The Language of Sycamores Read online

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Language of Sycamores

  A Nal Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2005 by Lisa Wingate

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-1020-8

  A NAL BOOK®

  Nal Books first published by The Nal Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  NAL and the “N” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Electronic edition: January, 2005

  OTHER NAL ACCENT NOVELS

  by Lisa Wingate

  Tending Roses

  Good Hope Road

  To my teachers

  And all teachers,

  Who build dreams

  By creating the dreamers.

  Especially for Mrs. Krackhardt,

  My first grade teacher at Peaslee School

  Who told me I would become a writer one day.

  Acknowledgments

  While writing The Language of Sycamores, I thought often of my teachers, perhaps because of the children in the story, Sherita, Meleka, and Dell, who so desperately need someone to believe in them. Any words of acknowledgment I would write here would be incomplete if I didn’t include the people who inspired me to believe in my dream. My heartfelt thanks to my many wonderful teachers over the years, but particularly to Mrs. Krackhardt, who took the time to notice a shy transfer student writing a book during indoor recess. I still remember the day you stopped by my desk, read my story, and said, “You are a wonderful writer!” From that moment on, I believed I was exactly what you told me I was.

  To the principal who sent me to detention for writing stories when I wasn’t supposed to, the math teacher who told me that I’d better pay attention in geometry because writing isn’t a “real” career, and the graduate teaching assistant who gave me an F on my first essay in freshman composition, I blow a big raspberry at you and say I forgive you completely for trampling on my dream. It is the trampled seed that grows the deepest roots.

  My gratitude once again goes out to my writer friends, my constant sources of encouragement (and good reading material), Dusty, Velda, June, Marge, and especially Jessica. Special thanks to my family on both sides, who have peddled books to anyone who will stand still, housed me during book signings, traveled with me to speaking engagements, and read countless rough drafts. You are the reason I write about family bonds. These stories are my feeble attempt to share you with the world. All crazy, quirky, cantankerous and slightly off-plumb characters are, of course, purely fictional.

  Thanks beyond measure to the booksellers who have shown such devotion to my previous books, the reviewers and media personnel who have been amazingly kind about giving support and endorsements, and the many readers from all over the country who have sent notes and e-mails about the books. It never fails that, when I’m having a discouraging day at the computer, one of you will send a note that lifts me up. I am blessed to have so many friends so far away. To all of you who read Tending Roses and Good Hope Road and asked for a sequel, The Language of Sycamores is that final chapter. I hope you enjoy discovering it as much as I did.

  Thanks, as always, to everyone at New American Library, and especially to my editor, Ellen Edwards. Extreme gratitude also goes to my agent, Claudia Cross, of Sterling Lord Literistic.

  Last of all, of course, to my husband and my boys, who inspire me every day and give me a million reasons to live, love, and laugh. What more could a girl ask for than that?

  Chapter 1

  Life is like the poster on the wall of the doctor’s office—one of those inspirational quotes framed in misty pink flowers.

  There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.

  —ZORA NEALE HURSTON

  It’s not easy to be so profound when life actually starts asking questions you can’t answer—not just one or two narrow questions, but a barrage of broad, complex, open-ended questions. A flood, my grandma Rose would have called it. “Sometimes life goes by in a trickle, and sometimes life goes by in a flood,” she used to say. “It’s in those rainy seasons you find out how well you can swim.” When she said that, I had no idea what she meant. I never listened much to Grandma Rose. She had an old-fashioned, Bible-thumping, show--me-state Baptist lecture on every subject, and she wasn’t shy about dealing them out. I was busy, confident, on top of the world—a modern woman. I didn’t have time to listen to what she was trying to tell me. My life was all about things I could program and control—microprocessors and LAN networks and wireless links that move at the speed of light.

  I had no experience with realities that couldn’t be controlled through data switches and efficiently written code. I knew nothing about surviving a flood because I’d never been in one. I was safely entrenched, or in a rut—it depended on how you looked at it. The problem with ruts is that when it starts to rain, they flood easily.

  Things were, all in all, pretty good in my particular rut. Even with the trauma of September 11 and the fact that my husband was an airline pilot, we were fairly content. I had a good career; he had a good career. We had sufficient income for what we wanted. We had friends and activities and, after a few years of living out in California, we were back in Boston, where I grew up and where we met sixteen years ago on an incoming flight. We’d settled into a trendy converted loft in the old Leather District—the place to be, if you knew Boston well enough to get past the tourist hype. Sometimes, we both ended up there on the weekend. Together.

  The day I read that quote from Zora Neale Hurston was the day everything changed.

