A Different Light Read online

  “Hey, Mom, watch my bike, okay?” Callie rolled the bike toward Athen, who barely caught it as it careened toward the ground. “This is my race.”

  Athen steered the bike to the line forming along the track and joined the other parents who gathered to watch their offspring in the footraces that were about to begin. Two dozen or so young girls, ages ten to twelve, lined up. Athen craned her neck to locate Callie, whose recent birthday qualified her for the race. Always competitive, Callie was performing the warm-up exercises John had taught her.

  The runners were called to the line and a balloon was popped to start the race. Callie’s churning legs carried her quickly to the finish line seconds before anyone else. She won handily.

  “Yay, Callie!” Athen happily applauded.

  “Your daughter, I’m guessing?” a deep voice from behind her commented.

  “Yes,” Athen replied and tried to catch Callie’s eye in the crowd.

  “She’s a good runner. She has good form.”

  “Thank you, yes, she’s quite an athlete.” Athen turned to acknowledge the compliment.

  That his eyes exactly matched his shirt had been her first thought. Both were the same crisp blue of an October sky. Athen flushed scarlet when she realized those blue eyes were staring intently into her own.

  “Well, I can’t think of a better outlet for kids.” He pulled off his maroon baseball cap. One hand tried unsuccessfully to tame the unruly black curls that spilled in sweaty ringlets across his forehead. “Boy, it’s a hot one, isn’t it? Must be close to ninety already.”

  “Yes.” The red tinge crept all the way to her earlobes.

  The boys were lining up for their race, and Athen pretended an interest she did not feel to excuse herself from further conversation with the stranger. He was standing too close, and she found his proximity disconcerting. She moved slightly toward the track as a means of putting some distance between them.

  The boys’ race was over in a flash, the winner jumping into the air with a hoot. From behind her came a loud whistle. She wondered if it had been the stranger, but she did not turn around. Maybe he’d gotten the message. Maybe he was gone.

  “One more race and we can move out of this hot sun.” He hadn’t gone anywhere. She had not moved far enough.

  Athen nodded without comment as the top three to finish from the girls’ and boys’ races lined up for the final competition.

  “I’ll bet your daughter gives them all a run for their money.”

  Again Athen offered no response. She found herself hoping the race would be over quickly so that she could leave. He was making her uncomfortable, but she wasn’t sure why.

  “Want me to hold on to that bike so your hands are free?” he offered. “You might want to get ready to applaud. Your girl could take it all right here.”

  “No, thank you, I’m fine,” she mumbled, trying to ignore the fact that he now stood close enough for her to smell the faintest hint of his aftershave. Close enough for her to notice, when she lowered her eyes toward the ground in an effort to divert her gaze from his handsome face, that his long, muscular legs were tan below his white shorts.

  The balloon popped and the runners passed by in a dusty pack. Callie came in a very close second to the boy who had won the previous race.

  Callie walked slowly in a direct line to her mother, her hands on her hips, her expression sheer disappointment.

  “You really did well, sweetie.” Athen reached out to offer consolation.

  “Not well enough,” grumbled Callie.

  “Hey, Callie, great race,” the boy who won called out to her, but when he approached, Callie bent down in a pretense of retying her sneaker and barely acknowledged him. He backed away, a look of dismay on his face.

  “Come on, Callie, we’ll get a cold drink and then maybe some lunch.” Athen patted her on the shoulder, glancing behind her as they walked away. The stranger had disappeared.

  As she wheeled the bike across the field, Athen found herself unconsciously sorting through the throng of people filling the park. She was not, she emphatically denied at the suggestion of a small voice inside her, looking for a last glimpse of a maroon baseball cap that topped a shock of black curls.

  SHE THOUGHT OF HIM THE next morning as she was going through her closet, looking for something to wear to work. She pulled a blue knit dress from its hanger and slid it over her head. She closed the buttons down the front, and thought about a blue shirt that matched blue eyes that perfectly matched the color of her dress. She slammed the closet door with a loud bang, hoping to scare the image away.

