A Rose by the Door Read online

  She did it anyway. “I don’t know. Must be a visitor.”

  “You don’t have any ideas about her, do you? You don’t know who she is?”

  “No.” The lie didn’t sit well with Bea’s stomach.

  “I’m thinking that must be the people the Sissels took in.”

  “Must be. Have you heard her name, Nancy? Is it something familiar?” Is it Bartling, like mine?

  “Nothing familiar. Nobody knows anything about her. Can’t believe Loren Sissel would allow a stranger in her house like that.”

  Bea pressed the backs of her knees hard against the seat. “Loren’s the preacher’s wife, Nancy. I think preacher’s wives have to do things like that all the time. It’s the ‘angels unawares’ Scripture.”

  “Oh, that one.”

  ”‘Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels unaware.’”

  The hymn ended and they all sat down. She isn’t a stranger to me. She came to my door and told me her name. She said she’d been married to my boy.

  And still I didn’t take her in.

  As luck would have it, George chose that moment to deliver the first of a long list of announcements. He spoke to his congregation about the worshipers who had gotten ticketed last week for parking on the grass. He made an urgent plea for people with extra cereal boxes and carpet squares to donate them immediately to the VBS committee. He led everyone in a prayer for Saul, a missionary in Guatemala, while Bea closed her eyes and bowed her head, the words running through her mind not the words being spoken from the pulpit at all. Her own spirit taunted her with words instead.

  Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

  Words she’d memorized long ago from the ancient black Sneed family Bible that jeered at her from the coffee table at home.

  Listen to George’s prayer, Beatrice. Don’t let your mind wander like this. Your own mind will do nothing but get you into trouble.

  Bea had always come to her prayers with an expectant heart, a childlike faith that counted on miracles. That had been the only way she’d ever known to approach her God. She picked up her church Bible from her lap, the thin modern one she’d purchased at the bookstore after she’d gotten tired of lugging the big one around. She held the book unopened, its weight over-flowing her hand.

  When she’d been young, she’d prayed for the right husband. When she’d met Ray, she’d sought the Lord’s will while they were dating, when they’d gotten engaged, and after they’d gotten married. While she’d carried her child in her womb, feeling him kick with butterfly movements beneath her ribs, she had prayed, “This child is yours, Father. Keep him safe and healthy. Keep him for your purpose.”

  After Nathan had left, her knees had gone numb and raw from hours spent beside her bed. She remained loyal and expectant, her head bent in supplication, her soul uplifted to heaven. Sometimes her prayers had gone too profound for words. She’d simply gathered up all her yearning and held it there, throbbing and broken, for God to see.

  Every time she remembered now how hard she’d prayed for Nathan’s return, the memory carried her to yet another deeper rank of grief.

  First her husband. Then her sons. Then her God.

  A heavenly Father who had turned deaf ears to her prayer.

  That girl isn’t my own flesh and blood. I don’t even know if she’s telling me the truth.

  Ray had once said that he believed people had a right to go in any direction they thought was right. They’d been on a trip to Arizona, standing where captured heat radiated into the cool morning from the sand, watching the sunrise from the east over the desert.

  “Look at that, Beatrice!” Ray said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and drawing her close. “Would you look at that!”

  “Where?” She scanned the horizon, not understanding what he wanted her to see.

  “There.” He pointed. Across the morning desert came a Union Pacific freight train, sleek and straight on its track, cattle cars glinting like a length of silver yarn in the rising sun, threading closer. “See.”

  Bea could see a hobo riding high atop one of the cars, his head thrown back, sitting straddle-legged, going wherever the Union Pacific would take him. “He’s got the right idea, I think.”

  Bea laughed sharply, uncomfortably. “I didn’t know we really had hoboes anymore. I thought they were only on television and in stories.”

  “Oh, we still have them, all right.” They waited the short while it took for the train to trundle past them. It passed so close, Bea thought Ray might lift his hand and wave at the man, only he didn’t. “I feel so strange watching a man like that pass by,” Ray said. “Like he’s reminded me how freedom feels. I had forgotten.”

