Steven sank into one of the pair of oversized easy chairs I’d bought thinking they would work well for reading stories to grandchildren one day. I was making my way to the matching chair when he reached for my hand and pulled me toward his lap.
I squeezed into the space next to him, half on his lap, and he began to absently scratch my back with his pinned arm.
“That was pretty fun,” I said, then waited, hoping to gauge my husband’s reaction to any of the varied people and activities of the long day. I felt content and was enjoying this intimacy. He remained quiet, so I continued, “Sophie’s been a good sport, don’t you think? Seth seems comfortable and happy around her. She’s handling the other boys quite well.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I like her. You know she comes from right near Kfar Vitkin? She knows Mira and Shaul’s boys and went to the army with Tomer.”
“You’re kidding. Sometimes I think everyone in Israel knows everyone else.”
Steven’s cousins lived on a small collective in an out-of-the-way spot near the city of Natanya. We were close to those cousins, and to their children, and it was fun to think that this new girl knew them. “So she went back to serve in the army? I thought her family had been here a long time.”
“Yeah, she and her brothers all served. I wonder if that complicates citizenship? I guess her mother is American by birth.”
“Hmmm. So do you think she’s serious about medical school?”
“Sounds like it. She seems smart enough and I like her attitude about it.”
I smiled into the darkness. Steven shifted his weight and I started to stand up, but he pulled me back down. I swung my legs sideways over the chair so I was sitting more comfortably on his lap. I grazed his lips with my own and sank my head onto his shoulder, happy to watch the moonlight play over the landscape.
“I had an interesting chat with Julia Reiss.” Steven’s voice rumbled through his chest into my ear.
“Really. Interesting how?”
“Do you know where she’s from?”
“Somewhere in Ohio. I know she rowed for OSU.”
“Right. She’s from the Dayton area. Yellow Springs, actually. It’s where Antioch College is.”
“Why do I think they don’t have a rowing team at Antioch?”
Steven ignored this comment. “Her mother works in the placement office at the college, helping students arrange their required cooperative work placements. It’s a pretty unique program. Been around for a lot of years. I remember friends going there when it was a hippie mecca.”
“I’ve certainly heard about it, but I’ve never been there. I’ve only ever driven through Dayton when we used to go to Cincinnati. What does her dad do?”
“He’s a wood worker. Teaches at the college and does the art fair circuit. He’s been to the Ann Arbor Art Fair a number of times. Brought the whole family once.”
I settled further onto Steven’s shoulder. “Did you learn anything more about her family?”
“She has an eighteen-year-old brother, and it sounds like her grandmother has been a close part of her life.” This all matched information I already had about Julia.
“But what’s she doing up here?”
“I actually had a hard time keeping the conversation on her. She did a fair job of interviewing me. Asked me a lot about us, and our kids; how long we’d been married, how old the kids were. She basically repeated what she said at the labyrinth. She liked vacationing in northern Michigan as a child, so thought this would be a good place to come and sort out some kind of personal issue she has. The job and the living situation fell into place, so for now, it’s working for her.”
“Huh. She didn’t give you any clues to what she needs to sort out?”
Steven paused. “Not really.” He absently twirled a strand of my hair around his finger. A burst of laughter from the next room seemed to bring him back to our houseful of children. “Come on, it sounds like they’ve got Pictionary going out there. Let’s go watch.”
I unwrapped myself from the chair and headed toward the noise. In our family, there is no mere watching a game of Pictionary, and soon Steven and I were assigned to teams. Across the dining table, Alex’s face was lit in the soft lamplight. Steven produced one of his fractured interpretations of a clue that resulted in a preposterous line drawing, which caused Alex to break into laughter, lifting the mask of strain that often infused his features. The joyful boy shone through, something that never failed to make me giddy. Seth and Sophie teamed well together, frequently guessing the clues first.
