Each and All by John Kuti
Chapter 13
For Amanda, it was another exciting week at the farm because her 71 Riviera arrived and it was off the trailer and on a hoist within an hour, and Amanda was there under it, wearing coveralls for the first time in her life, coveralls she would wear almost every day until the car looked more perfect and polished than it had when it had been new. Amanda learned to get dirty, and after the first day, she couldn’t believe that she loved it, even as she showered and tried to get to get the grease and oil from under her fingernails. Working beside Tom, or he father, smelling the oil, hearing the roar of the air compressor as she felt the air gun shaking in her soft hands, as she undid the bolts holding the seats to the floor and the frame, made her heart kick to the thrill of masculine pleasure; power and force and precision.
For Amanda there were just not enough hours in the day for everything she wanted to do. With school in the morning, with her regular chores, with spending time focused on learning to read music and understand it and explore it in the enormous record collection in the music room, with taking care of Tundra, with her hour of solitude, with the time she wanted to spent with Tom, working on the restoration of the Riviera would mean she would have to work late into the evening almost every day. She often thought of her other life when she had suffered interminable boredom and was always nearly desperate for something to do.
Every weekday evening, after Laura had worked with Eugene on her book, she would walk from the farmhouse down the long lane way, but instead of turning into the sand dunes where the cabin was waiting, she kept going to the lake and walked along the beach where the parking lot had been plowed for the ice races and that had finally melted to bare sand. At first she did it strictly for the exercise, feeling she had lost her muscle tone and physical condition, but soon the walks became something that was almost a physical pleasure under clear incredible starlit skies or clouds running under the yellow moon like stones sliding on glare ice. The sound of the wind in the different kinds of trees, the sound of the ice sheering and booming like hand muffled bells, the sound of the ice giving way to spring when it was like continuously breaking fine crystal glasses shattering along the sand, the sounds were always new and different every moment, every night, every time that she listened and felt the sound moving coldly inside herself.
Within a month, the early spring had cleared the bay and the beach of all the ice and snow. One high wind, one night of big waves had shattered the bay ice into countless, beautiful, translucent panes. On subsequent nights the panes had moved and shifted and gathered together where the wind prevailed and within the first two weeks of March the moon had turned the ice to drifting singular dots and dashes shining like white Morse code signals, reflecting in the moonlight on the black water. Over all the night’s beauty, the smell of spring in the trees and the water added a sweet musky note, cambium and seaweed thawing again in the sun of the spring.
Laura felt the great routines of nature stirring something inside her the way the routines of her life at the farm had done. It was impossible to articulate, but impossible to miss, as obvious as every unique sensory moment of her walks, everything she saw and heard and smelled and felt had all come before, all happened before, year after year, century after century and would probably do so for as long as she could conceive of time. Laura’s quiet workdays were filling up with her new life.
In Toronto, early in March, Ian and Ann Marie had decided to have dinner together at least once a week. The truth of the matter was that they were both very lonely, Ann Marie having lost her only daughter in the bitterest way, Ian having lost his wife and daughter in the sweetest way possible. Ian felt secure and happy for both Laura and Amanda, while poor Ann Marie felt only the strange curdled hope that her powerful premonition of disaster was wrong. It was during the second dinner that they shared that they finally confessed their own loneliness, but both of them realized the fine dinner and wine they shared was a poor second choice to a pizza with those who were so far away.
“If I gave you two wishes, one for yourself and one for someone else, what would they be?” Ann Marie had asked over dessert.
“That’s good. I like the two parts to the question.” Ian answered and thought for moment before he replied.
“I guess I’d wish I knew what was going to happen when Laura finishes her book. That would be my wish. For someone else, I wish Laura’s book is so successful that I could quit my job and we could buy a piece of property and build a perfect little house near enough to Amanda to see her every week.”
“Those sound like two wishes for you.” Ann Marie replied.
“I guess they are. For someone else, I guess I’d wish that Eugene would have some kind of miraculous cure, and Megan would come home.”
“For that you get two more wishes, just for you.” Ann Marie added quickly, obviously touched by his sympathy.
Ian took the new wishes gladly. “I wish I could make Laura laugh the way I did when we were first married. And I wish I could make Amanda forget everything about the night she...” he couldn’t finish the sentence, but Ann Marie, of course, knew exactly what he meant. For some reason the dinner, the wine, their mutual loneliness, and just looking and acting as if they were an old married couple having dinner together, made the two of them relax as they had never done with each other before.
It was Ann Marie’s turn to tell her wishes and she too longed for a place and a time when she could be with her daughter, both of them forgiven for the ways they had hurt each other, both of them hopeful for a future that included a man for each of them who would love them simply, honestly, faithfully, passionately, like Ian, like Eugene, like Tom.
Ian gave her two wishes more and she wished that what had happened on the streets of Vancouver would be removed forever from Megan’s memory.” And I wish me and Megan knew how to love one another.”
When Ian drove Ann Marie home in Laura’s BMW, they embraced with a warmth that they had never felt was appropriate before, and anyone seeing them holding each other so close in the front seat of the car would have thought it was most inappropriate for a married man to be holding his wife’s best friend that way. Little did they realize that their weekly dinners would soon breakup with the explosive shock wave of river ice letting go.
Only Tom knew the crisis that was actually happening far away in Vancouver. Megan had been spending more and more time each day with Alan Artin, the boy she was trying to get off the street. She was also spending an hour every day at Wayne’s friend’s apartment, writing her daily message to Tom on the computer and doing her daily note to her mother.
As Megan’s boyfriend’s drug habit grew and the amount of money she brought home every day diminished, he became more violent and demanding, screaming at her, shaking her violently, finally slapping her every time she came home with less than the two hundred dollars he needed for his habit.
The nightmare of her life was balanced, in a strange way, by the sweet time she took to herself to spend on the street with the boy Alan, and the sweetest time of all spent pouring her heart and her circumstances out to the boy far away on a farm, a boy who she was now certain that she loved. Only Tom knew the crisis had come when Megan’s boyfriend had beaten her so badly that she had to be taken to wait in the long emergency hospital queue as her split lip and cheek slowly stopped bleeding and swollen black flesh closed around her left eye. She was a mess, but she didn’t cry or complain as she sat with Alan who was telling her she should go home, telling her that anything was better than living with a junkie.
She wanted very much to go home, and she knew that Alan very much wished that he had a home waiting as she did where he would be safe and accepted. Megan knew from his descriptions of his own life that, for him, going home really wasn’t an alternative. After the emergency room they went to Wayne’s friend’s place and Megan sat at the computer crying at last, as she typed and told Tom everything that had happened. The long hours before Tom read the message and repli
When Tom finally replied, he had two suggestions. He would send Megan the money for a plane ticket home to her mother or she could come and stay at the farm until she was better. The invitation ripped Megan’s heart because she wanted more than anything to go to the farm and be with Tom, but having just seen her face she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stand the idea that the first time he would see her she would look like battered meat. She also decided that she was responsible for Alan, she wouldn’t leave him, abandon him the way everyone else in his life had done. As she had learned to do in her daily interchanges with Tom, she told him the truth the way she wouldn’t tell it to anyone else.
He didn’t argue. As always, he seemed to understand and accept her feelings. He wrote back that he had already talked to his birth mother on the telephone and that Megan and the boy were welcome to go and stay with her until they could sort out what to do. That was how Megan and the boy spent the first weeks of March living with Tom’s birth mother in her simple house on Vancouver Island. Strangely, they both fit in like old shoes, living with someone who knew where they had been and what they had done and what they had left behind. They ate well, slept well, and went for long walks in the incredible rain forest that was so alive it filled the nostrils with the most powerful perfume imaginable. At night they sat and talked by the fire and listened to records Tom’s mother loved so much.
The three of them played Billy Holiday’s songs over and over and let their hearts vibrate to the incredible sympathetic pain in the beautiful raspy voice. Learning that Billy Holiday was a prostitute at twelve and a junkie all her adult life only made her words touch them more deeply. Neither of them had ever heard of Billy Holiday until they went to stay with Tom’s mother.
Ann Marie knew little more than that her daily letter from Megan came from the town nearest Tom’s mother’s reserve. Megan had told her mother she no longer was with her boyfriend, that she had taken the boy Alan under her wing and was staying with Tom’s mother until they could figure out what to do. It was more than implied that when she helped Alan got settled somewhere, she would be coming home.
Ann Marie’s heart sang, not knowing the actual circumstances of her daughter’s life. She wanted to do something to help solve the last problem that was keeping her daughter away. She was pleased at Megan’s loyalty and compassion but helpless and frustrated, and for the first time she let out some of her own feelings in her letters to encourage Megan to come home, to bring the boy, to expect nothing but warmth and forgiveness and love. Megan had replied that things were still up in the air.
At the farm, every spring, in March and April, two or three times a month, expeditions were planned to visit century farms, looking for antiques. It was the time before spring planting when a farm family could be counted on to be near the farmhouse, to be able to make a decision about selling an old piece of furniture, an old family heirloom. The big white cube truck was serviced and readied for the trip while the exact route was planned on government mine survey maps that were in such a large scale that even the individual houses and out buildings were marked on them clearly. For the past number of years, the trip had concentrated on the Ottawa Valley northeast of the capital, along the Ottawa River.
One of the adult Van Fleet children would drive and be responsible for carrying the money which was not an inconsiderable amount, usually 10,000 dollars. It was not unusual for a weekend trip to clear five times that in profit when the antiques were sold in Wayne’s Toronto store. That year, Tom would be leading an expedition for the first time, and it was soon decided among the children that Tom should go with Martha and Amanda.
There wasn’t anything in the year that Martha enjoyed more than the antique expeditions, and because there was only a chance to go once or twice in the year, her preparations and her excitement were matched in their intensity. It was Martha who kept Tom and Amanda informed about her tentative plans as she prepared for the second weekend in March when they would be going. Martha, nervous about anything that might throw off her plans, kept asking her mother if she was sure if it would be alright, that Tom and Amanda, boyfriend and girlfriend, would be safe and appropriate, spending a night in a motel so far from home, with only her as a chaperone. She reassured her mother that she would be vigilant and that Amanda would not be slinking out of the room they shared and going to do illicit things with Tom in his.
Sharon had already spoken to Laura and both agreed that they trusted their children and especially trusted the vigilance of twelve year old Martha upon whose righteous reporting they knew they could rely. Martha was slightly shocked and surprised that she would be trusted to maintain the proprieties for her older brother and his girlfriend, but she was secretly thrilled at the responsibility and positively determined that no one would return from the trip dishonored.
Tom was anything but enthusiastic about the trip and both Martha and Amanda could sense it, but they didn’t understand that the reason that Tom was reluctant to go away from the farm was because of what was going on in Vancouver with Megan. Now that Megan was at his birth mother’s home and she had all day to herself, her email messages just got longer and longer and more personal and intimate, and Tom knew that the intimacy was directed at him. Like most men when confronted with intimacy they couldn’t handle, he pretended it didn’t exist, matter-of-factly, unemotionally acknowledging her gratitude and her open confessions of what his being there had done for her life and for her feelings about herself, and about how she saw the whole world. The fact that he was not only encouraging her to come home to her mother as the best case, but even to the farm if that was the only alternative, made him realize that he was creating a situation where he was going to hurt either Megan or Amanda or both of them, But the alternative of letting Megan find her way in the world without any support just wasn’t acceptable to him. His own feelings for Megan were also very mixed and confusing. The truth he wasn’t telling her or himself was that he was creating a situation he wouldn’t be able to understand or control. There was a bond that only shared pain could forge. Still, when Tom told Megan that he could not disappoint Martha and Amanda and that he would be away for the weekend, away from a computer and the Internet, he felt very uncomfortable doing it.
The daily messages between them had come to be Megan’s emotional life and the thought of Tom going away for the weekend with someone, someone she knew must love him, made her spend the weekend unable to eat, barely able to think, crying bitterly on the long walks in the rain forest with Alan as he tried to console her and sympathize and give her hope. Tom, of course, would never know anything about that weekend or how Wayne would call Ian late Sunday night and propose a plan to help Megan and Allen move to Toronto and start a new life.
Tom had finally broken Megan’s confidence and told his brother Wayne the circumstances of her situation in Vancouver and asked his older brother for his advice and help, if there was any possible way he could give it.
Tom had made Wayne understand and accept that anything he did would have to be approved by Megan before her mother was told and, the McCalls, especially Amanda, could not be told of the plans because they might get back to Ann Marie before Megan had agreed to anything. Wayne had called Tom on the cell phone they were carrying in the Cube Van to ask him for one exception, he asked to be allowed to talk to Ian about the problem when he came back from the farm Sunday night because he had an idea of how Ian might be able to help get Megan and the boy to Toronto.
Tom and Amanda and Martha set out at dawn on Saturday morning in the big empty white truck hoping to come back with it filled with unknown treasures from farms that were some of the earliest settlements in Upp
The time on the road flashed by like the utility poles and it was fun because, whenever the Van Fleets were alone in a car or a truck, somebody was usually singing, either accompanying the music on the CD player or singing songs that wouldn’t be found on any commercial recordings. Martha had chosen the music for the weekend and it was almost entirely her favorite old Celtic songs sung by singing families from the East Coast of Canada, her mother Sharon’s roots. Martha loved roots music and into the big pile of CDs Tom had added the roots music of their father and mother, the musical comedy Hair.
After the sweet high voices and the fiddle’s and the traditional ballads and the infectious plaintive feelings of the old Celtic songs, Hair came on with the raunchy, raucous rock and roll explosive power of the rich middle class flower that it was. The old hippie musical was the highlight of the trip to Ottawa. Martha even sat there enduring the song Sodomy and all the other disgusting, forbidden words in it that one of her friends had explained to her in graphic detail. When Amanda started to sing along, it was too much for Martha, she could listen to such things being sung by someone on a recording, but listening to them in the mouth of the friend sitting beside her, terrified her own brother would join in, left her sitting there silently mortified until she leaped for the CD changer buttons and deleted the one terrible song from its selections. Amanda stopped singing and Tom sang the first two words, ‘Sodomy, Fellatio,’ off key, at the top of his lungs into the sudden silence and Martha screamed at him to stop, screaming how she hated that song.
As they drove, Amanda had the wonderful idea of singing the title song from Hair with her father and her mother at the next Saturday coffeehouse gathering, because all of them were so follicaley challenged in one way or another. Martha was relieved and delighted at the change of subject, and the three of them sang, repeating the song, as Amanda learned all the words and the tangled, poetic, attributes of long, beautiful hair; shining, gleaming, flaxen, waxen.
As they sang, they were traveling the paved remnants of the Opeongo trail, one of the first trails to settlements north of the great Lakes shoreline. The Irish, Scots, and Dutch had made the houses and barns into sheltering squares, and they could see them from the highway as they passed. The old faded buildings seem to fit with perfection into the rugged rough rocks heaving out of the earth, the bare granite remnants of some of the oldest stones on the planet.
Before they got to their destination, when they took a pause from singing, Martha showed Amanda her personal book of treasures, the long list of items from flea markets and excursions that she’d found over the years, each item described in detail as to condition, the purchase and selling price listed into columns at the right of the page. Amanda was interested and couldn’t help but pick up the infectious excitement that Martha resurrected as she went over her great finds. Amanda looked at the handwriting on the pages as it had changed over the years, the writing that had changed and improved coincidentally with Martha’s own education and understanding of antiques. It was all clearly reflected in the improving values of her discoveries.
