Rachel nodded. "The war turned him into someone I didn't know." She felt freed by the way Becky refused to tiptoe around the topic. "He became…unpredictable."
"And I know that some people are upset that you're here. You're their scapegoat."
That word again.
"I just want you to know that everyone doesn't feel that way," Becky continued. "It's good for you to do things like taking this class. You're a legend in this town, just like your grandfather, only for different reasons. Twenty years have passed, and there are very few people here who remember the real Rachel Huber. They only remember the pumped-up myth of the teacher who…you know…who blew it, they think."
Rachel tried not to wince at Becky's choice of words.
"The only way to counteract that reputation," Becky continued, "is to let people get to know you. Michael told me about all the awards you've won as a teacher. People need to hear about that. I'm taking it upon myself to spread the word. Hope you don't mind."
Rachel smiled. "It means a lot to me to know that everyone doesn't blame me."
"Hell, no. Just a few people who still need someone to pin their unhappiness on. I don't give them the time of day."
Their meal arrived, and they ate and talked like the old friends they were, Becky bringing her up to date on nearly everyone from their high school class as well as their teachers and the school secretaries and cafeteria workers. By the time they left the restaurant it was dark outside, and Rachel felt fully satisfied. She'd had a good workout, good food, and good company.
She said good-bye to Becky on the corner, then walked the block to her car in front of the United Church of Christ. She slipped her key into the lock on the car door.
"Rachel?"
She turned at the sound of Michael's voice. He was walking down the sidewalk in front of the Mennonite church, his features barely visible in the darkness.
"Are you just getting out of work?" she asked.
He stopped on the sidewalk, the car between them, and glanced back at his church. "I guess you could say that. Where were you? In the library?"
"No. I took the aerobics class with Becky. Then we got some dinner."
He looked truly pleased. "That's great. I'm glad to see you out and about."
"I'm glad to see you, period. How's Jason?"
"Good. We've had a terrific week together." He looked out toward Huber Pond, and she saw the war going on inside him. She knew the instant he lost it. "Do you have time for a cup of coffee?" he asked.
She smiled at him. "I want to, Michael, but are you sure it's a good idea?"
"Probably not." He grinned his Michael Stoltz grin. "But let's do it anyway."
He didn't need to talk her into it.
They walked to the small cafe next to the bank. Brahms Cafe, it was called. The walls were decorated with musical instruments and pictures of composers, Peter Huber included. After feeling so welcome in the aerobics class, Rachel walked into the cafe without so much as a twinge of anxiety.
"You can sit anywhere, Mike." The waitress glanced at them, then did a double take when she realized who the preacher was with. Rachel felt the woman's eyes burning a hole in her back as she and Michael walked toward a booth.
An older man passed their Formica-topped table as they were sitting down. He shot a look at Rachel, then nodded at Michael. "Michael," he said, and Michael returned the greeting.
Rachel waited until the man was out of earshot. "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all," she said quietly.
Michael shook his head, let out a sigh. "Drew just lectured me, not more than a couple of hours ago, about not being seen with you. So what do I do? First chance I get, I suggest we go out in public."
"Oh, Michael," she said in frustration. "We're not doing anything wrong."
"I know that. And I refuse to act as if we are."
The waitress appeared at their table. "Rice pudding?" she asked Michael.
He nodded. "And coffee." He looked at Rachel. "Have some dessert?"
She shook her head and looked up at the waitress, who immediately averted her eyes. "Just decaf," she said.
The waitress called to an older couple standing by the front door and seated them in the booth across the aisle from her and Michael.
"Hello, Mike," the silver-haired woman said as she and the gentleman settled into the booth.
Michael nodded. "Hi, Marge. Dow." He hesitated a moment before adding, "Do you know Rachel?"
Marge nodded. "We met at Hairlights. This is my husband, Dow."
"Oh, yes." Rachel remembered the woman as one of the hairdressers in Lily's salon. "Nice seeing you again."
