Twenty

by Debra Landwehr Engle

  She blushed again.

  “Well . . . of course,” she said, beaming.

  “So the scary part is that maybe he doesn’t like you as much as you like him,” I said. “And the other scary part is that he does.”

  Becky looked me right in the eye. “How did you know that?” she said.

  “Experience,” I said. “Everything that’s exciting has an edge of fear to it. The trick is to follow the excitement, not the fear. I mean, make good decisions, but don’t let your fear stop you.”

  Shannon opened her eyes, her head still on her paws, and looked at me, as if to say, “You do realize, don’t you, that you’re talking to yourself?”

  Maybe some of Joe’s guidance rubbed off on me all those years ago.

  Becky’s phone rang. She glanced at it and smiled. “It’s him,” she said. “Thanks, Aunt Meg.” She kissed my cheek as she left.

  A few minutes later, Mark knocked on the guest room door and came in and sat down. We talked about his senior year in college, his internship, the young woman from Taiwan he’s been dating, what his plans are after graduation.

  And then, shortly after he left, same thing with Brent. He told me he’s been struggling in school and wondering if he should take a year off. He may not have come to any conclusions, but it seemed helpful for him to talk it through.

  Such good kids, and I’m so grateful to have had that time with them. Holly and Phil have done a tremendous job raising them. Their grandmother—and their cousin—would be proud.

  Holly and I set out the stir-fry and rice, and we sat around the kitchen table telling stories. All three of the kids were here for supper before they went out for the evening, and it seemed like the right time to give them the mementos I’d brought.

  A music box for Becky that belonged to Mama. A level for Brent from Daddy’s toolbox that Mama used all the time. And a blue ribbon from Daddy’s spelling bee days for Mark.

  “These are so cool,” they said as they opened them, genuinely touched. It’s one of the things I love most about them—their capacity for gratitude and valuing things that other kids wouldn’t.

  “Well, the items are great in and of themselves,” I said. “But they mean a lot more when you know the stories behind them.”

  “Do you remember that level, Holly?” I said, picking it up and tilting it back and forth until the fluid centered in the middle of the little glass window.

  “Oh, heavens, yes,” she said. “Sometimes I thought Mama would beat us over the head with it just to get us to help her out in the barn.”

  “What was she doing?” Brent asked.

  Funny how one question can be like a faucet just waiting to turn on a whole conversation. For the next hour, Holly and I recalled the first few years after Daddy died, and how Mama held on to that acreage, determined to live out as much of their dream as she could.

  We told them how Mama and Daddy bought the place with plans for more children, big gardens; it was a place with room for hobbies and horses. The dream of a bigger family died with Daddy, of course, but Mama held on to that acreage with the little bit of insurance money she collected.

  How she managed it, we don’t really know. But she set to work selling vegetables that she raised. And she’d go to garage sales and buy broken-down old furniture and take it to the barn to repair it, talking to Romeo for company. Then she’d sell it out of the barn, freshly upholstered and painted. She called it Fleur Antiques to make it sound respectable. She knew how to make things new again.

  “Do you remember Grandpa at all?” Becky asked Holly and me. I smiled at her curiosity. Daddy and Rose were both phantoms in her mind since they were gone before she was born. Only Mama held real memories for her.

  We’d moved into the living room, where Becky stretched out on the couch and put her feet in Holly’s lap. Sometimes I thought she might be sleeping. But I think she took it all in, weaving pieces of memories into some kind of braid she could hold on to, connecting her to all that came before.

  “Barely,” Holly said. “I was only three when he died. Mostly I remember him being happy. And didn’t we go to drive-in movies?” she asked me.

  “We did. I’m surprised you remember that. You always fell asleep right after the show started.”

  “I remember how he’d come home at the end of the day wearing a suit and fedora—looking very dapper,” I said. “He’d give Mama a kiss and pick up Holly and me and swing us around in the kitchen. And then he’d go change clothes as fast as he could, as if he couldn’t wait to get into his work clothes and go out to tinker in the barn.

