Chapter 7
For Amanda, life was suspended animation, everything moved while everything just hung there like a line of icicles. The idea of wanting responsibility was new and exciting. The reality that there were so few responsibilities for her to assume stunned her. The week before she had felt inundated by endless demands; now she felt there was nothing for her to do. What she lived for; what she thought about all day was the nightly e-mail message she would get from Tom, and the e-mail message she would compose and send to him very late before she slept. He liked her more than a little. She tried not to sound like she was overwhelmed by the way he understood her, how he kept saying she was just fine, and how she was starting to believe it. Both of them would soon use their messages to tell about the simple ordinary events of their days. Her days seemed so pedestrian and boring. His days seemed so rich and interesting and filled with responsibility. After the first week, they both began to talk about when Amanda would come to visit the farm. For some reason, even though Tom had his own car, a 1958 red turtle back Volvo, when they spoke of finally meeting, it was always understood that Amanda would come to the farm.
She was delighted and terrified at the thought. What would he think of her? Would he think she was pretty? Would he like her body? Would he be disappointed in who she was?
Her repeated hints to her parents about how nice it would be to visit the farm were greeted without any apparent serious interest. As usual, Laura was too busy. As usual, Amanda and Ian had to wait for her to fit them into her life. Ian was more than keen to go, but he knew he had to feign a certain lack of interest because of Laura’s obvious tight schedule.
Amanda had seen her friend Kara a few times after school. It took some doing, but Amanda finally got her to stop taking it also personally. She assured her friend she still wanted her to be a part of her life. She assured her that the change in her wardrobe and hair didn’t mean she expected her to change hers.
“You just look so straight. No matter where we go, one of us is going to look like a freak.” Kara complained.
“That’s okay. I’m tired of the teenage style police.” Kara didn’t like it one bit. She tried to grill her friend about the dramatic transformation in her behavior and attitude, and came to accept that it all came down to it being Amanda’s reaction to some boy. She knew that everyone fell hard eventually and made fools of themselves. It was a lesson every woman had to learn to prepare herself for when a man would put the boots to your heart. And if you were lucky that would be the only damage done.
The story that Amanda told her about the farm gave Kara the creeps. It seemed like a voluntary boot camp. Except for the Saturday night coffeehouse, it didn’t seem to be any fun at all. It was nothing but work and responsibility. And when Amanda told her that the only time when anyone drank liquor was wine with dinner, she didn’t believe it. She was sure everyone drank. She had never known anyone who didn’t.
Amanda told her that most of Tom’s family came from a background of alcohol or drug abuse so everyone accepted the rule without complaint, according to Tom.
“Right. So why don’t we all go straight. I hope you’re not telling me I have to get hammered all by myself.”
If I get caught stoned or drinking while I’m on probation, I go straight to jail.” Amanda replied.
“Who says you are going to get caught?”
“I’m not going to risk it.” Amanda insisted.
“Suit yourself. You’ll see. Straight people always end up fucking you over, big-time.”
Amanda said nothing and when she thought about Kara, she realized she really wanted to help her crawl out of the pit of her own loneliness and anger. She had just crawled out of her own pit and had no idea of how to even begin to reach a hand down to her friend. The easy responsibilities in life seemed few and far between, the hard ones to seemed to be impossible. It made Amanda feel helpless and ineffectual.
Weeks after she had first been to the farm, Laura phone Sharon and asked her if it would be all right if her family came to visit that Saturday and stayed for a little bit of the coffeehouse festivities because Amanda was frantic about coming. Sharon was both delighted and enthusiastic about having them come. She told Laura that her son Tom was especially anxious to meet Amanda. It seemed they had struck up an Internet friendship, and when Laura told Sharon that Amanda was reading car magazines to select a car for them to restore, they knew they were dealing with something big.
Laura called Ian and he called Amanda at school with the news. Her heart hit the ground like a stone. She would have less than two days to get ready and cursed her mother for giving her only two days to prepare. She also cursed her mother for giving her so much time to suffer and wait. She cursed herself most of all for being so nervous and scared.
She had been continually agonizing about whether she should send her picture to Tom. Should she prepare him for what she looked like. But what picture to send? The ones she had from the past year made her look like a freak. The ones she had from before made her look like a child. The last picture she had of herself looking normal was when she was fourteen years old and she had certainly changed considerably in the two years since. She had decided a new picture was mandatory but was desperate about what she would do to create it. She then had what she thought was a great idea.
For an hour after school she went looking for one of those photo booths where she could put in a dollar and get a series of passport size pictures. The trouble was they only seemed to exist in television commercials. She thought of going to one of the photo studio she found in the Yellow Pages but was too embarrassed to do it. She didn’t want a phony portrait anyway.
Finally, she went to a camera shop and bought a used Polaroid camera and some film and went outside of the streets and asked a stranger to take her picture leaning against the side of the building. Those were the pictures Tom received that night. He wrote back immediately telling her he had no idea she would be so pretty. That lifted her off the ground so far she would not come down until she felt his hand in hers the next day. His hand in hers; there are connections that are sometimes word perfect, even when they are unspoken.
Amanda had no idea what would happen when she met Tom. The long drive in the Lexus was quiet and endless. The quit try her parents made at small talk met with little response from Amanda. She tried to be polite but quickly fell into nervous anticipatory silence.
“You look nice.” Laura said to Amanda and meant it. It seemed that everyone got dressed up for the coffeehouse in Saturday’s so it took Amanda most of the previous day to decide what she would wear. Instead of replying to her mother’s comments with the role of the eyes, and a comment such as, ‘I look nice compared to what?’ she simply thanked her mother and went back to her nervous silence.
