by Nancy Jensen
“I’m pretty sure it’s this way,” Rainey said, turning past the cows, though she wasn’t sure at all. She hadn’t been out here since the day of Ken’s funeral—twelve, thirteen years now. Before that, she had been to Pilgrim’s End only twice, but the advantage of the house being so far out in the country—no doubt the only advantage—was that the landscape had changed very little in the twenty-five years Grace had been here—a place so completely nowhere that developers ignored it. Rainey caught herself nodding at the cows as she passed, wondering if it was the corn they were staring at, plotting somehow to open the gate and cross the road to feast on the succulent young shoots.
“I’m sure I’ve worn the wrong shoes,” Lynn said, looking down at her strappy high heels.
Taylor leaned up from the backseat. “Mom, I told you to wear flats or running shoes.”
“I don’t own any flats. Or running shoes.”
Lynn was still angry with her daughter, but more angry with her sister for having cooked up the plan for this gathering. A few weeks ago, without any warning and in the middle of their Saturday-morning breakfast, Taylor had said, “Aunt Grace wants to have the family in to celebrate my graduation. And my scholarship.”
There were so many explosive possibilities in those few words, Lynn hadn’t known which to defuse first. Family, as it turned out, was meant to include Aunt Alma and Sarah, the granddaughter become daughter. In Lynn’s mind, they hardly counted as family, as she hadn’t seen either of them since the first Christmas after her cousin Milton and his wife had gone to prison. While Lynn was in the spare bedroom wrapping the gifts she’d hidden in her suitcase, Alma came in, closed the door, and said, “I need you to tell me what I have to do to get permanent legal custody of Sarah. Every step.”
Lynn flushed with panic. Only days before, she had filed as a candidate in the judge’s race—no one even knew about it yet besides Sam. But if she helped Alma, it wouldn’t be long before her political enemies found out about Milton, and then all it would take to ruin her career would be a few artfully edited ads and speeches linking her name with Milton’s misdeeds. Lynn turned from Alma and began gathering the scraps of paper and ribbon, speaking mechanically about state laws and licensing and how she couldn’t adequately advise on a case in another state. She ended by saying, “I’ll have my secretary call you with a list of phone numbers for lawyers near you who specialize in family law.”
Alma would not give up. “I could do as well looking in the Yellow Pages,” she said, and when Lynn tried to leave the bedroom, the packages in her arms, Alma blocked the door. “You owe me a favor, Lynn. You wouldn’t have found your father without me.”
So Lynn had done what she could. After the holidays, she shut herself in her office and spent half a day phoning through her contact list until she found an advocate for Alma’s suit. After that, she worked on her own time as a shadow consultant, studying all the documents the Ohio attorney faxed her, offering advice over the phone, being careful to destroy her paper trail. Even though everything had worked out—her campaign had moved forward without so much as a whisper of impropriety, and she had won handily with 62 percent of the vote—she had not forgiven Alma for holding her to an ancient obligation. Other than the printed card of acknowledgment for the flowers Lynn had sent when Uncle Gordon died, she and Alma had had no contact since that Christmas. Sarah, just a baby then, must be thirteen by now. A complete stranger. What could they possibly find to say to one another?
Lynn felt similarly disconnected from Grace, who made it to Mother’s house in Newman for maybe one out of every three Christmases, always using the excuse that she couldn’t find anyone to tend her animals long enough for an overnight trip. “If you ever decide to have Christmas at your house,” Grace had said to her a few years ago, “I can make it a day trip. It’s only a little over an hour for me to Indianapolis. Of course you’re all welcome here anytime you want to come. If it snows, it’s gorgeous, and not too tricky to drive unless it’s right after the snow. One thing we aren’t short of out here is plows.”
