Each and All by John Kuti

  Chapter 9

  The next week was the first time since Amanda was two years old that her family spent a week together in the place that they lived. Without much discussion, it was arranged that Tom would stay at their condo until Amanda was over the shock of her ordeal. Ian took a week’s vacation and Laura had to stay home while she recovered from her own injuries.

  When Amanda had first seen her mother when she woke up, the look of shock in Amanda’s eyes was so powerful that it scared everyone in the room. She had got out of Wayne’s guest bed and walked to her mother and touched her sore, cut face. She had forgotten that Tom had told her that her mother had been in an accident and it almost seemed she connected her mothers injuries to what had happened to her.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Amanda said to her mother as she touched her swollen face.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for. You have to lie down and sleep.”

  Laura then led Amanda back to the bed, and it was late in the afternoon when Tom brought Amanda something to eat. She had woken up looking numb and confused. She had again forgotten what happened to her mother. She seemed to have forgotten everything that had happened to her. She didn’t know where she was or how she had come to be there. She couldn’t understand why Tom was bringing her lunch in a strange place. She couldn’t understand why he was saying that her parents were in the other room waiting to see her. She couldn’t understand, and she didn’t know how to explain to him she didn’t understand. She had gone through the looking glass of reality. She was there, but only as a flat reflection.

  She was back in her own bed that evening when Laura came into the room and handed her a little pill and told her to swallow it. She did that, thinking it was another tranquillizer. Laura didn’t tell her or anyone else that it was a morning after contraceptive pill, just to be absolutely safe.

  Tom stayed in Amanda’s room almost every minute of the time he was there. He slept in a sleeping bag beside her bed. He ate with her, encouraging her to eat when she barely wanted to look at food. The boy who knew how to write such long, eloquent letters didn’t seem to know what to say to her. She didn’t care. She didn’t seem to want to talk at all. She didn’t seem to want to talk to Ian or Laura when they came in and sat beside her on her bed. She was falling into a deep depression and the tranquilizer pills she had been prescribed didn’t seem to be stopping her descent.

  Ian spent a good deal of time talking to people who had significant experience with others who had been traumatized by violence. There didn’t seem to be a satisfying answer that would spare Amanda the pain that was slowly dissolving her life. Ian had seen it all before in courtrooms and jail cells and even sitting across from him in his office. He had seen what violence could do. He came to understand how violence would touch every person who touched the person who had endured it. It was the other way violence spread out like blood from a wound.

  It was from Kara that Ian had received the crude outlines of the evening in which Amanda had been raped. After some serious persuasion, Kara told him where it had occurred. She had told him the circumstances inside the Rave. She told him the name, Freaky Deaky.

  After a call to a police detective he knew quite well, Ian understood that it would be almost impossible to prosecute such a crime. His rage and helplessness came at each other from opposite directions and made him feel almost sick to his stomach.

  When Wayne called to ask after Amanda the day after she had gone home, Ian poured out his frustration and anger. The one thing he didn’t expect was that Wayne would have already taken up Amanda’s cause. Wayne had a serious plan of action. He, in fact, had far more information about the Rave and Freaky Deaky than Ian could imagine anyone could have compiled in one short day.

  Wayne wanted Ian to come and talk to him. He wanted to make the son of a bitch pay.

  Wayne had learned Amanda wasn’t the first one to the raped like Amanda. He had learned details from contacts on the street that made it clear that there would certainly be other rapes unless Freaky Deaky was stopped. Ian was frightened but excited that there was even the faint possibility that there was something that could be done, some small hope for some kind of justice.

  The meeting Ian had with Wayne and Charles gave him more hope than he ever believed might be possible. There was no guarantee. There was no way to know how their actions would finally play out, but they would close in on the sick degenerate. They would search for his weaknesses. He would know he was being pursued. Ian could see they were actually going to reach into his sick, impregnable life.

  Ian approved the 500 posters that would go out onto the street. He approved the reward for the Internet campaign to find witnesses and testimony. He approved the campaign to find out everything they could, both personal and financial, about the psychopath who had raped Amanda. He approved the Rat Out A Rat Web site that would be advertised everywhere Freaky Deaky had ever been.

  “You find a person’s weakness when you find out what they care about.” Wayne told Ian. Ian knew only to well how true and how deep that went.” You find what to do with that weakness when you find out whose opinion matters to them.”

  Within two days, Charles, with his Internet wizardry, had found out that Freaky Deaky’s real name was Alan Marle, and where he had grown-up, and the property he owned, and his parent’s address. From his high school year book, they found out that he was the class fat boy, the butt of many jokes and put downs. Even in the yearbook class photo he was described as the one most likely to be Jabba the Hutt. Charles found addresses for more than half of Marle’s classmates and contacted them.

  Ian, who also remembered being the butt of jokes in high school, had no sympathy. He believed psychopaths were born not made. He approved the 10,000 dollar reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction for any rape he may have committed. The Rat Out A Rat Web Site had many, many hits seeking the twenty dollar bill that came with any decent information about his behavior and background. The Web Site became a bulletin board for old stories and new ones about Marle as a pathetic, long time loser with a tidy little inheritance. It amazed Ian how quickly E-mail could retrieve such personal information. Wayne and Charles knew what they were doing. They had done it before. The way to destroy someone in modern society was to make them totally uncool. The more uncool Marle appeared, the more vulnerable he became. New posters went out every day with the juiciest stories. Ian was impressed and glad to participate, and his own idea of serving Marle with a civil lawsuit just added to the pressure they were putting on him.

  Marle’s face was on posters that seemed to be everywhere he went. They accused him of rape, described him as a fat boy loser; offered big money to rat him out. All this made Marle decidedly nervous and absolutely enraged. The looks on the faces of people on the street, and even on the faces of his own cowering minions, absolutely unnerved him. He thought that he was invulnerable to prosecution because he made sure the witnesses and the victim were all high on drugs. He made sure that all the people present during the rape were more than passive participants. He made sure that everyone he touched was absolutely terrified of what he might do. A bully relies on absolute terror because a crack in the armor was always eventually fatal. The fact that someone seemed to have no fear of him, the fact that his only response was to throw tantrums, shook loose his power. Having succeeded so many times with absolutely no consequences to his actions, he was shocked to find himself suddenly living in a search light of attention, attention he couldn’t control or manipulate.

  It took less than a week before the disgusting smoking gun was produced. Having compiled lists of people who had been at Marle’s Raves and Rapes, they were stunned when four videotapes arrived in Wayne’s mailbox depicting four separate assaults. It seemed that Marle had a video camera record his works in progress. His painted works of art were not enough of a trophy to satisfy his twisted ego. And so with the videos, faces could be a
ttached to witnesses, victims could be identified and tracked down. One of the videotapes actually showed Amanda’s rape and humiliation. Wayne and Charles forced themselves to watch it, as they had the others, to take digital images of witnesses to put on the Web Site so that names could be discovered and turned over to the police. Ian couldn’t bring himself to watch any of it.

  It was less than two weeks after Amanda’s rape that Ian turned over an absolutely airtight case for prosecution. Marle would not escape. The information age and his own sick vanity had sealed his fate. The need to record himself and keep a trophy of his works of art gave him his self- produced fifteen minutes of infamy. His black star had flared and was done.

  He was arrested the same day that the police received the evidence, and it wasn’t a week until he pleaded guilty to the rapes and to four counts of forcible confinement. His lackies and minions were also arrested and charged and would spend years in prison for their part in the crimes. Only the depraved spectators got off without suffering any real consequences, as was often the way with modern life.

  Ian couldn’t believe it. A case that could never be prosecuted had been made absolutely iron clad because of Wayne and Charles and the Internet.

  It turned out that Wayne had done this kind of thing before, defending gay men and women who had been brutalized or victimized in some way. Wayne and Charles called themselves the Queer Agents of Karma.

  “If I had you working for me in my practice, I’d be the most famous criminal lawyer in the country.” Ian said to them, and he wasn’t exactly sure that it wouldn’t have been the case.

  Ian was shocked to find out that some of the things the Queer Agents did were quite illegal.

  “I used to have quite a problem with heroin,” Wayne explained, “When I got straight I realized that sometimes a junkie just needs somebody to get them through a particularly bad time. Sometimes a junkie will do almost anything for a score. They know that if they come here they probably won’t have to do absolutely anything to get it.”

  “You give junkies heroin?” Ian asked incredulously.

  “Sometimes. Sometimes it’s the best thing to do.”

  “How do you tell when that’s so?”

  “You have to have been a junkie. You have to still feel the razor’s edge under your own feet.”

  The only time that Tom left the McCall’s condominium was when he went with Ian to the funeral of the boy who had died in the accident. Ian was not surprised that George was not there. He was glad of it. He didn’t want to have to consider that George had any humanity in his heart. He believed he would never be able to feel any compassion for the man who had made him a cuckold.

  The funeral was small and sad and held the pure particular breathless tragedy that only parents who bury children know. Ian told the parents who he was, and when he said he felt for their tremendous loss they had no idea how close that was to being actually true.

