I thought at once, uncomfortably, of the incident at Box Hill in Jane Austen's novel
Emma
in which Emma Woodhouse speaks with caustic wit at the expense of the tedious Miss Bates. I thought of Mr. Knightley's gentle yet unmincing reproach of Emma after her unkind words. I could almost hear him saying to me, “It was badly done, indeed!”
I would not tolerate an invasion upon my private affairs, however, and the thought of the lunchroom women discussing my piano lessons, pitying me for not having had the opportunity as a child, commenting on my spunk, and charting my progress filled me with loathing. I had had every right to speak sternly to Birdie, I told myself as I returned to the work on my desk.
We conversed very little on our way to Birdie's home the following Tuesday afternoon. Birdie made several attempts to probe into my past with questions such as “You haven't always lived in the South, have you?” “Where were you born?” and “How long have you worked at Emma Weldy?” to which I answered respectively, “No,” “In Indiana,” and “Twenty-one years.” She soon ceased asking questions and contented herself with aimless comments calling for no response. “Those little maple trees will be turning the most beautiful color in October,” “I believe that's the same mail truck that delivers out to our house,” and “It's been so handy since the Rite-Aid out here on this end of town started selling milk.”
She remarked at some length about my carâa black 1967 Ford Fairlane that Thomas had bought and reconditioned for me the year after our marriageâinforming me that she and Mickey had owned a yellow Ford of the same year and model when they lived in Tuscaloosa but had sold it after an ice cream truck had sideswiped it. “Yours is in tip-top shape,” she said, and leaning in my direction, she added, “Eighty-two thousand milesâis that all it has on it?” to which I nodded and replied, “Yes.”
If I had stopped to map out the location of Birdie's house according to her earlier description of “about four miles from here, right on Highway 11 going to Derby,” I would have known precisely which house it was. I had passed it many times over the years of traveling from Filbert to Derby. Derby boasts a modest mall, a thriving Wal-Mart, an excellent dentist, and a well-appointed library for so small a town.
“You'll need to turn left at the driveway up here past this,” Birdie said, waving toward the large brick marker for the Shepherd's Valley Cemetery. A small stone statue of a shepherd holding a lamb stood on a concrete base beside the marker. I recalled distinctly the cold January day some eight months earlier when I had attended the interment of Thomas's uncle Mayfield, the day I had, in fact, first observed Birdie Freeman playing the organ at the Mortland Funeral Home. I remembered thinking as we drove slowly through the cemetery entrance that winter day that the statue was disproportionately small, that it looked like something a religious devotee might place in his flower garden rather than a focal image suitable for marking so large and solemn a field as the Shepherd's Valley Cemetery.
I could have told anyone that there was a small white frame house to the north of the cemetery, set well off the road at the end of a long gravel driveway, though I suppose I had always presumed it to be the home of the Shepherd's Valley groundskeeper. As I followed the narrow driveway toward the house, I took in the details. Beside me, Birdie had begun rustling about, refolding her brown paper lunch bag and pressing it against her large tan purse, then clutching them both to her chest with one hand as she smoothed her white skirt. She lifted both feet off the floor of the car and lightly tapped them together.
“I just love coming home!” she proclaimed at last. “There's nothing like that feeling of knowing your day's work is done and you're back
home
.”
If I had been asked to draw a picture of the kind of home in which Birdie and Mickey Freeman would live, I am certain that I would have produced something very similar to what stood before me at the end of the driveway. I suppose the absence of contrapuntal elements between the main character and her habitat only adds to the unfortunate predictability of my story. I cannot change the facts to make my story more engaging, however. Birdie's house must stand as it is.
It was a white house, exceedingly white, so white that it had a slightly bluish cast. In fact, there was a great deal of white to be seen everywhere, from the billows of cumulus clouds overhead to the white sheets on the clothesline alongside the house. Indeed, it could have been the setting for a television commercial for laundry detergent. I thought it most imprudent, however, that Birdie had left sheets on the line while she had been away from home for nearly eight hours, especially as there had been a thirty percent chance of rain showers that morning, which, fortunately for her, had not materialized.
