by Lisa Samson
“Do you think they bought it?” he asked as they waved the two down the driveway.
“Yes. Don’t you?”
“Not for a second, honey. But they know you’re safe, fed, and warm. I think they know that’s all they could do for you too. And your mother …”
“She’s still not well.”
“Seems very fragile.”
Elisabeth Seymour still held a childlike cuteness about her, her hair long and dark with bangs skimming along her eyebrows, her brown eyes large in her pale face. Not a whole lot to fall back on, as his mother used to say, if she got sick. And she’d gotten sick.
She’d spoken to Claudius while her husband was saying goodbye to May. “I can’t do it, Claudius.” She wiped a sudden tear off her cheek. “I can’t be there for her. I’m so sorry.” And she finally collapsed under the weight of her own emotions, into his arms, where she sobbed in the chilly spring wind, helpless.
They were all helpless, he realized. Where was a strong person with the know-how to relieve this situation? How could God throw them all together to cook in this stew of incompetence, desperation, and powerlessness?
But the letters from home increased after that, and twice a month the Seymours made the drive from Lexington. They ate pie and talked about their lives, and nobody ever mentioned Rwanda.
During one visit Michael Seymour pulled Claudius aside. Claudius liked the college professor standing with him. His speech was always measured and precise, but warm. He never missed a thing anybody said, as if he stored up all that info in his long, graying ponytail.
“Should I insist she come back home?”
“She won’t anyway. She’s stuck.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Me neither, Michael.”
“Has she made any progress at all?”
“She does fine here. But just here. I couldn’t tell you what she would do out in the big wide world.”
“What a mess.”
And Claudius had always thought everything was tidy. In a way. At least here at Borne’s Last Chance. Now it was anything but neat. Not with that woman sitting in there missing her baby and not knowing what to do and having no strength for the task if she did.
Next Michael pulled May aside. Claudius, chatting with Elisabeth about the fiddle and showing her his old, handmade mountain instrument, heard their murmurs. Michael implored her to come home. But May refused on the grounds she had too much work to do and besides, she loved it on the farm so much.
For various reasons, they all chose to leave it at that.
“She’s twenty-four years old,” Michael said to Claudius. “I can’t come in like I did when she was sixteen. I told her what I think she needs to do, and that I’ll do all I can to make it happen. But I can’t make her do it.”
“That’s got to come from her,” Claudius agreed.
“Well, I thank you again for taking good care of her. I don’t know where she’d be without you.”
Back with you, Claudius wanted to say, because he knew May would have had no other choice. He knew he held the key. He could tell her to leave, to get away from the farm, that her time was up.
But he never would do that. No. He just couldn’t.
• 11 •
Ruthie clued Claudius in on the importance of April 6 the day before it arrived. She caught him by the arm as he was coming out of the feed store, a bag of chicken feed over his left shoulder.
“Now you don’t want to go reminding her of it, but just be aware. It was a year ago today that it all began in Rwanda. She may not realize it, but the body itself has a way of remembering.”
Claudius knew what she meant. Every June 13 he felt depressed and irritable, and then he’d remember, long after supper, that it was the anniversary of his father’s death.
“I’ll be on the lookout. Maybe I’ll make us something special for dinner tomorrow.”
“The IGA is running a special on rib eyes, $5.99 a pound.”
He whistled and started for the Galaxy. “I don’t know ’bout that.”
She looked very attractive in a pink and yellow dress covered in large daisies. She’d slid on pink shoes to match. And she’d just been to the beauty parlor.
“Oh, come on, you old cheapskate.” She followed him. “You never spend money on anything and you know it. It’ll do you good to expand your horizons.”
“On steak?”
“If that’s what it takes, then yes.”
“You got a new hairdo.”
She ran a hand over some curls at the back of her head, the ebony shot through with strands of gold. “I made a bold move, Claudius.”
“Looks all right on you, Ruthie.”
“I’m feeling a little bit restless. Been around this town my entire life.”
He dropped the feed into the trunk. “It’s a good town.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned her hip against the back fender of the car. “I’ve been grieving for half a century.”
“Well, you never do anything halfway, Ruthie.”
“True. But isn’t that a little ridiculous? Jordy would have called someone who did that a fool.”
“Yes, he would have.”
“Have I been a fool?”
“No.” He closed the trunk. “Well, I’m going to get those steaks, I reckon. What’s your next step?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. How much time we got left, Claudius?”
“Only the good Lord knows.”
She pushed off the car and looked down at her feet. “Getting old isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.”
“And it’s not cracked up to be much.”
“Maybe I should go away for a while.”