  It was on the ride back to Toronto that Ian told Tom his own overwhelming feelings. Tom, like his mother, seemed to be able to lift tragedy into his arms without seeming to be overwhelmed by its cold, dead weight. Tom listened to a father’s fear and anger and then he listened to a husband’s heartache and shame. The only thing that Tom said after Ian’s long monologue was that the way that he got through pain was remembering the prayer his mother had invented for their Sunday service, ‘It is possible to respect all living things. It is possible to be thankful for every experience in life.’

  “Well, that’s beyond me.” Ian replied.

  “Me too. But it helps to believe it’s possible.” Tom added, and Ian understood the incredible strength of the boy sitting next him who had never for a moment found a way to unburden his own heart of its deepest aching. To feel respect for George Marshall and Alan Marle and to feel gratitude for what they had done seemed impossible to Ian, yet Tom did seem to actually project the faith that nothing was absolutely impossible. It was Tom’s pure faith that soothed Ian’s pain at last.

  In the two weeks it took to bring Marle to Justice, Amanda was fighting for her soul. Her dreams and memories washed over every waking moment she experienced. Her feelings for Tom seemed to be frozen like frost patterns on a black, transparent heart. He became like a big living plush toy moving around her room, quietly waiting for her to choose the time when she would speak.

  If she had stayed in her room forever, she wasn’t sure that he just wouldn’t have stayed there too, bringing her food, playing her music, singing her songs, sleeping on the floor beside her, sitting for hours saying absolutely nothing. By the end of the first day in her room she was completely comfortable with his presence and silently anxious whenever he left the room, even for a moment.

  Laura and Ian would often come into Amanda’s room and try to talk to her and she would try to respond as well as she could, but it was obvious the shock of what she had endured was not going away.

  When Wayne described the tapes to Ian and he realized just what she had endured and he told Laura what he had learned, they were both terrified that Amanda might have had her mind and heart permanently broken. Life broke everyone. What she had endured could break anyone absolutely. They were both terrified that a psychopath might have taken their daughter from them forever, leaving behind only the soft, beautiful body he had defiled.

  It was a nightmare for Laura. Her own accident and her torn up face made it virtually impossible for her to work. Without work there was a hole in her life so enormous she almost felt on the edge of absolute oblivion. Strangely, it was her love for Amanda that kept her sane because when she went into her daughter’s room and held her daughter’s hand and looked in her daughter’s eyes, she could still feel the vague contours of her own heart.

  In a strange way it was Amanda’s nightmare that kept Laura from being completely overwhelmed by her own. It was from a strange and sad perspective, but her love for her daughter was real and warm and undeniable. Amanda would never know it, but the touch of her hand was the thing that would save her mother from a complete emotional collapse. The one thing Laura did that scared everyone was when she cut her blond hair almost back to her skull. It would grow out in the auburn color it was when she was twelve. When Ian asked her about what she had done, all she told him was that it was important. When strangers saw her they thought she either had cancer or worse, had regressed to some ‘90’s Sinead O’Connor retro look. When Amanda saw what Laura had done to herself her eyes misted over as she turned her head away. She understood self-abuse. She understood feeling completely helpless. She thought that Laura had finally come to the world of negative attention children know so well.

  As her face healed and Ian brought news that the monster who had brutalized Amanda would pay, in some measure, for what he had done to her, Laura slowly walked away from the abyss. At Ian’s suggestion, she even got out the Christmas decorations and did up their home with all the beautiful lights and decorations gathered over so many years. Christmas decor was the McCall family’s only tradition. When Laura was finished, she felt better than she had since their nightmare began. Even Amanda left her room for the first time to come out and see the decorations. She even told Tom the history of some of the things hanging on the branches of the fragrant balsam tree.

  Ann Marie had come to see Amanda to see if she could offer her any professional help as a psychologist. Ann Marie knew well enough not to push a patient just after a trauma and so she only stayed a little while on her first visits. It was after the Christmas decorations went up and she was visiting with Amanda alone in her room that she began to tell Amanda about her own worries about her daughter Megan. It was Amanda’s compassion that finally broke the cold grip of horror that held her heart. It was to Ann Marie that Amanda finally told the story of what happened to her. It was Ann Marie who heard the horror in the details and the memories and Amanda’s own guilt and shame. It poured out and out and Ann Marie had never heard anything more brutal or agoni
zing in her life. As the words and images poured, and the tears began to run and run from Amanda’s big eyes, Ann Marie’s own heart filled up with a projected terror of what might lay in wait in her own daughter’s future.

  It was after Amanda had let the flash flood of emotions sweep over Ann Marie that Amanda slept through the night for the first time, and it was after that when she started to have the song, Bridge over Troubled Water, run through her head over and over.

  When she woke up the third day after the song had embedded itself in her mind and saw every word of it written in black magic marker on the wall she had cleared for favorite song lyrics, she was absolutely stunned. Tom had written them there while she slept.

  “Why did you write that song up there?” she asked him, expectantly.

  “Because I’m on your side. I just wanted you to know that. You’re my silver girl.” he whispered.”

  “I’ve been hearing that song in my head for days.”

  Tom started to sing it softly, almost like he was speaking, the same song he sang softly night after night while she was sleeping. Amanda barely remembered any of the words while the song had rolled around in her head, but hearing them now in Tom’s beautiful voice touched her deeply. He was there when pain was all around. He was there when she was feeling really unimaginably small. It was clear he intended to dry her tears, to dry them all. She listened to him sing as she followed the words on the wall and it was then she knew that she would survive. When he was finished singing, she opened her arms and he came to her and, for the first time since the terrible night, they held each other and she kissed him and it was his tears that she dried.

  Within a day Amanda left her bed, dressed for the day and re-entered the life of her family, the family that was suddenly so completely and ubiquitously there. For the first time, in years, they all sat down together for meals, they sat together and watched television, they read quietly and listened to music and actually talked to one another. Tom stayed for two days after Amanda came back to the world. They spent time in her room talking about everything except her assault. Of course, the other thing that had changed between them was their approach to their own sexual attraction for each other. Amanda loved to have Tom hold her like spoons, fully dressed, but a kiss was different, for both of them it was like kissing a soft, tender, new, white scar. The only time Amanda’s parents would bring up the subject of her assault was when Ian would report on the success they are having tracking down Marle. Amanda never said anything about what Wayne and Ian were doing.

  It was from Tom that the family learned the story of Wayne’s heroin addiction and how it had nearly destroyed his life. Wayne always felt like a city boy and left the farm when he was 2twenty one to start the antique business in Toronto. That was before the family made antique reproductions or had made a science out of picking antiques from old century farms. It was an overdose that almost killed him that made the family realize the problem. Eugene and Sharon had been shocked that they had not even suspected his addiction. That Wayne was gay had never been an issue for them. He made clear his sexual orientation from the time he reached puberty. The addiction was the secret.

  When Wayne refused to go into rehabilitation, Eugene left the farm for the first time in his life and moved in with his son and paid for the heroin, worked in the antique store and cruised gay bars and, for two years, became a part of Wayne’s life. He only went home two days a week when Sharon would take his place with her son. They quickly stopped telling Wayne to stop taking drugs. They only insisted that the drugs be from a reliable source. Eugene even learned how to do the testing procedures to make sure Wayne would not overdose. Because the family was far from wealthy in those days, Eugene even had one of the old Walnut trees felled to pay for the heroin Wayne needed. Eugene’s absolute love and non-judgmental commitment finally mattered more to Wayne than the addictive rush of his drugs. He gave up drugs because Eugene loved him so much, and because he finally couldn’t bear that he was the reason that his other brothers and sisters were going without a father. Taking down the old Walnut tree to pay for his addiction was also something Wayne found hard to let go.

  Hearing the story made Ian and Laura feel very poor and inferior as parents. Laura remembered wanting to send Amanda away to boarding school as she listened to the story and the memory almost made her sick to her stomach.

  It was when Tom was leaving that they realized the depth and persistence of Amanda’s emotional injury. It was when she was going to go with Tom down to his car and say goodbye as he was leaving that it struck home. When she went out of the door of the condominium and began to walk down the hall to the elevator she suddenly started to breathe faster and faster, and then she began to cry, and before they reached the elevator she had turned, running as if she was being pursued by a living nightmare. She ran to her room and they found her lying in her bed in the fetal position, hyperventilating. When she finally calmed down and she could speak, she tried to tell them of the unimaginable terror of leaving the safety of her home. She was absolutely adamant and certain that she would never be able to go out into the world again.

  “I can’t go out there. I can’t.” she pleaded.

  Everyone felt they had to indulge her fear. They assumed she only needed time, that she still was in shock, but Amanda had no doubts about the force of the terror that she felt walking down the familiar hall. She knew when she was beyond her depth. The terror in the hall was monumental, overpowering, even when she compared it to her feelings lying in the paint as she was being raped.

