Читать книгу Song of Silence - Cynthia Ruchti - Страница 9

Chapter 3

3

Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to strip her office and the music room of her personal belongings before the end of the school year. Her administrator thought she’d find it comforting that school-owned equipment, instruments, music stands, and textbooks would be sold or given to another school. Comforting? Like iron spikes pounded into her vocal cords.

It took more willpower than she’d ever used against a sleeve of Oreos not to respond, “You mean, sold to a school that cares about the arts?”

Even the inattentive students noticed how bare the room seemed with the life stripped out of it. But their enthusiasm for the upcoming summer break overrode somber moments. Lucy had spent the last few days of the school year—of her career at the school—encouraging students to consider other ways to keep the music going. Private lessons. Small ensembles. Singing or playing for church activities. Community youth music programs, which an especially sharp student was quick to point out didn’t exist in Willowcrest.

“You, Mrs. Tuttle. You could make a program.”

In the community that allowed its school board to evict music? Not an environment likely to get behind a project like that.

“I don’t know what my plans are right now,” she’d answered. That was no fabrication.

For the first time in twenty years, she had no plan. Even in the years before she’d applied for this position, she’d had a plan. She’d get Sam and Olivia through school, taking every recertification necessary and every continuing education class she could fit in and afford, serve for every music boosters event, accompany the choirs, sing for every wedding, play for every funeral, stay in the forefront of hiring minds, so when her dad was ready to retire, she could be considered a logical choice to take over the program he’d crafted, despite her years off to raise her family. Her heart soared in each of those endeavors. They brought significance and meaning while she waited for her life’s goal.

Her father’s music program left a true legacy in the community. He died from a brain aneurysm four years before he was slated to retire. Lucy’s plan got bumped up. But the decision-makers agreed they didn’t need to look farther than Cottonwood Street for a replacement for Lucy’s beloved father.

Her final note in the final measures of her role as music teacher for K-8 at Willowcrest School—a bitingly cold thought on an otherwise cloudless day in early June—was that she’d failed her father.

She’d grown hoarse with the effort, but in the end had been ineffective in convincing the new decision makers that art and music weren’t just as important as science, math, English. They helped students understand and perform better in academics. Stay in school. Develop a success mind-set. Become more well-rounded young citizens and learn to work in community. Music gave students interests and options.

She couldn’t stop the bulldozer of budget cuts that demolished her father’s programs. It had run over her too.

How much therapy would it take to recover from that?

***

It couldn’t be the flu. The nausea that hit as she pulled into the driveway at home came on too quickly for it to be the work of a virus. It had all the earmarks of melodramatic disappointment.

For nineteen summers she’d skipped across the threshold, relatively content the school year ended, tamping down her exuberance for the following September with the natural exhaustion from nine months of intense labor and the late-in-the-school-year squirreliness of students more than ready for a break.

She steadied herself against the car door and waited for the wave of nausea to pass. It didn’t. She’d have to cross the threshold despite it.

Charlie had the door open before she got there. Again. “Hey, LucyMyLight. Welcome home.” He grabbed one of the boxes she carried and stepped aside to let her in.

Nausea and headache. The house bulged with people.

Congratulations! Way to go! You should be proud of what you’ve accomplished! And the stinger—Happy Retirement!—twirled in a cacophony of well-intentioned noise from friends and family. Family. SamWise and Olivia?

“Hi, Mom.” Her daughter leaned close to Lucy’s ear. “We tried to talk Dad out of it, but he insisted you needed a party.”

“I so don’t,” Lucy whispered back without moving her faux-smiling lips.

“I know. I’ll help you get through it.”

“Sam, honey. How did you get off work on a weekday?” Lucy hugged her taller-and-thinner-than-Charlie son. Leaning into his sturdiness steadied her.

Charlie joined the hug fest. “We pulled it off, didn’t we, kids? Okay, let’s get this party started. Happy Retirement Day, Lucy.” He cupped her face in his hands. In a volume only she could hear, he said, “Making the best of it, love.” His kiss on her cheek came first. Then the tenderest of smiles.

If it hadn’t been for that brief hint of understanding, that grace note, she might have ground her teeth to nubs. Locked herself in the bathroom. Called 9-1-1 to have them break up the hilarity on Cottonwood Street.

Instead, she braced herself for the well-wishes and the so-sorry-to-hears and the you’ll-find-something-else-to-dos. The buffet Charlie organized consisted of all desserts. Smart man.

No, he didn’t! Yes, he did. Presents. He’d let people bring presents.

Lucy caught Olivia by the arm. “I’m not a drinker, right?”

Olivia smiled, every penny of her multi-thousand-dollar ortho-dontics worth it. “No. You’re not.”

“Just checking.”

“Hang in there, Mom. I’ll help you write thank-you notes.”

“Giving birth to you was the best idea I ever had.”

Olivia’s laughter lifted some of the awkwardness of opening gifts that felt like funeral party favors. More music mugs. Miniature golf clubs in case she found, as the card said, “a little time for golf.” A framed photo of Lucy, arms raised, directing her Christmas choir. “See there?” the giver noted. “It’s a clock face. Get it? Time on her hands?”