  I was staring at the misty floral poster in Dr. Conner’s office when he told me that my second set of tests hadn’t come back normal. I didn’t hear him at first—I was thinking that I needed to get back to the Lansing building for the two o’clock management meeting about the newest round of layoffs. If Dr. Conner didn’t hurry up, I’d be late. Why didn’t doctors realize that everyone else’s time was just as valuable as theirs?

  “It could be cancer again, Karen,” he said.

  That one word sliced through my consciousness with the silent swish of an arrow, bisecting everything I was thinking. Cancer. It could be cancer again, Karen. My mind rushed ba
ck eight years to the first time a doctor told me that. Back to the day I miscarried the tiny baby that was growing inside me, and the doctor, during the D & C that followed, seemed concerned about more than just the miscarriage. He said the same thing then: It could be cancer. And it was. A lab test confirmed it.

  Surgery removed the spots and a partial hysterectomy took away the chance of ever having children, but it couldn’t remove the guilt. It was my own fault for convincing myself that since James and I weren’t at the point of planning any children, I could skip the dreaded annual visit to the gynecologist. Eventually, I’d skipped for so many years that I was afraid to go back. Even after I knew I was accidentally pregnant following our romantic seventh-anniversary trip to Fiji, I put off going to the doctor for a week, two, three, until ten weeks into the pregnancy, I started cramping and spotting and I knew something was very wrong.

  Now here we sat again, me with my stomach full of the old fear, and Dr. Conner wearing a regretful-but-businesslike mask.

  “Karen?” I realized he was talking to me.

  “Wh . . . what?” I heard myself say. All I could do was stare at the pink poster on the wall.

  “Don’t start worrying yet. The biopsy is just a precaution, because the lab detected some inflamed cells on your slide. Seventy-five percent of uterine cancer reoccurrences happen within the first three years, and you’ve been cancer-free for eight years now. Odds are the tissue sample will come back negative, but we need to go ahead with the biopsy, just to be certain.”

  “Today?” I muttered. I have to go to a management meeting. The company’s doing a new round of layoffs today—I have to be there to tell my people. . . .

  “No, not today, but let’s schedule it soon.”

  “Sure,” I said, standing up and reaching for my purse on the chair, feeling my fingers close numbly over the handle. “I’ll schedule it on my way out.”

  Dr. Conner patted my shoulder, ushering me through the door. “Good. No point spending time wondering and worrying. Let’s just do the test, and that’ll put the question behind us.”

  There are years that ask questions. Years . . . “All right.” I started down the hall, and I could feel Dr. Conner eyeing me. Slowing as I came near the reception desk, I watched the doctor slip into another exam room. When he was gone, I kept walking, past the desk, through the waiting room door, past the pregnant ladies in the uncomfortable chairs, through the plate glass exit, across the marble lobby where my heels echoed against the silence, and onto the Boston street. I stood there gulping air, leaning against the cool exterior of the building, feeling like I wanted to kick off my shoes and run . . . somewhere.

  This is stupid, Karen, I told myself. You’re overreacting because it’s already a stressful day, because you’re torqued up about the layoffs and the meeting. That’s all. This test is nothing. It’s nothing. It’s routine, just to prove there isn’t anything wrong.

  Closing my eyes, I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing away the rush of blood in my ears, the blaring of car horns, the rumble of the subway passing somewhere underneath. I wished the day were over. I wished we were already through the meeting, where we would be given the layoff list, and through the inevitable aftermath of going from cubicle to cubicle, quietly delivering bad news to the unlucky, telling them how sorry we were. Promising letters of reference and handing out severance packages, as if that could make up for the loss of a job you’d put your heart into.

  “God, I hate this,” I muttered, even though the situation at Lansing Technology had nothing to do with God and everything to do with corporate higher-ups who spent too much, forged earnings reports too often, overextended credit, lined their pockets, and were desperate to save their own six-figure jobs. “This is so wrong.” Everything about this day felt wrong.

  “I know.” A voice echoed faintly against the doorway, breaking through the cacophony, and I jerked away from the wall, opening my eyes. A bag lady was standing there watching me, her silver hair tied in a faded pink scarf like a fortune-teller’s. Her eyes were blue and cloudy, folded like two small crystal balls among the dusky wrinkles of her face. She tapped her fingers against the handle of her shopping cart, pointing expectantly to her bucket of flowers. I assumed she was selling them.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, when she just stood there. “I’m not interested today.”

  Reaching into her bucket, she pulled out a rose, pink like her scarf, and tried to hand it to me.

  I waved her off, repeating, “I’m not interested. I don’t need one. I don’t . . . have any change today.”

  Frowning, she moved her lips like she was chewing on a thought. For just an instant, she reminded me of Grandma Rose when she knew I was tuning out one of her lectures. I felt a pinch of conscience that said I should take the flower and hand the bag lady a few dollars.

  I checked my purse. Nothing but fives, tens, and twenties. “I’m sorry. All I have is a . . .”