Marge and her husband lost themselves in their menus, and Michael gave Rachel a rueful smile. "Well," he said softy. "We might as well have rented a billboard to announce we were going to have a cup of coffee together. Marge is rather notorious for spreading the word."
"I really like Lily."
He nodded. "Lily's terrific."
"She gives me hope. She seems to symbolize something…" She hunted for the words. "She endured the tragedy, and yet she's so alive and strong and well adjusted and…she doesn't seem to blame me." She was aware of speaking softly, just in case she could be overheard by Marge, but the older woman and her husband seemed engrossed in their menus.
Michael nodded, but she got the sense he didn't entirely agree with her rosy picture of the young hairdresser. "Yes, she's adjusted well, and she's not the type to blame anyone for anything. She's a very forgiving sort of person. It's something the church teaches—to forgive—and Lily's a good example of that. But she still has a wounded side to her. She probably won't let you see it, but it's there."
"How do you know?"
"When she was in high school, she was in the youth group at the church, and she talked to me a lot about her sister. About the guilt she felt over having survived when her sister didn't. It's common knowledge that she's afraid to have kids. Afraid of losing them."
"Oh. Poor thing." Rachel pursed her lips. She had wanted to believe that Lily had somehow been spared the tenacious suffering that had so many people in its grip.
"Hey, take a look at this," Michael said with an abrupt change of topic. He pulled a newspaper ad from his pocket. "Drew gets the Washington Post," he said, laying the ad flat on the table and turning it so she could see. "What do you think?"
It was a large ad for the National Symphony Orchestra, and it was a moment before she understood. "An all-Huber program!" she exclaimed. "Oh, I've got to take Gram."
He smiled. "And me, too, all right? If I can figure out a way to swing it. I thought we could get a couple of rooms near the Kennedy Center and stay overnight. It's too far to drive back that late."
The happiness she'd been toying with all night suddenly flowered again. She wished she could tell him how much she wanted that time with him, how much she'd missed seeing him this week. But she couldn't. It might scare him as much as it scared her.
She studied the ad as he talked about the logistics of getting tickets. There was a picture of the pianist who would be performing with the orchestra that night. Karl Speicer. A handsome man, though quite old. At least in his seventies, judging from the picture. His hair was white, and he wore an engaging smile. The name was vaguely familiar. "I think Gram has some of this guy's recordings," she said. "He plays a lot of my grandfather's compositions." She looked up at Michael. "I'm so glad you saw this. Gram's going to be thrilled."
The waitress appeared with the rice pudding and coffee.
"How are preparations going for the hearing and all?" she asked.
"All right. We handed out leaflets today and talked it up. I think we'll have a good turnout. Just hope we can get some of the Amish to show up." He ate a spoonful of pudding before speaking again. "I spoke with the student leader of the youth group this morning," he said. "We're going to meet Friday to start planning the Reflection Day observance. I talked to her about gearing our presentation toward making this the last Reflecti
on Day." He smiled. "She was a bit shocked at first, I think. I mean, she's only seventeen. There's been a Reflection Day every year of her life. But we talked about it, and I think she understood my reasoning. She actually sounded excited about it by the end of the phone call. That's the good thing about working with teenagers. They're rebels at heart. They enjoy thumbing their noses at an institution."
Rachel frowned into her coffee. The whole Reflection Day concept struck her as bizarre and destructive. "When is it again?" she asked.
"September twelfth. It's always the second Monday of September."
She supposed that she, better than anyone, should remember the second Monday of September. She hoped she would be back in San Antonio by then. "Well," she said with a sigh, "the one aspect of Reflection Day that I do like is its focus on the cost of war."
"Yes. So do I." Michael slowly finished his pudding. He set his spoon in the empty bowl and looked at her squarely. "I've always felt terrible that I wasn't around when Luke got back. That I wasn't there to help him. And you."
