When We Were Saints (8 page)

Archie stepped forward. "You see all that just by smelling the flowers?"

"Mmm," Clare said. She went around the room, moving from plant to plant, flower to flower like a bumblebee sampling the nectar. "Are these your grandmama's beautiful flowers?" she asked, her nose in the daffodils.

"Yeah," Archie said, surprised himself by all of the plants. When had his grandmother moved them out of the back room? "My grandmama used to just keep them in one room, the guest bedroom. My granddaddy didn't like plants growing inside. He said plants and animals belonged outdoors. I always wanted a dog. A farm needs a dog, but my granddaddy said he wouldn't let it inside, so I refused to have one." Archie sniffed one of the daffodils, noticing it didn't have much of a smell. "Anyway, as long as he didn't see them, my grandmama was allowed to have the plants in the house."

"Well, she has a real gift, doesn't she?" Clare said. "You know, I always think the most beautiful souls reside inside people who can make things grow like this, don't you?"

Archie was about to answer but then his grandmother spoke from the doorway. "Why, thank you, honey. I appreciate that. You must be Clare."

Clare stepped forward and offered her hand. "And you're Archibald's grandmama, Emma Vaughn Caswell. I've been wanting so much to meet you."

Emma Vaughn looked surprised. "You have?"

Clare turned around and looked at all the flowers and plants. "They're such a comfort, aren't they—the plants. Like old friends, I would think," she said.

"Why, yes!" Emma Vaughn replied, and Archie noticed her face flush with pleasure and surprise. He, too, was surprised. His grandmother seemed just as taken with Clare as he was. She sat down on the couch and asked Clare and Archie to join hen.

Clare sat next to Emma Vaughn and patted the seat beside her. "Come on, Archibald, and sit, so we can get to know your grandmama better."

Did Clare know how little he knew his grandmother or was that just some figure of speech? Archie sat down beside her wondering what she would say next.

"This is where Mr. Silas Benjamin died, isn't it?" Clare asked, turning to face Archie's grandmother: He sure hadn't expected her to say that. He watched his grandmother to see if she would break down crying or get upset with Clare for bringing up such a touchy subject.

"Well, yes, it is," Emma Vaughn said, her voice solemn. "I'm not sure I've done the right thing bringing all these plants out here, but it seemed such a pity to keep them in the back room, and like you said, they are a comfort."

"Of course they are," Clare said, glancing around again at the flowers. "And you've filled this room with life. That's important. A room needs that; a house needs it. Don't you think?"

"Yes, yes I do."

"And it's important that you do the things that give your life meaning, and I can see, Miz Caswell, that gardening does that for you."

Again a pink flush of delight spread across Emma Vaughn's cheeks. "Well gracious me, child, aren't you a surprise? Except for the kitchen herbs and these plants here, I haven't done much gardening in a long while. When I was much younger I used to dream of creating a marvelous garden here on the farm."

Archie couldn't believe the expression on his grandmother's face. She had a faraway, enraptured look, as though she were seeing paradise before her: She told Archie and Clare all about her girlhood dreams, and for the first time in Archie's life, he saw his grandmother as a person, a real person with her own hopes and dreams and disappointments.
He had never heard his grandmother open up to anyone the way she was opening up to Clare. In a matter of minutes, Clare had her laughing and crying and divulging things Archie never would have guessed in a million years about his grandmother, She confessed that being married to Silas had been a full-time job, and she'd never had the time to create much of a garden. She said she had always loved cats. She had grown up with them as pets, and she had been so sad when she married and Silas refused to let her have any house cats. Clare even got her talking about his grandfather's prophecies and how sorry she felt for him. She told Clare how hard it had been for his grandfather to accept all the changes in the town he had loved so much, and she told her almost whispering, that Silas drank too much.

Archie sat listening with his mouth dropped open in shock. By the end of the conversation, Clare had convinced his grandmother that she should return to her gardening and take over one of the greenhouses on the property to grow the camellias she loved so much. "But first," Clare added, "you need to get your leg looked at."

Both Archie and his grandmother looked flabbergasted.

