59

What is the singing of birds … compared with the
voice of one we love?

Journal, April 30, 1851

Hope Fry was back in the hammock on the sleeping porch. It was pitch dark on the porch, so dark that the ugly mesh of the black screens was invisible. Low in the western sky she could see the slender crescent of the new moon.

Across the hall Ananda was moving around. Hope could hear his hurrying footsteps going up and down the stairs again and again.

She was eager to tell him she had heard the wood thrush singing in Gowing’s Swamp. But she was angry with him for not being at home for the lovely supper she had made with such special care. If he had been too sick to go with them to Gowing’s Swamp this morning, he should have been too sick to go out for supper. He had spent the day with Bonnie Glover, that was obvious. Hope wasn’t about to coo at him about birds, not when she was so cross at him, so disappointed.

And miserable, just miserable. It wasn’t only that Hope was in love with Ananda Singh. It was something more than that. She was beginning to see the world through Ananda’s eyes. She saw him moving along a path strewn with pine needles, waving aside a swarm of black flies, climbing a hillside lush with ferns, growing to the dimensions of a white oak tree, his arms poised like branches, his hands fingering out into leaves. Oh, what was he doing, running up and down the stairs like that?

There was a grinding noise outdoors. Hope sat up suddenly, and the hammock nearly dumped her on the floor. She knew that noise. It was Ananda’s car. He was leaving.

Oh, but she had to talk to him, she had to. She had to tell him about the singing bird and the garden in the swamp. Hope rushed down the back staircase, not stepping on each stair but dropping down in the controlled fall she had learned in childhood.

Her father was alone in the kitchen. “Oh, where is he going?” cried Hope.

Oliver Fry looked at her in surprise. “He told me to say good-bye to you.”

“He hasn’t gone for good?”

“Well, yes, I guess he has.”

“But where? Where is he going?” Hope strained at the jammed screen door and jerked it open.

Oliver Fry stared at his daughter. “He’s moving in with a roommate. They found a place on Belknap Street.”

Oh, it was Bonnie, of course it was Bonnie. Ananda was moving in with Bonnie Glover. A lump swelled in Hope’s throat. She cast a desperate glance at her father and ran out of the kitchen. The owl shrieked. The door of the porch banged shut.

Oliver’s pity went out to his daughter. He wanted her to be happy—one’s children should not be wretched—but her present misery seemed better to him than her former bitter pride.

Outdoors in the driveway beside the house, Hope stopped short. Ananda’s car was still there. The noisy engine had been turned off. The driver’s seat was empty. In the glow from the kitchen window she could see the suitcase on the front seat, the boxes of books in the back.

Ananda had been about to drive to Belknap Street, and then he had changed his mind. He was nowhere to be seen. Where was he?

Hope ran out to the sidewalk and looked left and right. Then she saw him in his long white Indian shirt. He was pumping a bicycle, moving away toward the center of town.

She followed him. She couldn’t help it. As the narrow moon dropped out of sight behind the houses on Everett Street, Hope began to run after the dim white figure rising and falling on her father’s old bicycle, wheeling slowly in the direction of the Milldam.