Presumptuous, that’s what Grace was. Practically inviting herself to Indianapolis, then implying everyone else ought to defer to the complexities of her life. What on earth could Grace know about complexities? And now this party. How dare Grace take it upon herself to make plans for Taylor? The two barely knew each other, except for sending messages over Facebook and talking on the phone now and then. Well, this proved what Lynn had long suspected: Grace had been stirring up and encouraging Taylor’s starry-eyed ambition to become a composer. Lynn and Sam had always believed Taylor would grow out of her fantasies, as little girls grow up to recognize they aren’t really princesses, and so they had worked hard and put enough by to pay Taylor’s tuition to any school she wanted. Taylor herself had given them reason to believe everything would turn out all right, for, in spite of her repeated claim that she cared for nothing but music, she had kept her grades up in every subject and had scored high enough on the SAT to guarantee admission anywhere in the country.
Taylor had run into the house, screaming and waving the acceptance letter from the state university over her head. Though Lynn had forced herself to smile and give her daughter a congratulatory kiss, Taylor must have caught her look of dismay. “It’s tops in composition, Mom. They hardly let anybody in as a freshman, but they picked me.”
Later, when Lynn and Sam were alone, he said, “It could be worse, Judge. It could be one of those arts schools without any general-education requirements.” He hugged her to him and laughed. “Don’t forget—I thought I wanted to be a gym teacher.” Lynn had smiled at that, the image of Sam in too-tight short shorts advocating for push-ups instead of for fair hiring practices. “Let’s just give her a chance,” he said, “She’ll take those other classes and find out there’s a lot more she could be interested in.”
Sam was right: Just being in college—all that opportunity to recognize her potential—would get Taylor back on the right path, and then in a year Taylor could transfer to a college more worthy of her gifts. But that didn’t mean Lynn was going to forgive Grace’s meddling. She’d tried to defuse Taylor’s enthusiasm for going to Grace’s by saying, “We’ll have a graduation party here. As grand as you like.” Ignoring her daughter’s downcast look—a ploy—Lynn said brightly, “Invite anyone you want. You can invite Grace. Think of all the trouble you’ll save her by asking her here.”
Taylor wiped tears from her eyes and spoke without looking up. “I don’t want a fancy party, Mom. Just my friends over for pizza or something.” She wiped her tears again and took three deep breaths. “It’s just…” As if suddenly gaining courage, she raised her eyes to meet Lynn’s. “It’s just that Aunt Grace is the only one who is happy for me about the scholarship.”
Lynn had left Taylor with a promise to talk over the matter with Sam, fully believing her husband, who could discuss Grace without having to cut through a tangle of emotions, would offer a way to avoid the invitation by suggesting a plan so reasonable that even Taylor would have to accept it. To Lynn’s astonishment, Sam had said, “Maybe it’s not such a bad idea after all. Maybe seeing how her ‘artist’ aunt really lives is just the wake-up smack Taylor needs.” Sam said he could excuse himself from going to Grace’s, citing an engagement to speak at a Lions Club meeting, but what he would really do with the day was shop for a new car for Taylor. Their daughter would find it upon her return, parked in the driveway and adorned with a giant bow.
Rainey slowed the car, watching for mailboxes. “Somebody please tell me again how Grace managed to persuade Alma to come.”
“I’m not exactly sure how they first hooked up,” Taylor said. “Probably Aunt Grace’s Web site or Facebook—like we did. Anyway, somehow Sarah found out that a Girl Scout troop was visiting the farm for different projects, so she asked if she could come for a week or two. She can do enough there to earn about a million badges—arts and crafts, organic gardening, small business operation, wildlife, botany—she sent me the list.”
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br /> “Fine,” Rainey said. “If that little girl wants to run around in the woods and get eaten up by bugs, that’s her business. But why does Grace have to torture the rest of us?”
Taylor slumped back against the seat. “She’s doing this for me. For my party.”
“There are a lot of other places to have a party besides the wilderness.”
Lynn could have backed up her mother, whose obvious annoyance with Grace pleased her, but she didn’t want to add fuel to her disagreement with Taylor. Silence was the best choice. Even after fifteen years, the bond she had with her mother remained tenuous. Being together in the hospital room when Grandma died, weeping as one when they realized what had happened, had changed things. From that day forward, whenever they spoke, they silently agreed not to talk about Carl, each of them taking care not to detonate the mine that lay between them. And then came Taylor, their love for her becoming a natural barrier against hidden trip wires.