  It took the rest of the day before Amanda convinced Tom that he had to go home. He could come to see her on the weekends, but she didn’t want to even consider the idea that he would be staying any longer. It was guilt and shame. She was weak. She would always be weak, it seemed. She was afraid that he was thinking that he would have to be as brave and as dedicated as his father had been with Wayne. She knew him only too well. That was exactly what he was thinking. Love had no limits, held nothing back. He believed he should be willing to offer his life for her. That was why the long drive back to the farm was so hard for Tom. All his plans, all his dreams would be destroyed, if he stood by the girl that he loved. If he didn’t, what was he?

  In two weeks of healing, the stitches had come out of Laura’s cuts and her face bore the white scars that she would carry for the rest of her life, the scars she would soon stop trying to cover with make-up. She went back to work, but something had contorted inside her like a spring pulled beyond its ability to extend. The purpose and pleasure of her actions had lost their meaning, even for the single moments and events that were once all that she had expected of life. Her heart had become a sieve that didn’t seem to be able to hold any satisfaction in any moment, in any place, in any company. Strangely, it was only going home to Ian and Amanda the made her heart feel like it hadn’t been turned to salt.

  Seeing Tom with Amanda when he came back to see her became one of the sweetest pleasures that she had ever known. To see her daughter so loved, so cherished, and to see her daughter accept it so easily, so naturally was beyond anything she’d ever seen or imagined. They made her look at Ian as she had never looked at him before. As Tom brought his simple unconditional love to Amanda, she could see, for the first time perhaps, that Ian had been doing the same thing to both of them for as long as they had been together. The pain of her betrayal of him became a bitter after taste to every warm thought she had of him, but she never spoke of it because the pain that Amanda was enduring was so much greater and more important to them all. Her feelings were like a fresh turned furrow that froze hard in the cold of winter. The only time she and Ian had talked about George and her adultery was when they were lying in bed on another long night when they couldn’t sleep. She told him softly she was so sorry that she had hurt him. “Me too.” was all he replied.

  There was nothing else to be said. There was nothing else to be done. Nothing t
hey did to each other, no pain either would ask or inflict on the other would ever obscure the reality that without one another and Amanda they would be absolutely alone and desolate. They were no great heroic and beautiful family, but they were a family, and it was in its worst moments that they discovered how absolute and undeniable that was.

  George continued to be a problem. His repeated phone calls and messages were easy to block and Ian quickly took over the task of answering the phone and the messages. He saw George pleading with Laura to forgive him, explaining that he was absolutely desperate when he tried to blame the accident on her. He had no license or insurance because of previous drunk driving convictions and so he felt he had no choice but to do what he had done.

  It seemed the police did not believe his story. If it had not been for Laura’s blood on the passenger seat there would have been no way to prove that she had not in fact been driving. He was being charged with driving without a license or insurance. The irony was that the one time George did cause someone injury and have an accident was one of the few times that he drove without being over the limit for intoxication. There would be a trial and Laura would have to testify. He again begged her to say that she was driving, to save him from possible jail time.

  Ian was disgusted at George’s self-centered bathos. He simply copied the incriminating messages and sent them to the police.

  Amanda learned about her mother’s affair a few days after Tom went home to the farm for the first time since her attack. She had been sitting on the balcony that looked down into the condominium courtyard, the balcony being the one place that Laura could actually exit the walls of her home without going into an absolute panic. She did not recognize the man looking up at her and was shocked when he started to scream her mother’s name, echoing against the hard black walls of brick. He was obviously drunk and just kept screaming her mother’s name over and over. “Laura!... Laura!” Finally, when Ian heard the sound through the glass and saw Amanda staring over the balcony railing, he came outside and saw George in his staggering, drunken stupidity. He was so far gone that Ian could not even feel any anger towards him. All he felt was a cold pity. When George saw Ian, he stopped shouting.

  “Stanley Kowalski, I presume.” Ian said, mockingly.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I would like speak to Laura, please.” George said in a pathetic, drunken voice.

  “Go home. Do it now or I’ll have the police arrest you.” Ian said coldly.

  “Who is he?” Amanda asked her father.

  The look in his eyes when he turned to her told Amanda everything that she had to know. The pathetic man below was her mother’s lover. What George said then as she looked down at him proved it.

  “I love her. I honestly love her. I can’t help it. I can’t help it.” he said and then fell down onto the ground and laid back and said Laura’s name once more and seemed to pass out.

  “He’s her lover, isn’t he?” Amanda demanded to know.

  “No. It doesn’t matter.” Ian said, evading and admitting the truth at the same time.

  It was then that Laura came out onto the balcony and saw what Ian and Amanda were looking at below. When she looked over the balcony she thought that she was going to throw up seeing George lying there looking so pathetic. The look in Amanda’s eyes told Laura that her daughter had learned the truth, and for the first time Laura felt totally ashamed.

  “I could kill him.” Laura said and sounded as if she meant it.

  “Where does he live?” Ian asked Laura, “I’ll take him home.”

  Laura told Ian an address.

  “This won’t happen again.” he said as he left them.

  He left Laura and Amanda standing silently dealing with shame and disgust.

  “Did your father tell you who he was?” Laura asked.

  “He didn’t have to. What does he see in you?” Amanda asked her mother.

  “I don’t know. He’s got some middle aged fantasy.”

  “Not him. I can see what he would see in you. What does daddy see in you?”

  “I don’t know.” Laura replied and meant every word of it.

  The strange thing was that Amanda didn’t seem to be angry. It was sadness and pity for her father’s pain that she was feeling. That was why she just stood there beside her mother and waited until Ian came into the court yard and grabbed George by the back of the collar of his leather coat and unceremoniously dragged him away like a heavy, black sack of garbage. George woke up and started to struggle, but his flailing arms and legs could catch hold of nothing. He started to beg Ian to stop and, when they came to the swimming pool that was still undrained after the summer season, Ian dragged George to the edge and let him fall into the water through the crust of ice. George struggled and screamed at the shock of the cold and Ian had to hold on tight with both hands to the leather coat. When he hauled George out the water after a few seconds, George was absolutely sober and shivering in the cold.

  “Get up!” Ian told him, and George did as he was told. When it looked like he was going to say something, Ian told him to shut up and listen. He told him his affair with Laura was over. He told him she was not going to save him. She would testify as to his pathetic behavior. “Furthermore I’m prepared to have the ambulance drivers and police officers at the accident scene taped so they can testify to exactly what you did while that boy lay dying in the snow.” Ian explained, forcefully.

  “And do you know what I’ll do with that tape?” he continued,” I’ll tell you. I’ll send it to every member of your staff at school, to every member of your school board. I’ll even send it to your students so you’ll have to face that every day. I’ll send it to every bar that you drink in. And I’m even going to send it to your dear old Mom in Perry Sound. Do you understand me?”

  George understood. George understood Ian meant to do exactly as he said.

  “And if that doesn’t get you out of our lives forever, Laura will sue you for slander for saying she was at the wheel of your car. And win or loose that suit will cost you so much money the only place you’ll ever be able to shop again is Goodwill Industries.”

  Ian had learned George’s weaknesses.

  “Now I’m going to drive you home and you will never come back here. You will never call or communicate with my wife again. Is that right?”

  George finally nodded his head and followed Ian silently to his car.

  Ian had learned well the tactics Wayne used so effectively. Everyone had someone before whom they might be shamed. George had lots to be ashamed of, and it had not taken Ian long to find out who those people might be.

  It worked. That was the last time that George Marshall ever reached out to Laura directly. From that moment on, his effect would merely be in the old harmonic echoes of Laura’s growing sadness.

  The twenty minute drive to George’s apartment seemed to last forever for both Ian and George. The winner and the loser had nothing to say to one another.

  More than anything, Ian felt ashamed that his wife had chosen to betray him for someone so transparent and pathetically needy. George felt ashamed that he lost to someone so obviously lacking in style and sophistication. For him, knowing he was beaten, the only thing left was creating a last line that might pass to her second-hand.

  When Ian pulled up in front of George’s building he did the most bizarre thing. He offered Ian his hand to shake. Against everything he was feeling and all common sense, Ian took George’s hand and shook it like they were concluding some minor business agreement.

  “She could have been anything.” George said to Ian as he took back his hand. Ian had nothing he could say to that as he watched George open the car door and get out, finally gone from their lives.

  It was what happened, not what could have happened, that George would live with forever. He never changed. He never understood that his own motivation was something he would never find in a scene again. That wa
s why he would miss Laura almost constantly. He would make many women listen to his unrequited longing and it destroyed his power over them.

  Laura had gone back to work but she was experiencing her own kind of agoraphobia; she just didn’t like seeing people anymore. She spent as much of the day as she could in her office avoiding phone calls and commitments. She became the opposite, and her days became the opposite of everything she had ever done before in her life. When she no longer had the priorities of seeing and being seen, shmoozing and shining, her work life became little more than being an appointment secretary. It was a job she quickly came to loathe.