Amanda hoped she looked better than nice. She wanted to look sexy without looking too flashy. She wanted to make an impression and still look casual. She wanted to look like her mother without wearing her mother’s clothes. The day before had been so hard because she had tried every permutation in combination of the clothes she had her closet. She even called her friend Kara to come over to help her decide. Her friend almost gagged at every option she was presented and when she pulled out a joint and started to light it, Amanda just about had a fit.
“Are you crazy, my parents know what weed smells like. They smell dope in my room I’ll be grounded for a month.”
“Then you’re so on your own. I gotta go. Call me when you come back from wherever you are.” Kara left Amanda with her poor little middle-class problem, ‘Oh, what am I going to wear!’ She ended up looking much like Naomi Oliver in a soft silk blouse and a pair of tight jeans that showed off the long lithe curves of her youth.
Riding quietly in the back seat of the Lexus, it was amazing to Amanda that her reflexive defensive, sarcastic comments to longer seemed to even come to her mind. Even to Amanda, it seemed as if she had
somehow received an attitude transplant. It made her realize how hurt, angry and disappointed she had been in her parents, and even more so in herself. As Ian and Laura talked in the front seat, Amanda thought about change and what a mysterious, unexpected and miraculous thing it was. For her, it seemed to happen almost instantaneously. The same thing had happened when she had first met her friend Kara. But her knowing Tom had changed her a hundred times more. It made her nervous to think of her enormous impressionability and made her strangely apprehensive about changes the future might bring.
Laura had her own fears to deal with. Her biggest apprehension of the day was about the four unanswered questions that had come from Eugene’s computer. The very thought of telling him the story of her life was unnerving and intimidating, and ultimately intrusive. She knew, because it was Eugene, thatt he was expecting a serious reply, a personal narrative she had never even given to herself. She always tried to live in the present, her thoughts about the past almost entirely related to how they affected the present moment. Telling about her life, her husband, her daughter and herself was something she wanted to avoid. His request was romantic and impractical. What was she to do? What was there to tell? They were typical urban middle-class people; too busy, too stressed, too spoiled, smart and self-centered. They had won life’s lottery in so many ways and were hoping to have fun, fun, fun, until daddy took the T-bird away. To hear Eugene or Sharon answer those questions might have been interesting, but to Laura her answers would have seemed sad or vain or both. They were interesting people trying to live interesting lives but somehow lacking the passion and originality to really pull it off. By the time they got to the farm, Laura had decided that no matter how Eugene would feel about it, the best thing to do was leave his questions unanswered. For Laura, returning to the farm was like coming to class with an uncompleted assignment. When they were young she was able to insist that their feelings remain vague and implied. She didn’t want to feel that she had to change that just because it was thirty years later and he happened to be dying.
Ian carried the conversation in the car. His fear and apprehension was similar to what Laura had felt the first time she approached the farm. He was both nervous and excited about facing the force of Sharon’s personality, a force that could reach out to his troubled daughter and change her life in a few days. Ian always saw himself as the foundation of his family because he was the one who did the maintenance and repair that was necessary to keep volatile emotions from eating away at the rational structure of his family’s life. Where he felt like an expert in minor repairs and renovations, he felt he was on the way to meet a great master builder.
Ian was certain Eugene had once loved his wife, and if the story about the journal he had kept for her was true, he might still love her in the way only a first love can survive. If he hadn’t been dying and if he hadn’t been married to someone like Sharon, he might have felt more uncomfortable about the visit. But both he and Laura had come from failed marriages and married each other after the young ideal of a true and accessible heart had disappeared in a number of short-term relationships and bed partners. It made feeling pangs of jealousy rather like the memory of childhood’s innocence.
When they turned into the laneway of the farm, both Ian and Amanda were struck by the sheer scale it. The endless serpentine stone walls, the huge cross of the farmhouse itself, the size of the log out buildings, the enormous cedar-enclosed parking lot and garages were impossible to imagine beforehand. Amanda loved the huge lichen covered stones that Eugene had brought the farm and placed like sentinels along the lane way. Ian thought he was prepared when he drove into the parking lot and saw the two dozen gleaming classic cars were they sat each Saturday morning after their weekly runs. When he saw them lined up before their garage doors, he was aghast. They were like lacquered jewels gleaming in the autumn sun.
When they got out of the Lexus, both Amanda and Laura could see that Ian would have been happy to spend the rest of the day just hanging around the garages watching the process involved in the restoration of a half a dozen classic cars.
Amanda had expected Tom to be in the garage working, because he told her that was where he spent a good deal of his time. But there were only a few people working because it was the hour when everyone on the farm gathered for the midday meal. Ian dragged his ladies into the garage and Amanda’s heart began to slowly rev higher and higher as she realized that this was where Tom had spent many hours and days, and was the place he said he was happiest. It was a guy thing she couldn’t have imagined until she saw the cars sitting in the long row outside. Old steel frames and panels and great lumps of engine could come together in such dynamic beauty.
Ian made Laura walked the long row of the classic cars that belonged to the children while Amanda stayed with the one she knew to be Tom’s 544 Hump back Volvo. Ian couldn’t help himself, he lifted for door of the Gull Wing Coupe and sat inside and Laura smiled at the pure pleasure on his face. Reluctantly she opened the passenger door and got in to satisfy Ian’s pleadings. Both doors came down and Laura was back where she had once belonged: a different love, a different life, a different body mind and heart. Eugene was right, she thought, polished steel could really last. She had missed his point entirely. When they got out of the Mercedes, Amanda had disappeared. Laura only saw her sitting like a statue in the passenger seat of Tom’s Volvo. She went to the door and opened it and saw her daughter’s forced smile through the heart pounding fear she was experiencing. Her own heart started beat in time to Amanda’s.