When they stopped at the first farmhouse chosen on Martha’s detailed map, she almost flew out of the truck to the door of the farmhouse where she politely asked the farmer if she might come in, that she and her brother were looking to purchase antiques for her older brothers antique store.
She was invited in cordially and asked to call Tom and Amanda to join her.
Amanda had no idea visits to an old log farmhouses could take so long. Almost always, especially because it was the children who did the antique picking, the simple strangers insisted on making them tea and offering them whatever sweets were at hand. The Van Fleets had learned it was an unavoidable ritual that they all eventually came to appreciate, and even enjoy. Learning they were farm folks too, usually sealed their welcome. Still, it was obvious that Martha was barely able to control her excitement and she could barely hear the questions or the conversation around her as her eyes flew from one piece of furniture to another, from one piece of glass or brass or pottery to another.
Finally Martha couldn’t bear it anymore and asked the farmer and his wife about a number of the things in the room. There was a huge pine corner cupboard and a set of eight Chicken Coupe chairs that Martha looked at with particular lust.
As Amanda listened, Martha discussed with Tom some of the items she could see and asked the farmer and his wife if it would be all right she looked at some of them more closely. When she had permission to do so, she almost vibrated around the room from one old object to another. After tea, Tom asked if they might look in the barn and any of their old sheds for antiques the farm folks might not want to keep, and the farmer and his wife both dressed in their coats and led the way out into the sheltering square stockade of the old log barns.
Martha was the excited puppy on point as she searched through every building, carefully examining the dusty centuries of junk and old tools, old toys and heirlooms that had lost any meaning and personal value. Some of the best prizes were often found where they had been discarded. Often Martha would announce to Tom when she found something interesting and she would write it on her little notepad in her fine hand. The tour of the buildings took nearly an hour and Martha had more than two pages of notes to remind her of what she had seen. What most surprised Amanda was that Martha almost jumped out of her skin when she found an old pitcher in a cardboard box in the tool shed.
“I think it’s Mallorytown glass.” Martha said almost breathlessly. She brought the pitcher to Tom and he examined it and agreed that it was from the glassworks of the first glass factory in Ontario.
Tom explained to the farm couple that their pitcher was probably worth several thousand dollars and they should take it into the house for safe keeping. The old couple seemed to visibly shrink in fear as Tom and Martha discussed the value of the things they had carelessly thrown aside. Hundreds of dollars for this old weather vane, hundreds of dollars for that old box, hundreds of dollars for an old wicker doll’s carriage, and thousands of dollars for an old jug. The world of high finance and expensive artifacts was new and exciting and shocking because they had never realized the value of the things that they took for granted.
In the barn stable, as two draft horses stared out of their stalls, Tom sat on a straw bale with his sister Martha as they went over the list of things, making estimates of value that glazed the eyes of the simple farm couple who stood silently and watched the two children talk like experts antique appraisers. Amanda was impressed. The couple was blown away.
It took fifteen minutes in the strange kind of time the farm couple clearly didn’t understand, but there in the barn, Tom wrote out a list of the items that he and Martha had agreed they would like to purchase and the amount of money they would be willing to pay for them. They explained how they would pay more if the items turned out to be worth more than they thought, the minimum they would receive was the money they agreed upon, the maximum they would receive would be half of what they received selling the item wholesale.
Tom gave the farm couple the written list and the dollar amounts and their eyes got wider and more frightened as they saw they were being offered a total of three thousand eight hundred dollars for their old things.
The only thing they seemed reluctant to part with was the eight chicken coop chairs which carried the memories of when they were used when people or family came to visit, which they admitted was now almost never. The six hundred dollars Tom was offering for them seemed to be far more than they were worth, but they had a certain sentimental value, reminding them of happier and busier and more prosperous times in life. They decided th
It took half an hour moving from one foot to another and handing the list back and forth before the couple decided they would be pleased to exchange their old things for thirty eight hundred dollars in cash.
The deal was done. Tom counted the money out, in hundreds, from the pile of bills that seemed enormous to everyone except Tom and his sister Martha.
It was already into the afternoon when the truck was more than half full. They only stopped at three other likely looking places and had taken a few things from each one so it meant they had only spent five thousand dollars. Packed carefully in the back were four cardboard boxes filled with toys from the turn of the century. There were three Nantucket baskets, two primitive washstands, a spectacular hand painted bonnet chest and a walnut wallstand of the most intricate carving packed among the small glass and china they had found. It was almost dark when they gave up for the day and drove to the nearest town to look for a restaurant to have their dinner and to find a motel where they could spend the night.
While they had dinner at a little Chinese restaurant, in an old wooden booth under an ornate, high, white painted tin ceiling, Amanda listened to Tom and his sister Martha replaying the day’s activities, the discoveries, the histories of the artifacts, their estimated value and, most of all, the things that they found that they really thought were beautiful. Amanda felt like a displaced person whenever the subject of history and artifacts had come up on the farm. The years of experience and interest, and, in Martha’s case, passion, left Amanda without any connections to tie her to the moment and the discussion. Her cultural past seemed almost blank to her, memories of media mostly, cartoons and commercials and mass produced toys for the mass-market of her childhood. As he talked, Tom ate his disgusting Poutine, the french fries with cheese and gravy oosing through it, while Amanda looked at the carved names and dates in the wood of the table where they sat. Mostly teenage boys made love permanent in initials and hearts and first names and sometimes, determinedly, first and last names together, and Amanda wondered how many of those carved loves had been real or dissolved or lived out a life together.
Over dessert, Tom read the paper. The front page was all Kosovo, the seemingly random brutality, the killing of Muslims by Serbs, had turned into state ordered ethnic cleansing. After six hundred years, people were being driven from their homes and slaughtered in their houses for simply having a different religion, for being different. In the middle of Europe, civilized people slaughtering civilized people was just too close to home and too hard to ignore as the disgust and the outrage in distant complacent Canada rose as it rose in Tom’s heart. And for Tom, the horror and the outrage was actually personal and frightening because he had made friends with one in the foster children from the farm who had often come to the Saturday night coffeehouses even after he left university and was in medical school. He was now a doctor and his first two years would be with Doctors without Borders and his first service was in Kosovo. Every few weeks he would write or Email Tom back home, and the worries were more personal than the ones in the papers and far more heartbreaking for it.
After dinner, the three of them walked through the town that was so much like other towns in Eastern Ontario that had once been wealthy with mills and agriculture and timber, and now had its ornate architecture filled with boutiques and gift stores and discount outlets. Overhead, the detailed patterns of the brick set off ornate many paned windows where most of the second floor rooms appeared to be dark and unoccupied. The old limestone churches stood huge and white and cold in the mild evening air as the steel and glass of the new City Hall sat on its bare lot as if it had somehow been transported from the future to where it sat.
Martha asked if they could play, ‘Did You Ever Notice’, a game the Van Fleet family children played two or three times a year.
Everyone would pile into the passenger van and travel to a different destination; a city street, a town market, a bus terminal, an orchard, a meadow, or a forest ravine. There everyone scattered and spent two hours wandering alone, noticing whatever they might never have noticed before. The way plants grew or died, or how people walked, or the way they dressed or how they changed over time with age and with sex, the object of the game was to pick the most interesting new observation and bring it back to share with the others. All the observations were gathered and listed and there was a vote about which observation was the most interesting. The prize for the most interesting, incisive observation was being treated like royalty for the rest of the day, all requests, all desires, all whims to be satisfied with the obsequious, fawning, servitude of various brothers and sisters.
It was the first time Amanda had heard of the game and she thought it was a wonderful idea but asked if it would be possible to play the game while they walked along together. The rules were amended and conversation stopped as they walked through the streets of the town looking and thinking and trying to understand what they were seeing and why it was the way it was. They walked for an hour before Martha finally said that she’d made a decision about her best observation. Martha was methodical and patient and always very competitive. Tom’s observation was that among the males they passed, most were wearing some kind of athletic shoes. Martha said she noticed that, of the first twenty people they passed on the street, only three had any discernible fragrance. Amanda’s observation was not in the realm of statistical analysis the Van Fleet children favored. What she had noticed also had to do with the sense of smell. Towns smelled different than countrysides, and the thing that she really noticed was how difficult it was to describe the steel and cement and car exhaust aroma that she noticed for the very first time in her life. The vote was taken and, because a person wasn’t allowed to vote for themselves, the winner was immediately obvious, Tom and Martha voted for Amanda’s perception.
The prize was a lot less satisfying than Amanda imagined that it might be. She had no idea what to do or what to ask of her new, humble and ready servants. The inquiries about her comfort and her interests and her desires left her feeling more uncomfortable than she imagined they might, and the more uncomfortable she felt, the more offers of service and consideration came her way. Finally after having Tom feed her a hot fudge sundae, spoon by spoon, she had had enough and ordered them all back to the motel where they had rented two rooms and parked the big truck while they went for dinner.
Back at the motel, the three of them lay side by side watching television on the bed in the room that Martha and Amanda would share. The bare boxes of the motel room, the closet, the chest of drawers, the bed and the night stands, and even the television itself seemed rigid and small and cold in the heat of the room. Boxes in boxes in boxes, and Amanda noticed the boxes for the first time and the motel room felt very small and empty compared to the places they had visited that day, compared to the farm they had left behind.
While Tom and Martha watched a romantic comedy on television, Amanda sat and played, Did You Ever Notice, all by herself. She noticed the wear patterns in the rose colored carpet. She noticed there were only three wire hangers for clothes. She noticed the Chenille bedspread had been sewn down the middle, one made from two that had been washed too often. She noticed Martha’s blond hair and the many shades mixed together. She noticed Martha’s skin and her growing pores starting to get oily, showing red blemishes here and there. She noticed Tom’s beautiful brown skin, his face and his long neck, and the way he held his hands in his lap like a lady. She noticed all the little scars that left their mark from his elbow to his fingers from working with his hands. She noticed his legs and the swell of his thigh and the mound in his jeans between his legs. She noticed and wondered and she saw that Tom had noticed where she was looking and she blushed and looked away to the television.
Around ten o clock Tom asked Amanda, the queen for the day, whether she had any further desires. He had no idea that desire was exactly wh
“If you two are going out, I want you to leave me Tom’s room key.” she said briskly. “If you don’t, I’m going to have to get dressed and come with you.”
Tom looked indignant and mortified, but saw the look in his little sister’s face and knew that she would put up no end of fuss and that she meant exactly what she said. He gave her the key.
At the Dairy Queen, Amanda changed her mind and chose instead a chocolate dipped soft ice cream cone, and Tom had the same thing, and they went back to the streets and walked to the beautiful park beside the fast running black river. Walking in the dark, holding hands, without work or duties or activities or anyone’s attention, they felt small and close and alone. There was a bench by the bank by a wide stone bridge and, when they sat down in the unusually warm spring evening, the ice cream cones were almost gone.
Amanda didn’t know that she had longed to be away and alone with Tom, and as they sat there watching the light dance on the water, Amanda felt desire moving invisibly inside her like the river, and she felt her expectations, deeply and darkly, moving away into the future. The present moment focused on the long beautiful body beside her, and the pleasure in her own, silently waiting as well. Tom had been tender and so patient with her when they had touched or kissed, pulling back as soon as he felt any tension in her at all, and sitting beside him, she felt the clenched fist in her heart open and she could feel her lips tingle with desire. She felt almost normal, almost like a woman, the fairy tale sleeping princess waiting like the winter awaits the warm kiss of spring.
“I want you to put your arms around me.” she said, turning to look at him, “And then I want you to do exactly as you are told, everything I wish, and I want you to do it enthusiastically.”
Tom looked at her and put his arm around her and, as he did that, she swung herself over his lap, her thighs embracing his. She sat in his lap and looked in his eyes and she ran the fingers of her right hand over every feature of his face, finally moving her fingertips from his lips along his cheek bone and down his neck and then back beneath his long hair.
“My man, your mistress would like the most beautiful kiss any woman has ever received in this world.”
Tom didn’t say anything, as his eyes dilated in the dark and Amanda leaned forward and rose up as his head tilted back and his lips received hers, and the gentle kiss grew and grew and grew as his arms came around her and held her, and his hands moved under the heavy wool sweater she was wearing, pulling out the cotton blouse from her jeans, sliding his cool hands onto her hot soft back. From her open mouth, into his, from the tip of her tongue, a drop of saliva fell like a drop of dew.
It wasn’t the most beautiful kiss he’d ever given to her, but it was far and away the most beautiful kiss he had ever received in his life. More beautiful than Christmas Eve, more beautiful than the kiss in the Walnut Wood, more beautiful than he imagined soft lips touching could be, and his heart was pounding and they could both feel his erection between them as his warmed hands moved forward around her torso and up between them and he reached up and felt her breasts fill his hands for the very first time. Amanda gasped. She felt her nipples between his fingers and the heat between their legs as she rose up and pressed herself hard into him, kissing him with a force she never imagined was in her.
It was a long, beautiful few minutes before the incredible intensity locking them together began to release. Both of them knew it was as far as they would go that night. Tom with his sense of Puritan principle, Amanda with her submerged fear, and Martha waiting as a monitor made both of them realize that nothing more was going to happen, they knew they were safe from having to give themselves completely. Knowing it helped open Amanda’s heart, letting herself touch and be touched, like the sun touched and warmed the spring glades in the bare woods they had passed all day long.
Everything could remain unsaid. Everything could still be waiting for life. Everything could still be safe and beautiful, as Amanda moved her sore knees and shifted into Tom’s lap, resting her head softly on his shoulder. The river drifting with the stars, the darkness drifting over the few, far glowing street lights, under the stone bridge there was a deep arch of pitch blackness.
At the motel room, Amanda opened the door with her key and the room was dark except for the blue light from the television washing over Martha were she was lying asleep. It was Amanda who noticed Tom’s room key tied with a string to her slender wrist. She whispered and pointed and Tom saw the key and they both laughed quietly. Amanda slipped her hand into Tom’s and led him to the little alcove in the room beside the dark bathroom. She reached into the bathroom and turned on the bright white light. She let go of Tom’s hand and walked into the light and turned and faced him and their eyes held fast as Amanda reached down for the hem of her sweater and pulled it slowly over her head. Tom watched her fingers as they undid the buttons of her blouse, and when she pulled it from her shoulders and dropped it on the floor, it was Tom’s turn to gasp. Fingers undid her belt buckle and the snap of her jeans opened with a click that seemed to echo in little tiled room, as Amanda slid down her jeans with her red panties inside them, and she bent over and pushed them down and stepped out of them, and she stood up and she was naked and so beautiful standing in Tom’s gaze, and she smiled simply, and it was the smile that made Tom eyes lose focus and he understood why it was called blind desire.
Finally, finally he was able to smile into her eyes and just stand there and remember every curve, every detail, every soft shadow and crevice of her young loveliness. Amanda whispered that she loved him and he whispered that he loved her too and Tom whispered, ‘You are so beautiful.”
