Chapter 4
That Saturday Laura and George drove to the farm in his Porsche. The last leaves of fall hung in warm pockets in the woods, yellow islands in the bare emptiness of the end of the year. White clouds gathered on the horizon and rose unnoticed in perpetual change and design. The cut farm fields passed like countless summers as they swept along the country roads remembering the half remembered turns in life
Running the gray roads, running into the sun, they were running blindly into a strange almost desperate destiny. No matter how often it’s traveled, no road is ever familiar, no road is the one a person expects, no road ends in the place it’s expected to go. That Saturday morning the autumn road had its own lovely, almost addictive high. Laura and George were running together on the road that ran from the city to the country, the road they had left far behind.
Laura was shocked when she saw the farm again for the first time in more than thirty years. The enormous brick farmhouse that had sat among seven old lonely walnut trees was now swallowed in its own extensions: the two-story peaked spine of the house was extended back and doubled its original length; two single story arms came off the body of the house at right angles; and enormous log out-buildings had sprung up in the fields all around the house.
“I can’t believe this is the same place.” Laura said, almost breathlessly.
“Gene calls it the compound.”
“Where did all these walls come from?” Laura asked about the long serpentine walls that ran along the long lane way leading to the compound, snaking in long flowing curves to take in the house and the log out buildings and garden areas. The walls made a most powerful impression. The walls were made of gray limestone that seemed to have weathered in their own intricate curves, almost like the convolutions of dissected human brains.
When George explained the source of the walls and then explained the lovely gazebo surrounding the most distant walnut tree, she knew she was in a place where people lived with such intensity and high expectations that she was sure she wouldn’t belong. She was almost tempted to ask George to turn around.
He had quickly explained how Gene and Sharon had built the walls together over the last twenty years. They owned a rock quarry on one of their wood lots and Gene would bring a truckload of limestone for them to work on together. A half an hour a day, they had worked together building the walls. It was their time to work together, their time to connect without speaking.
“It’s all very symbolic, the walls and all.” Laura had pointed out.
When she pointed out the huge beautiful gazebo surrounding the single walnut tree, George explained that it was the Van Fleet church.
“Gene and Sharon decided they wanted to give their children a sense of their own history and traditions and that religion should be a part of that, but they had Protestants and Catholics, a Buddhist, a Jew and a Native child so that it was hard to decide how to make a religious service they all could share. They came up with one based on the Quaker model. Service is every Sunday just before lunch. They take turns preparing the service. The person leading that week says the opening prayer then there is a song that they’ve chosen to begin the half-hour when anyone can express any spiritual feeling or story that they want to share, then there’s another song and the last ten minutes is in silent prayer. There is one last song and it’s over. No one is allowed to talk about anything that happened in the service. The opening prayer is really quite nice. ‘It is possible to respect all living things. It is possible to be thankful for life’s deepest sorrows.’ Isn’t that great?”
As they got closer to the house Laura saw that the gardens around the house were tucked around huge boulders, glacial travelers that Eugene had brought using the crane on the big lumber truck. Where the dry lawn had once been, small, flat limestone pebbles lay all around the traveler stones so the landscaping looked almost oriental.
The farm was one surprise after another. When they pulled into the parking lot it was into a huge enclosed paddock surrounded by a ten foot deep wall of cedars. Two long log buildings backed onto the cedars. On one side was a ten car garage. Opposite was its twin, which included the working garage, where repairs and restoration were done. Because it was Saturday, the day they were run, there was a classic, restored automobile sitting in front of each of the doors of the parking garage. Each wooden door of the garage was painted one of the colors of the famous automobile marques: Ferrari red, British Racing Green, Bugatti Blue, Mercedes Silver and Alpha Romeo yellow. The cars had just finished their Saturday run and the smell of oil and hot engines hung in the cool afternoon air. From inside the working garage came the deep rip of an engine being revved violently as it was being tuned.
Laura could see through the open working garage doors how busy it was; young men and women in blue jeans and coveralls focused on their work. She was surprised that nearly half the people working in the garage seemed to be young women and girls.
The row of beautiful cars gleaming in front of their doors was breathtaking. Laura was looking at close to two million dollars’ worth of cars and it looked it.
“These are the kid’s cars.” George explained, “When each of the kids was fourteen, Gene helped them find a classic car that they liked that needed restoring, and they worked together to restore the car to mint condition. Eugene always said that none of his kids would ever work for a bank or a car company. He always said was that a car was the best thing ever invented to connect two human beings.”
“Not a wall?” Laura replied, sarcastically.
“No. And don’t ask any of the kids about their cars unless you want to hear more about an Allard or a Bristol or a Porsche Speedster then you never wanted to know.”
Laura walked to the beautiful silver Gull Wing Mercedes she had ridden in so many times. The two pieces of wicker luggage that lay under the back window were just as they were all those many years ago. The grand touring car had lived up to its name. It made her heart flutter to see the shining, beautiful jewel box of her youth. It was so much more beautiful than she remembered it being, the silver shoulders and curves of its body, the masculine presence and power, the feminine grace and fluidity.
When they walked out of the cedar paddock Laura felt strangely light headed and displaced.
When they passed the puffing steam engine that had been hidden by the cedars it was just one more unexpected surprise. The huge old iron horse puffed white steam into the sky, the auger from its hopper car groaned as it delivered wood chips to its fire box, wood chips recycled from the Van Fleet lumber mill. George explained that the old steam engine supplied the heat and the electricity for all the buildings through underground pipes and cables. “If there was ever a nuclear Holocaust, nobody here would probably even notice.” George said with obvious admiration.
“But it’s enormous. Where did it come from? How did they get it here?” she asked incredulously.
“Now that’s a story.” he replied.
George looked up and she followed his eyes to the woman who was now approaching them from the house. Laura knew it was Sharon, the woman she couldn’t stop thinking about for weeks.
