A Place to Call Home

by Deborah Smith

  What he and his crew had done to Ten Jumps in less than two weeks would become the stuff of local legend.

  He’d built a dirt landing strip for his Cessna. The small plane sat there with the cocky assurance of one of the large dragonflies that perched on ferns at the lake’s edge.

  He had rebuilt the old cabin—a new roof, a new porch, doors, windows, wiring, plumbing; he’d added a handsome kitchen at the back and a low, large deck that stair-stepped down the slope toward the lake, narrowing to a stone walkway that led to a gazebo under the water oaks.

  When I arrived in the pinkish light of early morning, I was dressed for a construction site, not a handsome scene that could have served as background for the L. L. Bean catalog. I eased from one of the farm trucks in my jeans and T-shirt and hiking boots and was confronted with an elegant little Eden filled with men who were installing squares of sodded grass along smoothly graded earth, where the blackberry thicket had been.

  “It’s perfect,” I whispered, just before Roan reached the truck, cupped his hands under my elbows, and gave me a quick, hard kiss on the mouth. “It is now,” he corrected.

  The kiss happened so fast—the feel of him imprinted on my lips; I was dizzy and the breath went out of me. A dozen men were gazing avidly at us with chunks of grassy earth in their hands.

  I cocked my head in the direction of the cane I leaned on. “Borrowed it from Grandma. No more crutches.”

  “And no more excuses?” Roan asked quietly.

  “Who’s dodging reality? Me or you?”

  He arched a brow, then slid his arm through mine as cozily as an old pal set for a stroll, except for the fact that his arm was warm and hard and covered in rolled-up blue cotton sleeve and that he brushed his forearm, deliberately, I thought, along the side of my breast. “Let’s both ignore reality a while,” he countered with a fine, casual smile, and he was as handsome as I’d ever imagined him and I felt soft inside and scared.

  He’d taught himself so many sugaring lessons over twenty years. He knew exactly what he was doing.

  “They’re finishing up this morning,” he said about the crew, as if the project had been no problem at all. “They’ll be leaving by noon. I’ve got the cabin completely furnished inside, too.” He paused. “Would you like to take a tour inside?”

  “No,” I replied. Nearly barked it at him. “No, thanks,” I added in a more normal voice. “Maybe later.”

  We sat in the gazebo at a picnic table covered in linen and decorated with a silver vase filled with red roses. A boom box broadcast Mozart from atop a stack of lumber on a flatbed trailer.

  “From this angle,” Roan said, “you don’t even notice the cabin has an addition on the back.”

  “Grandpa would be glad you bought the place.”

  “Are you glad?” Roan asked.

  I looked at him for a few seconds. “You know I am,” I said finally.

  “I wish you’d worn the necklace.”

  “I did.” I pulled it from under the neck of my T-shirt. It was the old one, the color in the pendant worn thin and brassy.

  Roan studied me with narrowed eyes. “I want you to wear the new one.”

  “I want the letters you wrote me. They’re mine.”

  He nodded and gestured calmly toward the cabin. “I told you all you had to do was come here and get them. But I’d appreciate it if you’d wait until the crew’s gone. The letters are private.”

  We traded polite, stilted nods of agreement. It was an excruciating deal.

  Roan introduced each man in the crew to me. Wolfgang, the middle-aged foreman who’d delivered the necklace, bowed to me. He wasn’t actually a foreman; he was an independent contractor; the crew were his employees.

  Roan said Wolfgang had taken up contracting to support a wife and five children, but before that he’d been a disc jockey at a small radio station that broadcast classical music; Mozart was his favorite. He owned the boom box, and the crew made a running joke of hiding his Mozart tapes and replacing them with Snoop Doggy Dog and Hank Williams.

  There was so much familiarity and affection in these descriptions, so many people and events in Roan’s history I hadn’t shared, and the same was true for what he knew about me. “I thought you bought and sold land,” I said. “What do you need a building contractor for?”

