Caught in the Middle Page 5

  What an idiot.

  I opened the front door just as Mom and Dad and Sam crossed the porch.

  “How was dinner?” Mom asked.

  I hesitated. I knew how they would react to the news that Jack not only hadn’t come for me, he had also asked me to come to him.

  Asked? a little voice inside said. Asked? How about told.

  It’s nice to realize that some semblance of sanity remained, but at the time, I tried to squash it.

  Sam, now a handsome eighteen-year-old three weeks short of leaving for Penn State, looked at me.

  “You never went out,” he said. “Right?”

  The kid was too smart. Willing my chin not to tremble, I nodded.

  “But you’re going out now?” Mom asked. She looked around for Jack.

  “He’s not here, is he, Merry?” said Sam. “Jerky Jack isn’t here. He never was here. What did he do? Forget?”

  “No!” said I. “He called.”

  “Sure,” said Sam sarcastically. “About five minutes ago, I bet. What was his excuse?”

  “He didn’t make any excuses,” I said in a shaky voice.

  “But if Jack’s not here, where are you going?” Mom asked.

  “To Jack’s.”

  They all stared at me.

  “He’s hungry,” I said, just as if that explained everything.

  “Of course he is,” Sam said. “Jerky Jack wants to eat Marshmallow Merry.”

  Dad reached out and laid a hand on Sam’s arm. “Easy, son.”

  “Dad!” Sam was almost in tears. “He’s making a fool of her!”

  My father looked at me with pain in his eyes. I looked at the floor.

  “Merry,” Dad said, “do you know that you rarely laugh anymore?”

  I looked up, startled. That wasn’t what I expected him to say. I expected the heart-wrenching talk about Jack wasting my youth. I knew how to ignore that one.

  “Do you realize that you have lost the gutsy independence that used to worry your mother and me so when you were in high school?”

  “If I’m such a wimp,” I said defensively, “how come I’m such a good journalist? Huh? That takes guts!”

  He just smiled sadly. “Do you know that you put Jack ahead of everything, including common sense and God?”

  I stared at the porch floor again. Deep inside I knew my father was right. I knew Sam was right. Somehow, I had become a spineless marshmallow. And not even a soft, spongy one that bounced back after it was squeezed, but a permanently mashed one whose heart ached all the time, especially when Jack told me that he loved me, but…

  Mom put an arm around my waist and gently led me back into the house.

  “You can’t run to him whenever he calls, Merry,” she said. “You know that. And he’s not going to change, I’m afraid. He will always see life only from his own narrow point of view and act to satisfy only himself. It’s a tragedy, because he’s squandering a great potential for serving God by serving Jack, but that’s how it is. Jack first and foremost.”

  I shivered in the July heat. I wrapped my arms around myself, trying vainly to get warm, as my mother continued relentlessly.

  “You must face the fact, honey, that Jack’s way of thinking leaves out a wife—which is probably a good thing, because she’d spend her life being hurt and Jack would never understand why.”

  “But I love him,” I whispered. Tears filled my eyes. “I know things can’t continue as they are, but I don’t know what to do.”

  “Move,” said Sam so quickly that he’d obviously been waiting for the chance to state his idea. “Go someplace where Jack isn’t. If he cares enough, he’ll come and get you. If he doesn’t…” He shrugged.

  I didn’t go to Jack’s that night. I also didn’t sleep that night or for several more as I thought and prayed. Move! The very thought made me sweat. As a compromise, I got my hair cut.

  “What have you done?” Jack asked angrily when he saw the shorn me.

  “I got my hair cut,” I said as he stalked around me. “Don’t you like it?”

  He shrugged. “It’s okay, I guess, if you like girls with boys’ haircuts.”

  I looked in the mirror at the young woman with curly, spiky black hair. “I do not look like a boy.” I didn’t look like me, either, but I figured I’d get to know this stranger in time.

  He ignored me and got to what, for him, was the point. “You never asked me.”

  For some reason, for the first time in years, I got angry at Jack. “I’m twenty-six, Jack. I’m allowed to cut my hair with or without your consent.”