  “Freedom?”

  “Just to follow the rails. To go any direction the train takes you. That fellow doesn’t have a care in the world. Look at him. He knows what it’s like to really live. Maybe we’d all get by better if we’d be willing to do that.”

  She couldn’t keep silent. “You don’t know a thing, Ray. Maybe he really wants a couple of kids. Maybe he wants a wife who gets up early to cook breakfast.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” When Ray glanced down at her, he still held that faraway expression in his eyes. “He doesn’t get that.” He pulled her tighter against him and kissed her hard on the lips. “Those things are all mine.”

  Bea forced herself to concentrate on the words echoing over the sound system. From the pulpit, the pastor happened to be reading a Scripture that felt every bit as derisive as the one playing through Bea’s head. “I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”

  Words. All of it is just words.

  So many layers of hope . . . destroyed.

  So much joy and anticipation . . . shattered.

  I shouldn’t have come to this place. I shouldn’t be sitting here, with a Bible in my lap and my eyes closed, acting like I believe.

  Bea opened her eyes and stared out the church window at the nothing sky.

  The prayer ended and, horror of horrors, George Sissel gave everybody several minutes to leave their seats, shake hands, and greet visitors they might have over-looked the first time around. Bea felt the presence of the girl and her daughter as keenly as if some mystical, irre vocable bond tied her to them. She turned to her right, to her left, desperate to exchange pleasantries with anyone else who might be near and willing to jabber. But, like the parting of the Red Sea, folks moved away from her. Those two, the young woman and the waiflike child, stood conspicuously alone in the midst of a hugging, welcoming crowd. If she turned around, oh, my, she and Bea would be staring straight up each other’s noses with nobody else standing in between.

  Bea’s throat worked, practicing words. But she couldn’t think of anything to say. Not here. Not now. Not when exchanging pleasantries and welcoming two people to a worship service seemed ridiculous because she hadn’t welcomed them into her house two days before. She stood there aching, clutching her hands together, yearning, not knowing what she was yearning for.

  The knot of church women clustered around, talking about the state of the melons at the Oshkosh Superette and the rain due to move through on Tuesday and the Idaho truck that had jackknifed on the highway yesterday noon, halting traffic for two hours while people parked their cars and picked up packages of frozen Tater Tots.

  What would it take to find out if that girl was telling the truth? What would it take to find out if she’d been married to Nathan?

  Bea took a deep breath and let her shoulders sag. She felt like a drained vessel without a single droplet left to draw on for sustenance.

  Don’t
make it be me. Somebody else go over there. Somebody else shake her hand and welcome her and tell her you’re glad she’s visiting.

  But everybody else stayed well away.

  Bea stood rooted to the spot, as unable to move as a hackberry tree would be to sprout legs and walk across the floor.

  Pastor George stepped from behind the podium. “If the kids would come forward now, we have a special program for them this morning.” He extended his arms to the children, robe sleeves billowing. “We’ve got a special week coming up and this is to give you all a taste. Come learn about Jesus. And bring your friends. I hear we’ve got prizes for those who bring the most friends. Really good prizes. Not to give anything away, but I do have one clue to give you.” He glanced back and forth conspiratorially, as if doing something he shouldn’t then leaned forward and announced in a loud stage whisper, “Roller blades.”

  A cheer went up from several little boys behind her. My, but vacation Bible school was becoming almost as commercial as Christmas. Bea allowed herself a little scowl.

  Before she could let the annoyance sink too deep, the children in the sanctuary began to stream forward, a goodly number of them, all the way from Ryan Staley, the gangly sixth-grader with the braces who had already had three visits from the middle school basketball coach, to Vera Champlin, two, who had to be led by hand while she gathered her dress in a fist and sucked on the hem of her ruffled petticoat.