  When Anthony Holtz walked through the door of her office she felt guilty and nervous and afraid. Her heart started to beat fast as she got up and hugged him. He sat down in the big modern office chair and Laura retreated behind her desk from where she apologized for not being as accessible as he deserved her to be. He had absolutely no idea of what she had been through, except that she had been in a car accident.

  “I like your scars.” he said and she could see that he was being sincere.

  “All poets love scars.” she replied, “It’s their stock in trade.”

  “Giving them and getting them; that pretty well sums us up.” he agreed.

  With a poet’s ability to compress life into one impossible question, he asked her what she would do now that it had all stopped being fun. The question shook her. That was exactly it. It had all stopped being fun. She didn’t know or want to explain to him the circumstances that had changed her so much, but his question had gone to the very root of her problem and it almost took her breath away.

  “This is all I know how to do.” she said to him, honestly.

  “Life is a balance between people and things. If one fails you, go to the other. If they both fail you, start over. Is that where you are?”

  “You do cut to the chase, the bottom line. I suppose that’s where am. But there is no way to start over. You can’t just cut your losses when that’s all you have. Sometimes you have to live with your losses forever. I don’t know what to do.”

  She sounded so desperate and feeble that Anthony thought she might cry, but Laura was far past crying for herself. She had shed more tears in the past two months than she had in her whole life. There were buckets of tears; her life was pickled in brine. Then Laura told Anthony the short truth that poets love.

  “I failed myself. I failed the people I love. The only thing I never seem to fail at is work and now that’s just not important. What do I do Anthony?”

  “You’re just a modern woman. Wake-up and smell the My Sin.”

  “That’s a hideous thing to say.” and she meant it. She did not want to believe for an instant that the pit she stood in might be crowded.

  “Life is a high school, sweetheart. You get to choose one or two teachers; you get to choose your clique. That’s it.”

  “No wonder nobody reads poetry anymore. You poets are just too damn succinct and depressing.” she replied. “So I get a Life Sucks T-shirt and some medication and follow my bliss?” she said mockingly.

  “That’s one way. Starting over doesn’t mean self-destruction or walking away or throwing in the towel. Starting over may be simply learning to pay attention in class.”

  “What’s that supposed mean?”

  She honestly didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “If the big things in your life fail you, maybe you had better start learning to be satisfied with little things. Nobody deserves to be loved. People love you just the same. You’re no different. No matter how empty you feel, if you start to pay attention and look at the details in your life, you may find there are exquisite little Persian miniatures lying around in your life that are absolutely priceless. You don’t have any idea what I’m talking about do you?”

  She shook her head in agreement.

  “Get out of this business, dear heart. There are no Persian miniatures here. You’re wasting your life on big impressive things that have no shelf life.”

  Laura stared into Anthony’s eyes with a deep affection and sadness. The look was like poetry, the way she sometimes felt after a poem that cut the heart between love’s ecstasy and its loss. The look in his eyes was like a Persian miniature.

  Ten minutes later Laura was unemployed.

  That same day there was a breakthrough with Amanda. Ann Marie had started to come every day to work with her but was having no success in dealing with Amanda’s agoraphobia until she noticed that she would often look at her digital watch while they were talking. At first Ann Marie thought the Amanda was just bored with listening to her talk. But even when the talk moved away from Amanda’s own problems to Ann Marie’s problem with her daughter Megan, the same behavior continued, even though Amanda was obviously very interested and concerned about Megan’s dangerous life style.

  When Ann Marie asked Amanda why she looked at her watch so often, Amanda confessed the she wasn’t even aware that she was doing it, she certainly wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Let’s try something.” Ann Marie suggested, “Focus your attention on your watch, don’t look up; don’t think of anything except the seconds passing, just focus on the numbers that’s all, and give me your hand.”

  Amanda did as she was requested and for two minutes and twenty three seconds they stood beside Amanda’s bed until Ann Marie began to lead her out of her room. Amanda knew exactly where they were going and when they arrived at the front door she expected her tears to return, but somehow the numbers passing on her wrist, counting the inexorable flow of time seemed to insulate her from the fear she expected. Even when Ann Marie opened the front door, there was no rush of panic, and so they walked the fourteen seconds down the hall to the elevator and turned around and walked twelve seconds back without so much as a gasp of breath from Amanda. Somehow time was safe where space was not. In time she felt invulnerable where space only held unimaginable terror.

  At the apartment door Amanda looked up from the watch into her mother’s friend’s face and couldn’t believe what she had done. “I don’t get it. Why wasn’t I afraid?”

  “Maybe because you were focused on something other than where you were.”

  “But I knew where I was. I wasn’t that focused.”

  “Whatever it is, it seems to help. Let’s try again. You think you can do it without me holding your hand?”

  “I don’t know.” Amanda looked back at the face on her watch and did what she never thought she would be able to do again, she walked to the elevator and back in twenty seconds of simple, mild anxiety. She threw herself into Ann Marie’s arms and hugged her. She was truly grateful. But then the terrible question hit home,

  “What will happen if I stopped looking at my watch?”

  “Let’s see. This time when you go to the elevator and turn around, look up and just keep counting the seconds in your mind. Does that make you anxious?”

  “I don’t think so. If I can see my watch in my mind, it should be just like looking at it on my wrist. Here goes nothing.” With somewhat more anxiety, Amanda walked to the elevator counting the seconds in her mind as she watched them pass in liquid crystals, and when she got to the elevator, she took a deep breath and looked up from her watch and counted the seconds one after another. She stood there at the elevator for thirty seven seconds before the elevator door opened behind her and her mother stepped out, shocked to see her daughter standing in front of her.

  “Oh my God.” Laura gasped.

  Hearing her mother’s voice behind her broke Amanda’s concentration and the sequence of seconds was broken and suddenly she started to breathe very fast and Ann Marie saw it and shouted to her to look at her watch. When she did that, she was suddenly saved.

  Laura got off the elevator and Amanda greeted her as she stared intently at her wrist. Once the rhythm of time was again comfortably flowing through her mind, Amanda was able to look up again as she wal
ked with her mother the fifteen seconds it took to get to their door. It was Laura’s turn to receive the joyful body of her daughter into her arms. Ann Marie looked at them with envy.

  By the time Tom came that weekend, Amanda and her watch were able to go out on the street, the first time holding Ann Marie’s hand, and then go shopping with her mother holding hers as she had so many years ago when she was a little girl, all the while the image of seconds passing, gliding over the montage of everyday life. Her greatest success was sitting alone in the condominium foyer for an hour waiting for Tom to arrive. Although they talked every day on the phone, she kept secret her triumph so she could see the look in his eyes when he saw her standing strong and alone. She was not disappointed. He was so intent as he was buzzed through the door that he did not see her. When she whispered his name and he turned and saw her, his whole body looked like a Roman candle of joy had exploded through his eyes. She ran to his arms and he swung her around and he felt her lips on his cheek and his heart soared in the squeal of her laughter. When he put her down and her breath returned to normal and she looked into his eyes, the crystalline seconds she imposed over life were gone, and for the first time since that night, she crawled out of the cold pool of fear. She didn’t tell Tom that he was sharing the greatest moment of triumph in her life, all he knew was the depth and passion in her still, blue eyes and the soft force of her embrace and the petal softness of her lips as she kissed him as she had done in what seemed a lifetime before. Her strength made him breathless. When she broke their kiss and stood in front of him and looked in his eyes she put his hand on her chest and it was pounding like it was ready to burst. The joy he felt, feeling his fingers all but enclosing her heart, was so intense that his eyes lost the ability to hold their focus and it was in that love’s blindness that he took his hand away from her heart and placed her own on his chest and she could feel his heart slamming against it like a hard ball hitting hard leather. That was the moment that both of them knew the strength of their feeling for each other was indivisible and would last in whatever way that forever would allow them.

  “Let’s go for a walk.” Amanda finally said to him when the sweet pleasure she was feeling started to throb inside her. She tried to contain the enormity and power of the love that she had barely been able to feel moving while she was in the frozen grip of the horror that she had endured. Both of them would always remember that moment and the long seam of pain running through perfect joy.

  In the week before Christmas, Laura and Amanda were alone together for the first time since Amanda was a baby. Unlike their usual routine when they were at home, Amanda in her room, Laura in her office, they actually spent time together in the same rooms. It was strange for both of them to have Laura reading and Amanda listening intently to music in the living room. After the first day together, Laura was surprised when Amanda asked her if she could help while her mother made dinner, and both of them were pleasantly surprised that they could work together and enjoy the task at hand. When Ian came home that evening and they all sat down to dinner, he could see the pride in his daughter’s face as he complemented Laura on the food.

  When Laura explained that almost all of the dinner had been prepared by Amanda, he was delighted. Usually it was Ian who came home early from work and put together a quick meal for whoever was there. To come home to dinner like a traditional father was a pleasure he never expected to experience, but he didn’t think it was appropriate to say so because of the terrible circumstances that brought it to be. The best thing was the unimaginable sweetness of sitting at a dinner table with his family at peace with one another, so many breaking waves of pain having lifted them to a calm, gentle shore.