  “I started by buying tract houses in poor neighborhoods. I bought one, made all the repairs myself, sold it for a profit, bought two more. Renovate, resell. Buy more. Wolfgang handles the renovations for me now. It’s a sideline.”

  “You do it just for the money? I don’t think so.”

  “Money and satisfaction,” he said, shrugging.

  “Tell me more about your business. And tell me how you ended up on the West Coast.”

  He turned his chair to face mine. I clasped my hands between my knees, shoulders folded in, compressed and tight. I was creating a narrow focus for absorbing information. “I find land in opportune places,” he said carefully. “Potential for commercial, industrial growth. I study zonings and planning prospectives; I read local newspapers, research the market trends.” He paused. “I slip in and buy land before it’s worth much, hold on to it, then sell when it’s worth a lot more.”

  “Buy low, sell high. Take what nobody suspects is worth having, prove it’s special.”

  “It’s all about looking closer than other people will and looking farther. I learned that from you.”

  The mood was tender, electric, and strangely serene between us. But because there was no easier way to do it, I asked quietly, “Are you married?”

  “Good God. No.”

  “Why do you say it like that?”

  “Because you could think I wouldn’t tell you if I was married.”

  “Why aren’t you married? You’ve never been married?”

  “Never,” he said slowly, searching my face. “Why aren’t you married?”

  “I’ve been around. I just never cared enough.”

  “Same here.”

  “There’s a lot you still haven’t told me.”

  He reached beneath the table, retrieved a manila folder, and handed it to me. I opened it and skimmed more documents. Properties he owned on the West Coast. There was a business address under the name Racavan, Inc. I shut the folder and laid it aside. “You still think this is what I’m most interested in? How much money you have?”

  “I just wanted you to know that part first.”

  “You mean you wanted the family to know.”

  “All right. I wanted them to know.” He filled two crystal glasses from a bottle of champagne he’d set to chill in a bucket crusted with dried concrete. “My serving style isn’t fancy,” he said with a droll curl in the words, “but the champagne is one of the best.” He handed me a glass and then clicked his to mine. Holding his glass against a ray of morning sunshine and studying the sparkle of crystal and liquid, he added simply, “I don’t drink very often, and when I do it’s for quality, not quantity.”

  He’s hard on himself because of Big Roan’s drinking, I thought. I started to say so, and from the look on his face he wished for the right words, too, but finally we settled for the ritual tap of fragile glass against glass again. I cleared my throat. “I haven’t had a drink since before, well, before that night—”

  “The night of the accident. Just say it. Get past it.”

  “It was no accident. I don’t know what to call it.”

  “It was as much an accident as everything else life throws at people.” Roan leaned toward me intently. “The only part of my life that feels like destiny, not just plain dumb accident, is you.”

  I bent my head. I didn’t want to cry in front of him for some reason. I didn’t want to be that vulnerable yet. “Go ahead and indulge,” he whispered. “You’re safe with me.”

  Safety had nothing to do with us. Desperate togetherness, tense kindness, something darkly sexual and politely remote, twenty years of space between childhood and adulthood, squeezed together li
ke a time warp.

  I drew back, swallowed my champagne, and stared blindly at the pods of several portable construction toilets nearby. One was set off by itself behind a sweetgum shrub and bore a hand-lettered sign that said LADY ONLY. “Thank you for hiding my personal outhouse behind a shrub. You’ve got indoor toilets by now, I guess.”

  “I wanted to be ready if you visited sooner. I didn’t want you to feel like you were on display.”

  “I was hoping to avoid that, for both our sakes.”

  “We can’t. I knew that when I came back.”

  Jenny Sullivan gave her son a face that escaped godawful comparison with his father’s blunt, fleshy features. Big Roan gave him the height, the thick shoulders and heavy chest and dark hair, but Jenny gave him the large gray eyes and handsome mouth. And he had made himself into a man, with all that implied. “You look untouchable, but I know better,” I said. “And I want to touch you, but I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “That’s how I feel about you.”

  I sat there, blinking helplessly. We were both desperate to get beyond these cautious formalities, but we didn’t know how yet. “What does Racavan stand for?” I asked.

