by Cathy Lamb
What the journals told me? Toran knew me. He got me. He was trying to help.
I almost disgraced myself by giggling.
9
When my mother was backpacking through Europe with her friends Jody and Paula, she met my father, unsurprisingly, at Molly Cockles Scottish Dancing Pub. She told me he was “huge, with a heavy Scottish accent, red hair and beard, and so loveable I lost my head.”
She didn’t even return to America. Nine months after they were married in our garden, I was born.
My father told me that my mother was “his angel. The winds of Scotland brought her to me.” Then he cleared his throat. “On a serious note, your mum took to farming like a unicorn to magic. I think she may know more than me. Plus, she understands the business of selling our crops. She knows how to work with the stores, the middlemen. She is one tough woman, and I am telling you, Charlotte”—he leaned in close and tapped his head—“she’s got brains, and thank the ever-loving God you’ve got hers.”
My mother talked to me as an adult starting when I was about five. I remember because the day after my fifth birthday she said to me, “You are old enough to be a feminist. So let’s talk about what it means to be one. A feminist is . . .” and she told me what it was.
I remember she had me sign a piece of paper that said, “I am a feminist. When you are a feminist it means that you believe in equal rights and opportunities for women. When those rights and opportunities aren’t granted, it is your obligation to fight for them, for you and for your fellow women.” I signed it in purple crayon. She signed in pink. My father signed in green.
She would discuss with me social issues on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly women’s issues. It was the sixties, and the war was raging in Vietnam. Her brother had been shipped over to fight, and her father was there, I later learned, working for the CIA.
My mother raged against that war, especially when her brother came home in a body bag. I had loved Uncle Tony.
She talked about women’s jobs, how women were being discriminated against in education and in the workplace, not getting the promotions and salaries they deserved. She was a raving liberal who could cook, as my father said, “Heaven in a dish. She is heaven, your mother.”
I remembered her baking an apple pie for my dad one day, he loved her apple pies, while discussing how women must be independent in their thinking, their careers, and their marriages.
My father had gone to university before returning home to work the land. My mother had a degree in English.
They were both temperamental, intellectual, and passionate. I remember a number of fire-breathing fights. My poor father would cry when they got in a fight. He tried to hide it, but I saw his eyes and he had to leave the house and walk away, or play his bagpipes in a particularly mournful and pathetic way until my mother went outside and gave him a hug.
They would go upstairs and sort things out. Things were cooking in the bedroom. I know this now because I used to hear the bed springs squeaking, slow at first, then faster and harder.
Often.
I told my mother one time—I must have been about six, because I remember I was holding my favorite stuffed alligator, Señor Spook—that her bed sounded like it was going to break.
She said, “Why do you say that, darling?” I made the sounds of the springs creaking, faster and faster. “Are you and Daddy bouncing on the bed? You told me I shouldn’t do that because it will break the springs.”
They had a new bed in that bedroom the next day.
My mother still loves my father. She has never stopped loving him and has never seriously dated anyone else, like McKenzie Rae has never stopped loving her first love, as I have never stopped loving Toran. Scottish men can get deep into your soul and they don’t leave. You live with them, right close to your heart.
My father told Bridget and me a Scottish legend once. He made it up on the spot as he was staring at my mother, who was making his favorite blueberry muffins at the time. He pulled us onto his lap, his red beard tickling my face.
It was about a poor Scottish lad who was in love with the princess in the castle. He played the bagpipes outside her window. The princess had created a garden, filled with a wandering purple clematis over a white picket fence, a statue of a little girl holding an umbrella, a three-foot-tall purple star, a rose garden, and silver watering cans nailed to a post.
She painted birdhouses—one in a Japanese style, another shaped like a cottage, then a cat.
It was colorful and serene, an oasis, and when the princess smiled across the roses at him, his heart wept with love. When the princess’s father had a competition for her hand, the Scottish lad worked night and day perfecting all of his skills—marksmanship, bow and arrow, running, spear tossing.
He won, despite a conniving king from a distant land, a greedy merchant, and a “dandy” trying to stop him every way they could. The princess was stubborn and willful, but she agreed to marry him as long as she could still be independent and could attend university. (My father was a feminist and believed in education.) The lad readily agreed, and his life was a “golden song” from then on out.
It was his love story to my mother. She turned and hugged him, bent and gave him a smooching kiss right in front of us. His eyes filled with tears. I giggled and patted his shoulders. “It’s okay to cry, Daddy.”
Bridget handed him a napkin.
But that’s how my mother felt about my father.
That’s how he felt about her.
After we left, my mother never gardened again.
Toran came over with three men on Saturday, a pile of tools, wheel barrels, and machines that made loud grinding noises, and we went to work in my mother’s garden. Another bin arrived for all the yard debris. I liked the men, all employees of his farm. It was amazing what five people and a bunch of machines that growled could finish in one day.
At the end, Toran and I, covered in dirt and dust, stood back.
“We have a start, luv,” he said.