The game ended well after midnight. Andrew and Carrie headed to bed first, the exhaustion of early pregnancy trumping the desire to extend a rare evening with all the brothers in one place. Alex posted the best Pictionary artwork on the refrigerator before securing a spot on the sofa in the den to watch a movie on his laptop. Seth and Sophie took a moonlight walk, and Steven and I climbed the stairs to our room upstairs.
I looked at Steven as I slid into bed and noticed that his face still had that far away look. “You seem a little preoccupied,” I ventured. “Are you okay? I thought the evening went really well. Didn’t you?”
“Yeah, really well. All the boys seem like they’re in pretty good shape, and I like Sophie,” Steven replied, his face clearing for a moment.
“But?” I waited.
“No buts,” Steven said quietly. “It’s been a long day. I’m looking forward to some sleep.”
Sunday dawned brilliant and cold. Everyone but Steven had to leave for home, and the typical flurry of packing, loading, and good-byes occupied most of the morning. Alex took the dogs for a walk to avoid the chaos; he would make the trip back to Iowa over two days and wouldn’t leave until midafternoon. As always, I experienced a deflated sense of not having gotten quite enough from the kids’ visit mixed with relief at getting my life back. I’d grown accustomed to the paradox and felt no guilt.
Sophie and Seth left first. When Andrew and Carrie’s car rolled down the driveway a half hour later, I set off into the late-morning brilliance to find Alex. I hoped to talk more to him about my ideas for setting up a pressing and aging operation, and I also wondered where he’d gone with the revelations of his birth family’s medical histories. We hadn’t had much time alone since he’d arrived.
I knew he would likely have started off on the road leading from the back of the house through the woods to Cathead Point. We both loved the log cabin there, with its view of the lighthouse across the bay to the east, and the Fox Islands in Lake Michigan to the west. If I’d calculated correctly, Alex would be sitting on the front veranda in one of the Adirondack chairs, watching the dogs careening wildly in the dune grass among the boulders—many of which were massive Petoskey stones, the unique, fossil-patterned indigenous rocks coveted by collectors.
Sure enough, after hiking the quarter mile to the point, I rounded the front of the cabin and spied Alex seated comfortably where I expected to see him. I hadn’t expected to see Julia Reiss occupying a second chair on the porch, however. I felt a stab of irritation. I wanted this time alone with Alex.
Deep in conversation, they didn’t see me approach until the dogs bounded toward me in a flurry of brown and white fur and flailing tails. Alex turned but remained seated, and for a moment I hesitated, uncertain whether an interruption would be welcome. But I wanted these last moments of visit with my son, so I moved closer.
“Hey,” Alex called.
“Hi Mrs. Stone,” Julia said.
I mounted the broad wooden steps to the solid deck wrapped around three sides of the cabin. The window blinds were drawn, separating us from the comfortable, solid wood furniture, collection of antler lamps, bent-twig stools and end tables, and old quilts and woven blankets stowed in the loft bedrooms inside. Brilliant sunshine danced on the waves ruffling the surface of the lake in front of us. I sank into the chair next to Julia and closed my eyes, waiting to see if they would continue their conversation.
“So what does an orthopedic
PA actually do?” Julia asked. “Like, do you do surgery?”
“We do a lot of intake diagnostic work, and yeah, we scrub into surgeries, and then we do a lot of follow-up care.” Alex warmed to the attention but remained low-key. He leaned forward in his chair and, with classic Alex savvy, diverted attention from himself, asking, “So, what brought you up here?”
His question surprised me. While Steven often elicited people’s life stories, Alex didn’t. Just as he’d done the evening before at the Leytons’, he was becoming uncharacteristically personal with Julia.
Squinting through half-closed eyes, I saw Julia turn toward me, but I remained silent and unmoving in my chair.
She hesitated, and then spoke quietly, her words floating in the whisper of breeze and the warmth of the sunbathed gallery. “I’ve discovered some things about my family history that shocked me and left me with a lot of questions. I’m really close to my parents and they don’t know what I’ve discovered. I haven’t figured out if I want to get into it with them, or how, and I just thought it would be better to get away and sort things out for myself first. I’ve always loved it up here so I just decided to take some time. I lucked into the job and a free place to live.”
