Each and All by John Kuti
Chapter 5
When Laura got home Ian was watching sports on television. She was feeling energized from the adrenaline rush of what happened at the door of George’s apartment, but most especially because of the incredible potential energy that infused every corner of the farm. The helpless feeling that nothing would change was almost like a fading backbeat of anxiety and doubt. She thought about being the she-wolf, the leader of the pack that Sharon clearly was for her family, and wondered if she could do that for her little family as well.
“So how was it?” Ian asked about her day on the farm. “It was incredible. It’s like a capitalist commune. I’ve never seen more people doing more things and getting richer and richer by the minute. When you pull into the parking lot there must be a million dollars’ worth of cars just sitting there, and those are just the ones that belong to the kids.
Ian’s eyes lit up as she talked, but she was on the hunt. “Is she home?” She asked, breaking off the story. Ian nodded that she was, and Laura went straight to Amanda’s room. It took three knocks before she got an anguished sounding, “What?” Laura went right through the door. Amanda looked like she had been sleeping even though it was just late afternoon. She stared at Laura with some apprehension, seeing the energy her mother brought into the room.
“Your father and I are going to dinner and we’d like you to come with us.” Laura said while Amanda looked extremely apprehensive about the request.
“Why? You want to take me somewhere where I can’t make a scene. What’s happened? I want to know. You don’t have to take me to a restaurant.”
“Don’t be so paranoid. I just went to visit the family of my dying high school boyfriend and it’s a story I really want you and your father to hear together. Don’t think of this as quality time; just think of this as having dinner with your parents when they might actually have something interesting to say. Please?” It was the please that did it. Amanda looked absolutely confused. She didn’t move or reply.
“If we’re going to get through this as a family we have to start by just spending some time together. I know you don’t trust me, and I sure as hell don’t trust you, but maybe we can leave that behind for just one meal. Let’s start with one meal. Please.”
Amanda did not know how to respond. This new tactic was too simple and too difficult to figure out without more information. And almost against her better judgment she got up and followed her mother out of the room.
In the car on the way to the restaurant, Amanda sat in the back seat and said nothing as her mother talked, until just before they arrived.
“So what did you say about what a screwed up daughter you have?” she finally asked quietly.
“It’s true, I went there for advice from someone with a lot of experience in dealing with broken children, not that you are anywhere near as broken as her children when they were adopted. I realized that it isn’t advice that we need, we need to do what they do every day; we need to connect with each other. You must miss it, like we do.” Laura said, and she didn’t sound sarcastic at all. And against all odds, and everyone’s pessimistic expectation, dinner was absolutely delightful as Laura described her day’s experience at the farm, and the description of it brought out what the farm did to most people, it brought out the heady perfume of pure possibility.
Amanda and her father sat there enthralled as the story poured from Laura: the beautiful cars, the carved walnut family tree, the art and the art studio she had seen, the furniture factory, the coffeehouse classroom, the steam engine, the foster family cabins, the horses, the sand dunes, the wall of lyrics and the beach. Ian was most taken with the idea of restoring cars to their original pristine beauty and how each child has helped restore their own car with their father.
“I know you wouldn’t want to get dirty working on an old car,” he said to Amanda, “But when you get your first car, maybe we could find one that you liked and have them restore it for you? And it will be a wonderful investment for your future as well.”
“I don’t want an old car.” Amanda replied with some obvious contempt for the idea.
“It’s true that none of your girlfriends will probably be very impressed with a beautiful restored classic car, and you’d probably get tired of having every boy you know come up to you wanting to ride in it and drive it. You’d probably just hate the idea of having every boy think you are so cool.” Laura added.
“Boys like old cars?” Amanda asked incredulously.
“Not quite as much as sex.” Ian added, and Amanda’s eyes grew wide in surprise.
Ian’s other interest was in the cabins the foster families used in the summer. Again Amanda could not believe that people would choose to go and live without running water and indoor toilets.
“You’re not thinking that we should go up there and be one of those foster families?”
Laura reassured Amanda that neither she nor her father had time to do that, no matter how screwed up they were. “In a way, it’s probably too bad. Ann Marie and Megan could probably use that kind of time together.” No one touched the unspoken implication that Laura didn’t think that they could use that kind of time together. No one wanted to admit it because none of them was prepared to do it.
Amanda was most interested in the coffeehouse and the family room with its huge collection of records, tapes and CDs.
“It would be so cool to have your own club in your own house where people could come and play music and sing. Wow!”
Amanda made her mother describe the coffeehouse in detail, the stage and the instruments and who was there doing what. She loved when her mother told her about the huge song line collection on the wall of the coffeehouse. She started thinking out loud about lines she would choose. This prompted both her parents to do the same and each of them let dancing rays of delight flare out of the tiny seams that old songs opened in their hearts. Sweet feelings flowed through the dinner, and when Laura and Ian toasted their daughter, it was done with an absolute lack of irony. Amanda just looked embarrassed.
At home, Amanda didn’t go straight to her room that she usually did. He threw herself the big leather armchair and spent some time searching particular CDs for certain lines she liked. It was also obvious that she was there because she wanted to listen to what Laura had to say about the farm. She literally could not stop talking about it. For Ian, she did a far more detailed description of Sharon making her sound both fascinating and formidable. Then she told the story of Arthur and Laura Lee and how everyone in the family had mistaken her for the imaginary girl in the letters. Ian was intrigued but could not understand force and the meaning of such letters to adopted children. Laura told how some of the adult children had cried listening to Tom tell the story.
“Can you remember the story?” Amanda asked her mother.
“I couldn’t do it justice.” she replied, “I wish you could have heard it. Tom is such an interesting boy. I have never heard such power in a quiet voice. I think he is about your age, Amanda. He has long black hair that should be in a hair conditioner commercial. He is very hot.”
Amanda was clearly interested in this news and was frustrated by having missed an experience that sounded too good to be true, that made a family sound like it could be extraordinary and miraculously happy.
“So why are you telling me all that? We’re not going to visit, are we?” Amanda asked pointedly.