  The next day I went to the library when a story I was covering took me nearby. I read the want ads in the Philadelphia area papers. A week later I had a job at The News in Amhearst, thirty miles west of Philadelphia in Chester County. In two more weeks I was ready to move.

  “But we never talked this over,” Jack protested. “What if I don’t want you to move? After all, we’re thinking of getting married.”

  “We are? When?”

  “Sure we are. I just need a few more months, that’s all.”

  I shook my head. “I have to find out who I am, Jack, who God made me to be, because I’ve forgotten.”

  I determined when I first arrived in Amhearst that on work nights I would turn the TV off at ten and be in bed by ten-thirty. Discipline was absolutely necessary if I were to survive. The problem always came between ten-thirty and whenever I fell asleep. Such long, tossing, fitful, unhappy hours!

  In desperation I began reviving a habit I’d had in high school and lost at Penn State: I began reading a chapter in the Bible and praying as I sat in bed with Whiskers crowded comfortingly against me. Maybe, in this way, I could calm my mind enough to sleep.

  I began in the book of Philippians where Paul writes about pressing on and realized quite quickly that my father had been right that painful night on the front porch. In my total involvement with Jack, I had forgotten God.

  Oh, I went to church every Sunday, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Jack. I sang the hymns and praise songs with joy and listened to the pastor with a critical ear. I knew that afterward Jack would want to discuss the service and the sermon, turning things this way and that, sniffing, pawing, looking for flaws like a cat looks for life in the carcass of a caught mouse. But, I was learning with considerable pain, it was Jack I wanted to please, and Jack I wanted to worship, not God. Any joy I felt was in the touch of Jack beside me, not in the presence of God within me.

  Dear God, how forgiving are you toward someone who has become as shortsighted as I have been?

  Slowly, weeknights in Amhearst became less terrifying, but weekends held their own special horrors.

  And so, on that early September Friday night just after my move, I found myself digging through the trash can for Sunday’s bulletin, which I had just thrown away in my brief cleaning frenzy. I pulled it out and reread it, my attention drawn to the announcement about the bell clinic. I studied the words a few minutes, uncertain.

  There had been a bell choir at Penn State, and I’d always itched to play in it. To my ear, bells sound so beautiful—lyrical and somehow angelic. But I’d never had the nerve to audition at school because of the music majors.

  Now I nodded decisively, grabbed my purse and ran before I had a chance to change my mind. Maybe the bell choir wasn’t for a marginal musician like me, but at the very least I’d have something to occupy me tonight.

  Much to my surprise, there were only about twenty people at the bell clinic, but those who were there were friendly and helpful, especially the woman beside me.

  “I’m Maddie Reeder,” she said. “And I have no music sense whatsoever. I just love how the bells sound.”

  I had found a friend, though her musical abilities weren’t quite as bad as she indicated. And she could laugh at herself, a trait I appreciated.

  As usual, it wasn’t the notes that gave me trouble; it was the rhythms. I concentrated fiercely, and suddenly two hours were gone.

&
nbsp; “Practices are every Thursday,” said the man who had introduced himself as Ned Winslow, the church’s music director. “You have to be at every practice. It’s not like a vocal choir where the others in your section can cover for you when you’re absent. If you’re not here, your bells aren’t played. So it’s a commitment.” He smiled at those standing before the tables. “How many of you are interested?”

  I bravely raised a hand, and so did Maddie Reeder. About half of the others did, too, and the Faith Bell Choir was born. We premiered the first Sunday in October with an incredibly elementary song, but we impressed the socks off the congregation. We were to play the first Sunday of each month and for special occasions like Christmas and Easter.

  By this December Thursday night, I felt I had acquired a few friends as I hung my coat and greeted the other ringers. We were a club, a group who shared a common cause, common experiences and common jokes. I belonged here.

  I slipped on a pair of canvas gardening gloves and lifted two shiny brass bells from their red velvet resting places. I carried them carefully to the practice table and laid them down, then returned for two others.