  He took a pen from a dusty breast pocket of his workshirt, pulled the folder between us on the table, and wrote Rathcabhain. “Irish,” he said somberly. “I’m … sentimental. Like Maloneys and Delaneys. I boiled the words down to Racavan.”

  “Rath. Fortress.” I squinted, struggling to translate the second term.

  “Hollow,” he said. “The fortress of the hollow.”

  The crew left just before noon; I’d watched them come to him with questions or suggestions and he had the easy confidence of a man who was accustomed to being called “sir,” though none of the crew were that formal with him.

  “You need lunch,” Roan said when we were alone, and before I could say, I want to read the letters now, he bounded to his feet and left me sitting in the gazebo while he disappeared into the cabin. A few minutes later he carried a wicker hamper back and set out white china plates, heavy silverware, white napkins, and tall etched glasses that he filled with ice from a small insulated container. And then he produced ceramic bowls and as neatly as a schooled waiter dished out boiled shrimp and colorful salads and croissants. He finished with a flourish, pouring cold white wine from a tall bottle.

  I stared at the spread. “Is that hamper bottomless?”

  He inclined his head. “No, but my intention to take good care of you is unlimited. You always brought food to me. Now I want to bring food to you.”

  “Well, then, I’ll just have to eat it,” I said softly, singing inside, helplessly.

  The letters, my common sense whispered.

  • • •

  We talked all afternoon.

  The day grew more peaceful with each glass of wine; the sky’s blue seeped down into the air until the light had the quality of prisms through a stained-glass window; and the clean scent of water and woods and the raw clay of the cleared earth combined with the wine and the emotions to make me suddenly turn close to Roan, grasping his hands and looking at him tearfully. There was nothing deceptive about him as I’d worried; there was kindness and a brand of troubled restraint, as if he had to measure every word and gesture.

  I told him I was anchored and so was he; we came from the same people, even without a direct bloodline. My line of conversation clearly dampened the mood, although his large, strong fingers stroked my hands urgently. Frowning, he said I thought that anyone who had Irish roots was related, and I said of course they are, I’m being philosophical from the alcohol, just listen.

  He knew how it was with my family. The kindest things they say to one another are rarely said out loud; they bring food and personal support, small gifts and photographs. I took a photo album from my bulky cloth purse and laid it open on the table. “There,” I said, thumping the album. Parades, ceremonies, reunions, garden club initiations, Civitans, Kiwanis. Church, state, community. “You’re part of all that,” I told him.

  “You don’t see me in the pictures, do you?” he countered wearily.

  “If you hadn’t run away from the church home you’d have been brought back to the farm. Everything would have been all right. If you’d only trusted me more.”

  “Trusted you? Peep, you’re the only person I did trust. But you couldn’t change what happened to me, no matter what you think.”

  Peep. Tears slid down my face. I brushed them aside angrily. “You will feel at home here soon,” I insisted. “I’ll bring you rootings from shrubs in the yard at the farm. Offspring from plants my great-grandparents cultivated from cuttings their grandparents were given by kin and neighbors.”

  “Rootings?” he echoed with a ferocious half-smile. “I’ve got enough Maloney influence around me.”

  I went on urgently, telling him that polite compromise can be a virtue; feuds are traded in silence, because nothing is more important than preserving the root. We remember how we came here, I insisted; your Sullivans must have settled the same way—alone and poor, strangers in a mountain wilderness where a soul could freeze alone in the winter, a widow and her babies could starve unless people worked together.

  Now we move away and around; the roads are fast, the satellites bring distant peoples into our lives, there are planes to take; the world is much smaller than it was when he and I were kids, and much closer. My father and his brothers sit in the town diner discussing computer software and the Internet. Mama corresponds by e-mail with potters all over the country and elsewhere. Daddy’s llamas forget how far north they’ve come from their Peruvian homeland; Daddy files their hooves with an iron rasp forged by his blacksmithing grandfather before he was born; Josh squires visiting Japanese officials to dinner in Atlanta, then comes home to the farm and sits in the dark in the bedroom where he slept as a boy, smoking a soapstone pipe one of our great-great-grandfathers purchased from a Cherokee as soldiers marched the last of the Indians away from their homeland, these mountains.