"You had an obligation in Rwanda, Michael. Besides, you didn't know anything was wrong until it was too late."
He lowered his eyes to the ad on the table, pushed it around a bit with the tips of his fingers. "Vietnam," he said, shaking his head. "You know, I've been to Washington a dozen times in recent years and still can't bring myself to go to the Vietnam Memorial."
She could see the pain inside him. Still, after all these years.
"You were so wise to recognize you couldn't fight," she said. She pictured him standing on the steps of the Town Hall, facing a small crowd of protesters as he asserted his status as a conscientious objector. He'd said he was unable to accept violence as a solution to any problem. "When I heard you speak that day, it was the first time I had any doubts about my feelings for Luke," she admitted. "I admired you for taking that stance. And that speech you made…I cried."
Michael smiled at her. "Do you know who was responsible for me being a conscientious objector?" he asked. "Do you know who helped me write that speech?"
She shook her head. "Who?"
"Your grandparents."
"What?"
"You wondered how I know your grandmother so well. That's how. Both Helen and Peter helped me figure out what to do about the draft. When I decided that I could, with good conscience, be a C.O., they helped me obtain that status, which wasn't too easy, considering I didn't belong to any church back then. Peter spent hours with me, helping me put my feelings into words."
Rachel was stunned. She leaned back in the booth and stared at her old friend. She would have sworn she'd known all there was to know about him back then. "Why didn't you ever tell me about that? I didn't even know you knew them. I wasn't even allowed to see them myself, and there you were, spending hours upon hours with them." She heard the hurt in her voice even before she felt it.
"It was very important that as few people as possible knew what Peter and Helen were up to."
"What do you mean, 'up to'?"
"They were very well known among the draft-age men—boys—throughout the county. You know what pacifists they were. They would have done anything to keep guys from going to fight. Anything, legal or not. And most of what they did wasn't. They harbored AWOL soldiers, they drove draft resisters up to Canada. They doctored medical records, gave advice on how to flunk physicals, and counseled and nurtured C.O.'s like myself. Remember Bobby Mullen?"
Rachel nodded at the name of one of their high school classmates.
"They altered his medical record to make it look like he had a bad knee. They fixed Darren Wise's record so it looked like he had high blood pressure, and they gave him pills to take before his physical to make sure his B.P. would be consistent with his records."
In spite of her shock, Rachel couldn't help laughing. "So that was their terrible crime," she said. "That was why my parents turned their backs on them." She could imagine her father's outrage over her grandparents' blatant disregard for the laws of their country as they struggled to save young men from the fate Luke had suffered.
"Why didn't they help Luke?" she asked.
"They would have, willingly, but he wasn't interested. I dragged him over to their house one time, and he was disgusted by the scam. He felt it was his duty to fight. He told me I was taking the coward's way out." Michael's voice broke slightly on the last word, and Rachel reached across the table to cover his hand with her own.
He drew his hand away from under hers, slowly but deliberately, and for a moment neither of them spoke.
Rachel blinked back tears. She shouldn't have touched him. Not with Marge sitting right across the aisle from them.
"Oh, Rache," he said. "I'm sorry."
She felt the twist in her heart and shook her head. She didn't want to cry here.
Michael leaned forward. "I've been doing a lot of thinking and praying," he said. "A lot of soul-searching. I'm coming to understand some things that are hard for me to face up to."
"Like what?" Her voice came out in a whisper.
"I thought I'd turned to faith as a way to deal with Luke's death, and the loss of the children, and all those things that didn't make sense and hurt too badly to live with. Katy and the church made me feel safe and settled and forgiven. I thought I'd found answers, but I realize now that what I actually found was a way to…escape." He looked out the window. The Mennonite church stood less than a block away, its steeple piercing the night sky. "I'm so insulated now," he continued. "I'm insulated from everything that can cause me a moment's unrest. It was so hard not acting on my feelings for you back in the Peace Corps. A terrible moral dilemma for me. Well, now I'm very protected from having to make moral decisions. The rules and constraints on me are very clear, and I thought I was way beyond temptation. But then here comes Rachel, like a test."