“We had better go up to the house.” Laura said softly, “I’ll bet he can’t wait to see you “
“I know, that’s what scares me.”
“I know.” said Laura and reached out her hand and helped Amanda from the car.
The dogs on the porch greeted them as they came up to the house. The barking brought Sharon and Tom, and after a moment, amid the moving dogs there were hugs and kisses passed between the adults. When the adults had greeted, Tom reached his hand for Amanda’s and they looked into each other’s eyes trying to remember how to breathe and speak at the same time. The touch of his hand actually settled her, the look in his eyes made her want to cry. They were strangers who knew each other by heart. So beautiful, so deep and shining and real, and just an ordinary moment saying hello.
“Hi, I’m glad you’re here.” Tom said simply.
“Me too.”
Tom wouldn’t let go of her hand and her heart sank from knowing it and knowing how brave he was to do it in front of his mother and her own parents. He held her hand as he lead Amanda into the house, their parents following close behind.
They found Eugene sitting in his big wheelchair at the dinner table, his daughters Nancy and Mary still talking to him as others cleared the table after lunch. The whole family was waiting to rise from their meal when their mother returned.
When Tom and Sharon came in with the McCalls, the same star struck hush fell on the room as it had when Laura had joined them weeks before. This time all the attention was on Amanda as Tom introduced his brothers and sisters. Sharon told her family that they could be excused and everyone rose and gathered around Tom and Amanda. For the first time since they had touched, Tom let go of Amanda’s hand. The cool touch of air made her realize her hand was sweating.
It was then that Eugene and Amanda locked eyes. She went to him and reached out to take his hand in hers and smiled, even though she felt shock of holding a hand moving inexorably from life to lifelessness. She fought back tears because she did not know how Tom could stand to feel the enormous presence of death so close to someone he loved. She blurted out that he was Tom’s greatest hero, and his eyes shone with the inexorable lightness of life. Sharon shooed away the flock of children and led her guests into the sun room where Tom put his father back into bed from his wheelchair. The visitors were all shocked to see that it looked like lifting a child. Quickly Sharon adjusted Eu
gene’s head so he could see his alphabet chart and almost immediately the computer screen came alive. The letters began to form one at a time as the letters spelled Amanda is so beautiful! She blushed scarlet between a in the u of beautiful.
“I know.” said Laura.
“Ian, my home is yours.” Eugene said.
“Thanks, but I don’t think I could afford the overhead.”
Eugene laughed weakly and Laura was stunned to hear the weakened version of the same laugh she remembered from thirty years before.
Sharon asserted herself again and said they would leave Laura for a quick visit with Eugene while she gave Ian and Amanda a quick tour of the house. Ian said he was anxious to do that, and it was obvious that Amanda could hardly wait for Tom to lead her through his exotic domain.
In the dining room, Sharon explained the polished walnut family tree filling one wall.
“Everyone in the family has a box on the family tree where we keep the stories of our ancestral past. We are crazy for genealogical research around here. Our big family of orphans probably knows more about their relatives than you can even imagine.”
Amanda saw the box with Tom’s name and wondered what stories it might contain. She was more than a little uncomfortable to realize that she knew almost nothing about her own grandparents. The long wall opposite the family tree contained the photo collage the children had created over the years. It was not just the changing bodies and faces of the children that was so captivating, but the range of activities and interests shown in the photographs. Laura almost had to drag Ian away from the wall to proceed with the tour.
The music room with the long high wall of recorded music was the one that took hold Amanda as she walked slowly past rack after rack of vinyl records, tapes and CDs, she couldn’t believe that so much music could exist in one house. Her father had always been the music collector in the family, but his collection was a bookcase compared to a library. Tom followed her as she brushed her fingers over the recorded music.
“My mom’s the music collector in the family.” Tom explained, “Since the Internet, the music collection has expanded alot.”
“It’s true. It’s my one real addiction. For me, finding a great song or great performance is like finding a piece of your own heart you never knew you had lost, a piece of your heart that you now have to share.” Sharon added.
“Maybe we can come back here later and listen to records?” Tom said to Amanda.
“That would be so great.” she replied. Sharon had to call them from the door to get them to proceed with the tour.
As usual, people were singing in the coffeehouse. They were working on Joni Mitchell songs for that Saturday night. Amanda stood in front of the stage and felt the exciting presence and power that lay dormant in all the musical instruments in front of her. The pictures from her computer did not prepare her for the scale or the electric presence the room conveyed. Ian couldn’t help himself and walked to the big white wall covered with hand written lyrics.
Like most people, first-time visitors found it difficult to pull themselves away from the wall of lyrics. Amanda picked a pen from the Walnut ledge that ran the length of the wall and wrote,’ and too many kisses seem to cool in the warmth of the sun.’ Tom smiled at Amanda and pointed to lyrics he had written on the wall, ‘Build me a boat that will carry two, and both shall row, my love and I’
Amanda’s heart rose up on the crest of the wave that little boat had raised. She wanted to scream, she was so happy.
Tom asked if it would be all right if he took Amanda for a ride around the farm. His mother said that would be fine, but made Amanda promise to give her some time alone so they could talk before dinner. Amanda promised, but wondered anxiously what Sharon wanted to say to her alone. Tom told Amanda that she would need something warm to wear on the ride, so she should follow him, so she could find something to borrow. His confidence and quiet authority were even sexier than his body.