  The next morning as Laura was going out to her early morning aerobics class, she asked Amanda if she wanted to come along and was completely surprised that she eagerly leaped up to join her. It was only a moment before she came back with a pair of cut off jeans, a tank top and a pair of runners.

  At the health club, Amanda quickly found out that her mother was in much better shape than she was as she tried to keep up, but Laura taught her to pace herself, to slow down and just stretch in rhythm when her breathing started to rip at her lungs. Watching her daughter’s lithe young woman’s body moving in front of her was bittersweet for Laura. She looked so lovely but it seemed so strange to see her there, a part of her own middle-class world. After the exercise and shower, Laura asked Amanda if they should treat themselves to a massage.

  “Is it a man or women?” Amanda asked, nervously.

  Laura realized that it wasn’t shyness but fear that made Amanda ask the question. The thought of a strange man’s hands touching her daughter even gave Laura a chill.

  “We can ask for a masseuse. It wouldn’t be a man.”

  She lied and told Amanda she preferred a masseuse herself.

  After the massage, Amanda asked her mother if she could have her hair cut and styled for Christmas. Of course Laura was delighted, and when her hair was cut and dried, they were thrilled. She didn’t look like a girl. She looked like a woman, a beautiful woman.

  “You’re stunning,” Laura said honestly.

  “Thanks for the genes.” Amanda replied, self-consciously.

  Late in the morning, mother and daughter walked out onto the street glowing, warm and as light as feather down throws.

  They stopped at a grocery store on the way home after Amanda said she wanted to cook dinner again that night, and the simple pleasure of following a shopping cart being pushed by her teenage daughter filled Laura’s heart.

  Where she had expected to crash after the shock of quitting her job and having no place to go and nothing to do, Laura was completely amazed that instead of being bored and uncomfortable she and Amanda were neither. All the repressed anger and resentment that had grown between them for years seemed to have vanished like morning mist. Laura could not understand that Amanda seemed to have even forgiven her for betraying Ian. She expected her daughter’s cold wrath to hit her like a breaker, but Amanda didn’t say or do anything to exploit the shame or guilt she was feeling.

  The worst thing about the week was the excruciatingly difficult task all women face during holidays, what to buy for their men. For Amanda it felt almost crucial to her to find something for Tom that represented the love and gratitude she felt for all he had done for her, and also for what he was as a person. When she told Laura this was what she would like her Christmas present to do, Laura laughed out loud at the impossibility of finding such a thing.

  “What a coincidence, that’s exactly what I’m looking to find for your father.” Laura said teasingly, but Amanda didn’t take it as a joke.

  “Well, I’m glad.”

  For the first time in their lives both of them had serious shopping to do. It was agonizingly difficult and it was the closest the two of them had ever felt in their lives.

  Laura was also charged with finding presents for Amanda because her birthday fell on the day of Christmas Eve. The thousand dollars in cash in a card was something she and Ian agreed would never happened again. So, as they shopped for their men, Laura was secretly looking for something that would tell Amanda how much she and Ian loved her, and how proud they were of her strength and courage.

  That simple presents could mean so much had never crossed either of their minds before. The difficulty of expressing love and gratitude had never hit them with such force because they had never before felt the need to express the depth of the emotions they were feeling.

  It was the day before Amanda’s birthday that Laura thought of the perfect present for Amanda to give to Tom, a compact disc of Amanda singing her favorite songs.

  “Oh my God, that would be perfect, that would be so perfect!” Amanda shrieked. “But how would I do it?”

  “If you can pick the songs, I know a little jazz group, a piano, drums and guitar. I know this studio where we can get it done, if we are really, really lucky.” Laura expl
ained matter-of- factly. For the first time in her life her daughter was truly impressed by her mother’s connections.

  That afternoon was, once again, one of the most wonderful experiences the two them had ever shared. Just like a professional, Amanda sang with the little trio and laid down a dozen songs that Amanda knew by heart, songs she learned since she had met Tom. When I Fall In Love was the first cut and Bridge Over Troubled Water was the last, and even the band was impressed at Amanda’s power and range. When she sang Running on Empty by Jackson Browne, the lyrics cut through Laura like a knife. ‘Running on empty, running blind/ running into the sun/because I’m running behind’, had pretty much been Laura’s life. I’m running behind, in fact, had been one of Laura’s most common expressions. Laura knew that Amanda had included the song for her, to remind her of whom she had been. She took the cut of intended irony as well as she could as Amanda and the little band rocked out the rhythm of the road. She had been running on empty for so long that it took her life collapsing before Laura realized it was inevitable that she was going to spin out or stall completely. The boy was dead from her spin, the rest of her life had stalled. When Amanda sang the song ‘Laura’ it was not the misty memory of an old forgotten lover, it became the song of a daughter singing to her mother, remembering footsteps down a hall, remembering a laugh floating on a summer night. Laura knew Amanda was singing about her childhood. When Amanda got to the last lines of the song and sang of the familiar eyes and the very first kiss she received in her life, a kiss she couldn’t quite recall, Laura remembered the first time she looked into Amanda’s eyes and kissed her baby’s red face and her heart fell with the deep, poignant weight of their love for one another that had begun seventeen years ago to that day. And when Amanda sang the last line of the song Laura felt a seam of heart ache throb inside her.’ That was Laura. But she’s only a dream’. Amanda sang the last line looking through the glass window into the control room, holding on to her mother’s eyes. Laura didn’t miss the heart- rending irony of the change of tense. It felt like the person that she had been had become a walking dream from the moment George’s car struck the young boy. The change of tense said that she hadn’t really changed.

  On the way home from the studio they didn’t speak for a long time until finally Laura asked Amanda if she might want to give her father a copy of her CD.

  Amanda was delighted with the idea, then had second thoughts that it would make her gift to Tom less special, but she resolved her own doubts when she realized that Tom would think better of her for including her father in her gift. Laura then told Amanda that she could probably get a record company executive to listen to her CD if she wanted her to do that.

  “You really have a spectacular talent.” her mother said, honestly.

  Amanda was proud and touched that her mother thought that she was talented but also felt the thought of traveling and being somebody who depended on people’s attention and approval was horrible.

  “I love singing. But I never want to be a singer.”

  “I can’t say that I’m not relieved. It’s a terrible life. You might end up with someone like me making all your decisions. Again.”

  “Good point.” Amanda said laughing.

  It was Amanda who suggested the present that Laura would purchase for Ian’s Christmas gift. The suggestion came as a question.

  “Why don’t you and Dad wear wedding rings?”

  Laura gave the response she used for so many years. “It was feminist fervor. I thought a woman needed a wedding ring as much as a fish needed a bell on her bicycle.” Amanda had never heard the line before and obviously didn’t understand.

  “Maybe it’s time. You don’t think that he would find it too ironic? “Laura added doubtfully.

  “You mean because you were sleeping with someone else?”

  “Yes. That’s just what I mean.”

  “Daddy is too sweet to think like that.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “You could put an inscription inside.” Amanda added.

  “But what would I say?” Laura liked the idea of the rings but felt panicked and overwhelmed by the idea of turning her feelings into a few sentimental words. She tried to pass the task to Amanda who instantly refused.

  “They should be your feelings, not mine.”

  Laura said she would think about it on the way to the jewelry store, but when they got to the best little jewelry store Laura knew, she still wasn’t able to find a few words to sum up a marriage, her marriage.

  What made matters even more difficult was the fact that she didn’t really like any of the rings she saw on the trays that were presented to her. It was always hard for her to compromise her sense of taste and style, and to do it with her wedding ring seemed almost a sacrilege. Amanda could see her mother’s discomfort and reluctance to make a choice. She could also see the salesperson getting nervous that she wasn’t closing the sale. Finally when the saleswoman asked Laura her image of a wedding ring and Laura told her, “Simple, wide and flat.” The light went on and the saleswoman led her to a display case of estate jewelry and Laura saw the exact pair of rings that she had in mind, ‘simple, wide and flat.’

  “I’ll take those.” Laura said decisively. As the saleswoman handed them to her to inspect and Laura passed them to Amanda, they were both actually excited.

  Looking carefully, Amanda pointed out that there weren’t any inscriptions inside and there was a great deal of room to say anything her mother chose to say.

  When the saleswoman said that it would be unlikely they could do an inscription that day, Laura was shocked when Amanda said that they would just have to go somewhere else.

  After a few minutes, the saleswoman returned with the news the inscriptions could be done, but they would have to come back later in the day. Then came the big decision.

  “What would you like the inscriptions to say?” the saleswoman asked, matter-of-factly.

  “My Ian. Your Laura. “Laura replied simply.

  “That’s it?” Amanda said, trying to hide her disappointment. “Maybe you could add a forever or something?”

  “No. ‘My Ian, so true.’ ‘My Laura, in truth.’ How’s that?” Laura asked Amanda, and the look in their eyes had the warmth and intimacy of old friends.

