Late the following winter, when Linden was nearly eight months old, she developed a sore throat and swollen glands. At first, they thought it was a cold, but when her breathing became jagged, Aloysius scooped her up and ran her to the nearby hospital, where she was diagnosed with diphtheria. For the next eleven days, Aloysius and Marguerite sat by her bedside. Aloysius reassured Marguerite that he had a special relationship with God and that his God would not let their child get worse. Yet despite the antitoxins the doctors gave her, Linden’s breaths became shallow and wheezy. Her face turned a bluish gray, which Aloysius knew was really not a color but notice from the body that it was beginning to shut down. He and Marguerite were holding Linden’s hands and singing a lullaby when they saw her breathing stop and her face go slack. They kept singing and squeezing her hands as if by treating her as alive, they could keep her so. They sat like that for what could have been ten minutes or two hours, until a nurse came into the room and gently told them it was time.
They got home well past midnight. In the darkness, Aloysius lay on their bed and held Linden’s yellow blanket over his face, trying to inhale her. He begged God to give him the diphtheria and take him, too, even though he knew the unreasonableness of his request. He prayed that, by some miracle, Linden would be restored to them. When that didn’t happen, he asked for the strength to care for himself and for Marguerite. Over time, it became clear how that wasn’t going to happen, either.
In her despair Marguerite turned on Aloysius. So much for him and his God. How could she believe in a God who let an eight-month-old baby die? They didn’t fight, because Aloysius had no fight in him. He became angry with God, convinced that He had abandoned him. His faith and devotion dried up until he was left only with grief. He retreated into himself. Sometimes, he found it hard even to look at Marguerite. That face, those eyes, so reminiscent of Linden’s, could make his heart jump with the momentary belief that she had reappeared. Then reality would hit with pain as fresh as the day she’d died.
Without his faith, his studies became irrelevant. He stopped going to classes. He quit his job at the restaurant. Four months after Linden’s death, he and Marguerite were broke, and broken. When Marguerite said she wanted to move back to her parents’ in Toronto, Aloysius didn’t protest. She packed up her few belongings, leaving Aloysius alone in the cottage. There was no choice but for him to return to Kingston after nearly two years. He left everything behind except Linden’s yellow cashmere blanket, a reminder of what could have been.
Back at the farm, his parents tried to interest him in his old chores, but he remained sullen and immutable. Early one morning, before anyone was awake, Aloysius crept down to the barn, picked up an ax and brought it to the house, where he threw all his weight and rage into trying to fell the linden tree. His father ran out in his bare feet.
“What are you doing?”
Aloysius kept whacking the tree and didn’t look up.
“Stop, now!” yelled his father. “Do you really think you can get even by killing that tree?”
“Does anyone ever get even?”
“If you think God will take pity on you because you’re having a tantrum, think again. He’s heard you. He knows you’re in pain. You’ll heal, but not like this. Put down the damn ax. Anyway, you’ve chosen to mess with the wrong tree. This one’s a whole lot stronger than you are.”
Aloysius dropped the ax. “I’m tired.”
His father opened his arms, and Aloysius came to him. After a time, his father said: “You need to go get yourself a job somewhere. Hiding out with us is a mistake. You’ve already started manhood; there’s no turning back. You’re always welcome here, but it’s time to move forward.”
It took a few days for his father’s words to sink in. Aloysius knew he was right: By staying on the farm, he was hiding. It had been six months since Linden died, six months since Aloysius had left the world and everything that held meaning for him. He and Marguerite hadn’t been in touch, but he’d still try to honor his promise to her and get a job in the city. He’d work until he got his feet on the ground, then maybe go up to Toronto and find her. With no qualifications except a strong body, he’d take any job requiring physical strength.
At the Kingston library, he scoured the New York newspapers until he found what he thought to be the perfect opportunity: the Panonia Plumbing Company, in a place called the Bronx, was looking for a truck driver who didn’t mind “long hours and heavy lifting.” He was ready for both and applied. It was during the Depression, when jobs, even labor jobs, were scarce. But Aloysius, in the only suit he owned, with his hair slicked back and his assertive voice, cut a fine figure. The owner hired him on the spot, saying, “If you turn out to be as good as you look, this will be one happy marriage.” Aloysius moved to the Bronx and rented a room at the YMCA.
In this new place where no one knew who he was, he slowly learned how to put one foot in front of the other and live again. Seeing Marguerite would only open the door to pain. The longer he didn’t contact her, the less necessary it seemed.
One afternoon, nearly a year after he moved to the Bronx, he was asked to deliver a porcelain high-back sink to a florist in a place he’d never heard of called New Rochelle, twenty miles outside of New York City. The sink had clawlike legs and felt as if it weighed close to one hundred pounds. He carried it into the florist shop as he might carry a calf, with all four legs tucked behind him. The woman behind the counter laughed when she saw him: “Well, you are a sight. Who’s that you’ve got with you?” Her laughter got his attention, as did her green eyes. She had enough freckles on her face to cover the side of a barn. Before he knew it, the two of them were laughing together, though he hardly knew why. That young woman was Cora, and for the third time in his young life, Aloysius felt as if he’d touched fire.
Eventually, he forgave God. Cora talked him into returning to school, the Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan. Cora wasn’t from a religious family, but because her family owned the only florist shop in town, they knew everyone, including the pastor at First Baptist. When Aloysius graduated, he was able to get a job as the assistant to that pastor.
After they married, they took a small apartment not far from the church, and once again, life was as it was meant to be. Although he had told Cora about Marguerite, he would keep Linden to himself until Cora got pregnant. When, after a year, and then two, that didn’t happen, he decided that telling her would be like rubbing salt in a wound. He never told her about the recurring fish dream either, the one in which he held a baby who became smaller and smaller until it was the size of a goldfish and slipped out of his hands.
The secret of Linden weighed almost as heavily on him as her death. He promised himself he would tell Cora when the time was right. But the time never seemed to get right.
Chapter 10
As she grew, it quickly became clear that little Alice Wingo was the exact opposite of her mother. She had Grandma Geraldine’s swirly black hair and dark skin and Grandpa Earle’s pin-straight nose. At five years old, her white teeth flashed like a constellation when she smiled, revealing someone else’s gap between her two front teeth. The gap between her teeth was all she knew about her father.