All I Ever Dreamed

by Michael Blumlein

  The electric stove was out, but we had the fireplace for cooking. For light we used candles. If it had just been Jack and me, this would have been romantic, but for Jody it was anything but. Frightened by the flickering shadows on his bedroom walls, he started having nightmares. Extinguishing the candles and putting him in total darkness only made things worse, and we ended up bringing him in bed with us. This made for sleepless nights, which seemed only in keeping with the general mood of deprivation. Of all of us, Emily was the only one who thrived.

  Living primitive for her was a lark, an adventure out of one of her books. She loved our fires and candlelight, loved gathering water in pots and cooking over an open flame. She helped Jack patch the roof and retrieve the sunken dock. She organized a crabbing expedition with her friends Stephanie and Christopher. At low tide the three of them rowed out into the cove, and two hours later, ecstatic, returned with a bucketful of the native blues. Spurred by her example, Jack took his snorkel and fins oceanside, where he gathered a netful of mussels from the offshore rocks. That night we feasted, and our spirits lifted. The next day dawned clear. The electricity came back at ten, and in celebration I took a hot shower, then made a batch of cookies in the now-­functioning oven. My mother drove into Westerly to stock the refrigerator, and Jack, liberated from his role as survivalist, went to check on his path.

  He came back an hour later, shaking his head. It was gone. The Wild Wood Trail, his labor of love, had disappeared. In its place was an impenetrable tangle of uprooted viburnum, bittersweet and honeysuckle. Branches were torn from trees, some of which themselves were torn wholly from the ground. The bogs were flooded. The plank and tire bridge was washed out. And the light, whose play through the thickets and clearings Jack depended on for direction, was everywhere different, causing him to get lost time and again, until at last he gave up and back-tracked home.

  I felt defeated for him, but I needn’t have. Fifteen minutes later he was marching back out the door, this time armed with machete, loppers and a hand saw. In two days he had a new path that incorporated cleared sections of the old one with fresh twists and turns. For lack of time it was more primitive than the original, with fallen trees to shimmy over and tunnels of toppled grape to crawl through. On my second trip along it, which was my first alone, I found a cache of old bottles in a pile of dirt. I also saw a muskrat and, before they scurried off, a deer and fawn eating fallen apples. And yesterday, purely by accident, I found the rock.

  It was speckled black on a field of gray and shaped like the nose of an airplane. In its center was a fist-sized hole just as Uncle Matthew had described. There was water in the hole, the surface of which was flecked with yellow pollen. Stalks of goldenrod were flowering nearby.

  That afternoon I went to tell Uncle Matthew. He was sweeping sand from his porch when I arrived, dressed in his orange jumpsuit and a Red Sox baseball cap. The broken window had already been repaired, Aunt Lillian’s garden cleared of sand and the dune against the front stairs shoveled down.

  “You’ve been busy,” I said.

  “A veritable whirlwind,” he replied cheerily, putting down his broom and dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief. “Sloth was drubbed out of me at an early age. A dreadful sin, my beloved wife’s exhortations to the contrary. She would have me in bed half the day if she could.”

  “It’s no sin to rest. She cares about you.”

  “The sin is not in rest. The sin is in sloth. There’s a difference.”

  “Sloth is laziness,” I said. “You’re hardly lazy, Uncle.”

  “Sloth is laziness of spirit. Laxity of purpose. Carelessness. Sloth is taking things for granted.”

  “What do you take for granted, Uncle Matthew?”

  He looked at me, then smiled. “Elephant’s child. I take that the sun will rise for granted. That sins can be rectified. That peace is attainable.”

  “That’s faith, Uncle.”

  “None of it easily,” he continued. “I think of the Book of Genesis. The parable of creation. God toiled for six days and rested but one. One day for devotion, for contemplation, for meditation, for prayer. One in seven, more taxing by far than the other six. Which is why He asks no more. One day alone He requires that we search out joy and beauty in the world, one out of seven that we show our love. Every day He asks that we should, and of course hopes that we do, but one day He demands that we must.”