“Oh my God,” Lynn said, pointing up the road. “That’s got to be it.”
A great painted shield, bright gold—at least nine feet high—stood several yards ahead of a gravel road. A strange design, painted in red, filled the upper part of the shield. At the center, a large scrolling letter F split its stem into an M on the left and a B on the right. From the joined initials hung the words Grace Vincent, Artisan & Armorer.
Rainey was trying to work out the meaning of the three letters—F, M, B—when Lynn touched her mother’s arm and nodded at what stood on the other side of the gravel road. “It gets worse.” There was no missing that what served as a mailbox was an immense knight’s helmet, gleaming green and at least three times the size any ordinary man might wear. It bore the same images as on the shield, only smaller and painted in red edged with gold, with the practical addition of a delivery address.
“Ha!” cried Taylor. “The Green Knight!”
The women in the front seat ignored her. “Think of the poor guy stuck with this route,” Rainey said. “Having to lift up that visor and shove his hand in just to deliver the mail.”
The gravel drive was so long Rainey was on the point of turning back when she saw the house—tiny, made of weather-grayed stone, like hermits’ houses in fairy tales. The two barns, one behind and one to the left of the house, were far larger. The barn on the side was the newer one—Ken and Grace had built it themselves and painted it a ferny green instead of traditional red, so it blended with the woods that encircled the property and stretched beyond sight. The older barn, as old as the house, was tar black, and, though taller and wider than the stone dwelling, the barn would have been nearly invisible behind it, easily mistaken for a hollow in the woods, were it not for the slender windows that wrapped the building just below the roofline.
Rainey recalled now that this was Grace’s workshop. She hadn’t really looked at it on the day of the funeral, but she remembered Grace’s excitement over the phone, just after it was finished: “You have to see it. We took out the loft so the whole center fills with light all day. We’re building worktables and benches with the wood from the loft floor. It was all Ken’s idea.”
“It must get awfully hot with so many windows,” Rainey said.
“Oh, no,” Grace insisted. “You’ll see that when you come. The afternoon sun filters through the trees. It’s perfect.”
Rainey could sense Grace waiting for her to say something else, but she couldn’t think of a thing. Not one thing. Far from planning a visit to that godforsaken place, back then she was still waiting for Grace to come to her senses, leave Ken, and get on with her life.
“He’s good to me, Mom,” Grace said to the silence. “Ken loves me.”
Yes, Rainey now thought. Loved her so much that not a year later he went and killed himself. She still despised him for hurting her daughter that way, leaving Grace to deal with the shock and embarrassment of his suicide. Disloyal, that’s what it was. Selfish.
How she had longed to wrap Grace in her arms then like an infant and carry her back home to Newman to take care of her. But Grace had not wanted her comforting. Four or five times since then, Rainey had been on the point of giving Grace her father’s potsherd—the jagged little triangle with its faded black lines, diverging paths—but the moment had never seemed right. Why, she couldn’t say. Rainey loved her younger daughter more than anyone else in this world, but Grace remained a mystery to her, a puzzle she would live out her life without ever solving.
Two immense white dogs, their coats stuck all over with bits of twigs, leaves, and mud, leapt around the car and barked, their noses high in the air. Lynn sighed in irritation, Taylor tapped at the window, calling, “Hey, doggies!” while Rainey sat rigid, her fingers white-knuckled around the steering wheel. What was Grace thinking, letting those beasts run loose like that?
Grace came jogging down the path from the house, calling, “I’ve got them!” She whistled and the dogs bounded toward her. Somehow she made them sit, lie down, then rise and follow her in relaxed walks toward a fenced area where thick straw lay around a pair of doghouses. Once past the gate, Grace pointed at the openings to each of the doghouses, and the dogs went in, turned around, and poked their heads out to wait for Grace to hug each of them around the neck and plant kisses on their giant brows.
Only after Grace had twice tugged at the gate to prove the latch was secure did Rainey open her car door. She was barely on her feet when she was nearly knocked off them again by Grace’s running hug. “Hi, Mom!” While Rainey brushed dog hair and God knows what else off her blouse, Grace turned to her sister. “Lynn, I’m so glad you’re here!” Rainey watched as her elder daughter awkwardly patted Grace’s back.
