Each and All by John Kuti

Chapter 12

  Over the next few weeks the McCall’s fit into the routine life of the farm as if they had never had a past history anywhere else. Ian came to the farm every Friday night and went back Sunday afternoon. Even for him, his real life seemed to be on the farm. His work and his home in the city were only his practical connections. His heart and mind never left the farm when he did. Laura and Amanda settled into their own routines so deeply that they barely ever thought about their home and their past in the city.

  The first story of Arthur and Laura Lee was finished and Laura read it to everyone in the coffee house, after the children had done their monthly research presentation for the entire family. Laura wasn’t sure that the strong reaction she had to the story meant it was as good as she hoped because of the emotional connection everyone in the room, except for Amanda and Ian, had to the stories. On some faces there was the funny pained smile of delight, on other faces there were tears.

  She had captured the heartache of two ordinary, special young people connected so profoundly and separated by such cultural stupidity and its following physical distance. Laura didn’t get a standing ovation, but as everyone clapped enthusiastically after she finished her reading, she knew in the faces and the eyes and the release of tension in the applause that she was a writer, a reach-into-the-heart, honest to God, writer.

  While Laura wrote, Ian and Amanda spent hours each weekend with the Van Fleet family practicing for the ice races that were coming soon. Ian loved it. Driving safely up to the limits of adhesion was a feeling he never experienced in his life. His life had always been about staying in the right lanes, making sure that he was always in control of every situation. He loved finding out just how close he could come without spinning wildly out of control. The challenge was not only in how close he could come to the limits of control, but how sensitive his whole body could be to the feeling of when it was going to happen. Learning that each car had different handling characteristics and different limits, and that the feeling inside him when he was about to lose adhesion was also different was like a drug with many delightful variations. All alone at the wheel of one car after another, Ian often found himself laughing out loud as he almost lost control and had to braid his arms to catch a slide.

  Amanda, on the other hand, enjoyed herself, but was much too cautious a driver to ever find racing to be as thrilling as her father did. It was losing control, going for a big spin, having such unfamiliarity with what to do or how to react when she lost control that made her stay well under the speed limits the cars she drove were able to manage around the course. For her, practicing for the ice races was fun in a much more sensual way. Each car felt different inside. Each car took some getting used to in just getting comfortable with how things felt and moved as she drove. The smell of each car was totally different. They were beautiful in such different and unexpected ways. And the best thing of all, for Amanda, was she could see how every one of the children who had restored their own cars had formed a personal bond with their car. Driving someone else’s car usually meant that person would come and share their feelings and experiences and memories of the car with her. For Amanda, the thrill she could relate to, in the beautiful old cars was the thrill of their restoration. Making and preserving such beautiful things was an experience she envied each of the Van Fleet children.

  When she explained to Ian and Laura how she felt one Saturday before they finally fell asleep in their cabin loft, Ian suggested perhaps Amanda should pick out an old car and think about restoring it with Tom’s help, if he agreed.

  Amanda knew he would agree and enthusiastically said so because they had talked about it a number of times. Amanda knew that since Laura had quit her job, money would be an issue for her parents. But that day she had learned from Sharon that she was going to be treated like all the other children and all the other workers on the farm. She was going to get a salary.

  Amanda and Laura had been thought of as special cases when they came to the farm, so the idea of their working there did not seem to apply. But Sharon had explained to her that the children felt that both Laura and Amanda had worked so hard since they arrived that they deserved to be paid like everyone else.

  Whether at school or at work, everyone on the farm earned twenty dollars an hour. Ten percent was deducted and directed to the charity of that person’s choice, ten percent was deducted for room and board if that applied, thirty percent was put into savings that couldn’t be touched by those who were under eighteen, the rest was paid in cash.

  That meant that Amanda would be getting four hundred dollars a week and Laura would be getting five hundred and sixty dollars a week.

  Sharon had asked Amanda to talk over her proposal with her parents and it was in the context of Amanda wanting to restore an old car that she brought it up. Ian and Laura were both shocked at the idea of being paid. They had felt that they were imposing on the generosity of the Van Fleets as it was.

  “Why didn’t Sharon bring this up before?” Laura asked.

  “They said that everyone that isn’t part of the family is usually on probation for a month to see if they are really prepared to work hard. With you and me, she said, it all just got forgotten in all the excitement when we came.”

  “Everyone makes twenty dollars an hour, even the children, even with all their money?” Ian asked incredulously.

  “Sharon said that everybody on the farm lives on their earnings so they won’t forget that money comes from working hard.”

  “Maybe I could quit my job and work here too. I can’t believe this.” Ian exclaimed.

  “I hope you’re still making a little more than twenty dollars an hour.” Laura replied.

  “I know. That’s true. But if you clear five hundred and sixty dollars, and so do I, and Amanda brings in four hundred, that’s almost sixteen hundred dollars a week. Not too shabby.”

  “Are you serious?” Laura gasped. “You want to give up being a lawyer to work in a garage?”

  “No. I guess I’m not really serious. But I sure would love to be here with you two all the time.” he replied while wistfully facing reality.

  “I don’t think it’s such a bad idea.” Amanda interjected.

  “I’m not quitting my job. We don’t really belong here.” Ian said, soberly.

  “I don’t think any of us should forget that. We really don’t belong here.” Laura added, emphatically.

  “Your mother will be coming home when her book is done, and I hope you’ll be going to university.” Ian continued.

  “I know. Tom and I have already talked about it. He’s going to write his SAT’s this spring and apply for admission to Queens University. I think maybe, if work hard, I can write them next year and go after him.”

  “When did all this get decided?” Laura asked, “I think that’s great.”

  “Tom said his parents always encouraged their kids to go university because it gave a person time to study when they didn’t have to work at anything else. Being able to learn from people who are experts in the subjects you’re interested in is supposed to be exciting. That’s what Tom’s says. He wants to study sociology and focus on aboriginal studies.” Amanda explained.

  “What do you think you’d like to study?” Ian asked, hardly believing he was having this conversation with his daughter who, a few months before, couldn’t find any reason or purpose in life.

  “I think I’d like to study music. I don’t think they would probably let me in because I don’t play an instrument, but I’m hoping that if I work hard and learn to read music, maybe my voice would be enough to get me in.”

  “Who would have thunk it.” Laura replied, “I think that’s fantastic!”

  Ian screamed a “Yahoo! That’s so, so totally fantastic.”

  Amanda had no idea that her parents would react as if she had told them they just won the lottery and she wasn’t sure that both her parents weren’t going to come crawling into her bed to
give her hugs. Again, Laura was stunned by how much went unsaid in almost every moment that people shared: fears, hopes, ambitions, doubts. She’d come to see the human heart lay under a thin translucent sheet of dark emotional ice.

  Amanda continued, “I know I should be saving my money for university because you’re going to be using mine to send Stacy, but Tom and I found a 71 Buick Riviera that we’d love to restore. Tom’s had somebody go to inspect it. It’s only in fair shape but it’s all there and it’s only 7000 dollars and we could restore it for maybe another seven because we’re doing all the work. I was hoping maybe, if you could get a bank loan that I could pay, it would be the car I could take to university.

  “Absolutely!” Ian shouted in his enthusiasm. “Don’t worry about the money, that’s a very cheap car. Do you realize how much money we have been saving since you both came to the farm? No restaurant bills, no bar bills, almost no gasoline bills. A 14,000 dollar loan would cost maybe four hundred a month. That’s half of what the two of you used to spend on clothes. The money is not a problem. You put what you earn into the bank for university.”

  “That’s so fantastic!” Amanda exclaimed, “Did you know that the fast backed Riviera was Bill Marshall’s last great car. He did the Corvette and the Shelby Cobra. It really is so beautiful!”

  “Who’s Bill Marshall?” Laura asked

  “He’s kind of a famous American car designer.” Amanda replied, “I can’t believe this is happening. I can really have it?”

  “Absolutely!” Ian shot back.

  “Absolutely.” Laura agreed.

  Ian then started humming, ‘We’re in the Money’, and everyone laughed.

  Laura was shocked that quitting her job actually meant that they had more money. It didn’t feel very good to realize that she had been paying to work for all those years.

  The big news for Ann Marie that week was that she started exchanging handwritten letters with Megan. Rather than have messages passed back and forth through himself, Wayne’s friend got them to both to agree to write a few paragraphs every day and pop them into the mail. He had stationary and envelopes and stamps at the ready for when Megan dropped by every day. He made it the last task for her to do before she left to go back to her boyfriend or to the streets. Removing the practical considerations removed any excuse not to write, and soon it became part of Megan’s routine to write her mother a few words about how she was doing and how great the weather was compared to Ontario, frozen in winter. Spring bulbs were already blooming and the days, damp and wet, were still pleasant enough to make her want to gloat. Ann Marie wrote back each day with her own news of the weather, her news from the farm she’d gleaned from Ian, and what she could share about her own experiences in the past day. Neither of them had any idea how wonderful it would feel to know that there would be a letter waiting for them every day, a letter they could hold and touch and carry and keep with others in a growing pile. It was a strange experience for both of them to realize the powerful emotions they felt in holding a little note that said almost nothing.

  Tom still maintained his news blackout. It was Ann Marie and Megan who began to share little insights and feelings about Tom in their daily letters. Megan was anxious to know what he was like, what he looked like, and she wanted to know if he said anything about her. She was both pleased and disappointed to learn that he had said nothing, pleased that he had kept her confidence, disappointed that she had no idea what he felt about her.

  Before long, Megan was encouraging her mother to go to the farm to visit. And although Ann Marie had come to like the farm, she still felt like a fifth wheel. The best she could do for Megan was to call Ian on the phone after his weekends at the farm and debrief him about what he had been doing, how Laura was doing with the book, how Tom and Amanda were getting on.

  She could feel a romantic interest rising in her daughter like an ocean tide. She did her best to encourage it, even though she knew Tom and Amanda looked like they were really very much in love. Anything that would get her daughter to want to come home was worth encouraging as far as she was concerned, regardless of the consequences that might follow. Time vanished the way the remnants of the big snow dissolved in the sun and the wind, evaporating in the cold, clear air. Where the snow had piled in the deepest drifts, the snow banks were still more than four feet deep, and where the snow blower had heaved it, day after day, alongside the road, it was still much higher than anyone could reach.

  The ice races were always the second Sunday of February if the ice on the Lake was deep enough to hold all the cars and all the people required around the course. The sun and the wind had cleaned the lake ice of snow and when it was tested, each test place was found to be over ten inches in depth. The conditions that year were almost perfect.

  Other years it was often necessary to smooth the surface because of pressure ridges that might trip one of the cars and set it rolling. That was the nightmare, but in all the years since the ice races began, there had never been a roll over or even a serious incident to damage one of the cars. Considerations of safety were meticulously, and Sharon made especially sure that no one got reckless in the competitive exuberance of the day.