  “The acreage always had something that needed to be fixed, and he loved to do it. He’d come in with grease on his T-shirt, and Mama would scold him, even though she never really seemed mad. Then she’d peel that shirt off him right there in the kitchen and treat it with ammonia and white vinegar.”

  “How do you remember that?” Holly said.

  “Oh, Mama taught me all those tricks,” I said.

  “How come you didn’t learn those things, Mom?” Brent said, teasing.

  “Your grandma tried to teach her,” I said, “but your mom was too busy with the boys.”

  Phil smiled, and Becky opened her eyes and came to life. “Those are the stories we really want to hear,” she said, waving her feet in the air.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” Holly said. “I was a model teenager.” Her kids groaned in unison. “Anyway, as I recall, your aunt won the popularity award.”

  “Yeah, but everyone I dated broke up with me so they could date you,” I said.

  “Never mind,” Holly said, trying to redirect the conversation. “Remember the home movies Daddy took of us?”

  Sure, I remembered. The long bar of lights that attached to the movie camera, lighting up the living room at Christmas to film Holly and me when we opened our presents. The lights were so bright we squinted when he told us to look at the camera.

  “I put those on DVDs a few years ago. Didn’t I send a set to you?”

  “You did,” Holly said, getting up from the couch. “We haven’t watched them in ages.” She opened a cupboard under the bookshelves and pulled out the DVDs.

  “Since we’re talking about Daddy, I want to find the one where he’s singing.”

  I smiled. “You mean the mash-up of ‘Davy Crockett’ and ‘Wouldn’t It Be Loverly’?”

  “That’s the one,” she said. She handed a DVD to Mark, who loaded it into the player. Then she forwarded it to the scene she wanted.

  There he was. Our dad, standing in the living room next to the old flowered couch. He wore a bearskin cap like Davy Crockett, and he sang in a booming baritone: “Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee, greenest state in the land of the free. . . .”

  Then he paused while he took off the cap and picked up a broom like My Fair Lady and continued in a high-pitched voice . . . “warm face, warm hands, warm feet, oh, wouldn’t it be loverly?”

  Holly and I were off camera, but you could hear us squealing. “Sing it again, Daddy!”

  “He loved making us laugh, didn’t he?” Holly said.

  “Definitely,” I said. “That’s what I remember most about him. He wanted us to be happy.”

  * * *

  As we talked tonight, I could see beyond the kids’ appearance to something deeper. I’d forgotten how it felt to sit and visit with the family. To be in the company of people I love. This house is so filled with life, and the farmhouse back home is so filled with memories. No wonder I thought my life was over.

  The kids all had places to go. And Phil disappeared to the bedroom to read. “I’ll let you two catch up,” he said, giving Holly a kiss on the cheek.

  Holly and I curled up on the couches, watching the moonlight glance off the water. “It’s beautiful here,” I said. “You’ve created a wonderful life for yourself.”

  “Thanks,” Holly said. “I try to never take it for granted.” She turned and looked at me. “I want you to find happiness again, too. You deser
ve it more than anyone I know.”

  “I’m getting there,” I said. “Day by day.”

  We were quiet for a minute. “I’ll be right back,” I said.

  I went to my room and came back with the childhood picture I’d had enlarged. “I found something I want you to have,” I said, handing her the tissue-wrapped box.

  She unwrapped it, then held it and stared.

  “I haven’t seen this picture for ages,” she said. “Where was it?”

  “In a box in the basement,” I said. “With a lot of other photos, and some of Daddy’s things.”

  “We were so little,” she said. “We had no idea, really.”

  I sat down quietly.

  “How did Mama do it?” she asked. “How did she keep everything going? How did she make life good for us when she was devastated?”

  At that moment, I felt a pain in my stomach. I hadn’t thought about it this way. Mama hadn’t given up. Ever. Even during the most difficult times. But she’d had us to keep her going. That made a difference, didn’t it?