  “Six days is a long time to wait for a little love.”

  “As I say, it needn’t be that long. It’s the ratio that’s important, not the absolute number. It could be one-seventh of a day, or an hour. I suppose if one were facile, it could be one-seventh of every minute.”

  “At a minimum,” I observed. “It wouldn’t hurt to try for more.”

  He inclined his head in agreement. “Sloth is the sin of not trying at all. Toiling, but never on behalf of the Lord. Or the heart.”

  “Is that what Granddaddy taught you?”

  “My father believed that children were full of sin. Sloth was but one of many.”

  “Temptation, I suppose, was another.”

  He gave me a look, and for a moment I thought I would bite my tongue. But I wanted to know how far it went. How far, and who knew, and what, if anything, had been done.

  He listened solemnly as I recounted my experience with and of his father. He was deeply troubled to hear it, though not shocked. By the end, he had his handkerchief balled up in his hands.

  “Louise has said much the same. Apparently, she wasn’t alone.”

  “Did you know it was happening?”

  He shook his head. “Never.”

  “Would you have stopped him?”

  His body seemed to tremble. “I would have killed him.”

  I didn’t believe that. Nor could I believe that he didn’t know. I asked again.

  “If I did know,” said Uncle Matthew, “it’s hidden from me. My father could do no wrong. For that alone I pray daily for forgiveness.”

  “We all idolized him,” I said.

  “Yes. It is a hunger the Devil depends on.”

  “And silence. He thrives on silence too.”

  He sighed. “We have much to atone for, Sharon.”

  “I found the rock,” I told him.

  “The rock?”

  “Yes. The one with the hole in the center.”

  He looked bewildered.

  “The stone, Uncle Matthew. Just where you said. The hurricane destroyed the old path. Jack made a new one that goes right by it.”

  “You say it has a hole in the center?”

  “Yes. Like this.” I showed him with my hands. “You described it to me.”

  “Remarkable. The sacred stone. Revealed by the violence of Nature’s hand. Discovered by you.”

  “And Jack’s sweat,” I added.

  “Stout-hearted Jack,” said Uncle Matthew. “Blessed be the path makers.”

  “Will you come and see it?”

  “Will I?” He was beaming now, his face as jovial as before it had been grim. “Lead on, Beatrice. Lead on.”

  That evening he hatched a plan to locate the third point of his triangle, and the next morning, while he rummaged in his garage for an old surveyor’s transit left over from the days when his father had parceled out the land, I drove into Westerly for a helium-filled balloon. The only one I could find was made of foil and painted with a picture of Tyranno­saurus Rex. I bought two, gave one to Jody and added an extra twenty feet of string to the other, which I then carried along the path to the rock. There I tied it down and teased it up and out above the trees. Re-tracing my path, I took the long, circuitous route that ended on the knoll.

  Uncle Matthew was already bent over the transit, which he had set upon a large, flat rock. In the distance I could see Block Island and in the opposite direction the entire length of the pond. The dinosaur balloon, glinting in the sun, was clearly visible above the canopy of the woods, and the transit was trained on it. Clamping it in place, Uncle Matthew straight
ened up.

  He was wearing khaki shorts, a matching short-sleeved shirt and a pith helmet. In his shirt pocket was a spiral notebook and a pen. I’m sure he fancied himself an adventurer, but to me he looked a little daffy, like a cartoon character or a slightly addle-brained boy scout.

  “Fifty-three degrees east of north,” he said, removing the notebook and jotting this down. “Assuming an equilateral triangle, that makes our third point either here, seven degrees west of north, or here, a hundred and thirteen degrees east.”

  He showed me the notebook, where he had sketched a triangle atop two intersecting lines labeled with the points of the compass.

  “Our third point can’t be east . . . it falls in the ocean. You see how simple it is? The only possible location is here.”

  He left me to puzzle over his drawing, while he returned to the transit, which he swiveled around until it pointed toward the pond.

