The Claim Tag in My Husband’s Coat
“Wilbur died in 2003,” Elaine said. “He worked at a feed plant in Grand Island the last eighteen years.”
“He never farmed again.”
“It does not say that.”
I let it go.
A child’s voice in the background. A bell. A woman answered, warm and brisk.
“Good afternoon, this is Rachel.”
My mouth went dry as sand. “Mrs. Kovar, you will not remember me. My name is Velma Gaines. I was a neighbor of your family a long time ago, in Cobb Ridge. Zion Lutheran.”
There was a silence. Not an empty one.
“Mrs. Gaines,” Rachel said slowly. “You made the plum bars. For the funeral dinners. I used to hide behind the pie table and eat the corners.” She gave a short laugh. “Why are you calling me?”
“I have something that belongs to you,” I said. “My husband left it for you a long time ago. Merrill. He tried to find you for years, honey, and he could not. I have only just found you for him.”
“Mr. Gaines,” she said, very small. “The one who clapped.”
I did not understand her.
“At the Christmas program. In 1984. I played ‘Silent Night,’ and I was so frightened my bow was jumping. When I finished, nobody clapped, because it was church and you do not clap in a Lutheran church in Iowa, and I stood in front of everyone with my face on fire. And then from the back there was one man. One pair of big hands. Loud. By himself. Not caring who looked. I looked up, and it was Mr. Gaines.” She was laughing and crying at once. “I have thought about that man for forty years.”
I stood in my kitchen with the receiver in my hand.
And I remembered, God forgive me, that I had forgotten. A cold December night, the heater ticking in the sanctuary, and Merrill beside me in the back pew, who had never made a noise in church except the bass line. He had put his hands together. People turned around. I hissed, “Merrill!” And he said, not even whispering, “Well, she was good.”
That was the whole of it. And a girl of ten had carried that sound through the loss of a farm and a father and a dozen schools.
“Let me tell you what else he did,” I said.
Rachel lived in a tidy brick ranch house on a street of them. Plastic reindeer on the lawn next door, a wreath on her door, frozen mums in a pot on the step. Before Elaine could shut off the engine the door opened and a woman came out onto the stoop in her stocking feet.
She was fifty-one. I would have known her anywhere. The same long chin, the braid going silver, a red sweater, her arms wrapped around herself the way she must have stood in that church at ten years old.
She came down the walk in the snow without her shoes, and I got out of the car with the case in my arms, and neither of us said anything. Then she put both arms around me, case and all, and held on.
Inside, the house smelled of coffee and cinnamon. A man in a flannel shirt shook my hand and said his name was Tim and he would put the kettle on, and then did not leave the room. A girl of about seven peeked around the kitchen door, and Rachel said, “That is Tasha, my granddaughter. Tasha, this is Mrs. Gaines from Iowa.”