After two hours of that, SamWise wrapped his arm around his dad’s shoulder and told the crowd, “Hey, gang. Hate to break this up, but the family has dinner reservations tonight. So . . . thanks for coming. We know Mom has appreciated your support over the years, and—”

Olivia stepped in. “—and so do we. Don’t worry about helping with clean up. We’ll take care of that. Mom has longed for the day when her kids offered to clean up without being asked.” A smattering of guffaws served as a benediction. “Thanks so much, folks.”

Charlie helped steer well-wishers toward the door. When the last of them had exited, to waiting cars parked who knew how far down the block in order to sufficiently surprise Lucy when she’d walked in, Charlie closed the door, leaned his back against it, and said, “There. That helped, didn’t it? Nice party to kick off your newfound freedom?”

Freedom? Of all the words in all the world, the only one that came to her mind was a social media British word she couldn’t voice.

***

Dinner reservations were at their own kitchen table. Delivery pizza. Sam’s idea. Good son. Good son.

Charlie picked the last bit of Italian sausage from one of two pizza boxes while Lucy reached for the final mushroom. “So,” he said, “are you ready for . . .”

Don’t say it. Don’t say it, please. No, I’m not ready for the first day of the rest of my life!

“. . . the rest day of the first of your life?”

“What?” Her voice was harsher than she meant it to be. Had he twisted the phrase on purpose?

“More root beer, anyone?”

A Tuttle tradition. Pizza and root beer. Now that she thought about it, it sounded more disgusting than quirky.

“I’m switching to water,” Lucy said.

Charlie whisked Sam away to show him the website on which he’d found the best prices for worm farm supplies. Sam’s face looked like tolerance with a thin mask of interest.

Olivia crunched the empty pizza box as small as she could and stuffed it into the recycling bin. “Mom?”

“Hmm?” Lucy gathered paper plates and followed on Olivia’s heels.

“You hadn’t prewarned Dad that a retirement party was the last thing you’d want?”

Lucy opened the door of the dishwasher and loaded silverware. “It didn’t cross my mind.” She paused to rinse the pizza cutter. “Sometimes husbands think they’re helping when they’re not.” She eyed her should-have-gotten-her-PhD-in-psychology daughter. “In his mind, he was doing something thoughtful.” Thoughtful. She dropped another fork into the dishwasher basket. “I love him. Sometimes that has to be enough.”

Olivia searched for storage containers for the leftover desserts. “Do you have a lid for this one?” She held a rectangular container aloft.

“Bottom drawer near the sink. Toward the back.”

“Found it.”

Lucy closed the dishwasher and leaned against it. “Olivia, why didn’t you succeed in stopping your father?”

Her daughter turned, her eyes wide.

“Stop me from what?” Charlie asked, poking his head into the kitchen.

“Girl talk,” Lucy answered, drawing a smile from where it had been hiding. “What did you need?”

“Internet’s out.”

“Again? I’ll be so glad when they finish laying the underground fiber optics.”

“Where do we keep those big legal pads of paper? I need to sketch out my plans.”

Don’t ask me. I’m the planless one. “The closet in the office. Second shelf from the top. Right-hand side. Behind the—”

“I’ll find them. Thanks.” His head disappeared, leaving the women alone again.

Olivia’s eye roll joined her pert smile, the equivalent of a silent “Sure, he will.” Lucy counted down. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five . . .

Charlie reappeared. “Where?”

Lucy started the dishwasher with a practiced sigh. “I’ll show you.”

Olivia snapped the lid on another storage container of leftover desserts. “That’s okay, Mom. I’ll show him.” Then mouthed for Lucy’s eyes only, “Because I love him.”

The room emptied. Life had emptied. Now what? Tone down the drama, Lucy. Life isn’t over. It just feels like it.

She was too young to consider this stage retirement, too old to consider it a serendipitous opportunity to retool. But . . .

From this angle, one thing became clear. Life had just handed her time to repaint the kitchen. And it needed it. What else had she neglected?

“LucyMyLight?”

The man who loved her enough to throw her a retirement party when she’d been riffed. The man who committed his for-evers to her. The man who probably had no idea how his surprise had drained her. Or that he had pizza sauce on his chin. “Yes?” She swiped at a water spot on the faucet.

“Do you know what I think we should do?”

She waited. Buy an RV and travel all fifty states—well, the forty-nine accessible by RV, work at odd jobs along the way to pay for gas and teach music lessons from aluminum lawn chairs? Let the worms have the house and they’d move into the garage? Move to Nashville or New York where people care about music?

“I think we should invest in a better computer. I’ll be taking orders internationally, I imagine.”

“For worms.” So that’s what deadpan sounded like. She couldn’t retract the echo.

“Are you okay?” Charlie looked offended. Charlie looked offended.

She skirted around him and headed down the hall to the bedroom. “Okay? Not. Even. Close.”