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She was an exceptional woman. Anyway, I wanted you to have this. A reminder of the two of us, together always.”

  DAY TWELVE

  I almost told Holly about the pearls today. It took all the restraint I had to keep from blurting it out. But she’d be horrified. And then she’d call every doctor in Seattle. So instead we went to see a healer. I felt exactly like Becky—excited and scared.

  The sign on the shop said LIN CHOW: PRIVATE READINGS. We saw it after lunch, when we were trudging up Stewart Street with our hands full from the Market. The smell of sea air and fresh fish made me feel invigorated and alive. If we’d been smart, we would have done our shopping after lunch so we wouldn’t have so much to carry. That was when the sign caught my eye. The number on the door said 2000, and I told Holly I wanted to go in.

  She’s never had a sense of the mystical like Mama and I did. She’s not judgmental about it, but she is rooted firmly in this world. When we were little, she used to listen to my stories of fairies and trolls and elves and think that I made them up, when I was just telling her what I knew to be true outside our back door. I think she’s always wanted to believe, really, but it’s simply not in her makeup. She’s sensitive, but completely sensible. Give her the choice between poetry or a good cookbook, and she’ll choose the how-to every time.

  So when I told her I wanted to go in and see Lin Chow, she just smiled and said, “Sure.”

  When we walked in, I started to tingle. I could feel that inner knowing, like a divining rod that starts to sway as you get closer to water. Lin nodded at Holly, then turned to me and bowed, as though she’d been expecting me.

  On the ledge in front of the window, ceramic pots held an assortment of orchids, exotic cactus plants, and unexpected combinations of spiky agave and wandering Jew. The red curtains cast a rosy light throughout the room, and everything seemed to shimmer with vitality. It felt like a womb of peace and tranquility.

  I knew the space made Holly uncomfortable, but I breathed it in like warm rain. I could tell I was with someone who understood what it means to have one foot in this world and one foot on the other side.

  Lin’s hair was swept up in a bun, and she wore a flowered tunic and black pants with sandals. She stood a head shorter than me, yet she had a large and peaceful presence.

  Her first words were not, “How can I help you?” or “What can I do for you?” but “I’m glad you’ve come. Please sit.” She motioned toward a tufted chair that faced a small ebony desk with carved legs.

  “Please—” She motioned for Holly to sit on a flowered sofa under the window. “Sisters?” she said, looking back and forth at us.

  “Yes,” I said, knowing we don’t look that much alike.

  “Thank you,” Holly said, “but I think I’ll leave you alone for a few minutes. I’ve got an errand to run up the street. Is that okay?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Yes,” Lin said. “Thirty minutes, please.”

  Holly winked at me and headed back out into the sunlight.

  I was happy Holly had left. I didn’t want to reveal too much in front of her, but I also didn’t want to be evasive. Mostly I just wanted to be with Lin and absorb that comforting energy. So clean and pure, it felt as though it was channeled directly from the other side.

  She understood without my saying anything. “I will tell you only what you are open to hearing,” she said. “Please, shuffle these cards.”

  I wasn’t even sure what she planned to do. These weren’t tarot cards—just an ordinary deck of playing cards. She wasn’t a palm reader, or an energy healer. I shuffled the cards and handed them to her. She closed her eyes, took a couple of deep breaths, and laid out several cards in front of her. Then she picked them up and put them back in the deck. I realized they were nothing but a prop, like a string of rosary beads or a worry doll. They gave her body something to focus on so her mind could travel.

  She opened her eyes and looked toward me, but through me, focusing on something in the distance. Her hands dealt out the cards and picked them up silently, but with a rhythm.

  “You were born in October, no?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “The ninth.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Under a full moon. You have always been divinely protected.”

  “Really?” I said, surprised. “I haven’t always felt that way.”

  “You have always been accompanied by beings of light,” she said. “Does this make sense?”