  She had neither time nor inclination to dwell on strange men, she reminded herself. She’d been widowed less than a year. She had a child to raise and a job to do. She was a single mother with responsibilities. She banished the intruder from her thoughts and turned her attention to the task of getting Callie to the camp bus on time, and getting herself to the office by eight.

  All in all, working wasn’t so bad. Her job gave her a reason to get up in the morning, a reason to get dressed in something other than shorts and a T-shirt. It gave her a purpose she vaguely suspected she lacked.

  The work itself wasn’t much of a challenge, particularly for a woman whose last full-time working experience had been teaching sixth grade in an inner-city school. As Dan had instructed, she read through the paper first thing every morning (after starting the coffee, of course), circling those items she thought would interest her boss in red ink. Next, she logged on to the internet and printed out any emails that had been sent to the mayor via the city’s website. She checked the paper’s online edition for comments that followed editorials that related to the city’s business, and letters to the editor. By the end of the second week, she’d become proficient at determining which items (other than the obvious “Trash Truck Injures Five”) contained information Dan would need to begin his day.

  Filing never took more than ten minutes, since Rossi preferred to communicate many of his thoughts by telephone, rarely following up in letter form, and almost never by email, unless Athen wrote it for him. Even then, he seemed almost reluctant to put his thoughts in writing. Most of Athen’s typing consisted of memorandums to the staff or notes she took at the daily conferences with the council members.

  The three o’clock meeting became the highlight of her day. The routine never changed, nor was anyone ever late. The four members of Council and the city solicitor filed in and always took the same seats. Rossi sat on the black leather chair facing the room. Jim Wolmar, the council president, took the chair to Rossi’s left. Angelo Giamboni shared the long sofa with George Konstantos, who’d been appointed by Rossi to fill the vacancy on Council following Ari’s stroke three years earlier, and Riley Fallon, the lone African-American councilman. Harlan Justis, the solicitor, sat facing Wolmar and Rossi from the love seat. The seating arrangement never varied, nor did the level of participation.

  All discussions seemed to consist of a dialogue between Rossi and Wolmar. The occasional request for a legal opinion would elicit a brief and mostly vague response from Justis. Giamboni, the first cousin of Rossi’s deceased wife, never spoke unless he was directly addressed, but he always nodded in unconscious agreement every time Dan opened his mouth. Konstantos, well into his seventies, appeared to sleep through most of the meetings. Fallon would, on occasion, make an attempt to offer a carefully worded opinion or present another point of view when an issue might be particularly thorny, but since no one ever responded, it didn’t seem to matter. Except, Athen suspected, maybe to Fallon, who could at least go back to his district and say he had made an attempt to sway Council to a decision more favorable to their interests.

  It had not taken Athen long to discover two important facts about the city’s governing body. One was that the interests of the minorities—the Greeks, the African-Americans, the Hispanics—were of no consequence as far as Council was concerned. The second was that Council met only for the sake of appearance, because the only power in
the city rested solely in Dan Rossi’s hands. But, she rationalized, it could be worse.

  From what she could see, Dan Rossi possessed an unequaled devotion to the city of Woodside Heights and to its citizens. The man had almost wept to her in private when the city’s second-largest employer, a packaging plant, had closed its doors, putting almost eighty people out of work. He seemed genuinely outraged at the rise in crime, the rise in drug trafficking, and the rise in poverty, and the effects of all three on his city. He’d taken Athen under his wing, explaining ever so patiently the inner workings of the city government, the nuances of political parlance.

  “Ah, you’re a natural for public service, Athen.” He’d beamed at her one afternoon when the council meeting had ended and the others had left the room. “I could tell just by looking at you that you understood the ramifications on the city’s finances of Fallon’s proposal. We’d have to raise everyone’s taxes to do what he wants, and you were spot on. This isn’t the time to raise taxes. Nope, the apple certainly didn’t fall far from the tree. Ari’d sure be proud of his little girl.”