“Sharon did invite us to come, but I don’t know. There’s something about that place that makes me really nervous. I can’t tell you what it is because I’ve never been made to feel more welcome anywhere in my life. Maybe that’s just it. Would you really want to go Amanda?”
“I guess not, but that coffeehouse night sounds like fun. Maybe we could just go and listen to music.”
“Let’s see what happens next week.” Ian said, his voice betraying his own enthusiasm for the idea. Then Laura remembered the single sheet of paper Sharon had
Dear Laura,
When Sharon told me you are coming to the farm I was so delighted and terrified. I was delighted you’d see what our old farm had become, and my beautiful family. I was frightened you’d see me and be appalled at what my disease has done. Pure vanity.
Long ago it was you and my grandfather and my gullwing coupe that taught me how to live. You made me want to be more than I was. My Mercedes taught me that the best things in life can be preserved and restored, that the past is the only real foundation for the future. The walnut trees my grandfather planted for unborn generations have made everything possible. We have harvested his faith in the future. One tree bought me my old beautiful car, and that car brought you into my life. And it was you who made me realize that I truly wanted to aspire; like lovers, like parents, like sunflowers.
That’s the lesson I’ve tried to pass on to my own children. That’s why you’ll always be welcome here with true love and gratitude. Eugene
Laura chose not to read the four questions he had hoped she would answer.
“Wow!” Ian said, “That’s quite a letter.”
“I’ll say.” Amanda added, looking at her mother who looked very vulnerable indeed.
Ian asked about the walnut trees and she told him the story of how Eugene’s grandfather had planted a walnut forests sometime in the last quarter of the ninteenth century when he was just a young man. Eugene had taken her riding to show her the century forest all those years ago and she still remembered the Cathedral of walnut and White Pine trees towering above the old cedar windbreaks. He told her each walnut tree was worth more than $30,000, and each member of the family could choose one tree, when they were sixteen years old and spend the money just as they wished. He and his brother were the first to do it. His brother bought himself a law degree; he had bought himself a 1959 Mercedes-Benz Gull Wing Coupe.
“And it appears that forest is mostly untouched.” she added.
“How could they leave all that money?” Amanda interjected, “They could all be millionaires.”
Here was a story Amanda could relate to: money growing on trees, a hot boy with long flowing hair, fast cars, fun and songs lines to share. And the most intriguing thing of all that it sounded like her mother might’ve been the romantic inspiration for it all. ‘I’ll bet he still loves her.’ she thought, and she was not alone.
Laura announced she was going to bed, at which point Amanda got up and said good night and thanked them for the evening, and everyone smiled, and it was all very weird.
When Amanda was back in her room she looked at the wall opposite her bed and saw the collage of magazine photos of beautiful boys and men, of beautiful young girls and women in suggestive and dramatic poses. It only took her a second to decide they had to come down. She would make her own wall of song lyrics, saving the great lines that touched her heart. No one knew that Amanda loved to sing. It was where she was herself in the many long hours that her parents weren’t home. She would perform all over the condominium, stretching her voice as she accompanied her favorite singers, the silver bud vase that she used as a microphone prop long ago discolored from the sweat of her hands. When she was almost finished pulling down they magazine photos from her wall, the telephone on her bed rang. It surprised her because of the fact that only her friend Kara continued to call since she had stopped going to school. That was who she assumed it was. The voice on the other end of the line was absolutely unfamiliar but when the woman introduced herself as Sharon Van Fleet, her heart fluttered away from her like a free autumn leaf, like a page from Vogue that slid through her fingers. Sharon asked Amanda if her mother had mentioned her visit to the farm.
“She hasn’t stopped talking about it.” Amanda replied, “I can give you my mom’s phone number if you like.”
Then Sharon told her that it wasn’t Laura that she was interested in talking to, it was her. This made Amanda very nervous.
“Why would you want to talk to me?”
“Because we all really like your mother, and I thought it might be nice to invite you and your father to visit sometime.” A band began playing behind Sharon’s voice and Amanda realized he was calling from the coffeehouse. All the voices she had heard in the background now also made sense. The music almost drowned out Sharon’s voice and she had to shout so Amanda could hear her.
“I knew that you’d probably be the most reluctant to visit, so we decided to put on a little concert so that you would feel a little more welcome and comfortable if you decided to come to visit us. I’m going to leave the phone open here on the table and you can talk to whoever comes along. And if you open your computer e-mail you’ll see that were sending a picture every few minutes so that you can see what’s happening here. We sing like this every Saturday night. I hope you won’t feel that were being too pushy. I hope you don’t mind were having a concert in your honor.”
“No, I don’t mind.” Amanda was blown away. She walked over to her computer and opened the inbox and there were already three pictures waiting for her to see. Sharon said goodbye and gave the phone to her daughter Mary.
Mary was talking a mile a minute as Amanda sat down in front of her computer dragging the long extension cord attached to the phone and feeling very nervous and somehow manipulated in a way she didn’t quite understand. When the music stopped, she finally was able to make sense of what Mary was saying. She was asking about what kind of music Amanda like best, and when Amanda told her some of the bands she liked, she was shocked to realize that Mary didn’t know any of them.
“Don’t you watch, ‘MTV’?” Amanda asked and was surprised when Mary told that she didn’t watch television all that much, that everyone on the farm liked making music more than they liked watching it on television. In the background Amanda heard a voice say her name and dedicate the next song to her. The voice from the stage told people that Mary was talking to Amanda on the phone and if people wanted to say hello to the guest of honor, she was going to be there on the phone listening.
“This is a big night for us.” said the distant voice, “It’s the first live broadcast from the coffeehouse. Say hello to Amanda everybody.” The whole crowd shouted, “Hello, Amanda”
The announcement made Amanda even more nervous but she was secretly delighted with the whole thing. She talked to Mary and then started to worry that no one else would want to talk to her. She shouldn’t have worried. A phone to a teenager was an irresistible thing as long as there was another teenager waiting for a connection at the other end of the line.