Amanda whispered, “I’m glad you think so.” and then slowly reached out and gently swung the bathroom door closed while Tom just stood there in the darkness with his mouth so dry that he could barely open his lips.
Waking Martha for the key, she was barely conscious as Tom snapped the string from her wrist and she rolled over and was fast asleep before he even made it to the door. She wouldn’t even remember waking up, and in the morning felt disgraced by her bare wrist. With no other evidence, she couldn’t even dare make an accusation. Martha’s guilt lasted barely an instant as she got the others up just past dawn, the blue eyed, tiny Sgt. Major of the day. She had everyone showered and dressed and force marched to breakfast in quick time. She knew farm people were up with the dawn and she didn’t want to miss one minute of the great treasure hunt.
There was another new experience for Tom and Amanda: afterglow. Even with the call from his brother Wayne in the early hours of the morning asking Tom’s permission to talk to Ian about a plan to get Megan home from the West, the world seemed warm and slow and simple and lovely as he walked with Amanda to the restaurant and they had their bacon and eggs while Martha poured over her maps, and Tom picked songs from the little jukebox in the booth. One two three, that’s how elementary it was going to be. Falling in love was so easy, so easy, like taking candy from a baby. Martha noticed and was troubled by the new intense gazes passing between Tom and Amanda.
The day went quickly as it always did hunting antique treasures. They loaded and secured two harvest tables, a number of pine cupboard’s and wash stands among their purchases, and the truck was almost full as pastel colors began seeping into the West. They had done very well and spent just a little over three quarters of the money they had brought with them.
Late in the afternoon, Martha had them turn onto an old narrow gravel road from the wider County Road they were traveling. The warm two weeks in March had melted the snow everywhere except the north side of the little woodland valleys where shallow black pools were filled from the little rivulets draining
Tom parked on the road and went to the lane way and looked inside the car. There were still a few bags of groceries sitting on the front passenger seat. Walking back to the truck, he told the girls that he was going to try to pull the car free with the winch on the front of the truck, and he started the engine and turned it into the lane and stretched out the long wire cable and got himself absolutely filthy lying down on the dirt so that he could tie the winch hook to the frame of the car. He took the car out of gear and went back to the truck and the winch pulled the cable tight and the old car began to groan and then slowly almost levitate out of the two holes the tires had dug in the dirt. Tom loosened the cable and then went up and detached it and got even dirtier. When he was finished, he had Martha turn off the truck and the three of them walked up the lane way to the farm.
When they crested the hill they saw that the farmhouse and the big barn and the out buildings between them were made of logs like many others they had seen, the only difference was the scale of the buildings, compared to all the others. The house was two stories and an el shape, the barn was enormous. It was an absolutely beautiful setting, the buildings resting in a little flat valley among rolling fields spreading away in every direction. The other thing that was absolutely stunning were the perfectly pruned old apple and pear and plum trees nestled before the beautiful gardens along the walls of every building, even the barn. But what was truly unusual was the strange artwork positioned all around the property.
Stone or wood or heavy wild grape vines had been made into strange abstract sculptures. Raised up or dug into the earth, the sculptures were strange because they were held together by the simple forces of gravity. Nothing had been cut or carved or broken, things were simply assembled so their own natures and forms and shapes would hold them together and give them the form and the structure as the pieces of art they obviously were. It was nature gathered and reordered and made beautiful in a form nature never imagined. The beauty of nature was ordered in the other harmony of the human imagination. The three strangers looked at what seemed to be an abstract mandala made of field stones, each stone no bigger than a fist, the mandala slowly descending into the earth to a black pool of water at its center.
“This must be some artist’s place.” Martha said.
Amanda agreed and Tom said he liked the sculptures but Amanda and Martha weren’t sure what to think. It was just rocks and wood stuck together
The door to the farmhouse opened and a tiny old woman stepped out to greet them. She looked like an apple doll in her old dress, with her gray hair pulled back and tied in a bun and her brown eyes shining under a beautiful, warm smile that reminded Tom of his mother. The old woman looked the way Sharon might, many years in the future.
They were greeted warmly and the women introduced herself as Miss Bridget Brown and Tom introduced himself and his companions and explained that he had seen a car at the bottom of the lane way and he took the liberty to pull it free from where it was stuck. The little woman threw back her head and threw up her arms, “Providence! My Providence!” she exclaimed, and she told Tom that it would have taken her many hours to jack up the car to get it free.
“That’s why you look like you’ve been rolling in the mud.” Bridget said to Tom,” We’ll have to attend to your clothes. What is it I can do to thank you?” She laughed and took his hand in hers the way his mother might have done with someone she was welcoming. Tom explained their purpose, picking antiques, and she laughed like it was the greatest joke of all.
“We’ll have to go down and take a look in the barn. The one side of the hay loft is still full of the old things my grandfather brought from the old country. He was going to build a fine brick house but somehow the money and the success and the wealth of the New World never really made its way here.” she explained.
“What kind of old furniture?” Martha asked expectantly.
“It’s all these fancy pieces of hand made old things with all the fine turnings and carving. It just never belonged in the rough old log house that’s been here all these hundred and fifty years. Those pieces were meant for the fine mansion my grandfather was expectin to build with his new fortune.”
Martha’s eyes exploded like Roman candles.
“First we’ll have tea and cakes and then we’ll go on down to the barn.” Miss Bridget said brightly, but Martha apologized and asked if it would be all right if she went ahead to the barn because it would soon be dark and very difficult to see.
“That’s true. We still use kerosene lights here. We could never afford the cost of the Hydro coming down the road this far. You go on ahead, if it’s your mind. I’ll take these two inside for some treats, if that’s all right.” Bridget said to Martha, politely. Martha said she was perfectly happy and it was true, and she walked, then ran all the way to the barn.
Tom asked Miss Brown if she had her car keys and if it would be all right if he went down the hill and tried to get the car up the lane. He asked her for something to put on the seat so he wouldn’t get it dirty.
“You’re a dear boy and your mother’s pride, I’ll allow.” she said to Tom and took the car keys out of her dress pocket and handed them to him and then she went in the house and returned immediately with an old rubber raincoat which she gave to him. Tom took the coat and told the woman that his family restored old classic automobiles, and Bridget explained to him that the Studebaker was her family’s first car and had now gone more than 43,000 miles.
“Most of those miles happened a long time ago.” Bridget said, almost sounding wistful.
In the past seventy years the car had averaged less than five hundred miles per year and Tom and Amanda were stunned. Tom told her it was in incredible shape and she explained how it was kept in the drive shed on the wooden floor boards and how she oiled and greased it and maintained it to the standards of the owner’s manual, doing the recommended service at the times recommended, rather than the mileages suggested. Tom was amazed at the story but said nothing and left the old woman with Amanda as he went down the hill to try to get the car up the lane. Amanda stood waiting when the old woman asked her relationship to Tom, explaining that she could see that she was not his sister, explaining there was a difference in the look in her eyes that made clear that Amanda saw Tom as someone very special.
“He’s very special.” Amanda agreed.
“I think you’re right, and there’s something about you that warms my heart as well.” Bridget told Amanda, and the simple sincerity of what she was saying actually made Amanda blush. They stood there and said nothing as they heard the Studebaker start and then slip into gear and then roar to life as Tom climbed the hill at speed. The roar of the motor and the sound of the wheels in the wet dirt broke the silence of the still evening, until the silence finally returned when Tom stopped the car and turned off the motor as the sunset turned the windshield into a sheet of gold.
Inside the house, Miss Brown put a kettle on the wood stove for tea as she moved with surprising purpose and a graceful economy of motion. Tom and Amanda sat on pine arrow backed chairs by the huge hundred and fifty year old harvest table with turned legs the size of Canon balls. The kitchen where they sat was surprisingly spare, not unlike the cabins on the Van Fleet farm. The warmth of the wood stove’s radiant heat made it comfortable and reminded Amanda of the radiant warmth she had come to love. Blazing light fell
Proudly Bridget led her guests past trays and trays of seedlings, some with only the first two primary leaves open, while dozens of red geranium cuttings were already throwing off red blooms in the darkest side of the room. Dog tooth violets and trilliums were already blooming in clay pots clustered among the geraniums so they looked like patches of a woodland grove. Bridget’s pride was all on the dark side of the room in the Woodland wild flowers and her greatest pride was the Lady Slipper orchids that grew on one shelf after another. Some, already succulently in bloom, received the caress of Miss Brown’s single finger as she explained what they were and their habits. Most of the Lady Slipper orchids were native species she once found near her property and that she grew to put back into bogs and woodlands every spring.
“The lumber companies tore up everything.” she said with contempt. “The great forests were leveled long ago and what was left was cut for pulp.” Bridget was disgusted by the practices and said so, her decades of gardening effort were meant to restore and replenish the tenderest things lost to greed. Her focus was most often on the Lady slipper orchid and where there had been few survivors there were now hundreds, thanks to her. Where there were none, they were introduced and left to thrive until they would again feel the bulldozer tracks moving back from the future.
Amanda noticed that, despite Bridget Brown’s lovely smile and obvious love for plants, she had sad eyes and an air of resignation that made her seem tender and alone and, in contrast to her welcoming behavior, somehow withdrawn and shy. She was a recluse. Her manner couldn’t hide it. Amanda was absolutely fascinated by her and, over tea and scones drenched with wild fruit jams exploding with flavor, she slowly got Miss Bridget to tell about herself and her life. The Irish brogue had survived three generations from her grandfather who had been sent as a remittance man to the New World when Canada was almost completely wilderness.
“Back then, if you were a disgrace to the family, they sent you to the colonies with some money and a yearly allowance. My grandfather was just such a disgrace and he managed to disgrace himself again living in Ottawa, so he came out here with a new bride and all that furniture up in the barn loft.
“My Granda was the first to feel the disappointments of the land, but I never did. My family had riches they never even imagined. They walked through it and by it every day of their lives.”
It was already dark outside and the coal oil lamps filled the room with shadows when a knock came on the door and they heard Martha’s little voice on the other side saying that it was her. Bridget got up and went to the door and let Martha in like a new unexpected guest. Martha walked into the room and straight to Tom and she looked like she’d seen some incredible unspeakable horror.
“It’s Hepplewhite.” she whispered, and the two words caught in her throat.
Martha had come from poking through dusty stacks of furniture that had come from the Thomas Hepplewhite factory where it had been made in London England centuries ago. Stacked in the dusty old barn was perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of the most precious inlaid beauty and delicacy ever created by the hands of man.
Tom didn’t realize the implications of what she was saying because he was sure she was talking about the copies and derivative creations done in the style of Thomas Hepplewhite.
“I think they’re originals.” Martha said in a small reverent voice.
“No.” Tom replied, and Martha answered him by simply nodding her head over and over.
“Miss Brown, my sister tells me that your furniture may be original Hepplewhite pieces. That would mean that they were worth an incredible amount of money, more than we can afford to pay.”
“I don’t want to be talking about that old stuff when I have you delightful folks here to visit. You have to tell me about yourself and your family and how it is they came to be looking for such old things.” Tom knew that the price and the process of acquiring antiques was gaining the confidence and trust of simple folk, and so, much to Martha’s chagrin and anxiety, Tom had her sit down and take tea and sample the cakes and jams from the beautiful flo blue platter.
Tom described the farm and his family and the circumstances that made fourteen strangers into brothers and sisters, and he described his parents and all they had done to make them happy and prosperous and secure. He described the businesses and the summer foster families and he even mentioned how all the children had been educated at home.
Miss Brown sat there with her eyes focused on Tom as if she was listening to tales from the Arabian Nights. Sometimes she would repeat his last phrase in wonder or say,’ How wonderful, How wonderful.’ one of her favorite phrases. As Amanda listened and Martha got more anxious to be discussing antiques, Amanda realized the reclusive woman was overwhelmed by the description of the farm the same way she had been overwhelmed by its reality. They had both lived their lives alone in one room, the difference was that Amanda had always felt there was something enormous missing in her life. Bridget Brown had been content with everything in hers.
Finally, Martha couldn’t take it any longer and asked Tom to come to the barn to see the things that she had found, but Miss Brown had absolutely no interest in the impatience of youth and told Martha that the old things had been there for a hundred and fifty years and weren’t going anywhere soon. That was not what Martha wanted to hear and certainly not what she hoped would happen. This was the mother-load for Martha, the mother of all finds, the legendary discovery that would make her a legend among pickers. She would be the first one to see El Dorado. But she knew well enough to be quiet when asked, and so she sat there and squirmed while Miss Brown asked about the Van Fleet family’s home school education. Again Miss Brown listened with wonder.
When Tom seemed to be finished with the topic, Bridget changed the subject radically.
“So, do your parents take you off to church every Sunday?” she asked.
“That’s hard to explain. We have Sunday service around a tree, and we mostly just sit there and think.” Tom replied.
“I suppose that’s another invention of your mother’s?” Bridget asked. And when Tom nodded, she rolled back her eyes and said that Sharon was the first person she’d heard about in many, many years that she wished that she could meet.
“You don’t go to church?” Amanda asked Miss Brown.
Bridget Brown got up from the table and went and got a fat white book from beside her Lincoln rocker and came and handed it to Amanda. It was the collected works of Emily Dickinson.
“Everything I could ever imagine wanting to know or feel about God or human beings is in these poems. If I lived to be two hundred years old and grew another brain twice a smart as the one I have, I’d never be able to find the bottom or the top of the places Emily has been before and left little road maps in her words.”
From heart, she quoted Emily Dickinson’s poem, A Mile Out From Shore.
“We’re people of the land.” she said, “A church is a poor old tub to go out on the fathomless deep.”
The visitors then realized they clearly were in the presence of something more than just a simple, uneducated farmer.
“What if it’s the only old tub that you’ve got?” Amanda asked, gently.
“Then I guess you do like me and just wander over to the shoreline now and then and stare at the horizon and wonder. Do you ever wonder, Sweet Cream?” Miss Brown asked Amanda.
Amanda laughed at being given the nickname of her own beautiful horse and she told Miss Brown the coincidence, and then Miss Brown said the coincidence was all hers. None of them knew what she meant.
Bridget Brown looked at the strange nervous gaze in Martha’s eyes and she took pity on her and said that
“Oh, please!” Martha squealed.
At the big sliding barn door Tom strained to push it aside while the others all waited to go inside. Miss Brown stood with the coal oil light she carried from the house before she led the way into the enormous black throat of the barn where they could hear the dry coughs of a few animals moving in their pens and stalls, hooves on old cement. Bridget Brown led the way to the wooden stairs to the second floor of the barn in the muffled chords of their footsteps, and no one spoke as they all gathered at the top of the stairs, and then Miss Brown led them to the hayloft on the North side of the barn and she handed the lantern to Tom and he carried it up the wooden ladder to the loft where they could see the old furniture piled in deep rows. Martha was up the ladder in a flash, Tom and Amanda following while Miss Brown waited in the dark at the foot of the ladder.
Martha almost dragged Tom through the rows of furniture telling him to look from one piece to another, the lamp showing where her hand had wiped away the dust of a century to show the detailed marquetry among the incredible wood grains. Antiques that had belonged to Miss Brown’s grandfather and his, had been preserved in their unblemished beauty over the centuries. Time was turned, time was carved, time was where it stood forgotten.