  Dan would frequently ask her opinion on matters relevant to the running of the city, though more often than not he’d somehow manage to change her opinion by pointing out where she lacked the relevant facts. Once he explained things to her, she could see his point, could see how she had been misled by the media or his detractors, who only sought to push their own agenda. More and more as the weeks progressed, Dan spent increasing amounts of time with her, rehashing meetings, reiterating who said what and what they really meant. He had become her political father figure and her mentor.

  “Pateras,” she would tell her father, “it’s an exciting thing to be involved in the working of a city, but, of course, you know that. I only wish I’d learned more from you. Dan says you had a better understanding of how the city runs, of how things get done, than anyone he’s ever known. That you’d be the next mayor if you hadn’t become ill. He said you’d have lots to say about the problems the city is having and that he wished he could hear your thoughts right now.”

  Had Athen been less focused on the fact that her father could not witness her political awakening firsthand, she might have noticed the dark cloud that passed over Ari’s face every time she mentioned Dan Rossi’s name.

  5

  Callie,” Athen called from the back door. “Are you almost ready?”

  “Are you kidding? I’ve been ready all week.” Callie raced to the driveway and tossed a shovel into the backseat. “I thought Saturday would never come.”

  Guess she’s ready, Athen mused as she got into the driver’s side.

  “Do you remember how to get there?” Callie got into the passenger seat and buckled her seat belt.

  “Sort of. You can let me know if I make any wrong turns.”

  No wrong turns and twenty minutes later, Athen pulled onto the small grassy spot that served as the parking lot for Ms. Evelyn Wallace’s nursery. No upscale garden center, Ms. Evelyn’s was a true nursery. There was no storefront. Sales were conducted at the old-fashioned cash register inside the door of a slightly dilapidated greenhouse. There were no rows of shiny brass flowerpots, no manicured displays of hothouse plants, no fancy garden furniture.

  Ms. Evelyn grew perennials in the fields surrounding her tidy bungalow up on a hill overlooking the city, where the ancestors of the city’s African-American community had found refuge after their harrowing journey along the Underground Railroad. Ms. Evelyn herself planted every one of the seeds that grew in her greenhouse, tended the seedlings, and set them out into the fields with the help of her two daughters, now grown, and her sixteen-year-old grandson, Lamar. She grew her plants for the sheer love of growing things, for the delight in the eyes of her customers when they found that species unheard of by the high school kids who worked for the big chain nurseries. Ms. Evelyn loved her plants and she loved her customers who appreciated them. She had adored John Moran.

  “Lord, Callie Moran, I’d given up on you this year. Goodness, child, let me look at you. I haven’t seen you since the day they laid your daddy to rest, God rest his precious soul.” Spry and ageless in denim overalls, Ms. Evelyn wiped a teary eye on the sleeve of her white shirt. “And you there, Athen.” She greeted Athen with a warm smile. “I thought maybe you’d gone to one of those fancy boutique places this year.”

  “Never!” Callie protested. “Daddy always said, ‘Nobody has better plants than Ms. Evelyn.’”

  “And your daddy knew his flowers, that’s for sure.” Ms. Evelyn patted Callie on the back with obvious fondness. “You planning on keeping that garden going by yourself?”

  “I want to, but, see, we lost a lot of Dad’s perennials.” Callie told Ms. Evelyn about the tree falling and the resulting empty spaces in the garden.

  “Well, now, it’s August, Callie, you know my field’s all but picked clean by the Fourth of July,” she chided, then added gently, “But I do have a few things out back in my private garden that I’d be happy to share with you. You run on back and take a look. Did you remember to bring your shovel? Good. There’s some peach-colored foxglove that I know you’ll like, honey, and some of that dark pink old-fashioned geranium that your daddy was so fond of. You remember the name for that?”

  “Cranesbill,” recited Callie proudly as she pulled her garden gloves from a back pocket and armed herself with her shovel. “Sanguineum.”

