What We Take For Truth

by Deborah Nedelman

  ***

  “Listen, boy, before you take off, what the hell is all this stuff you scribbled on my wall?” After all the excitement up the mountain had calmed down, Walt finally had a chance to grumble at his nephew. “I thought you were a neat freak. What got into you, boy?”

  “Sorry about that. Time was short.” Charlie explained how he and Grace had talked.

  His uncle shook his head sadly. “Oh, lordy. I knew this day was coming. She wants to find Annie, right?”

  Charlie nodded. “Sure, but she’s gotta heal that leg first.” Charlie pointed his finger at the words he’d written on the wall.

  “She asked me to call Nathan, so I did. That goddamned prick took Annie all the way to LA and left her there. Can you believe that? She’s in some nut house out there. Been there for years.”

  Walt sat heavily on one of the kitchen chairs and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. “I never could understand what that man had that made women fall for him. Seemed to me he had jerk written all over his face.”

  He twisted in his seat to look more closely at the wall. “You write this all down on paper?”

  Charlie nodded.

  Walt stood up, grinning. “OK. Now this town’s gotta help her. Prosperity is so full of guilt right now I think we just might be able to pull this off.”

  ***

  Rose made her way to the Hoot Owl one morning. She stood by the booth where Kev and Grace were eating.

  “I’m sorry, Parrot.”

  Grace looked up.

  “Kev and I are going back to the cabin in a bit,” she said. “Would you like to come with us? See what I’ve done?” Her anger and distrust were fading, but she wasn’t ready to hear Rose’s side of the story. As long as Kev was there, she and Rose could be together without that wound reopening.

  As the three of them entered the cabin, Grace stepped back and let Rose take it all in, anticipating a reaction that would distract them all from any other conversation. Rose didn’t disappoint her.

  “Oh, my dear! This is marvelous.” Rose took Grace’s hand and, laughing, said, “How delightful!” Turning to the boy, she said, “Do you like it, Kev?” He nodded vigorously and pointed to the snake over the stove. “Yes, but it’s not a real snake. Parrot made that up, didn’t she? We don’t need to be afraid.” Rose had an intuitive sense of what the child needed to hear. In spite of herself, Grace felt a wave of gratitude and affection.“OK, take the grand tour—you can peek into the bath and see Clett Tolfson’s blue toilet. I sleep in the loft and you can climb up there if you want. I’m going to give Kev a little introduction to all the animals, so he can learn their names.”

  Rose took her time exploring the jungle Grace’s imagination had produced, and while Grace’s attention was focused on teaching Kev what she knew about toucans, Rose let herself out.

  There is too much to say, Grace thought, too much for either of us to handle yet.

  Chapter 23

  Grace looked forward to her time with Kev each day. His eyes were a bit brighter from one visit to the next. He’d stopped frowning at the cast on her leg and walked more confidently by her side as they made their daily trip to the café.

  Wielding her crutches took both hands and Grace couldn’t manage to get Kev’s pie to the table on her own, so she showed him how to get it for himself. “Only very special customers are allowed back here in the kitchen, Kev. You have to promise not to touch anything but your piece of pie. Lyle will make sure it’s right here on the shelf for you. You got that?”

  As he nodded his head enthusiastically, Kev gave Grace a grin. In that moment, he looked almost like the old Kev. The new Kev, though, had been touched by fear and by sadness, and Grace wondered if that was a change that could ever be healed.

  ***

  One evening Grace called Mary and asked her if she’d seen the change in Kev. They spoke about how he seemed happier, more relaxed. “But he’s different, Mary. It’s not just that he’s the not talking; it’s like he’s not a carefree kid anymore.”

  “Well, that’s right, isn’t it? He’s growing up and he’s learning how the world really is. And how he really is. He’s got to understand that hiking alone in the woods is dangerous!”

  “I hate to see that fear in him, though.”