He led her to a giant walk-in closet where she was wide-eyed, seeing all the clothes hanging on long racks. Tom led her quickly to the place where she would find a sweater in her size. She picked out a soft green one, and when she lifted her arms to put it on over her head, she hoped Tom was watching the stretch of her body. When their eyes connected, she knew he had been watching. How it was that ordinary oxygen dissolved into the properties of helium she could did not know, because when she spoke, her voice came out of her half an octave higher than normal.
“Whose clothes are these?” she asked.
“Everybody’s, nobody’s, anybody who wants to wear anything in here can do that. They’re all from second hand stores.” he explained. “These are just work clothes. Everybody keeps their good stuff in their own room and you have to wash them yourself when they gets dirty, so nobody wears their own good stuff very often. The stuff in here just gets done in the regular laundry.”
Tom took Amanda to find a jacket and she picked one with wide sleeves and a high collar made of corduroy, and when she put it on and saw herself in the mirror nearby, she felt pretty and lucky and special and almost breathless with the sudden realization she was alone with Tom. He seemed to realize it too. He stood there for a second and she wanted very much to take his hand and turn him to her, slip into his arms and look up into his eyes and wait for his kiss. She only stood there feeling time move in the slow motions of desire. The next thing Amanda said shocked them both.
“My mother makes me take birth control pills every day.”
“Really.” Tom replied, and Amanda could not tell if the shocked look in his face was because he was disgusted with her or her mother. She started to cry. His eyes looked so distant. It hit her like a slap. She pulled herself together.
“I guess we better go.” Tom said.
“I guess.” Amanda replied, and he led her out of the house and down the path to the barn.
Sharon and Ian found Laura sitting on the front porch in one of the big white wicker chairs. One of the children had already set coffee, tea and cakes on a tray in front of her. There were cups and mugs for Ian, Sharon, Tom and Amanda. Sharon sat across from the McCalls as Laura explained that she had been shown out of the sunroom where they had left her because it was Eugene’s time to rest.
“I’m sorry. Gene would never ask anyone to leave, so we have a pretty strict schedule for visiting time and rest time. The kids can sometimes be pretty protective.”
“It’s hard to get used to talking to a television monitor. I’m so used to looking into people’s eyes when they talk. And I’m not used to having someone look so deeply into my eyes when it’s my turn to say something.” Laura said.
“I know what you are saying. The most amazing thing is that as his body has weakened and faded, his eyes seemed to get more vibrant and alive.” Sharon replied.
“I think you’re right. He always had spectacular eyes, like Paul Newman.” Laura agreed.
“Like Rosemary flowers.” Sharon added, “The one small dignity of Lou Gehrig’s disease is that it doesn’t touch the eyes or the sphincters. But I guess that’s more than you need to know.”
Ian interrupted and said how grateful they were for having changed Amanda’s life.
“I don’t know how you did it. But in the last weeks, she has become a mature, responsible adult. It’s hard to believe that the delightful human being that we have brought to your house was an emotional disaster a few weeks ago. It seems she has a crush on your boy Tom, so we are grateful to him as well.”
“I keep thinking this must be a dream. I’m going to wake up to this spitting, snarling alley cat we’ve had for her daughter for the past year. Then every morning I wake up to the smiling, polite helpful, insightful little angel. I just can’t believe it’s true.” Laura added sincerely.
“I’m so glad. It almost never happens like that. Usually, people have to get really unhappy with being unhappy. Usually, trust and self-confidence only come with v
ery clear rules and lots and lots of praise and reassurance. The hardest thing for a troubled child to do is to believe that you love them, even when they do things you don’t like. Being loved and feeling loved can be like opposite sides of a coin. They think they have to be perfect to deserve to be loved. They think we have to be perfect before our love for them can be trusted. In our house, most of the times, I set the rules and Eugene did the praise and reassurance. It’s good cop, bad cop around here most of the time.”
“It’s like that in our house too. My problem is that I’m not there enough to enforce the rules.” Laura replied, “Ian’s good at giving praise, he’s not so good at being the bad guy.”
“Men have a hero thing most women don’t.” Sharon replied.
Then came a piercing scream of a whistle so close and strident that it literally lifted Ian and Laura right out of their chairs. It was such a shock, such a surprise, that it was almost hard for them to recover their breath.
“What was that?” Ian gasped.
Sharon was laughing as she explained that she knew exactly what had happened. Tom was obviously showing Amanda, the steam engine that supplied all the heat and power to the farm and told her to pull on the rope that ran the steam whistle.
“It’s one of the jokes the kids play on the visitors. I hope Amanda didn’t pee her pants. It’s been known to happen.”
Ian was laughing, imagining the situation. Laura felt sorry for Amanda.
“Why do men think it’s so funny to scare women have to death?” Laura asked Sharon.
“So ladies never forget they are going to need a brave, strong man someday.” Ian explained.
“I don’t know.” Sharon added, “When Eugene and I used to go for rides in his Mercedes, he would sometimes go into a corner so fast I thought we were both going to die. He thought it was hysterical. The only way I got him to stop doing that was by telling him I’d never ride with him again if he did it one more time. I really don’t know why men behave like boys.”
“Because boys just want to have fun.” Ian interjected.