  While they were waiting for the bill and the credit card check, Laura saw Amanda’s Christmas present lying in the case that had held her rings. It was a lovely gold necklace of large single links holding a pendent of a beautiful Phoenix rising from blue lapis lazuli flames. Amanda was surprised when her mother left her to speak to the saleswoman who had gone to the back of the store, telling Amanda she was going to check that the punctuation was right.

  When they came back at the end of the day, the saleswoman discretely slipped the little wrapped jewel box that held the Phoenix into Laura’s hand.

  The day of Christmas Eve was going to be so different for the McCalls. Ian had usually prepared a dinner for Amanda before he and Laura would go to a Christmas Eve party, leaving Amanda either alone or with a sitter when she was young. Finding a sitter had always been one of the most difficult problems of the Christmas holidays. Before they went out, they would give Amanda her present. The thousand dollars she got in the past two years, always seemed to be received with significant enthusiasm so the guilt they felt at leaving her was more than assuaged. This year was going to be radically different with all three of them home and staying in for the night. Tom was invited and was coming for dinner and Amanda had insisted that they prepare a traditional dinner so the three them were geared up to produce a Turkey and all the trimmings.

  Amanda could hardly sleep because she was so excited at the thought of having so much love actually gathered in the walls of her home. She thought about the feeble traditions that her family had to show their feelings for each other, and remembered the wall of photographs in the dining room at the farm and envied all the pictures of all
the birthdays and all the Christmases. And then she had a tremendous idea that barely let her sleep for the rest of the night.

  When Laura got up the next morning and came out to the kitchen for coffee, she was seized by her daughter, who was trembling in the excitement of her wonderful idea.

  “I’ve got the greatest idea for a present for Dad. What is it he loves more than anything in the world?” Amanda asked breathlessly.

  “That would be you.” Laura replied honestly.

  “And that would also be you.” Amanda added, and her mother didn’t want to disagree.

  “I want to make this pedestal all covered with pictures of just me and just you and just me and you. What do you think? If we got your good camera we could go out until noon and go to the one-hour developing and bring everything back here and I could do all the gluing in my room.”

  “But we’re supposed to help your father cook dinner.” Laura protested, but when Amanda insisted they could do that in the afternoon, Laura didn’t dare spoil her daughter’s fun. That was why all Ian saw of them that morning was when they were going out the door loaded down with the tripod and camera equipment.

  Finding the pedestal was easy. Laura told Amanda she would never have had the nerve to make fun of the fact that Ian put them both on pedestals.

  “You like it up there?” Laura asked, and was surprised at the answer.

  “Of course I do, just like you.”

  “I do. It’s true.”

  With the pedestal in the back of the BMW, Laura let Amanda lead her through the agenda of her imagination. The first stop was Allen Gardens and all the flowers and orchids and big leaved palms that made Christmas into a jungle. Passing the camera between them, posing and preening and using the tripod so they could use the remote on the camera to capture both of them mugging shamelessly before the little black box was infectiously delightful. They were doing the one thing that would truly delight and touch Ian, they were actually enjoying being together, being foolish together, being affectionate with one another, unashamedly loving each other.

  When they moved to the street amid the bustle of bodies doing last-minute shopping and set up the tripod so it separated the stream of people on the street, Amanda took a photo of both of them they would treasurer forever. Amanda was singing Born to Be Wild as they were doing exaggerated modern dance steps around one another as the remote control froze images of their comic grace. Amanda suddenly put her arm around her mother and kissed her squarely on the cheek as hard as she could press her lips. The camera captured the delight and shock on Laura’s face with Amanda’s nose and lips mashed into it.

  The sign wave of life had been so compressed and extreme for the McCalls. They had gone from the best moments and feelings to the worst moments and feelings they could imagine, and there they were so far above the line of mediocrity, relishing every moment, delighting in every experience, savoring the beauty of every ordinary instant they shared with one another. If someone had told any of them a week before that this would be the most wonderful Christmas of their lives, not one of the McCalls could have conceived that it would have been possible. But it was more than possible. It was a living, breathing undeniably beautiful fact of life.

  While they waited the hour for the films to develop, they sat in a busy coffee shop and talked like old friends. One ordinary moment in life could be better and better than the ordinary moments that came before. Amanda asked her mother why she had quit her job.

  “Because it wasn’t fun anymore. Maybe because fun was all it was ever going to be. Maybe it’s because I spoiled everything else in my life so that I could do my job well. Maybe because I got tired of feeding a whole lot of insatiable egos, especially my own.”

  “Wow!.....Wow!” Laura’s confession left Amanda with nothing to say. That was the moment she understood how desperate her mother must be feeling. She had always sacrificed family for work and now she was sacrificing work for her family. Outside of work, Amanda couldn’t imagine her mother’s future, and she realized Laura probably couldn’t either. It scared her.

  Finally she thought of telling her mother her own feelings about her future. She told her mother that she hated the idea of going back to school because she just knew how different she was, how she could never again see her school or her friends as being anything really important to her. “Every moment of life should feel precious. I’m just going to be putting in time. I think that me and Tom will eventually get married. Tom is a serious, committed person and I think he’s made me into somebody like that too. I don’t want you to be scared that we’re going to run away and get married. We haven’t even really talked about getting married, but I know that we love each other and I’ll never find a better man in this world than Tom. It’s just that I can see where I’m going in life and it’s probably going to be with Tom. This last week I feel like a woman.” Amanda saw the deadly serious look of fear in her mother’s eyes.

  “But today, it’s your seventeenth birthday. There’s so much time.” Laura said anxiously.

  “I know that. I’m not in a hurry to make some dream come true. I can just see where the path begins.”

  “I should be upset. I should be upset by what you’re saying, but you’re right to think you are a woman now. I have to respect that. What you’ve been through has earned you that. I’m sorry you’re just going to have to put in time at school.”

  “That’s okay. It’s only another year after this one. I wish that school was like it was on the farm. That would be incredible. That would be a real education.”

  “You’re probably right, but that’s just home school for their own family.” Laura said sympathetically. She was almost sorry that the Van Fleet’s didn’t run a private school. It would’ve been a school she could have sent Amanda without a sliver of guilt.

  The smell of the Christmas turkey cooking filled every room as Amanda worked on her present for her father in her room. When she emerged and included it under the tree, it was wrapped in great mounds of tissue paper and wide ribbon running diagonally so it looked like a lumpy barber pole. It was the only large present under the tree. It looked like they were having the sparest of Christmases when it was absolutely the opposite.

  Making salads and baking a cake for the first time in her life was nerve racking fun for Amanda. When Tom arrived at half past five, everything was ready except the icing on the cake. He watched as Amanda learned to do it. She even balanced the slightly lopsided cake with the thick chocolate icing. He was happy and impressed.

  The rest of Christmas Eve was almost like it was for young children, it was the opposite of twilight, it was the thick half light that touched everything just before the sun rose in the morning with the soft colors that slowly gathered the world for the day. Christmas Eve was like a new morning and they all felt it. The Christmas Carols they played for the first time in years were lovely. Tom and Amanda sang ‘Oh Holy Night’ with Nat King Cole and, after the horror that they all survived, their souls did feel their worth.

  Ann Marie had come about a half an hour after Tom and rather than feel uncomfortable and outside of the family gathering, she felt safe and included and treasured for what she’d done to help Amanda get through a nightmare.

  Ian offered Tom a drink when they all left the kitchen after admiring the dinner preparations, but he told them that the Van Fleets only drank with meals and so he would wait for dinner. Ian was going to offer Amanda a drink, but he saw the look in her eyes that said she would have preferred that he didn’t put the question to her.

  She had a special agenda that couldn’t wait. The presents under the tree had grown with the ones that Ann Marie and Tom had brought.

  “I can’t stand it. When do we do presents?” Amanda asked, excitedly.

  “I don’t see why we can’t do them now.” Ian replied. “Why don’t you be Santa, Amanda.”

  “Great.” she replied and went to the tree.

&n
bsp; Ann Marie opened the first present and it was a beautiful Hermes scarf Amanda and her mother had picked when they were shopping together.

  Ann Marie asked that her presents be next and Ian opened the present for him and Laura and made a big fuss over the wonderful bottle of French champagne. Then Amanda opened the gift that Ann Marie had brought for her and she screamed when she saw the beautiful gold digital watch, and when she read the inscription on the back she was truly touched. ‘For Amanda, hold on to every second. Love Ann Marie’. Amanda kissed her and hugged her.

  Ian suggested that she and Tom exchange presents but Amanda asked if it would be alright if they waited until the end, because it was complicated. She suggested that he open her present to him from her and her mother, and she brought the heavy pedestal and sat it in front of him where he worked at getting the ribbons and tissue away from each other. As he worked, he kept making ridiculous guesses about what he would find, like an outboard motor or a lifetime supply of ties or underwear. When he saw what it was his eyes lit up the way they never had for a present.