  “I know what you mean, Grace. Nobody likes to see a kid forced to face the reality of pain or loss when they’re still young. We go to great lengths to protect them, don’t we?”

  ***

  One morning a few days later, as he and Grace were going from bird to bird around the walls of the cabin, Grace pointed to a scarlet macaw and called it a parrot. “Macaw,” he said. “You’re the parrot.”

  Grace replied with a straight face, “Maybe.”

  “Not maybe!” Kev yelled. “You’re the parrot!”

  Pretending to flap her wings, Grace asked, “A parrot who flies?”

  “A parrot with a leg that’s broken,” Kev whispered.

  She put her arms around the boy and held him close. “My leg is getting better, Kev. I’m so sorry you thought I was lost. You were so brave to go out looking for me.”

  “I got lost. It was dark and scary. I got hurt.”

  “Yes, it was a bad time. But we’re not lost anymore and we’re both getting better.”

  Kev grinned, pointing at the cast on her leg. “Maybe, maybe not!”

  “Oh, Kev!” Grace hugged him tightly. Her tears confused him initially, but when she started laughing, so did he.

  ***

  With Kev finally talking again, Grace found herself faced with her own confusions. She thought a lot about what Pat had said: Was going to find her mother a kind of running away? How would she feel if Annie didn’t recognize her? Before she made another decision, she knew she needed to hear what Rose had to say.

  When Rose picked up the phone, Grace found herself at a loss. “I… um... Rose?”

  “Grace?” The older woman sighed. “I’ve been hoping you’d call. Shall I come down there?”

  “Actually, could you come and pick me up? I’d like to do this at your place, but I can’t get up there on my own.”

  “Good idea. I’ll be there in a half hour.”

  Neither woman spoke until they’d arrived at the Dyers’. Grace found it difficult to look at Rose; she walked over and sat down at the dining room table. Keeping her head down, she ran her finger along a scar in the polished wood. The old table had witnessed some of her happiest days and held this souvenir of one of her saddest.

  “That was a bad day,” Rose said as she pulled out a chair and sat opposite Grace. “I’d never seen such pain in your face. I don’t think you even realized what you were doing when you dug your knife into the table. But you wouldn’t talk to me about it. And by then I’d gotten used to letting secrets lie.” Rose reached over to take Grace’s hand, but the younger woman pulled back. “You were the one thing Jackson and I never could agree on.”

  Suspicion pinched at Grace’s eyes and buzzed in her ears. She could barely look at this woman she loved so intensely and who had disappointed her so deeply.

  “He didn’t believe we should keep the truth from you. But I couldn’t imagine how to tell you, how to explain it to a child.” Rose was pleading.

  “Did you imagine I’d never find out?” Grace tasted the bitterness.

  “I suppose I thought some miracle would happen. That Annie would wake up from the nightmare she was living and come home to get you. But part of me dreaded that possibility too.” Rose clasped her hands and rested her elbows on the table. The tiny diamonds in her wedding ring glimmered in the pale light. “Jackson was as devoted to your father as I was to your mother. When their marriage fell apart, we were both unmoored for a while.”

  Grace’s chest tightened against the pain. “Why”—she swallowed—“did she leave me?”

  “It was a terrible time, Parrot. Your father...” Rose planted her hand flat on the table and pointed to the wound in the wood. “Jackson always blamed
the war. ‘Those guys saw ugly things in Vietnam. Who wouldn’t be angry?’ he’d say whenever Annie spoke about your father’s behavior.” She looked up at Grace. “Your momma was a sweet girl, but she wasn’t strong. Warren’s demons were more than she could handle. Maybe more than any woman should have to handle. He hurt her, but Jane convinced her he’d never hurt you. And, of course, she trusted me and Jackson to watch out for you. But I know, too, that Annie believed Warren would eventually let you go to her.” Rose pulled a tissue from the sleeve of her sweater and blew her nose. “Then you started talking about her being dead, and I got scared. Annie called me every week or so at first.” Rose picked up Grace’s hand. “I told her you needed her, that she had to come back and see you. And she did, you know.”