  I arranged the B-flat, B, C and C-sharp in an orderly line. On either side of me, people were arranging their bells, ringing them, sorting their music and pulling on their heavy gloves to protect the fold of skin between the thumb and forefinger from the rubbing of ringing the bells.

  “All right, folks,” said Ned Winslow. “Turn to the piece we’ll play with the vocal choir Christmas Sunday morning. Merry, note that the arrangement wasn’t written by someone who knows bells. The C and C-sharp are written in the treble clef as with choral or orchestral music. You will want to transfer them to the bass clef.”

  I began penciling in the changes and was halfway through the piece when Ned said, “Okay, let’s try it. Merry, just do the best you can.”

  I hit my first clunker about the same time I became conscious of someone entering the room and sitting on the floor near the door.

  “C-sharp, folks,” yelled Ned.

  How does he know that? I wondered. How can he tell, with all the other notes being played, that it’s C-sharp that’s missing? Of course, that’s why he teaches music and I hit clunkers.

  As I made the necessary transfer of bells, I realized our listener was Curt Carlyle. I hit three clunkers in a row.

  “Want a bell, Curt?” Ned asked when we finished the song. “We can always use more ringers.”

  Curt shook his head. “I’ll just listen for a while, if you don’t mind.”

  Ned nodded. “Okay, choir, let’s take it from measure fifty-four, treble clef upstems only, on the runs. One-and-two-and-ready-and-play-and…”

  I followed along, thankful that I was in the bass clef, which had many fewer runs. Beside me, Maddie muttered to herself as she counted the beats.

  “Now, everyone, bells up,” Ned said.

  My world narrowed to my four notes. I exchanged my Cs and C-sharps at the correct time and only missed two notes the entire piece. I felt pleased with myself as practice ended and I returned my bells to their velvet cases.

  I began collecting the thick foam cushions that covered the tables. Other choir members collected music, folded cloth covers and turned tables on their sides to collapse their legs.

  Curt worked his way across the room toward me, talking to people as he moved.

  “I knew I’d seen you somewhere before,” he said, taking the cushions from me. “As soon as I came in and heard the bells, I knew where.”

  I felt self-conscious in a way I hadn’t this morning. Then, I was supposed to interview him, and talking was my job. Now, he looked very large and somewhat overwhelming, his vitality directed at me, not his work.

  “I take it you go to church here,” I said. Now there was a piece of sharp deduction.

  “From a little tyke,” Maddie said as she walked past with an armful of music notebooks. “He used to lob spitballs at me in Sunday school.”

  “Only to pay you back for the sore shins you always gave me,” Curt said.

  “I used to kick him every time I saw him,” Maddie said. “Just on general principles. I knew I had to or he’d cream me.”

  “And who would have blamed me?”

  “One of these days we’re going to marry him off,” Maddie said. “Doug and I have been trying for years. But until then, I keep an eye out for prospective candidates.” She pretended to study me closely.

  Curt shook his head, almost embarrassed. “Get lost, Maddie.”

  Laughing unrepentantly, she carried the choir notebooks to the storage closet.

  I slid into my coat. “I would have thought you’d be at City Hall doing last-minute things for your show rather than coming to some meeting at church. Which, by the way, you’re missing.”

  “No meeting,” he said. “And I am doing last-minute work for tomorrow. Come with me—I’ll show you.”

  I was conscious of people watching us as we walked out of the practice room together. Grist for the mill, I thought. I bet he’s the church’s most eligible bachelor.

  “You’ll make certain the church is locked?” Ned called after us as he shepherded the rest of the choir out the door before him.

  Curt nodded as he touched a switch that illuminated another hall. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”

  “It’s eerie in here at night,” I said as we walked by dark and deserted classrooms. “Too empty.”

  Curt pulled a key from his pocket and slipped it into the lock on a door marked Hal Brinkley.

  “Why are we breaking into Pastor Brinkley’s office?” I asked, waiting for alarms to clang and whistles to shrill.

  “Look on the wall above his desk.”