  And because Roan was born with my parents’ help, because my mother held him in her arms before his own mother did, he was ours. We had let him down once, but there was hope for the future. I told him so.

  He said very little, but something shifted and settled between us. “You don’t really believe I’ve come back here to stay,” he said. “This isn’t permanent. I’m setting up housekeeping just long enough to persuade you to leave with me.”

  “You’ll stay,” I said. “And right now I can’t stand to think about you being out here alone at night. Come to the house. You’ve been invited. Come on. Make the effort.”

  “You’re a grown woman. You don’t have to be discreet. Stay here. Keep me company.”

  “I’m living under my parents’ roof. That was my choice. I don’t want to upset them or make them think badly of you.”

  “I don’t care what they think of me,” he countered quickly. “If you won’t stay here tonight, then how about this? We’ll get in the plane and I’ll fly us over to the coast. We’ll find a hotel right by the ocean.”

  “Are you trying to seduce a woman who only has one good leg to stand on?”

  “If I seduce you, you won’t have to stand on it.”

  The rush of sensation was addictive. To fed again—the leftover memory of his mouth, the relaxation of the champagne, the May warmth, the delirium that hadn’t sorted everything out yet and sought to make sense. I got up, took my cane, and made my way along the lake’s edge, just moving because I needed to move. He walked beside me, between me and the lake; it wasn’t much of a stretch to worry I’d fall in. “I’ve got a lot on my mind,” I said. “The rest of me has trouble getting my attention.”

  “All right,” he said, moving around to my left side and offering me his arm. “I’ll give you an arm, you loan me the rest of you, and I’ll show you around the cabin.”

  I looked from him to the cabin, sitting beautifully in its new, pristine state. Renewal. Trust. Comfort. The lure of privacy b
etween us. The fear of intimacy between us, because there’d be no room for common sense then.

  I should leave. Keep my distance for now.

  Bats and swallows flitted overhead, through streams of late-afternoon sunshine. An evening mist began to gather on the lake; a lone mourning dove flew into the forest, as if headed across the ridge that led to the Hollow.

  The Hollow. Suddenly we were connected to the same earth as the Hollow; the terrible memories were too close by and I saw them in Roan’s eyes and felt them in my own. “Stop thinking about it,” I said suddenly, as much to myself as to him. “You’re not alone here now.”

  He looked at me gratefully. I slid my hand around the crook of his elbow, and we walked slowly up the slope.

  I sat with queenly luxury in an overstuffed armchair in the cabin’s refurbished main room, next to the fireplace, my feet propped on a plush ottoman. Roan moved among the room’s brass lamps, heavy woven rugs, and dark furniture with a kind of charming masculine vagueness about the decor. That’s a chair, that’s a table. They’re made of wood.

  “You’re almost as bad as I am. You’d never cut it as an antiques dealer,” I said gently. “That thing in the corner’s an armoire, not a clothes box.”

  “Good God.” He tapped a knuckle on the armoire’s heavy doors. “So that’s why it cost so much.”

  “You’re not talking to Martha Stewart here, believe me. I can only say that you have some nice sturdy old-fashioned furniture, and you don’t go in for froufrou, and it looks like mostly pine and oak to me, maybe Shaker or country style, and I like that floor lamp with the iron vines around the base.”

  “They never let you write for the home section of the newspaper, did they?” His mild teasing brought up a bad subject—my discarded career. I smiled but quickly focused my attention on an old rug spread under my chair. “Turkish,” I said lamely, pointing. “Or some type of English Victorian design.”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I liked it because the pattern was green and white.” He angled between a thick coffee table and a deep, plush couch, then went to the door to the second room and gestured inside. “You should see the bedroom,” he said. “And I’m not being coy, I mean you should see how good it looks.”