The Path Of Dreams

by Eugene Woodbury

  “He’s fine with it. Really,” Elly said, ceding to her mother’s wish to change the subject, though she suspected that this as well had been a sore point between her mother and grandfather.

  “Good. He does seem a suitable companion for my eldest daughter. So, do you love him?”

  “Yeah, Mom. I love him like crazy.” She said in a more subdued voice, “I believe Connor took your advice to heart.” She hastened to add, “He didn’t tell me. But he would have done the right thing in any case.”

  “I hoped you’d overlook my meddling. I don’t want to be that kind of mother-in-law.”

  “It’s okay, Mom,” Elly reassured her. “It’s nice to know there’s somebody watching over me.”

  “The people watching over you, daughter, have a serious command of karma. Not something I would want to stand in the way of.”

  Connor’s parents flew in from Seattle Wednesday afternoon. They rented a car at the airport and drove down to Provo.

  Elly waited anxiously.

  “I’m telling you,” Connor repeated. “They’re going to love you.” They were indeed delighted to meet her. Elly wore the pearl choker.

  “Oh, it’s just right on you,” her mother-in-law said. “It goes perfectly with your complexion. I’ll have to do your portrait when you come to Maine.” “Mom used to teach high school art,” Connor explained.

  His father greeted her with a pleasant reserve. Meeting him and knowing Connor, she had no difficulty grasping something of what his grandfather must have been like. Connor said that height-wise he’d averaged out, and that seemed true of his personality as well. His mother was no taller than her mother and his father was about the same height as her father, though the McKenzies were a dozen years older than her parents.

  June came over with Sayaka, and Elly made sure June and Wanda were accorded the praise they deserved as the wedding planners. Both mothers demanded more details, at which point Connor and his father retreated to the garage to talk cars.

  Elly hung around with them for a while, but finally had to admit that she simply was not that interested in the particulars of the Challenger Special V-eight engine.

  While the older women poured over the wedding pictures, Elly paged through the family photo albums Wanda had brought out. The pictures were mostly of people she didn’t know, though now and then she recognized Wanda or Connor’s parents or Lynne and her family.

  And then a photograph that must have been taken the same day as the one in Grandpa McKenzie’s study. The boy stood in the foreground, his grandfather several yards behind. Both had looked up as the shutter was snapped. The camera lens compressed the distance between them. Elly’s heart ached, knowing the years it would take to close the few yards that separated them.

  Yet she couldn’t help but imagine a child of their own, the same dark hair but her almond eyes, and maybe even blue.

  The next album was filled with much older material. It was lying face down on the table, so she paged through it backwards. Toward the front she came across a copy of a yellowed daguerreotype. It appeared to be a wedding portrait, a man and a woman stiffly posed in their nineteenth century Sunday best. There must be a good twenty years between them.

  “Who’s this?” Elly asked, though she was sure she knew.

  Micah said, “That’s Connor McKenzie and his third wife, Katherine Anne Carroll.”

  “He was the one,” Elly said. “Connor McKenzie and Sametaroh Oh.”

  “What was that?”

  “Our go-betweens,” she said mostly to herself. She looked up and realized nobody knew what she was talking about. “Sametaroh was my greatgreat-grandfather. I’d like to think they’ve gotten to know each other since.”

  Micah and Wanda nodded. Her mother smiled at her across the table, a private understanding. She knew what Elly was talking about, about an old samurai racking the sleep of his stubborn daughters until they did the right thing.

  Chapter 49

  Thanksgiving

  Elly’s grandparents invited them to Thanksgiving. Martin and Lynne and Glenn and Mike were included, as were the Ohs. Representing the Packards were Uncle Grant, Aunt Karen, and Elly’s cousins, Kim and Debby and Darrell. The total came to twenty, average for a Packard Thanksgiving.

  The men set up the tables in the living room (including a Relief Society loaner). Before long, Connor and Grant were drawn into the gravitational well of the family room television. Connor made a point of gallantly resisting until Elly laughed. “Oh, go watch football,” she said, and escorted him downstairs herself.

  The game had already captured Mike and Tom and Darrell, along with Naomi and Atsuko. Atsuko planted herself in Mike’s lap and was being treated to a personalized play-by-play analysis of the sport.

  “You’d better watch out for this one,” Elly warned Mike. “She’s a little bundle of trouble.”

  “Hidoi!” exclaimed Atsuko. “Elly’s being mean. I am a lot of trouble, but I’m worth it.” She said pointedly to Connor, “Neh?”

  “She’s right,” Connor agreed. “She’s a bundle of trouble.”

  Mike looked like he was in the mood for trouble, and more where that came from. Elly watched for a few minutes, munched on a few potato chips, and then went back upstairs.

  It was like rising into a warm, delicious cloud. The aroma of baking bread, steaming mashed potatoes, turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie. Japanese cuisine took a holiday on Thanksgiving. The Packard, Oh, and McKenzie women busied about the kitchen and dining room like worker bees. Traditional gender roles shamelessly ruled the day.