Sharon was absolutely right about the steam whistle. Amanda was finally recovering from the shock of the steam whistle’s blast. She had thrown herself against Tom, her two fists striking his chest as he put his arms around her and said he was sorry, even though he couldn’t keep from laughing. The distance in his eyes had vanished and her heart was still whirling like maple keys in the wind. Back on their horses, Tom led the way through the Cedar hedges surrounding the automobile garages. Always another surprise. They were suddenly in a very old beautiful orchard: apple and cherry and pear trees in wide long rows, the sweet smell of rotting windfall apples drifting around them. The bigger surprise was the fact that there were nine very different tree houses built into the centres of some of the very old trees, each one completely different in structure and design and decoration. As they rode down the line of trees, Tom explained to her that these were the tree houses his brothers and sisters had built for their personal sanctuaries. No one was allowed to enter them unless they were invited. Mostly people were never invited because the sanctuary spots were often the place where the children would go for the private hour of solitary reflection that happened every weekday from four until five.
“I don’t understand.” Amanda inquired, “Everyone has to go and be alone for an hour every day? Why?”
“Because there are so many people here, it’s hard to get time to yourself. It was my mom’s idea. When we each came here, the first thing we got to do was build a sanctuary place with my mom and dad. It’s so we have a place to go when we felt hurt or angry, or just want to be by ourselves. You can always go to your sanctuary spot anytime of the day, no matter what’s happening. My brother Tranh built his as a secret underground bunker in the side of the dirt ramp going to the second floor of the barn. We tease him that it’s his Viet Cong heritage. That one there is my sister Christa’s, the one with the sign that says ‘Love Abides’. She’s been in a psychiatric facility for the last year.”
Amanda realized that under the idyllic surface there was deep unresolved pain and terror in this family of so many adopted children.
“Which one of these is yours?” she asked.
“It’s this one.” he said. They stopped beside a huge old Apple tree supporting a small room made of vertical birch bark planks. It had only one opening, a little door that could only be reached by climbing up through the branches. She wished he would ask her to climb up and see the room where he spent an hour alone every day. It was so different to the luxury condominium where she spent so much time alone. But alone was alone, and yet his seemed like private luxury rather than the abandonment that she usually felt. She told him that her time alone was painful, and he said that it was understandable. He suggested that she might want to find a place that was just her own outside her condo, a place where her deepest feelings were safe.
“That’s not so easy in a big city.” she replied.
Tom didn’t say anything, with barely a gesture his horse understood his intent and moved along the orchard row. Amanda’s horse followed alongside. They headed across the field to a little cemetery on a rise overlooking the farm.
Sharon, Laura and Ian finished their coffee and Laura brought up the letters of Arthur and Laura Lee.
“I asked Eugene how he might feel if I looked at Arthur and Laura Lee’s letters with the idea of publishing them. He said I should ask you and his daughter Sarah’s advice.”
Sharon’s demeanor changed instantly. She was suddenly reluctant and defensive about the idea of exploiting what was a personal treasure for her family.
“I’ll talk to Eugene. You should talk to Sarah. She has almost a perfect memory of every letter Eugene read to the children. He keeps them in the vault, and so no one has seen them since he lost his voice. Everyone depends on Sarah to keep Arthur and Laura Lee alive. Sarah doesn’t live at home anymore, but she’ll be here for Saturday night coffeehouse tonight.”
For the first time, Laura and Sharon truly locked eyes. Both of them knew it was a test. Both of them felt their own deepest vulnerability. They would not lock eyes like that again for a very long time.
Tom and Amanda rode slowly side-by-side through the family Cemetery. He said that he loved the idea that everyone he cared about would one day be laid to rest around him. It made Amanda very sad to think about mortality, about his mortality in such real terms. Would this be where she would be laid to rest, or would there be another beside him, another woman who had born him his children.
“Even my birth mother will have a place here if she wishes it.” he explained, “Since her time in residential school, she has lost all connection with her people.”
“They’re your people too.” Amanda added.
“I wish.” He seemed suddenly uncomfortable and changed the subject. “I like to keep all the graves clean.”
Purple clover and Queen Anne’s lace grew all-around the Cemetery, but each grave was groomed and covered with the heart-shaped leaves of spring violets.
From the Cemetery they rode across the fields and approached the deep cedar hedge surrounding the century-old Walnut Forest. The horses knew the way and found the road angled into the forest, and when they broke through the intense intoxicating smell of the Cedars, Amanda almost gasped with what she saw. Countless high straight walnut trees mixed with enormous white pines were trimmed so high that they looked like cathedral spires. The crown of every tree seems suspended from the sky. Below, the Walnut leaves were turning sepia brown under countless green walnuts scattered in one perfect circle after another. Butterscotch coloured pine needles covered the forest floor, and the only other living things Amanda could see were the ferns and mosses that had claimed their own places in the woods.
The horses knew they should stop when they entered the forest. They also knew when it was time to move on to the big black pearl of a pool at the center of the forest.
The absolute stillness, the strange, sweet, acidic masculine smell of walnuts made the place seem almost mystical.
Tom slipped out of his saddle and helped Amanda down to the ground when the horses, Jack and Diane, began to shift and silently complain that they were bored.
“This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in my life.” Amanda said softly.
If there was ever a moment for a first kiss, this was the moment. They had both been waiting, and they both felt the effortless desire in their arms as they gathered one another, two bodies; one embrace. Then their eyes met, then closed, and they felt the heart pounding force and absolute delicacy of their first kiss. In the perfect cathedral of trees, in the perfect unrepeatable perfection of the moment, they each absorbed how their bodies fit together in a way they would never feel with another human being.