  “Equal sides and equal weight,” he muttered to himself. “Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Triangulus mysticus. Triangulus benedicti. Prudence, justice and mercy.”

  All at once, I heard laughter. A moment later, Emily’s friend Stephanie appeared below us. She was walking down Beach Road with another girl, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen her and Emily together for several days. Automatically, I assumed that they had had a falling out, and just as automatically, I started thinking up ways to mend Emily’s hurt feelings.

  “At the edge of the woods. That’s where you’ll find it.”

  “Find what?” My mind had gone blank.

  “A rock, I would think. Or a cairn of some sort. There, I would say.”

  I followed his finger. It was pointing into the thickest part of the woods. There was no way on earth I was going to get through that. Not in the two days we had left for vacation. Not without a path.

  “Go around,” he said. “Follow the edge of the cove. Go at low tide.”

  His vision of a sacred space, which had worked its way under my skin, now paled beside my preoccupation with Emily. You go, I wanted to say. You look.

  But he was old, and I was young, and there was no sense offending him unnecessarily. We left it that I’d look if I had time. And the next day, with everybody miraculously taken care of, it turned out I did.

  Skirting the undeveloped, rear shoreline of the cove is a deer trail that at high tide is submerged. But at ebb tide it’s passable, and in jeans and old sneakers I made my way through the marsh grass and the mud. The day was mild and still: except for sparrows flitting in and out of cattails and egrets picking through the flats, nothing moved. I passed some nondescript rocks, the remnants of an old dock, and a tire that had washed ashore, hardly things to qualify as holy. Reaching the end of the trail, I turned around and re-traced my steps, paying closer attention this time.

  Two of the rocks, I noted, were boulder-sized and larger than the rest. One was littered with broken shells, remnants, I assumed, of a gull’s meal. The other was covered with poison ivy. From where I stood, both the knoll and the dinosaur balloon were visible. It seemed more or less the right spot. But what spot, I wondered, was that? There was a nearby apple tree that was failing under a burden of bittersweet. Also a rotted cedar filled with holes. And these two rocks, which were ordinary at best.

  I looked another fifteen minutes before giving up and heading home. I felt both disappointed and relieved. Hope tends to run in me like water, and sometimes I can’t distinguish the false from the true. True hope is uplifting. I think of it as based on strength. False hope is a sign of weakness. It’s a result of not being honest with oneself, not being willing to see things as they are.

  I was relieved to come up empty because I had begun to suspect that the search was one of those self-defeating hopes, one of those false promises, like Granddaddy telling me I was special, assuring me there was nothing wrong. Vaguely, I blamed Uncle Matthew for hooking me on this cock-eyed vision of his, for getting me started. On the other hand, I understood how irresistible the idea of an ancient seat of power could be. This was a man, after all, who had dedicated his life to the world of the spirit and the soul. Had I been composed a little differently, I could easily have done the same.

  That night my mother cooked lobsters and curried rice, an end of vacation tradition, our last supper. Jody was dumb­struck as she dropped the brownish-green creatures in the pot and ten minutes later pulled them out bright orange. It was a transformation of magical proportions, though neither of the kids would go so far as to eat one. Jody on the refusal-to-try-anything-new principle, Emily on the loftier grounds of unwillingness to participate in such a brutal slaughter. Jack pointed out that she had had no such compunction when she was gleefully boiling up her bucketful of crabs from the pond. That, she replied, was different.

  “How was it different?” he asked.

  “How would you like to have your hands tied up and kept half-frozen until someone decides it’s time to kill you?”

  “If you don’t bind their claws, they could take your finger off,” said Jack.

  “It’s cruel.”

  He tried to ease her conscience. “When they’re cold like that, they’re not suffering. They’re not thinking about tomorrow. They’re probably not thinking at all.”

  “Where did you get such a soft heart, Emily?” my mother asked.

  “It’s not like I have some big thing for lobsters,” Emily said. “It’s just I feel bad for them.”

  “At home we eat vegetarian mostly,” I said in her defense.