Her short dark hair was flecked with gray, her powerful stride fluid and graceful. She looked almost Spanish in features, and in fact that was her background: her genes had come from the wrecked Armada off County Cork that emigrated to Cape Race in Newfoundland then to the farm where they had set such massive roots in orphaned children. Her high flat face was lit with the most irresistible smile and her eyes shone with an unquenchable liquid fire, the warmth of that fire almost palpable on the cool autumn day. Those eyes were absolutely locked on Laura. Sharon came to Laura with her hand out and when she took Laura’s soft hand in both of hers, Laura felt literally overwhelmed. “I’m Sharon, Gene’s wife. Welcome.”
‘Does everyone get this kind of reception?’ she thought to herself, yet simply said, “Hello, I have been looking forward to meeting you.”
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“I always wondered when this day would happen.” Sharon replied. Her comment shocked and surprised Laura completely; not if but when. ‘It’s almost as if she thinks my being here was inevitable.’ she thought to herself, and if it hadn’t been for the eyes and the smile she was facing, she would have immediately asked what she meant.
It took Laura a moment after Sharon had gathered them in a line and they were walking abreast together towards the house, before Laura did turn to her and asked what she had meant.
“Why did you think this day would eventually come? Why would you think that I would ever come here?”
“I wasn’t sure that we’d meet here at the farm, but there is in notebook with your name on it that Eugene has kept all these years that I was one day to deliver to you. He always kept a notebook for every person he loved. We’ll all see them when he dies. “
She was stunned. Laura had no interest or curiosity in any notebook of old memories. She had come, afraid that she was going to be in over her head, now she was heaved in the deep end and sinking fast, her mind spinning, the surface of reality already seemingly far overhead. Sharon settled her and George on the huge enclosed porch furnished with heavy, white, comfortable wicker chairs.
“There’s coffee on. How do you take it?” she asked Laura.
“Just black.” she replied
“Like George.” Sharon excused herself and was back in a few moments while Laura interrogated George about what he knew about the notebook.
“Everybody’s a journal fanatic around here. See that little building covered in rose bushs? That’s a little small town bank vault Gene brought home years and years ago. Everybody keeps journals and keepsakes and personal treasures in the vault. I guess there’s a journal for you. Are you surprised?”
“Why? Why would he have kept a journal about me? Why would he want to give it to me after he dies? How could he imagine I’d want it?”
Sharon came back and sat opposite Laura so she could look in her eyes as they spoke.
Laura wondered if she had read the old journal. She wondered how much she knew.
“Tell me about this book with my name upon it.” Laura tried to sound casual and conversational, but she was sure her anxiety was starting to show.
“As long as we’ve been together Eugene has kept journals. A few months ago he asked me to retrieve them along with the instructions of what he would like to have happen on his death. There are journals for his parents and for me and for all his children and there is one there for you. It has your current address and what I assume are all your previous addresses. It’s clear he hasn’t forgotten you.
When George called and said you were coming and I told Eugene, he asked if I would have any problem with treating you with the same concern we would show any member of the family. I told him that I would try, for his sake, if you wished it, but I would know better after I met you. You’re not family.”
“Absolutely not! I certainly wouldn’t ask you or expect you to treat me like a member of your family. I think it is unreasonable that he would ask you to do that.”
“It may seem so to most people, but every one of our children was a stranger when they came through our front door so; for us, being family isn’t so much a matter of blood.”
This was the last thing Laura expected to encounter. The fear, the anxiety was all over her face. Sharon saw it and reached over and touched her hand.
“I know it’s hard to trust a stranger who is offering to take you into their life. You are no stranger to Eugene. You’re no stranger to me. We’re not asking you to respond in any way you don’t wish to do. There are no expectations here.”
“That’s not the way it feels to me.” Laura replied sharply.
It was in that moment that Laura knew what she was facing. The warmth, the unrelenting sincerity, the smile, the shining lovely brown eyes made her feel like a wan little piece of white bread indeed. She knew, in that moment that she was facing the most powerful woman she’d ever faced in her life. Where Laura could hold any room, this woman seemed to be able to take hold of a heart. She felt Sharon’s lay hands on her life and she didn’t like it one little bit.
Then Sharon asked Laura about her daughter. “I understand her name is Amanda?”
Her mind spinning back to a simpler reality, Laura remembered the reason she had come. Her enormous concerns for her daughter had spun away in the force of the few minutes and the few things that had happened since Sharon first took her hand when they met.
“Tell me about Amanda. Tell me what you like about her?”
Almost against her better judgment, Laura explained the anger and rebellion her daughter had shown in the past year. She explained the shock of discovering that she was a part of a bullying gang of girls, and how she was always bright and compassionate and gifted in anything she tried.
“How much time do you spend working together? Do you share any common interests?”
“We’re different generations. We don’t share common interests.” Laura said nervously.
“Please don’t think that I’m about to blame you as a parent.” Sharon said, anticipating Laura’s thoughts. “It’s not easy in a city sharing work or even play. It’s no longer necessary, so what’s the point of making work and artificial play? But the reality is that it’s only in work and play that people form the simple bonds that remind them of how deeply they are connected. You want to feel connected to your daughter. She wants to feel deeply connected to you, even if she’s doing everything she can to make you think the opposite. And when she hurts you, sometimes you can’t help wanting to hurt her back.”
“That’s true. We don’t like each other very much right now.” Laura admitted.
“Well, maybe you have to start by both admitting that’s true. With my kids, when they hated us, I’d ask them to make a list of things they’d like us to change about how we did things or how we treated them. Then I’d ask if it wouldn’t be fair to look at a list of things we would like to see them change about the way they treated us. Kids all think that life should be fair. It’s their biggest weakness. Being a parent is mostly teaching your kids that sometimes you, and sometimes them, and a lot of times life, just isn’t fair. It’s not a lesson anyone takes gladly.”