The next song began and Mary passed the phone to another teenager who went on to describe the coffeehouse and who was there on what is going on. The music Amanda could hear was unlike anything she knew. The digital photos that came every few minutes downloaded from the coffeehouse showed her the table and the person that had the phone talking to her. She was shocked at the number of people up on the stage. For a while it was hard to try to carry on a conversation with a stranger while trying to see details in a downloaded picture, but soon Amanda got used to watching the moment to moment changes in the room so far away. She started to ask questions about what she was seeing, and it was a strange and wonderful kind of conversation where she could ask about people in the picture who would move and were no longer where she was directing her phone partner to look.
Amanda didn’t realize how much she missed her peer connections, and it was exciting and wonderful to reconnect over a phone to a succession of people who were obviously near her age. They talked about music and school and Amanda quickly learned that none of the children who lived on the farm went to a traditional school. The school was in the coffeehouse. There were two older sisters who were the teachers, and they only went to school from eight in the morning u
The first time Amanda saw Tom he was standing alone on the stage with an Irish harp. He sang a song in Gaelic, a lovely ballad he sang in a beautiful baritone voice. All the young girls who weren’t dancing were standing by the stage, and he was clearly the center of their attention. The picture that Amanda was looking at on the computer screen showed all the female heads from behind. The next photo had hardly changed from the first, and by the time the next photo appeared the song was over and Tom had left the stage. Her mother was right, he certainly looked hot. It was well past midnight and Amanda’s arm was aching from holding the phone to her ear when, as she was waiting for the next picture to download, the receiver was passed once more and a soft male voice said, “Hello, this is Tom Van Fleet.”
Boy-girl vibrations set up inside Amanda and slowed time considerably as she tried to think of what to say to him. She told him she could see him in the photos on her computer, but could not tell how tall he was. “A little over six feet, I think. My ancestors were aboriginal people.”
“I know. That’s so cool. My mom’s best friend is one too. So what other instruments do you play?”
“I play fiddle, guitar, bass, piano and sometimes a concert harp.”
“You don’t mean those big gold ones?”
“Just like Harpo Marx.” he replied.
“Who’s he?” she asked.
“One of the Marx Brothers; don’t you know who they are?”
Amanda had no idea who the Marx brothers were. She was sure they must’ve been musicians and so she said one of the dumbest things that she ever said in her life.
“I don’t really know many classical musicians.” she answered.
“Tomorrow you should go to the video store and find the old classic section and rent a movie called Duck Soup.” Tom replied. “Harpo Marx is in that movie. My dad used to say that life was like Harpo Marx’s trench coat. It’s amazing the things that can come out of it.”
Amanda did not like feeling dumb or unsophisticated. Like her mother, when she was nervous she went on the attack.
“So why haven’t you asked me what I look like?” she pressed him.
“I would guess you’re probably average looking like most people, like me.”
“You are not average and neither am I.”
The silence that followed her statement absolutely shook her confidence. Did he think she was vain? Did he think she was flattering him? Did he think she was just an immature idiot? The silence remained. She didn’t know what to say, and when her mouth opened and she spoke, what came out was more immature idiocy.
“Well, everyone thinks I’m really pretty and really smart and I almost killed a girl this week.”
Tom said nothing. She instantly realized how stupid she sounded and just about wanted to die. Finally when he spoke in his slow gentle voice, what he said cut like a knife.
“I’m sorry that you almost killed a girl. You must be sick at heart.”
Then it was Amanda’s turn to be silent. She didn’t know what to say to him. He had not reacted to what she had said as any other boy she knew would have responded. His response was sadness and compassion and it hit the wellspring of her own. She fought back her own tears.
“I’m really sorry I did it. I wish I could take it back. You must think I’m terrible.”
“I don’t think you’re terrible. I think you made a bad mistake. I think you must be very sorry. You probably need to heal yourself and I think you should try to help the person you hurt try to heal as well.”
“But I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to stop hurting myself or hurting other people.” Amanda started to cry as silently as she could.
“You know everything you need to know. You know how to cry when you’re sorry. You know how to tell someone what’s in your heart. I think you have all the tools you need.”
“How would you know that?” she asked, softly.
“Listening to someone’s heart is like listening to someone sing. You can tell the feelings they have inside without knowing anything more about them.”
“That’s so beautiful. I’ve never told anybody in my whole life that I want to sing, that I love to sing, that it’s the only time I feel like I can be myself.”
“Then you should come to visit us. We sing all the time. We could do a song together.”
If there was anything in the world he could’ve said to her to completely melt her heart that was it.
“That would be great.” she sighed, and couldn’t help smiling as she looked at the new photo of Tom sitting talking to her on the phone. He told her that he had to go now because he was going to sing another song. He said that he hoped that she would come to visit and she said that she hoped so too, and it was more than hope. It was the beginning of love’s longing.
When he was gone and the phone was passed, she got to talk to someone who was obviously another admirer of Tom. The voice on the other end wanted to know everything that he had said, and when Amanda told her that he offered to sing a song with her, it was obvious the girl was completely jealous. “Most of the girls around here would kill to sing with Tom.”
“Really.” Amanda played dumb. “He really is a very good singer. I can understand.” Then the girl told Amanda that they had to stop talking because Tom was going to sing, and over the phone line she heard his distant voice singing, ‘When I Fall in Love’, and the simple ballad left Amanda sitting silently, her heart pounding, her head spinning, trying to deny the positively stupid and absolutely crazy, not a chance that it could be real, feeling that she had fallen in love. It was just past one o’clock when Sharon came back on the phone and asked Amanda how she’d enjoyed her concert. Amanda told her it was wonderful and thanked her with true sincerity. Sharon renewed her invitation for Amanda to visit her family. “You’d like the farm; there’s lots to see and lots to do.”
“I’m sure I’d love to meet your family.” she said, “I’m so sorry your husband has that terrible disease.”