Archie said, "What's wrong with her leg?" and at the same time his grandmother asked, "How could you know about my leg? I've told no one."

Clare smiled. "I saw you limping when you came into the room, and when you sat down you bit your lip like it hurt an awful lot to sit. It's your leg, isn't it? Your right one."

"I hadn't even noticed," Archie said. He leaned forward in his seat to get a better look at his grandmother. "Grandmama, is this true?"

"Well, yes. Yes, it is. I thought it was just my sciatica acting up."

Clare said, "But you know it isn't. That's why you've got so much worry. I can see it in your eyes. You need to take care of that leg and let a doctor look at it, and all your other worries will take care of themselves. You've got a greenhouse to fill and a cat or two to add to your household, and Archibald here to love."

Archie and his grandmother looked at each other and Archie saw tears in his grandmother's eyes. He smiled at her and looked away, touched by the love he felt coming from her At that moment he felt closer to her than he'd ever been before.

Before Clare left, Emma Vaughn had promised her that she would make an appointment with the doctor and would begin planning a garden and clearing out the greenhouse for her camellias. Archie wondered if his grandmother had forgotten her plans to move in with her lady friends. If she had, he wasn't going to remind her of it.

Archie walked with Clare out onto the porch, and when he had closed the door behind him so his grandmother couldn't hear he asked her "What did you do in there? Her face is all lit up like a Christmas tree. I've never seen her like that. I never knew all those things she told you." Archie shook his head in wonder. "I just never knew."

"I'm just seeing her Archibald, and loving who I see. That's all." Clare hugged him good-bye, then ran to her bicycle and rode away, waving as she pedaled down the drive.

Archie waved back and watched her until she rode out of sight.

T
HE DAYS PASSED AND
Archie didn't do any of the things Clare had told him he must do. He thought about what he was supposed to be doing a lot, daydreaming instead of doing his schoolwork, asking himself if he could ever say that prayer three thousand times in one day, in one sitting. How long would it take him? He watched the television and wondered what it would be like not to see his favorite shows anymore, especially the old reruns of the Laurel and Hardy shows and
Star Trek.

Archie looked at all the drawings he had taped up on the walls of his bedroom. While his grandfather had been alive, Archie had kept his drawings hidden in his closet because his grandfather had once torn up a whole morning's worth of work after he discovered Archie had been in his room drawing instead of out baling hay with Clyde and the other workers. Archie had tried to explain that he had lost track of the time, but that was no excuse. His grandfather grabbed the papers in his fist and shredded them and left them on the floor of Archie's bedroom for him to pick up. Because his grandfather was gone, Archie felt it was at last safe to take his drawings out of hiding and spread them all over the room by taping them to the walls. How could he give up the pleasure and comfort his drawings gave him, especially since he had the freedom to draw and display whatever he liked?

Archie sat at his computer and stared at the screen. He knew that if he and Armory were still writing back and forth, he wouldn't be able to give up the computer even for a day, but now he wondered. Armory hadn't written him at all to apologize or explain what had happened on the phone when Archie had called. Archie wrote him once to see if he could find out, but Armory had never answered him and so he gave up. He realized the friendship was over.

He wondered what Armory would think if he told him about Clare. How would he describe her? Armory wouldn't believe him if he told the truth. He'd tell Archie that Clare was crazy, that the whole saint scheme was totally insane. When Archie thought about trying to explain everything to his old friend, it did sound crazy, even to him, but when he thought of Clare's visit and the way he had felt when he was with her—special and accepted, loved, even, just the way he was; skinny, lost Archibald Lee Caswell—her vision made perfect sense. Didn't she say he had been called? Didn't she say he was rare? Why then was he hesitating? He wanted to do it, didn't he?

Archie couldn't get the memory out of his head of that day up on the mountain when he'd been down on his knees before the pines. He couldn't get rid of the memory of that feeling he'd had up there, and he wanted to experience it again—experience God. He wanted to see Clare again, too, but what if she was wrong? What if he wasn't "rare"? What if he hadn't been called, and it was just his grandfather's way of getting to him one last time? What if he tried to do the things Clare had told him to do and he failed? He hated the thought of disappointing her—and God. He wanted it to be as easy as the first time, but no matter how many times he biked up the mountain and sat on the boulder eating a lemon, that wonderful, holy experience never happened again.