“That’s true. It’s a lousy lesson to have to give someone you love.” Laura replied.
“It is. But in the end everyone is grateful to learn it. Everyone wants to learn that heartache is mostly nobody’s fault. But let’s talk more later, right now, let’s go see Eugene. He’s waiting to see you. And if you like, after lunch, George can take you on the grand tour.”
Sharon got up and it was decided. Laura knew that this would be the price she would have to pay for meeting Sharon and playing out the small faint hope that she could actually help with Amanda. Sharon’s hand in Laura’s calmed her fear as they walked into the house.
Inside the house the soft white walls were covered with paintings done by the children at various stages of life. Between them original antique pine furniture gave the rooms the deep golden glow of the wood. Each antique piece carried a small hand lettered card that told the history of the piece and its owners, written in a fine calligraphic hand. History was the family passion. When Laura entered the enormous renovated dining room and saw the long glowing Walnut table that seated twenty-four people, she realized how pervasive and deep that passion for history went.
Unlike the rest of the house where home-made paintings and sculptures and folk art were scattered everywhere on walls and floors and windowsills, the dining room was dominated by its two opposing long walls.
One wall bore the most interesting carved Walnut bas- relief of what looked like a Banyan tree. Individual trunks of many trees rose to connect into one inter-connected crown.
These were the family trees of each of the sixteen children surrounding Eugene’s and Sharon’s family trees in the center. On the trunk of e
ach tree was a brass box in which were kept white cards that told their family histories, the stories that traced the ancestors of each of the children and both of their adopted parents. The carving was fine and exquisite, showing the deep, blood-black luster of the polished wood. It also showed the symbolic importance and the actual respect for the individual past of each person in the family.
Laura asked about the lovely carved wall sculpture and listened to Sharon explain how Eugene had begun to search out the stories of their children’s past and would on birthdays, put what he learned in the boxes that bore each of their names. Genealogy was one of his passions, and it soon became the passion of almost all of the children as well.
“Our kids all came here feeling absolutely rootless. Those boxes now contain deeper roots than the oldest line of settlers in the county.” she explained, proudly.
“I can see that. It must be wonderful for them.” Laura replied.
“The best things are the actual stories in those boxes. They are truly inspiring. There’s more courage and tragedy and hard work and hope in those boxes then in all the history books that have been written. When kids know the trials and suffering their parents and grandparents and even great-great grandparents overcame, it makes them put their own disappointments in perspective.”
Laura nodded in agreement and then asked about the opposite wall that had long rows of post card size photos of the Van Fleet family at work and at play.
“Every week one of the children is assigned the particular job of being the photo journalist of the week. They have no other chores. They get to go where they want, take as many pictures as they want, of whatever they decide is interesting. At the end of the week two pictures are chosen to go up on wall, one that’s the personal choice of the photojournalist and one selected by a vote from all the other members of the family. Sometimes picking that picture is harder than picking a new Pope.It’s a whole lot cheaper now with digital cameras
It was a montage of time and love, snapshots that gave it attention and detail.
“They take photo albums seriously around here.” said George, “A little too seriously, if you ask me.”
Sharon ignored the remark and led them on through the dining room into the huge sun room where Eugene lay in his double hospital bed, surrounded by technical apparatus: his respirator, his electric wheelchair, and his computer and monitor. The technical devices warding off death sat amid an explosion of life and flowers. Citrus trees sat among ferns and flowers. Dendrobium and cymbidium and ageratum orchids hung in waxy splendor from grapevine planters and from latticed benches. They were on the floor and on tables everywhere. The odor was almost cloyingly sweet in its power. It was funeral home succor to Laura. Eugene’s twelve year old daughter Martha was sitting on the bed beside her father. She looked up and smiled as the visitors entered with her mother through the patio doors separating the sun room from the rest of the house. The slate floor gleamed in colors of amber and green and rust and black.
Eugene lay at the end of the room, sitting up in his big adjustable bed. His head was in a brace so a laser could read his eye movements which the computer turned into the standard alphabet of speech. A number of chairs sat by the bed for visitors, in one of which sat Eugene’s thirty year old daughter Sarah. Her eyes turned to the visitors as well.
Then for the first time in over thirty years, Laura looked into Eugene’s blue eyes and he looked into hers. She stepped nervously to the foot of the bed. She stared through him, through the years, through the terrible change that had happened to him.’We’re did he go?’ she thought.’ No look of love, and her heart lost its balance for an instant.
“Hello, Gene.” she gasped. Her heart pounded and her hands were sweating. She tried to smile and failed. He did look like a wasted Fred Astaire. She knew he could not speak but saw his arm slowly lift as if to greet her.
A single tear formed in Eugene’s right eye, filled full and fell slowly down his cheek. That tear hung on and slid down every heart in the room. It hung suspended on Laura’s like hot lead and she thought for a second she was going to faint.
Sharon saved her by reaching down to her side and taking her wet hand.
“Eugene uses a computer to speak. His eye movements on an alphabet chart are moved to the computer monitor.”
Laura looked up at the computer monitor beside Eugene’s bed and saw the words.
“What joy!”
And when her eyes came back to his and they rejoined after his message, she could tell it was true, and she had to use every fiber of her being to keep herself from crying.
“Your place, your family, it’s a dream.” Laura said to him.
His eyes turned away from her as he typed and she read, “No, it’s real.”
“It’s hard-core reality, sometimes.” Sharon added. “When I told him you were coming, he prepared a little message for you to read.” And she handed Laura a single piece of white paper that had some words she could not absorb. At the bottom of the words were four questions. ‘Tell me about your life? Tell me about your daughter? Tell me about your husband? And finally, tell me about you?’
Expectations, commitments, the unexpected demands of their meeting almost overwhelmed her as she stood at the death bed of this man she had loved so tenuously as a boy, while she stood holding the hand of his formidable middle aged wife. Sharon felt in Laura’s hand the overwhelming emotional impact that seeing Eugene was having.
