Beauty From Ashes (19 page)

child said wearily, “but he was just trying to wipe away some spit from the corner of his old mouth. I wiped it away for him, Aunt Anne.”

“I’m sure he appreciated that,” Anne said, her mind dipping back to Frances Anne’s sadness and humiliation for her own ill mother, forced by age and sickness to be stripped of the dignity that had always been hers.

“We try to keep her hair brushed and pinned up a little,” Frances Anne had said as tears stood in her eyes, and she shuddered at the way her mother’s once perfectly coiffed hair merely hung these days, long and stringy, needing desperately to be washed if anyone had dared try, given her condition.

“I read to Grandpapa,” Pete said on Thursday, March 21. “He always liked to hear me read Robert Burns’s poetry. I’m not too good with a Scottish brogue, but I tried. One good thing I told him over and over is that his very own namesake, John Couper, will be here from Savannah tomorrow.”

“Yes, yes,” Anne breathed. “Everything’s bound to be better once your brother reaches Hopeton. I’ve longed for him every minute of our

dreadful vigil, haven’t you, Pete?” 245

“Yep. I do my best to be the strong one, Mama, and most of the time I’m fairly satisfied with the way I act, but I know no one helps you the way John Couper does just by being where you can look at him.”

“He’s my only son.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not a bit jealous. I did my best, but being a tomboy was as far as I could go.”

Anne smiled in response and patted Pete’s hand. “I couldn’t have gotten through these days without you, Rebecca.”

“Well! You called me Rebecca and this time I know you aren’t cross with me.” Pete laughed. “Mama, I also know I said `yep` a minute ago and I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It sounded good—and daily. Normal. I find I’m reaching for anything that smacks of the normal these days.”

“I don’t suppose Dr. Holmes has said anything about how long Grandpapa could just lie there in his coma.”

“Not a word. He’s a fine doctor, but doctors know only so much. I wish I had even

a hint, though. I’m sure that in his highly responsible position with Mr. McCleskey, John Couper will need to know when he’ll be free to return to Savannah. Today is March 21, isn’t it?”

“Yep.”

Anne gave her red-haired daughter another smile. “I rather like it when you say `yep` today.”

John Couper arrived at Hopeton just before dark the next day, March 22, and for the first time since her father’s apoplectic seizure, Anne slept through the night. The boy’s very presence under the same roof with her was a balm she would never try to explain even to herself.

As always after a sleep of twenty minutes, an hour, or blessedly now, a night’s sleep of six hours, the first face Anne inevitably saw was Eve’s. This morning her servant-friend looked so exhausted, so sleepy, Anne sat up quickly in the bed.

“Eve! You haven’t slept a wink, have you?”

“No’m, but I feels triumphant ‘cause

you sure did sleep, Miss Anne. 247 Don’ you worry none about Eve. An’ before you have to ax, I tell you, Mausa Couper, he be just the same.”

“Hasn’t said a word, I guess,” Anne murmured almost to herself as Eve helped her into a warm robe.

“No’m. Jus’ layin’ there. John Couper, our boy, he still asleep, I guess. Nothin’ would do but he sit beside his grandpapa till past midnight. Johnson run him off to bed.”

“Oh, Eve, Eve, help me to dream again. I was actually beginning to believe—and that’s the start of a real dream—that soon we’d have a place of our own.”

“We gonna hab a place ob our own, Miss Anne. John Couper he tol’ me too las’ night after you went to bed.”

Anne brightened. “He did? He told you too?”

“Ain’t got nuffin in sight yet, but eber time I sees dat boy, I sees better why he lif’ yo’ heart the way he do.”

“The way he does,” Anne corrected her.

“Yes’m. Jus’ befo’ you open yo’ eyes,

Eve hear one ob de Hopeton people set down hot water fo’ yo’ bath. It be right outside de door. I knows you be itchin’ to get in to yo’ papa.”

While Eve went for the bucket of hot water to slosh into cold already in the washbowl, Anne wondered where Pete slept last night. She had no memory of her daughter’s crawling into bed beside her, and only one side of the bed looked slept in.

“Where did Pete sleep, Eve?”

Busy warming the icy water for Anne’s sponge bath, Eve said, “She mighta doze some in a chair, but she stay right wif John Couper till after midnight ‘longside yo’ papa, and de las’ I seen her when I leabes to go wif June to our side ob de cabin Mausa James Hamilton let us use, Pete, she be scratchin’ away on a piece of paper downstairs in de parlor. Writin’ a letter to somebody, I reckon.”