"I don't want to be viewed that way, Michael." She was not certain if it was hurt or anger she felt over the use of the word ‘test’. "It makes me into an object—the evil seductress—instead of an old friend who cares about you. Who wants only good things for you."
He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes warm behind his glasses. "You're right," he said. "I keep doing this, don't I? I keep looking for a nice, neat way to understand my life. If you're a test, then I can resist you. If you're just a good and caring friend, it makes it harder."
She smiled. "You make it sound like you're the only one with a moral code. I've got one, too, you know. It's not elaborate and complicated. It's very simple: I would never move in on another woman's man. All right?"
He laughed. "I'm making this more difficult than it has to be, is that what you're saying?" He put a few bills on the table and stood up, nodding to her to join him.
They walked in a comfortable silence to her car, but she knew better than to give him a hug before getting in. Still, once she was in the car and watching him walk down the road, she felt the tightening in her belly and all the other shades of desire she'd been fighting all week. How easily that old feeling of guilt-edged longing could be brought to life again. Maybe this was a test after all.
–19–
Helen was sitting at the piano, picking out the melody of a song with her good hand, when she heard Rachel's car in the driveway. She abandoned the piano and sat down on the ivy-upholstered sofa, opening a book on her lap. It was a minute before she heard the car door slam, another before she heard her granddaughter's footsteps on the porch.
"Have a good time?" she asked as Rachel walked in the door.
"I can't believe Mom and Dad kept me away from you just because you were helping guys beat the draft." Rachel dropped into a chair.
Helen smiled. So Michael had told her. "Well, I guess what we were doing seemed like a terrible thing to your parents. It would have seemed like a terrible thing to a lot of people, had they known. Your mother and father thought they were putting you in jeopardy by letting you spend time with us. Besides, we always had a house full of boys. They wouldn't want you over her
e." She told herself she wasn't lying. Those were the reasons for the estrangement. At least in part.
Rachel looked toward the empty fireplace, and Helen turned her book facedown on her knee. There was hurt in her granddaughter's face. After all this time.
"We thought we were doing something that was very important," Helen said. "Very necessary. I would never have given up the ability to have my granddaughter in my life if I didn't think what I was doing was critical."
Rachel nodded. "I understand."
"It was a difficult period of my life." Helen raised her hand in the air and discovered it was trembling. She lowered it quickly to her lap. "I thought John—your father—would get over it. I never thought he'd cut you out of our lives for good. Forgive me, Rachel."
"I don't think there's anything to forgive. It was just unfortunate. But I'm glad you did what you did. I'm proud of you for that."
Helen was touched. "We felt good about it," she said. "We were taking action instead of sitting around complaining." She smiled to herself. "Peter got himself arrested a few times," she said.
"Really?" Rachel nearly smiled. "And how about you?"
"Only one time for me." She set her book on the end table, folded her hands in her lap. "So," she said, "I didn't know you were going to see Michael tonight."
"No, neither did I. We bumped into each other in town and went out for a cup of coffee. Oh! Guess what?"
"What?"
"Michael and I are taking you to Washington, D.C. on the nineteenth to hear the symphony perform an all-Huber concert."
It took a moment for Helen to absorb what Rachel was saying. "An all-Huber concert?" she repeated.
"Yes. They're doing Patchwork and Lionheart and the Second Concerto. What do you think?"
"Who?" Helen leaned forward. "Who's doing it?"
"The National Symphony."
"No. I mean who's the pianist?" She held her breath.
"Oh. It's Speicer, I think. Karl Speicer."
The living room did a delicate spin, and Helen clutched the arm of the sofa. Rachel was immediately on her feet, dropping to her knees in front of her.