Plop! A frog turned the still reflection of the forest and their kiss into shimmering energy, Emily Carr in true life.
When they broke their breathtaking kiss, Tom held Amanda’s face in his hands and said absolutely nothing. His eyes said everything.
“I’m going to be strong.” she whispered.
“I know.” he replied. And to Tom she looked so truly beautiful in every way that it was an image he pressed into his heart that it would never fade for as long as he lived.
When they got back to the farm they found their parents sitting in the wicker chairs on the front porch, the wood smell and warmth of the fireplace stripping their bodies of the cool autumn air.
“How was your ride?” Laura asked Amanda, and the soft look in her mother’s eyes, and the liquid long peeling of the silent bell in her chest overwhelmed Amanda and she shocked herself and everyone else as she fell into her mother’s lap and held her close and cried. She didn’t just cry, she sobbed.
Laura was so shocked she didn’t know what to say as Amanda whispered in her ear, “Mama, it so beautiful here.” Laura relaxed and held her daughter close. Amanda hadn’t called her Mama since she was ten years old, and so it was Laura’s turn to struggle against tears while everyone felt close and tender in the liquid silence of the room. Finally Amanda recovered and threw her head back and looked at Tom and said, “This is so uncool.”
“I think it’s absolutely cool.” Tom replied, and he was looking at her with a force that only his mother knew and remembered.
Sharon asked Tom to sit down and Amanda got out of her mother’s lap and went to sit in the chair beside him, suddenly feeling quite embarrassed at being the very center of the strange kind of attention she had created. So many feelings were tumbling in her father’s heart that he had almost forgotten his usual assumed responsibility to lead the conversation.
“Tell me what you saw.” he said to Amanda.
Talking let her recover her emotions as she told the story of the last hour. Both of her parents were very interested in the tree houses and the idea of having an hour of private time just to reflect on the day.
“That’s a luxury I can’t even imagine” said Ian.
Laura agreed and said the idea made her realize how little control she had in her life. There simply were no spare hours in the day.
“I didn’t think you ever liked being alone.” Ian said to his wife.
“I know. But an hour day, just for myself, sounds absolutely decadent.” she replied.
“I don’t think time for yourself should be optional.” Sharon said with her usual finality.
Both Ian and Laura said nothing in response. Amanda was thinking that if her parents started taking time alone, that would leave her with even less. She didn’t understand why three little lives in the city could be so absolutely complicated, difficult and lonely.
By the time the sun set it was in waves of amber and pink flowing into rivers of maroon. the McCalls looked at one another and felt like they had been sitting on that porch for most of their lives. It was Sharon who finally broke up the gathering as she stood up and took Amanda’s hand.
“You promised me a few minutes alone, let’s go see if anybody needs anything in the kitchen.” she said, and Amanda took her hand and dutifully followed her out of the room leaving Tom alone with Laura and Ian.
Amanda was surprised that were only two people in the kitchen. Martha was there with Ryan gathering different homemade relishes and condiments on big trays.
“Saturday night is always burgers and french fries at the coffeehouse.” Sharon explained to Amanda. “Two people at each table are responsible to keep all the others fed and happy.”
“That’s great. I wish I could help, but I really don’t know how to cook anything, even burgers and fries.” Amanda confessed.
Sharon was surprised but said nothing.
“Do we need anything?” Sharon asked her two children.
“We’ll need another peck of potatoes.” said Martha. “We were just going to get them.”
“Amanda and I will do that.” said Sharon and the two children looked strangely at Amanda. They didn’t usually get intercepted in the chores.
Sharon lead the way out of the kitchen through the kitchen side door where Amanda saw the rock garden cascading back for thirty yards. She did not think to ask about the beautiful Cedar door cut into the big mound of earth and stones at the end of the garden. Sharon effortlessly pulled back the root cellar door and Amanda was surprised to see that it was six inches thick. Sharon touched a switch and a dull light filled the room and Amanda could see all the fruit and root vegetables stored on shelves and floor pallets as far as she could see. She followed Sharon inside until they came to bushels and bushels of dark potatoes.
“This place is amazing.” exclaimed Amanda, the odor of the earth, the root vegetables, apples and pears mixed together in an almost erotic smell. Sharon pulled out a half bushel of potatoes and sat down on one of the small benches in the cave.
“Sit for a minute.” Sharon said to Amanda, indicating that she should sit down beside her. Amanda was nervous about what was coming.
“Your parents say that you’ve changed a great deal in the last few weeks. They think you’re finally happy with your life.” Sharon began. “Is it true?”
“No. I’m not happy with my life. I don’t really have a life of my own, but I know I’m still young. Tom has made me realize what I have to do to make that happen. I don’t know if you can believe this, but you have the most wonderful son in the world. He’s so strong and gentle and wise.” And then she said the thing she thought she would never have said in one million years, to Tom or anyone else.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I love Tom. You’ll think I’m insane because we just met, but I know my heart.”
“I absolutely believe you.” Sharon said gently, “I just want you to be careful with your heart and his. One thing young people never believe is that they are the ones who really have the luxury of time. Falling in love sometimes happens in such a hurry, and life is very long.”
“If you’re talking about sex, I’m on the pill. I really don’t need to be, but my mother is paranoid that I’m going to get pregnant and need an abortion like she did.” Amanda explained.
“That’s not what I was talking about. I know Tom, and now I know you as well, and I know I don’t have to worry about sex. What I meant was that you have time to create the conditions of your life. Your heart is the foundation on which you can choose to build anything. All I wanted to say to you is you should never forget to look for the things that will always be true to your heart.”