“I suppose, but I wonder who? She must be exhausted, too.”

Dr. Holmes reached Hopeton by boat from

Darien in the early afternoon of the next day, 249 Saturday, March 23. Fanny, because she was so good at nursing the sick, whether it was an injured bird or an ill person, was inside the sickroom with the doctor and the ever-faithful Johnson, who hadn’t left his master in two whole days and nights.

“I guess we’ll know something soon,” Anne said, her voice both nervous and weary. “It’s good Fanny’s the way she is with the sick, isn’t it?”

“Fanny has a lot inside her she doesn’t show often,” John Couper said. “In her quiet way, she’s always been devoted to Grandpapa.”

“Do you know anyone who isn’t?” Pete wanted to know. “I almost envy Fanny, getting to be in there. Just waiting is ghastly.”

For a time they stood outside in the hall. John Couper held Anne’s hand, trying as always to give her some of his young strength.

Finally, Pete asked, “Mama, can you close your eyes and picture Grandpapa the way he used to be? Tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, red-haired like me, laughing.”

“What, Pete?”

“Where are you, Mama?” John Couper asked with a tender, half-teasing smile. His father’s smile.

“Where—am I? Halfway between here and nowhere, I guess,” Anne murmured, trying to return his smile. “I heard most of what you said, Pete, dear. I work hard trying to remember Papa as I’ve always known him. It helps some. But will it help once he’s gone forever?”

“Try not to think that way, Mama,” John Couper said. “Don’t you remember when Grandpapa made that little speech at his ninetieth birthday last March? He seemed sure that my father, Annie, Aunt Isabella, and Grandmama were somehow right there with us. He will be, too, for as long as we all live. It sounds a little weird when I say it, but it didn’t sound that way when Grandpapa told us. I believed it then. I believe it now, too. In a way we can’t understand, his spirit will still be with us.”

“I know what you mean to be doing for Mama, John Couper,” Pete said firmly, her words even more direct than usual. “You’re trying to help her by telling her not to think of Grandpapa as

being gone forever. But he’s going to be out of 251 our sight, so we won’t be able to hear his voice again. That’s what Mama’s thinking about—not things like spirits. Mama, all of us will just have to work our way to the place where concepts like heaven help us. Mama’s worried about—now. The first empty days.”

Anne felt her heart sink. “Pete! Pete, are you saying you don’t believe your Grandpapa will know about us all down here once he’s in heaven? Darling, sometimes I wonder about your faith.”

“That’s silly, Mama,” Pete almost snapped at her. “Of course I believe what Grandpapa said in his little speech, but I also believe in seeing things as they really are—now. It isn’t going to help any of us when our friends and relatives come up to us in Christ Churchyard and try to comfort us by saying what a long, full, happy life he had! It doesn’t help me at all that he’s ninety-one years old. I’ll miss him because he’s—my grandpapa.”

Before anyone could answer Pete or even express an opinion, the sickroom door opened and Fanny slipped into their grieving little

group.

“Fanny,” Anne gasped. “Is—is there any change?”

“No, Mama. No change. But Dr. Holmes wants me to tell you he’ll be staying all night. He also said there’s only prayer now. And Johnson said he wants us all to know he’s praying right along with Dr. Holmes.”

“If there’s nothing else that can be done for him, why is Dr. Holmes spending the night?” Pete asked, her voice too loud. Then she quickly added, “Oh, Mama, forgive me! I— I blurted, didn’t I?”

“Yes, dear, you did. But we each have our own way of reacting at a time like this. We all know what you meant.”

“Dr. Holmes says Grandpapa’s already— partly there,” Fanny said. “In a way, I think, he’s waiting, too. We all know how he longs to see Grandmama again. Jesus said we’d all be together with Him someday. Aunt Isabella’s sweet husband, Theodore, told me, just before he went up North to live, that we could count on every word Jesus said while He was still on earth. Jesus told His disciples that wherever

He went, they would eventually go too. 253 It’s right in the Bible: `… where I am, there ye may be also.` We all know Jesus wouldn’t fib to us.”

For a moment no one said a word. Finally Anne saw a sweet smile light John Couper’s face as he looked in some wonder at his usually shy, quiet sister Fanny. But the boy said nothing. Pete was not smiling. Like John Couper, though, she was staring at her sister, who had always done most of her talking inside herself.