Sharon thanked her for saying that and Amanda felt different and better and almost mature. As Tom was speaking, she had been watching in the background as people gathered around Eugene’s wheelchair. It broke her heart to think of her own father like that. After Sharon hung up the phone and the computer images stopped coming, Amanda lay down on her bed with her sore, sore arm and felt like her heart was going to explode, and for once the secret feeling felt like it was why she was alive. Bubbles in her blood, bubbles in her brain: she was a glass and Tom was champagne.
Lying on her bed, she almost gasped in shock when the phone rang. It was Kara screaming at her, absolutely livid because she’d been stood up. Amanda was supposed to have sneaked out after her parents were asleep to join Kara on Yonge Street.
“So who have you been talking to for the past six million fucking hours?” Kara demanded.
“I was listening to a concert that was dedicated to me.” she replied, smugly.
“What concert? On the phone? Are you wired, or what?”
“Absolutely.” Then Amanda told Kara that she was really tired and just wanted to go to sleep, and hung up the phone on her still furious friend. She did not want Kara to ridicule her or Tom or the farm, which she was absolutely sure was what would have happened if Amanda had tried to describe the last few hours.
As usual, Amanda did not fall asleep until past four in the morning. That night it was the pure excitement of memory that kept her from sleep. She googled Eugene Van Fleet and it took her to the farm’s website and a list of all the e-mail addresses of the children. Amanda has spent a long time trying to find Tom in the photos she’d been sent from the coffeehouse to see if there was some hint of a relationship with another girl. For her, that was the biggest question of all. No matter how she parsed it, there was going to be no way for her to find out unless she went to the farm. She had the terrifying thought that she might
She quickly realized that she could legitimately send him an e-mail to thank him for his consideration and the things he had said to her that touched her heart, and how much she liked his last song. It took her about five minutes to figure out how to say all that, but how to ask the big terrible question was so hard she finally fell asleep without having resolved any words. When she woke up, she was strangely alert. She realized this is been the first Saturday night in far too many that she hadn’t been stoned in one way or another. The nervous excitement of an unfinished question remained.
Ian was shocked when he got up for his early-morning jog and found Amanda looking through his old vinyl records. She saw his surprise but ignored it.
“You know a song called ‘When I Fall in Love’?” she asked.
Ian went to the huge music collection starts in to search through the CDs and quickly pulled out one of Sam Cooke singing live and handed it to Amanda.
“Brilliant!” she shrieked. “Can I play it?”
“Sure.”
Amanda listened to the particular cut of her special song as Ian went to get himself a glass of orange juice. He was shocked at the focus and intensity in her face as she listened to the song. When it was over she replayed it again and asked who Sam Cooke was. Ian told her the story of how Sam Cooke started as a gospel singer and switched to rock ‘n roll, and how he was shot and killed in a motel when he was with an underage girl. “It was rock ‘n roll’s first great scandal,” he explained.
Amanda listened attentively and then, out of the blue, asked him where she could rent a copy of Duck Soup.
She was disappointed when he said he didn’t know exactly, but assumed it would be in one of the bigger video stores.
“Do you think you could drive me?” she asked, girlishly.
“Sure. Why do you have such a sudden yen to watch The Marx Brothers?”
“Somebody told me Duck Soup is quite good.”
“It’s classic. I’ll take you when I come back from my jog. Why don’t you get yourself some breakfast?”
When Ian came back an hour later, Amanda was still listening to Sam Cooke.
“He’s incredible.” she said, “Why doesn’t anybody ever play his records?”
“They probably do on Golden Oldies.”
“Such a crime! So, can we go and look for Duck Soup?”
“There is a line I never thought I would hear from my daughter. Sure, let’s go.”
Ian tried to get Amanda to talk about her strange morning behavior and it didn’t take much. She knew Kara would ridicule her, if she tried to talk about the coffeehouse concert. There was no one else on earth who would possibly be interested in hearing about the most exciting evening of her life. Her father was the one who ended up listening to it all pour out, except her deep, personal reaction to Tom and what he had said to her.
Ian struggled in the tidal wave of words, amazed at Sharon’s ingenuity, amazed at the absolute power that could reach out from so far away and in one evening give his daughter a sense of excitement that he hadn’t seen in her since she was twelve years old. Amanda kept talking, only pausing when Ian was paying for the videocassette. She had made him rent all the Marx Brothers movies. That was when Ian realized the emotional impact the farm would have on them all.
Back in the car, Amanda was suddenly quiet, sitting holding an arm load of tapes. She told her father about Tom and how he had invited her to sing with him. She told him Tom played the harp just like Harpo Marx. Amanda was quiet once more until she said, “You know how they fix up old cars at the farm. Do you think that when I get a car, I could pick an old one they could fix up, like you said?”
“It might take a year to restore an old car. I can’t imagine why you would need a car unless you’re going away to school, and that would mean you’d have to bring your marks back up to what they used to be.” he answered seriously. He was gingerly sliding out onto the thin ice of the future. He was shocked when she took her hand and went with him.
“But how would I pick an old car?” she asked, tacitly agreeing to his terms.
“That shouldn’t be too hard.” He stopped at their local convenience store and told her to wait and came back with the national auto trader for classic cars. He handed it to her and said, “Maybe you can get Tom to help you choose?” Her eyes flared at the thought. She blushed.
She started leafing through the auto trader the way she had opened Christmas gifts when she was a little girl. Ian’s heart sank to see it. Cupids bow sang, and his arrows had already flown. Ian could see where they were stuck in his daughter’s heart. Suddenly the meaningless future seemed to connect to a farm neither one of them had ever seen.
When Laura woke up and came into the living room, it was to find Amanda and Ian rolling on the couch with laughter watching the Marx Brothers. She could see the tears that had been running down her daughter’s face. She sat in the armchair and watched the two of them as much as she watched the television, but soon she was laughing as they were. There was something about the Marx Brothers, the way they confronted power, privilege and pomposity with pure absurd anarchy that was somehow liberating. There was no sanity clause.
