A Gift of Love

  There was no need to distinguish Asa from any other Asa in class—he was the only one. In fact, he was the only Asa in the entire school, perhaps in all of Brooklyn.

  Emma tucked a strand of her coppery hair behind her ear as she bent over her desk.

  "Miss Graham! Miss Graham!"

  One of the Michaels was speaking. There were two Michaels, which was unusual. Usually she had at least three in each class.

  "Yes, Michael R.?" She glanced at the clock. Fifteen more minutes until the final bell, and she had yet to pass out the final assignments.

  "Do you have a boyfriend?"

  A silence fell over the room. Emma cleared her throat, accustomed to hearing that question at least once a week. During the holiday season, the question cropped up alarmingly more frequently. It was her own personal signal that the season had begun in earnest.

  "No, Michael R., not at the moment. Okay, listen up, I have here a stack of letters to go home to your… Yes Bobby. What's your question?"

  "Miss Graham? My parents wrestle at nights with their shirts off. I've seen them."

  Emma bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. "Thank you for sharing that with us, Bobby. As I was saying the notes I'm passing out are to be signed by one of your parents. Each note is special, and …Yes, Sunbeam, do you have something to add?"

  Sunbeam seemed surprised to have been called upon. No matter what, she always seemed surprised. Blinking she stood up next to her desk.

  "My father smokes a funny-looking pipe at night."

  Sunbeam's father, a former roadie for the Grateful Dead, now a Wall Street banker, also wore tie-dyed underwear, according to his daughter, and had been arrested in college. Sunbeam brought in his mug shots for show-and-tell.

  "Smoking is not good for you," said Billy. "It gives you cancer and they have to cut you up and then you die."

  Sunbeam's lower lip began to tremble. "But he only takes one or two little puffs. He says it makes him happy. Will my daddy die?"

  "No Sunbeam. I'm sure your daddy will be just fine." Emma began passing out the notes. Asa did not move when she gave him the folded white paper.

  "Asa," she said, "you get to do something very special. You get 'five golden rings.' Just bring in some old plastic curtain rings, and I'll help you paint them gold."

  Slowly without looking down, he took the note and jammed it into his Power Rangers backpack.

  "You have to write the note to his daddy, since his mommy is dead," chirped Jennifer K., again flicking her hair.

  Emma wanted to wrap the silken hair around her little neck. Instead she ignored the comment. She had learned during her first year of teaching that sometimes the best reaction is no reaction at all.

  "Okay—the bell's about to ring. The sooner you guys bring the items into class, the sooner we can begin. And remember tonight's homework—a full page of capital Js."

  The bell blasted, and the children grabbed their backpacks and lunchboxes and lined up by the door. Everyone had a buddy. Except for Asa. He stood alone, the last in line.

  He was always the last in line.

  Emma had wanted to be a teacher ever since she herself had been in first grade. There was never any question, never any doubt. Others wanted to be teachers for the short hours and the long vacations, but for Emma, it was the teaching she adored.

  On the wall of her Park Slope apartment, just three blocks from her school were class pictures of Emma and her kids. There were five photographs, neatly mounted in identical wood and acrylic frames chronicling her rise from student teacher to full teacher. It was a large, blank wall, with plenty of space for the scores of pictures that would eventually hang there.

  Most of her friends from college were married now, with children of their own. Emma was content with her temporary charges and a closet full of pastel taffeta bridesmaid dresses and dyed-to-match pumps neatly lined up in a row.

  Emma collapsed onto the couch, exhausted, although it was only a little past five in the evening. She put everything she had into her job. There was nothing left at the end of the day.

  It was good that she had no husband or boyfriend, she reflected. She couldn't possible gather the energy it would take to meet a guy, much less cultivate a relationship. Of course, there had been boyfriends, especially in college. Things just hadn't worked out. Nothing tragic or catastrophic. She just had never met the right guy.

  Her lips curved into a small smile. Who would the right guy be? He would have to be tall, at least tall enough to balance her own five-foot-eight frame, and athletic enough to want to bicycle with her on one of her summer trips. Smart, perhaps even brilliant, with just enough idealism to soften the edges. It would be nice if he could also be handsome.