  “Those weren’t dreams, then?” Grace asked, allowing her hand to rest in Rose’s. “She really came to me in the night? She sat on my bed?”

  Rose nodded. “It was the only way. Warren would have... well, we were all afraid of what he would have done to her if he knew. Jane and I arranged it. Brought you up here. You remember how you used to spend the night here when you were little?”

  Grace gave a single nod of her head. “It was here. She came here to see me.” She pushed back her chair and walked to the window that looked out on the garden. “That’s why I remembered the smell of lilacs, even in my dreams. It was your lilac bush—the one that always smells so strong and blooms so late. I dreamed about those visits later—I wrote about them in my diary.”

  “It was all we could think to do. Let Annie at least see you while you were asleep. But then she lost the baby and she stopped calling.”

  Grace nodded. “Charlie told me.”

  A few of the threads that had tangled into a stubborn knot in Grace’s mind were beginning to pull clear. Charlie’s report of what Nathan had said about Annie’s change after the miscarriage. The way the letters had stopped abruptly. The dreams.

  “Are you saying she never came back after she lost the baby?”

  Rose nodded. “We lost her then. I think she must have gone out of her head with grief, after losing you and then the baby, she just couldn’t cope. I tried to stay in contact with her, but she never responded and eventually my letters were all returned and her phone was disconnected. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “I had those dreams—her sitting by me, holding me—for years. Even after Daddy was killed. They seemed so real.”

  “When we need comfort, we can fool ourselves into believing a lot of things, Grace.”

  Rose got up and walked into the kitchen. She leaned against the sink. “Jackson should be here. He should have to tell you.”

  “But he’s not.” Grace looked at a photo of Rose’s husband that sat on the windowsill. Grace had been so afraid that Jackson would blow up when he saw what she’d done to his table, but he hadn’t. He’d been sad about it, she knew, but he’d told her it wasn’t her fault. That had never made sense. “I need to know all of it, Rose. You have to tell me everything now.”

  “Yes. OK. When your mother left, I insisted Jackson have a talk with Warren. Tell him we knew he’d been cruel to Annie and we wouldn’t stand for any of that with you. I don’t know what he actually said, but when he got home Jackson told me it was going to be OK. I wanted to believe him, I guess.” She turned to Grace. “It was just that once, wasn’t it? That one time when you were fourteen? When you came here and sat there carving up my table with your anger?”

  Slowly Grace shrugged. Could she trust her own memories of her father anymore?

  “I loved him. He was gruff and all.” Her eyes filled and she let the tears fall. “All the guys are like that. But he taught me to love the woods, the birds, all this...” She spread her arms to encompass the whole of the mountains and the forests that surrounded Prosperity. “He was a good dad.” She fell down into the chair again and put her head in her hands.

  Rose swayed and then walked over to the young woman she’d always thought of as her granddaughter. She wrapped her arms around her. “Oh, Gracie. I’m just so sorry for all of it.”

  After several minutes, Grace wiped her hand across her eyes and looked up at Rose. “How did you know he hit me?”

  “He told Jackson. He was beside himself, Jackson said. He’d lost control. Something about how you kept asking about Annie. I don’t know. But Jackson made him swear he’d get help, right then. And he did.” Rose put her hands on Grace’s shoulders and stooped to look her in the eye. “Your father went to the V.A. and talked to someone. He didn’t want you to know. Another secret. They put him in a therapy group.”

  “Wow. I can’t picture my dad in a therapy group.” She chuckled and shook her head. “I hope it helped him.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Grace. But just knowing he was going was enough for Jackson. He told me it wouldn’t happen again. I have to say, I was grateful you would be out of that house soon.” Rose pulled a couple of tissues from the box on the table, handed one to Grace and wiped her own eyes with the other. “But then the forest intervened, didn’t it? It’s a terrible thing to say, but I felt some relief when your dad was killed.”