  In the chancel there appeared a makeshift cardboard throne and a pharaoh with blackened eyebrows wearing a gold brocade bedspread. “Everybody crowd on up here,” George motioned, making sure everyone who’d like had responded. They climbed up the steps, encircling the altar, sitting on their knees or cross-legged, their chins craned, their eyes wide. Some sat two abreast. Little ones nestled into the laps of big ones while others scooted sideways and patted the carpet, making room for their friends. All were enthralled, amazed by the props and the funny actor dressed up as Pharaoh and the summons to come forward.

  Not until Pastor George issued his second invitation did Bea notice the little girl who remained huddled against her mother’s ribcage, clinging for dear life, burying her face in the folds of a borrowed print dress.

  Bea could read their gestures from across the aisle— the mother urging her child to go, the little girl shaking her head, burrowing deeper. At the front of the sanctuary, music began. Five teenagers lined up behind the pharaoh, donning sunglasses and black hats. They snapped their fingers in rhythm and spread their arms wide, performing clumsy hand motions to the song.

  “Come learn God’s stories, come learn the Bible true, come hear all about Jesus, come find out how much He loves you . . .”

  The little girl lifted her head.

  “Come learn God’s stories, come learn the Bible true . . .”

  In fascination, she let go of her mother, moved forward on the pew, her eyes on the performers, her spindly legs dangling.

  “Come hear all about Jesus. . .”

  The little girl clung to the pew in front of her with all ten fingers, her pixie nose resting right there.

  “Come find out how much He loves you.”

  Pastor George took to his pulpit again. In his hand, he held a sack full of clothespins. Pharaoh stood from his throne at the end of the song and began to recount the story of his life in Egypt. “Moses came to me in my palace and demanded, ‘Let my people go!’ Can you say that?”

  Without much prompting at all, the children on the chancel joined in. “Let my people go!”

  One clear voice ringing from the pew across the aisle: “Let my people go!”

  Pharaoh stooped low and crossed one arm over the other knee to talk to the children on eye level. “God promised to take care of his people. And God always keeps his promises. When Pharaoh wouldn’t do as Moses asked, God sent plagues to Egypt.”

  The Bible suddenly seemed a huge weight in Bea’s hands.

  God did things like that for the Israelites. But He never did anything like that for me.

  The more stories Pharaoh told in front of the church, the more rapt that one little girl became. Her feet touched the floor. With eyes glued to him, she meandered into the aisle. “God showed everyone that He cares for His people,” the actor said as the little girl stood listening with her eyes wide. And suddenly it wasn’t the young woman who tore at Bea’s conscience anymore, it was the innocent little girl, standing alone in a strange place, hearing a message of God’s love.

  “One of the plagues God sent to protect His people from Pharaoh was a swarm of locusts.” Pastor George began digging in the sack and handing out clothespins. “These are the locusts. Now, you each get a turn to come up here and clip your locusts onto Pharaoh.”

  “No! No!” Pharaoh shielded his face with his hands. The group of giggling children overran him, clipping clothespins onto his robe, his hair, his belt, his backside.

  She’s just a little girl. Seeking protection and love any place she can find it. But she won’t find it with me. Not here in Ash Hollow.

  Bea should have brought her handkerchief. She had been crazy to leave it at home. She clutched her hands in her lap.

  Nathan used to go to vacation Bible school. He would come home laughing with fists full of papers and his heart full of songs.

  The air around her seemed suddenly as thick and unbreathable as water. Try as she might, Bea couldn’t force it into her lungs.

  I turned them away from my door, Lord. I turned them away for good reason.

  The sanctuary walls closed in around her. She needed out. She needed to breathe, to pull moving, fresh air into lungs ready to explode from a ballast of unhappiness.

  In her desperation, Bea didn’t care who was watching. She didn’t care what anyone thought anymore. She fumbled with her Bible and hooked the handle of her purse over one arm. She kept her hat brim low, her head down, as she lurched through a row of knees and feet, everybody moving in every direction to avoid getting stepped on.

