Then Sings My Soul (5 page)

As she stuffed the rest of her favorite possessions into a suitcase alongside her mother, she supposed she was more like Jakob than Catherine in regard to her faith. Words from verses swam through her mind out of order, no longer strung together on plastic bracelets from Vacation Bible School or underlined with fluorescent highlighter in
The Way
, the old Bible her Young Life leader had given her. Like she'd told Catherine, maybe she'd find more of God and find more meaning to her faith in the desert, surrounded by mountains and open sky.

Nel set her last suitcase on the floor of the foyer. The old, flower-power design had seen her through many junior high and high school slumber parties. She and her mother embraced, and in the end it was Nel's arms that slackened first, Nel's legs that stepped toward the threshold.

Catherine had reached out and straightened Nel's glasses, then patted her cheeks.

“Tell Dad I'll be back.”

“He'll be upset you didn't say good-bye in person.”

“I won't be able to leave if I do.”

Catherine held the end of one of her tennis-sweater sleeves to her trembling mouth and leaned against the front door as if trying to steady herself as she watched Nel stuff the suitcase in the car.

And so, without saying good-bye to Jakob, Nel drove south along the lake that chilly spring day, with the top of her red VW Beetle down and the heat on full blast. She drove past blueberry fields, some of them smoking and blackened from controlled burns that would help them produce bigger yields. Miles of road later, as she approached the Indiana border, she began to sing along with the radio to “I Will Follow Him” by Little Peggy March. Then she pushed an eight-track tape into the console and sang every Peter, Paul, and Mary song ever made. Gusts of wind beat her long black hair against her face. Part of her wished she could go back to days when the lake house had seemed like a mansion, when warm summer winds had caressed her arms like a cashmere sweater, and homemade sundresses Mama made out of seersucker had hung just above her knees, when she hadn't minded the tickle of grass in her ears as she lay flat, limbs spread wide in the thick of the yard, and stared at clouds floating past. Happiness had lingered in those days before shame had swallowed her up.

CHAPTER 6

Billy Esposito tried, still, to make small talk as they rattled their way through first a storm door and then the sticky side door of Jakob's house, his voice too loud against the hushed hollowness inside.

The kid must hate silence, Jakob thought as a pang of uneasiness filled him.

Catherine would know what to say to Nel.

He almost turned his head to look for a reassuring phantom of his wife, the pain of her absence jolting him again. This must be what an amputee feels. Jakob recalled stories he'd heard from veteran friends, then later, friends who'd lost limbs due to diabetes, who described how they could still feel a foot or a leg, a hand or an arm even after it had been severed. That the nonexistent appendage itched and burned and ached as if it were still there. Worse, sometimes, than if it were still there. After all, an itch on something that didn't exist couldn't be scratched.

He'd been beyond lucky to marry Catherine, and his thoughts drifted to her and their earlier years together. Had there not been a war going on, and most of the respectable men her age fighting in the Pacific or on some godforsaken front in Europe, Jakob knew he and Catherine would never have had a chance. In fact, Catherine had been engaged before, but her fiancé, the son of a Chicago hotel tycoon, had died a hero on a navy destroyer lost in the Battle of Guadalcanal.

“November 13, 1942. Days before he would've been on leave … for the holidays,” Catherine had explained about her fiancé's demise. A tear had rolled down her face and landed on her wrist, next to her triple-stranded pearl bracelet. She and Jakob sat on a scrolled, mahogany-trimmed, velvet settee in the lobby of the Palmer House hotel in Chicago. It was the weekend before Christmas Eve 1943, and the two of them were at a party, complete with Santa, who had arrived and begun giving presents to all the children in attendance. She was there because her father, chairman of the board of a steel company, was hosting the event. Jakob was there because Mr. Grünfelder, the jeweler he and his brother Peter had worked for, had invited him knowing he was alone, as he had been since Mrs. Stewart died from influenza in 1935, and Mr. Stewart died in 1941 from what appeared to have been a heart attack. Jakob had agreed to come to the party out of respect more than loneliness.

The lights of the Christmas party, the strolling strings, the ballroom pounding with the newest sounds of Big Band and jazz, the corks popping and the ice tinkling against the sides of long-stemmed glasses had overwhelmed him. Preferring to keep to himself, he'd been warming one side of the settee for some time when Catherine, breathless from dancing and dressed in a silver, floor-length, single-sleeved sheath, plopped down next to him, at first barely seeming to notice he was there. Her dark-brown hair, pulled up with a glinting, jeweled hairpin into a smooth chignon, gleamed. He had tried not to let his eyes linger on her bare left shoulder, which reminded him of marble; it was, he thought, so exquisitely statuesque.