Little tears were actually running down Martha’s cheeks as she moved the dust away from one piece after another exposing the beauty in the glow of the lamp light. Amanda followed in the shadows and she could see the electric excitement in Martha was now vibrating in Tom. He told Amanda that they were looking at some of the most beautiful furniture that had ever been created. She told him she could see that, but it was only partly true. She could see so much more beauty in the glow in lamp light in Tom and Martha’s eyes.
They finally came back down the ladder where they joined Miss Brown, and Tom explained to her that Martha and he agreed that the pieces gathering dust in the loft would make her very wealthy indeed if she chose to have them sold at auction. Tom explained that his brother would be glad to have the chance to be her agent, and because of the enormous value they would have to negotiate a much smaller percentage than they usually asked when buying furniture wholesale. Tom was very clear and calm and business like as he spoke and Amanda had never seen him so sincere and careful. Martha stood beside Tom as he spoke and her anxiety made her whole body twitch up and down like a toddler needing a bathroom.
“There is a little inlaid writing desk I’d like to take to show my brother, if you agree to sell it. It’s probably worth a hundred thousand dollars at auction and I could leave you two thousand dollars as a down payment.”
“Oh my, all that money, all that fuss. You’re welcome to take anything you like. I suppose it would be good if they found a place to be where they’d be appreciated, where they wouldn’t be just an old forgotten dream.” Miss Brown said as if she was talking about giving away a few rooted cuttings.
Martha almost fainted.
“Even that old forgotten dream makes them more valuable, their provenance is almost impeccable.” Tom explained, “I insist that you take full value for your things, and I’m sure my brother Wayne would be happy to help your things find people to appreciate them.”
“Then that’s all that matters. It’s been a great day for us all, it seems. My old car is out of the mud and you have found some things that you like.” Bridget Brown replied matter-of-factly.
Martha couldn’t help it. “But don’t you realize there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars up there? Don’t you care about the money at all?” she all but demanded to know.
“Dear, the government has been sending me this enormous amount of money every month for the past fifteen years. It comes whether I want it or need it and it’s far more money than I can ever use or want. In fact it just keeps building in my bank account. What am I to do with hundreds of thousands of dollars?” she replied, as if Martha’s question was the height of youthful inexperience.
Tom insisted that, regardless of her needs, it wouldn’t be possible for him to take her furniture without giving her its fair value.
“If you don’t need the money yourself, perhaps you’d want to give it to some charity.” Amanda interjected, speaking to Miss Brown.
“Wonderful! Wonderful! I could leave that business all to you, if it wouldn’t be imposing too much.” she replied enthusiastically. “That’s it then. Let’s have no more talk about the money.”
“There are charities where people give money to buy land so it will never be developed, so it will stay natural and wild.” Tom continued, ignoring her admonition about money.
“What a perfect and wonderful thing that is. I’m sure Amanda will be able to find such folk.” she replied and then she told him to go get the table they wanted to take with them and Tom and Martha went up the ladder and carefully gathered the little table and lowered it down to the floor. Martha stood over it dusting the surface with the sleeve of her jacket and she was breathing like she was in the throes of lust. And that was exactly what it was; her mind was reeling with the very idea that this old woman was just letting them take her priceless things.
Rather than bring the truck up the muddy lane way, Martha and Tom carried the little table downhill as Amanda walked beside them with the lamp, standing by until the last of the packing blankets enclosed the table like a silk moth cocoon. Then they closed up the truck and Tom and Amanda went back up the hill to say goodbye to Miss Brown. There was a cold wind starting to rise with the moonlight as Tom and Amanda stood at the door of the log farmhouse with Bridget Brown.
“We’re so grateful for all this. I don’t know how to thank you.” Tom said sincerely.
“It was a pleasure meeting you all and I expect you’ll be back for those other things, so this isn’t goodbye.” she replied, warmly.
“And you should really think about what the money might do for your life. You should talk to your family. Money is an important thing in life. It gives you great opportunities.” Tom said gently, seriously concerned about the issue
“Opportunities are for those who need them, dear heart. And as to my family, I had a son. He was ashamed of being poor. He was ashamed of me. I guess the joke is on him, if what you say about all the old things in the hay loft is true.”
“How could he ever have been ashamed of you?” Amanda asked, almost angrily.
“Aren’t you a sweet thing to say so. Aren’t you a sweet thing?” Miss Brown took her hand in hers and kissed it and the gesture caught a lump in Amanda’s throat.
“Would you be coming back?” the old woman asked softly.
“I would love to come back and see you.” Amanda replied enthusiastically.
“Then you will, and we’’ll go for a long walk and you’ll tell me everything that’s important and I’ll try to do that too.”
“It’ll be like having a real Gran. My only Grandmother lives in Victoria and I’ve only seen her once in the last five years.” Amanda explained.
“We’ll start you a hope chest in the space of your heart.” Bridget Brown replied, and the idea of it seemed strange and thrilling to Amanda. For many days after, she thought about a hope chest in the space of her heart.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I have a little book by someone you might just love. It’s the journals of an artist, a painter named Emily Carr.” Amanda explained.
It had been Tom’s present to her. Emily Carr had lived and painted among Tom’s own people. She remembered she had left it on the truck dash, and when she remembered, she just knew it was meant for Miss Brown.
Miss Bridget Brown thanked her and took the little book.
Amanda hugged Miss Brown and then she turned and went downhill beside Tom and she felt somehow that Miss Brown had turned some lever inside her, transforming the way she felt and saw. The quiet
The road home was long; Martha obsessing over Tom’s driving almost all the way. She couldn’t help worrying about the little Hepplewhite secretary. It was with a great sense of relief to them all that Martha finally opened the back of the truck and gathered their undamaged prize. The secretary was carried to the front porch of the farmhouse and cleaned as Sharon and Laura stood in awe of its beauty, as Martha talked a blue streak, listing from memory all the other beautiful things that would come out of the black hayloft far away.
Amanda said that she would like to take Miss Brown a wonderful picnic and some roses, if Rosie could spare them. She told how Miss Brown was one of the most interesting human beings she’d ever met in her life.
Later that night, before they slept, Laura listened to Amanda tell the story of her weekend and she was amazed at how Amanda had formed such a powerful interest in an old reclusive woman in just the few hours they had been together. The woman seemed to have filled something that was missing in Amanda. Laura was completely intrigued. As Laura listened to Amanda speaking with a simple confident tone, she wondered if she had finally made love with Tom despite their promise and Martha’s professed vigilance. Laura wondered how things could change, how things could happen so fast. A few hours with a stranger could be so eventful. A few hours with the right stranger could change a person’s life.
The next morning began a day that would completely transform Amanda’s life at the farm. It began at breakfast when Tom told her that Megan and her friend Alan were coming back from the West. They would be coming to the farm the next day. Before breakfast was over Amanda, was taking a phone call from her father asking her if it would be all right if Megan’s friend Alan could stay in her room until the school year was over. He had explained that the boy was not interested in going to the farm; he wanted to stay in the city because the idea of living on a farm just wasn’t something he wanted to do. Amanda was shocked and didn’t know what to say. The idea of some strange boy she had never heard of living in her room almost felt like a violation of her own personal space. The thought of some stranger touching her things was something she couldn’t bear, and she told her father what she was feeling. He told her he understood completely and he would pack all her things and store them in the locker in the basement of their condominium.
Considering where she was living and considering how much others had done for her, finally made it impossible for Amanda to say no. Reluctantly she agreed, and when she hung up the phone and knew that her father would be packing her things, it was as if she was somehow dead and gone. It made a knot in her stomach that felt like a fist when it cramped.
When she told Tom about the phone call he already knew everything, and that private knowledge, that he hadn’t shared with her, made her feel somehow betrayed. What was worse was when he told her that Ann Marie and Megan would be coming the next day to talk to Sharon to see if there was a way to work out a plan so that that Megan would be staying at the farm indefinitely.
“When did all this get decided?” Amanda asked soberly.
“In the last two days, Wayne has been talking to my mother and to Sharon and your dad trying to work out a way to get her to come back home. I couldn’t tell you anything about it, because nothing was finally decided until three in the morning last night.”
“My dad wants to let some boy live in my room. Where she is she going to stay here?” Amanda asked dejectedly.
“Probably one of the cabins, if my mother gets her way; Megan’s mom probably has to come live here with her. She’s always said there is no point in taking in other children short term unless they come with a family. In her mind, letting your kids go away from home is the worst thing you can do. I don’t know if it’s going to work out. It sounds like Megan’s mother doesn’t want to come here. She wants Megan to move back home and Megan says she won’t do it. She says she’d just get back in with her old friends. And she’s probably right” Tom explained carefully.
“Do you want her to come here?” Amanda asked Tom directly.
“Of course. This is the best chance she has at turning her life around. Look what it’s done for you?” he answered.
“Well, I can’t help it, I feel pretty threatened. I’m losing my room to some boy I’ve never seen and some girl is coming here, probably to be with you. You’re going to be the one who changes her life and she’s going to fall in love with you for sure. And I’m supposed to like this. Amanda looked straight into Tom’s eyes but he didn’t give an inch.
“We’re talking about trying to keep someone’s life from going in the toilet. I’ve been in that toilet, so you’re going to have to trust my feelings and you’re going to have to think about someone else who needs help more than you do, and someone who needs a room that you don’t even use.”
Amanda knew he was right even though it was her room and her place with her father she was being asked to give up. She knew what she owed to Tom and what he owed to his parents and she felt selfish and small, but she couldn’t help it because she was very much afraid of how things could change, how much she had to lose. She was looking at everything she had to lose and that absolute, sudden realization made her fear explode geometrically inside her.
“You’re right. I’m scared to death, but we’re talking about people’s lives here. I really haven’t forgotten what it means to have your life on the line. I haven’t forgotten. You won’t have any trouble from me. But I still hate it.” Amanda said in resignation to the reality of the situation.
Tom could see Amanda was telling the truth, and he could see how hard it was for her, and part of him felt guilty for the secret personal intensity of his relationship with Megan, and part of him was afraid of what was coming, and part of him was angry she doubted him and the love that he knew was the center of his being.
That afternoon, Ann Marie and Wayne and Ian were in the arrivals lounge of the Air Canada terminal waiting for the plane from Vancouver. Ian had phoned her at three thirty in the morning to tell her the news that her daughter was coming home. Ian had talked and explained everything while Ann Marie cried like a baby on the other end of the phone. He had explained everything about where the boy would be staying and how they would be going to the farm to talk to Sharon and how the plane would be coming that afternoon. He had explained the details of the negotiated settlement the way a lawyer would do. He stuck to the facts and kept to the agenda and he could hear a mother’s heart being torn apart between the forces of joy and fear. It was what she had hoped and prayed for and she had absolutely no idea what she would do to make sure her daughter would climb out of humiliation and self-destruction. All she could do was cry and say thank you, over and over, when Ian finally stopped talking.
Sitting in the airport lounge, Ian and Wayne tried to keep Ann Marie from exploding in anticipation of seeing her daughter. She was rehearsing the moment they would see one another and what she would do, and how she would react, and how her daughter would respond, and what would happen, and how it would be, and how she would feel, and how would she look, and how she would get through just the first five minutes. What was she going to say? The half-hour wait for the plane’s arrival was filled with lots of anxious talk and replays of everything that had gone on in the past two days, Ann Marie finding out about the negotiations and arrangements that were necessary to get Megan to agree to come home. Ann Marie was embarrassed that her friends would have to negotiate for her with her seventeen year old daughter who was able to control professional adults from 3000 miles away. She was amazed to hear how involved the plans were for both Alan and Megan.
Wayne had arranged for Alan to undergo assessment and counseling before being enrolled in school, and depending on how the sessions went, he would be
She was very nervous about the tentative plans for Megan going to live at the farm, and the idea she would have to give up her work and go to live there with her was one thing that she was desperately hoping she would not have to do. She wanted her daughter in her house, in her time, in her own way. She did not want to share or surrender anything she was about to get back of her daughter. When the plane was delayed, the conversation suddenly hit a wall of disappointment. The empty runway into the arrival lounge looked as long and cold and hard as Ann Marie’s terrified heart. A million stories had walked down that ramp. A million hearts had walked through the impersonal blue decor. There was only one story, one heart that mattered to Ann Marie.
The silence grew and Ian could feel the tension and so he tried to break it by talking about the first thing that came into his mind, the last thing he remembered that had interested him, the story that Laura was working on in the Arthur and Laura Lee book. It was the story of John Merrick, the Elephant Man. Ian wondered aloud how someone so disfigured and so abused and so tormented all his life could end up with the gentle sweetness and an unbound sense of forgiveness for all those who had tormented him. Ann Marie was barely listening, but Wayne, almost by heart, knew the very letters Arthur and Laura Lee had exchanged, knew how Arthur and Laura Lee would come to John Merrick in his dreams and describe to him the beauty of the human heart that no one could see and that so many would one day come to recognize. John Merrick had his dreams and his own memory of how his own mother had loved him and looked at him before she died when he was just a boy.
“I’m not sure if those aren’t my favorite letters,” Wayne replied, “Being gay can sometimes feel like you’re hideous and ugly and a complete freak no one would ever want around. I wasn’t wanted before I even knew I was gay, so it was kind of a double barreled blast to the old ego when I realized what I was. By then I was living at the farm and starting to feel like I belonged to a real family and then I was feeling things that I thought would make them reject me all over again. Feeling you don’t belong, sometimes is worse when you think that people may actually love you.” That got Ann Marie’s attention. Wayne went on talking.
“It’s like, what’s wrong with this picture. Sometimes you can’t help thinking that you’re the thing that’s wrong with the picture. I loved the farm and Sharon and Eugene, and even some of my brothers and sisters. I loved everything there, except it just wasn’t me. You have to be really strong to let someone really love you. At the farm, you just can’t get away from it for a second,”
“You know what finally got me off heroin, besides my dad following me everywhere? The best thing, the thing that made getting straight something I wanted to do, was having my apartment just the way I wanted it. Isn’t that crazy? Decorating saved my life. How perfectly stereotypical.” Ann Marie was finally transported from her own anxiety listening to Wayne confess his own fear of love.
“Why do you think that was?” Ann Marie asked seriously.
“I think everyone needs to feel they belong in the context of their life. Finding your own context is probably the hardest thing in life.” Wayne answered.
Ian understood exactly what he was saying. His context was not the city, his context connected his hands and his heart and his mind the way it happened at the farm. That was where he really belonged. He knew it then with a terrible certainty and sense of loss.
“I love the context of my own life.” Ann Marie replied, “It’s obviously not the best context for my daughter. What do I do when she comes home?”
“Well, I think she and Tom have been working on that. I think she knows what it means now to have no context at all. She’s going to feel lost and afraid and too proud to admit it, but she’s made a long first step, and she’s come with someone that she won’t abandon. I think she’s on her way.” Wayne answered reassuringly, and Ann Marie wanted to believe it with all her heart. Wayne and Tom and all the Van Fleets somehow always made the future look hopeful.