The weeds had been rototilled and dumped. The bushes had been brought under control and looked like bushes instead of ten-foot-tall, green monsters. The vines had been cut back. The earth had been churned, ready for new plantings; the bricks from the pathways were piled up, to be relaid later. The tipping trellises and arcs had been taken down so we could reuse the wood in new trellises and arcs. The arc under The Purple Lush was repaired and cemented. We had saved the purple star, the post with the silver watering cans, and other birdhouses we’d found.
“We’ll stick to the spirit of your mother’s design when we replant, if you’d like, Charlotte.”
“I would love that.” It was touching that Toran would think of that. “I would love to put my mother’s garden back together, as she had it. It was art.”
“Yes, it was. Peaceful. Safe. Flowers everywhere.”
I turned to him, my hair in a ponytail, my glasses slipping off my nose because I was sweating. “Thank you, Toran. I can’t believe you did all this for me.”
“Anytime, luv. Anytime. I will want payment, though.”
I grinned. Oh boy! Payment! I envisioned a strip tease if I had two shots of whiskey. Maybe a dance? I could pull off my whale sweater slowly, drop my corduroy skirt an inch at a time, kick off my sturdy brown shoes....
“A Scottish Whisky Gateau cake?”
I tried to hide my disappointment. At least he had the whiskey part right. “I’ll make it.”
“Thank you.” So heartfelt. “You made that for me when we were fifteen, do you remember?”
“I do.” We were dating by then. He had kissed me over the mixer.
After Toran left for a shower, I stood in my mother’s garden, put my arms out, and spun, one time, not twice, I don’t like dizziness. Toran had always been my hero. Today he was my garden hero. He’d helped me because he knew it meant something to me.
That was so romantic—at least to me, not to him probably—that I fought not to giggle.
I would not giggle. I do not giggle. I am Charlotte Mackintosh, feminist, lover of biology and physics and all things science, and I do not giggle. It’s ridiculous and immature.
I coughed.
I would not giggle.
So I laughed, then I teared up, then I smiled and felt . . . peace.
Yes, peace, in my mother’s garden.
I made a Scottish Whisky Gateau cake with sponge fingers for Toran. The look on his face was all worth it.
“Like it?” I asked him.
“It’s the best thing I’ve eaten since you made it for me twenty years ago.”
I am a feminist. I am in the kitchen because that’s where I want to be. I love to cook. And I love seeing Toran loving what I make.
Now, that was a treat.
I went back to my cottage the next day, giddy. A clean garden palette. I remembered where my mother had everything, her paths, the picnic table, the rose garden, the herb garden, cutting beds, wild flower borders, the fountain with the girl with the umbrella, the post with the silver watering cans, the birdhouses, the garden rooms. I started planning.
At one point it rained, briefly, then the sun came out, and a rainbow stretched across the sky. I stopped. I had to. I remembered.
My father had told Bridget and me a story about one of our ancestors. Her name was Irene “The Loving” Mackintosh. She had six daughters and sons, all fiery, sword-throwing Scottish warriors. As she grew old, her bones brittle, she wanted to leave something behind so her children would always remember she loved them.
She had six magic paintbrushes and she decided to paint art in the sky. She drew a purple line, then blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. With her bare hands she took the line and made a half circle, then threw it into the air. The rainbow grew and grew, until it covered the land from mountain to mountain.
When Irene “The Loving” Mackintosh was gone, all her children had to do was look up, during a rainy, sunny day, and they would see her love for them. “That’s where rainbows come from,” my father said. “From love.”
When I see rainbows, I think of my father. I still feel his love.
My mother called. I told her about her garden, how I was following her design. I knew it made her cry. The connection was poor. We decided to keep writing letters back and forth. I heard her last comment, though. “I love you, Charlotte. Forever and away, I love you.”
April 24, 1972
Dear Charlotte,
He is after me. All the time.
I can’t tell anyone. He says I can’t. He says he’ll kill Toran if I tell anyone.
Who would believe me anyhow?
I hurt.
I wish you still lived here.
What picture should I draw today?
Pain. I could draw pain. Or fear. What does pain and fear look like on paper? How do you draw it in miniature when it’s huge and feels like it’s suffocating you? How do you draw shame? How do you draw that I am dirty now and used?
He is after me.
Love,
Bridget
May 16, 1972
Dear Charlotte,
Father Cruickshank is coming to dinner tonight. My father has already told me to be good for him.
Be good.
For the rapist.
Love,
Bridget
May 17, 1972
Dear Charlotte,
Father Cruickshank told my father when I was in my room that he was concerned because I sometimes sneak out of the school to see boys in the village.
I don’t do that.
My father hit me in the face, twice. My mother did nothing. I had to spend all Saturday in my room, on my knees. My father called me a whore. I can’t leave home except to go to school. Slut. Dirty. No man will want you now. Used.
Love,
Bridget
June 4, 1972
Dear Charlotte,
Help me. Help me. Can you help me?
I think I want to die.
