like the woman had slipped a frozen anchovy down his shirt.
She said she loved my name. She tried it out a few times: "Charity, Charity," like she was tasting fine wine, and then she said it was splendid, a splendid name, and I thought to myself that never did a word sound so fine as "splendid."
My eight-year-old sister, Grace, kept drifting in and out of the room like a fairy unable to light on her lily pad, and Adrienne just took it for normal. And maybe where she came from it was.
She said she and her lover (her lover!) had been in Paris because she had an art show there and did we know Montmartre and had we been to the Louvre, which she pronounced with lots of spit and throat-clearing sounds, just like a real French person. Of course we didn't know anything about Paris, but Daddy tried to say something about it anyway and then gave up halfway through, expecting Mama to come to his rescue the way she always did, forgetting that Mama was already two weeks gone.
"Ah," Adrienne said, "you must go. Everyone should go at least once in their lives. La Tour Eiffel, Chartres, l'Arc de Triompheâoh, and if you're into people watching, the sidewalk cafés are marvelous. I sat there for hours every day, sketching, painting. The colors are brilliant. The people are fantastic; so interesting. You know the French hold their mouths differently. Like this." She drew her lips forward, puckering and pouting at the same time. "It's amazing! My God! I've got to go back there."
She did. She said, "My God," right in front of Daddy, and then on top of it, something else about her lover and "ooh-la-la," right there in our living room, and didn't stop to catch her breath or check to see if what she said was upsetting anybody or anything. She just slouched back in that wingback, dangled her hand over the armrest, and twirled the stem of her sunglasses round and round in her hands, and went right on talking and saying whatever she pleased. And I knew, soon as I got up to my room, I was going to pull out my sunglasses and practice twirling and slouching in front of my mirror till I looked just like her.
She told us about the types of cheeses they had in Paris, with names that sounded nothing like Swiss or cheddar or American, and then about Degas and Rodin, which I thought were more cheese names but turned out to be famous artists like her, only dead.
She told us about her art, how she paints landscapes and cityscapes and shapes and such in oils and watercolors. And we knew some about that 'cause she was born right here in Casper and even though she did move away when she was still a baby, she'd been written up in our paper. It was all about how famous she had become and what kind of painting she did and such. We kept the article tacked to our bulletin board in the back of the church till it got so dry and yellow it just crumbled into pieces, but we still had the tack up there, in memory of it, I guess.
After so much art talk and Adrienne slouching in Mama's chair half the day, Daddy was ready for her to leave. He stood up and then so did I, and Grace was already standing, on her way out the door again, but Adrienne didn't move. She said she'd come over for a purpose.
She said, "I'm very distressed by all the attention I've been getting down here." She set her sunglasses on top of her head and reached for a candy mint without even asking. She popped it in her mouth and leaned back in her chair. Daddy sat back down on the camelback sofa all stiff and bristly, patting down his hairpiece, and I just stood there watching like this was some exciting new TV show.
"Really, I can't have it," Adrienne said. "I'm working on an important project, an experiment, and I can't have your people coming over, dropping off food, and wanting to chat for hours on end."
Daddy tugged at his shirt collar, and I could see his face was blotching up red hot. I stepped forward and offered her another mint.
"Thank you, Charity," she said to me. Just so fine. "Thank you. Charity." I can still hear her voice and remember how it sounded, like a slip of ice melting down the throat. I sat back down and said it to myself, "Thank you, Charity," and then I caught sight of Daddy looking sour at me and decided to save it for nighttime when I was alone in my room.
"Miss Dabney," Daddy said, straining with politeness, "surely you must be able to understand that this is not New York City. We're a small town and your arrival is big news. Everyone knows everyone around here, and when a stranger comes to town it's only polite that our congregation welcome her."
Adrienne laughed. "Small town is right. I never realized. My mother used to tell me stories about growing up here, about the old Dabney homestead and how it would someday be mine. What I never realized was that the few people she used to talk about were probably the only people in town. No wonder I couldn't find it on the mapâmy God, this is a small town."
"It sure is," I said, hoping Adrienne would stop taking the Lord's name in vain before Daddy popped a blood vessel. "Why, it's so small you can hold it in the palm of your hand without fear of spilling."
She laughed and nodded and said to me, "Charity, I think I'm going to like you." And I felt the thrill of those words right down to my toes, which I had been imagining with a couple of silver rings on them like hers; but then Daddy cleared his throat and started talking again and those rings just popped right off my feet.
"I'm sorry we've been bothering you with our visits. It was certainly not our intention. You can rest assured that I'll have my congregationâ"
"Look," Adrienne interrupted. "It's just that I came here to work, and when some ancient woman rolls her car down my driveway and honks her horn outside my window until I come outâwell, I can't have it."
"That would be Miss Tuney Mae Jenkins," I said.
Adrienne nodded and her sunglasses slipped off her head onto her nose. She left them there.
"Yes, I went outside to see what all the honking was for and she threw open her door and yelled to me, 'Hey, sugar, come get me out of this contraption.'
Hey, sugar!
My God! And then she goes up my stairs and into my house as if it's hers, turning on the lights and putting some godawful dessert into the fridge. Well, you know, you saw it. Reverend Pittman, when you stopped by."
What Adrienne didn't know was that the whole town knew about Daddy's visit. What with him being the preacher of the only church in town, it was his business and his duty to welcome Miss Adrienne. So he trotted on over to her place with a peanut pie he had me make using Mama's recipe, and law if she didn't refuse to invite him in, just kept him out on the stoop and told him how she hated peanuts, thought they carried worms, so no use her keeping the pie. Then she dug Miss Tuney Mae's pecan deluxe out of her fridge and shoved it off on Daddy, saying how she feels the same way about pecans. Imagine coming to Casper, Alabama, where all we grow is peanuts and pecans and tobacco and such, and her not liking any of it.
When Miss Tuney Mae found out Adrienne palmed off her pecan deluxe on Daddy, she had plenty to say about it,
and
her. I heard her talking to Old Higgs after church, telling him how Adrienne still had all her furniture covered in sheets.
"Didn't pull a one of 'em off, not even to offer me a seat," she said. "And, mercy, it was dark in there. Now, I offered to send the Dooley brothers over to pry the boards off her winders, and know what she said? Said she wanted them left on. Said she didn't need help cleaning, neither, and just looking around at all the dust and her artsy stuff piled up high in the shadows told me she was needing lots of help, but she said she planned to leave it exactly the way it was for a while. Now, imagine that, would you. Leaving it like no one was living there. Like she wasn't a live soul breathing in there."