  The day before race day was always frantic. There would be more than a hundred cars entering the races and there would be four or five hundred spectators to tend to and feed. The huge food tent had to be put up on the beach and all the folding tables and chairs and the portable gas grills and everything else necessary to feed that many people had to be picked up and conveyed and put up and prepared. Portable toilets also had to be set up and secured.

  Saturday morning, Ian sat in the closed cab of the front-end loader with Rosie, whose job it was to clear a parking lot on the beach for all the cars that would be coming the next day, both those of the participants in the racing and those that belonged to spectators.

  The snow that was removed from the parking lot was dumped all along the shore. It wasn’t long before Rosie let Ian try his hand with the front-end loader ramming it forward and filling the big bucket with snow, and then shifting and swiftly emptying it in a long, long row as they listened to Rosie’s favorite rhythm and blues CDs. It was so much fun that Ian couldn’t help thinking about and anticipating the story he would have to tell on Monday to the other lawyers in his firm. Skiing Whistler or Mt.Tremblant was nothing compared to this. This was driving heavy machinery. They would eat their hearts out. After the snow was piled in a long deep wind row along the beach, Rosie showed Ian how to use the loader bucket to tamp down the snow and then cut it precisely in big steps to make a grandstand for all the spectators that would be coming. It took some practice because of the delicacy of the work, but as Ian got used to the hydraulic controls it was much more fun than just scooping and moving snow. It made him laugh as he worked. When they finished the grandstand, they went to the food tent to share cups of strong coffee in big black mugs with the other workers who had been marking out the course and preparing places for the marshals. Ian amused everyone with his descriptions of his newfound expertise with the front-end loader.

  “You know what you should do? You should charge middle-aged professionals a hundred dollars an hour and let them dig holes and fill them up and drive dump trucks and front-end loaders just like real men. There isn’t a guy in my office who wouldn’t pay through the nose to have as much fun as I’m having. Let’s face it, a man never gets over his first dump truck. There’s a business in this, Big Boys-Big Toys.” Ian enthused.

  Men, boys, women and girls all laughed and nodded.

  “It sounds like a great idea to me.” Rosie replied, “But don’t tell my mother. She’ll have us building an executive ice hotel within the week.”

  Everyone really laughed at that. Rosie added that his mother would probably invent courses in jams and jellies for the women executives trying to reconnect with their domestic side.

  “Tell me about it. Laura would be her first custo
mer. Once every five years she takes a five hundred dollar cooking course that’s meant to do just that. They are the most expensive three meals we ever ate.” Ian added. Ian was glad that Laura wasn’t there to hear him teasing her. The coffee tasted as rich as the air and as sweet as the entire experience.

  Nearby, Tom and Amanda were creating a huge skating rink. An ice auger had cut through the thick ice and a gasoline pump was pouring water onto the Lake where it shone like Saran in the sun. The Van Fleet family in action was something to behold.

  Later that afternoon, while she was helping with the baking, Laura told Sharon that the ice race preparations were like putting on a wedding in one day.

  “I suppose if we had to, we could do that too.” she had replied.

  Unlike the food preparations for Christmas, the only thing that had to be cooked the day before were all the desert treats.

  When Laura said that the smell of cookies and walnut scones baking was one of the greatest smells she’d ever experienced, Sharon shocked Laura by whispering into her ear, “That’s because it smells like sperm.” Laura gasped back her laughter. And Sharon went on to tell Laura that she should go and put her face in the oat bin in the barn if she really wanted to get a nose full.

  Laura laughed so hard that Amanda asked her what was so funny.

  “We’re discussing the medicinal properties of rolled oats.” Sharon replied.

  Late in the afternoon, when everything was almost ready at the lake, and the sky was turning to colour on the horizon, people who had been working all day on food preparation started arriving from the farmhouse.

  What followed was another of the Van Fleet’s race weekend traditions, snowball statute tag. The two youngest children proceeded to pick sides and two big teams formed up behind each of them. Arthur’s team wore white arm bands and Laura Lee’s team wore no arm band at all.

  Fittingly, Amanda and Laura were among the first chosen for Laura Lee’s team. Tom and Ian and Sharon lined up behind Ryan for Arthur.

  A coin flip decided who defended Haystack Island and Arthur’s team was the first to defend.

  The defending team had five minutes to make great piles of snowballs and position themselves at least twenty yards out into the lake.

  One of the defending team fired a starting pistol when they were ready for the attack, and with the crack of the gun, bodies came running and dodging and dancing out onto the Lake trying to get past the defenders and make it to Haystack Island.

  If one of the attacking team was struck with a snowball they had to freeze in the position in which they were struck. They could only be released if one of their teammates could get to them and touch them to set them free. The first-round of the game was over when the last moving body on the attacking team had made it to Haystack Island. Then the teams reversed roles and the attack came once again.

  In big winter coats and boots it was a hysterical parody of war. People slipped and fell and went sliding wildly trying to dodge the snowball’s flying from near and far. It was pandemonium, with human freeze frames scattered all over the ice. It was people gasping for breath and crying from laughter, in the hysterics of uncoordinated hunters and hunted. Slip- sliding away, it was zombies in snow pants in halting, falling-down, graceless, hysterical pirouettes.

  Laura was not used to running for her life, and so she was frozen very quickly. Amanda, with the incredible agility of her youth, broke back from her team after they tried to do an end run around the defenders lines. Only Ian was pursuing her and he had to come from a long way when she decided to double back to free Laura. Amanda touched her mother and they both got a significant head start on Ian when he fell trying to make a turn, dropping all his snowballs and having to gather them up again. Running with an arm full of snowballs was not easy and a definite advantage to the hunted. When Laura and Amanda looked back, Ian was gaining on them steadily and then Amanda saw Tom break from the active defenders and take an angle to intercept them before they reached Haystack Island. Whether he had the speed to do it was the question. Running flat footed on the ice to avoid slipping and falling turned out to be incredibly hard work and they were all wheezing and gasping, pursuers and pursued.

  It seemed that both Laura and Amanda would get to Haystack Island safely until they got near the shore where huge slabs of ice lay in deep tangled translucent layers. Climbing and sliding and picking a path through the ice sheets was slow going and Amanda screamed with surprise when Tom and Ian arrived at almost the same time, slowing down to walk as they approached their ladies, their last single surviving snowballs at the ready.

  “This is the end, my friend.” Tom sang in a ragged imitation of Jim Morrison.

  He threw his single snowball as Amanda got up to run the last yards to the Island. She screamed when he threw his snowball and laughed, shouting happily when he missed.

  Ian got closer and closer to Laura before he was going to fire his last snowball. Laura kept moving as fast she could, all the while talking to Ian without looking back at him, telling him that he was going to choke, that his aim had never been much a good, that he threw like a girl, that the footing of the ice was something he should consider, that he couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.

  “In that coat your butt is not that much smaller.” Ian teased, “Get ready to freeze.”

  He threw his snowball and, to his delight, hit her squarely on her scrambling butt.

  Amanda was safe on the Island and when she saw her mother have to freeze in place and lay sprawled on her face flat on the last ice slab, she went running to free her and laughed hysterically as Tom and Ian tried to find snow to pack into snowballs in the slabs of ice all around them.

  Amanda touched Laura’s gloved hand and helped her mother to her feet as they strolled to the Island laughing and taunting their men. Laura and Amanda were two of the four people from Laura Lee’s team to make it to the Island. When the teams switched roles, the pursuit and the capture were done in an even more exaggerate slow motion. The pursued ran slower, but so did their pursuers. Tom and Ian were frozen in the very first wave of the attack. Arthur’s team attacked in a mass to the center of the defending line and as the other team concentrated their bodies to meet the assault, they split into two groups trying to out flank the concentrated defenders.

  The strategy worked pretty well as the first ones hit with snowballs and frozen were touched repeatedly and freed by those following behind, and when the snowballs of the defenders were mostly exhausted, everyone made a break to out flank the defenders who were busy making and gathering snowballs before they could set out in hot pursuit. It was a rout. Almost half of Arthur’s team made it to Haystack Island with Laura Lee’s team pursuing in the distance. Tom and Ian stood like statues in place where they had been struck and frozen in the first wave of their team’s assault. It was a strange and beautiful scene watching people scamper like uncoordinated ducks in the beautiful twilight of the evening.

  “Your family sure knows how to live.” Ian said to Tom, his frozen mate.

  “Tradition!.... Tradition! “ Tom sang, and felt anything but as useless as a fiddler on a roof.

  Standing there in the fading light, looking at Tom in his winter coat and long hair singing an old show tune, Ian felt love for another human being for the first time since he held his daughter in his arms seventeen years before. That it would be for someone that she loved as well doubled the measure of its sweetness. The sky glowed behind the figures far away on the ice. Time froze its memories into life and life only, as the winter blue of the day disappeared. It was a strange, beautiful moment that Ian would never forget.

  In what seemed like forever, the teams finally came back over the ice where the winner was declared to be Laura Lee’s team. They had won nine to four. The half-hour had exhausted everyone, but before they went back to the farmhouse, Tom and Amanda took her parents to see the skating rink they had made for the next day’s activities.

  I
t lay as a huge black slab that the next day would see alternate every hour between hockey and free skating. Tom took Amanda’s hand, and she took her father’s, and he took Laura’s and they walked out on to the pure, hard black hole, perfectly smooth, perfectly glowing in the half light. When they turned to leave, sliding as much as walking on the slick ice, Ian pushed Amanda and pulled Laura and all of them went down in a heap of thrashing arms and legs. Amanda screamed as Tom fell on top of her and so did her mother as Ian rolled on top of her squirming body.

  “The losers demand a kiss in consolation.” Ian announced, definitively.

  “You deserve nothing but the contempt of the victors.” Laura shouted.

  Suddenly Amanda, squirming under Tom, started screaming hysterically, the weight of his body a sense memory that went down through her like an ax. Tom rolled away from her and then tried to gather her into his arms as she shook and screamed, until Laura crawled to her and took her in her arms and she finally calmed down and stopped crying. Tom and Ian sat there for those interminable moments and just stared helplessly, their hearts racing faster than when they had been running as fast as they could over the ice.

  Amanda recovered.

  Tom helped her to her feet and Ian helped Laura, and then Amanda put herself into Tom’s arms and he could feel her trembling, and feel her warm lips imperceptibly kiss his cold cheek and hear her whisper, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry”. Tom didn’t know what to say except that it was okay.

  A huge crowd gathered in the coffee house where the losers at snowball statue tag had to make and serve the winners food and drinks all night long. Later that night, thawed and red faced like everyone else, Ian told his table that the Van Fleets were the only people he ever knew who never let childhood get lost. It was true of course, but Sharon didn’t mention the irony that her family was made of lost children, lost childhoods. Laura remembered how Eugene would always talk about his childhood when they were young, as if he had never left it behind. The fun traditions were often Eugene’s.