“Let’s leave Gene to rest. We’ll have a quick house tour before lunch. We can have another visit later, if you like.” she said, and Eugene looked into her eyes and they shared an unspoken message that no one else in the room could understand.
Gene’s children got up and started to move him as the others left, the curiosity and apprehension over what they had seen written all over each of their faces. It was obvious they had not the slightest idea who Laura was. It was obvious they were both dying to know the story behind this stranger who could move their father to tears.
Sharon comforted Laura again. “The first time is hard.”
“It must break your heart, every day.”
“It’s not how he is. It’s how he will be that’s hard.” Sharon said softly.
The house tour let Laura recover her emotional balance. Her mind tried to reconcile old innocent emotions with the new painful experiences that were somehow connected to her heart. Who she had been was gone. What he was was wasting away. The meaning of his life was all around her. And the meaning of death was something she could feel like a hand on her shoulder. She was so glad to look into new rooms and see different people doing so many different things.
In the huge modern kitchen a half a dozen people were preparing lunch for the family. Laura noticed Eugene’s mother, now eighty years old, deliberately cleaning a counter while a small, blond child beside her watched her carefully. Sharon said she would not try to make introductions because there were just too many people between family and friends and people who worked in the farm.
Finally George, who had been following so quietly spoke as they poked their heads into the big family room with all the big armchairs and sofas, with the big television and the many stereo turntables and tuners and headphones and the enormous collection of tapes and vinyl and CDs. In the family room, it was possible to be a part of the group or be absolutely alone.
The coffee house was always the biggest surprise to new visitors to the farmhouse. Nobody expects to walk through a room in a farmhouse and find an enormous stage covered with musical instruments standing in front of dozens of restaurant tables. The coffee house got its name from the way that it looked. The fact that it also served as the classroom for the children of the family was anything but obvious. Sharon had to tell Laura about its dual purpose. This was the place the family learned. This was the place they spent most of their time having fun. On Saturday nights it was filled to overflowing with friends and guests and family in an Ea
st coast Ceilidh of music and dance when the grand piano, the guitars and drums, the wood winds and strings of all kinds would rise to practiced lips and hands.
There were at least a dozen people in the room working on an arrangement of a song. Some played and sang. Some sang and clapped time from the audience. Everyone was too focused to even pay attention when Sharon passed through with her guests. The one thing that everyone on the farm was used to seeing was strange faces. Light poured in from the windows on a long wall of the room. On the opposite log wall stretched a framed twenty-four foot run of white painted wall board. In big letters in the top center was painted the words: SONG LINES: FEEL! MAKE! KEEP! Underneath the big letters written in countless hands and many colors of ink were song lines people had written as favorites, favorites to save and share in a place where they would be seen, appreciated and compared with all the other great lines that had come from songs that had found a place in some particular heart.
‘And I feel the very mentioned of you. Like the kicker in Julip or two.’ was printed beside,’ Well, you hesitate by one, and you hesitate by two, Angels in heaven singing hesitation blues.’
George took Laura to see the song lines close up and she read out loud,
“But a fat and healthy working class
Is the thing that I most fear
So I reach my hand for the water tap,
And I water the worker’s beer.”
Then Laura found one she truly loved and said so, before she read it out loud.
“Putting on the agony, putting on the style,
That’s what all the young folks are doing, all the while.
And as I look around me, I’m very apt to smile,
To see so many people putting on the style.”
She chuckled to herself at the old folk lyric then realized with a shock that it was written in Eugene’s own careful hand.
They finished the tour by going outside and coming in the back of the laundry room. The big dryers were already finished the morning laundry and it had been hung by size in its place in the biggest walk-in closet Laura had ever seen.
“We get all our work clothes second-hand. They go up on these racks until they’re too worn to wear. Anybody can wear anything in this room. Personal clothes are kept and cared for by those who buy them.” Sharon explained.
“I suppose it’s the only way you can afford to dress so many children. Amanda cost a fortune until this last year when she moved into retro grunge.”
“We are retro grunge here most of the time.” Sharon sympathized.
“No, this isn’t retro grunge. There isn’t anything anywhere nearly worn enough. “Laura replied regretfully.
They passed through the kitchen once more and great bowls of food had been prepared and were steaming on the central working table, ready to be delivered to the dining room table where the family ate, or delivered to the coffee house were everyone else gathered for lunch.
When they came back into the dining room the enormous black walnut table had been covered with one long cotton tablecloth. Seventeen places had been set for the family, children and grandchildren and two special guests.
Eugene was already at the head of the table having been moved into his big wheelchair. Those near him were taking turns telling him about the things that had happened that day. Sharon seated Laura and George beside her at the other end of the table. It was only a moment before every place that had been set had someone waiting. The food had been delivered and everyone was quickly ready to eat.
Sharon said the Grace that came before every meal. “Let us give thanks for each moment of life. Let us respect all created things.”
Everyone said amen and waited in silence for Sharon to speak.
“You all know George. Today we get to welcome a dear high school friend of your father’s, Laura McCall.
If she had been introduced as someone just raised from the dead or someone just visiting from another planet or a time traveler from the twenty eighthth century, the effect of the introduction could not have been more profound. Casual faces were struck with shock and disbelief. Some mouths actually fell open. Laura’s heart sank in fear and surprise at the power of this focused, unexpected, intense attention.
Martha, the twelve year old who was sitting opposite Laura, spoke into the shocked silence of the room.
“Is your middle name Lee?” she asked, softly.
“No, it’s Anne.” Laura replied in confusion. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you look just like Arthur described her.” Everyone stared in mutual agreement. Was this Laura Lee?
Sharon suddenly understood what was happening and laughed for a moment before she saved Laura’s racing heart from actually running away with her. She explained to Laura that for the last two decades Eugene had been reading letters from two sixteen year olds named Arthur and Laura Lee. These were letters exchanged more than thirty five years ago.