  Elly stopped in the kitchen doorway. Her grandmother, mother, and mother-in-law were gathered together at the counter. Each of them had grown up in the little island of her own family, knowing only her own language and her own kind, wary of others and the outside world. And then, at the proper time, she’d been dispatched to distant lands, seeking friendly relations with foreign peoples.

  This is my beloved and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

  Her mother turned and saw her. “Elly, why don’t you and your cousins set the table?”

  So she helped Kim and Debby. Glenn and Connor’s father, like Uncle Oh, were immune to football. The men arranged the chairs and discussed the advantages of hot water baseboard systems versus forced air.

  Back in the kitchen, Elly fished a walnut from the bowl and looked for a nutcracker. Her grandmother handed her the cranberry relish. “Put that on the table, dear.”

  When Elly came back she asked, “Where’s Mom?”

  Wanda said, “I think she went with Martin to look at the horses. You know Martin can’t resist a horse.”

  Her grandmother added, “Your grandfather should be in the barn. Tell him to come inside and get washed up. We’ll be ready to begin in another, oh, twenty minutes or so.”

  Outside it was cold and gray. Flurries tumbled through overcast skies. Elly turned up the collar of her jacket and hurried across the yard. She met Martin coming out of the barn. He had a coil of longe line over his right shoulder. “Hi, Uncle Martin,” she said.

  “Hiya, Elly. Your mom and gramps are inside.” Elly stepped into the barn. Despite the overcast skies, her eyes took a minute to adjust to the dim interior. There were two stalls on her left, a dozen bales of hay stacked against the wall opposite. The barn was as Elly remembered it, except that it seemed to get smaller as she got older.

  Her mother was standing in the center of the small riding arena. Seeing her there in her long coat, Elly was struck by the realization that she never dressed extravagantly, even when she wore kimono. She wore little makeup and no jewelry. Yet her bearing was almost regal, a stature that spoke of a long and proud ancestry. Fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners.

  Elly’s grandfather was studiously straightening up the tack, the sort of thing a man did hoping others would see how busy he was and go away.

  Her mother said, “Grandfather.”

  The break in the silen
ce startled Elly as much as it did him. She slipped into the shadow between the stalls.

  “Grandfather,” her mother said again.

  He seemed to sigh to himself before he turned and sat down on a hay bale. He pulled the work gloves off his hands and raised his head to meet her gaze. He nodded. Elly noted the heaviness in the gesture, the weight of old guilt that bowed his shoulders like a warp in weathered wood.

  Her mother took a careful step forward. “Twenty-five years ago I was a willful young woman, sure of my own course and deaf to the counsel of others. June warned me that consequences would follow. ‘One day you will have a daughter and she will grow up and do exactly what you are doing now. Then you will know how it feels.’ The apple falls not far from the tree. I believe that was the expression she used.”

  She took a deep breath. Her voice grew quieter. “Now I know how it feels.” She almost smiled, but it was an expression that masked pain.

  “Sayaka—” Elly’s grandfather started to say.

  “No,” she said, her voice firm again. “This has gone on long enough. You are the father of my husband, grandfather to my children. I am your daughter-in-law. That is my place within this family. No matter what else, I owed you my respect. I withheld it. You asked for my pardon. I gave it grudgingly. And now, what you have done for Elly and Connor—” Her voice broke. She paused to draw an even breath. “I cannot say how grateful I am, only that I owe you a debt I cannot repay.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then she clasped her hands together at her waist and bowed.

  Elly almost gasped aloud. Her hand flew to her mouth. She had never imagined her mother capable of such an act of voluntary contrition. Her eyes darted to her grandfather’s face, wondering if he understood the true significance of the gesture.

  But somehow he did. A glow lit up his face, like that of a man at the mountaintop welcoming the dawn. He got to his feet, an oak standing beside the willow. He pulled her to him and enfolded her in his arms. “Don’t you know, Sayaka,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion, “that I’ve always loved you as my own daughter. Nothing could ever change that. All that stands between us has been my unwillingness to admit it.”

  Elly averted her gaze, her vision blurring. Her presence suddenly felt rude and intrusive. She slipped through the barn doors. The air was sharp and cold against her face. She shook the tears from her eyes, walked to the fence, and folded her arms on the rail. Uncle Martin was in the center of the paddock with the horse at the end of the longe lines. Now and then he crouched down to examine the horse’s gait.

  “Uncle Martin!” Elly called out. “It’s time for dinner!”

  He nodded. “Whoa, there,” he said to the horse. He unclipped the lines and sent the horse off with a friendly swat on the flank.

  She heard the barn door swing open. Her mother joined her at the railing. “Did you say it was time for dinner?”

  “Yeah, Grandma sent me out to get you.”

  Her grandfather met Martin at the gate. “Let me put that away,” he said, taking the longe lines.

  “Seems to be favoring the right fore,” Martin said. “Nothing more than a bruised frog, I’d say.”

  “Well,” Sayaka said, affectionately stroking her daughter’s hair, “we’d better not keep everybody waiting.”

  Elly nodded, then buried her head against her mother’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she said, her voice muffled by the coat.

  “Sorry about what?”

  “Getting married without telling you.”