Ann Marie suddenly saw the word ‘Arrived’ beside the flight from Vancouver, and it looked so real and final and as concrete as anything she’d ever seen in her life, and she saw the plane taxying to its ramp and then there was an interminable few minutes before the first people started coming down the ramp to the arrivals lounge. Somehow she expected to see Megan looking as she did before she left, dressed in leather and studs and silk scarves and platform shoes. She had also prepared herself for a hooker in hot pants and halter. What she did not prepare herself for was a girl dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt walking beside a beautiful blond haired boy in tight jeans and a white rayon shirt. They looked positively as normal as everyone else disgorging from the plane, and nothing like what they had been or what they had done.
Ann Marie couldn’t help herself, she screamed and started to run to her daughter and when Megan saw her mother she looked absolutely terrified and stopped dead in her tracks. The force of her mother’s emotion was irresistible as Ann Marie gathered her daughter in her arms, pressing her lips into Megan’s cheek, tasting it like it was the most succulent, addictive fruit in the world. Megan endured the onslaught until her mother backed away, standing there crying, just holding her face between her hands.
“You look so beautiful. You look so beautiful!” Ann Marie said through her tears.
“Okay, that’s enough, eh.” Megan replied as Wayne and Ian joined them. “I’m not beautiful.”
Wayne introduced himself to Alan and then introduced the boy to Ian, and Alan looked at Ian nervously, suspiciously. He was looking in Ian’s eyes for his angle. He was looking for the price he’d have to pay, what strangers always wanted. Suspicious minds made it difficult for anyone to feel comfortable. No one knew anyone’s real motives; no one knew what anyone really wanted. The best they could hope for each moment was that it wouldn’t explode in misunderstanding.
Wayne bought everyone dinner at a Chinese restaurant downtown. Getting there, packed in one car was almost a surreal experience because everyone seemed to be trying their best to be civil and light and happy. The conversation sounded like Alan and Megan had been coming back from some middle-class holiday in Florida. The thing that made it surreal was that no one could ask or answer any real questions about what happened or where they had been and what they had experienced.
Dinner was better when Wayne and Ian put on their practical hats and started to talk about the logistics of the evening and the next day. Alan would spend the week getting oriented in Toronto with Wayne and Ian, settling into his room and school and meeting some of the people who would help him feel safe and familiar. That night he would be staying with Wayne and Charles, meeting some people the next day and then joining Ian for dinner before he went back to see where he would be living for the foreseeable future. Ann Marie and Megan would be going to the farm the next morning to talk with Sharon and Tom. Just the mention of Tom’s name made Megan nervous and excited. She had sent him pictures of herself and Alan and Tom’s birth mother in the past week. She had changed her appearance entirely, trying to imagine how people dressed on the farm, what she would have to look like to fit in and belong. The pictures from the ice races were the only clue she had, and that was the reason she was dressed in jeans and sweatshirt. Style wasn’t substance at the farm. She knew she was going to have to dress down.
Ann Marie was amazed that the defensiveness and anger that had been so much a part of her daughter’s demeanor seemed to have vanished. She looked nervous and frightened and looked more like a
The evening was over many hours before Alan and Megan were used to. Even when they were living with Tom’s birth mother, it took a long time for them to adjust to living in the day and sleeping at night. And the most difficult thing was not knowing where they should go and what they should do, what routine would get them through another night. Alan was going to a completely new life; Megan was going back to her old room. They both suffered from a similar anticipatory dread.
Back in her apartment, Ann Marie didn’t know what to do or say to make her daughter feel comfortable and welcome. She understood that Megan was perhaps only there for the night and Megan’s real hope was that they would take her at the farm where she could be with Tom. Megan did what all teenagers did when forced to be alone with a parent, she turned on the television. And that was what they did, sitting beside each other like strangers, mother and daughter watching television, Megan holding the remote control. In the morning Ann Marie was surprised when she got up and found her daughter still sitting in front of the television, drinking coffee and eating a pile of brown toast.
“So how was it being back in your room again?” Ann Marie asked bravely.
“I hate all that shit. It’s all fucked up baby shit. I’m sick of pretending to be more fucked up than I am. I’m sick of wearing my pain on my sleeve.” she replied, sounding angry.
“That’s great. That’s so great.” Ann Marie’s sighed in relief. She was hearing the first moment of honest self-awareness Megan had ever shared with her. She had no idea whether it was her own negative experiences or Tom’s influence that had done it, but her daughter was obviously looking at the context of her own life. Ann Marie wanted to cheer out loud, but didn’t dare.
Tom and Sharon and Amanda were waiting on the front porch of the farmhouse when Ann Marie’s car drove down the long lane way. Tom led the way when they got up, and with the dogs following behind them, they went to meet the hope and fear stepping out of the opposite doors of the new car. When Megan first looked at Tom, her heart soared because he was just so beautiful, and like a speck of dust soaring in the sunlight, without weight or substance, her love for him exploded out of her. But, in the next instant, when she noticed Amanda beside him and saw her hand in Tom’s, her whole being seemed to implode in the vacuum of loss and disappointment. She wanted to run. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream that it wasn’t fair. But she did nothing as Tom let go of Amanda’s hand and came to her and took her in his arms and she could hear his voice, his beautiful voice, telling her how glad he was that she was there. Amanda followed Tom and hugged Megan as well, as she remembered the girl that had become something of a woman.
It was then Sharon’s turn to welcome Megan and, as usual, she turned her eyes and her smile on her like a search light. Sharon led the way and they all walked back to the porch, Ann Marie beside her, Tom between Amanda and Megan, no one speaking, no one knowing what to say. Amanda and Tom went to the kitchen for a pot of tea while Sharon sat down with Ann Marie and her daughter.
“Your mother knows her way around the farm already and after we have tea, you probably have time before lunch to let her show you the place. You’re both probably feeling a little strange and nervous about the idea of living here and we’ll talk about that when you come back, but I think you should look around together and share your own impressions without having one of us steer you.” Sharon explained.
“I don’t want to stay here.” Megan said coldly.
“I don’t understand. I thought that was what you wanted?” Ann Marie said in surprise.
“This place gives me the creeps.” Megan spat out rudely. “I just want to go, OK?”
Ann Marie was stunned. From what she had understood, it would be up to her to decide if she was willing to come to live at the farm with Megan. She had understood that it had at all been arranged except for her final agreement. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or grateful or upset.
“That’s fine.” Sharon answered Megan. “There’s no point in you coming here unless you bring some kind of hope. But I’d like you to walk around and have lunch with us before you finally decide. And there’s one thing that I’d like you to think about while you’re looking around. I believe that if you stay three months with us, you’ll find someone here who will love you for the person you’re afraid to be with anyone else in the world.”
“What horseshit.” Megan shot back and it ripped her apart to say it because she already knew who that person was. Of that she was completely sure.
Ann Marie said nothing but was mortified by her daughter’s rudeness.
“I don’t think it’s horseshit.” Sharon replied,” And neither do you. You can’t lie to yourself by lying to me. But that’s all right, just go for a walk with your mother and think about what I said.”
“OK! Let’s do it!” she said almost angrily to her mother as she got up out of her chair.
“All right.” Ann Marie replied as she followed her daughter out the door in absolute confusion.
Even as a psychologist, Ann Marie didn’t know to deal with the situation. She wanted to ask if seeing Tom with Amanda was the reason she changed to mind about coming to stay at the farm, but if it was true, she had no idea of the reaction she would get. She also wanted to know if she was going to be a sad second choice and if Megan was planning to come home. There was so much to see, but they went through one building after another like they were tourists killing time. Megan seemed to be barely holding on to her rage and impatience. This was the Megan that Ann Marie remembered.
It was the caustic inevitability of time that was killing Megan as the shock of her realization of Tom’s connection to Amanda burned into her heart. She could barely hear and she could barely think, and she could barely talk when her mother spoke to her. Finally, in the barn, while they were looking at beautiful white Sweet Cream, Megan heard her mother say the hideous words that were pounding in her brain.
“You’re in love with Tom.”
“Yessss!” she squealed and slowly fell against her mother and started to cry the acid tears of her sorrow.
“You knew they were together when you decided to come here, but you’re going to lose him for sure if you just walk away.” Ann Marie said softly. She wanted her daughter to hope once again. It wasn’t the first time she had hoped that Tom would do for Megan what he had done for Amanda. Holding her daughter close to her, she knew for the first time that it was possible.
“Don’t give up on him.” Ann Marie said seriously.
After a time, the tears stopped and the sobs became silent and Megan looked at her mother and just stared into her eyes, looking to see if she was being played. She knew her mother didn’t want to come to live at the farm. She knew her mother really didn’t want to go that far for her. Saying what she did, Megan realized that her mother was prepared to do what it took to make her happy, even if her happiness was just a pipe dream.
“But I’m just street trash. How could he ever want me?”
“Has he ever treated you like street trash? Isn’t he the one who wanted you to come here?” Ann Marie asked pointedly.
It was true. The person she came to love in words on a computer screen, and the very real feeling she had when she was in his arms, said he cared about her and respected her, and understood her as no one ever had. To stay and watch him with Amanda would be the hardest thing she would have to do in her life. She had no idea if she could ev
It was then Ann Marie saw something she had never seen before in her daughter, emotional strength and resilience. Megan stood back and stood up and wiped away her tears as if they were all there was of all she had suffered, all that she had endured, all the things that made her know she could face humiliation and disappointment and survive. What she didn’t know was if could survive it at the hands of the people she loved. She looked in her mother’s eyes and for the first time in her life knew that she was undeniably on her side. That was what gave her the strength to go back and face Sharon and face Amanda and look in Tom’s beautiful eyes.
Both Ann Marie and Megan were relieved that it was only Sharon sitting on the porch with a tea pot under a quilted cozy of a cat.
“Lunch will be ready in just half an hour, but you’re probably thirsty from the drive. Sit. It’s our own blend of Sumac and lemon balm.”
Ann Marie and Megan sat while Sharon poured and asked how Megan liked the tour.
“It’s cool. Tom’s told me everything about the place in emails. He told me all the rules around here and they’re sure different.” Megan said trying to sound casual.
“The rules we have here aren’t very complicated. Because there’s so many people, and so much going on, everybody has to do their share. But nobody is forced to do anything. Nobody is sent to their room. If there’s a problem, you work it out with me. I’m the alpha wolf. I’m in charge until somebody comes along who does it better. If you decide to stay, you go to school in the morning and work in the afternoon, and if you decide you don’t want to work, you can just sit and watch everybody else while they do. But if you decide you don’t want to work, you don’t get paid that day or that week or that month. “
“Why would we be paid?” Ann Marie asked in surprise.
“Because we’re serious capitalists around here. Work gets rewarded, not working doesn’t.” Sharon answered. “But that’s never been a problem. Once anybody starts to enjoy working, it’s more addictive than sex. They’re actually a lot alike, the better you get at it, the more you want to do it.”
Megan didn’t believe it for a second but decided not to challenge Sharon, instead explaining to her mother how much they would be making in dollars and cents, and Sharon was bemused to watch her doing it. Thanks to Tom, secondhand, Megan really did know a lot about the farm.
“It’s also especially good for the foster families who come here because parents get to stop having to be the boss all the time, and the kids learn what it’s like to have a real one.” Sharon added when Megan was finished talking.
“It would be worth coming to stay here just for that.” Ann Marie said with a laugh, and she could see that her daughter agreed wholeheartedly.
“What happens if I really screw up?” Megan asked almost defiantly.
“You live with it. We live with it and I’ll get to sound really fierce. If you screw up because you didn’t know any better, we try to work out a way to learn from your mistake. If you screw up because you just want attention, we try to figure out a way to get you more than you ever imagined. There’s good attention and bad attention. If you want bad attention you’re going to feel very alone. Every one of my kids has had more attention for being bad than you could ever dream. Bad attention doesn’t impress anyone around here.” Sharon answered simply.
“Has Tom told you what he was like when he first became a part of our family?” Sharon asked Megan.
“A little bit.” Megan answered, nervous at the mention of his name.
“Tom was the prince of bad attention. Ask some of the others. He was sad and scared and as angry as any one of my children.” Sharon said without explanation.
Both Megan and her mother sat in shock and surprise at learning such a thing about a boy they both thought was as close to perfect as they could imagine.
“Why did you say that if I stay here three months I’ll find somebody who loves me for the person I can’t be with anyone else?” Megan asked nervously.
“It happens. It always happens on the farm. It’s just my own observation.” Sharon replied.
“I don’t believe it. Everybody? Hardly anybody ever finds somebody that will love them for who they really are. It doesn’t happen.”
“I’ll bet you ten thousand dollars against a simple handshake that it happens to you if you come to live here for three months.” Sharon replied.
“Right! Ten thousand dollars! I really believe you.” Megan said her eyes rolling in total skepticism.
“Why not?” Sharon answered, “It’s worth ten thousand dollars to me to think you’ll find someone who loves you for yourself. Just think of it as my little sweetener. I think it would be good if you and your mother came here, at least until the summer.”
“I don’t believe you.” Megan answered defiantly. “Ten thousand dollars!”
Sharon got up and left the room leaving Ann Marie and her daughter not knowing what to do or say until she came back and counted ten pink Canadian thousand dollar bills into Megan’s hand.
“There. You hold the money. If you decide after three months that I was wrong about finding someone who’ll love you for yourself, you’ll have ten thousand dollars to start a new life, if I’m wrong. I’m betting we’ve got lots more to offer than you ever even dreamed exists in life.”
“Let me get this shit straight. If I don’t find somebody who loves me, I get to keep the ten grand. If I do, you get it back.”
“That’s it.” Sharon concurred. “The last time I won that bet was with Tom.”
“He found someone who loved him for himself. Who was it? “ Megan asked, pointedly.
“It was his father, just like Amanda.”
Megan was stunned to hear it, and didn’t like the deep connection it implied.
“You can’t do this bet. I don’t understand.” Ann Marie said to Sharon.
“I think it’s a great bet. There’s no way I can lose.” Sharon said. “I could make the same bet with you.”
Ann Marie was stunned. “You really like betting the long shots. No side bets thank you. But I still don’t understand why I have to be here with Megan. I have a lot of patients depending on me. I could probably afford the time off, but I don’t understand what I’d be doing here.” Ann Marie continued.
“You have a daughter who wants to be able to stop depending on you, and to do that she needs you beside her. You need to see each other working side-by-side; you need to stop playing tug-of-war with your lives. This is the only place you can learn to pull in the same direction.” Sharon explained concisely.
“I guess I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t take the chance that you’re right.”
“You can’t lose, if you play.” Sharon answered and mother and daughter looked at each other like they were waiting to see the color change of a pregnancy test.
Over lunch, Megan made one very important decision. She decided that if she was going to have any chance with Tom at all, she would have to become Amanda’s friend. They had a history, as children, getting along well enough. Amanda wasn’t a real friend she would have to betray, but she would have to become one. Megan began the process by which she would learn to make compartments inside her for her feelings for different people. None of the compartments would connect. None of the compartments would know the other was there.
The rest of the day was actually fun, the most fun she remembered that hadn’t involved money. That she had ten crisp pink bills crammed in her jeans didn’t even occur to her.