Laura had no idea how all this it come to pass, assuming it had to do with their previous night’s dinner. She could not imagine how the world could change for someone overnight. Even if she had known, she couldn’t imagine that anyone could fall in love with a stranger on the phone. There was no end to the wonders of the morning. As the movie was rewinding, Amanda was back immersed in her car magazine, leafing through it with serious intensity. Curiouser and curiouser. How quickly things could change. She could hardly wait to ask Ian to explain what was going on.
When Amanda’s phone rang she nearly flew out of the room, and when she picked up the receiver it was Kara’s voice. “Fuck you bitch!” she screamed and slammed down the phone.
“Thanks for calling.” Amanda said to the dead line.
Two things happened that afternoon that were part of Amanda’s amazing transformation. The first thing was absolutely obvious to everyone; she washed the gel out of her hair, the gel that had gone back the day after she came home from jail. That morning she had looked at herself in the mirror as she had countless other times, and where once she had seen the hideous transformation of a beautiful child into an imperfect, distorted, underdeveloped woman, she now looked at what she hoped was the beginnings of feminine beauty. She secretly wanted to be beautiful. She was glad that she had her mother’s genes. She remembered the picture of her mother when she was sixteen and imagined that she might approach such beauty. Under the gel, in the soft hair and translucent skin was her own beauty. And unlike every other moment in front of her mirror over the past year, it was a beauty she did not want to flaunt or deny but accept as a gift that might please others or one other in particular.
The other thing that happened that afternoon was done in private. Alone in her room, Amanda got the phone number of the hospital and called Stacy Peak. It took every ounce of courage inside her, but she dialed the number, and when Stacy’s father answered she told him who was. Before he passed the phone, Amanda told him that she realized how badly she had hurt Stacy, how terrible it must’ve been for them to face the possibility that their daughter might even die. Without knowing where the words were coming from, Amanda told Stacy’s father that she realized that she had to change and become a better person, and she had to do whatever she could to help Stacy heal as well. The bile in Stacy’s father’s voice vanished as he told her there wasn’t anything she could have said that would’ve made him feel more comfortable giving Stacy the phone. When Stacy came on the phone, it was a voice filled with fear and apprehension.
“I’m so sorry. I treated you like some kind of freak. It was because I didn’t want anyone to turn on me.” Amanda began.
The conversation that followed this was probably the first adult conversation either
Both of them were absolutely amazed that they shared a common view of life as outsiders. They talked about why everyone’s opinion mattered so much and why their own opinions mattered so little. They talked about having nothing in life that was really their own. Then Stacy said something just before they hung up that would never leave Amanda.
“The only thing I have ever been able to do in my life is get good grades. You are so lucky. You could always do anything. You were always so popular. I could never understand why you wanted to throw that all away and hang out with a whole bunch of losers.”
“I guess it’s just hard to grow up when you feel so alone.” Amanda replied.
“I know. I know. Maybe when I come back to school, we could have lunch?”
“Sure, let’s do lunch.” Amanda said breezily, but both of them knew the incredible courage doing that would require of each of them.
Encouraged, inspired, feeling almost brave, Amanda sat down at her computer and composed her first e-mail message to Tom.
‘Dear Tom,
I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed the concert last night on the phone. Please thank your mother for me. I bet it was her idea. I also want to tell you how much I enjoyed talking to you. You don’t talk like most guys. It made me really think about what you said. It made a serious difference. I called the girl I hurt today, and I think we both feel a lot better. We are going to do lunch.
I watched Duck Soup this morning and feel really dumb not knowing who The Marx Brothers were. They are so great. I never saw my father laugh so much in my life. I don’t think I laughed so much either. I think your father is right; life is like Harpo’s trench coat. It sure is crazy sometimes.
My dad also has a copy of Sam Cooke singing, ‘When I Fall in Love’. It didn’t sound to me like he really believed the words. I thought that when you sang them, you really meant it. So when you fall in love, what is it you are looking for? I guess like most girls I spend a lot of time thinking about that. I don’t know what the answer is, but none of the guys I’ve ever met is even close. How about you?
I have been thinking about what we could sing, if we ever really meet. It’s fun to think about. You must get to think about stuff like that all the time. You’re so lucky. Well, I better go. It would be really nice if we could ever sing together and maybe even be friends. Thanks again. Amanda’
Amanda read the message over and over and was sure she was sounding very aggressive or needy, or stupid, or pathetic, or just sooooo immature. But the longer she tried to edit her message, the more hopeless it seemed. There was nothing she wanted to take out. There wasn’t any more she dared put in. It was a perfect letter. It was a pathetic letter. She had no idea what she would do. She thought about what he would be doing when he would read her letter, and if he would show it to anyone. Feeling so brave when she began, she felt absolutely terrified when she finished. This letter might change the whole course of her life. It might also do absolutely nothing. And she was absolutely right.
Early in the afternoon while Laura was trying to catch up on her own phone messages, the phone had rung in her hand, and it was her friend Ann Marie. She wanted to go for an emergency walk in Mount Pleasant Cemetery because her daughter Megan was spinning out of control, even more than usual. Laura listened to her friend talk about her daughter’s new boyfriend who was ten years older than Megan and seemed to be even more into the drug culture than the rest of her daughter’s friends. It’d only been by chance that Ann Marie had met him. She was walking down Queen Street when she saw her daughter being groped by the new boyfriend at one of the bus stops. She had grabbed him by the back of his shirt and stood him up while both he and Megan screamed obscenities at her. He told her to go fuck herself. Megan had supported him in this view, in her own obscene hysterical way.
“So, how was your day?” Ann Marie asked dejectedly.
Laura commiserated as well as she could, then gave Ann Marie a brief description of her visit to the farm and her impressions of Sharon, and told her about the apparent miracle that it happened in the last day with Amanda. She had completely shed her emery board surface. She was going back to school. She watched Marx Brothers movies with her father. She was reading car magazines. She had washed the grease out of her hair. Ann Marie was impressed.
“There’s only one thing that can do all that overnight...a man.” Laura said, and Ann Marie agreed with her.
The more Laura told her friend about the farm and her impressions of the children, the more envious they admitted to being.