As always, Pete could remain silent only so long. For a moment it was as though they were all waiting for whatever she might think to say.

What Pete said was, “You’ve got a smile on your face, John Couper, but I don’t really believe you’re laughing at Fanny.”

“Far from it,” he said softly, his face still glowing. “I’m too grateful to her for that. Thanks, dear Fanny. I’m in awe of what you just said to us.”

“Yeah,” Pete murmured, tears standing in her blue eyes. “I’m in awe of what you said, too, Sister.”

Again there was silence. Then Anne, arms outstretched to her son and her two older daughters, embraced them all warmly, held them to her for a long time. “Thank you, Fanny. Thank you too, Pete, for being exactly as you are. And I thank you, John Couper, for being my son. I know your father’s proud of all of you.” Tears streamed down her face, but she found a smile. “I’m proud of you, too.” She lifted Fanny’s face, plain, tear-streaked, but radiant. “I’m especially proud of you, Fanny. And ever so grateful.”

John Couper leaned down to kiss Fanny’s forehead. “And, little Sister, so is your only brother.”

In a brief visit to her father’s sickbed, during which even Johnson and Dr. Holmes left her alone with the dying man who had symbolized safety and love through all the days of Anne’s life, she kissed his dry, motionless face and told him she loved him, then whispered, “You’ll be right with God, Papa, so talk to Him about all of us. Keep Him reminded of us all trying to learn to live without you. Tell Him we do

so want you and John and Mama and 255 Annie and Isabella to be proud of the way we’re living, wherever we’ll be on this old earth.”

For a moment she could only stand there, choking back sobs. Then, despite the odd, unfamiliar way his mouth pulled back at one corner, she saw real peace on his face and made herself give Papa one last smile. “None of it is going to be—easy,” she whispered. “You and I never marched in a storm as fierce as the one we’re all facing now—without you to hold us.”

Dawn had not quite pushed away all the darkness when Anne felt Pete’s firm hand on her shoulder. The girl shook her lightly, but there was no need.

“Mama? Oh, you’re awake.”

“Yes, for most of the night. Where did you sleep, Pete?”

“I didn’t. Uncle James Hamilton needed me.”

“What?”

“I know he seems not to need people much because he’s always so in charge, but Mama, Grandpapa is

gone!”

The little cry Anne gave came from so deep inside her, it was barely audible.

“I found Uncle James sitting on the bare floor right outside Grandpapa’s closed door —all by himself. He even let Johnson show Dr. Holmes out. I don’t know how long Uncle James had been sitting there in a heap like that, but he was crying. Sobbing. I know I embarrassed him by just being there, and because I never saw him out of control before in my whole life, I was embarrassed to try to help him.”

For a time Anne just lay there, looking up at her daughter in the coming daylight. Then she asked, “Who was—with Papa?”

“Uncle James, Dr. Holmes, and Johnson, of course.”

“Of course, Johnson,” Anne said in barely a whisper. “Was it—easy? Did Papa have an easy death?”

“Uncle James said he just took a deep breath and—yes. The old darling has been close, for days.”

Anne glanced at the spring sunlight showing now around the heavy winter curtains. “This is just about the

time Papa woke up every morning in the 257 old days. I wonder what he’s waking up to —now?”

“I felt so sorry for Uncle James, Mama. Somehow sorrier for him than I might have if he hadn’t always been so—so strong and strict.”

“I know, Pete. It’s hard on a man to be caught crying. What did you say to him?”

“I can’t remember what I said. I know I just sat down on the floor beside him and hugged him hard. He—he hugged me back, too.”

“He did? Oh, that’s good, isn’t it?”

“He kept telling me that you and Fanny and Selina and I never need to worry about a place to live. That Hopeton’s our home from now on.”

Anne said nothing.

“It’s good of him, but it doesn’t help much, does it, Mama?”

“We don’t have to think about any of that today. I couldn’t anyway. Oh, Pete, Pete, I’ve leaned on your grandfather every day of my life!”

“I know.”

“He and I almost breathed together. No one but you and Eve and Fanny and John Couper really

knew what happened to my heart when we had to leave Lawrence—except Papa. He gave that dear house to John and me and he—knew.”

For long, long minutes, mother and daughter held on to each other and wept together. When at last Eve pulled open the thick curtains before trying to get them both to eat a little, even the clear, late March sunlight made little difference. Papa was gone and the world held only a giant shadow.