  I remembered Mama telling me that the colored swirls would always be with me. Was it possible, even if I couldn’t see them? Even if the colors on my kitchen wall were my only reminder?

  “Yes,” I said. “It does.”

  “You are only in your body part of the time,” Lin Chow continued. “You are one who travels frequently in other worlds. And you have experienced many losses, have you not?”

  I said, “Yes,” softly.

  “One who is especially dear to you is here and wants to say hello,” she said.

  “My daughter?” I asked, eager for the answer to be yes.

  “No,” she said, “it is a masculine figure. A father figure.”

  “Daddy?” I wondered.

  “Yes,” she said, “he was your father in this life, but you have been apart for many years, have you not?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “He is concerned about you,” she said.

  I stiffened.

  “He knows you have made a decision that may not be the best for you. Does this make sense?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “He is close by you and wants you to know that.” She kept dealing and picking up the cards.

  “The decision,” I said, “. . . does he have information about how the decision will turn out?”

  She paused for a moment, listening intently. “He cannot say,” she said. “He is shaking his head.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “But he has something for you,” she said. “It is a rose. It appears to be very meaningful. Does this make sense?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It does.”

  She dealt the cards more slowly and intently now.

  “There is something you want to ask, is there not?” she said.

  I looked up at the ceiling. “You know when I was born,” I said slowly, not sure I wanted the answer to the next question. “Do you also know when I will leave this life?”

  She laid out seven cards on the table, then picked them up again. “This information is never shared,” she said quietly. “It is a law of the universe. Only God knows the answer to this question.”

  Was she being honest, or did she have information she didn’t want to share?

  “It is the truth,” she said, as though she heard my silent question.

  “I can tell you this,” she said. “There is something in you that doesn’t belong. You must get rid of it or you will die.”
r />   Same rhythm of cards on the table. Same peaceful quiet in the room.

  I took another deep breath. “Can you tell me what it is?” I said.

  She reached across the table and took my hands in hers.

  “Your chi energy is strong and alive,” she said. “And at the same time it tells me an ending is coming soon.”

  “Have you felt this before?” I asked.

  “Not in quite this way,” she said. “But I can tell you that one’s system is most vital just before an important change.”

  I felt exposed, as though she knew my secret. When I looked away, she picked up the cards, straightened the deck, and set it on the table with a sense of finality. “You have this answer,” she said. “You are the only one who knows.”

  I sat quietly.

  “But I have something that may help you,” she said. She got up, walked to a carved wooden cabinet on the other side of the room, and pulled out a packet filled with powder.

  “Drink this with your food,” she said. “Stir it into liquid. It will help you.”

  Did she know somehow about the pearls? Was this an antidote of some kind? I thought of the lab tests and what they might show. Yes, doctor, I imagined myself saying. My red blood count was low, so I drank a white powder from a Chinese healer. Of course, that was after I took a bottle of pearls that might kill me.

  I heard the jingle of bells as Holly came back in the shop.

  “You are right on time,” Lin said, rising from her chair, indicating that we were done. I felt like I’d been there for hours, and I could barely move to stand up. But I turned around and smiled at Holly.

  “Did you get what you needed?” I asked. I pulled cash out of my purse and handed it to Lin.

  “Sure thing,” she said. “I hope you did, too.”

  Lin smiled and bowed toward each of us. “Good day,” she said. “Take good care of one another. This is what sisters do.”

  * * *

  I’ve been part of a sisterhood in many ways, and its gifts are not lost on me. The spring after Mama died, I planted a memorial garden for her and Rose under the pergola behind the house.

  Nancy and I stayed at the shop a couple of nights after closing, and she helped me design the bed. I brought in the measurements, and we drew it out on graph paper, the way Mama used to do. We chose shade-loving perennials with foliage ranging from deep emerald to variegations of celery green and white. Lily of the valley for its sweet scent in early spring, bleeding heart for its delicate pink blooms in May and June, and lamium to fill in between the plants and cover the ground with green.