The Stolen Child(118)

After the fire, Tess saved me. Distraught over the damage I had done, I moped about the house for

days. The destruction of the children's section was not my fault, although I deeply regretted the loss of all

the books. The children will need new stories and fairy tales to see them through their nightmares and

daydreams, to transfigure their sorrows and fears at not being able to remain children forever.

Tess and Edward arrived home from her cousin's just as the police were leaving. It seems I was

regarded as a person of suspicion, for the librarians had reported my spate of frequent visits and "erratic

behavior." The firemen had discovered the lantern in the ashes, but there was no way to link back to me

what had once been my father's. Tess accepted my feeble explanations, and when the police came

around again, she told them a little white lie, saying that we had spoken over the phone on the night of

the fire and she remembered quite clearly having woken me from a deep sleep. Without any proof, the

mat-ter faded. The arson investigation, as far as I know, proved inconclusive, and the blaze passed into

local lore, as if the books themselves had suddenly burst into flames.

Having Tess and Edward back home those few weeks before school started was both reassuring

and unnerving. Their mere presence in the house calmed my fragile psyche after the fire, but there were

times when I could barely look Tess in the eye. Burdened with guilt over her complicity, I searched for

some way to tell her the truth, and perhaps she guessed the reasons for my growing anxiety.

"I feel responsible, in part," Tess told me over dinner. "And helpless. As if we should do something

about rebuilding." Over our lamb chops, she out-lined a plan to raise money for the library. The details

arrived in such waves that I knew Tess had been contemplating the matter since the day of her re-turn.

"We'll start a book drive, too, and you can make your concert a benefit for the children."

Stunned and relieved, I could raise no objection, and over the next weeks, the bursts of activity

overwhelmed my sense of decorum and privacy. People boxed up their fairy tales and nursery rhymes,

and swarmed through the house at all hours with cartons of books, stacking them in the studio and

garage. What had been my hermitage became a beehive for the well-intentioned. The phone rang

constantly with offers to help. On top of the hubbub over the books, planning for the concert interrupted

our peace. An artist came by to show poster designs for the concert. Advance tickets were sold from

our living room. On a Saturday morning, Lewis Love and his teenaged son, Oscar, showed up with a

pickup truck, and we loaded the organ in the back to install it in the church. Rehearsals were scheduled

for three nights a week, and the students and the musicians constructed it measure by measure. The

giddy pace and hum of life left me too exhausted to consider my conflicted emotions. Swept up in the

motion Tess had created, I could only truly function by concentrating on the music as the date for the

performance drew near.

From the wings, I watched the crowd file into the church for the benefit pre-miere of The Stolen

Child on that night in late October. Since I was perform-ing on the organ, I had passed the conductor's

baton to Oscar Love, and our old Coverboys drummer Jimmy Cummings was on timpani. Oscar had

rented a tuxedo for the occasion and Jimmy had cut his hair, and we seemed much too respectable

versions of our former selves. A few of my fellow teachers from Twain sat together in the back rows,

and even one of the last remaining nuns from our grade school days attended. Ebullient as ever, my

sisters showed up in formal wear, pearls at their collars, and they flanked my mother and Charlie, who

winked at me as if to impart a dose of his abundant confidence. I was most surprised to see Eileen Blake

escorted by her son Brian, who was in town for a visit. He gave me a momentary fright when they

arrived, but the more I studied him, the less he could be compared rationally with Edward. My son after

all, and thank goodness, he takes after his mother in every respect but appearance. With his hair tamed,

and dressed up in his first suit and tie, Edward looked like another boy altogether, and seeing the

foreshadowing of the man my son will become one day, I felt both pride and regret over the brevity of

childhood. Tess could not stop grinning that crooked smile of hers, and rightfully so, for the symphony I

had promised to write long ago was nearly hers.

To let in some fresh air on the crisp autumn night, the priests had cracked the windows, and a light

breeze crossed the altar and the nave. The organ had been positioned at the apse because of the

acoustics, and my back was to the audience and the rest of the small orchestra as we took our positions;