“Hell, does she take in boarders? We should ship them both up there and pick them up when they become human beings.” Ann Marie suggested, half-jokingly.
Laura replied that they actually did take in families in crisis, but it had to be the whole family and only for the summer.
“Well, I guess that’s not going to work.” She then wanted to know the real dirt and asked about Laura’s affair with George.
“It’s intense. I’m amazed how he can make me forget everything: my job, my daughter, my husband, how tired I am, and all the damn resentments I can’t even remember.” She did not mention that he even made her forget the hole that life had gnawed inside her. Then Laura told her friend about the hot scene inside the door of George’s apartment the day before. Ann Marie listened and responded with great admiration and then Laura asked her friend what had made her do it, and why it had been so overwhelmingly and overpoweringly intense and satisfy. Guilt was starting to melt the edges of her heart.
“I felt like a man. After I had the greediest orgasm of my life, I couldn’t wait to get out of there. You should have seen him lying there, looking up at me with those puppy dog eyes. I keep thinking I had better end this soon. He’s so emotionally homeless.” Laura confessed.
Laura also told her friend how George had got her to scream that she was beautiful when she finished coming. She didn’t understand why doing that should have cut into her so deeply and why it would leave a scar she would be afraid to even touch for a very long time.
When they talked about Laura’s visit to the farm and her impressions of Sharon, Ann Marie said that it made her very nervous. She thought Sharon sounded like a very controlling person. When Laura told her that Sharon’s sincerity and warmth seemed genuine, but rather enveloping, Ann Marie said that a sense of detachment and space was absolutely necessary in relationships for people to maintain their individual identities.
“It’s true. She swallows you up. That place swallows you up. I don’t really understand how her kids deal with it. The thing I can’t explain is why it felt so good.”
“Sometimes a change is as good as a rest. She certainly sounds different.” Ann Marie replied.
As usual, both friends felt better after their conversation. Laura went back to her work and Ann Marie went home from her office where she found a letter from her daughter Megan saying she was moving to Vancouver with her new boyfriend. She had taken her clothes and her mother’s debit card that she used to clean out her mother’s checking account. She said that Ann Marie owed her that much for what she had done to her that day on the street.
That night Laura had to listen to a long anguished heartbroken call that carried all the guilt and terror and desperation that a parent could possibly feel for having done nothing but try to protect her daughter from a tragic mistake.
“I’m helpless. I’m terrified and alone for the first time in my whole life; no man, no child, no future, and I don’t really think I have any hope of one. I’m a sixty-
It was all about Ann Marie. Even she knew it. She couldn’t help it and so she hung up the phone before she could blurt out her most horrible, humiliating secret. She had suspected for weeks that her daughter had been shooting heroin. She had hung up without being able to admit to her friend that she was terrified that it was only a matter of time before life would completely destroy her poor little family of two. Family life was a freeze and thaw cycle of love and pain.
It was already dark when Amanda finally pushed the button that said, send. Her fate flew through cyberspace, and what was done could not be undone. Only a sixteen-year-old girl can know absolutely the hope of a perfect beginning. She didn’t want to leave her room until she got some kind of answer. She almost ran when she went to the kitchen to get herself something to eat. She was starving. Her anxiety was eating right through her other more insatiable hunger.
She listened to music and wrote down special lyrics. She looked at car magazines and picked a number of cars that she really liked. She liked the old MGA, and the E type Jaguar. At first she thought she wanted something small and sleek, something romantic, a convertible sports car. She finally decided she would ask Tom’s opinion of a Volvo P1800. She had always thought Volvos were the ultimate suburban sedan. The picture of the old sports car showed it definitely had character. It was tough. Then she decided a sports car was just too immature. She started looking at old sedans and completely fell in love with a 77, swept back Buick Riviera. It was style and substance. It was her gullwing coupe. She blushed when she imagined her own children in the back seat.
At eight o’clock, she had mail. It was Tom! It was the first big fall of love’s great roller coaster.
She read the words voraciously. It was a nice, polite and sincere reply. He enjoyed talking to her too. ‘Great’! He was glad she was able to talk to the girl that she had hurt. ‘Me too!’ ‘So what did you talk about?’ he had asked. ‘My God, he wants me to write back again.’ She was ecstatic. Then the absolutely greatest spectacular thing was when he said that he had never been in love, and so he hoped that when he sang that song, it somehow came across. ‘It came! ‘It came!’
Then came the answer to the biggest question of all, what he was looking for in love. ‘I’m looking for someone strong.’ he had written.
Amanda’s heart hit the bottom of the first big fun ride drop. ‘Is that all?’ she thought, that’s not so much to expect, I suppose. And I guess that lets me out. She felt like she was going to cry.
She wasn’t strong. She didn’t even know how to pretend to be strong. The only person she knew that was even occasionally strong was her father. The one thing she held onto was Tom saying that he was looking forward to doing a song with her, especially because it would be the first time that she sang for an audience. ‘My God, I’ll have to be in front of people. I’ll probably shrivel up and die, and I’d be standing beside the one person who would totally see it.’ Her heart was ready to explode all over again.
Amanda fell asleep still hearing the roller coaster wheels that had been clattering under her heart all night long. Strong, strong; He wants someone strong. Strong, strong; He wants someone strong. Why did it have to be that?
Amanda was quiet over breakfast. As usual, Laura was long gone. Ian was busy getting ready for his work day. He and Amanda shared a fast breakfast before he watched her eat her birth control pill and throw together her backpack. Breakfast and the few minutes it took to drive Amanda to school were the only regular times Ian really shared with his daughter. It wasn’t quality time. Usually Ian was starting to focus on work and she was usually just too wrecked to speak.
This day was different because she was up and ready before Ian had knocked on her door. It looked like the same old routine, but they both knew something had changed. The most obvious change was then Amanda no longer dressed to impress. She was dressed simply in jeans and a sweatshirt which, for her in the past year, was like being dressed in a full-length ball gown. Ian knew better than to comment on the change.
When they were pulling out into morning traffic, Ian was totally taken off guard by her unusual question.