Bridget
I closed my eyes. Nausea, dizzying and sickening, hit like a spinning steamroller. I swayed, held on to my chair, put my hand to my mouth, and tried to breathe.
I wanted to kill Angus Cruickshank. Kill him.
Briefly, before I curled up in a ball, I wondered who else wanted to kill him.
Toran walked in.
Yes. Toran would. He would have every reason to kill Cruickshank.
I handed him the letters I’d read. He’d seen them already, but the rage on that man’s face . . . like thunder meeting lightning in the sky. He slammed out and was gone for two hours. When he came back, he hugged me.
That kind of rage can kill you if you’re not careful, take life away from you until you’re dead inside.
Had Toran been dead enough inside that he risked jail to kill Angus Cruickshank when he finally found out through Bridget what had happened?
Maybe. I wouldn’t have blamed him at all.
Bridget, where are you? Please come home.
Every morning I went to my office in the yellow building. I had met the rest of Toran’s staff, all genial, interesting people. They seemed to adore Toran, not hard to do. I was pleased to see he had people, old and young, working for him. His secretary was seventy-two, named Norma. Toran had bought her land, she told me. “Grateful to him I am, as I did not need it after me Harvey died, and Toran says I can stay until I croak off. He didn’t say ‘croak off,’ I did. Free house and a job working for Toran. I go on two cruises a year. Never did that with me Harvey. Harvey didn’t like to travel. Norma does!” She leaned in closer. “I had a shipboard romance last time, too. Tickled my fancy. Lucky me.”
Within a short period, Norma was giving me calls to take from people who needed to talk money. I took them and at first had to ask Toran questions, but then I started answering the questions myself based on what Toran had said. I also started taking calls about equipment, shipping, clients’ concerns, orders, and general business.
I couldn’t stand to sit around and think about my writer’s block anymore. Working for Toran kept me busy and kept me working with numbers, awesome numbers. Geek me.
I had only initial calculations, but Toran was running a profitable farm.
Extraordinarily profitable. Blueberries, apples, and potatoes were needed products.
I was impressed, and I told him so.
“Ah, Char . . . thank you.” He tried to hide it, but I think he was proud.
He should be.
The next morning I took a quick shower. I washed my hair and brushed it out. I don’t like washing my hair. It takes so long—what an irritant. I put the clip on top of my head to keep my hair out of my eyes, then wrapped the rest of it in a bun. I put on my glasses; the left side wobbled. I pulled on my light brown skirt with the ruffle and my comfortable brown sturdy shoes. I buttoned up my gray blouse to the neck, then added a knitted gray vest with white teacups. I stared at myself in the mirror.
It was the same self that had stared back at me my whole life.
But this time . . . I tilted my head to the left.
I tilted it to the right. My glasses almost fell off.
I peered down at my shoes. Five years old. Still going strong for daily shoes. Or were they? I turned my left foot to the side. There was a small hole. I turned my right foot to the side. Two small holes. The heels were worn. I would have them reheeled. It would be the third time.
They were comfy. Fit to my wide feet. My flipper feet, as my mother called them. “You should have become a swimmer. You would have won all the metals with feet like that.”
I studied my gray blouse. It had been a favorite for three years. Bought this one at Goodwill, too. Had a designer label. I paid four dollars.
I studied my skirt. The hem was out in the back. Not more than a couple of inches. Frayed on the edges. Who would notice?
Comfy, too.
But maybe . . . frumpy?
I peered at my face again, my glasses askew to the left. The tape was rough.
&nb
sp; I should do something about my hair. It was way too long.
I remembered what my mother had said to me once: “Please. Get a haircut. It is not necessary to look as if you are wearing a long brown mop on your head in order to be a feminist. Being a feminist is all about women power, it’s a sisterhood, that’s what it is, and it can be done with a fashionable haircut. Do you have that? No.”
I wouldn’t have to do anything to my teeth. I am religious about the dentist. Twice a year. And he put something on my teeth last time to make them whiter and get rid of coffee stains. I had to pay extra for that, but I felt it well worth the cost.
I brushed my eyebrows down. Thick. Not touching in the middle. But . . . thick.
Did other women have eyebrows this thick? I would check.
I could hear my mother’s voice in my head again: “Get a supportive bra with lace. That’s important. Especially for you, Charlotte, with you being on the chesty side. Get those guns pushed up and together and unbutton another button so you don’t appear to be an Americanized, scientific, brainy Mary Poppins.” Now, there was a feminist for you, magic umbrella to boot.
I stared at the mirror again.
The Stanleys, and their crew, continued to work on my house. The electrical and plumbing, all new, was done, including canned lighting throughout the house to brighten things up.
Toran bought me a white bedspread with purple irises, because he knows those are my favorite flowers, and a lamp in the shape of a black cat. He said, “I thought, to help you write again, if you had your favorite flowers around you and a cat . . .” I burst into tears at his thoughtfulness and had to blow my nose in a noisy way. It was embarrassing.
The chimney was repaired and cleaned out. The Stanleys had found a dead raccoon in it.