  Amanda thought about how her own pampered childhood was so lonely compared to the second childhood she had discovered at the farm. Her family was like three worker bees who had grown up in canyons of steel and cement and got trapped in a car and released far, far away, next to an orchard in bloom, but with no hive to return to. Amanda was embarrassed and frightened by her hysterics on the ice rink, but no one said anything, even though she could see terrified questions in so many eyes. The eyes finally warmed and settled when she got up and sang.

  Later that night, when Tom and Amanda sat at the piano and sang Louis Armstrong’s Wonderful World, it was clear they were both having difficulty seeing the trees of green and the red roses too. Amanda screaming, quivering on the black ice was a part of the wonderful world they couldn’t skate around. Sometimes there were no blades to carry a heart over the frictionless cold that could be human pain.

  Sunday morning dawned clear and cold, but it would be sometime before Ian and Laura knew that as they woke under their eider down duvet as they listened to Amanda who was already dressed and awake in the cabin, quietly breaking the silence with the soft thuds of the wood that she dropped into the wood stove to refresh the fire. She was gone without a word, and the click of the iron latch of the door was like a signal and Ian and Laura slipped into each other’s arms with a passion that almost felt new.

  All through breakfast time, almost all the way through Sunday service, they made love as they hadn’t done in many years. Ian had a confidence and joy in his love making that Laura found startlingly new, and she was also startled that she found that her old memories had somehow lead to a fresh excitement in her own sexuality. It was the frustration of Arthur and Laura Lee’s desire and their separation that somehow mingled with her own old memories of desire and recklessness that made her respond with a heat she hardly expected.

  Sliding together in the heat and the slick sweat building between them under the eider down, they moved from one position and sensation to another as they listened to the roar of old engines as cars made their way to the huge parking lot by the Lake, the different notes, the different timbres vibrating through the cold air, vibrating somewhere in the solar plexus of desire. Later on, Ian and Laura went in the opposite direction to the stream of people making their way to the lake as they went up to the farmhouse and had showers and grabbed a coffee before joining all the others at the races.

  They actually showered together for the first time in years because they found that the farmhouse was absolutely empty for the first time that they’d ever experienced. In the silence of the huge house, in the hot spray of water, in the white lather of soap in their hands, on their flesh, they made love again like they had long years before.

  Later again, leaning against a side board in the kitchen after they had dressed and found a pot of fresh coffee, they found they had nothing to say about what they had just experienced, no way to explain where the last two hours had come from. For Laura, the sweet silence between them was like a shoe box of imaginary letters and memories, and one more time she realized that what went on between people was almost always unspoken. Life could be like Eugene’s terrible disease, but sometimes, beautifully so.

  The farm had been swarming with people and old cars since before breakfast, but it seemed that the volunteers were so familiar with the traditions and routines of race day that by the time the Van Fleets loaded up Eugene and a van full of baked goods, the races were ready to start at the lake. By the time Ian and Laura arrived at the big tent by the lake, racing was already well underway

  A four by eight chalk board displayed a list of entrants in the various engine displacement categories, and another identical board served to list lap times for each car.

  Ian insisted that Laura go for a walk with him in the parking lot reserved for entrants, just to see what was there. The cars were predominantly from the big three North American companies: General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. But, mixed in with the predominantly European cars of the Van Fleet children were a few long defunct marques, Studebaker, De Soto, Hudson. There was a Nash Metropolitan and a big lumpy sedan called a Muntz Jet, the rarest car in the parking lot parked with a Nomad, Fleetliner, Torpedo, Biscayne, Charger, Mustang, a GTO and a Sedan de Ville.

  A crowd of well over five hundred people had gathered for the ice races that day, and a significant number of them were wandering through the parking lot with Ian and Laura seeing who was there, greeting old friends, renewing connections that had all begun on the farm. Almost all of the entrants were children from the foster families who had come every summer for so many years to work on the farm.

  Learning the basics of automobile repair in the huge garage on the farm, seeing old rusty wrecks become even better than new was usually interesting enough for young children. But understanding that they could have their own car restored if they did their best to help with the work of restoration was intoxicating. From the time they could afford to do it, the Van Fleets had offered the foster children on the farm the first chance to having their own cars done for them. They were offered interest free loans up to ten thousand dollars that they could pay for with their own sweat equity working at all the other necessary tasks on the farm.

  Because they weren’t paid for the time when they were working on their own car, the summer children usually worked late into the evenings and most weekends as well, to have their cars ready for when they would have their first license to drive.

  The ice races were more than nostalgia for those who had come to maturity at the farm, it was going down into the basement and seeing the stone foundation of their lives that had set in those early years of restorations. Repair and renovation happened on a whole lot of levels.

  The hours went by in the roar of engines, in the spray of ice behind tires and the smell of oil and exhaust drifting in the air. The start-finish line was set up very professionally with starting lights that counted down in four half second interva
ls from Red to Orange, to Orange and then Green. With the green light, the cars broke the photo-electric beam and the big digital display started counting the hundredths of a second that would accumulate until the car came back and froze its interim lap time. The display then proceeded to record the final time of the two laps of the frantic race against the clock. Most cars did the two laps around Haystack Island in between four and five minutes and so a whole day’s anticipation was condensed into a very few moments of excitement.

  Mostly, the day was spent socializing, eating great food and reminiscing.

  The other part of race day that everyone loved, to varying degrees, was called, the buttonhook. The buttonhook was the simplest of races and was run parallel to the shore, well out of the way of the Haystack Island course. Three rubber Highway cones were set next to each other and ten feet apart, exactly a half-mile from the starting line.

  The race was called the buttonhook because each participant had to drive the half-mile course, pass between the two right side cones and then circle back and go through the opening on the other side making a long, wide, erratic buttonhook.

  Missing the gate or touching a pylon meant instant disqualification. Those were the only rules.

  Because no studded tires were permitted on the tires, braking before and after the gates, soon polished the ice so that slowing down became excruciatingly difficult and turnarounds became long slides and spins and spirals of pure anxiety. There were many different strategies about braking and making the turn. There were great disagreements about changing gears and which car’s driving characteristics adapted best to such a race. The buttonhook race was informal. Timing was done with a simple stop watch held by someone watching from the crowd. Speed was not the only consideration in winning the buttonhook. Style points counted as well and where given by designated judges using the same six point scoring scale used to judge figure skating. The slower the times became because of the faster ice, the higher the style points that came with it. Nothing about the buttonhook was fair or predictable; the only thing level about the playing field was the ice.

  The buttonhook was going all-out, just for the fun of it. Winners and losers debated endlessly, then complained interminably about the judging. In the end, it was actually impossible to tell who had actually won because of all the sham protests and disagreements.

  Ian and Amanda both ran the buttonhook that day. Amanda hated it and did it only once, driving back in Tom’s Volvo looking wide eyed and white. It was too much like the feeling of vertigo in the panic attacks she had so recently endured.

  Ian loved the buttonhook and got in line again and again with whatever car someone would lend him. And because all cars were permitted in the buttonhook, he even got the Lexus, and when he hit the brakes at the turn and cranked the wheel to one side to get the car sideways, he did what looked like a skater’s scratch spin that left him so dizzy that it was almost a minute before he could get the car moving again and make his way to the finish line. Every time Ian got out of another car, his eyes were brighter and seemed to be dancing with frenetic energy and excitement. The buttonhook was the perfect distraction for the spectators, giving them something to watch and cheer almost constantly.

  Amanda had been separated from Tom until the early afternoon as she did marshal duty out on the lake making sure each car got around the course safely. Tom worked the start and finish line while Ian kept the record on the lap times on the big slate board before he went and got involved in buttonhook racing

  Sharon and Eugene were again in the white passenger van watching the excitement of it all. For them, it was seeing so much of their history in the people, in the cars, in the place and tradition that gave warmth and excitement to every winter.

  Laura did not like watching the racing so she worked in the big food tent, first making flap jacks until her arm was sore from moving the big iron skillet on the gas grill. During the break between breakfast and when she would begin preparing hamburgers and hot dogs, she sat at a table and drank strong coffee and talked to people who came and went and treated her almost like a celebrity. People she didn’t know and had never even met came and introduced themselves, obviously connected to the great Van Fleet grape vine that said she was someone special. It felt good to be the center of attention and a part of a big social gathering again. It had been her life for so many years that seeing the dynamic connections and separations in a big group of people was intriguingly enjoyable, almost as if she was wandering through a familiar neighborhood she had left behind for a new life.

  Many of the people knew that she was writing a book, and she experienced, for the first time, what it was like to be on the receiving end of unanswerable questions. As with most authors, she was expected to distill one of the most difficult creative tasks in the world into a few pithy sentences. It surprised her how difficult it was to answer simple questions, especially the simplest one of all,’ So what is your book about?’

  Finally, like most authors, she got it down to a simple intimidating answer. “It’s about imaginary loves, imaginary friends, imaginary dreams and time travel.”

  Most people seemed impressed with the answer and intimidated enough by it that they didn’t usually ask any more questions.

  Beyond the tent walls, as background to her conversations, there was the roar of the gas generator that ran the air compressor that ran the air wrenches that screamed at the lug nuts that held the tires that were replaced from the big stacks that were there in all different dimensions and tread patterns for anyone to use.

  Laura didn’t see Ian when he made his first run of the day in Rosie’s Cooper S. She didn’t see him pound away, the ice flying off of the studded front tires that dragged the car rapidly off toward the first big turn. Ian didn’t see Amanda waving to him wildly from where she sat on the folding director’s chair on the inside of the first turn around Haystack Island. He was weaving his arms trying to get as close to the turn as he could, feeling the centrifugal forces in every part of his body. Amanda heard the cheer from the grandstand as Ian passed by the first time, and she waved and jumped up and down, and Ian did notice her cheering wildly, and it gave his heart a kick from a throttle cable of pride that he never knew he had in him.

  Laura was back at the gas grill doing custom order burgers, chatting with people while they waited, slowly getting a sense of the life stories of the people who came and went, who had come to the farm and had never really left its influence behind. Laura was surprised that most people talked about Eugene and not Sharon. To her, Sharon was the enormous generator of power that made the farm what it was, and she was surprised that people barely mentioned her when they talked about their past histories on the farm. To Laura, Sharon was the one with the dynamic personality and the force and determination of ambition and energy.

  She always saw Eugene as having a quiet strength, a quiet confidence, a private, personal agenda that she couldn’t imagine inspiring or overpowering anyone. Yet what people seemed to remember most about their experiences at the farm involved Eugene and practical things like the restoration of their cars, the organization of races and picnics, the lending of equipment, or the gifts of truckloads of lumber. It was Eugene’s generosity that seemed to be the thing that connected him to people, the same generosity that had put a precious box of letters into her hands, to ignore or to make into a new life.