There were black shutters at each window; the front windows consisted of small panes of beveled glass. Ruffled curtains, two planters of white chrysanthemums beside the front steps, and a black wrought iron railing around the tiny porch completed the quaint effect of Birdie's house. A stand of tall pine trees behind the house made the house appear even smaller. A whimsical thought came to me. It would be easy to imagine Snow White inside this house awaiting the arrival of the seven dwarfs.
The house beside the cemetery brought to mind a novel that I had read, the first work of fiction, I believe, by the talented journalist Anna Quindlen, a book titled
Object Lessons
. As I recall, the father of the main character lived in the caretaker's cottage within a cemetery. The main character herself had lived there before her marriage. Sharply delineated impressions remain in my mind of the lush, brilliant foliage surrounding the cottage.
As I have said, Birdie's house was not within the confines of the cemetery, however, and as I looked more closely I could see the dim outlines of at least two other houses beyond the pine trees. Since I saw no direct access to the houses from this side, I assumed that they faced McKinney Bridge Road, which runs parallel to Highway 11 on the other side of the cemetery. I concluded that the neighbors to which Birdie frequently alluded must reside in these houses, for I observed no others nearby.
The long driveway led eventually to a carport, the free-standing type, with a trim aluminum roof painted black. Dark flagstones provided a walkway from the carport to the front sidewalk. I did not drive under the carport, which sheltered no car at present, but stopped my Ford about six feet away from it.
“Come on in,” Birdie said before I had even turned off the ignition. “I know you must be ready to get started, and so am I.”
My heart was strangely unsettled as I walked behind her up the stone walkway and then to the sidewalk. I kept my eyes upon her small white sneakers, and as I watched her mount the front steps, I could not decide which I desired more: to return to the safety of my Ford in the drivewayâthat is, to start the car and put it in reverse, to undo this awful mistake by canceling all future piano lessonsâor to follow Birdie Freeman's steps across the threshold of the white door that she was preparing to unlock.
Of course I followed her.
That first day I wanted to see nothing inside her house, yet I saw everything. My desire was only to have the first lesson finished so that from that day onward a routine free from distractions could be established. I wished for the setting to become irrelevant, invisible for all practical purposes. I wanted to view my piano lessons as a visit to a clinic. Birdie was merely a doctor who would diagnose my condition, prescribe a semiweekly remediation, and chart my progress. I might as easily have leapt into Niagara Falls and tried to imagine myself sitting beneath a lawn sprinkler.
Birdie's home was as tidy inside as it was outside, yet while the blacks and whites of the exterior gave forth an air of subdued conservativism, the interior was a riot of color. In an earlier chapter I mentioned my sensitivity to color. A multitude of strong, intense colors affects me on a visceral level.
After stepping across the threshold into Birdie's house, I stood very still. The brightness of the room assaulted me. Though in perfect order, it was clear to me that the living room was used a great deal. The two recliners, one upholstered in peach and the other in royal blue, appeared comfortably “broken in,” as they say. The sofa fabric was yellow, with startling designs of white prisms woven into it. Imprinted bands of bold, rich colors fanned from each small white pyramid. It was what is referred to as a busy pattern, one which, if stared at too long, begins to writhe or jerk.
There were several multicolored braided rugs of varying sizes positioned over the hardwood floors, and upon the coffee table was arrangedâalthough the effect was more informal than the word
arranged
suggestsâan assortment of ceramic figurines, which Thomas would refer to as “gimcracks and doodads.” The table also held three houseplants (an African violet, an ivy, and a bonsai similar to the one that Birdie had given me), framed photographs, and a few magazines. I noted in particular two issues of
National Geographic
and one of
Reader's Digest
.