  “A pedestal for my girls, from my girls, how appropriate. Look at these pictures. Where did you do this?”

  Amanda explained their morning mission and her last-minute inspiration.

  “There’s not much room on top of this. You may have to fight to take turns.” he teased.

  “I think we’re tired of that.” said Laura, “Been there, done that.”

  Everyone laughed as Ian sat the pedestal in the middle of the coffee table for them all to admire. It took some time before everyone stopped looking at the photos and commenting and laughing.

  “Now it’s my turn.” Ian said, “Here’s something for you and your mother to share” He handed Amanda an envelope. Amanda opened the envelope and found a child’s Christmas card that opened with a pop up pony. Inside was a gift certificate to a riding stable north of the city.

  “I thought it might give you time to do some of that awful female bonding, talking about hormones and diets and what men are really like.” Ian said mischievously.

  “That’s the last thing we’d want to talk about. But what a lovely idea.” Laura replied.

  She took Ian’s hand and kissed him and Amanda came and sat in his lap and gave him a smooch before she went back to the tree for more presents. It was then that she saw the little box with the card and her name. Ian suggested that she open it next and when she did and it was the beautiful gold Phoenix she seemed delighted. When she showed it to Tom and he fastened the clasp at the back of her neck, he said the idea of the Phoenix was perfect. Amanda asked him why it was called a Phoenix. Tom explained the myth of the bird that was reborn from its own ashes and, as the idea sank into her mind, Amanda realized that she was like the Phoenix. Only a little while before, she had been nothing but cold ashes. She kissed her mother and her father and whispered a thank you. “It’s the best present I ever had.”

  Amanda couldn’t stand it. She had to know what was inside the six foot long tube Tom had brought for her. She guessed it was a painting. She was wrong.

  “Seeing as it’s all about me, maybe I can open this one now.” she asked as she examined the long tube.

  Laura said she was dying to see what it was. Ian said it looked like curtain rods.

  Amanda read the handmade card that said simply, ‘So strong and so beautiful. My love, Tom.’

  Ann Marie asked if Amanda would be embarrassed to read the card out loud and, when she read it, she realized the two meanings that could be found in the words. It said she was so strong and beautiful. It could also mean that his love was so strong and beautiful. The instant she realized the second meaning she blushed. Then she opened the present from the one end, sliding a long carved wooden object out into her hands. It was a long harpoon carved from Walnut, with many gray whales with their long fluke’s trailing up the length of the shaft. At the end a beautiful purple clamshell was lashed as the tip. Amanda explained that Tom’s ancestors had hunted whales with such a harpoon.

  “I’ve been working on it for a long time.” Tom explained, “It’s a whaling harpoon. Even though it’s not the same wood, and it’s not carved in the same tradition, it’s my own symbol of courage. I made it for my father because I never thought I would ever know anyone who had more courage than he has shown until......”

  Amanda cut him off. “Don’t.” She couldn’t bear to have him say the words. She ran to him, still holding the harpoon, and put her arms around him and kissed him and fought back the tears.

  Everyone was misty watching. When Amanda pulled away she was absolutely speechless, staring into Tom’s beautiful eyes.

  “There’s a present there for your mom.” Tom said to Amanda and everyone was surprised when Amanda went to the tree and picked up the present Tom had indicated. He explained that it was from his father. Amanda gave her mother the present and when she opened it, Tom gasped when he saw what it was. Laura opened the old shoebox and inside were all the blue tissue air mail letters of Arthur and Laura Lee. Even Ann Marie realized what they were from Laura’s description of them. Everyone in the room was struck in stunned silence.

  “I can’t accept these. They belong to your family.”

  Tom couldn’t say anything. He was staring at Laura’s hands touching the letters. The only hands that he had ever seen touch them before were his father’s. It was then that Tom realized how much his father had loved her, perhaps still loved her. It felt like it did when he had once fallen on the handle bar of his bicycle. He was shocked, and a part of him was absolutely outraged. He had to force himself to be gracious.

  “If my dad wanted you to have those letters, then that’s where they belong.” Tom’s mind reeled with the implications of what had just happened. Did his mother know? Did his brothers and sisters know? How would they find out? If they didn’t know, should he tell them? Inside the box Laura found a computer generated letter from Eugene saying they were hers, and she should use the letters just as she saw fit, but that he would appreciate it if she returned a copy of then to Sharon, sometime after his death. Laura told Tom his father’s instructions and said she would be more than willing to do that, but I’m the one who should have the copies. “These belong with your family.” Laura said softly.

  To say Tom was relieved would have been an enormous understatement. Laura put the box on the table in front of her and said that she would still have to talk to Sharon and Eugene about what she would do with them. At least Tom’s questions were answered. He felt a great rush of relief.

  Laura asked Amanda, who was standing in shock staring at the letters, to get Laura’s own present for Ian. Amanda went and got the little box from the bough of the tree and Ian read the card. It said, ‘ I hope it’s not too little or too late,’ Ian refused to read the card when Ann Marie asked. When he opened the box and saw the two gold bands he looked very much the same way that Tom had looked when he saw the shoebox of letters. He was perfectly stunned in surprise.

  “Read the inscriptions.” Amanda told him excitedly.

  He read them to himself and then read them to everyone, and for the first time in her life Laura knew what it was like to have a room full of people touched by something she did that was warm and loving and tender. When Ian kissed her and told her it was the second best present he had ever received in his life and that she had given him the first one as well, Laura said that he was absolutely right.

  “I’m sorry it was so long between them.” she said, and she looked up and saw Amanda crying and looked over and saw her friend crying and looked and saw Tom crying and she said to Ian that his were the only dry eyes in the house and he really wasn’t getting into the spirit of the moment.

  “I was just thinking that my pedestal came a close third on my list of great presents.”

  Laura took the ring and put it on his finger and then he took hers and slid it in place on her hand and they kissed again and both of them remembe
red the kiss when they had married in the registry office. This one was beautiful. It had been a long time coming.

  Laura snuggled under Ian’s arm and asked Amanda if she hadn’t forgotten Tom’s present. She would never have believed it was possible, but that was exactly what had happened. Amanda squealed from the realization and took the little package from the tree and gave it to Tom as she squeezed into the seat beside him. He opened the card and read out loud,’ To Tom, my Walnut Wood.’ All my love, Amanda.

  Tom opened the gift and saw the handmade cover for the CD and saw the list of songs and he thanked her and kissed her and told everyone that they were some of his favorites. He hadn’t realized the voice that would be singing them was Amanda’s as she snatched it from his hands and put it on the CD player. Laura was the only one who knew or realized what they were about to hear as Amanda’s voice came on and filled the room and everyone erupted in delight and surprise.

  For the next half-hour they all sat and listened to Amanda’s beautiful voice. When they got to where Amanda sang’ Laura’, her mother watched and was quietly self-conscious as everyone listened to the lyrics, listened to a daughter sing to her beautiful, distant mother. Sometimes, in dreams, Laura knew she could be beautiful and almost feel that it was real.

  Finally, as the last lines of Bridge of over Troubled Waters faded with the last chords of the piano, everyone burst out in spontaneous applause. Ian asked delicately whether he might have a copy, and when Amanda told him that she thought that Tom wouldn’t mind sharing his present Tom heartily agreed. Ann Marie said that she would love one too and Tom volunteered that such a thing could be arranged as his family had a CD burner.

  Ann Marie said that Amanda had an incredible gift that she should share. “You have to send that CD to a record company.” she urged.

  Ian agreed and said that Amanda was as good as any professional singer. He asked about when and how she had done the CD, and then Amanda sat up and told the whole exciting story.

  Finally when the story was over and Ann Marie asked to hear the CD again, Ian said that there was one little thing left to do.

  “Today is someone’s 17th birthday and there’s just a little something we have to do yet.” Ian explained. Tom said he was outraged that Amanda didn’t tell him it was her birthday. When she said it wasn’t important, he told her she was dead wrong.

  Ian got up and went to the mantle of the fireplace and took an envelope from under a black raku bowl and gave the card to Amanda.

  Somehow the thousand dollars that she expected would be inside the card felt strangely out of place. After all the perfect presents, the cash that she used to just love seemed to be so impersonal. She thanked her father and mother and opened the card and it was another pop up pony. She read the card that said she was the bravest, most beautiful, most intelligent, most perceptive, most understanding, most sensitive, most tender, most precious, most talented, most under-appreciated daughter in the world. Ian’s sense of fun and irony made everyone laugh. It also made Ann Marie’s heart ache in envy.

  Then Amanda read the P.S. on the card telling her to look in the drawer of the hall table. There was no thousands dollars in the card, and as Amanda went to the table, she was both nervous and curious about what she would find. Inside the table was a wrapped birthday present that she brought back into the living room. When she opened it, she lifted out a chrome and leather bridle for a horse. Ian then did his game show announcer voice telling Amanda that the bridle was for her brand new pony. “Amanda your birthday present is a brand new pony!”

  Amanda was stunned. “A pony? You bought me a pony.”