  Midway through the afternoon, Laura looked up and her dear friend Ann Marie was standing in front of her, waiting like so many others for a burger. Both women were obviously delighted to see one another, the old city connection come to the farm, placing them in a situation neither of them could have ever even imagined through most of their long relationship. Ann Marie ordered a burger and Laura produced it almost instantly because the food line had been slow for some time. Laura pointed out the table of incredible homemade relishes that both of them already knew from Saturday coffee house feasts. The generator outside the tent also ran three po
rtable deep fryers in which french fries were made all day long.

  “Fries?” Laura asked her friend with all the nonchalance of a short order cook.

  “Great.” Ann Marie answered, and they both laughed at the situation in which they found themselves, such sophisticated ladies.

  Laura asked one of the other people working in the tent if it would be all right if she took a break and talked with her friend, but before she was replaced, she made a toasted bun for her own burger. It would be the first food that she ate since she finished off the last pancakes earlier in the morning.

  They talked as they waited for Ann Marie’s French-fries and Laura learned that Ann Marie had been invited to the ice races but only decided to come at the last minute. It had been Megan who had encouraged her, almost pleading in her letters that she should not miss the ice races, that Tom had told her they were one of the two great social events of the Van Fleet calendar. He had described the skating and the racing and the food and all the cars and seeing old friends and the description had made Megan incredibly jealous and sorry that she would not be able to be there with Tom. She would have to be there vicariously and so Ann Marie had finally agreed to go up to the farm and see what all the fuss was about.

  Laura went right to the bottom-line.

  “You think Megan has feelings for Tom?”

  “I’m sure. This sounds terrible but I hope she does. Since they’ve been communicating, she’s actually started to talk in her letters about coming home. I try to encourage her without sounding too eager or hopeful. I don’t want to spook her by letting her know how much I miss her. That boy is the only real hope I have of getting her home, and knowing that isn’t easy.” Ann Marie replied.

  “Well, he’s an amazing boy. What’s one more romantic triangle in this place?”

  “What do you mean? What triangles?” Ann Marie said curiously.

  “Maybe I’m just generalizing.” Laura answered, and then changed the subject, asking Ann Marie if she wanted to go out and watch some of the racing.

  Ann Marie agreed enthusiastically and gathered up her fries and hamburger into a little wicker basket and the two of them went out from the soft light of the big tent into the blazing, beautiful winter blue afternoon. It was then that Ann Marie remembered Megan’s absolute crucial instruction that when she went to the ice races, she was to take pictures of everything, especially Tom.

  She told Laura about her instructions and handed her the little wicker basket with her food while she pulled a small automatic camera out of her coat pocket.

  “You don’t really have to take pictures if you don’t want to. One of the Van Fleet children is the designated photographer and there’ll be a huge pile of snapshots that you can choose from, if you like.” Laura explained.

  “No, I have my instructions.” Ann Marie replied. “Let’s go over to the skating rink. That looks like fun.”

  At the skating rink, it was mostly mothers and children who were not so interested in the car racing and were having a good time on the huge sheet of ice. Boys in hockey equipment sat on the snow benches waiting for their turn to get back on the ice to play.

  Ann Marie set down her food for the last time because it was already cold.

  She took pictures of the boys nearby and pictures of the people skating on the ice rink. She then switched the camera to its panoramic mode and did snapshots of all the activities she could see making an extended panorama of her own from the activities literally surrounding her.

  “I wish I had remembered the camera when you were flipping burgers. That’s a picture I would have treasured. You have another shift?” Ann Marie teased.

  “Only if I want one. It’s all volunteer and very loosely organized. When we go back for a coffee, I’ll do a proper working-class pose, if you like.” Laura replied

  “I’d like.” Ann Marie answered enthusiastically.

  Ann Marie took a picture of the men’s and women’s ice skates resting in pairs, in two lines, supported by their blades where there were cut into the snow.

  “Your remember when we used to take Megan and Amanda to skating lessons all those years ago?” Ann Marie asked Laura.

  “Sure. But it wasn’t that many years ago. It just feels like it. Two months ago feels like years. This place does weird things to time.” Laura replied. “When’s the last time you were on skates?”

  “Probably the last time you were, one of those open family skating days at the arena. The kids were what, eleven?”

  “That’s probably right. What do you say we borrow a pair of those skates? I think that’s what they’re for.”

  Of course, that was exactly what the long line of skates was intended for. Little was left to chance. Every consideration was usually extended to the people visiting the farm. And so Laura and Ann Marie, the old friends from the city, laced on cold, used skates and glided onto the huge skating rink that Amanda and Tom had created the day before. Like their daughters, they had had the benefit of weekly skating lessons when they were both girls, and the practice and the skill and the balance quickly aligned in their muscles as their old sense memories and confidence came back from all the years before when life was all second nature.

  Laura learned that her friend could skate with so much more skill than she’d ever shown as a mother tied down by a daughter in mittens. Ann Marie did spins and spirals and even a toe loop as Laura skated nearby doing a few simple turns. When she stopped for a rest and the two of them were skating side-by-side, Laura borrowed the camera from her friend and had her skate again so she could take pictures of Ann Marie moving so fast and beautifully through the air.

  The skill that Ann Marie displayed on skates was something that Laura could match with a camera, and when the pictures were sent and Megan saw tem on her computer screen, she was shocked and thrilled to see her mother looking so free and beautiful. No one ever knew that Ann Marie once had dreams of ice skating glory when she was just a girl. After the pictures, the two friends skated together side-by-side, and after a while even put one gloved hand into another as they talked small talk about their week, about their work; not husbands, not children, just glided into the simple pleasure of moving effortlessly through the air and feeling almost like childless mothers.

  Laura looked away from where she was skating when she saw Ian drive by on the lake, driving their own family car. It was then she could see the people gathered down the shore and the cones that marked the starting line for the buttonhook.

  Ian stopped the Lexus at the starting line and an instant later sped off down lake and Laura felt her heart spin with the same centrifugal force as Ian hit the brakes as he passed through the pylons of the buttonhook and the car began to spin like a child’s big clumsy top.

  Ann Marie had followed Laura’s eyes.

  “What the hell is he doing?” Ann Marie gasped.

  When Laura could finally speak and she saw Ian rush to the finish line, she told her friend she had no idea what he was doing but that he wouldn’t be doing it again. The two friends skated out onto the rough ice of the lake and met Ian as he was coming back near the shore while another entrant was already blasting down the ice aiming for the buttonhook. Ian stopped beside Laura and Ann Marie as the car did a little shake on the ice as it came to rest. The window slid down and Laura could see Amanda sitting in the passenger seat beside her father. The two of them looked like they had just stolen the crown jewels.

  “Did you see us? Did you see us?” Amanda shrieked.

  “We’re high on the style points.” Ian added, proudly.

  “Not with me you’re not!” Laura spat at Ian. “You will never. You will never do anything like that again, not alone or with my daughter, for as long as you live. Do you understand me?”

  Ian immediately understood the flashbacks of Laura’s fear and apologized.

  “I didn’t think. I thought you were working in the food tent. We’ll stop. I’m sorry. Why don’t you
get in?” he said, and Laura opened the back door of the car and she and Ann Marie got in. It was a moment before anyone spoke. Amanda told her mother that the buttonhook looked scary but it was actually very safe. There had never even been an accident or a crumpled fender and she had even done the buttonhook herself. Laura said that she didn’t care, that the thought of someone she loved spinning out of control in a car was enough to make her want to throw up.

  Ian let the two ladies off at the skating rink where they retrieved their boots. They had got out without saying another word. From the skating rink they proceeded with Ann Marie’s photo essay for Megan, taking many pictures of Tom who was now recording lap times on the big board. From the board, Laura was shocked to learn that Ian was still in third-place in the Cooper S.

  It was with serious anxiety that she learned that the last three races of the day pitted the four best times into two preliminary races and one final race to determine the champion of the day. The head-to-head battles were the highlight of the races.

  Ann Marie took pictures of Laura and Tom as he was explaining the circumstances of the final race. In the photos, in stilled life, the horror on Laura’s face was even palpably greater than it had seemed in real-time. Laura didn’t know what to do or say or even if she could stay and watch her husband racing head-to-head on the ice.

  When Tom said that he would come with Amanda to find Laura and Ann Marie for the final races, it was on the tip of her tongue to say,’ Don’t bother.’, but she bit her tongue and said nothing.

  Ann Marie was worried about the look in Laura’s eyes and the sudden silence and lack of response to anything that she said. She tried asking her one single question about how she was coping with the aftermath of her own accident with George Marshall, but Laura just shrugged in helpless resignation at the feelings and emotions that were too strong and difficult to face or let go.

  Later in the day it was in the discomfort of unspoken anxiety that the two friends finally ended up sitting with Tom and Amanda waiting for the final three races, sitting on beach cushions in the snow bleachers with the last big crowd of the day. Laura felt the comfort in the press of all the bodies. She thought she was calm and didn’t even notice the cotton dryness of her mouth.

  In what seemed like a breathless moment after a very long wait, the lights flashed down to green and Ian raced away against a huge tan Oldsmobile Tornado. A great cheer rose up and people chanted Ian, Ian, Ian, Ian, the little white car obviously the favorite against the huge old luxury sedan.

  After two laps Ian was ahead by about fifty yards and when he went by the start finish line to begin the last lap Laura was on her feet cheering with everyone else, but her heart was mute and she was actually cheering and hoping that he would somehow spin out and lose and not have to race again that day, or ever. Just as the two cars were about to make the turn around Haystack Island, a maroon-black Porsche drove onto the Lake and set out in pursuit of the racing cars. It was George Marshall driving his Porsche, the Porsche that had been perfectly repaired in the garages of the farm.

  Everyone stopped cheering in shock at the intrusion of a car in the middle of the race. The car was already fish-tailing as it sped away and spun completely going into the first turn. In the silence everyone could hear George restart the stalled engine and set away once again.

  Sharon had made clear to George that he wasn’t welcome at the farm as long as Laura and Amanda were there. He had called a number of times when he was drunk to protest what he felt was his arbitrary exclusion from the farm. He had screamed at her about being Eugene’s best friend and that she didn’t have the right to keep him away, and he had almost refused to believe her when she said that it hadn’t been her decision, but had actually been Eugene’s. When George had said that Eugene was just jealous that he had had Laura, Sharon had hung up the phone.

  George had come to the ice races every year and raced enthusiastically. To him, it was more his competitive style. The ice races were the only times that George felt there was much glory to be had in any of the activities on the farm. The more he thought about his exclusion, the angrier he had become. Driving drunk, driving suspended, he made his way to the farm to make the point that he still existed and wouldn’t be written off.