  There hung a Curtis Carlyle of a stone springhouse with a wreath on its door and a battered milk can leaning against the lintel. A storm sky of deep, brooding blues and violets was about to tear open and inundate the fragile scene. Stark, barren trees bent before the force of an invisible wind.

  “It’s wonderful!” I said. “Especially the sky!”

  “It’s the original of the print I released last year. I’m borrowing it to hang at the show. Maybe it will convince someone to buy a print.”

  I hesitated. “I’ve got a question that’s sort of awkward,” I said, stiff with anxiety about how he would receive it.

  He looked at me expectantly.

  “Isn’t it a bit insensitive or crass or something to have this show at City Hall with Trudy just dead?”

  Curt took a deep breath. “I thought the same thing myself, so I called Forbes Raleigh, one of the commissioners. He felt I should go on with things because the invitations were out, the show half-hung, everything moving full bore. He polled the others, and they agreed. To my relief.”

  “You don’t think there will be an emotional backlash?”

  “I sure hope not. This show provides well over half my income for the entire year.”

  I blinked. “You’re kidding.”

  Curt reached behind the painting and eased it from its position. “Spread that popcorn wrap on the floor, will you? And I’m not kidding. I’ve a lot riding on this weekend.”

  I helped Curt wrap the picture securely, and we left the office, taking care to turn out the lights and lock the door. We walked down the quiet, shadowy hall. When Curt turned out the hall light, we were in darkness except for the faint red gleam of the emergency light and the weak glow of a streetlight that shone in the parking lot.

  Unconsciously I moved closer to Curt.

  When we went outside, the bitter wind leaped upon us, pushing its way up sleeves and down collars.

  “It feels like your picture looks,” I said.

  We looked skyward: no stars. Chicago’s snowstorm would soon be ours.

  I hunched my shoulders against the wind and wished my car were parked in front of the church like Curt’s instead of in the side lot where the choir always parked. I looked across the barren expanse of macadam and shivered. It seemed s
o far from here to there.

  “Let me put this picture in the car, and I’ll walk you over,” Curt said.

  Grateful for his thoughtfulness, I nodded and waited. Undoubtedly Jack would have let me go ahead by myself, never thinking to accompany me such a short distance, never understanding that I might feel vulnerable and exposed in the darkness.

  As Curt and I walked across the empty, echoing lot, our footfalls were loud in the silence. The light from the streetlamp shone coldly on my car, illuminating the driver’s side and casting deep shadows on the passenger’s side. Shivering, I thought of the great darkness by the lilac near the driveway at home.

  I pulled my glove off and fished in my purse until I found my keys.

  “Here. Let me.” Curt held out his hand.

  “Thanks, but I can do it.”

  “Of course you can. But let me.” He extended his hand farther.

  Frowning, I reluctantly gave him the keys. Or I tried to give them to him. Somehow in the exchange, made awkward by his gloves, they fell to the ground.

  “Uh-oh.” I should have just unlocked the door myself. When was I ever going to stop listening to guys who told me what to do?

  “Sorry,” Curt said. “I’ll get them.”

  “It’s okay. Don’t bother,” I said.

  We both bent to retrieve the keys, gently bumping heads.

  Simultaneously a loud sound tore the night, making me jump. I lurched and fell against the car door. Straightening, I stared in disbelief at the small hole in my windshield and the cobwebby cracks that radiated from it.

  SIX

  I barely had time to register “shot” when Curt, gloves off and on his knees looking for my keys, grabbed the back of my coat and pulled me abruptly down. I landed with a teeth-jarring thud on an uneven surface I realized was his foot. I heard him grunt.

  “Someone’s shooting!” I squawked. “In a populated neighborhood!”

  “Idiot,” muttered Curt, pushing me off him.

  “What? Me?” I got very defensive. “You’re the one who yanked me over! I didn’t mean to land on you.”

  “Not you,” Curt said impatiently. “Him. Whoever it is.”

  A second shot fragmented the side window above our heads. Little pieces of glass rained down on us, stinging our faces and getting caught in our hair.