  “It’s not exactly a pony. Your mother and I thought you might like to pick out a horse that would be your own when you went riding together.” Ian explained.

  “Get out!” My own horse! Tommy, I get to have my own horse!” She kissed her mother and threw herself once more into her father’s lap telling them that this was the best Christmas she could’ve ever imagined.

  “God, how do you go shopping for a horse?” she asked as she extricated herself from her father’s lap.

  “Tom tells me there’s a place called Studs Are Us.” Ian said, and Tom heatedly denied ever saying such a thing.

  By the time they finally sat down to eat, everything had to be re-heated in the microwave oven. The roast turkey and raisin stuffing, the honey glazed yams, the scalloped potatoes, the cranberry sauce and the asparagus in vinaigrette. It was all there, the holiday feast the McCalls had never prepared for themselves, for their little family of three. To Tom it was all only too familiar, and it was from some considerable experience that he praised each dish. Amanda was proud and happy.

  “I never knew that cooking could make so many dirty dishes.” she said, “The kitchen in a restaurant at the end of the night must have a mountain of dishes to wash.”

  Tom offered to do them with Amanda and Laura said it wouldn’t be necessary because the dishwasher would make quick work of them all.

  “My mom won’t let us have a dishwasher because she says that only washing and drying dishes makes people appreciate how hard the people who made the food had to work.”

  “Your mother sounds like she has high expectations of all of you.” Ann Marie replied.

  “She always says the best thing she could give her children was to learn to love working hard.” Tom replied, and it was obvious from his tone that he believed that she had passed the gift to him.

  Every other person at the dining table felt ashamed and guilty. That was a gift neither Amanda or Megan or their parents had even imagined as a gift. It was Tom’s comment that made Ann Marie say how much she missed her daughter and how she wished that Megan was there to share the most beautiful Christmas that she ever remembered in her life.

  “I was going to talk to you about this later.” Ian said to Ann Marie, “I’ve talked to Tom’s brother Wayne about Megan and he said he had some very close friends in Vancouver, and that he might make some inquiries about her. He says that he has a friend who has had some success intervening with young runaway boys. I was going to ask if you might think it was all right if Wayne asked his friend to help.”

  “All right! Of course it would be all right. I’ve tried myself to contact agencies out there but there was absolutely no one who would pay any attention to me. If I only had some idea that she was all right.”

  Everyone could see the look of fear suddenly give way to the sound of hope.

  Ann Marie told them all everything she knew from the detective agency and said that she planned to go to Vancouver in a last desperate attempt to get her daughter to come home.

  “The worst thing is the knowledge, as a professional, that I’m the very last person for whom she will leave the street. The mother-daughter ways of rage is usually impossible to overcome without something or someone coming between them.” Ann Marie explained sadly.

  “Wayne agrees with you. He said his friend has had some success doing just that. At least it would be good if he can get her to communicate with you again.”

  “That would be an absolutely tremendous start. Then I’d have some hope. I could hear her voice again. I’m scared to death that I will never hear her voice again.” she replied.

  So the joy spread as Ann Marie pumped Ian and Tom for everything they knew about Wayne’s friend, and what he did, and how he intervened, and how much success he had. The fact that it was runaway boys working in the sex trade made no difference to her exploding hope.

  After dinner, Amanda insisted that she clear the table because everyone had been so wonderful and generous to her and made her realize how important and beautiful her little family, was underneath it all. The underneath it all stung a little bit, but Laura and Ian were just too happy to let it get in the way of their happiness. They knew Amanda wasn’t trying to hurt them when she said it.

  Tom helped Amanda clear the dishes and stack them in the dishwasher and when they ca
me back in the living room Ann Marie was still going on about the idea of rescuing Megan.

  “You know what I would like to do now?” Amanda said enthusiastically, “I’d like to go out and sing Christmas carols on the street.”

  No one seemed to be enthusiastic at all.

  “We might recover a little of the money we spent on Christmas presents this year.” said Ian.

  “It’s hard to sing in front of high-rise buildings.” Laura said, “Why don’t we just sing here, with each other?”

  “We could sing on the balcony.” Amanda added and she led them all out into the cold night air where they gathered at the rail and Amanda led them in song. They sang Christmas carols together into the courtyard of the condominium and, after they had been singing for about twenty minutes, they noticed that people had come out onto their own balconies and were listening to them, and then some of the people actually joined them, and Laura and Ian were proud as Amanda’s voice rose over everyone’s and made the singing so sweet. Ann Marie between Ian and Laura, Laura holding Amanda’s hand on the other side of Tom, they sang together until they had to go in from the cold. Applause, like a playing card pinned to bicycle spokes, exploded in the echoing courtyard when they stopped.

  It was about ten thirty when the phone rang and Laura answered, and it was Sharon calling to wish each of them a Merry Christmas. When she spoke to Amanda she asked her if she might be able to convince her parents to join them for Christmas the next morning. Amanda exploded in joy at the idea because she had been hoping that Tom would ask her to come to the farm for Christmas. Strangely, the idea of her parents coming along with them somehow made it even better. Her family was starting to feel like it had an extended family and Sharon made it clear that that was exactly what she felt too.

  It didn’t take Amanda but a moment and her pleading beautiful eyes to convince her parents that they were invited to come and would really be welcome. Then Amanda was very bold.

  “Our friend Ann Marie is here. Do you think it would be all right if she came with us. I’m sure that you would love to meet her.” Amanda asked gently. She listened to Sharon’s reply and then told Ann Marie that Sharon wanted to talk to her.

  Her protesting gestures gave way at last as Amanda held out the phone as Sharon waited. She took the phone and felt the force of Sharon’s personality for the first time. Sharon told her how Tom had described Amanda’s gratitude and appreciation for how she had helped her. She explained how terrified and helpless Tom had been. Sharon told Ann Marie how much she admired her professional skill and she would be very disappointed if she didn’t get to meet her. She told her that Christmas day on the farm was a sea of bodies but she would very much like to spend some time with her. She asked Ann Marie to do it as a favor to her and Amanda. She said that Tom would also feel that her coming to the farm was a very small way of showing his gratitude for what she had done for Amanda.

  The rest of the night was as warm as a summer sun rising high above the horizon. It flooded each of their bodies as they sat and talked and listened once more to Amanda singing on the CD.

  When they finally went to bed, Ann Marie to the pullout studio couch in Laura’s office, Tom to the bed Amanda made for him on the living room sofa, because his place on the sleeping bag beside Amanda’s bed hadn’t been appropriate since she had come back from the abyss.

  In their beds Laura and Ian cuddled and kissed and sweetly and quietly made love.

  Amanda could barely sleep the whole night. She was aching, feeling her heart was too small to hold all the feelings inside it.

  Ann Marie had a short little cry thinking about where Megan was that moment, but hope was far stronger than pain and she started to dream of what it would be like when she saw her daughter again.

  Tom lay awake on the couch and thought about what it would be like to go to Amanda’s room and crawl into bed with her and touch her and he wondered how she would respond. From the moment in the foyer of her condominium when he felt their hearts married like ropes, the sexual longing inside him just grew stronger and stronger with every moment. The sweet shock of seeing her with her hair cut like a woman, her face proud like a woman was an indelible, pure desire.

  In the morning Amanda and Tom were already up when the others came from their sleep. Amanda had watched Tom prepare breakfast and she was amazed at how fast and efficient he was in the kitchen. Before everyone got up, he had touched her neck while she was scrambling eggs and she had turned around and he saw, for the first time since the terrible night, a mist of desire clouding her eyes. When they kissed, it was warm, wet flower petals giving, and the press of their long, lovely bodies, soft and hard, burning into their minds.

  It was Amanda pressing that made everyone get through breakfast very quickly, and she made it clear she hoped everyone would shower and dress, post haste, because she didn’t want to miss anything at the farm. It was an agonizing hour and half before they were all in cars and on the way out of the city, Amanda in Tom’s red Volvo, Ian and Laura and Ann Marie in the quiet Lexus.

  Before Tom and Amanda had headed out of town she had asked him to drive by her friend Kara’s house. Amanda had a hand written gift certificate for a hundred dollars to their favorite boutique Tu Cool Bi Half.

  Since the terrible night Kara had been very cold to Amanda. The Christmas present was to be a peace offering.

  It only made Kara’s cold resentment of her friend worse.

  She took the card but didn’t open it.

  “You caused me a lot of hassles since you got raped. People think I was a rat. I’m not a rat. You and me are from different worlds. I don’t need you and your rich farmer boyfriend.”

  Amanda was stunned.

  “You don’t know a friend when you see one.” Tom said to Kara.

  Kara told him she knew a red skin when she saw one.

  Amanda felt the same rage she did when Stacey Peak had accidentally slapped her face.

  “I feel sorry for you. You make your own life suck, just like I did.” Amanda told her, then took Tom’s hand and led him back to the car.

  “Merry Christmas, you dumb cunt.” Kara shouted from her door.