The Music Box (7 page)

There was a quiet knock at the door, then it pushed open with a creak. “Miss Picard?”

“Melissa.” Swiftly Angie set down the paper, as though caught doing something wrong. “What are you doing still at school?”

Timidly the girl entered the room, walked over and stood near the desk, fidgeting with her bookstrap. “I was wondering if I could have my assignment back.”

Angie studied the slight figure and asked, “May I ask why?”

A moment's hesitation, then, “I've changed my mind. I'll do another one tonight and turn it in tomorrow.”

Angie gave a slow nod and handed the paper over. “I have to tell you, Melissa, I've already read it.”

The little shoulders slumped. “Daddy says we need to stop thinking about it.”

“What, about your mother's death?” Angie leaned over and slid a chair closer to her desk. “Sit down here, Melissa. Why did he say that?”

“He says we've grieved enough. I think he's right, too.”

Angie searched carefully for the proper words. “Have you really had a time to be sad?”

There was no hesitation to her response. “I feel like I've cried all the tears the world can hold.”

The words seared like a red-hot knife. Angie tried to keep her face calm and asked, “You still miss her, don't you?”

A single nod, the words almost a whisper. “So much.”

It struck her then, a knell that echoed through her with a force so powerful it did not need to be heard. The message came to her again.
Share Yourself. Share Me
.

It would have been easy to drape the message in all her past hurts and push it aside. So very easy. Yet there was something that held her, some sense of being drawn into an act and a moment that held far more importance than she could fathom.

The moment stretched on. Angie remained caught not by indecision but rather by the sense of being called to service. Melissa sat and kicked her legs in forlorn jerks, her face downcast.

Then another thought struck Angie. She pulled open her bottom drawer and brought out a bundle wrapped in old newspaper. She had taken the glass chest home but could not seem to find the proper place for it. So she had brought it to school, thinking it could hold her paper clips and rubber bands. But then it seemed too nice for such a commonplace use. Now that she looked at it again, she had the feeling that it had held another purpose all along.

“I want you to have this,” Angie said quietly.

The girl's eyes grew wide. “For me?”

“Be careful,” Angie replied. “It's very old.”

Cautiously Melissa unwrapped the newspaper. When the heavy lead glass came into view, her smile transformed her face. Melissa fit the lid onto the base, held it up, and watched as the sunlight turned the pressed glass into a glittering box of prisms.

“Look, it's catching rainbows!” Suddenly the serious girl was a child again, so excited she could no longer sit still. She bounded up and danced over to the window to hold the box up so that the light fell strong upon it. “Look, Miss Picard! It's a box for rainbows, and it's got hearts all over it!” She spun around. “Is this really for me?”

“If you like it,” Angie said. “It's yours.”

“It's so beautiful.” She turned back to the window and lifted the box back up. “Momma used to love boxes too.”

For some reason the matter-of-fact tone brought a burning to Angie's eyes. She swallowed, then said, “Did she now.”

“Yes, ma'am. Boxes and music. I remember how she used to say that everybody needed to collect some favorite thing, and she was extra lucky because she had four favorites, two things to collect and two people to keep.” Slowly the box was lowered. “I get scared sometimes that I'm going to forget things like that.”

“I am absolutely positive,” Angie replied slowly, “that you are going to remember all the good things, all your life long.”

Melissa looked back at her then, her expression now desperate. “Really?”

“Really.” Again the silent chiming message resounded through her. Angie responded by asking, “What do you do with your Saturdays?”

“Nothing much.” The girl's attention returned to her little glass box. “Daddy works, so I do my homework and read and maybe go for a walk or something.”

“Don't you have any friends?” When Melissa responded with a little shiver of a head shake, Angie asked her, “Would you like to go for a drive?”

Again there was the round-eyed astonishment. “With you?”

7

On Saturday, the weather was with them. The autumn's first hard frost gave way to a pristine morning of brilliant blue. Angie had risen long before dawn and was ready for departure two hours earlier than scheduled. When she had wiped a spotless kitchen cabinet for the second time and polished the living room furniture, she forced herself to sit down at the kitchen table. She fiddled with her gloves and watched the clock's hand crawl around, rising twice to check if it had stopped.

Before she pulled her big Chrysler into the Nealey drive, Angie hesitated by the entrance to ensure that Carson had already left for work. When she saw that the way was empty, she started in, only to halt a second time. The sparrow of a girl hurried out to meet her, dressed in dark blue with a matching small-brimmed hat.

Her auburn locks were brushed until they shone, bouncing and flying out behind her with each excited step. “I locked the door top and bottom. And Daddy gave me money for lunch. And he says thank you. And you must come over some time so he can meet you proper.” Melissa halted by the car window, breathless with excitement. “I think I've remembered everything.”

“You look perfect,” Angie said quietly. “Come around and get in.”

She did as she was told. Once Melissa was settled, Angie asked, “Can you read a map?”

“A little. Not very well.”

Angie spread out the road map and traced a slender blue line. “We're going up into the foothills. I am beginning to make friends up there.”

“We're going to visit friends?”

“In a way. I collect antiques. It's my hobby. These mountain people are very closed to outsiders. But they talk with me. Some of them, anyway. And if they have something they don't want anymore, sometimes they let me buy it.” Melissa was watching her with bright-eyed enthusiasm. “Do you know what an antique is?”

“Something old. Like the box you gave me. Papa didn't want to let me keep it at first. And he said I couldn't go for a drive with you. He said it wasn't proper. Then I told him what you said about being able to remember Momma, and he got all quiet for a while. Then he said I could keep the box and come with you today.” She turned her attention to the front window. “Daddy misses Momma a lot.”