  When I looked up, she was gone, disappearing down the street, probably headed toward Faneuil Hall, where the street preachers and the beggars and the pigeons hung out during the day, competing for tourist dollars and handouts from the lunch crowd. Pushing her cart at an aimless pace, she gazed up into the trees like she hadn’t a care in the world. I wondered what it would be like to be her, ambling down the street, studying the spring growth on the maples, no particular place to be.

  The alarm beeped on my PalmPilot, snapping me back to the real world where I was going to be late for an important meeting if I didn’t hurry the eight blocks back to the office. “Geez, you’re a space cadet today, Karen,” I muttered to myself. “Get with it.”

  The pink rose was lying on the steps when I looked up, something soft and living, out of place against the hard concrete. Picking it up, I glanced down the sidewalk, where the bag lady had vanished into the crowd; then I turned and headed the other way toward the office.

  By the time I’d walked the eight blocks, I was panting like I’d run a marathon and my mind was fully back to reality. Sweat dripped under my suit jacket, not because it was unusually hot for spring in Boston, but because my mind was in overdrive and my stomach was churning with a mixture of nerves and hunger. No time for a late lunch. Only twenty minutes until the meeting, and I still had to grab the budget spreadsheets from my office and make it back to the war room on the first floor. Should have skipped the doctor’s appointment, I told myself. Should have known the appointment would run late. It seemed like a bad dream, Dr. Conner sitting there telling me about the tests. Abnormal results. Inflamed cells. Biopsy. How could this be happening now?

  It had to be an erroneous result—changes in my body brought on by stress, too much caffeine, and guzzling ibuprofen these past few months since the company’s financial problems became public knowledge. It was no wonder my body was run-down. After I got through the meeting today, I’d call Dr. Conner’s office and schedule the biopsy, get it over with and prove I was O.K. I wouldn’t even bother telling James when he got back from his trip tomorrow night. There was no reason to worry him. He tended to overreact to any health issues, because his mother had died of cancer when he was young. After the biopsy is over and everything’s all right, then I’ll tell him.

  The war room was already starting to buzz as I passed. Brent Giani from Systems Support was waiting for an elevator. When I turned the corner into the corridor, he glanced up at me with the wry grin of a techie genius who knew his job would never be on the line. “Funeral flowers?” He motioned, and I glanced down, realizing I was still carrying the rose.

  “A bag lady gave it to me. Could be she knows something I don’t know.” I held the flower against my chest like a corpse resting in a casket. Black humor, but Brent liked it.

  He chuckled, reaching down to hike up his wrinkled khaki pants under a midsection that had spent too many hours eating Bugles in a computer chair. He was missing a button halfway down his shirt. He probably knew it and didn’t care. “You’re not worried, are you
?” he asked.

  I thought about that as the elevator whizzed upward. “I wasn’t worried on the last round, but if they’re going to cut another twenty percent, that’s deep. It isn’t all going to be clerical help and people in Sales, Marketing, and HR. They’re going to get some of us. They’ll have to. It’s the people in tech who make the big salaries.”

  Brent shrugged, arrogant despite his rumpled pants and the button missing on his shirt. “It’s the people in tech who keep the systems branch of this company going. Don’t worry. They’ll do the big cuts other places. They won’t cut our people.”

  I nodded, hoping his confidence came from inside information. Brent was always hacking into confidential company files and secret memos. “I hope you’re right.” The elevator chimed on the seventh floor. “Revenues are down. That’s what worries me. It’s a hard market these days—less custom installations, more stuff going out canned or using local installers. That has a direct effect on my group, since we are custom installations.”

  The elevator vibrated into place. Brent gave me a wink that said he knew something I didn’t, and whispered, “Don’t start worrying yet,” just before the doors opened and I stepped into my department, where I could feel gazes following me, counting on me to make everything all right.

  I hurried to my office, trying to look busy but confident and calm. I didn’t want anyone reading disaster in my expression or my actions, which was the reason I hadn’t canceled my doctor’s appointment. It was easier to be there, reading magazines in the waiting room with the pregnant ladies, than here, walking on eggshells, trying not to watch everyone watching me. Hopefully, right now they were thinking that if I could spend two hours at the doctor’s office, there really couldn’t be much to worry about back here at Lansing.

  I hoped they were thinking that, and I wished I believed it. So far, the only person I’d had to lay off was a kid who’d only been with the company a few months as an installations tech. He decided to go back to college, so there wasn’t much harm done. But looking around now, I couldn’t imagine who else I would let go. Everyone in my department was good, dedicated, committed—a team, a family. They were all longtimers with the company. Longtimers with kids in private school, braces, college, with retirement funds and families that needed health insurance. People who had given this company, this department, me everything they had.