  “Aren’t you something, Callie Moran.” Ms. Evelyn’s eyes danced as she called after the girl who was now running merrily up the hill. “And make sure to take some delphinium—there’s blue, white, and some rose-colored, too, that did real well this year.”

  “Ms. Evelyn, we don’t want to dig up your garden,” Athen protested. “We can come back in the spring and …”

  “Nonsense, honey. It’ll give me great pleasure to share with you and help rebuild John’s garden. Now you go along with Callie. I see she’s got her shovel. Did you only bring the one?”

  Athen nodded. She’d forgotten that the routine at Ms. Evelyn’s was strictly dig your own.

  “Now, you just go on over to that box of tools and help yourself to whatever you need. There should be a shovel there that will work for you.”

  “Thanks, Ms. Evelyn.” Athen peered into the box that was filled with all manner of foreign-looking implements and selected a short-handled shovel that had a long narrow blade, the only thing in the box that looked vaguely familiar.

  “Now be sure not to miss the rose achillea, and my goodness, there must be a dozen varieties of aquilegia … oh, and liatris …” Ms. Evelyn called after Athen as she trudged up the hill in the direction Callie had previously scampered. “And the rose campion is thick as thieves up there. You be sure to dig up a nice clump of that. Stuff self-seeds like nobody’s business.”

  Athen waved and continued her climb, reciting the names of the plants Ms. Evelyn had tossed at her so casually. Aquilegia, something campion. Achillea. Weren’t there any common varieties here, like black-eyed Susans or geraniums or pansies?

  “Callie, those look half dead.” Athen looked over the stash of brown-stemmed, dried clusters Callie had set aside.

  “They’re perennials, Mom,” Callie explained without looking up from her efforts.

  “They’re the ones that die back after they bloom and come back again next year?” Athen tried to recall the terms bandied about by John and Callie as they poured over seed catalogs. Perennials. Biennials. Annuals. Half-hardy something or others.

  “Very good, Mom.” Callie grinned as she dislodged a clump of something from the ground and carried it to a clear spot.

  “Ms. Evelyn said we needed to dig up some, er, rose something. Actually, she said two rose somethings.”

  “Rose campion and achillea.” Callie nodded without looking up. “Got ’em.”

  “Okay, then. What should I do?” The parent had the feeling she’d just become the child.

  “Dig up some of that gypsophilia.” Callie motioned with he
r head to an area on Athen’s right.

  “Ah … which one is that?”

  “Baby’s breath, Mom. The white stuff like you get in bouquets from the florist?” Callie was clearly relishing her position of superiority. “Mom, don’t you know anything about flowers?”

  “Apparently not.”

  Athen was still struggling with the first plant, silently cursing her lack of technique in dealing with the dried, hard earth when Callie ran off to the greenhouse in search of some flats on which to transport their new garden.

  “Damn.” Athen inspected splintered fingernails as she brushed dirt from her hands onto her jeans, which were making her legs feel like tightly encased sausages as the temperature rose along with the humidity.

  “You know, you’re making this a lot harder than it needs to be.” An amused voice seemed to float from the edge of the garden.

  She looked up, annoyed. The source of the voice leaned casually against the trunk of a tree. Through the sun’s glare she could distinguish only white shorts, a white shirt, and white tennis shoes. She held her hand over her eyes to block the blinding intensity of the sun’s harsh light.

  “How long have you been standing there?” Even without the baseball cap, and with dark glasses covering a good portion of his face, Athen would have known him anywhere.

  “Long enough to know this is not something you do very often. If at all.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “No gloves. Real gardeners wear gloves when they’re going to be digging.” He walked toward her through the rows of plants. “And hats if they’re out in the hot sun. At the very least, they’d tie up their hair, if they had as much as you do.”

  She became suddenly conscious that her own hair, hanging straight down her back, weighed about seven tons and was white-hot.

  “Here, let me help.” He picked up Callie’s discarded shovel. “Would you like me to dig that up for you?”

  “That’s not really necessary, I can …”