“I'm sure he does.” Angie put the car into gear, and as she drove out of town, she wondered at what she could say to change the subject. But just as swiftly, there was an answering chime within her heart.
This was on the child's mind, something she could not speak of at home
. Perhaps she should follow the child's course.

As she turned off the main highway and onto a narrow county road, she asked, “Were the old folk songs your mother's favorites?”

“Momma had lots of favorites.” Carefully Melissa lifted off her blue hat and set it on the seat between them. “She liked lots of old music, and she liked hymns, and she liked bluegrass music. She said bluegrass music was the best music ever made for tapping your foot. Momma said every time she heard bluegrass she wished she had a long skirt on so she could lift it up and whirl around the room.”

Angie could only glance over once in a while, as the road twisted and turned and climbed at a steep pace. “Your mother liked hymn singing?”

“Yes.” But something about the question left Melissa eager to talk about something else. “Momma said her old music was for quiet times, when she could sit still and take it in deep. I could always tell when Momma was in a quiet mood, 'cause I'd come home and she'd be playing old music with the big orchestras and lots of violins.”

“That sort of music is called classical,” Angie said. “Who were some of her favorite composers?”

“She had one she used to play a lot. But I never could say the name. I remember the story, though, the one the music was written about. Once upon a time there was a beautiful lady. She gets caught by a bad old king, who says he's going to kill her. But she keeps telling him these beautiful stories, and every night he lets her live another day so he can hear one more. Finally he falls in love with her, and they get married and live happily ever after.”

“Scheherazade,” Angie replied. “It's a symphony by Rimsky-Korsakov.”

“That's the one,” Melissa said, nodding in her excitement. “Do you like it, too?”

“Very much. The music captures the feeling of struggling against terrible odds and overcoming them in the end.”

“My momma struggled,” Melissa said. “But she didn't win.”

“You don't know that.” Angie paused to choose her words with great care. “She didn't live, no, that much is true. But she left behind a legacy of love and a beautiful daughter. And from what you said, she met her Maker with great love and great faith.”

When Melissa did not say anything, Angie asked, “Why did you and your father move here?”

“Papa said we were wasting our lives.”

The words wrenched at her heart. Angie crested the rise, signaled, and pulled off the road. She focused her full attention on Melissa. “What did he mean, dear?”

“He said that a lot after the funeral.” Melissa's gaze remained directed out the front windshield. “But then he was talking about Momma. ‘What a waste,' he'd say, over and over and over. ‘What a waste.' I used to dream those words. Then for a while he stopped saying them. And then last spring he started saying it again, but he was talking about us now. We were wasting our lives. We needed to move on. We needed to go somewhere else and start over again.”

“So you came here,” Angie said, but inside she was remembering the night of the argument with the pinched-faced man. She had seen him as both angry and menacing. She had even feared for this little girl living with him. She had seen no seed of love in him, none at all. And now she felt mortally ashamed. “Your father is a very strong man. And wise.”

“I think so too. Papa needed to come. I didn't want to, though. I was scared.”

“What frightened you?”

“I was afraid that maybe if we moved I'd forget Momma.” She turned imploring eyes toward Angie. “That's not wrong, is it?”

“I am sure your mother is very proud of you and of the love you hold for her memory,” Angie replied. She watched Melissa settle back, as though the reassurance made everything all right. Once more Angie felt the gentle urgings of her heart. She marveled at this, for it had been so long since her heart had spoken at all. She led the talk back around by asking, “You say your mother loved hymns. Was she a Christian? Did she believe in God?”

Melissa responded by turning back to the windshield and giving a single nod.

Angie searched her heart for what needed to be said. “And you and your father, you moved away from God after she passed on?”

“Why not?” Melissa replied to the window. “God didn't do anything for us.”

Angie sighed. And nodded. A very slow nod, one of shared pain and understanding. She had been along this very same route. It would have been so easy to have abandoned faith, to have used her distress and her anger, yes,
anger at God
as a reason for turning away.

Slowly Melissa swung around, as though her gaze was drawn against her will. She watched Angie a moment, then asked, “Do you believe in God?”

“I do.”

“But why?”

Angie could not help but feel the pain behind that question. And the yearning. Even so, all the words she had come to know from youth about salvation and repentance and commands, they did not seem to fit. So all she said was, “Because I could not go on without faith. I would have shriveled up and blown away a long time ago.”

Melissa gazed at her with eyes that held both the openness of youth and the ancient wisdom of suffering. “Did somebody die?”

There was no place for anything less than the truth. “My husband. A little over six years ago.”

Melissa stared out her window a long moment. “Then, you know,” she said simply. “I prayed a lot when Momma got sick. I prayed all the time. And still God let her die. The preacher said she was in a better place. But why did God have to take her? Momma didn't want to go. She told me. She said if she was not already dying, the pain of not being able to watch me grow up would have killed her stone-dead.” Melissa wiped an impatient hand across her cheeks, as though not wanting to take the time for tears. “Why did God make her go away?”

It came to her then—the Bible passage, and the need to talk it through. “I asked myself the same questions. I searched everywhere for answers. I asked everybody I could. And it seemed to me that the people who talked didn't know the first thing about suffering. And the people who knew, they didn't talk at all.”

Angie turned in her seat so that she could face the young girl straight on. “So I started reading the Bible more than I ever had before, looking for my own answers. It was either that or close the Book and never open it again. And I came across the shortest verse in the Scriptures.