“Now,” said Grace, holding her arms open to Taylor. “Here’s our family star!”
They clapped each other in a tight hug, rocked together, then pulled back to smile into each other’s faces, and, as if signaling in secret code, they began to giggle and jump, arms still locked.
“Let me in!” cried a young voice, and a slim girl with what appeared to be shining blue hair sprinted towards them.
Grace and Taylor opened their arms to the girl and the three linked hands and pulled one another around in a circle.
“Whoo!” cried Grace. “I have to stop.” And she did stop—abruptly—pulling her laughing companions onto the ground with her.
Rainey and Lynn stood over the group, staring at the girl with the blue hair. She flashed a smile at them and held out her hand for someone to pull her up. “It’s a coif. I made it—almost all of it,” she said. “Grace helped me get the shape right.” When she twisted her head back and forth, the light caught the electric blue links, turning her into a sparkling waterfall.
“Isn’t it heavy?” Lynn asked, for something to say.
“Lift the end,” said the waterfall, leaning her head toward Lynn. “It’s titanium. Very light—but strong.”
“I’m Lynn.”
“I figured.” The girl bowed. “I’m Sarah. And you’re Aunt Rainey. I mean Great-Aunt Rainey.”
Seeing Rainey’s look of alarm, Grace put her hands on Sarah’s shoulders and said, “We’ve been working on a family tree. For Girl Scouts, so Sarah’s trying to get all the labels right.”
They all turned toward the sound of an approaching car. “Grandma!” Sarah darted toward it and started chattering at the window before Alma had completely stopped.
As Lynn had only a moment before, Alma expressed her worry about the weight of the coif, whether it would damage Sarah’s fine blond hair or scratch her scalp.
“Do take it off, sweetheart,” Alma said. “We’ll get a wig stand so you can put it up in your room. It’s really just meant to be looked at.”
“I want to wear it all the time,” said Sarah. “It’s pretty.”
“No, Sarah.” Alma was already lifting the head covering, catching the clinging hairs in her fingers to keep them from pulling out. She’d barely slept for the last eleven days, worrying what Grace might lead Sarah into. Today at last
she could collect her child and begin restoring a little order. Not that she didn’t think Grace meant well—Alma was sure she did—but her niece had never been a mother and couldn’t be expected to know when she was getting carried away.
There was nothing to do about it, of course, but facing this particular truth was a disappointment to Alma. She should have trusted her first impulse, the impulse that cried No! when Sarah had brought up the idea of spending time with Grace. As part of her strategy to get her way, Sarah had pulled up Grace’s Web site on the computer and then made Alma sit beside her at the desk. “Look,” Sarah had said, pointing to the screen, “she let all these Girl Scouts blog about the things they did there. In a week, I could earn enough badges to go up two ranks—easy!” Looking at Sarah in that moment, a child on the verge of adulthood, Alma had taken herself in hand, recalling that it was she who had urged Sarah to become a Scout, with the hope that her granddaughter might grow into a responsible young woman. She would simply have to stand aside and let Sarah do this.
So Alma had made the long drive from Ohio to drop Sarah off. She’d even stayed overnight in Grace’s little house, doing her best to behave as if it were a charming country inn rather than the primitive hut it more closely resembled. During the visit, she had chatted with her niece and smiled, admiring what she had the strength to admire—like a blossoming pear tree in the front yard—keeping her fears to herself. But she had concealed her hopes, as well.
On her next birthday, Alma would be seventy-eight, and while she remained in good health, she had to face facts. Gordon had died suddenly eight years ago. What if something like that happened to her? What would become of Sarah? Ever since they’d been released from prison—Penny after eighteen months and Milton after three years—her son and daughter-in-law had suffered the twice-yearly visits to Sarah as if these were extensions of their sentences. And while Alma had taught Sarah to behave warmly toward her parents, she knew the child felt nothing for them because they made it so clear they felt nothing for her.