A rectangular cabinet of blond wood occupied one corner, its lid raised to reveal a phonograph player. Leaning against it on the floor were a number of phonograph albums. The one facing outward featured the smiling visage of Jim Nabors. Other miscellaneous furnishings included a low bookcase, an old dictionary standâdisplaying what I assumed at first to be a huge dictionary but that I later discovered to be a family Bibleâand two floor lamps. The curtains were striped in yellow, green, and navy.
The walls were covered with a plethora of art: original paintings, including everything from a watercolor of a red schoolhouse in the style of folk art to a convincing impressionistic oil rendering of trees along a shoreline at sunset; two cross-stitched samplers; framed quilt squares; floral prints; several large photographs of nature scenes such as one might see on wall calendars; two wreaths; and an old metal Nehi Soda sign. Right above the piano was a hand-stitched poem with an embroidered forest scene in the background. This poem, to which I will return later, was titled “Gifts from the Wildwood,” and I was to memorize it over the course of the next several weeks as I sat at Birdie's piano each Tuesday and Friday afternoon.
As I absorbed the blow of finding myself inside the fastidiously kept yet madly kaleidoscopic living room of Birdie Freeman, I heard her offer me a glass of ginger ale. Resting my gaze at last upon the piano, beside which sat a small rocking chair with a red gingham seat pad, I declined with a brief shake of my head. For a moment I felt that the room was in motion.
“Well, then, let's come on over and sit down here,” she said, pointing to the piano stool. “You'll probably need it lower.” She spun it around a few times as if she were steering a ride at an amusement park. It was an old-fashioned stool of dark mahogany, with a needlepoint design of dusky pink roses upon the round seat. It was small but sturdy.
“These are what we'll start out with,” she said, picking up four books of different colors titled The Music Tree series. “This first one is just real basic,” she said, choosing the gold book, which bore the subtitle
Time to Begin
, and setting the others aside. “But since you said you've never had any music lessons at all, I guess we'll just go through the whole series from the beginning like I do with all my new pupils.” She smiled at me, then flipped through the gold book from back to front. As she did so, I saw the titles of several songs: “Trapeze Artist,” “Noisy Neighbors,” “Goldfish,” “Naptime,” “Inchworm.”
When she reached the front of the book, she stopped and folded it back with great deliberation. “Well, here we go,” she said. She set the book on the music rack in front of me and traced with her small forefinger as she read aloud the words at the top of the page. “Unit One. Discoveries. Learning about Higher.” Then she leaned down by my side, her hands on her knees, and said, “You're so quiet, Margaret. Is anything the matter?”
“No,” I replied. “I simply want to get about our business.”
Her face broke into a smile at once, uncomely for its dental defects yet radiant for its spontaneity. “Yes, let's do that,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “Let's get about our business. I like that.” She straightened up and, pointing again to the page, said, “Now, first of all, when a note goes up higher on these five lines called the staff, it sounds”âhere she raised the pitch of her voiceâ“
higher
, and you use one of these higher keys up here on the keyboard to play it.” I watched as she applied a finger to keys of successively higher pitches, striking lightly and quickly as if each key were a live coal, hot to the touch.
One Saturday evening in late September, after I had completed four piano lessons at Birdie's house, I accompanied Thomas's cousin Joan to a play, or a “play trilogy” as it was billed, in Greenville. Though Joan's salaried career is in advertising and publicity, she also writes a weekly freelance column for the Berea
Bugler
and the Filbert
Nutshell
called “Arts in the Upstate” in which she highlights the work of various regional artists, musicians, and writers. As an ancillary of the news media, she receives two free tickets to all area arts events, and when serving as reviewer, she frequently invites me to share the evening with her.
For me these evenings are charged with a mental stimulation that can only be described as electric. A live performance naturally produces a powerful current of response, but the evenings with Joan are further intensified by the knowledge that she is compelled to formulate a balanced, well-focused, succinct judgment for immediate publication. After each performance, we generally stop at the Second Cup Coffee Shoppe, though I do not drink coffee, where Joan reads her notes to me, and we discuss the performance.