  It was a long anxious moment for everyone as they heard the motors muffled behind Haystack Island and then saw the Oldsmobile appear all alone, Ian having spun badly on the most distant turn. By the time he got the Cooper S moving again George Marshall was coming out of the same turn and it wasn’t an instant before he passed breathtakingly close to Ian’s passenger door. The shock of another car passing so close out of nowhere set Ian’s heart racing as he set out in hot pursuit. He knew the car. He knew who it was. He was so angry he wanted to smash George Marshall’s face.

  As the black cherry Porsche came through the final turn, it slowly broke adhesion and it began a long slow slide, the same slow motion death spiral that now slid Laura’s consciousness sideways as she watched the car come to a stop and people rush to it and drag George from the door.

  Laura started to feel her hands trembling. Standing among the silent crowd, watching Ian drive up to the Porsche and stop and leap out of the car, Laura watched people hold her husband back as George was stumbling trying to shake away from people who were holding him up because he was so obviously drunk. George got his moments of attention. George made his self-centered point. ‘He wasn’t going to be banned. He had the right to participate. He had paid for it. He had paid for the right to be someone.’

  Sharon left Eugene and made her way to where George Marshall had crumpled to a heap on the ice. He had stopped struggling. He was quietly talking to himself as everyone watched in helpless embarrassment. Ian had already left when Sharon arrived and she quickly instructed that George be taken up to the farm house where he could dry out overnight before he would be allowed to leave.

  The Van Fleet children, especially the young ones, who thought they had left drunken adults long behind, were quite frightened and unnerved by the melodramatic behavior of their uncle George that day. He was ignored by the children until he finally fell asleep in a big wicker chair on the front porch. Sharon had sat with him and listened to him go on and blame her and blame Laura and blame everyone but himself for the pain that he could no longer distract or deny. He had lost his job. He had lost his purpose. He had even lost his will to perform. The pathetic little race around Haystack Island was the first little bit of theater he had managed since Ian had thrust him through the ice of the condominium swimming pool. Sharon knew better than to argue or agree with a drunk. She sat and listened to him rail as her children came and went and finally kissed her and went off to bed. When he was sober enough, Sharon told George that he was staying the night and it was his bedtime.

  The last thing she said to George before she watched him go through the door of the guest room was, “So you’ve got a broken heart. It’s about bloody time.”

  Before all that, earlier in the day, before Sharon had arrived and told people what to do about George sitting by his Porsche, Amanda had found Ian coming across the ice. She was running to get him, running to bring him to where Laura sat with Ann Marie in a cluster of anxious people. Laura was shaking uncontrollably. Ann Marie was holding her friend through their winter coats as Laura kept repeating over and over again, “I don’t understand why I can’t stop shaking.”

  Ann Marie had already given her two sedatives from the bottle of pills she carried for her personal use. Personally and professionally, Ann Marie knew the course that an anxiety attack could take once it had hold of a person’s body. After her daughter had left for the West Coast she was often aware that she was getting very close to losing control. Drugs were good, sometimes.

  Laura had lost control of her body even as her mind seemed clear and unaffected by what was happening to her, and her friend was the perfect person to be there to talk to her and comfort her and explain to her ex
actly what was happening and that her lost control was only momentary and came from the shock of seeing the car in which she had her terrible accident. Consciously Laura knew that her friend was right. The instant she saw the car it was as if she was sitting in the passenger seat once again, and when she saw it slowly slide out of control in its final turn, her sense memory was just too vivid and took possession of her like some wild spirit.

  As Ian and Amanda arrived, running to Laura’s side, the crowd opened and Ian and Amanda looked down and saw her shaking and it was as if someone had put an electric current into her spine that made her shake like a poplar in a heavy wind. Standing there helplessly, Ian asked Ann Marie what she thought they should do. There was an ambulance that always came to the ice races just in case there was an accident or an injury, and Tom suddenly arrived with the ambulance attendants, and when Laura looked up and saw them she started to scream and say she didn’t want them, she didn’t want them. Ann Marie said it would be good to get her inside where it was warm; someplace she was comfortable and familiar.

  “Just let me go back to the cabin.” Laura said after she recovered her calm voice after the ambulance attendants backed away.

  “That’s a good idea. We just need a little time to let the pills work. I think the fewer the people the better. I think it’s best if you don’t see people looking anxious about the way you are feeling right now.” Ann Marie explained to Laura.

  It made sense, even though it was difficult for Ian and Amanda to accept that they would have to let Ann Marie go and sit alone with Laura to see her through the course of her anxiety attack. They put Laura and Ann Marie in the nearest car and in an instant she was gone, leaving Tom and Amanda and Ian standing there wondering where they should go and what they should do.

  It was almost dark when the last race went off and even those who didn’t know Laura or the story of the circumstances of her anxiety attack were subdued by the strange final events of the day as a winner was declared for the ice races of 1999. It was little more than an hour before the sedatives and warmth of the quiet cabin settled Laura so that her body stopped trembling and she seemed to be completely back to normal.

  Back at the lake, Ian and Tom and Amanda hadn’t helped with the cleanup that started almost the instant the ice race winner was declared. They didn’t know what to do except they wanted to be near the cabin so they would be able to go to check to see when it would be all right to join Laura and Ann Marie. To kill time, they put on skates and talked quietly while they skated three in line, Amanda in the middle between her father and the boy she loved. There wasn’t much to say about Laura and so they replayed the events surrounding Ian’s last race and the circumstances of George Marshall’s appearance and talked about what he would do and what they should do about him.

  “He couldn’t have known I was in that race.” Ian said.

  “I think he was just mad at my mom for telling him he wasn’t welcome. My uncle George was always a show boat when it came to the ice races.” Tom replied.

  “I can’t believe he was so pathetic. What was he babbling about? “Amanda asked sounding anxious and agitated.

  “God knows. Drunks are always crying over something.” Ian replied.

  It took only seconds gliding on the ice to go from one end of the rink to the other, even with the slow turns, even with the slowed momentum from their hands holding each other, they did dozens of laps in the gathering darkness. As they talked, the lake side emptied of people and sound. The roar of the cars, the clean sound of voices, people and things packed, then moved, vanished in the counter clockwise circles of the three of them skating and waiting for when they could see Laura again.

  They didn’t know Laura already seemed to have recovered when they decided to walk up to the barn so that Tom could show Amanda her Valentine’s present. It was a day early, but he thought it might be a good idea to distract her from her concerns about her mother.

  From his father, Tom had learned the secret of being a great lover and husband: anticipation. He had watched his father anticipate the considerations and acts of affection and the time Sharon needed. He could not have articulated it, but he learned it by example, and now he anticipated that Amanda would need to feel the positive side of love.

  He was very mysterious and Ian was anticipating that Tom was letting Amanda see the Christmas and Valentine present that Ian and Laura had chosen with Tom’s help, and had secretly smuggled to the barn.

  Amanda was anticipating that the mystery of Tom’s behavior had to do with the Riviera they had purchased over the phone. She thought that it had arrived and Tom was leading the way to show it to her.

  She knew that Tom’s mysterious ways always ended in something wonderful and considerate, intended to make her happy. But she didn’t know whether she could get in the mood to celebrate anything because of the way she was feeling, because of her memory of seeing her mother so completely helpless and shaken.

  While Tom and her family walked to the barn, Laura sat with her old best friend sipping tea, appreciative that she could actually hold the cup in her hand without shaking half of the liquid onto the floor.

  “Two old shaky ladies.” Laura said softly.

  “We’re not quite The Power Sisters we once said we were.” Ann Marie agreed.

  “You think our lives were always this shaky? Were the power sisters really an illusion all along?” Laura asked, knowing the answer before she heard it, remembering how they first dubbed themselves the power sisters when they were just young mothers.

  “With lovers and children, I guess we’ve always been shaky ladies, just like everybody else we know.”

  “I don’t understand how two strong ladies turn to such mush when it comes to relationships.”

  “I don’t understand it either. If I did, I’d either get awfully rich or put myself out of business as a therapist.”

  “And what would we have to talk about? “Laura said pointedly.

  “Do you remember when we were both brand-new mothers and scared to death and as happy as we’ve ever been in our lives? You remember holding up our babies so they could see each other for the very first-time? Do you remember how it felt? I never felt more powerful than that in my life. We were such romantic fools.”

  “Last fall I would have agreed. I would have said you were absolutely right. Now I look at Amanda and I listen to her singing, and she has such wisdom in the way she phrases the words of a song that I know we did something wonderful, in spite of ourselves. I’ve been such a lousy mother and look what she’s become.”

  Ann Marie felt terrible, knowing that Laura was right, envying her to the depths of her being what Amanda had become, and she was crushed with guilt by the comparison to what her own daughter was living and feeling, even as they spoke.

  It was Laura’s turn to comfort her friend. She told her that Megan wasn’t lost. She told her that she herself couldn’t even imagine the strength she’d come to see in Amanda, and she was sure that same strength was there in Megan waiting for the flood that would germinate the seeds of her life.

  “Those babies will be the real power sisters one day soon. You watch.” Laura said as she let her hand slide from her friend’s cheek and rest on the curve of her neck and her shoulder.

  Ann Marie almost believed it, because she wanted to believe it so much. Laura, at least in the moment she said it, believed it too. Both of them thought about Tom, but were afraid to say what they were thinking.

  At the barn, Amanda’s eyes exploded in shock when she was shown the beautiful Appaloosa Mare, the black dalmatian spots exploding over the white flanks of the beautiful horse. She knew instantly that the horse was hers. She had her hands to her mouth as Tom opened the stall and she stood face-to-face with the beautiful lyric power that she would soon have at her complete control.

  She touched the long forelock and felt the course white hair as she looked into the brown eyes of her new friend.

&n
bsp; “You’re so beautiful.” Amanda said to the horse who nodded as if an agreement.

  “Amanda this is Sweet Cream. Sweet Cream, this is Amanda.” Ian said by way of making a very proud introduction.

  “Sweet Cream; I can’t believed anything in the world could be so beautiful. Sweetie, my Sweetie.”

  “Tomorrow we’ll take Sweet Cream on a little ride down to the lake.” Tom added and Amanda nodded and found her father’s eyes, and put her head softly against his chest, and thanked him.

  Ian said that they could never have found such a beautiful, gentle horse without Tom’s help, and she took herself out of her father’s arms and put herself into Tom’s. After that, she put her arms around Sweet Cream’s neck and the two of them nuzzled, pressed cheek to cheek.

  “If you don’t mind that your dad’s here, maybe I can give you my Valentine’s present a day early.” Tom asked

  “Sure, if you want to.” she replied, and let go of Sweet Cream when Tom backed her into her stall.

  You have to follow me.” Tom answered seriously, and led the way into the barn to the big granary with the big smooth pine latch that slid inside the door, and Tom held the door open and they went into the pitch black room.

  Tom took Amanda’s hand and she took her father’s as Tom led the way explaining that he was going to turn on the light when he was ready. He positioned them in front of a big empty granary bin standing in the feeble light spilling from where Tom had left the big door open behind them.