With Tom and Amanda, Megan and her mother cleaned and prepared the cabin beside the McCall’s, lit the wood stove and washed the dishes and put new bedding on the mattresses in the loft. It was like going camping the way people lived a hundred years before. It was an experience only the rich could really afford. Ann Marie was enjoying each artifact of their temporary new life. The ironstone dishes, the eider d
Amanda tried her best to enjoy playing house. She tried her best to ignore Tom’s subtle, nervous excitement. He was obviously delighted to have Megan there. But she didn’t look or act at all like the hard edged street person Amanda expected. She was also more than a little jealous of Megan’s dark skin. Amanda knew that she couldn’t let anyone know what she really felt, although she did wish that she could go to her mother and pour out the cold fear in her heart. Life had too many unwanted triangles. The other point of the triangle she missed most was the one that was far away in Toronto.
In Toronto, Ian was busy getting himself physically and psychically prepared to share his life with a stranger. All of Amanda’s clothes and things were packed in moving boxes and moved down to their storage locker in the basement. The empty room was like Ian’s expectations, waiting to be filled with whatever was to come. The furniture didn’t suit a boy except the boy was openly gay and so Ian wasn’t sure that the decor wasn’t as right as he could have managed.
He picked Alan up from school the next day and they went shopping for clothes. It was an absolutely new experience for Ian, being in a men’s store with someone who looked like his son, shopping with a stranger who was so nervously self-conscious about being able to touch and choose from really beautiful clothes. It was the perfect ice breaker. Shopping was the way modern people connected.
Ian was surprised that Alan didn’t want to shop in the places created for people under twenty five. Alan wanted quality not quantity. He wanted to look like he just stepped from the pages of the best men’s style magazine.
Aside from the sticker shock of the individual items, Ian was pleased with the things Alan chose. They were things he would’ve chosen for himself, if he had wanted to indulge himself and he weas thirty years younger. He had always let his ladies spend most of the clothing allowances they had as a family.
Ian had told Alan that he would have a thousand dollars to buy himself clothes for the next few months and the boy had been surprised and delighted and he couldn’t believe his good fortune when Ian let him choose whatever he liked. It was more money than Alan had ever spent on clothes in his life, except in his imagination. Even knowing that he was almost certainly going to have to pay for those clothes with some personal humiliation, the thrill of choosing and having and wearing his best image of himself was worth it. They went to dinner in a third rate little restaurant Alan chose. His sense of style had not come to include food. Food was sustenance that he could never imagine being more.
Ian was delighted that his sixteen year old dinner companion was not a monosyllabic teenager, but rather had a bright intelligence and the tendency to talk too much, not too little. When Ian commented on his vocabulary, Alan told him that he spent a lot of time reading in libraries. Since he had run away from home at thirteen, it was where he was safest and least noticed, and also the happiest. Alan preferred being alone. It was a luxury he had never had until he found libraries. It was where he found all the best magazines to enjoy at his leisure. It was in those magazines that he learned about the world. He knew all the gossip and all the trends, who was hot and who was not, and the brief reviews of all the things that made it to popular culture. Ian felt like a glass cloche settling down over a young plant that had somehow survived a brutal winter. He very much wanted to give protection to something that looked so young and tender but obviously was as tough as nails.
It didn’t take many questions to get Alan to open up about his life and the things that he had endured. He seemed to dismiss them, the beatings, the neglect, the sexual exploitation as just part of the common currency of life. He lived in the moment and this moment was good. He had seen things in his life Ian couldn’t even imagine, especially because Alan seemed even younger than his years. He was like a puppy nervously nosing around some new backyard.
Back at the condominium, Alan’s eyes went wide in shock at the luxury he would be living in. He fell in the big leather armchair like it was a pile of hay in a field. He jumped back up and went to the big entertainment unit, touching the dials and feeling the plastic CD boxes and paper vinyl record covers like he was touching pure opulence. He asked for Billy Holiday and Ian found him the CD of her collected work. Ian showed him how to work the amplifier, then put on the compact disc so the sweet notes of heartache filled the room. They sat and listen for a long time, saying nothing, Alan accepting a diet soda in a crystal highball glass. The way music could fill and connect the spaces between people laid the foundation of trust between Ian and Alan. It was less than an hour before they could talk over the music, and the first real serious question Alan asked Ian was why his wife and his daughter didn’t live with him. It was then that Ian realized that Alan had been left out the most of the discussions involving where he was going and who would be part of his new life. They hadn’t even bothered to tell him that Laura was at the farm with Amanda.
Ian decided that Alan deserved to be brought up to speed about where he was and whose lives he had joined as he tried to condense the enormous events of the past few months. The accidental death, the rape, the Queer Agents of Karma, Laura’s connection to Eugene, the impact of the farm in all its ramifications, the book from the letters of two fictitious teenagers named Arthur and Laura Lee. It took more than an hour to sketch it out, but Alan was anything but bored. He listened like it was a story from a soap opera told around a campfire. And when the story was over, the boy literally had dropped his jaw. But it was the question that came out of him at the end that completely surprised Ian.
“Could I join The Queer Agents of Karma?” he had asked hopefully
“I don’t know. You have to ask Wayne. Why do you ask?” Ian replied.
“I’ve always been kind of small and lots of people kind of ripped me, you know. I always had this pretty face and girls love it and boys hate it. I’ve kind of always known I was gay and I didn’t want girlfriends, and the boys just beat me up. If I’ve got to go to school here, it’s just going to happen again. That’s why my foster homes never worked. That’s why I’d rather be on the street. I just thought maybe if I joined the Agents of Karma maybe I could get some protection.”
“You can count on it.” Ian said seriously, “You don’t have to join The Agents of Karma. I want you to believe that if anyone bullies you, we, you and me, can make them wish they’d never even thought of it. “
“No way!” Alan gasped.
“Way!” Ian replied and then went on to explain to Allen how they would document every incident, launch a barrage of subpoenas and civil suits against everyone even vaguely complicit in causing Alan the least injury. “The bullies, the witnesses, their parents, the school, the school board, we’ll drown them in the one thing everyone fears more than anything.”
“What’s that?” Alan asked in surprise,
“Legal bills. Everybody is totally terrified of legal bills.” Ian answered dramatically.
If Ian had told him that he would get him front row seats at the Oscars, Allen could not have been more impressed. He listened as Ian explained in detail how everything he had said might work and that it was really possible.
“If nothing else happens while you’re living here, I promise you won’t have to be afraid that anyone will touch you or hurt you again.” Ian said forcefully. The look in Alan’s eyes showed skepticism slowly dissolving to actual hope. A man whose daughter has been raped can convey a powerful resolution when it comes to violence.
That week, Laura watched Amanda slowly become more comfortable with Megan’s presence. It was now the four of them that walked up to the farmhouse for breakfast early in the morning. Two mothers, two daughters, two childhood friends who were trying to position themselves in an unspoken, unacknowledged romantic triangle.
For Laura, there were strange associa
Arthur and Laura Lee visited the dreams of the young Anna and saw her revulsion at what sex did to human life. It was all around her. Sex meant babies and more suffering. She made a pact with the celibate Arthur and the celibate Laura Lee that she too would stay celibate. For her, Jesus would be her only bridegroom and one day He would appear to her and tell her just that. Anna didn’t yet know that the real forces of life would make that quite impossible. Celibacy was not an option for a poor girl until Anna Lees created a place where it was.
It was an interesting question that all young people faced, and Anna Lees’ response was very interesting and extreme because she came to believe that sex, that procreation was the most corrupting influence in society. . And Jesus told her so. But for her, celibacy was a social statement more than a religious one. Laura had no idea then that Anna Lees would go on to become Mother Ann to the Shakers in North America and her social and religious beliefs would create mail-order seed packets and washing machines and furniture that would one day sell for millions of dollars and would even be the distant origin of the little reproduction Shaker bench in her living room in Toronto. Laura didn’t yet know the story of Mother Ann who invented a real society where black people and women were treated as absolute equals with men almost two hundred years before anybody had ever burned a brassiere or raised a fist over a podium. Laura didn’t know there was a model for the farm that was nearly two centuries old, and that a secular model of hands to work; hearts to family could still be so powerful. All she knew was a story of a girl who long ago was appalled by the consequences of sex. All she knew was the story of another girl who wanted life to be pure.
She had no idea that in America, in its infancy, the descendants of those who came seeking religious freedom would revile and stone and drive Mother Ann Lee and her first few Shakers out of every settlement or that one such assault would finally end the life of Mother Ann. All Laura knew was that, when she looked around, there were celibate and almost celibate lives all around her. Eugene and Sharon, Tom and Amanda, Ann Marie and Megan and even her and Ian were all like Shakers abstaining from sex, but for all the modern convoluted reasons that had nothing to do with babies. Only Eugene and Sharon had a real excuse. Only they, but for Eugene’s illness, might have perhaps, just possibly, been sexually active. For everyone else, it was the modern circumstances of life’s relationships that were too complicated to allow the most basic connection. With fewer babies, there was less time for sex. The farm had even turned a young girl who had sold sex a dozen times a day into one who just thought about it a whole lot. For Megan, her recent sexual history seemed to have vanished from her consciousness the moment she looked at Tom. Like everyone else, she longed for sexual contact, but somehow it had to be left behind with the rest of the world, out past the lane way to the farm. Everyone longed for what they couldn’t have, and everyone had a different reason for their self-deprivation. No one knew or realized they had become secret Shakers.
With spring the black birds came back in flocks, the cowbirds, the starlings, the iridescent blue-black grackles. One morning, Laura raised a huge flock of red wings from the meadow and the twisting black plane suddenly was crimson epaulets soaring in military formation. Everything, even something so simple, could change in a moment.
The next weekend was packed with activities. Ian and Alan had come to the farm with Wayne and Charles on Friday evening. Tom, Amanda, Megan and Alan spent the evening in the music room, exploring the Blues. Megan was thrilled to catch up with Alan. Megan was thrilled to learn how happy Alan was in his new school. For the first time he was able to walk through the halls of the school without fear.
“It was so incredible.” he explained enthusiastically. “It was only the first day and these three huge geeks come up to me, and the big one I found out was called Psycho Bob, tells me he wants to meet me after school and that I’m going to have to give him my new shirt for his girlfriend. He says his girlfriend likes fag shirts. And then I asked them what would happen if I didn’t give him my shirt, and Psycho Bob says that he’d take it off and make me take off my pants and my fag underwear.”
“He would’ve done it too.” Amanda added, “Everybody in the school is scared shitless of him. They don’t call him Psycho Bob for nothing. What did you do?”
“I gave him and his friends one of your father’s cards and Psycho Bob reads it and says he won’t be needing any lawyer, but I would be needing an undertaker. Then I told them the card was from my lawyer and that, before he touched me or my shirt, he should give my lawyer a call and find out what will happen if he does. I told them about how he was on special retainer to sue anyone that touched me and he didn’t care whether he won or lost, that my lawyer would make it the most expensive shirt he ever took off of anybody in his life. It didn’t matter if I even won the case because the legal bills would be brutal. I told Psycho Bob that his parents would be poor for a long, long time and Psycho Bob wouldn’t be able own anything of his own until he was pushing middle-age, if he was lucky. I told them to make the call if they didn’t believe me. I told them he should know how bad it would be, how much he’d have to pay for my shirt. He just about freaked. He looked like I’d hit him in the face with a shit pie. When he kind of wiped it off, he started to say how he was going to a make my life pure hell and I let him go on and let his buddies join in and then I pulled out the little tape recorder your dad gave me and told him that I was glad for the evidence, that I’d see him in court. It was like Godzilla laid a dump right on top of all three of them. It was so cool. I could really get into being a lawyer.”
They could all see how happy and excited Alan was at what he’d done. Only Amanda realized the terror of facing Psycho Bob and his goons. She tried explaining it, but with little success. She couldn’t help it, she was really proud of her father.
Alan explained the list of clients he had referred to Ian from the school. When word got out what he had done, Alan had become the talk of the school. Children who has been bullied all their lives came to him for advice, and with Ian’s permission, handed out his cards to be passed to anyone who was being harassed. Between the two of them, they wiped out the bullying practices that had survived for generations.
Ian had actually fielded a couple of calls from thoughtful bullies trying to find out if Alan was bluffing. Ian had explained to them, in brutal detail, the procedures and costs of the lawsuits they would face for any harassment, assault, or hate crimes stemming from the Charter of Rights protecting every person’s right to security of person and sexual orientation. Ian had explained that he represented a very rich client who had been bullied as a child and was prepared to use all his financial resources to pay back any bully that might want to try him in court. Amanda couldn’t help it, she was totally proud of her father.
“Is there really a rich client with deep pockets?” Megan asked.
“He said there would be, if there had to be.” Allen answered, and it sounded as if he believed him. “It sounds like you would’ve been one of the people getting handed one of your dad’s cards.” Allen said to Amanda. “You must have been pretty tough. People say you got three years in juvie. They say you put some girl in a coma for life. She vanished and then so did you.”
“She just moved schools. She’s not in any coma. Do they know I got raped?” she replied.
“I never heard that.” Alan answered.
“That’s something.” Amanda said in relief.
In the morning they packed the white cube van with packing blankets and the led a convoy to the Ottawa Valley and Bridget Brow
In the truck, Amanda and Megan listened to tapes and sang along. Megan didn’t like it because she barely knew any of the songs, although part of her was glad she didn’t have to sing and compete with Amanda’s incredible voice. The long drive to the Ottawa Valley was the first time Megan felt like a fifth wheel. But she had actually started to like Amanda. In the Lexus, Laura and Ann Marie got to know Alan for the first-time. As always, he was quiet at first with strangers, but when he was more comfortable, he spoke enthusiastically, the associations and memories of the conversation filling and branching in his thoughts and quite filling the car with his personality. They all liked him. Ian was actually quite proud of the impression he made on the ladies.
When Ann Marie asked him about his friendship with her daughter, it was the first time anyone had ventured to talk about anything that wasn’t very recent history. His response was entirely personal and had to do with how important Megan had been in getting him to think that he could actually someday get off the street. She had been there for him, she had listened to his dreams; she was there when he felt most alone. Ann Marie was stunned to realize her daughter had actually helped him stop taking Ecstasy to help him get through his days. They had become each other’s’ necessary narcotic and he admitted he missed her very much trying to adapt to a new school.
Wayne had connected Alan with an ally in his new school, and the first time the gay bashing jocks came calling, Alan had explained the lawsuits they would expect to follow. He again told the story of his meeting with Psycho Bob and how the story had spread quickly that Alan was someone who might be dangerous and might have serious resources behind him. He told again how Ian’s business cards had become the safe haven for so many. Everybody in the car could hear the thrill in his voice while he told the story and everyone was delighted for him. Laura could see how proud Ian was as he sat listening to Alan talk. Finally, at the end of the long gravel road, they descended like crows ready to pick over the carcass of long dead dreams piled in the dusty old barn.
Miss Brown wore gingham and was hauling an enamel bucket of goat’s milk from the barn when the convoy came roaring up the lane way. There was a great round of greetings and introductions and Amanda was unpacking jams and preserves Sharon had sent, as well as the Valentine rose that Tom had given her as well as a big bouquet from Rosie. She also had a big pack of photos taken around the farm since she had been there. Amanda couldn’t wait to see the reclusive old lady who had fired her imagination. She was even trying to read Emily Dickinson.