The only thing easy for Archie was giving up meat. That was one rule he could follow. His stomach wouldn't let him eat it. He told his grandmother not to cook him any more meat or poultry or fish.

She looked horrified. "What will you eat then? You're already skin and bones. You need your protein; you're a growing boy."

"I'll eat grains and beans and vegetables," he said.

His grandmother set her hands on her hips. "Well now, why don't you just go on out there with the cows to do your grazing and I won't have to cook at all."

Emma Vaughn had changed. She had made a doctor's appointment, and although she had to wait until her doctor got back from his vacation, just making the appointment had taken a load of worry off her mind. She had also started cleaning out the greenhouse, and she whistled in the mornings when she cooked breakfast and sang in the bathtub in the evenings. The greatest change, though, was that she spoke her mind and in no uncertain terms, and even though that meant she got after Archie every so often, he was pleased with the change and grateful to Clare for the way she had helped his grandmother.

Archie tried to explain his troubles with eating meat without getting his grandmother too riled up. " Grandmama," he said, "I would eat meat if I could, but my stomach just has a violent reaction to it these days. I don't know why. But you don't have to do anything extra. I'll get the groceries and I'll cook my own food, too."

Emma Vaughn shook her finger at Archie and said, "I've been cooking for seventy-nine of my eighty-four years, and I'll be cooking till I die, Archibald Lee Caswell—and don't you forget it. You'll get what you get, and if it's not good enough ... well, then I don't know what."

Archie got what he got, but he wouldn't eat the meat. He ate the vegetables and the rice, but if his grandmother made a meal with everything cooked together in one pot, like a stew or a casserole, he didn't eat at all.

Archie thought the stews were tricks his grandmother tried to get him to eat meat. He knew she couldn't believe he'd go without eating just because something had meat in it, but he did.

"You're a stubborn boy," she said to him one night when he once again refused her stew and got up from the table.

"No, Grandmama, you're a stubborn woman," Archie replied, "and I still can't eat the meat. I'm sorry."

Archie made up for the missed meals by going down to the kitchen after his grandmother had cleaned up and making a couple of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches to eat in his room. He knew his grandmother had to know about it, since the peanut butter and jelly jars were emptying out more quickly, but she never said anything and neither did he.

Archie didn't call Clare that first week after they had gotten together or the week after that, either and she didn't call him to see why he hadn't called. He felt guilty about it. He remembered Clare's face, her radiance, that light in her eyes, and he felt ashamed, but he had nothing to report, so he didn't call. However as the days passed, something inside Archie began to shift, and it shifted so slowly that he didn't even notice. It began with his schoolwork. He always did his work listening to music, but one day the music seemed too loud and he found it hard to concentrate, so he turned it down. A little while later the music sounded too loud again, and he turned it down some more. That kept happening until, by the end of the afternoon, he had turned his music off altogether: From that day forward he didn't listen to music while he studied.

A few days later he decided that his bedroom felt too crowded. All the time that he spent outside on top of the mountain made him more aware of the confinement he felt when he was in his room with the door closed. The old model cars he had collected over the years distracted him, and besides, he told himself, he was too old for model cars. He put them in a box and took them down to the basement. Archie had cleaned out every trace of the still while his grandfather had been in the hospital, but the memories of that afternoon with Armory and his grandfather were still vivid in his mind, and he set the box down and hurried back up the steps as fast as he could. His grandmother was standing with a puzzled expression at the top of the stairs.

Archie, believing she wanted to know what he was doing, told her he was packing up some things for the move, and she looked at him with her hands caked in dirt and her eyes shining and said, "Archibald, I'm confused." Then she wandered back out to the greenhouse, not saying why she was confused. Archie guessed it was because she was still making plans for the move with her friends to Miss Nattie Lynn's house, while at the same time she was planning her garden at home.