She spoke, and he listened, as her dance-floor giddiness fell away to slower, more serious conversation. Perhaps the rum caused Catherine to lean toward him, to find comfort in the gray edges of his sideburns and his middle-aged shoulders, broad from lifting presses and running machines at the Brake-All factory every day. Or perhaps it was a subliminal aura of neediness he gave off unintentionally, his singleness exposed in a crowd of couples, that evoked within her a sympathy, initially, before striking an eventual mutual flame of physical attraction that had them both reeling, drunk from their infatuation with each other by Valentine's Day, and married by June.

She had terrified him at first. Catherine, her lithe frame, the way her hips swayed when she walked, teasing him like a puppy to follow her down Michigan Avenue as they'd gone Christmas shopping together the next day, the bottom edge of her wool gabardine dress flipping to and fro, skimming along the rounded edges of her perfect—so perfect—calves. Until Catherine, he'd never noticed the thinness of a woman's fingers, the delicate way they lifted a champagne glass, or a cup of coffee, for that matter, and then the way their soft, cool ends pressed against the nape of his neck as he, trembling, had pressed his lips against hers for the first time. Loving Catherine had shaped him. Broken him, yes, but in ways that helped him live again. She had become, in fact, the religion he had lost long ago.

“Eleanor?”

Jakob's attention returned to Billy, who'd been calling and checking all the rooms for Nel. Jakob saw her first, chin in her hands, elbows resting on the edge of the deck railing. He nodded toward the deck. “There she is.”

Billy followed Jakob's gaze to where Nel stood.

“I'll take it from here, son. Thank you for your help today.” Jakob reached out to shake Billy's hand, and Billy grabbed him by the elbow as Jakob lurched toward him on his increasingly bad hip.

“Okay, Mr. Stewart. See you tomorrow.”

Jakob patted him on the shoulder as he moved past in a heavy hobble. He tugged on the back door that stuck a little before opening to the deck, then the yard, then the sharp drop-off to the lake, dappled at that hour with diamonds of afternoon sunlight. He hadn't intended to startle his daughter, but the sudden release of the decrepit door made her jump as she turned to him. She had aged beautifully like her mother. The resemblance caught his breath.

“Hi, Dad.”

He watched the wind blow her hair around her face, how she brushed it away from her small nose—Catherine's nose—and her brown eyes.

“Eleanor.” He coughed slightly, then swallowed against the dryness of his throat. “Welcome home.”

“Thanks.” She leaned back against the railing and pushed her glasses up on her nose.

Jakob noticed her face was wet with tears.

“So,” she said with a sniff. “What are we gonna do now?”

CHAPTER 7

Nel and Jakob embraced. As Nel put her arms around her father, the broad shoulders and most of his height remained as she remembered, but the weightiness, the sturdiness of what were once robust muscles felt doughy and lank, even though it'd been only two Christmases ago that she'd seen him. She backed away, keeping a hand on his upper arm.

“How are you, Dad?”

The diminishment of his frame caught her off guard. His eyes, hazel, rheumy, and droopy, like a surprised basset hound, softened before he looked away from her toward the lake.

“I'm okay.” He sighed and shook his head, his gaze settling on his loafers. “I didn't think … I thought she'd always be here.”

“Let's get out of this wind,” Nel suggested, reaching for the door. She held it open and frowned as she watched him totter in. He favored his left hip, and Nel recalled how her mother had said something recently about how he needed to have the right one replaced, but that no surgeon would operate on him because of his advanced age. He'd had the left hip done when he was eighty-six, and she'd stayed with them for a nearly a month then. He'd had both knees done when he was younger, shortly after she'd left for Santa Fe. He looked every bit of ninety-four as Nel watched him lean into the aluminum cane he must've found at a fishing show, if she'd had to guess. Where else could someone find a cane with digital pictures of walleye swimming up and down the shaft?

“Three o'clock already.” Jakob raised his eyebrows, long untended and bushy, to glance at the cuckoo clock squawking on top of the mantle. He let his body fall heavily into one of the paired wingback chairs closest to him.

“How did things go at the funeral home? What can I do—”

“It's taken care of,” he interrupted. “All planned. She wrote it all out, had it taped to the inside front cover of her Bible.”