  The smile became a giggle. "Yeah, right, Graham," she said to herself. "I'm sure there are tons of guys just like him, all waiting for you to make the first move."

  She stood and stretched, casting her reflection in the hall mirror.

  She was pretty, in an understated way, nothing flashy or showy. Perhaps that was her problem—she was too average. An average schoolteacher, in an average school, with an apartment that was functional and tidy, and average.

  Suddenly her cat, a sociopathic tabby with the unoriginal name of Pumpkin, pounced on her feet.

  "Okay, I'll get you dinner." She sighed and the cat immediately skittered across the floor and slid under the couch.

  It crossed her mind to call up some friends and go over to Dapper Dan's, a neighborhood hangout. But it took too much effort, simply too much work to get dressed and see the same old gang over the happy hour steam table. The limp chicken wings and potato skins did not quite balance out the overpriced beer and strained conversation.

  Instead, she'd spend an average evening with the cat and Peter Jennings on television. An evening like a thousand others, and a thousand more to come.

  Most of the kids remembered not only their homework but their holiday projects as well. Even Asa, silent, his large eyes ever roaming, clutched a small paper bag filled with curtain rings. If he had been any other child, she would have teased him about being ready to change the words to "thirty-seven golden rings." But Asa was different. Emma simply smiled at him

  It wasn't until after school was over, when the kids were gone and Emma was about to turn off the light switch, that she noticed Asa's paper bag was on the floor.

  She picked up the bag and opened it. There were a few dozen old curtain rings. His father must have bought new ones when they moved. On top of the heap was a smaller hoop, already painted gold.

  Curious, she pulled out the small hoop. It wasn't plastic. It was metal.

  Emma brought it over the light on her desk. Not only was it metal, it seemed to be real gold. The ring was clearly an antique and had the burnished pink-gold of old jewelry. There was an inscription on the inside, but the engraved script was too worn to read.

  "Funny," she muttered, placing the ring in her purse for safekeeping.

  She needed to call Asa's father to let him know about the ring. Perhaps then she could find out more about the boy, ask the father if he had always been such a withdrawn child. Of course she would have to be gentle, diplomatic—a cautious path she had trod many times when speaking to parents.

  Something flipped in her stomach at the thought. What was the little boy's father like? What kind of man must he be?

  It was an unnerving thought.

  In the end, the closest Emma came to speaking to Asa's father was leaving a message on his answering machine.

  "You have reached eight three nine, seven five seven two," said a clipped impersonal voice. "Please leave a message, and I will return the call as soon as possible."

  The voice wasn't unpleasant, Emma mused as she took a breath to answer. But just before she spoke, she inhaled the piece of gum she had been chewing.

  "Ah, I … Hello," she choked. After a brief series of gagging sounds that resembled Pumpkin coughing up a fur ball, she was able to continue. "I'm your,
ahem, ah. That's better. Hello. I'm Asa's teacher, Emma Graham, and I have…"

  A beep interrupted her sentence. Was that the signal to begin speaking or end the message?

  "Damn it," she snarled into the receiver.

  "Hello?" it was his voice, the voice of Asa's father. "I just walked in the door, and …"

  Emma did not hear anything else. She did the mature thing, had the adult reaction to being caught off guard: Emma slammed down the receiver.

  "Why did I do that?" she moaned at the silent telephone.

  Immediately her telephone rang. Could it be him? Oh, my God, she thought. Did he have caller identification? Had she left her number?

  Hesitantly, she picked up the phone. "Hello." She used a different voice, the sultry, deep voice of someone who just woke up.

  "Emma? Is that you? My goodness, you sound awful. Do you have a cold?"

  Immediately she relaxed. "Oh, hi, Mom." Emma fell back against the sofa cushions. "No, I'm fine."

  During the conversation with her mother, Emma kept on thinking of Asa's father and wondering what he could possibly think of her.