“But I don’t know the things that are true to my heart.”
“No one does, but you can ask it. If you let your heart say what it wants to say and not just what you want to hear, it will keep you true to yourself. That’s it. That’s all the wisdom there is in this old girl. No, that’s not completely true. Let’s go back to the coffeehouse, and I’ll to show you the greatest power that exists on earth.” Sharon said and got up and reached down for th
e basket of potatoes. Amanda took the other wire handle and they carried it back to the kitchen. Sharon then led the way to the coffeehouse with Amanda nervously anticipating what this world shattering power might be.
In the coffeehouse, almost a dozen people gathered around the stage singing when Sharon interrupted them. “Excuse me.” Sharon said, and everyone stopped what they were doing and waited for her to speak. “Who here remembers, ‘This Little Light of Mine’ Can we do it as a singing round? Susan you start, please.”
Susan, a little girl of about seven and the youngest one in the room began to sing in a sweet, high child’s voice,
“This little light of mine, I’m going to that it shine
This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.
This little item mine, I’m going to let it shine.
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.
Then the next voice joined Susan singing, and the next and next followed as the room filled with the growing chorus and it was quite beautiful to hear. All these people were obviously used to sing together. But Amanda didn’t get the point until Sharon began singing, leaving her silently alone as everyone sang. She felt more and more uncomfortable as she knew it would soon be her turn to join in or not. She had no choice, she had to sing. She knew she wanted to sing, and so when it was time for her to come in, she sang in public for the very first time in her life. And it felt quite wonderful. Sharon was right, the enormous force of the voices filling the room was amazingly powerful, and irresistibly beautiful. As if on cue, they all stopped together leaving Amanda beginning the last new round alone. “This Little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.” She sang the first solo in her life. When people clapped she was quite taken aback.
“You have a wonderful voice.” said Sharon and obviously meant it. Amanda wished that Tom had been there to hear her sing.
Sharon thanked the group and said to Amanda that they should be getting back to her parents. As they walked Sharon told Amanda the secret of the greatest power on earth.
“When everyone sang, you could feel the song forming inside, needing you to join in, couldn’t you? That’s what a song does. It asks you to share your feelings with someone else. A song makes people join their feelings together, and when people do that, there is no end to the beautiful things that can be created. There is also no end to the terrible things that can come out of the human heart when people open themselves up to the worst power inside them. There are songs of love and songs of war. The only real question in anyone’s life is what kind of song you want to sing. And no matter what kind of voice you have, life is rarely a solo. When it came your turn, it was impossible for you not to join the others because they opened their hearts to you. That’s the greatest power on earth, the power people have when they open their hearts together. And that’s the best thing I know in this world.”
Amanda was stunned. She saw Sharon’s passion and certainty and understood it with a clarity that made her feel as if she had actually faced the greatest power in the world. ‘This little light of mine.’ Amanda then knew with an absolute certainty that it was going to shine, and it was going to join the light from the hearts of countless people she had never even met. She knew an absolute certain joy in the possibilities of her future, and she knew the sad realization of what her past had been. Until the last weeks, she had shared nothing of her heart.
Later, Laura and Ian waited in the coffeehouse at a table close to the stage. Sharon went to get Eugene when the room was almost full. Sarah came in with her husband and two children, and Laura waved to her and asked if she would like to share their table. Sarah was obviously delighted.
Tom and Amanda had been in the family room with two headsets listening to the music Tom had chosen for Amanda to hear. Voices she had never heard before her life singing songs she never knew existed was a revelation to her. She loved his taste in music; King Pleasure singing jazz lyrics in a voice that moved with the tenor fluidity of a saxophone. ‘There I go. There I go. There I go. Pretty baby, you are the soul that snaps my control.’ Etta James, Fred Neal, Jim Kweskin and the Riders of the Purple Sage. Tom was like her own personal DJ picking one cut after another so she could get a flavor of the music she was hearing. For two hours they had sat as she marveled to herself that her heart could swell to such an incredible size just listening to other people sing. If there were purely happy beings on the planet in those two hours, Amanda was surely one of them. It was hard to imagine, but the night would only get better.
There was a big crowd gathered in the coffeehouse when they brought Eugene in his wheelchair and put him near the stage and the table where Sharon, Laura, and Ian, were sitting. Sarah came in with her family and Sharon called her to come sit with them. She put Sarah across from Laura and Sarah introduced her family. A moment of greeting and then Laura asked Sarah how it was the she remembered the letters of Arthur and Laura Lee so perfectly.
“Most of us older kids remember the stories pretty well because we heard them the most. The reason everyone thinks I know the stories so well is because I like to tell them. I teach the younger kids here in the farm, so they see me the most. I’m just one that gets asked most often, and so I’m the one everyone thinks is the expert on Arthur and Laura Lee.”
“Your father and mother seem somewhat anxious about letting me see the letters. I really think they would make a wonderful book. It’s such an original idea, but I don’t know if I should you even be asking. Maybe you can tell me if I’m barging into places that I don’t belong.”
“I really don’t know. No one except my dad has ever touched those letters. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if I told you the stories. Maybe you can come up for a Sunday visit to our house and I can tell you stories all day long.” Sarah replied.
Sarah’s children all seemed delighted by the idea, asking if it would be all right for them to listen to the stories too, and Sarah said they could listen until their bums turned blue. They squealed with laughter.
Tom and Amanda joined them and soon more than two hundred regular guests and family were starting in on burgers and fries that seemed to suddenly appear from nowhere.