He'd told Nel this before on the phone, but she didn't want to make him feel bad by reminding him. She wondered if forgetfulness like this was what Mattie had been referring to. She decided to dismiss it, considering much worse stories she'd heard about people with dementia.

“Are there friends I can call? Neighbors? People who might not read the paper?”

“No, no one.”

“Mattie said she'll bring us dinner around five.”

“I'll never starve if she has anything to do with it.”

Nel was glad to see him chuckle at that. “Mattie hasn't changed much.”

“No, she hasn't. Same good girl she's always been.”

Now that Jakob was home, she could at least try to relax and settle in. “You know, I probably ought to call Sam,” she said reluctantly.

“Sam? Have you married that poor guy yet?”

Nel laughed and kissed Jakob on the top of his head. “Not yet, Dad.”

She used the phone upstairs in her old bedroom, and when Sam didn't answer, she left a message to tell him she'd arrived safely. Then she sat on top of her old bedspread and noticed a faint smell of fabric softener on the faded-yellow Raggedy Ann pillowcase. She was sure Catherine had washed them regularly, even though they were never used, except for when she was in town. The way her mom took great care to remake the bed exactly as she had when Nel was growing up made her smile. She pulled a red-and-blue afghan over her shoulders and watched the tree limbs outside her window move against the wind, and she drifted off to the distant sound of a woodpecker pelting the side of a tree and the chatter of chickadees and nuthatches.

The doorbell startled her awake, and after reorienting herself to where she was, she ran downstairs to answer the door. “Don't worry, Dad. Don't get up. I'll get it.”

“I made you beef brisket.” Mattie gleamed as she walked through the front door and headed toward the kitchen. “Been cooking in the Crock-Pot all day, so it'll fall apart just like you like.”

After setting the load on the counter, Mattie pulled a Tupperware container of mashed potatoes and two french baguettes out of a basket, followed by a blueberry pie and a carton of whipped cream. She turned to Nel. “Did you get a chance to rest?”

“A little. Thanks so much for this—for everything. Will you eat with us?”

Mattie said yes, of course she'd love to join them for dinner, and together they sat in the dimming evening light and reminisced about Catherine. Nel soaked in memories—many new to her—of church gatherings, July Fourth celebrations with the South Haven Senior Women's Club, road trips to little towns where Mattie and Catherine perused antique stores while Jakob attended gem-and-mineral club meetings. Mattie filled Nel in on who had passed since she'd been home last—Clara Lieberman (cancer), Harriet and Mortie Czylek (six weeks apart; she from a heart attack, and he from a stroke), Gertrude Downing (in her sleep). They discussed the chronic sad state of Ed and Mary Jane Grabowski, who hadn't been well since their only son, James, a high school classmate of Nel's, drowned in a rip current near the lighthouse right after graduation. Sally Medendorp (also from Nel's class) had twins recently—that spring—her first babies at age forty-three. And the new senior pastor at South Haven Presbyterian Church had arrived that summer.

“Catherine adored him,” Mattie said. “You'll get to meet him tomorrow, since he'll be officiating.”

The next morning, Nel found Jakob standing at the stove making eggs, already dressed in his suit and tie. She leaned against the counter next to him.

“Scrambled?” He winked.

“Yep.”

He poured a little water in them. “Makes them fluffier. Just a little smidgen of water.”

“I remember.” She watched the eggs firm up as he stirred and scraped them around the skillet. “You look good, Dad.”

“No one looks good when they're my age,” he said, chuckling.

“No, really. That's a nice suit. Mom would say you're handsome.”

Jakob frowned and stirred. “Yes … I suppose she would.”

“Did you get your paper yet?” Nel scanned the counters for the
Herald-Palladium
but didn't see a copy. “I'll go get it.”

The sun shone bright that autumn morning, already melting the light frost on the east side of the house facing the street. She stretched and inhaled, the cool air taking the edge off the awkwardness of her mom's absence back in the kitchen. She'd been hypervigilant since she'd been home, watching for signs of forgetfulness in her dad, and felt some relief when she'd seen how appropriate he'd been so far. She was a little ashamed he'd gotten dressed and started breakfast before she'd even woken up. Stiff from the plane ride, she bent to touch her toes and saw a brown envelope in the mulch of the flower bed alongside the steps. She hopped off the stoop and pulled it from under the overgrown yew, where it must've blown in the last day or two, judging from the dew stains.