“Martha, tell Laura about Arthur and Laura Lee.”
Straight haired, serious Martha with her straight bangs and big eyes then told the story of the shoe box of blue air mail letters that Eugene would get out every month or so for all those years. For as long as the children could remember he would read one letter and its reply.
“Laura Lee and Arthur were both sixteen years old when she was sent to France to go to school. The year before, they had found three cases of old wine in a dry well on Haystack Island that had been left there by rumrunners during prohibition. Because Arthur’s father was an alcoholic, they took the three cases of wine and buried them under an old stone fence on her parent’s farm. They pretended to discover them there. The wine turned out to be worth hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Sharon had to stop the story and tell everyone to begin to eat. “That’s a first-time that’s ever happened.” she said with a laugh. “Lucy’s the family expert on Arthur and Laura Lee. Lucy why don’t go on.”
A twenty year old girl with two side braids continued, explaining that Arthur and Laura Lee had fallen in love two years before they had found the wine and Laura Lee had been sent away to school in France to separate her from Arthur who was now too poor to love her.
“From the time they were fourteen years old they both had the same dreams when they slept. They would see the same dream from different points of view, but it was always about the same dream, even though their experiences would be different. They found the wine because of one of their dreams. Laura Lee had dreamt about the rumrunners hiding liquor on Haystack Island. Arthur dreamed about where they put it in the old well behind some old lose stones about six feet down.”
“The wine was Chateaux Lafitte, 1928.” added Tranh, the quiet elder son before Lucy went on.
“As they got older their dreams got more wonderful. In their dreams they got to travel through time and space and visit the real lives and become part of the dreams of incredibly interesting people, some of them were even famous like Albert Einstein and Emily Dickinson. The interesting thing was that when they visited those people, they were all about their own age. Their letters to each other were about the lives and feelings of the people in their dreams. They got to hunt polar bear with an orphaned Inuit boy. They got to sit in church invisible to everyone but Emily Dickinson, when she refused to be counted among those who wanted to be saved. They got to know what it’s like to see someone walk into a gas chamber, and to see their parents die. Sometimes they were happy dreams, but most of the time they just made you want to cry. Arthur and Laura Lee could talk to these people when they fell asleep and were dreaming. Sometimes they could even appear, like invisible friends when these people were awake and really needed them. Arthur and Laura Lee helped the people they visited through some of the very worst times in their lives. The best letters, I think, are the ones about first love. Everybody in our family loves Arthur and Laura Lee like they were own brother and sister.”
Laura looked around the ta
ble and she could tell that it was most profoundly true.
Sharon, seeing how little people were eating, decided to intervene suggesting that one of the children who remembered one of the stories about Arthur and Laura Lee might share it with Laura after dessert. Tom, her eighteen year old son, a long, beautiful native American boy with a lovely flowing head of dark hair offered to do that.
“My father says that he was asked by Arthur to keep their letters so no one would find out they existed.” Tom said to explain why they were in Eugene’s possession. “We always asked what happened to them when they grew up but he would never ever say.”
Tranh pointed out that there was considerable debate within the family about the authenticity of the letters. “They appear to be old air mail letters. The handwriting is different and they even have envelopes that might authenticate them, although I’m sure my dad could have faked those if he had wanted to do it. Still, no one ever gets to examine them closely. Dad keeps them in the vault in the shoebox, until he decides it’s time to read us another. We miss them.” he said sadly.
They all looked at Eugene whose eyes were dancing among those of his children. When they came to Laura, he fixed her with a stare that wrapped around her heart like fingers.
“They sound like wonderful letters.” Laura said into his eyes, “You should publish them. There’s a huge juvenile market out there.”
She had not intended to sound crass, but that’s the way it was taken by almost all the children.
“I don’t think you’re really Laura Lee.” said Martha, softly.
“No, I’m certainly not. I’ve never shared a dream with anyone.” Then suddenly she remembered that that wasn’t completely true. Her eyes flashed to Eugene and she knew he had never forgotten.
Everyone saw the sudden look of intensity pass between them and wondered about it, then Laura quickly caught her balance and changed the subject completely.
“Tell me, who’s this week’s photojournalist?” she asked.
“I am.” said Ryan, a slim boy about eleven or twelve who held up an expensive Minolta automatic camera. “I know it’s against the rules, but can I take a picture while we’re eating?” he asked his mother. Sharon looked up at Eugene and every one of the children was completely shocked when she agreed that it was all right. Ryan pointed the camera straight at Laura and the shutter fell with a resounding click.
After that Sharon apologized to the children for not introducing each one of them to Laura. Starting with Tranh beside her, she went around the table introducing them all. She introduced them using their full names. The Van Fleet children always introduced themselves with their birth names included. The names came faster than Laura could remember them. Ambrose Bryant Van Fleet, Sara Cimek Van Fleet, Lucy Doan Van Fleet, were all adults lived away from the farm. Tranh and Ambrose and Sarah all had their children at the table with them. The younger members of the family still living at home began with Tom, a tall handsome native boy with long flowing black hair. The rest of the children ranged in age from sixteen to eight years old. Trudy Rammela Van Fleet, Mary Cusak Van Fleet and Martha Cushman Van Fleet were all teenagers. Ryan Reed Van Fleet, Amber Wellman Van Fleet, and David Roy Van Fleet were all just children. David sat beside Eugene’s mother Rose, who fed him as if he was an infant. They were the only ones who did not acknowledge Laura’s introduction.
Although David looked like a perfectly angelic child with a halo of curly blond hair, he was obviously developmentally handicapped. He had no apparent language aside from grunts. Laura saw that his grandmother was also suffering from some age related deficits. Her mind had apparently suffered a lot more than her body in her eighty some years.