“Dad, what makes some people strong?”
As surprised as he was by the question, he was more shocked to discover that he really had no answer to give her. But he knew he had to try the best that he could.
“Heredity and environment, I would guess.” he replied.
“That’s no answer. Where does it come from?” She was obviously very serious about this question.
“It comes from experience, I suppose.”
“Everybody has experience. Most people are just like mush. I feel like mush.”
“You probably won’t feel like that when you get older.” Ian replied ingenuously, “Everybody feels like that at your age.”
“No. Some people my age are strong.” Then came the razor edged cut of her question’s deeper implications. “You and mom are so smart and so successful, and sometimes you’re just as weak as I am. I don’t understand how I’m supposed to learn to be strong, when neither of you know how to do it very much.”
“I’m sorry you don’t think your mother and I are very strong.”
Amanda cut him off. “I’m not trying to hurt your feelings. I just want to know how I am supposed to learn how to be a strong person.”
“I guess you have to ask someone that you think is strong.”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking too. But that’s a pretty scary thing to do. It’s almost like confessing that you’re weak.”
By the time they arrived at Amanda’s school, Ian asked her if it would be all right if he gave the question some more thought. She agreed, but without much enthusiasm.
Amanda’s preoccupation with her question helped her get through the day. Everybody saw the change in her clothes and her hair. They teased her for wimping out, for being deprogrammed, for giving into her parents. ‘You look so straight. Maybe you’ll want to be on the dance committee next? Maybe somebody will nominate you for prom Queen.’ She didn’t care. What she heard were weak little comments from weak little people. When teachers saw her change of clothes and appearance they treated her like she had almost come back from the dead, giving her big phony smiles and hellos. She was appalled at how shallow they were. She felt like little Ms. Holden Caulfield being swallowed up in a sea of phoniness. All she could think about was what she could possibly say to Tom. She knew she wanted to write back to him. She knew that whatever she wrote was going to have to be the truth. She decided that no matter how long it took, she wasn’t going to write to them until she could do that, and even more importantly, until she had some vague idea of what it meant to be strong. Her decision took time, and more importantly, it took some considerable strength. Amanda was appalled at the thought that she almost never saw people being strong. Everybody got through stressful days, one day at a time. Everybody was ready to criticize everything. Nobody was ready to stand up and say what was really important.
Her father had been strong at the police station, even with her, which definitely had been a change. She assumed he must be strong at work. She assumed that her mother was too. But almost anywhere else, they were phony and critical, and just about as strong as mush. She lived in a world of weaklings and whiners. She was just as bad as anyone else, and most of the time, a whole lot worse. Usually around noon, Kara, who had quit school, would phone her and they would decide where to meet. Kara was surprised and shocked that Amanda had gone back to school and that her phone call had found her there. She was even more shocked and angry when Amanda refused to cut class to meet her on the street.
“So, you’re going to cut the only friend you have in the world. You’re going to dump me because you’ve got in a little trouble. What a fucking baby!”
“You’re right. I am a baby
“You calling me a baby? I could kick your teeth in.” Kara screamed.
“That would be very grown-up. Listen, I’ll call you.” Amanda again hung up the phone on her cursing friend.
Pointless friends; pointless studies; pointless teachers; pointless parents; what was the fucking point? All she wanted was to be pointed in the right direction. She had absolutely no sense of direction; she couldn’t even tell which way the wind was blowing. She had always ignored the fact that there was a wind of change that blew through everyone’s life. Everyone was looking for a happening life and had no idea what was happening to them. What’s up? What’s happening? Zip. Zip Nada!
At the end of Ian’s day, he had made an appointment to visit the Peaks at their home. He knew they had engaged a civil attorney because he had received a call telling them that there would be a civil lawsuit arising from Stacy’s injuries. He had expected as much.
Ian had succeeded in arranging his first meeting with the family and their attorney at their home where he felt they would be more comfortable and personally willing to compromise, to resist the unconscious pressure to litigate that a formal law office might give to a meeting.
When Ian entered the modest little home, it was like finding a little bit of England. The cultural roots that defined the little family were lined up on shelves all over the living room; pictures of Queen and country, pictures of the war effort, all of Stacy’s grandparents in the drab World War II uniforms of soldiers and nurses. The Union Jack, the Blue Boy and Pinky looked down over little porcelain tourist treasures from Blackpool, Chester, Stratford, Cardiff, Bristol, and more.
The Peak’s lawyer was young and nervous as he explained their position. Although Stacy did not seem to exhibit any permanent physical damage at the present time, there was no way to know what long-term effects such a serious injury could have. The pain and suffering that both Stacy and her family had endured could also not be discounted. Ian cut him off. He told them that he completely accepted that Amanda was liable for injuring Stacy. He said it was difficult in a case like theirs to determine financial liability. He expected and understood that there would be little sympathy for Amanda for what she had done, but rather than risk costly litigation for both families where one or both could be seriously disappointed and financially burdened, he proposed to make the family an offer that recognized Amanda’s responsibility and might offer them some financial benefit.
“If anything good is to come of this, I hope it will be that both Stacy and Amanda’s lives might be changed for the better. I believe Amanda has learned an important lesson. I think what has happened has changed her. Knowing what a good student Stacy is, and how expensive a university degree can be, our family has decided that perhaps the best way we can compensate Stacy for her terrible experience is to help her with her University education.” Ian explained, and then continued,
“I don’t know if Amanda will ever go to university, as we have always hoped. Aside from our small retirement savings plans, the only money we have is $30,000 in Amanda’s educational savings account. I’m proposing to make that available to Stacy to pay for her University degree, if she goes to school in Canada. We can’t afford an Ivy League school, even for our own daughter. I won’t call my offer generous because there is no way to measure your suffering. What I will say is that I hope you consider such an offer, because it really tries to make the best resolution of a terrible situation.”
The young lawyer protested the Stacy would be much better served with a much higher lump sum payment so she would not be deprived of the benefit of the interested accrued from that kind of settlement, a settlement that seemed seriously inadequate.