  Both Ian and Amanda were shocked when Tom turned on the little forty watt bulb and their eyes adjusted to the dark and they saw in the corner at the back of the wooden bin, a huge, beautiful Snowy Owl standing on a heavy piece of barn beam resting in the corner of the bin.

  It was almost a surreal sight because there was a potted rose bush exploding in red blooms entwined all the way up the beam on which the owl stood looking at them intently.

  “Happy Valentine.” Tom said as he joined Amanda and her father.

  “I don’t understand. Why would you capture such a beautiful thing?” Ian asked, “I think it may also be illegal to capture wild birds of prey.”

  “If you look closely you’ll see his right leg is quite badly injured.” Tom explained, “He was shot by some idiot hunter. There is a woman who has a refuge for injured birds who lives north of Kingston and sometimes we take in some of the birds that need help and rehabilitation before they go back to the wild. I just thought that maybe Amanda might want to help do that.” He turned to Amanda,” I know it’s a weird kind of Valentine, but I thought it might be something that would touch your heart. I just wanted to touch your heart for Valentine’s.”

  As usual, he had done it. No one could see in the half-light that Amanda’s eyes had welled up with the straining meniscus of her feelings as Tom led her through the wire gate sealing off the end of the granary bin. He slowly took her to the beautiful white bird with the rows and ripples of black tipped feathers and the huge white face with big eyes and twin bands of gold around the black, black ellipses of its irises.

  “He’s quite calm with all the handling he’s had to take.” Tom whispered, “You can touch him if you move slowly and gently.”

  Almost as wide-eyed as the bird, Amanda moved her hand and touched the perfect head, and the feathers were so soft it was almost like they weren’t there at all, just a coolness, a firmness, and then the sudden feeling of power as the Snowy Owl turned aside. Amanda let her hand run down the strong wing shoulder to the leg and she could see the ugly raw sore where the bullet had torn through the flesh.

  “We have to put antiseptic ointment on the wound every day.” Tom explained softly to Amanda. “It’s still quite painful and it’s amazing that he just stands there and shudders with the pain and lets you do what you have to do.”

  Amanda was mesmerized by the beauty of the Owl and the two of them couldn’t seem to take their eyes off one another.

  “It’s such a privilege to be this close to something so wild and beautiful. How do we feed him? What does eat? “Amanda asked seriously.

  .”They usually eat mice and voles, but we slice up some strips of steak for him. We can come back from the house later and feed him.” Tom answered.

  Tom reached down and broke away one of the red roses beneath them and handed it to Amanda who took it as the owl shook in surprise at the movement.

  “Rosie says that the rose is called Don Juan.” Tom said quietly.

  “That’s you.” Amanda teased,” I bet I’m the only girl in the whole world who got a sick Owl on a rose bush for Valentine’s. Does he have a name?”

  “I call him Tundra because that’s where Snowy Owls breed and spend most of their lives. We’re at the most southern point in their range. They only come this far south when winters are really bad in the North.”

  “Tundra. Hello, Tundra.” Amanda said to the Owl and it seemed to her that Tundra had the power and presence of a human being. “I wonder if my mom would want to help me nurse him?”

  “I think that would be a great idea.” Ian’s voice answered. He spoke to Amanda from where he had waited on the other side of the gate and watched silently, treasuring the moment that he felt privileged to see, with both of them, for some reason, thinking of Laura.

  When she was standing again outside of the gate looking at Tundra, Amanda asked Tom if it would be all right if she gave him her Valentine a day early because it seemed to her to be the perfect place and time. Tom agreed instantly and both he and Ian looked at Amanda as she just stood there, and then she began to sing. It was the first song she had ever composed in her life. She sang to Tom in the perfect acoustics of the wooden granary and both Tom and Ian felt the small anvil of love drop in their hearts as she sang.

  The song described the feelings of a girl awakening from a dream and finding a world that she’d never imagined could exist, a world with a Prince with long hair and beautiful eyes who taught her how to love. Each verse was something he taught her, trust and patience and gentleness and courage and each verse ended with the same phrase tying it to the bridge of the song, “Some things, some princes. some feelings are forever.”

  Amanda’s beautiful voice filled the granary and left the men standing there silently, and when the song was over and Tom took her in his arms, Amanda told them both that it was the first song she had ever written.

  “It’s spectacular.” Ian said softly.

  “So are you.” Tom whispered in Amanda’s ear.

  After the song they closed up the owl and left the granary light on and then they said goodbye to Sweetie and walked back to the cabin, Amanda holding hands between her father and Tom.

  Three hearts exploded in relief when they saw Laura sitting quietly sipping tea with Ann Marie. It was like a dam exploding for Amanda, and what poured out of her was her joy and excitement and all the details of her own beautiful horse, and the incredible injured Snowy Owl, and the climbing rose blooming in the black granary bin, and the horse was called Sweet Cream, and she would called it Sweetie, and the owl was called Tundra, and had the biggest eyes she had ever seen in the world and they looked right at you like it could read your thoughts, and some madman had shot it and it needed to have antiseptic ointment applied every day, and it needed to be fed little strips of steak, and maybe Laura might help her feed Tundra sometimes, if it wasn’t too much trouble.

  Laura said that it would be glad to help, and Amanda agreed and said that when Laura saw how beautiful it was, and how it’s feathers felt under her hand, it was an experience she would remember for long as she lived.

  “It’s so wild and beautiful and gentle and calm and it really is a privilege.” Amanda enthused.

  “I remember seeing a Snowy Owl sitting on a telephone pole when I was just a girl.” Laura said, “My mother and father stopped the car and I rolled down the window and the owl turned its head away and wouldn’t look at us. I remember that it made me feel terrible and so I made
a noise and it just spread its wings and drifted away over the fields.” Laura added, almost distantly.

  “Tundra looks at you like he is seeing into your soul.” Amanda replied.

  “My soul; poor Tundra.” Laura answered bleakly.

  Everyone ignored the remark, and Ian said that he had a little Valentine’s gift for Laura that he would have to give her then because he would have to be going back to Toronto very soon. He went to his brown leather travel bag and everyone felt the sharp sound of the zipper and then saw the red wrapped package with the big bow and the big card in the manilla envelope. Everyone watched as Laura took the present and the card and when she opened the card everyone gathered around to look at the eight and a half by eleven printed collage of a marriage.

  Ian had used the scanner and the computer to take pieces and images from the photos they had stored away in big albums in the bottom drawer of the bedroom dresser. He had cropped faces and places, a palm tree supported Laura perched in her string bikini, Laura in an evening gown leaned against the baby Amanda in a diaper. Amanda’s and Laura’s faces, as they changed over the past seventeen years, fell like snowflakes from the top to the bottom of the card. Legs and breasts and smiles and faces were blown up and pasted everywhere beneath them as a background.

  On the inside of the card, the computer had printed in forty point italic This Is Your Life Laura Anne McCall and beneath it Ian had written in his fine hand, Your Valentine always, Ian. The words were enclosed by a rough red heart made with magic marker.

  Everyone was staring at all the images on the card as Laura put it aside and stretched up and kissed Ian lightly and told him it was the best card she had ever received. And then she opened the little parcel and put aside the wrapping and the ribbon and opened a little cardboard box and lifted out a video camera.

  “This is our video camera.” Laura said in confusion.

  Amanda recognized it instantly as well and flashed a look of incomprehension at her father. Ian reached down to the camera and flicked open the little video display and pressed a button and the images in the camera began to play.

  Ian was standing there on the screen dressed in a wizards costume and cape that he had rented, all red and black brocade and gold thread, and beneath it all he made the sweeping melodramatic gestures and flourishes of an amateur magician.

  Ian’s voice came from the camera. “Welcome my love to the magical kingdom that you left far far behind as you have ventured forth on your great quest. I, your friendly neighborhood wizard, will take you on a little tour to remind you of all the charms and magical memories that abide in your own far away realm.”

  “Here is the table where nightly feasts are prepared to the exacting standards of your impeccable palate. What pizzas, what linguinis, what fondly remembered fondues have passed this way?Here is the leather sofa where my queen has curled up after too too many libations. Here’s the love seat upon which so many special bums have spread, the famous and the infamous. Do you remember the princes of verse who have sat here, Layton, and Atwood, and even Leonard Cohen with his dour date. Remember how you called them, Glum and Glummer, and he laughed. These are and have been your subjects. These are among the many who wait anxiously for your return.”

  “Next comes the spoils and trophies of our campaigns.”

  Ian then took the camera on a tour of the apartment lingering over the paintings, the sculptures, the decorative pieces, the beautiful, expensive things they had gathered in their years together. A huge abstract acrylic by Barbara Klunder over the fireplace came with an anniversary, a raku bowl glowing with its dark iridescence sat empty where it usually sat filled with fruit. Laura remembered the gallery and the artist in Niagara on the Lake as she watched the empty bowl. With vacations and holidays and anniversary’s came the spoils of their years of hard work.

  Then the tiny wizard on the screen led Laura through the apartment beginning another more intimate tour with the words, “You may recall certain incidents in the following places my queen.”

  What followed was a visual tour that led from the sofa to the love seat to the floor to the dining room table, then into the kitchen, to the counter, to the floor, to the counter once again then back to the floor and then out to the foyer to the rug by the fireplace then into Laura’s office to her chair and then to her desk and to the floor once again. Slowly lingering in long still seconds, the camera went to the bedroom and lingered for a long, long time on the bed moving slowly from one end to the other, traveling out from the floor on to the pillows. From there the camera traveled to the bathroom and the translucent shower door and an invisible hand pulled it back to show steaming billows of vapor rising as it had risen over them so long before.

  Ian said nothing during the tour and Amanda, and even Ann Marie, were amazed at the sexual tension that came with the slow pans and close-ups of places where Ian was making Laura remember they had made love.

  The shower door slammed to the invisible hand and the screen cut away to where Ian was standing once more in the living room in front of the camera mounted on its tripod. The music to Night Train, the old burlesque standard, was playing in the background as Ian told Laura that there were certain other amenities she may be missing from her kingdom and he dropped the brocade cape from his naked shoulder and he proceeded into a parody of a strip tease in which he would show an arm and then another shoulder and then a long hairy leg snaking between the folds of the magician’s robe. He danced like a sensual stripper as he turned his back on the camera and wrapped the robe tightly around his body and did bumps and grinds side to side before he suddenly turned his head and with a lascivious look dropped the cape to the floor and the three ladies in the little cabin all gasped and screamed and laughed to see the sudden, instantaneous, short-lived appearance of Ian’s naked backside. The movie was over on a freeze frame close-up of his butt marked with the foil words, The End, pasted, one word on each cheek.

  Amanda screamed, “Daddy, how gross!”

  But it wasn’t gross; it was funny and had everyone laughing even though sharing the sight of her husband’s naked body with her daughter and her best friend made Laura quite speechless in surprise.

