The Painted Table(27)
Joann, desperate to escape whatever pursues her, slips on the scattered buttons and falls to her hands and knees. Her eyes blaze. “Hurry! Everybody! Get under the table or we’ll all burn! It’s whipping in the wind, coming for us . . . the inferno! Get under the table!”
Nels strides into the room. “Joann! Joann! Whatcha doin’? Whatcha yellin’ about?” With effort he pulls his wife to her feet and tries to subdue her flailing arms.
“Saffee, get to bed. Right now!” he orders, as if embarrassed that his daughter is witnessing Joann’s unnatural behavior.
Instead, her heart racing, Saffee flips the wall switch. Joann wears a stranger’s face as her wild eyes dart around the illuminated room. There is no fire. She ceases her frantic reeling, whimpers, and crumples into Nels’s arms.
He guides her back to their bedroom, where disguises of childhood trauma continue to torment Joann’s midnight hours. Soon they will lurk by day.
Trembling, Saffee turns out the light, retreats to her own room, and slumps onto her side of the bed. It looks as if April has not moved.
The troubling scene lasted mere moments. Would Nancy Drew be able to unravel the meaning of it? Drama and mystery, so exhilarating on the written page, seem only to plunder real life. Although Saffee is confused, tonight she realizes, with maturity beyond her years, that her mother suffers seriously from some irrevocable trauma from her past.
As she lies in the darkness, listening to the high-pitched whine of a mosquito, it dawns on her that Joann’s obsession with painting the table has nothing to do with decorating.
The next morning, after Saffee has picked up all the scattered buttons, according to her father’s instruction, she wants to question her mother about last night’s peculiar excitement. She stands in the kitchen several minutes, watching Joann intently ironing Nels’s work shirts to a shine. It would be of no use to inquire; she is unapproachable. Saffee goes outside.
No one is in the neighboring backyard. She crosses over and climbs into the tire swing that hangs from a limb of a towering elm and idly scuffs her feet in the dirt. The tire spins in lazy circles. Saffee daydreams that her mother smiles, puts down her iron, goes to the back door, and calls her. Invites her to sit down beside her on the step, strokes her hair, and talks to her. Explains things about life and life’s mysteries.
She pumps her legs vigorously. Extending her arms and leaning far back, she looks at the pattern of the leafy canopy against the bright blue summer sky. Dapples of warm sun kiss her face and she remembers that she is not alone.
Into my heart, Lord Jesus . . .
She smiles and whispers, “Jesus, You’re swinging with me.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PALM SUNDAY
1952
Saffee kicks off her wet boots in the entryway and hears the familiar whir of the Singer sewing machine. She pushes through the French doors and hurries to the dining room where Joann bends over her work. Multiple yards of polished cotton splash pink cabbage roses across the Norway table and spill onto the floor.
“Mom, I need you to make something for the concert.”
Joann glances up.
“Hang up your coat. Make what? You know I’m busy trying to finish these draperies for the living room.”
Saffee pulls a length of white fabric and a mimeographed paper from a bag and shows them to her mother. The paper has a simple drawing of a square with a hole in the center. Below, it says, “Sirplus, 28 inches.”
“What’s this?” Joann asks. “What’s a sirplus?”
“I don’t know, but Mrs. Knudsen says everyone’s gotta wear one on Palm Sunday for the Messiah concert.”
Joann’s studied vocabulary is a source of pride. She keeps a notebook of newly learned words she finds in Time magazine and practices them on the family. Once, when Saffee questioned this preoccupation, Joann gazed at the ceiling and replied, “Well, Saffee, while I would never promote pretension, a certain erudition has always been considered a virtue.” But now, erudition or not, here is a word that puzzles her.
She leans to pick up a well-thumbed dictionary from the shelf of the telephone table, a book the family uses more frequently than the phone directory.
“Of course,” she huffs with indignation. “It’s surplice. S-u-r-p-l-i-c-e. ‘A loose white vestment worn by clergy and choristers at Christian church services.’ You’d think that people who aspire to communicate would also aspire to spell. What kind of people are up at that church?”
White lilies, their blossoms like trumpets, edge the entire choir loft. The burgundy-colored robes of First Methodist’s chancel choir serve as their dramatic backdrop. Although small in number, the choir sings from Handel’s magnificent work with as much passion as larger groups of renown.