  Emma yawned, gazing at the television as she sipped the last of her hot chocolate. Pumpkin was under th4e sofa, brutally shaking a felt mouse by its neck, bells jingling with every quiver.

  Idly, she reached for her purse. The ring was there safely tucked into the zippered coin compartment.

  It was a beautiful ring. Had it been Asa's mother's? No. That didn't seem right. The ring was too old and fragile to have been worn anytime recently. Whoever had worn this ring had done so for years, decades perhaps. Emma imagined an old woman refusing to part with her ring, refusing to take it off during chores and laundry and baking gingerbread for the grandchildren.

  So soft, so gently worn, the ring was smooth as polished satin. Emma placed the ring on her own left hand, the vacant ring finger. So soft, so smooth.

  Pumpkin emitted a high-pitched wail. Emma ignored the cat. The metal felt warm to the touch. It slid perfectly down her finger, as if it had been made for her. Her whole hand felt warm. A delicious drowsy feeling radiated up her arm and encompassed her entire body.

  Emma's eyes closed. She would sleep right here on the couch, she thought to herself. She would sleep.

  The mattress was lumpy.

  Emma tried to fall back asleep. She was having a wonderful dream, although she couldn't recall any of the details.

  An unfamiliar scent brought her back to consciousness. Something smelled of animals. Emma sat up.

  "Pumpkin? Does your litter box need cleaning?"

  The moment she opened her eyes, the words died on her lips.

  She was in a small room. It had wide-plank floors, and there was a large wooden wardrobe in one corner. A ladder back chair with a woven cane seat stood on a rag rug.

  It was a rustic bedroom, and she looked down at a handmade quilt. She could now smell straw and coffee and corn bread, the odors coming from beyond a calico curtain that hung in a doorway on a thick wood rug.

  Just beyond the calico curtain she heard footsteps. They sounded thick and booted, clanking on the planks.

  Embers glowed in the fireplace, but still the room was cold. Thick sheets of ice covered the window, on both the inside and the outside.

  Before Emma could even react to her strange surroundings, a large hand divided the calico curtain. In stepped one of the most handsome men she had ever seen—tall superbly built, wearing a loose whit shirt and thick trousers held up by leather suspenders.

  His hair was cold black, but sprinkled lightly with flecks of gray. Yet at that first, startling moment, it was his eyes that Emma noticed, brown eyes that had laughed and cried.

  "The doctor says we can try again, Em." His voice had a strangely flat accent. "When the time is right we can try again."

  With that he withdrew from the room as swiftly as he had entered.

  One extra detail managed to filter into her mind. The man had also been wearing a ring. From a single glance she knew his matched the ring on her own left hand.

  Two

  EMMA HAD NO IDEA HOW LONG she sat in the bed, quilt tucked under her neck, eyes fixed numbly on the calico curtain.

  She had heard of the term "clinical shock" before, and now she knew exactly what it meant. Time seemed suspended, and she was unable to move or speak or feel anything. Her mind numbly toiled to explain where she was. Perhaps she had been kidnapped and taken to an elaborate theme park, or she had gone overboard on this year's Pioneer Day celebration at school.

  But this was real. Every detail was too perfect to be a museum or some sort of illusion. The smells were sharp and pungent, the sounds echoed. No airplanes roared overhead, no highway hummed in the distance. Somehow, Emma had traveled back in time.

  Eventually she heard the man leave. He didn't say a word to her, no "good-bye" or "have a nice day" or "what the hell is a strange woman doing in my bed?" Nothing.

  Little by little she took note of her surroundings. The mattress was lumpy and seemed to be filled with corn husks. The quilt she gripped in her hands was slightly faded. Every knot and stitch was visible, quaintly uneven.

  There were animals outside. She could hear clucks and squawks, a vibrato neigh. More than once she heard what sounded like a wagon rolling by. The wheels crunched snow and gravel. The drivers clicked a rein or spoke soothing words to the horse.

  Finally Emma noticed a small hand mirror resting on a trunk. She jumped out of bed, slightly light-headed for a moment, and grabbed the mirror to see her reflections.