  “So there’s your Valentine, my queen.” Ian said to Laura, mischievously.

  “It’s certainly different. Perhaps a little too revealing, but thank you dear.” Laura got up and the simple kiss of gratitude somehow turned longer and steamier than either of them imagined it might.

  Amanda told them to break it up.

  Ann Marie said the Ian would have to start documenting other erotic sites, if they didn’t cut it out.

  Shortly after, Ian announced that he would have to be getting back to Toronto and Ann Marie agreed that she too would have to be leaving soon. He quickly packed his bag when Tom and Amanda said they would walk them both to the parking lot. Laura excused herself from the walk and the goodbyes, saying that she wanted to just stay where she was. Everyone understood, it seemed. When Ian was packed and ready and had kissed Laura goodbye, he suddenly realized the opportunity.

  “Ann Marie’s going back to the city. I can go with her if you think you might want me to leave the car.” he said to Laura.

  Laura hadn’t thought of leaving or even needing a car since she had come to the farm, but the idea of having her own transportation appealed to her, even though she knew that there was always a car she could borrow.

  “That would be good. I don’t know when I’d use it, but it might be good if it was there just the same.” she answered.

  It was decided just that quickly, and then Laura watched her husband and best friend go out of the big door with her daughter and her boyfriend leaving her feeling a disquieting sense of loneliness.

  The next morning after breakfast Laura met Tundra for the first time. She and Amanda had walked back from the farmhouse carrying a little bundle of sirloin that Amanda had cut into small strips and wrapped in a little plastic sandwich bag. In the granary,
Laura was engulfed in the heady smell of the oats that were meant for the horses. She remembered Sharon’s comment and smiled but didn’t say anything as Amanda led her to where Tundra was caged.

  Seeing the big beautiful bird, feeling its eyes and two pure bands of gold falling over her like she was a bottle in an arcade game was electrifying and gave her an excited sense of anticipation she didn’t understand. She thought maybe it was the bird’s self-assurance or its white beauty in the dark corner, or the image of the surreal rose bush entwined beneath it, but it was a feeling she couldn’t explain or deny. She was drawn to the bird by a force she had never experienced. It somehow connected with the feeling she had had when she had shouted at the Snowy Owl on the telephone pole when she was a girl. The attention she wanted so much from a beautiful bird so long in the past was still there and now she had it and having it, it was almost irresistible.

  Amanda had already had the experience of feeding Tundra the previous evening when she had gone back to the barn with Tom. She was more comfortable and confident than Laura would ever be handling the beautiful bird. She took out the strips of red meat and Tundra didn’t move or react until she held the strip of meat dangling to the side of his beak when Tundra would gently turn his head and take it from Amanda’s fingers. After the third strip Amanda, asked Laura if she would like to try, and she did that nervously, eye to beautiful eye, tense and excited and exhilarated. After two strips, Laura let Amanda finish the feeding.

  As Tom had showed her, Amanda then got ready to put antiseptic ointment on Tundra’s ugly wound. She took a soft sponge from the warm water she carried inside a plastic yogurt container. She squeezed the soapy antiseptic water from the sponge and slowly reached up to Tundra’s thigh and held firmly while she washed the wound with the sponge. Tundra shuddered to the touch and spread his wings wide for balance, and Laura stepped back seeing the majestic wingspan and the power in the soft contours of white.

  As Amanda cleaned the wound, she asked her mother to reach into her pocket and take out the antiseptic ointment that was there, and Laura did that and did exactly as Amanda instructed as Amanda told her to squeeze some of the ointment onto her finger and apply it to the wound while she held Tundra’s leg.

  With Amanda holding Tundra’s thigh in one hand and his talons in the other, Laura spread the white cream on the ugly wound as Tundra spread his wings above them and his whole body shuddered in pain as Laura tried to smooth the cream over the wound as gently as she could.

  It only took a few seconds before it was over. And then Amanda and Laura began the long long two minutes of slow exercises they had to do, moving Tundra’s leg and foot so the muscles would move and gain some flexibility and strength so they wouldn’t atrophy and leave Tundra unable to hunt . The exercises were absolutely necessary so that he wouldn’t die of starvation when he was released into the wild. Laura thought the pain she had seen and felt in the bird as she was touching his bare wound with her bare finger was terrible, but now the whole white beauty and softness of him shuddered silently under their hands.

  The huge beautiful wings trembling, the whole body shaking, the eyes wide and staring and making not one single effort to escape or resist made Laura feel another strange, powerful emotion that she had never known in her life but that seemed to be strangely familiar and personal. She knew what it was to shake uncontrollably. What she didn’t understand was that their pain was alike.

  When the physiotherapy was done for Tundra, mother and daughter were strangely excited and exhausted at the same time. Amanda asked Laura to help her free the climbing rose from where it was entwined on the post beneath the Snowy Owl, and Laura did that, and doing it was almost as delicate as what they had been doing before, pulling the living canes and leaves apart, feeling the thorns in the dark pricking her flesh in warning.

  Amanda carried the flower pot awkwardly out of Tundra’s cage as Laura followed her daughter, closing the gate as she was instructed to do, leaving the on the light for Tundra. Amanda was ready to carry the rose bush all the way to the cabin but Laura told her that the blossoms would all be frostbitten before they got there, so they discussed what to do and they found some plastic feed bags and the skill knife used to cut them open, and they made a sleeve for the rose bush and wrapped it securely with binder twine against the wind. It was while they were wrapping the rose that Laura realized what it was like to work with her own child. She understood what Sharon was intending when she asked her to wash dishes with Amanda. There was some kind of bond in a simple, common purpose that enveloped a moment like the fragrance of the roses blooming under their hands. Hands at work tied living things so subtly, so securely. Who would have guessed?

  After that, for the next six weeks, until Tundra rose into the air above the pasture and flew away, when he would turn his head back with his yellow eyes staring back, mother and daughter would go together every morning to tend to the healing of the bird that would be very late in his migration back to the Arctic.

  Laura got back to the cabin with Amanda and they both saw a bowl of roses sitting in the middle of the red table. It was a miniature version of the enormous Valentine bouquet that Rosie had placed in the center of the farmhouse dining room table as his traditional Valentine present for Sharon.

  Unlike the roses that came from flower shops, the roses that Rosie grew and bred in his green house were a mixture of antique roses that went back more than a century. The thick heavy heads of the blossoms nestled together beautifully and when Amanda and Laura approached them, the fragrance that rose from the table was more beautiful than any perfume they had ever smelled. No card came with the flowers and so they were not sure that it wasn’t Tom who had put them there, and Laura only learned later in the day that they were intended for her, so in that moment of indecision and mixed feelings they just smiled at one another and said how beautiful the roses were, that they had never seen such roses for sale.

  Amanda left her Don Juan rose by the only window in the cabin and she tended it and was amazed that it continued blooming for weeks, long after the hybrid perpetuals on the table had shed their blossoms and dried in place where Laura left them be.

  The best part of Valentine’s Day for Tom and Amanda was a short ride to the Lake on Sweetie and Jack. The food tent was gone and all that remained of the ice races were paths in the snow made by so many people and tires. They rode to the fallen black willow and looked at the sun shining on the still lake and they felt the hard beauty inside them, and winter felt forever and spring felt like it would never come.

  The evening of Valentine’s Day was like a regular day for Laura as she had worked on her book and went up to the farmhouse for dinner and waited on the porch for her hour with Eugene. She had been surprised with handmade Valentines from Amanda and Tom and all the other Van Fleet children.

  Laura wasn’t surprised when Sharon sat down across from her on the porch while she waited to see Eugene. What did surprise her was that she came in carrying an open bottle of red wine and two crystal glasses that she sat down between them. Laura didn’t say anything as Sharon poured them each a full glass of wine. Laura had never seen alcohol anywhere on the farm except on the dining room table. It was an exception she noted without comment. Sharon raised her glass to Laura.

  “Happy Valentine’s.”

  “Thank you. And to you. “Laura replied as she took a sip of the beautiful Beaujolais. It was a treat, and she did appreciate great wine. That was another thing at the farm where only the best would do. The wine that accompanied dinner every night was always magnificent.

  “So are you falling in love with Eugene?” Sharon asked after she sipped her wine, and the question caught Laura savoring her first swallow and it almost made her gag.

  “Excuse me? That’s like me asking you if you are falling in love with Ian?” Laura answered nervously, “Why would you ask me that?”

  “It’s Valentine’s Day and you spend time with him every day and he do
es love you very much, it’s clear.”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t think, considering the circumstances, you really have anything to worry about.”

  “Oh, I have lots to worry about. I’ve been pretty sure that I was first in his heart for all these years, and when I knew you were coming to stay here, I was pretty nervous that I’d feel my position slip. But when I first saw you with him the first day you came here with George, I knew that you didn’t love him. But I know everyone falls in love with him eventually, and I just wondered if it’s happened yet.” Sharon explained matter-of-factly.

  “I suppose I have. He’s a wonderful man, but if you mean like romantic love, then no. He’s dying for god’s sake. Isn’t romantic love kind of irrelevant now?”

  “No, not to me. You really don’t believe in heart stopping romance, do you?”

  “I don’t suppose that I do. So I guess we’re all safe.” Laura was thinking of the absurdity of wanting a dying man who looked like death already had most of his body.

  “We’re not as safe as you think. I was almost sure when you came here that he would eventually get to you, and when you started working on that book together I knew it. When you came here I knew that I was playing with fire, but I realized that book is the big boiler that’s going to keep that fire nice and contained and keep us all from getting burned.”

  Laura was stunned by the idea that somehow her book with Eugene was some kind of sublimation of romantic feelings. She didn’t want to believe it, but the thought of it made her decidedly nervous.

  “Why would you take such a risk, letting me come here, if that’s what you thought?” Laura asked pointedly.

  “Well, it’s one of the things that Eugene and I have in common, we’re not afraid of taking risks because we have a certain optimism and certain confidence that we can handle anything that comes along, even an old love like you.”

  “That’s probably why I think both of you live behind rose colored glasses. I hate risks. My daughter took risks and look where it got her. Every risk I’ve ever taken has lead to nothing but heartache. Look at my thing with George Marshall.” Laura shot back.

  “Nothing but heart ache? When the heartache was over were you better or worse as a person?” Sharon asked gently.

  “Life is a learning experience. Right! When do I get the diploma? The only good thing about heartache is when it ends. Nobody is better for it. The only thing it leaves is more walls and more fear.

  “So what are the walls between you and Eugene? What are you still afraid of?” Sharon pursued.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t even thought about it. Why would I? Why would you want to know?” Laura answered.

  “Because I don’t think I could ever begin to describe to you how much I love him. I’ll tell you the truth, I’m sure glad that you have that book between you.”

  “That makes two of us, I guess.”