  My mother did not reply. She didn’t have to. The look she gave me was enough.

  She pushed the serving bowl of rice toward Emily. “Well then you better fill up on this.”

  “I’m not hungry anymore,” said Emily, having eaten virtually nothing. “Can I be excused?”

  Jack glanced at me. Was discipline in order? I could feel my mother’s disapprobation.

  “Yes,” I said. “You may be. Go ahead.”

  She carried her plate to the kitchen, where she grabbed an apple and some crackers. She was almost out the door, when she stopped and came a few steps back.

  “I’m going out. Okay?”

  “Where?” I asked.

  She shrugged noncommittally.

  “I saw your friend Stephanie the other day. Is she still around?”

  “They’re leaving tomorrow.”

  “Maybe you should say goodbye. Exchange addresses.”

  “Mom.”

  “Let her go,” said Jack.

  “I’d like a destination.”

  “I’m taking a walk,” she said. “Is there some problem with that?”

  It is so hard letting go.

  “No,” I said at length. “No problem. Have fun.”

  She kissed Jack and me goodbye, then went over to my mother. “It was nice of you to get the lobsters, Grandma. I’m sorry I didn’t like them.”

  “I wish I’d known sooner.”

  If it were me, I would have turned my back on her. As it was, I was stiff with fury. But Emily did the opposite. She bent down and gave my mother a hug.

  “I love it here,” she said. “It’s my favorite part of the whole year. Thank you for having us, Grandma.”

  She kissed her on the cheek, then skipped out of the room, waving goodbye at the door.

  My mother, I think, was stunned. I waited for the backlash. But Jack had a better idea.

  “I’ll have more rice,” he said, reaching for the bowl. “One less mouth suits me fine. And if no one minds, I’ll have another lobster, too.”

  “Help yourself,” said my mother.

  “Please,” I added.

  “I’m with Emily,” he said, as he piled on the food. “It’s paradise here. You can’t beat it. Thank you, Grandma.”

  The next day was our last. We would spend the night in a motel at the airport and fly out at dawn the following day. My mother and I took an early morning walk to the breachway by way of Jack’s path. There was a heavy mist in the woods that grew heavier as
we emerged and neared the water. We could heard the songs of birds and the lap of waves but couldn’t see a thing. My mother was sad that we were leaving. I suspected that she was also relieved.

  “I do love the peace and quiet,” she acknowledged.

  “You’re used to living alone.”

  “Yes. Eight years this October since your father died.”

  I nodded. I, too, counted the years.

  “The winters tend to creep by, but the rest of the time seems to fly.”

  “Do you ever think of living with a man again?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t.”

  “Never?”

  She thought about it. “Oh, I guess I did, early on. All our friends were married. There was a certain expectation that I would be again. But I don’t think about it anymore. I enjoy my widowhood. I enjoy having to please no one but myself.”

  My mother had also been molested. While I had chosen to work it out in therapy and elsewhere, she had waited until she could live alone. My father’s untimely death had been in this way both a tragedy and a blessing for her. Up to then she had never in her life been absolutely free of men.

  “I love you, Mom,” I said.

  She took my hand, and a moment later, a great blue heron appeared out of the mist. It flew so close we could hear the rush of air through its wings. So big a bird it seemed almost not a bird at all.

  Later that morning I stopped by Uncle Matthew’s to say goodbye. He had just woken from a nap and wasn’t all there at first. He looked disheveled and old, and it occurred to me that this farewell, this visit—any visit—could be my last with him. I told him I’d been unable to find the third point. For a moment this drew a blank, but then it registered. He heaved a sigh.

  “Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps there is no point. No point, no triangle. Perhaps I’ve led you on a wild goose chase.”

  “Did you make it up, Uncle?”

  He pondered this. “I think not. I think there is a holiness here. The sea, the woods, all the life herein. This land is a great gift to us, Sharon, a great blessing. I believe in its power. I believe in its ability to bring peace. If we fail in our search, it can only be we who are lacking.”