Two dead children and Christa Hudson in the psychiatric hospital and two more children who rarely came home made up the rest of the family.
After the introductions, the children all talked and asked questions. George was obviously a favorite, his teasing remarks directed at the younger children made them laugh and giggle. But the children were obviously well practiced at asking questions. It was the younger ones who pumped Laura about her relationship with their father. ‘Was she his girlfriend? Has she ever been to Haystack Island? Had she ever written their father any letters? Had she ever been to France? Why had she never been to visit before?’ Laura answered each of the questions briefly. It was obvious that they expected more from her.
“I’m not Laura Lee.” she finally protested.
The thing that surprised Laura the most about the conversation was that no one cut in, or interrupted or tried to dominate the conversation in any way. It was as if there was an invisible, honorable house speaker recognizing each one in their turn. Finally Laura had to ask.
“How is it none of you ever interrupts one another? At my house there are only three of us and we sometimes have to rise through two octaves to be heard.”
“It’s the wooden spoon.” Sharon explained, indicating a large wooden spoon in a brass vase in the center of the table. “If people start interrupting one another we use the wooden spoon as a talking stick. You can only speak after putting up your hand and waiting for the person who is talking and has the talking stick to give it to you.”
“We hate it.” said Amber.
“It’s a lot quicker, and a lot easier to learn to be considerate and polite.” Sharon added. “All I have to do is threaten the wooden spoon and harmony instantly returns.”
Laura heard the pride in Sharon’s voice. She did not know that this was one of the first practical solutions she had devised many years ago when faced with so many new parental challenges.
“Could I borrow your stalking stick for a few years? Laura asked, “It doesn’t seem that you need it any longer, and I could sure use it at home.”
After dessert of fresh apple crumble Tom asked if he should begin one of the stories of Arthur and Laura Lee. The children looked anxiously at Laura and were obviously pleased when she said that she would love to hear one of the stories.
“This is this story of Petsuliack the Inuit orphan boy.” he began, “This is from Arthur’s letter dated July 9, 1959. Petsuliack was ten years old in 1909. He traveled with his people and his mother and father and younger brother and sister all of his life. They knew great hardship and great abundance. Petsuliack grew strong and happy until a terrible sickness came into his family and one after another his sister then his brother then his father and mother died from a terrible fever.The shaman tried to pray and call on spirits to help his parents recover, but it was no use.
As they died Arthur came to Petsuliack in his dreams and tried to comfort him in his terrible fear. And when at last his mother was dying, Arthur was by his side when she passed, and comforted him as best he could. Petsuliack did not know there were white people in the world. He was sure that Arthur in his dream was a spirit sent to him. He begged Arthur to save his mother and Arthur told him there was nothing he could do. For a ten-year old boy to see his sister and brother and father and mother buried under cold stones was a heartbreaking thing.
“What’s to become of me now?” he had asked Arthur through his tears as he lay on his dead mother’s still breast.”
Arthur did not know, so he could not say. They were silent and sad together, but being with a powerless spirit like Arthur was somehow still comforting to the boy.
Then Petsuliack was an orphan and the people who had been so good to him all his life now treated him like one of the dogs. He had to sleep with the dogs. He was fed scraps with the dogs. He had to make his own clothes out of skins others threw away or fox’s that he managed to snare when the women hunted. He had to sew his own clothes and it was poorly done because his mother had not taught him because he was a boy.
But even though he suffered greatly and had to sleep alone with the dogs in the entrance of the ice houses that were built in the winter, the worst pain was being thrust out from among the people, the worst pain was going from
being loved by everyone to being treated as if he was worthless.
The table was absolutely silent because this was an experience each of the children at the table knew only too well. They all knew what it was like to be treated worse than a dog.
Tom continued, “The rest of the story comes from Laura lee’s letter dated July 9, 1959. Finally when Petsuliack was twelve years old he boldly walked in to the ice house of the medicine man and told him that it was a heartless people who could so cruelly punish a boy for losing his parents. Surely the loss of his parents and brother and sister were as much the fault of the medicine man as it was his own. He had nursed his family the best that he could and failed, but so had the medicine man. The medicine man explained to him that he was not being punished.
“As you know, there are times when there is no food for long periods. You have seen people and children starve to death because there was no game, no hunt that succeeded. If a family had taken you in when your parents died, one day they would have to decide whether to give food to their own children or to share it with you. It is heartbreaking not to have food for your children because you love them. It would be also heartbreaking to deny food to a child you have grown to love. No one will let you into their heart because everyone knows that one day theirs would be broken when they might have to break yours.
“And so the people break my heart every day. This is a heartless people. It would be kinder to kill me and have done. I have even thought of doing it to spare the people the trouble it would obviously be.”
“The healer then told him that his suffering and trials may have been for greater purpose. Because he has suffered so much he has become very strong and resourceful. Because he has no family of his own he would one-day be free to attempt a great feat for the people that no one else would dare. He told them he had something no one else among the people had. He had the freedom to act on his own.”
The looks on the faces of the children were almost the same as a first-time they heard the story from Eugene as he read the letters in the strange handwriting. Faces were opened to the bottom of their hearts.
Tom told how the time came when a storm blew for over a month and there was no game and no food for weeks on end and people began to starve. Girl children and infants died first because they received the smallest portion. The dogs were still fed before children because without them the people were completely lost. Petsuliack still slept with them and he was terribly cut and torn when small bits of food were thrown to them and they fought for the smallest scrap.”
“That was when Laura Lee came to him in dreams and told him to have courage, told him she had seen his suffering and that even though the storm ranged, she knew that if he followed her that somehow things would turn out all right. And because it was like a dream, the boy walked into the storm until he was finally so cold and so lost he was sure he was about to die. Then he felt Laura Lee’s warm hand in his and saw her in the flesh as she led him to the shelter of a snow bank and when he was about to lay down in its lea, his nose smelled the oily smell and he looked closely and saw that the snow bank was a great sleeping white Bear. His only tool, his only weapon was a short bone knife he carried for skinning and cutting meat.”