  “Oh, Elly. That’s nothing to be sorry about. Don’t ever regret love. And just as importantly, live your life so you don’t have to regret the love you walked past time after time, but were too stubborn to acknowledge was there.” She brushed the bangs from her daughter’s face and smiled.

  Grandpa Packard latched the barn doors. Elly grabbed his hand. Holding her mother’s in her right, they walked back to the house.

  Chapter 50

  The Hearts of the Fathers

  F riday morning Connor completed the preliminaries for his grandfather at the Provo Temple. Elly attended the baptism, as did Wanda and Lynne and Connor’s parents. They returned to the temple chapel at two o’clock that afternoon: Elly, her mother and grandmother. Uncle Oh and Aunt June. Connor and his parents. Martin, Lynne, Glenn, and Aunt Wanda. Plus Susan. A much larger party than had attended their wedding.

  “It’s not as if I’m getting married,” Elly had argued, not wanting Susan to interrupt her vacation on her account. “And Melanie’s not coming.”

  “Not a problem,” Susan insisted, reminding her that Melanie was spending Thanksgiving in Arizona with Greg. “Meeting the parents. That’s way more important. Almost like getting engaged.”

  The sealing room was soon crowded with relatives, including one grizzled old man who shook Connor’s hand and said, “You know, son, always knew we’d make the som’bitch one of us sooner or later.”

  His wife exclaimed, “Willard! You’re in the temple!”

  The old guy grinned.

  Elly sat with her mother. Across the mirrored room, Connor sat next to his father. Connor caught her eye and smiled. In a rush, she found herself reliving the same moment from three months before. She felt a shock of nervous anxiety and blushed.

  Elder Packard walked to the altar. “We are gathered here today to seal the marriage of Connor and Margaret Mia McKenzie. We don’t usually conduct work for the dead in such a formal setting. But today’s work is for the living as well as for the dead. The sealing of a marriage and the reaffirmation of the wedding of my granddaughter and her husband.

  “Joseph Smith taught us that ‘turning the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers’ was ‘the greatest responsibility in this world that God has laid upon us.’ Christ himself declared that his calling was to ‘heal the brokenhearted and to preach deliverance to the captives.’ Those who died without the opportunity to accept the gospel, who cannot ‘be made perfect’ without us, as Paul wrote in the Epistle to the Hebrews.

  “The means by which this work will be completed is described in the 128th section of the Doctrine & Covenants. To those who perform these ordinances, the Prophet revealed that ‘whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.’ That’s what we’re about today, to ‘turn the hearts of the children to their fathers,’ according to which all of us shall be made whole.”

  Having completed his homily, he motioned to Elly and Connor, who knelt at the altar. On this occasion, though, as Elder Packard spoke the words of the marriage covenant, they affirmed their union on behalf of the dead, sealing the marriage of Margaret Mia and Connor McKenzie for all eternity.

  They got to their feet. Elly pressed against Connor’s side like a bashful newlywed.

  Elder Packard held up his hands. “A moment, please.” The room fell into a puzzled calm. “Due to the unusual circumstances of Elly and Connor’s marriage, one custom was omitted. Now would be the perfect time to correct it. Susan—”

  Susan bounced to her feet, taking a small velvet box from the pocket of her temple dress.

  “Oh, Connor,” Elly said, realization dawning on her.

  Susan opened the box. Connor took the first of the bands and slipped it onto his wife’s ring finger. Elly blinked the tears out of her eyes. She retrieved the second band and fitted it to her husband’s finger. They kissed and were married all over again.

  “They are still man and wife,” Elder Packer concluded with a smile.

  They were suddenly surrounded by family. Elly’s mother embraced her. “I’m really glad you came, Mom,” Elly said.

  “My beautiful daughter,” she whispered, “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

  Elly turned to her grandfather. In his face, she saw the look of a man forgiven, a man who had cast off a long-held regret. This is what marriage should do, she thought. It should merry us. She held Connor’s hand as they stood at the foot of the altar, between
the mirrored walls, in the company of all their kin.

  In the sliver of the eternal now, the threads woven by their ancestors had bound together countless generations separated by space and time, making cousins of those who otherwise would have known nothing of one another. They were no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the Saints, and of the household of God.

  “Connor,” Elly whispered. She nodded at the mirror on their left.

  And there, for a moment, glimpsed through Saint Paul’s clouded glass, appeared a mischievous samurai, a laconic Scot, a dark-haired man and woman, young and newly married. Likenesses that merged and coalesced with countless others. The shadows of all those who had gone before and all those destined to come.

  Reflections of their pasts. Lights shining into the future. They were the dreams their ancestors dreamed and could not believe. And this was the burden of their lives and the weight of the obligation they owed: to dream each day anew, and to follow the paths wherever those dreams might lead. Eugene Woodbury spent his childhood in the upstate New York community of Scotia-Glenville. He served for two years in the LDS Tokyo South Mission, and graduated from Brigham Young University with degrees in Japanese and TESOL. His stories have appeared in The New Era, Sunstone, Cricket, The American Gardener, and Clubhouse Magazine. He has twice been a Utah Original Writing Competition finalist, and is a recipient of the Sunstone Foundation Moonstone Award for short fiction. He can be reached via his website: www.eugenewoodbury.com.

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