Ian was about to argue the merits of his offer, but was cut off by Mr. Peek who told Ian and his own lawyer that the offer was acceptable as far as his family was concerned, that he felt the spirit in which it was offered was much more important to them than the money. Then he surprised Ian by telling him about the conversation Amanda had had with Stacy, and how Stacy had almost insisted that they drop any kind of legal action that all.
“I believe your daughter has changed for the better, and it’s difficult for me to admit, but I believe this incident has made my own daughter much stronger and more confident as a person. It isn’t often that a tragedy leads to a better life, but I believe that’s what’s happened here. Please tell your daughter that we all admire her sense of responsibility and the strength she has shown in reaching out to Stacy.”
Ian had no idea that Amanda had called Stacy, and certainly no idea what she had said, but he was as proud of her as he had ever been in his life. This was unlike a parent’s pride at a dance recital. This kind of pride was never forgotten or lost because it showed such mature strength.
It was over in one sense, and begun in another, because Stacy and her education would become a proud extension of their lives over the next few years. She would become, over those years, as close to being a sister to Amanda as anyone she would ever know. Mrs. Peak presented each of them with a small glass of sherry to mark the occasion, and the young lawyer looked like he was still confused and nervous about whether he had won or lost.
At first Amanda thought that strength was knowing what you wanted and doing what it took to get it. But junkies knew what they wanted and would do anything to get it. Everyone seemed to know what they wanted, except her. Everyone seemed to be able to get what they wanted, except her. Her old self-pity was hard to shake, but it didn’t take even an instant for her to realize the truth was that she always got what she wanted. What she never got was a reason for wanting the things that she did. She was life’s insatiable consumer, just like everyone else.
It took her three days to write a reply to Tom’s last message. It went on for five printed pages, explaining to him everything that she had been thinking, how difficult it was for her to come up with a definition of personal strength. Everyone knew it when they saw it, but saw it so infrequently that it was difficult to understand the source. She confessed to him that she felt just as weak as everyone that she seemed to know, but the one thing that was different about her was that when he said that she could become a better person, she knew in her heart that it was true.
‘Maybe strength comes out of courage. Maybe all I’m missing is guts.’ She had written and meant it. She read the message to herself a dozen times before she finally sent it. Strangely, what she feared most was not his reaction to what she had said, but rather that she hadn’t explained it as well as she had wanted to do.
‘It’s funny how you’re saying that you wanted someone strong made me see my life in a completely different way. It’s funny how one short talk can change so many things.’ was how she had closed, and then added a PS, ‘It’s funny and sad, but you almost feel like my best friend, even though we haven’t even met. Really funny and really sad.’
Before she went to sleep at three, she had read and reread his ten page reply that came just before midnight. Her heart felt like a glass jar jammed full of violets, so many beautiful feelings jammed into such a little space. Her long descriptions of her day and her thoughts were answered with serious reflection and respect. He told her he had shared many of her feelings in the first years after he had come to the farm, but since then he had come to believe that strength was learned from watching strong people, from learning to respect other’s feelings, even those that were so hard to express. ‘Both my parents are strong; some of my brothers and sisters are too. My life changed when I saw what they did with their strength. They make good things happen, and I know we can too. You can never have the power to do anything in life until you want to be responsible for it.’ Those were the words Amanda knew she would never forget as long as she lived.
And that was it for her. That was the answer. Everybody, including and especially her, seemed to want to avoid responsibility, to deny it, to deflect it, to rationalize a
Everything missing in her life was because she didn’t want to be responsible for any part of it. No wonder her life was so pathetic. No wonder she was so pathetic. But holding Tom’s letter and his simple, beautiful answer made her feel anything but pathetic. She felt respected and understood, and although she didn’t dare even admit the word into her mind, for the first time in her life, she actually felt that she was loved. Her last thought before sleep was an echo of her mother’s voice saying that ‘things were going to change around here’.
And change they did. The confident, civil, smiling, neat, engaging human being that was the new Amanda was greeted with both shock and delight by both Ian and Laura. She picked up her clothes and her dirty dishes and anticipated and asked permission to do things. She did her homework without being asked. The chrysalis had opened and the ugly little worm turned into a beautiful butterfly right before their eyes.
Ian had told Amanda what a difference her call to Stacy Peak had made. When he told Amanda that they would be using her educational fund to send Stacy to University, he was shocked when she said that it would be a much better way to spend the money than to use it on her. If she wanted to go to college, she could get student loans and work in the summers. “Stacy has such a tremendous mind, I think it’s great we can help her.” she said, seriously.
This was not his daughter. Benevolent aliens had infected her mind. He loved it. He wanted to know how one came to be among those chosen for the change. In the few hours when Laura and Amanda crossed paths, Laura was just as impressed with the change in her daughter. She didn’t know and was afraid to ask what made the sudden transformation possible. She knew Eugene’s boy Tom had something to do with it, because Amanda would ask questions about him whenever she could think of a way to bring him into the conversation. She wanted to know about every minute Laura had been in Tom’s presence. She wanted her mother to remember everything he had said. Laura knew that somehow, Amanda had developed a crush on this boy; what she didn’t know and didn’t want to know was how a schoolgirl’s crush could do what she and Ian could never accomplish with their daughter. She and Ian called it Amanda’s epiphany and the recognition of it came with a certain measure of envy.
At the end of the week from heaven, the three of them were once again having dinner at the little local Italian restaurant where the change in their lives had begun six days before. Amanda completed her week’s delightful devastation by apologizing to them for how terrible she had been the last year.
“I was lost. I’m back. I don’t think you’ll ever lose me again.” she said, simply.
Ian couldn’t help it, he cried. Amanda looked like she was going to cry too, but the skeptical look on her mother’s face stopped her cold. Laura knew this transformation wouldn’t last. It was a boy crush transformation that the entropy of love would soon degrade. She would enjoy it while it lasted, like her own little secret affair. For better or worse, she believed that life was lived in the moment, but that belief was about to change in the most horrific ways imaginable.