  “Well, exactly. Happy Valentine’s.” Sharon replied, and lifted her glass of wine and the two of them touched crystal edges and drank the dry musky liquid inside.

  After that they chatted like old friends and finished the bottle of wine and Laura’s head was spinning when she went and took her place beside Eugene after she had walked into the farmhouse with Sharon. She kissed his temple and told him Happy Valentine’s, and when she looked at the computer screen there was a Valentine card there with a big tree growing out of the middle of a red heart, and in the branches of the tree was a great mix of letters and as Laura watched, the letters began to fall and they fell into the heart where they formed words, line by line.

  My eyes in yours...

  Yours in mine...

  What’s reflection?

  Laura read the words and didn’t know what to say. Her heart felt very cold.

  “The fundamental question for a narcissist like me.” she managed to say after a long pregnant pause when she couldn’t take her eyes from the monitor. Like life. Like life. Like life! It was all she could think.

  Laura was almost completely sober when she left Eugene, and when she was making her way out of the farmhouse, she was surprised to see Sharon sitting on the porch sipping tea. Sharon asked her to sit down. The invitation made her decidedly nervous after their previous conversation, and she saw that Sharon saw that she was reluctant, and the smile Sharon gave her and the look in her eyes almost dared her to take the risk. It was the last thing she thought she would do, but she couldn’t help herself, the eyes and the smile made her sit down.

  In the next hour Sharon and Laura became friends the way only two women could do. They had decided, without knowing it, that they trusted one another, and for some inexplicable reason felt an affection for each other than neither would have ever guessed might happen. With affection and trust came the ability to express fear and reveal an intimacy that only exists in a woman’s heart. It was as if they undressed with each other, for each other, undressing their hearts without shame or envy. They undressed together and weren’t afraid to see or be seen. That was a feeling men never felt. It was a kind of trust whose roots went very deep. Only two women friends ever know what it means to be able to undress in front of one another and to feel both exposed and accepted at the same time.

  That evening, Laura and Sharon knew they could expose their marriages, their husbands, sex, faith and desire, hope and fear and respect and the way it was in their own natures. That evening they began talking about marriage, and neither of them knew or expected that the other would see and understand so much of what they were saying and what they had each experienced. The interesting thing was that both of them realized that their marriages were set on bedrock that was so very different, as different as the two men who loved them.

  It was a Valentine’s Day to remember and it wasn’t over.

  Amanda had kissed Tom goodnight when they left the music room and he was going to his room to write to Megan, and when she was passing through the porch and saw her mother and Sharon sitting there so late, she was almost startled to see it. She was instantly worried they were talking about her. It made her even more nervous when Laura asked her to come and sit and share tea with them. Expecting some kind of lecture, she waited nervously while her mother poured her a cup of tea.

  “So how does it feel to be in love?” Laura asked her daughter, handing her the full cup.

  “Moma! God! You know how it feels. God! Why are you asking that?”

  “Because I’m your mother and watching you and Tom, I think, maybe I’ve still got something to learn.”

  Amanda was absolutely stunned into silence by what her mother had said. ‘Laura, something to learn? Impossible!’

  “It’s not a trick question.” Sharon reassured her.

  “It feels like a trick question.” Amanda replied.

  “So what does new love feel like? You have to remind two middle-aged ladies.” Laura continued, “I’m being serious. We’ve been talking about love. I thought you’d have a pretty good perspective.”

  Amanda could see that her mother was serious, even though she was obviously having a good time asking the question, and perhaps even making Amanda feel a little uncomfortable discussing her deepest emotions.

  “It feels like a big sheet of ice that goes as far as you can see, and you can hear cracks every time you take another step, and it feels like there’s an enormous wind pushing at your back and you can barely keep your balance, and it’s the most beautiful scary feeling, and the most beautiful place you’ve ever been in your life, and you wouldn’t choose to be anywhere else in the world, even if you could.” Amanda replied seriously, looking straight into her mother’s eyes.

  “Wow! That’s it. My little girl’s really in love.”

  “It makes you grow up awful fast.” Amanda replied. “Does the ice ever get like it feels thicker?” she asked.

  “It feels thicker all the time.” Sharon replied, “You stop hearing the cracks and you’re sure that’
s because it’s thicker, but it isn’t true. When you start off it’s as thick as it’ll ever be. The reason you stop hearing the cracks is that you both learn to walk so much lighter. When you love someone for a long time, you kind of learn how to levitate, to defy the gravity of life.”

  “Ooo., I like that.” Amanda replied.

  “Me too.” Laura agreed, and she knew that it was true and she knew how heavy she had always felt in her marriage. And the strange thing was that knowing it made her feel immeasurably lighter. She thought about Ian and then she was thinking about Eugene lying like a flesh and blood stone in his bed not far away. Old loves, the words came drifting like autumn leaves.

  “Let’s talk about sex.” Sharon interjected.

  “Let’s!” Laura agreed instantly.

  “Oh, God!” Amanda screamed, “What have you two been drinking?”

  “Heady stuff,” Sharon answered, “It’s the truth in women’s eyes”

  “It’s the fellowship of females.” Laura agreed, “You’ve passed the test. We’ve just formally approved your membership.”

  “You’ve paid your dues.” Sharon replied.

  “You are woman. Let’s hear you roar.” Laura teased her daughter, and the smiles and good feelings and something about the moment made Amanda realize that it was true, she was being made a member of the woman’s fellowship and her heart felt so much lighter that she honestly felt that the gravity of life could be defied.

  “And you want me to talk about sex with my mother and my boyfriend’s mother. Right!”

  “We’re not mothers now. Part of the women’s fellowship is leaving your roles behind and just telling the simple truth.” Sharon explained.

  “The simple truth, about sex. Right! So are there any other rules in the women’s fellowship?” Amanda asked, trying to change the subject.

  “There’s only one other rule,” Laura interjected,” In the women’s fellowship, everything you say stays with those who hear it.”

  “That’s true.” Sharon agreed, “Girls gossip, women relate.”

  “This is all kind of new, what do you talk about besides relationships?” Amanda asked, seriously.

  “Not much.” Laura replied, “Do you know anything that’s more interesting?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “So do you have a question, something you’d really like to understand?” Laura asked her.

  “I want to know why you had an affair with that man.”

  Laura felt like she had been slapped in the face, but when she looked in Amanda’s eyes she saw the simple, deep emotion in the question, she did leave the role of mother behind and answered her as if she was talking to another woman.

  “You’re so busy you don’t even know that you’re burned out, so shutdown you don’t even know that you’re sad, and you’re with so many people you don’t even know that you’re lonely. George was a shot at being young and excited and connected to something and someone that isn’t as hard as everything else in life, something that wouldn’t need any maintenance.”

  Amanda listened and thought about what her mother had said and it was a difficult moment of silence before she spoke and said, “I can see how it could happen. I guess I just always thought that you were so strong.”

  “Me? I can’t believe you’d ever think that.” Laura replied quietly.

  “Just look at you. You are always such a powerhouse.”

  “And I’ve always been emotional mush.” her mother confessed.

  “Like mother, like daughter.” Amanda answered and she saw in her mother’s eyes that Laura no longer believed that what she was saying was even remotely true. She saw respect in her mother’s eyes that her mother had never seen in her own. Amanda just nodded and tried to smile.

  “There has to be more to your affair with George Marshall. You really aren’t emotional mush.” Sharon pointedly said to Laura..

  Laura knew that Sharon was right, that the moment demanded a lot more honesty than she had given to her daughter and so she told about ‘The Course’ George did with young women and the variation of it that had happened because she was his equal. She told about how he had touched the old weakness inside her, her own self-doubt, her fear, her need to feel wanted and real.

  “Every woman’s weakness.” Sharon agreed.

  “It’s true.” said Amanda,” A few months ago, I could have been somebody that would have wanted a man to do that to me. It’s really sick, eh.?”

  “I never knew why that man always turned me so cold.” said Sharon, “I could never understand why he and Eugene had always stayed friends.”

  “Didn’t you ever ask Eugene?” Laura replied.

  “Sometimes you have to speak up. Sometimes you know there’s no point in saying anything. I thought George Marshall was like that.” Sharon answered.

  Amanda had never seen or heard her mother being so honest and true, so strong, so real, and so much a women to admire. Laura told her feelings about what she had done and how she was sorry she had hurt both Amanda and Ian.

  “I’m sorry you hurt him too. You should tell him all this.”

  “I don’t think so. I think it would just hurt him more.”

  From there, the conversation spread and branched from the ideal to the practical, from the personal to the political in the intricacies and subtleties of love and lust and desire. The only subject that was left off limits was the one that was too terrible and close to Amanda’s innocence. The subject was the one every woman knew only too well, violation.

  No one, much less Amanda, knew how well or how deep her scar tissue had healed. No one wanted to explore it. The closest they got was when she talked about when desire faded. Amanda actually asked Sharon how she lived with the fact that she could no longer make love with her husband.

  Sharon had answered her honestly and said she had put a wall inside herself. It was like a long snowbank that had formed against the barbed wire fence of Eugene’s disease. Amanda realized there was a snowbank like it that had formed inside her against the paint that had dried on the canvas where she was raped.

  The meeting of the women’s fellowship lasted well past midnight and something fundamental had changed in the relationship of all three women. The way branches are grafted on to the boughs of a tree that would bear different fruit over the years, the three women were grafted onto the root stock of a past they had no idea that they shared until they could feel its living source in their lives. When the three women finally had to let the evening slip away, they got up to embrace and kiss and remember the circle they would never be able to break.

  Back at the cabin after Laura and Amanda were dressed in their night clothes, they came into each other’s arms to say good night and feel the connection, breast to soft breast, being mother and daughter and women. That was the night that Amanda left her mother’s bed and went back and slept alone.

  At home in Toronto Ian had gotten slowly drunk listening to Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, as he looked around at his favorite things, taking a man’s simple comfort in his very best toys. He wanted to tell someone how he felt inside, but he didn’t know who he could approach. He wanted someone to understand how things changed and were the same and how the farm had transformed his life and how he felt so far away from it, like he was floating in space watching himself sitting there sipping his amber drink. He thought about making an appointment to talk to Ann Marie. He decided against it. He thought about going to visit Wayne and seeing what he could do, maybe even become a regular member of the Queer Agents of Karma. He decided that he would look as desperate and lonely as he felt. The one thing he decided that he really wanted to do and would do, was find a really beautiful piece of land. It was a long time before he slept.

  Before Sharon went to bed that Valentine’s night, she had gone to check on Eugene as she always did. He was breathing easily, sound asleep and he didn’t wake as she crawled in beside him and took his hand an
d kissed it.

  She heard his eyes speak as the computer came to life and she looked up at the screen

  ‘So, you wanna fool around?’ appeared in tlve point Times Roman.

  “I’m feeling pretty hot.” Sharon whispered, and she reached out and touched him tenderly, with all the intimacy her heart could muster.