  She kept her head down as she stumbled up the aisle, away from the sound of children at an altar, away from the view of a seeking child. She opened the heavy front door of the church and slipped out, leaning on it when it shut and latched behind her. Like someone who had almost drowned, she took great gulps of summer air into her lungs and raised her face to the sun.

  Chapter Ten

  The Cramalot Inn stood on Main Street directly across from Barn Butte Electric, its broad glass window front glinting gold in the afternoon sun. From the shop on its right, the one beauty salon in town, came the tuneful swarming sound of blow-dryers in action. On the opposite side, the door to Cedar Vu Hardware stood propped open with a bin of dollar-sale items all in an untidy heap.

  Bea stopped on the sidewalk and rummaged through the bin—the drawer pulls and sun-tea jars, light bulbs and galvanized elbow joints. She dawdled on purpose, unable to escape the troubling memory of a child captivated by a Bible story played out on a stage. Unable to escape the awful recollection of the young mother alone in a place where no one should have to be that way.

  She picked up a turkey baster and squeezed it. Hmmmm. Guess she didn’t need another one. Already had three. She tossed it back into the jumble. Try as she might, she could not delay this any longer. She gripped her pocketbook with both hands and squared her shoulders, terrified.

  What if she isn’t who she says she is and I’ve let myself be drawn in?

  In a huge blaze across the front window of Cramalot Inn, someone had lettered with yellow tempera paint: “Welcome Oregon Trail Visitors. Home Of The Famous Roses.” One enormous rose had been painted on the glass, looking more like a gigantic scribble than anything else.

  The heavy door creaked when Bea opened it, and a tiny bell jangled to announce her arrival. The smell of fish and stale grease greeted her as she stepped into the dimness. She paused a moment so her eyes could adjust. Beside the cash register sat a display of Ash Hollow T-shirts and a rack of brochures advertising everything from Cabela’s factory
outlet store to the Crescent Lake Wildlife Refuge. A jukebox in the corner played an old country song she used to know but couldn’t remember anymore.

  Every table sported yellow plastic chairs and red-checkered plastic tablecloths. At each place a plastic vase held plastic flowers. Small plastic American flags, left over from July Fourth almost two weeks before, waved jauntily beside plastic squeeze bottles of mustard and ketchup. Each booth boasted a shiny undersized jukebox against the wall—the sort that keep children busy turning knobs, punching buttons, flipping placards, and reading song titles the entire length of a meal.

  When Bea walked in, several customers at the counter regarded her without removing their elbows from beside their plates. Charlene Grover, a buxom hostess Bea had known since Ray’s softball days, ambled the length of the counter and drawled, “Nice to see you, Bea. What can I do for you?”

  “Thought I’d come over for lunch.”

  “You picked a good day. We got pot roast.”

  Bea trained her eyes on the row of cake stands where cherry and cream pies winked an invitation. “That sounds real nice.”

  “You meeting anybody? Or are you by yourself?”

  “I’m by myself.”

  Charlene grabbed a plastic menu from beside the cash register and started toward a table near the kitchen. But Bea had already seen the girl carrying a platter of Tater Tots to a customer on the other side of the room. “I’d rather sit over there, Charlene.” She ges-tured toward the Tater Tot table. “I’d like a booth by the window.”

  “Alva T. would want me to put you here, Bea. You need somebody who’ll take care of you. That waitress is new.”

  “I want that booth, Charlene. Please.”

  The hostess smacked her gum and shrugged. “Well, suit yourself.”

  She made an about-face and led Bea the other way, her wide girth squeezing between the chairs. When they got there, Charlene slid the menu across the appointed tabletop like she was dealing a playing card. She set down a glass of water so hard in front of Bea that it splashed. As Bea sidled into the seat, the hostess laid out one thin napkin and a knife, fork, and spoon with military precision. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”