Addressed to Catherine, the postmark read New York City, and it was dated Tuesday, just before Mom died. Nel brushed off the envelope and pulled it open as she walked toward the end of the driveway to get the paper. Inside, she found a note on US Citizenship and Immigration Services letterhead explaining that therein was the information Catherine had requested from them. Behind that was a photocopy of a document titled “List of Manifest of Alien Passengers for the US Immigration Officer at Port of Arrival. Holland America Line.” The rest of the paper was filled with a list of names scrawled in barely legible handwriting. Columns next to the names requested information about every immigrant, including age; sex; occupation; whether they were able to read or write; nationality, race, or people; last residence (province, city, or town); final destination; whether they were polygamists or anarchists; how much money they had with them, if any; whether their passage was paid for and by whom; whether they were meeting anyone in the States; and various other details related to these questions.

Paper-clipped to the manifest was an old photo of two boys, one quite young, barely five, perhaps, and another who appeared to be a teenager. Both of them held fur hats, the sort that have flaps that cover the ears, and wore multiple layers of woolens and jackets. Neither boy smiled.

Interesting, Nel thought. Mom must've taken up genealogy recently. A lot of older people did. Curious she hadn't mentioned anything to Nel about it.

Nel set the papers aside to look into later. Perhaps she'd ask Mattie about it. For now she had to focus on getting Jakob and herself through the funeral.

The Reverend Adam Winslow and his wife, Sarah, waited at the threshold of the white-trimmed and pillared red-brick Presbyterian church for Jakob and Nel when they arrived. Mortified she had squealed the tires of her father's behemoth white Ford Crown Victoria when they'd pulled into the parking lot, Nel sheepishly reached toward Sarah's outstretched hand.

“You must be Nel.” A strand of faintly pink pearls peeked from beneath the collar of Sarah's thick, ground-length, navy wool overcoat. She ran the church music ministry, which both Catherine and Mattie had participated in. “Your mother spoke of you often. I can hardly believe we've never met.”

Reverend Winslow stepped toward Jakob, who was breathing loudly through pursed lips after trekking up the steps. “How are you holding up, Jake?”

“Fine, fine,” Jakob puffed, waving his cane-free hand in the air as if to dismiss the reverend's obvious concern.

Inside the sanctuary, Nel and Jakob took their seats in the front pew next to the reverend and Sarah. Mike Wisowaty, two years Nel's senior, straightened a wreath of flowers over the top of the casket. Catherine and Beth Wisowaty—Mike's mother—had tried to match-make Mike and Nel for years. She felt relieved that hadn't worked out. His face had rounded out considerably, as had his middle. If Nel had to guess, she'd say he had high blood pressure from the look of his blotchy, reddened cheeks and neck. He glanced her way, nodding with sympathy, and she smiled politely.

She looked around the sanctuary as it filled, recognizing faces, forgetting some names, remembering others. Old teachers, shop owners, neighbors, parents of her schoolmates, couples, widows and widowers of Jakob's coworkers from Brake-All—each person reflected how Catherine spent her life devoted to raising Nel and loving Jakob. The number of attendees was not overwhelming, and in other settings some might have been disappointed in the turnout. But Nel thought it was all perfect. The people who'd come mattered to Mom, and Nel knew Mom mattered to them.

Then she saw David Butler. She hadn't noticed him arrive, but he sat in the back pew, adjusting his tie in a way that made it obvious he wasn't used to wearing one. His face was ruddier than when they'd been in high school. He'd aged well, the years adding definition and a sort of wisdom to his once-boyish features. His hair was dark, nearly black like hers, except for around the temples. She hadn't realized she'd been staring at him until he nodded at her and grinned. She raised her hand and waved—Waved? How old was she, sixteen?—then snapped back around in her seat, annoyed at herself for blushing and acting like a teenager. The over twenty years that had passed since their senior year had done little to dampen her infatuation with him.

Mike approached Nel and Jakob. “Excuse me a moment, Reverend. Jakob. Nel. Does anyone need more time before we make the final preparations before the service?”

Nel shook her head, lowering her eyes to the handkerchief she'd brought, one she'd found in her mother's vanity, hand embroidered with the letters CBS, Catherine Bessinger Stewart.

“I said my good-byes to her every evening, and the other night was no exception,” Jakob said, looking wistful. His damp eyes regarded the casket. Then he turned to Nel. “You know, she had all the verses, the order of the service, “How Great Thou Art” for the hymn—everything picked out—and the instructions taped to the inside of her Bible?”