  “Oh!” Grace’s eyes widened as she threw her hand over her mouth. The pain of Warren’s death shocked her heart as it had that day three years before. It was almost too much to feel all at once, but there was a part deep inside her that knew what Rose had said was true for her too. She’d called it gruffness, but it was more than that. When she saw the way Jen’s dad treated her, though, Grace had told herself, “I’m so lucky. My dad would never hurt me like that.” But she had been afraid. Even as a little girl, something about being alone with her father had always made her uneasy. And when Jane told her he’d been killed, a tiny part of her relaxed. It was true.

  With that realization, she lost the strength to fight off the tears. She put her hand over her eyes and wept.

  Rose let her be for a while. As the tears subsided and Grace sat up and blew her nose, the older woman sat down next to her.

  “This is an awful lot to absorb, sweetheart. You need to take your time.”

  Grace gave Rose a weak smile. “You knew I fed those protestors camped in the woods, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, I suspected something like that was going on. You did what you had to do.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe it was my twisted way of getting back at my dad.”

  Crumpling her tissue into a ball, Rose said, “Well, a few sandwiches and pies aren’t going to make any difference in the end. And if any of those hardheaded loggers in town act all put out about it, I’ll say the same to them. Those kids camping in the old growth can see the future better than any old coot in Prosperity. This town just hates to face reality.”

  “That’s why you let them cut the trees in the preserve? So they wouldn’t have to face reality?” This final point of bitterness still rankled Grace.

  “It’s what Jackson would have done.” Rose stepped over to the windowsill and picked up his picture. “I told myself I would give in to him this one last time. But it was a fool’s game. I let my grief make me blind.”

  Grace absorbed this. “I guess we all wear blinders at times. Something I’ve been learning about myself.”

  Rose smiled. “You hungry? I think it’s time I fixed you a meal.”

  ***

  After that talk with Rose, Grace’s anger started to melt and was replaced by an insistent restlessness.

  In another week the doctor had removed her cast. It took some work to get her footing back; she started by pacing around the cabin, then took short strolls outside. She was still slow, but it felt great to walk with Kev to the café.

  Grace was coming back to the cabin from one of her walks when she saw Pat leaving the mill office. He raised a hand to wave. “Can we talk?” he asked.

  She nodded and motioned him to come and sit with her on her front step.

  “I owe you an apology,” he said as he settled beside her. Grace waited silently, not sure if she was ready to hear th
is. “I put you in a tough spot, making you choose between me and the promise you made to your dad. Shouldn’t ’a done that.”

  She nodded slowly. “It wouldn’t have worked, you know.”

  “Yeah, well, it was more about me acting like a jerk and grasping at straws. I’m not good with change. A little like Kev, I guess.”

  “True.” This made her smile. “Now what, Patrick? You’re done stealing trees from the preserve, right?”

  “We only did that with Rose’s permission,” he said, picking up a pebble from the ground and throwing it hard toward the woods. “I actually hated doing that, but I couldn’t see another way. Once we started, I felt like we’d crossed some sort of line and there was no point stopping. My dad was the one who made me face reality.”

  “Really?” Grace had a hard time picturing Burt Samson talking about saving trees.

  “He’s a practical guy. He doesn’t like the government setting limits, but he respects the law and he told me I was stupid to think I could get away with ignoring it. Plus, he admitted he’s seen changes in the mountains that worry him. He’s not ready to say logging caused the salmon runs to shrink, like your aunt says, but he made me think.”

  She looked at him. This was the Pat she’d fallen for so long ago. “And do you think the mill’s never going to be profitable again?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. The guys have some pretty good ideas. A small mill like ours, we’d have to cut way back on the crew and target our jobs, do more selective cutting, but we might stay alive.” He sounded more resigned than enthusiastic.

  “Hm. So, you’ll stay on?”

  “Can’t think of anything else I’d want to do,” he said. “You stayin’ here or going off to find Annie?”