Inside the farmhouse, Miss Bridget insisted that everyone sit down for cakes and tea. The problem was the there weren’t enough chairs for everyone to sit down around the big harvest table. It was an excuse for Martha to ask to be excused so she could run to the barn and check on the furniture. It was an excuse for Wayne and Charles to join her. They looked almost as excited as Martha. When they were gone, it was possible for everyone to find a place to sit.
Bridget Brown worked steadily and let Amanda help her set Staffordshire cups and saucers and Waterford Crystal cream and sugar servers out on the table. From the pantry came a big tin box out of which she took a great pile of butter tarts and scones and current cakes, confessing that she had an insatiable sweet tooth herself. She had baked just that morning. Other Waterford Crystal bowls were brought out filled with jam and honey, and when Tom began to speak about the antiques in the barn, Miss Brown cut him off, insisting that all discussions of such things would have to wait until they got to know one another. It was small talk until the tea arrived and filled two beautiful old pots. Then everyone went for the treats, the caramelized smells irresistible. It was Ian who was the first one to nearly swoon with pleasure when he tasted the honey on one of the simple scones.
“This isn’t honey. This is the honey they use in heaven.” he exclaimed.
“It’s bumble bee honey.” Miss Brown proudly explained, “It takes a keen desire to find one of the nests in the spring just as they wake-up. Bumble bees nest in the ground. I only take a little for special occasions.”
Nobody could imagine what special occasions might be in Miss Brown’s solitary life, but everyone tasted the bumble bee honey and everyone agreed that, compared to regular honey, it was like the finest wine compared to plonk. The talk of wine inspired Miss Brown and she got up and came back with two full bottles, insisting that they be opened immediately and enjoyed. Waterford Crystal wine glasses came from a cupboard and a beautiful golden wine filled everyone’s glass, even young Alan’s. Miss Bridget said he could live a little recklessly that day. Alan laughed and thanked her. If the honey was a hit, the wine blew everyone away. No one could remember having tasted a more incredible wine in their life. Laura, who loved wine, and had tasted a few fine vintages in her time, agreed that what she was holding was by far superior to anything she’d ever tasted in her life.
“It’s dandelion.” Miss Brown explained, “I have a few hundred bottles like it. It takes twelve years before it’s like this. I make thirty bottles a year and usually only use a dozen or so. They’re kind of piling up.”
“You could sell them for hundreds of dollars each.” Ian said seriously.
“Money, money. This old lady would rather talk about anything before money.” she replied, putting Ian firmly in his place.
Bridget Brown then told Amanda how thrilled she was with the little paperback copy of Emily Carr’s journals she had left for her the last time.
“I thought Emily Dickinson was all the books I’d ever be needing, but this other Emily is the best complement to her there could be. One lady who never left her room, another lady whose room was the whole wild world. I wish I could see one of her paintings one day.” she said wistfully.
“There are some wonderful Emily Carr’s in the national Gallery in Ottawa.” Tom pointed out.
“Oh, I’d love to go, but driving an old car through all that traffic, all those big roads.”
“Would you like to go, if I drove?” Ian asked her, tentatively.
“That would be a dream. Maybe one day you’ll bring my Amanda to visit and we’ll all go.” she replied.
“Why not today?” Amanda asked her. “My parents really just came to meet you. It’d be so great. There are too many people to pack furniture anyway. Please could we go?”
“I don’t know.” Miss Brown was taken quite aback.
“I think it’s a wonderful idea.” Ian agreed. “We’d be back in a few hours. Hands up, all those who want to go see Emily Carr?”
Amanda and Alan raised their hands as did Laura, and then slowly, almost shyly, so did Miss Bridget Brown. Amanda screamed in delight. Megan was thrilled with the idea as well. Tom’s hand had not gone up. He would be staying. It would be the first chance to have him to herself, more or less. Tom tried talking to Miss Brown about the business arrangements for the antiques, but she would have none of it.
“Take whatever you like. I’ll have no talk of money. You should talk about that with my Amanda.” she said with finality.
After some necessary reassurance about her appearance, Miss Bridget finally accepted that her appearance would be fine for the National Gallery, Amanda telling her that they would be lost in crowds of hundreds and thousands. It was then Miss Bridget explained for Alan the reference to the title of the Emily Carr journals.
“Hundreds and thousands were tiny sugar candies you bought by the scoop a long time ago. You licked your finger and then dipped it in the candies and licked off the hundreds and thousands.”
“I know the feeling.” Alan replied, and Megan roared with laughter.
So it was that they were soon piled
“Are you thinking of buying one with your newfound wealth?” Ian teased from the front seat.
“And how much would such a mobile palace be, in dollars?” she asked impishly.
“A little more than 50,000 dollars.” Ian replied.
Miss Brown pretended to clutch her heart and swoon. “I’m riding with the Rockefellers.” she gasped.
“Not quite.” Ian replied, “From what I understand, your net worth after your antiques are sold will make you the real Rockefeller.”
“The Saints preserve me.” she replied and laughed.
Alan wanted to know what a Rockefeller was.
After that Ian and Laura mostly listened from the front seat as Miss Brown and Amanda and Allen sat and talked like old friends, Amanda going on about the Van Fleet family farm and the music and the gardens and the art studio, and the grove of walnuts a century old. Ian and Laura listened with a mix of delight and regret that the few months Amanda had spent at the farm was everything she had to say about her life. It was as if her first seventeen years had made no impression that all. The only time Amanda mentioned anything about her city life was when she said that she wished she had known her own grandmother, Laura’s mother, who had died when Amanda was an infant.
“You can adopt me as your gran.” Miss Brown reminded her gently, and Amanda took the old woman’s little hard hand and squeezed it.
“I would love that. I would love you to be my own gran.”
“Does that make you a Rockefeller?” Ian asked Amanda from the front seat.
“It makes me very rich.” Amanda replied, and Miss Brown squeezed her hand in reply.
Back at the farm, while Wayne and Charles and Martha brought the furniture out of the barn to the truck parked nearby, Anne Marie and Tom and Megan wrapped and secured each piece in heavy packing blankets, each leg wrapped individually, each piece wrapped completely. There would be no scuffs or bruises or scrapes if they could help it. Megan felt that she was like one of those old pieces, and she felt she knew what it was like to have Tom’s hands rap her up, all safe from harm. Working together, their hands moving past one another and between her mother’s, was almost sensual for Megan.
While the pile of beautiful furniture slowly grew inside the truck, Miss Brown was standing in front of Emily Carr’s, Indian Chapel at Friendly Cove, tears slowly sliding through the cracks of her weathered face. She seemed almost to sway and vibrate like the trees in the painting. The McCalls and Alan stood behind her for the ten long minutes she stared into another artist’s soul, a soul to which she felt a harmonic resonance that was unlike anything she had ever felt in her life. The little group looked like a family of three generations having brought Granny out from the boredom of her life, doing their necessary duty to the old, a moment of time given back, a little bit of culture to enjoy before the grave. Seeing other people looking at Miss Brown, Laura realized that it was almost like she was an apparition of Emily Carr herself, standing in front one of her own paintings. It was a strange and beautiful feeling being moved at secondhand by someone so obviously overwhelmed. Miss Bridget was the most beautiful installation in the National Gallery that day.
“That’s the church I’d go to.” Bridget Brown said softly before she turned away from the painting.
When they were finally making their way out of the enormous glass Gallery, Miss Brown asked about the modern things she was passing, piles of sliced up fabric, piles of dirt and aluminum, little photos in rows the same size she remembered from her 110 Brownie.
Miss Brown couldn’t get over the idea that this was modern art. And when she was told they represented concepts, she replied by saying that it wasn’t true.
“I thought concepts were big things. These ideas are so tiny they’d look foolish if they were made by a four year old. They put them here with Emily Carr. It’s a disgrace. When was it that artists stop being interested in the human heart?” she asked.
“The hands show what the heart knows. My mother used to say that.” Miss Brown answered.
Their world was touched by old, distant moments of depth and perceptions.
In the museum bookstore, while Ian bought Miss Brown a big book of the paintings of Emily Carr, she stood nervously waiting by the door, overwhelmed by the people, the images in the racks and racks of books. Alan had been looking through the sweat shirts and brought her one with the White Chapel on it. Miss Brown looked at it like he had brought her a shirt made of fresh meat. Her eyes grew wide in indignation. Alan saw the look and without a word took the shirt back to where he got it. Miss Brown whispered to Amanda who laughed out loud before she went to her parents and told them Miss Brown wanted to see the manager of the national Gallery and tell him his new choices were an absolute disgrace.
Ian being Ian, he did just as he was asked. He asked for the bookstore manager and told him they would like to leave a message for the Gallery Director. Please tell him that Miss Bridget Brown, a very great artist, thinks the National Gallery is a disgrace in their new choices. And tell him that goes for the McCall family too.”
The bookstore manager looked at Ian like he was a madman.
“It takes all kinds.” the manager said coldly.
“It takes all kinds to do what?” Ian asked the manager.
“It takes all kinds to be more aggravation.”
“You have any idea what this place is all about? Ian asked.
“Jobs.” the manager replied seriously. “My job, her job, jobs, jobs, jobs.”
“You’re right. This isn’t your fault. We’ll have to speak to the management.” Ian replied.
Amanda and Alan had followed Ian on his mission and were both impressed and amused with his vain protest.
“I think we should sue on behalf of the people of Canada, a class-action suit claiming our money has been misspent, misappropriated for the perverse pleasures of people who have no idea about what art is all about.” Ian said forcefully.
“I love it.” Alan enthused.
“Sign me up.” Amanda agreed.
On the way back to Miss Brown’s farm, Laura listened to them tell the story of the bookstore protest and how he could drive a petition campaign on the Internet to gather a class-action suit by the people of Canada who felt outraged by what was happening in the National Gallery. Alan was the only one who didn’t know that nothing would come of Ian’s ranting, although everyone enjoyed the fantasy, especially Miss Brown.
“How much would such a lawsuit cost?” Miss Bridget asked seriously.
.”To the Supreme Court; hundreds and thousands?” Ian answered, “You’re not seriously thinking of financing such a thing?”
“I just might. I just might.” she answered and it sounded like it was more than an idle consideration.
Back at her home, Bridget saw that the furniture had been completely packed with the treasures from the barn and the white truck was parked near her front door. The packing crew was doing an art tour of the grounds around the farmhouse. Wayne and Charles were at one end of the garden looking at a sculpture made of flat stones slowly rising and tapering to a crest and looking very much like a miniature volcano. The colors of the stones made the volcano seem to be almost real because they’d been chosen to reflect sunlight and shadows the way they might fall on a distant mountain. The very crest of the volcano was a black hole made from a pail filled with water. The last stones covered the rim of the pail so that looking down one saw only the reflection of the sky in the black water. What broke the perfect symmetry, was a single black stone embedded in the slope of the little volcano, cutting a seam as if the black water in the pool at the top h
Tom and Megan were looking at a sculpture that was really a bench made from the curved trunk of a maple that had rotted from the inside leaving a four inch crust of hard wood from which Miss Brown had peeled the bark, and trimmed perfectly smooth with a spoke shave. Two short curved pieces of the same slab of wood formed the legs of the bench and were connected to the top with a meticulous joinery. It looked like something from a Japanese garden or an art deco house, all curves and waxen beauty.
Amanda saw Tom and Megan together and it made her feel somehow nervous. She had been glad that their nightly email conversations had ended when Megan had come to the farm and, until that day, almost all of their free time had been the three of them together. What was good could be bad, what was bad could be good. There was no way to separate feelings.
When everyone had gathered back in the house, it was again time for tea and cakes, but before that, dishes had to be washed and so Amanda and Tom, Megan, Alan and Martha were set to work heating the water and filling the rinsing bowl with cold water from the iron hand pump. The dishwashing liquid in the plastic bottle seemed like it had come from another century.
Miss Brown had chairs brought from upstairs so everyone could be seated around the table and when everyone was in place, she went to a curtain that seemed to be covering a bare wall and pulled the curtain aside. Mounted on a double bed quilting frame was the most unusual quilt any of them had ever seen. It was almost surreal in the way images were created from pieces of fabric with details embroidered in meticulous perfection. It was as if modern art had been created out of one the oldest, traditional practical crafts. The images were all of real things but the way they floated in space and came together had an abstract power that seem to swallow up the details in an almost explosive force. Everyone got out of their chairs to come to look at the quilt. The dishes were abandoned and everyone stood around the work of art that left the whole room absolutely silent. It was like looking at memory itself. Small things, a leaf, a feather, a single little stone were blown up huge while horizons and clouds and entire forests would be superimposed on them as part of them, in delicate hand stitching. The bark of a Hickory tree seemed so real that it was almost alive. Two six foot. tall hollyhocks stems stood like sentinels or lovers watching over everything before them. Every person in the room, but one, was aware that they were looking at a great piece of art. Miss Brown explained how she did one quilt every year and this one got busy very quickly. Wayne was the first to speak, telling her that she was a very great artist and it was absolutely essential that she show work.
“That’s lovely of you to say, but that would mean people might want to buy them and they are like my children. You could let a child go to live with someone you trusted, but you couldn’t just let one of your children go to a stranger.” she replied.
Miss Brown cared more about her creations than many people cared about their own children. Many of the people in the room did not miss the irony of what she was saying. It was then that Miss Brown went to an old, huge cedar bench by a window wall and opened the top and brought out another quilt for them to see.
“There are fifty seven of them.” she said, “I have more children than anyone can imagine. And they never leave home, and give nothing but pleasure, and they take very little space.”
Wayne and Ian helped Miss Brown open the quilt and it was completely different than the one they had seen. It still had the strange hypnotic feeling of being living memories, but the colors and the details and the abstract design was nothing like its sibling. It too was breathtaking.
“Would it be possible for us to look at them all?” Wayne asked, gently.
“It would, but it would take such a long time. Are you sure you’d like to see them?” Bridget replied.
Amanda spoke for everyone as she looked in her eyes and told her they were the most beautiful things she had ever seen and they had all the time in the world. As they always would, Bridget’s eyes melted for Amanda. There are instantaneous connections of the heart that are impossible to explain or describe but may be expressed in an unconditional gift of affection. What followed was the second great art show of the day. Miss Brown would bring each of the quilts, and others would open it to the light, and everyone would look at it in amazement, barely able to speak until Miss Brown, with a gesture, gave the signal and the quilt passed into other hands that folded it in the air beside the harvest table. Hands returned the folded quilt to the bench as Miss Brown brought the next one to show. When they were almost halfway through, they opened a quilt that was all stones and fungus and lichens overlain with beautiful individual flowers, apple blossoms, peach and cherry, tulips and dog tooth violets and trilliums and Lady Slipper orchids among the stones. Everything surrounded a black pool of water running with clouds and a single azure blue butterfly.
Amanda started to cry. No one noticed except Miss Brown. When the quilt went back to the bench, she took it from the hands bringing it and placed it aside. By the time all fifty seven quilts had been shown, everyone in the room was absolutely exhausted in the way only great art could exhaust a person completely. Letting feelings pour from the well of beauty exhausted the heart the way the chest and the arms were exhausted pumping water from a very deep well. One by one, the quilts had somehow fallen over the social energy in the room and no one could think of very much to say.