“His frozen hand found his knife and before he could think twice about his danger, he raised the knife over his head and plunged it down. The polar bear’s brown eye opened to receive the full force of his blow. Petsuliack received the full force of the bear’s forearm as it rose up and lashed out at his destroyer. Petsuliack was thrown far away and it was fortunate because the great bear was lashing out wildly, and then suddenly it just collapsed in a heap like a puppet whose strings were cut with a knife.”
“Laura Lee in her dream saw the boy crawl to the bear and climb under its body until he was warm enough to take his knife and cut through to the liver and eat. He then cut the fur from the Bear’s hind leg and wrapped it around himself, and carrying the bear’s liver, went back to the people. The storm passed when he stuck the bear and as he returned to the people he left a trail of blood in the snow the people followed to find the Bear’s carcass, and that was how the people were saved.”
“After that Petsuliack became a great hunter and married and had children and was a kind father and husband because he understood what it meant to love unselfishly, far better than any of the people could even imagine. And when the day came when there was an orphan child among the people he apologized for breaking tradition but took the child into his own family and always said the orphan child was no different than one of his own.”
The dinner table had the same silence as when Sharon had introduced Laura. Tears fell down the cheeks of Ryan and Mary and even Tom who had finished the story.
“Everybody loves that story.” Sharon said.
“I can understand why.” Laura replied, “It’s wonderful. I wish could hear some of the others.”
“You’ll have to rely on people’s memories. Eugene refuses to let anyone touch the letters.”
It was then obvious that lunch was over. Sharon got up from the table and all the children followed quickly, some clearing dishes and leftovers, some saying goodbye to Laura with some obvious regret before they went back to their duties.
George asked Laura if she would like to see the farm, and when she agreed, Sharon stopped Tom and asked him to saddle two horses for them.
“Prince and Atta-boy are still in their stalls.” he said, “I’ll have them ready in a few minutes. It was nice meeting you.” he said to Laura and shook her hand firmly.
By the time they got to the barn, two horses were saddled and tethered to iron rings by a water trough. The big old red barn still smelled of sweet hay and horses. When she and Eugene had been young and rolled in the hayloft there had only been two horses to hear them, and one dog to dance in excitement. Now there were more than half a dozen horses in the pasture and two old, big dog’s that would follow them where ever they went.
Laura on Atta-boy and George on Prince, they set out on the wide road that had once been just a trail to the lake half a mile away. Autumn aster sweet meadow air felt cold on her face where the still warm sun tried to touch it.
They rode abreast and the horses seemed to know exactly where they should go. Near the lake, the dirt road turned into the valley of big sand dunes that were almost the colour of flesh, the shimmering blue water appearing through them as they rode was vibrantly pure and deep. It was all as she remembered until they turned into the little village of log cabins built among the dunes. Each had a stone chimney and a porch and an outhouse nearby. It was almost like they were transported in time back to an early settler’s village, the quiet and the peace of the absent people had almost the same peace as Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, Laura thought to herself.
George stopped Prince in the center of the little community and Atta-boy, unasked, came to stop to beside him. George went on to explain that these were the summer cabins that the foster families used. It was here they learned to get back to the most basic way of life. It was here they found, over two summers, a village that would raise the consciousness of everyone: children and parents and neighbors.
“Each cabin has a well and a hand pump and a little wood stove for heat and cooking breakfast.”
Laura could see a circular pallet of dry wood beside each cabin, each one under a year-round cover of thatched rushes.
“There’s a sleeping loft in each of the cabins with a good mattress wrapped in plastic. I’ll bet you’ve never done it on plastic.” he said suggestively.
“Complete with spiders and mice and chipmunk turds.” she pointed out.
The long sand dunes stretched beside them as they rode out onto the beach, stretched beside them with the languid curves of a beautiful sleeping woman. Haystack Island lay still, a quarter of a mile from shore. Barely a hundred acres, it was still big enough to dwarf the Paleolithic mound at its flat center that had given it its name. She and Eugene ha
d swum to the Island many times one long hot summer ago. They would lay on the beach on the other side and watch the lake boats on the horizon, and except for the lack of palm trees, it was as private and beautiful to them as any South sea Island. To run lithe and naked through the crystal clear waves, to touch warm skin and sand, to touch breast to breast, to say absolutely nothing for hours, had been lost memories for Laura until that moment when they turned on to the beach. The memories, at best, seemed to be inappropriate, with far more of the back taste of bitterness than the sweet thing she would have expected them to be.
They rode slowly for another ten minutes as the horses picked a trail that climbed back into a field. They could see in the distance the five acre forest of walnut and white pine trees enclosed on all sides by a ten foot deep hedge of tall cedars. Laura could barely remember anything except the bare forest floor and how the trees were trimmed so high that the straight trunks were like cathedral columns. Then she remembered that in autumn, green walnuts would fall from each of the great trees and would lay in a circle beneath each one. She knew the circles were there once again.
George reminded her about what lay behind the cedars and she said she remembered but wanted to head back instead. Both horses seemed surprised to be turned back toward the farm and in a few minutes they could see all the buildings from the rise on which lay the farm’s old settler’s Cemetery.
It was the family McFee that lay beneath the old limestone weathered grave stones, the names and dates beginning early in the nineteenth century, one baby, then another, lost and remembered with a weathered inscription, a father by a mother by one child after another. Surviving children married and brought spouses to lay beside them with their children. And near the end of that century the Van Fleets began to take their places behind and beneath better limestone and deeper inscriptions.
There were four recent additions to the cemetery: Eugene’s father Frank, 1901-1968; Gene and Sharon’s son Casey, 1976-1980; their daughter Molly, 1982-1989 rested beneath new polished red granite tombstones. The one addition Laura did not notice was the huge traveler granite boulder that Eugene had dropped at the beginning of a new row where his two children lay. It was to be beneath this stone that he and Sharon would consider eternity.