There was a blackboard over Eugene’s head with a list of the songs and the people that would be singing. Individuals and groups could put themselves on the evening playbill if they were prepared and wanted to sing. A good part of the week was spent in discussing who would be singing and the songs that would be chosen. There is an unwritten protocol that no one could sing more than two song solo. The rest was all first come, first-served.
It was Ian who was reading the playbill for the night and turned Amanda’s attention to it. When she looked about halfway down the list she saw that it said Tom and Amanda,’ When I Fall in Love’. Amanda had to scrape her heart and her stomach from the floor. Her eyes flashed to Tom, who just smiled.
“How could you do this to me?” she asked, breathlessly.
“You said you wanted to sing a song together. It’s the only one I was sure we both knew.” he replied, “I’m sure you can do it.”
“She has a tremendous voice.” added Sharon.
“Really?” Laura asked in surprise.
“I guess we’ll see.” Amanda replied and continued to try to gather up her vital organs from where they had been scattered.
Ian couldn’t wait. It was more than romantic. It was all such a surprise. If a fortune teller a month before had told him how he would be spending this day, he would not have believed it was possible. He wouldn’t have believed such experiences and such feelings would be part of the life of his little family. Tom and Amanda were elected cooks for the night for their table, and they did a wonderful job keeping the whole table fed. Tom cooked, Amanda served.
Sharon’s grown son Rosie and his family joined them, and the table was suddenly full. Rosie’s wife Connie seemed to the one person Laura met on the farm who seemed to be ill at ease.
&
nbsp; It was East Coast, West Coast, New York, California and Yorkville, Toronto with a Joni Mitchell medley.
It was the longest and shortest day of Amanda’s life. So much had happened that she’d remember for a lifetime, and it all went by so fast. It was over, like a song. She couldn’t tell if time was crawling or running away with her as one song after another was played and Tom came and went joining different groups. When finally it was almost time, she felt that she was about to panic.
“Do we take turns singing? Do you want to start? When do I know when to come in?” she pleaded with Tom.
“It’s easy. I’ll start and you can join whenever you feel ready.”
“What if I never feel ready? I’ll look like an idiot.” she insisted.
“You might. Or maybe you’ll just look like a great prop. They do that kind of thing in musicals all the time. Relax. This is supposed to be fun.” What he said helped her. She knew he would take care of her. He would never let her look like a fool.
And then it was time and the two of them were on stage, and he went to the grand piano and sat down and she sat beside him and the whole room, went silent. Teenage girls, green with jealousy, gathered around the stage as they always did when Tom sang solo. He began to play and sing and he sang the first lines alone before he turned to look at Amanda. She joined him, and they sang together, and by the time they got to the phrase about moonlight kisses seeming to cool in the warmth of the sun, it was like they had been singing together forever. Amanda’s nervousness had completely vanished. She fell into the feeling of the song, and she meant its words totally and absolutely, and as completely as she had ever meant any words in her life.
Both Laura and Ian were shocked at the pure, high, beautiful voice that came out of their daughter. She had range and depth, feeling and poise. And if the girls around the stage were jealous before they began, there was no gauge to measure the depth of it as the last chord faded in the room. No dishes rattled. All conversation had stopped. Virtually everyone in the room knew that this was a special, beautiful moment.
When the applause began, Amanda jumped like a startled bird. As they went back to their seats, Amanda was more than in love; Amanda was proud of herself. She was in love. She didn’t care who saw it. She was so happy she wasn’t even afraid Tom would see and know. Still, there was something that made her reluctant to finally look into his eyes again. She heard his voice say that she was spectacular, and she felt his hand in hers and she looked at the light in her own father’s eyes, and Amanda literally shone. For some reason, Amanda thought of her friend Kara who would have just puked at what was to her such a beautiful a moment in life. ‘When I fall in love. What horseshit.’
The rest of the night was pure fun. The only other heart-wrenching moment happened when everyone listened to Tom sing Fred Neil’s, ‘The Dolphin,’. It was a beautiful song. She was glad Eugene had stayed to hear Tom sing that song before Sharon announced that he had to leave and rest. Everyone at the table said goodbye into his beautiful eyes, and to Amanda, the look seemed almost as happy as she felt.
Sometime past midnight, after all the songs on the blackboard had been played, and people were taking part in an impromptu jam session, Sharon dragged the McCalls up onto the stage to join in a raucous rendition of Yellow Submarine. In the audience or on the stage, everyone sang in the coffeehouse. It’d been much more comfortable singing from their table, but there was something about being on stage that was different, and when Ian wrapped his arms around his two loves, he felt a kind of power he had never known in his life.
Finally, around one o’clock, Laura put on her black hat and said they had to be going because she had an early meeting the next day. Reluctantly, they all got up and Tom and Sharon walked the McCalls to their car. The big parking lot still held many cars so it took some time to find the Lexus.
Before they got into the car, everyone traded hugs and kisses. The last kiss between Tom and Amanda was simple and sweet. It was the way they held each other that showed their heart’s true connection. It was like they knew with a simple certainty that they belonged in each other’s arms.
Amanda wanted to tell them all that this was the most wonderful day of her life, but she knew that saying it would have spoiled it somehow. She wanted her last memory of Tom on this day to be of his body in her arms, her body in his. The last look they shared was the perfect punctuation for the day, a look that is only possible in the first moments of the first true love of one’s life.
As the Lexus drove out of the laneway, Ian said the most perfect thing.
“So, Amanda, happy at last?”
He and Laura laughed together as Amanda sat blushing in the back seat.