When Wayne changed the subject and presented Miss Brown with a detailed inventory of all the things that had been packed in the truck, she told him to take care of such details himself. She told everyone that seeing Emily Carr’s paintings was worth more than all the old furniture in the world. Wayne assured her that he would keep her best interests in mind at all times. Miss Brown suggested, over tea, that they all stay to dinner, a clearly impractical suggestion considering their numbers. Tom pointed out that the packing crew had eaten the lunch they prepared before they left, and there was enough left for everyone else to satisfy their hunger before they got home. No one admitted to being hungry. Amanda suggested that they all go to a big restaurant and have a wonderful dinner to celebrate, but Miss Brown said that she’d never been to a restaurant in her life and wasn’t about to let someone else start cooking her meals. Soon after, it was clear that everyone was starting to feel they were out-staying their welcome, and when Wayne suggested to Tom that they get going, everyone knew the incredible day with Miss Brown was almost done.
As all the people filed through the front door after having made a great round of goodbyes, Miss Brown held Amanda back at the end, and when Tom waited for her, Miss Brown shooed him out the door. She led Amanda by the hand to where she had set aside the quilt that had made Amanda cry. She picked it up in her small old hands and when Amanda realized what was happening she started to shake her head and say she couldn’t, she couldn’t.
“This is for your hope chest.” Miss Brown said softly, “If I’m to be your adopted grandmother, you have to let me act like one. I want you to have this. I want you to know how dear you are to me. I want you to have this so you’ll remember you can come to visit me whenever you wish, whenever you feel you might need a funny old grandmother.”
“I don’t feel like I can dare to say no.” Amanda replied, “I’ll keep this forever. I’ll make sure my children know everything about where this came from and who made it and how it was part of one the most beautiful days in my life. I promise I’ll always come back to see you.”
“That’s lovely. This is a day I’ll always remember too.”
Amanda put down the quilt so she could take Miss Bridget Brown into her arms and the half a century separating them dissolved between supple youth and rigid, indomitable age.
That night, for some reason, the coffee house gathering was especially boisterous and happy. It was all new to
Near the end of the evening, after he and Amanda had sung, How Can People Be So Heartless, Tom announced a medley of songs from Hair from a new group, “All the way from Tranna, finally in the big time, give it up for The McCalls.”
He and Amanda dragged Ian and a reluctant Laura up on the stage and Amanda coaxed them into ‘Good Morning Star Shine’. Then it was, ‘I’ve Got Life’. Then Amanda handed out the words to her parents and the three of them, follicaley challenged in such different ways, rocked into the theme song, and it was ironically funny that the one thing none of them had was long beautiful hair. They sang together and took turns with the lines and by the end of the song Amanda was playing with her father and mother’s diminished locks, running her fingers through them as they sang and tried to keep from laughing with everyone in the crowd. “Here baby! There mama! Everywhere, Daddy, Daddy, Hair! Grow it! Show it!”
Ann Marie and Megan watched with a mixture of delight and envy. Neither of them had ever seen the McCalls look so close and happy. Both of them wondered whether they would somehow come to share such a moment themselves.
Ian was the last one to sleep that night, Alan tucked in a sleeping bag crashed on the futon below the loft. Ian could feel the soft press of Laura’s thigh alongside him as he replayed the day in his mind. He couldn’t get over how incredibly exciting and absolutely unpredictable life could be at the farm. His whole life had been one of predictable routines and duties, traditional expectations and organized play. He smiled as he remembered how Amanda had moved about the stage with such confidence and grace, and he could still feel her hands in his hair as she teased him with the lyrics of the song. Her sense of humor was always cutting but now it had a soft and subtle ironic edge as well. She had changed so much. She was like the little girl he remembered.
Ian thought about Laura and realized that she too had changed. She was more relaxed, less critical, more patient, and she was closer to Amanda than he had ever hoped would happen. Yet, there was a disturbing quietness coming out of her as well, her eyes often looking strangely sad, alone and vulnerable. They were feelings he always suspected were there, but at the farm, she had a harder time covering them. There was a liquid warm helplessness in her blue eyes that she couldn’t help showing, a helplessness Ian had only seen years before when Amanda was just a baby in her arms for the first times.
Laura had taken to going for long walks on the beach, sitting alone for a long time on the trunk of the black willow that had lain down in the wind into the water so that half its branches had rooted in the sand by the shore. This too was something new. Laura had always hated being alone. She had always needed to connect herself to someone at work or play either physically or electronically. She was quiet now even when she wasn’t angry or afraid. She was different. Laura had always believed that life was a performance. Her favorite movie, in fact, was called Performance and was about a reclusive rock star playedby Mick Jagger taking in a killer on the run, another kind of performer. When she was feeling drunk and frisky, she’d sometimes allude to the film doing a Cockney accent and saying. “I d know a bit about performin, meself.” She would laugh, and her eyes would shine.
The next day Ian went from the morning service to helping Amanda and Megan with their chores.
“Do you really want to help us kill chickens?” Amanda asked her father seriously.
“Sure. Why not? Do we do this with an ax or a lethal injection?” he replied.
“We use a scalpel. You’ll see. This is Megan’s first-time too.” she answered and led the way to the barn and the chicken coop.
In the barn there were three pens filled with White Rock capons. The first pen held the youngest poults, still young enough to need the warmth of an infrared heat lamp. The second held a hundred full-fledged birds, while the last pen held about fifty fully grown, powerful looking cockerels.
Ian and Megan stood silently as Amanda caught the first two birds that would die. She took each one to two galvanized funnels and dropped them through, reaching her hand to pull through the heads so they hung in the air and looked around in a frenzy. When the birds were hanging quietly, Amanda went to a box and took out the stainless-steel scalpel she would need to end their lives.
Both Ian and Megan were stunned and paralyzed in their silence as Ian watched his daughter proceeded with the absolute unsentimental killing of the birds. She took each bird’s head in her hands and forced open the beak with her fingers and in one smooth quick gesture slipped the scalpel inside its mouth and with one quick thrust punctured the brain of the bird through the roof of its mouth. Each bird thrashed silently in turn as Amanda held its head and a black stream of blood flowed from its mouth and fell in the sand bucket below. When the second bird was finally still, Amanda quickly took them and put them on a bench and asked Megan if she wanted to try it.
It was a strange mixture of pride and fear that led Megan to hold the stainless-steel scalpel in her hand while Amanda caught two more birds and put them into the hanging funnels. Amanda was very careful and patient, instructing Megan how to hold the head of the bird and use her fingers to make the beak open wide, and when she was thoroughly comfortable holding the head of the doomed bird, she pointed to where she would have to push the knife into the soft flesh on the roof of the bird’s month. Megan’s hands only trembled slightly as she put the knife to work and with a quick motion pushed it into the brain, killing the bird instantly. It was the muscle spasm of the powerful neck that shook the head free from her hands, and she screamed as the head was suddenly thrashing violently around spraying them all with blood before they could back away. It was only a few seconds before the bird was still and Amanda was laughing at the look on the innocent faces beside her, but Ian and Megan didn’t think it was very funny at all. Ian could not believe this was the same daughter who used to get angry when he would hit butterflies with the windshield of their car.
“How did you learn to do that?” he asked.
“Tom.”
“Doesn’t it bother you to do it?” he asked pointedly.
“Not anymore. These chickens have a pretty good life. They’d never have been born and felt what it was to be alive if they weren’t going to feed someone. They live a much safer and longer life here than if we just let them go in the woods.” she explained.
“Interesting rationale.” Ian replied, but he was still absolutely impressed with her skill in killing the birds without an apparent second thought.
Megan gently asked Amanda if she could try again and Amanda was glad to help her do it, and with better preparation, knowing what to expect, she did it as if she had been killing capons all her life.
As they walked back to the farmhouse, Ian carried one of the dead birds under each arm while the girls carried one each. He had never held a bird in his arms before and he was amazed at the weight and the softness of the full white feathers. As he walked, Ian thought about how Amanda had stroked each one of the soft feathered heads for a few seconds before it died and hung limp in the air. He remembered the clear, cold gaze of the eyes and how intense and aware each bird was of everything going on around it.
In the kitchen, it was Amanda’s job to boil a big open kettle of water and scald the birds and pull the sopping hot feathers away from the body and put them in a burlap feed bag. Holding the birds by the bright yellow legs, Amanda let the feathers drain before han
Ian watched his daughter take the birds to the cutting board and slit each belly in turn and pull out the viscera and put them into a bucket. Watching her hand covered in blood pulling out the heart and liver and the intestines of the bird was almost as amazing to Ian as watching her doing avian brain surgery. This wasn’t the daughter he knew.
Amanda asked Megan if she wanted to try gutting the last bird but it was too much for a city girl. She declined saying that maybe she would try the next time, but it was just too gross. Ian felt like the sentimental city boy that he was. Yet he was proud of his daughter and glad that his city girl had gone country.
“Just your basic chicken pluckin country girl.” Amanda said to Ian, as if she had been reading his thoughts.
“You don’t seem to miss all your stuffed toys.” he answered, teasing her.
“I do actually. Maybe you could bring Miss Mouse when you come next week.” she replied.
They laughed and he promised to do just that.
“You know I kind of even miss my room.” Amanda added, “Isn’t that weird?”
“It’s not so weird.” Megan agreed.” It’s funny. Since I came here, I actually started missing my own room. Maybe it’s because this place is just so different. It’s hard to believe that it’s real.”
“I know what you mean. If I didn’t know it, if I’d never come here, I wouldn’t think this place was even possible.” Amanda agreed.
“Really.” Megan concurred. “It’s just so not what you expect on a farm.”
And at lunch the family enjoyed the sweet fried chicken from the birds Ian had held in his hands only hours before.
And then the family started to talk about Kosovo and the ethnic cleansing going on. Tom had received an email message from his friend Charles who was with Doctors Without Borders and Tom explained how his doctor friend had been forced to run for his life from the bombing, running with the people on the roads, taking fire and treating wounds as the Serbs shelled the lines of refugees being run out of their own country. It was terrible listening helplessly to Tom’s description, repeating what Charles had written of the exodus as he walked with and tended to the bullet wounds and broken bones and shock and dehydration of ordinary people. Charles was supposed to have moved out with a convoy of trucks carrying their field hospital but instead had chosen to walk with the refugees, to suffer the freezing nights and the privations of the men and women and children, the old and the frail, in the universal dispossessed common terror of the hundreds and thousands of people fleeing for their lives.
So far away and yet it was so personal because Charles was there among all the faceless refugees. The Van Fleets were people of action and everyone wanted an idea of what they should do. It was not easy to be hard or cold. Aside from sending money, or more money, as almost everyone in the family had already done, there was nothing to do but watch the news and read the papers and suffer the far away pain and feel the bitter-sweet pleasure of all they had. There was no heart that could bear the pain that came from the nightly news, and so everyone had to live with a sense of denial and a sense of lividity in their own living flesh, knowing they couldn’t help, knowing there was nothing they could do that would make any difference. Knowing the world for what it is was hardest for those who loved it. The paralysis of good people faced with the evil that men do in the world was life. Laura sat and listened and realized that Eugene’s disease filled the whole world. There was no answer. There was no intervention when ordinary people would take the permission of a few evil men and be the instruments of the most hideous potentials of human nature. When ordinary people were given permission to think of someone who was different as being less than human; ordinary people became less than human and could do anything. Smashing a baby’s head against a post was sometimes easier than killing a bird in a funnel. Why and how it was only sometimes, some places, why it was easy to be hard, easy to be cold blooded was impossible to understand or accept. Amanda had listened to Tom talking about his friend Charles and what he had seen and she was sick with outrage.
“These people have been there six hundred years. How can anyone want to take back their land after that long?” Amanda asked
She was shocked when Tom answered her.
“You only took my people’s land a hundred years ago.” Tom replied, “Is that too long to get it back?”
The room was shocked into silence and no one spoke until Sharon finally asked Tom if the people in the room were part of his people too.
“You’re my family, not my people.” he said coldly.
Amanda was shocked. “Why are you blaming us for crimes we never committed. Those things happened so long ago.” she shot back.
“Old crimes, right! That’s why two percent of the population supply ninety percent of the child prostitutes in this country. That’s why children would rather sniff gasoline and fry their brains than look around at how they have been forced to live.” Megan added, angrily.
“That’s why churches are being sued into bankruptcies but won’t admit what they did to our people, five years ago, ten years ago, as long as white people have been here. Malcolm X was right, white people always slaughter people of color.” Tom said to Amanda, standing with Megan and their people.
“White people slaughtered millions of people in China and Cambodian and Rwanda I suppose.” Amanda shot back. She didn’t like Tom and Megan forcing her to accept her white guilt.
“And so it begins.” Sharon replied, and the whole table felt the hard germ in the seed of hatred and injustice begin to stir with life.
Laura looked into Eugene’s eyes and it frightened her. He looked like he had seen one of his own children’s head smashed against a wall. Eugene was the only one who realized that everyone in that room around the family table had once known what it was to be the one dispossessed, to be the other.
The next night after they had finished working, Laura sat beside Eugene in his bed and she didn’t move and of course he couldn’t, and so they both just sat there for a time. Her time with him had become strangely comforting and safe. She realized that Eugene had Henry James’ obsession with not losing one precious moment of life. She was not sure that the moment they were experiencing wasn’t one of them. ‘This moment.’ It was always one of his favorite expressions.
She spoke her feelings. “You know, you’re one of the great pack rats of experience.” And the three letters on the television monitor said, ‘Yup.’
It was funny that all the experiences she had with Eugene, the one constant thing that she carried with him was his eyes. She could bring back the dissolving montages of memories and senses and things they had done and felt and said, but they just dissolved away again like dreams dissolved, the way reality spread over feelings like weeds.
Blue as a boy’s baby blanket, bluebird wings, sunrise and sunset sky blue, Paul Newman blue, Brando blue, Our Lady blue, Rosemary flower blue, it was a kind of blue that she imagined was the color of his heart. His eyes followed her, touched her and held her like it was like a place all her own where she felt she would always belong.
Because of the conversation from the day before at lunch about Kosovo, Laura had decided to start working on his story from Arthur and Laura Lee’s letters about Istvan, the boy in the Nazi concentration camp who slept on a bed of fencing wire and played the violin with the camp Orchestra when prisoners marched off to work, when prisoners were stood up and shot, when
Arthur and Laura Lee had met Istvan in his dreams and they had no plan for his future, no answers to give him, no explanation to make for what he suffered, no hope to offer, nothing to do but to sing to him the song’s they loved most, songs that he had never heard in his life.
Eugene was pleased that Laura had finally agreed to include the heartbreaking story that had no hope or resolution, no ending except oblivion.
“Istvan’s story may be the most important one of all.” Laura said to Eugene.
“Perhaps.” Eugene replied, letter by letter.
“Sharon’s given me permission to fall in love with you again.” Laura said and turned around to look in his eyes, and they froze in the inescapable truth inside her teasing.
“Permission?” Eugene asked as Laura turned her head back and forth between his eyes and the television monitor.
“She says everyone falls in love with you eventually, but I was the only one she was afraid you’d love back more than you love her. She and I are friends now, and she says that she isn’t afraid of that anymore.”