  It was she, all right. Even in the dark and spotted mirror surface she recognized her own face. Her expression was one of confusion, her blue eyes reddened and a little swollen; her hair was braided and tied with strips of cloth. But it was unmistakably Emma Graham who stared back from the mirror.

  A small triangle of cloth poked out from the closed trunk. Before Emma replaced the mirror, she opened the trunk to tuck it back in place.

  A refreshing fragrance wafted up when she tilted the heavy lid back, a smell of flowers and springtime. On top of the neatly folded clothes were dried flowers, their stems tied with bright ribbons. Just below the ribbons was a small leather-bound book.

  It was a diary. Emma knew that immediately. She began to close the trunk lid, then halted. For a moment she simply stood, barefoot in a loose cotton nightgown. Then she grabbed the diary, closed the trunk, and jumped back into the wadded warmth of the bed.

  The red diary had no lock. Emma anticipated a musty smell when she opened the leaves, but the only odor she could detect was one of flowers.

  The pages were clean and white. After a few blank pages, the entries began. Blue ink, crisp, precisely formed letters.

  In Emma's own handwriting.

  There was no mistaking it and no possible explanation. Emma had written the exact same way since junior high school, the same sharp angles, the same distinctive slant. The writer of the journal was Emma herself.

  She rubbed her eyes, painful eyes that felt as if she had been crying. Then she began to read.

  The writing was Emma's but these were the words of a complete stranger.

  The entries began in March 1832, in Philadelphia. The writer did not identify herself, but spoke of her infant son and her husband and the journey west they were about to embark upon.

  There was a strange tone to the entries, a self-conscious caution to every word. No names were mentioned. No specifics.

  The baby will turn one year old on our journey. My husband hopes we will be in Indiana by then. He will begin working with Judge Isaiah Hawkins immediately. Those who have worked with my husband in Philadelphia express surprise and not a little dismay at his abrupt departure. As a lawyer, he is generally considered amongst the most promising in Philadelphia, if not the entire East Coast. Yet his choice of clients is capricious as the March wind, and every bit as impoverished. He seems determined not to accept clients who can afford his worth. He longs to go west, to face frontier law r
ather than city law. The baby frets.

  The baby will turn one year old on our journey. My husband hopes we will be in Indiana by then. He will begin working with Judge Isaiah Hawkins immediately. Those who have worked with my husband in Philadelphia express surprise and not a little dismay at his abrupt departure. As a lawyer, he is generally considered amongst the most promising in Philadelphia if not the entire East Coast. Yet his choice of clients is capricious as the March wind, and every bit as impoverished. He seems determined not to accept clients who can afford his worth. He longs to go west to face frontier law rather than city law. The baby frets.

  The next entry was even briefer.

  The canals are frozen, so we wait. I know no one, nor do I wish to make anyone's acquaintance. Our fellow travelers are an appalling lot, rough and slovenly of both appearance and manner. I can only believe the further west we travel, the further our surroundings will deteriorate.

  A few lines described her husband's excitement. "He knows not how I feel. He will see naught beyond his own happy idealism. He wants to help others, but I fear it will be at his family's expense."

  The next passage was dated May 1832. "The heat is fierce. I thought Overton Falls would be a town, but there are only a handful of houses. My baby would be a year old now had the Lord not called him to His side. Would he be taking his first steps?"

  Emma put the journal down. There were no other entries. The other pages were fresh and blank.

  "The baby died," she mumbled to herself.

  Emma simply stared at the room, at the coarse furniture, the valiant attempts at comfort. Suddenly she had to get outside, to see where she was and if she could find her way home.

  There were women's clothes in the wardrobe and she pulled out the warmest-looking dress she could find. There were stockings, all black and cotton and misshapen and a heavy petticoat. In the bottom of the wardrobe under scraps of cloth, were two pairs of shoes. Apparently they had both been worn for a while; both pairs were free of mud and dirt. She slipped on the sturdiest ones, black leather with thick buttons on the side and clunky soles.