My eyes were open now and turned toward Julia, who leaned back in her chair, her knitted headband uniting the blue of her eyes with the sky into which she stared.
I looked at Alex, but his impassive expression said nothing.
I sat up. “Families can get complicated, can’t they?” I didn’t want to say more.
“I guess so,” Julia said. “Maybe we could talk about that sometime.”
This unnerved me a little. Had Steven talked to her about our varied paths to forming a family? I doubted it. Had Alex spoken to her about finding his birth family? I doubted that even more. I began to feel the November chill as the sun climbed past the roof edge. Suddenly, I wanted this girl off my porch. Her interest had begun to feel invasive, and I still wanted time with Alex before he left.
Luckily, he took this moment as a cue to rise and whistle for the dogs.
“I’ve got to start heading homeward,” he said. “It was nice to meet you,” he said, nodding at Julia. “Hope you find what you’re looking for.”
Julia turned to me and laid her gloved hand lightly on my arm before stepping down to the sand. “Bye, Mrs. Stone. I’ll see you at the store.” Then she turned to Alex. “Bye. Have a safe drive.” She loped into a gentle jog, and we watched as her slender form grew smaller along the water’s edge.
“That was interesting,” I began, uncertain how Alex would code what had just transpired.
“Sounds like she’s like all the other weirdos up here trying to solve life’s problems,” he said. “But she is gorgeous.”
Nice, Alex. Way to reduce an emotional revelation to its lowest common denominator.
“Did you guys talk much?” I tried to remain casual, but Julia’s incursion into our family had become more mysterious in the past twenty-four hours, not less.
“We talked about dogs and fishing. Why are you so interested in her?”
“I don’t know. She just sort of pops up out of nowhere here, and she seems to want to know a lot about us.” My answer sounded a little lame, even to me.
“Well, I’ve got to get going. It’s going to be a mess driving in holiday traffic.”
“I can make you some lunch while you pack and load. Are you going to try for Alice’s tonight?” My sister Alice lived on the north shore of Chicago and of all our extended family members, she was closest to Alex.
“Yeah, it’ll be a long seven hours.”
We walked in silence for a moment, the dogs snuffling under the leaves for creatures and sticks. I faced Alex. “If you have any thoughts about my business plan so far, I’d be interested to hear them.”
“Okay . . .” Alex answered, his intonation suggesting an uncertain degree of enthusiasm.
“As in, I want to know if you’d be willing to go over a preliminary floor plan for a pressing operation in the cider house, and whether it seems workable to you. I’d also like a better sense of how seriously you’re thinking of making a move back to Michigan—like seriously interested, casually interested, or just flirting with the idea to please your mommy. Wait, cancel that last one, I don’t think that’s one of the real choices . . .” I’d intended this as a little joke, but the irritation evident in the hard set of Alex’s jaw suggested my humor had failed. I plowed on. “Can I send you ideas and will you tell me what you think?”
“I said okay.” Alex’s voice rose in some irritation.
“Okay what, Alex? I’m not interested in bugging you. I look forward to your input, but I’m not dependent on it.” Not for the first time, I wondered why I wanted to pursue this prickly son of mine for my fledgling business—but I did. I knew his organizational and mechanical talents as well as I knew his limitations. He could analyze and design an operation with an eye toward efficiency and productivity as if he were a trained engineer. What I didn’t want, any longer, was to tiptoe around his edginess.
“Okay, I’m in for helping you figure out how to arrange your press and the whole aging operation in your cute little garage, and I’ll help with the chemistry if you need it. But Dad’s already on my case about not throwing away my life to move up here.” Alex’s sarcasm and eye roll told me all I needed to know about his response to Steven’s input.