They passed through the Cemetery in the slow gait of the horses, Laura’s anxiety about what she had found on the farm and what she had brought to it still unresolved.
Tom was waiting for her and George at the barn and when she gave him the reins, she saw some of the young children who had been playing at the barn as they waited for her return and they were staring at her like she was an apparition that had truly risen from the dead. It didn’t matter, she felt calm and clear and saturated with silence, like trees that had shed their final leaves.
They sat again on the porch with Sharon and talked mostly about Amanda. Particular problems and incidents seemed to be quickly left behind for more abstract considerations such as the difficulty of being a parent and a child with so few common concerns and problems to share.
“Children are not much different than dogs heartbroken when they are left in a kennel. The one question I always asked myself with my kids was what could I do that would make them feel like we were a pack setting out on a hunt.”
“That’s not so easy in the city.” Laura replied, “Maybe we can do picnics or I can get her out of bed and the two of us can go to my morning workout session together. I doubt if she’d want to do anything with either of us right now.”
“In my experience, children aren’t very good when they have too many choices. If you want your kid to feel like a part of a pack, you have to be prepared to be the leader of the pack.”
“That’s true. We’ve always tried to give Amanda choices. We thought that would give her a positive self-image and improve her self-esteem. It seems like it’s done just the opposite.”
“All kids need rules. Independence is learning how to adapt your own needs to those rules. I tell my kids that rules are like foundations, you can build what you want on top of them but you can’t build where they don’t go, unless you lay new ones.”
Laura liked the analogy and said she would try to think about rules that would mean something to Amanda.
“Or you!” Sharon interjected.
Laura said they should probably be going back to Toronto and Sharon told her how glad she was that she had come. As usual she didn’t feel she had been very much help but she hoped she would return and bring Amanda and Ian.
“This place does things to people.” she said, “If you can get her to come, I’d be surprised if it didn’t have some effect. Think about it. I really hope you will come back with her.”
Laura said she would think about it. And then, unasked, Sharon led them back into the house to say goodbye to Eugene.
He was in the coffee house, watching the kids getting ready for that night’s gathering. He reached up his hand and Laura took it in both of hers and they looked into each other’s eyes and said nothing. Finally the silence had to be broken and she said goodbye. Her heart felt as thin and waxy as his hand in hers. She didn’t think she would ever see him again.
All of the Van Fleet children in the coffee house quietly followed Laura and George and their mother out to the parking lot. It seemed difficult for them, when they realized that she was leaving. Before they got into George’s Porsche, Sharon asked if Amanda had an email address because she would like to write and introduce herself, and almost reluctantly Laura gave it to her. Then Sharon pressed a piece of paper into her hand with her email address and their phone number.
“You can call me whenever you want to talk.”
Laura thanked her and said that she just might do that.
The hug Sharon offered George and then Laura was not only impossible to refuse but it also seemed like second nature, like she was family, like this first goodbye meant there would be many others to come. It wasn’t a hug Laura was used to receiving. The little group of children obviously wanted to say goodbye and they took her hand as they said it, and the looks on their faces were really quite touching.
“Will we see you again?” asked Martha, shyly.
“I don’t know. I hope so.” Laura replied and she felt badly because she wasn’t really sure she wasn’t lying to the child.
On the drive back to Toronto she was mostly quiet. She told George she liked him so much better when he didn’t talk or drink.
“I hate to admit it, but I’m afraid of that woman. You held your own pretty well.” he replied.
As she had done the first night she had been in George’s Porsche, she put back the seat so that she could lie still and watch the clouds that had filled the clear blue sky. She could not help feel, and she didn’t want to admit that Sharon had made a bond inside her that would be very difficult to shake.
She thought about Arthur and Laura Lee and if the letters were real and she doubted that it was true because it had to be just too great a coincidence. She tried to remember the details of the dream from thirty odd years before, and started to get really nervous, and as she was thinking about the dream, she somehow fell fast asleep.
She woke to the street traffic and when they got to George’s apartment and he asked her to come up she said, “Why not.”
Her blood pressure rose as they rode up in the elevator and just inside his door as he was hanging up his jacket he turned and saw the pure fire in her eyes. He was shocked. She walked up to him and grabbed the open neck of his crepe shirt and ripped the front of it out and away, the ticks of the buttons were thick around them as he gasped in surprise. He groaned when she kneeled before him and he felt her fingers open his belt and then his jeans and then rip them down to his ankles in one sudden violent jerk that took his underwear with them. Half hard only for seconds, her skill and passion had him moaning and rolling his eyes at sensations shocking his nerves, then big bundles of nerves, and then his whole body preparing to explode in absol
ute ecstasy. She stopped. He groaned.
“Lie down.” she said in her huskiest voice, and he did that and then she stood up and stripped over him.
For some reason nothing had felt like this between them before, George’s eyes wide and dilated as she lowered her desire down to him and into her, taking it full and fast and furiously. He reached for her body and her swollen hard breasts as she set the pace and began to stretch desire through to a pounding gallop with their breathing roaring behind them. Born to run, fast and faster and faster. Born to be wild. It was.
And when it was over and she was bent over in his arms, he told her that she was absolutely beautiful and meant it completely, unequivocally, absolutely.
“Say that you’re beautiful.” he whispered into her hair, “Say it!”
She waited for an instant and then threw her head back and glared in his eyes and said it.
“I am beautiful. I never get to say it.” And the glare in her eyes ended when she told him, “You know me just too damn well.”
Up, up and away. She got up and dressed and left him lying there grinning and about as happy as he’d ever been in his life. He didn’t even mind when she seemed to dismiss everything with her cool goodbye. “Thanks for this.” she had said before walking out the door.