Even so, I pushed on. “I’m assuming you’d never move here just for this business. I’m just hoping that if you decided to relocate to this area and you found a job you really liked, you might be willing to help me out some. This is a no harm, no foul proposition. And to be honest, as far as Dad’s concern goes, when was the last time you made any life decision because your parents wanted you to?” This produced a smile.
“I don’t take lightly that Dad’s not all into this with me, and I know it’s going to mean a division of my time and energy, but I think I can make this small business work, and I want to try it.”
By now we’d emerged onto the wide swath of driveway that curved around the back of the house. Alex gazed at the cider house. He began to talk rapidly. “If I were you, I’d lease time with someone else’s press for at least the first year, until you get your recipes down,” he said, “and just invest in the fermenting and storage equipment. Or get a commitment from someone for producing fresh cider while you’re experimenting so you can support the cost of the press from the get-go. And you better have a clear and flexible deal on the growing with Charles Aiken and his son.” He turned to face me. “As Dad is also quick to point out, I’m not in a position to commit one way or another to helping. It isn’t even a business yet. Exactly what you’re planning to start up is something else you ought to figure out.”
I stopped and looked at Alex and shook my head. He had been thinking about this all the while. In typical fashion, he’d analyzed the essential elements and highlighted important decision points with impressive accuracy. Something shifted at my center, and I knew with conviction that I would take the next steps to make hard cider. With or without Alex’s direct employment, I knew I’d have his sound advice and technical acumen at my disposal in some form or other. The two of us looked again toward the cider house with its new roof. Alex turned back to me and I grinned, raised eyebrows inviting him to share my mounting excitement.
“You’re nuts,” he said, but he said it with a smile.
Chapter 15
Winter hit hard and fast in the second week of December—not unusual for northern Michigan, but still catching off guard those of us clinging to the pleasure of the mild weather that had lasted through Thanksgiving. The snow had begun four days earlier—a mass of roiling clouds that blew in off the lake, accompanied by plummeting temperatures. The first icy onslaught had whipped around in the wind, stinging unprotected cheeks and eyes like needles. Then the front had settled over the peninsula and dropped a foot of snow in twenty-four hours. After another day and several more inches of fluffy
white stuff, the storm had passed, and this morning had dawned clear, sunny, and frigid.
The lake no longer pounded out rhythms to the falling snow, and the softened fields, laced tree branches, and muffled sounds combined to create a winter wonderland that never failed to thrill me. No snowbird behavior for me; I loved northern Michigan in the winter precisely for its harsh beauty and isolation. Short days and long nights brought me inward, forcing a welcome shift to indoor work with my hands, reading, planning, and dreaming. In another week, I would head downstate for the obligatory round of holiday parties and family gatherings. For now, however, I remained up north and determined to use the week to make some decisions about my cider venture.
Charlie Aiken drove up the driveway at 9:00 a.m. on the dot. I’d asked him to come for a “what if” meeting. His young trees were at least a year away from a full crop of apples, but I was ready to lay out for myself what would be required if he grew, I pressed and fermented, and his son James bottled our hard cider.
I had Charlie’s own tea recipe brewing in the pot, and had laid out dried fruits and nuts alongside fresh muffins on the old maple kitchen table.
“Hi, Abbie,” Charlie greeted me as he shook the snow off his jacket and hung it on a hook by the back door. “Looks like we’re finally going to get some winter.”
“Bad driving?” I asked.
“A little slippery but nothing outrageous,” he said.
“I’ve got some tea for you, and I’ve set us up in here.” I moved my laptop and set his tea across from where I sat. “I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m getting too far ahead of the game, but I’ve been making some calls and getting some estimates, and I’m feeling like I have to make some choices if I’m going to move forward with this business.”
I hadn’t meant to jump into the conversation so quickly and seriously. I still wasn’t used to the way people (read: men) did business up here. Any major decisions were preceded by a cup of coffee and a requisite amount of conversation about the weather, the high school football/basketball/baseball team, and an exchange of local gossip.
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