Panic arose inside him. Silly old man. He shoved it down. “Never did hurt anybody.”
He walked away. He had some steaks to buy. Ruthie could go wherever she liked. It wouldn’t matter to him. Not really. It never did. He would still raise his chickens, his tomatoes, his pumpkins. He saw that.
“See you later, Ruthie!” he called over his shoulder nevertheless.
He put the steaks in the refrigerator and then hurried around to the scrap pile beside the barn. May-May had decided to make up her own recipe book. He’d bought her some notebook paper and a binder, and she busied herself most afternoons copying down recipes. He never asked where she pictured herself making them. Hopefully she had an idea. A little place of her own. Working at a magazine, like she’d planned to do before she went to Africa. She’d be set for a while.
At three o’clock that afternoon, he ushered her to the northwest side of the barn. “I made something for you.”
A greenhouse, made out of French doors that a friend of the family, a contractor, had dropped off after redoing someone’s kitchen. Claudius had made a backless cube of them, then attached it to the barn. “You love flowers, May-May? We’ll grow flowers like you never seen this year.”
She looked it over. “You made that in one day?”
“Oh, sure. It wasn’t hard.”
“Can we sell the flowers?”
“If you’ll come with me.”
“We’ll see. Did your mother ever sell her flowers?”
“No. She give ’em away mostly. She knew how happy they seem to make folk.”
May ran a hand over the side of the greenhouse. “It’s very simple, isn’t it? Flowers. Why is it? Why do they cheer people up?”
“Do we have to know that?” he asked.
“I guess not. Do you know it’s been a year tomorrow?”
“Ruthie let on.”
“I figured she would.”
April 6 wouldn’t be a day May could sit around and get depressed, Claudius decided. So he went upstairs to wake her up a little early.
Strange, she lay asleep with her hand in the nightstand drawer. He looked in at her fingers resting on some red fabric. He gently worked it out from beneath her fingers and unfolded a long, narrow strip of cloth, a cross embroidered at either end.
He woke her.
Later, as he helped with the breakfast dishes, he said, “Well, May-May, I’ve got plans for us today.”
“Well, I was planning on scrubbing the floors today.”
“They’ll keep ’til tomorrow. Dirt never minds waiting.” He handed her the cutlery, ready to be dried and put away.
She enveloped them in the old checkered dish-towel.
“I’ve got some things to show you. It’ll just be a nice walk. You think you’re up to that?”
She’d gone further into her shell during the cold. It was time to let spring be spring. So far Claudius had let her pretend she needed to stay holed up in the house. But she was ready for some fresh air. He’d even set up the lawn chair before she awakened.
“What could a little walk hurt, May-May?”
“Maybe you’re right. Sure, I’ll come.” She breathed in through her nose and laid her hands flat on the table.
“Good girl.”
They finished up, and she slipped one of his old flannel shirts over her long-sleeved T-shirt, one of several from a Fruit of the Loom multi-colored pack Claudius brought back from Rose Brothers department store in town. Not long after she arrived, she’d come to him in tears, unable to face her own clothing.
“They remind me too much of who I was, Claudius. Who I am now. I can’t stand them for another day.”
He’d also bought her a pair of light gray work pants, much too large. Maybe one day he’d figure out how to judge sizes. Thankfully he had an extra belt.
Dressed in such heightened fashion—yes, he’d seen enough magazine covers at the Rite-Aid to know he had a terrible sense for clothing—she accompanied him to the far side of the yard where ivy vines grew in a great, leafy lump.
“You see that? Underneath all that are my mother’s roses. I kept them up until about three years ago. The life might be choked out of them, but I was wondering if you might try your hand at bringing them back.”
Violet smiled even more broadly back on the cookbook shelf, he was sure.
May nodded like a bobblehead, her grin matching Violet’s. “I would.”
“Well, all right then. Come see here now.”
They walked to the edge of the woods behind the barn, over grass ready to grow tender and thin and bright green as it came out of dormancy. The farm was waking up.
A patch of bright purple caught her eye, and she pointed. “What are those?”
“That there is my mother’s bulb garden. Mostly the crocuses and grape hyacinth are blooming now, but in a couple a weeks, glory, you’ll see so many daffodils you’ll have to wear sunglasses!” He laughed at his joke. He liked having someone to joke with.
She joined him. “Can I weed here? Maybe give the plants space to breathe? I mean, they need that, right?”
“They sure do. Used to keep this up too. Just so much a man my age can do, nowadays. I have to be a little choosy.”
Did he ever. Had two of those WPW episodes yesterday alone. He might have to slow down more, get rid of the chickens. Aw, no. He couldn’t get rid of those ladies.
They walked up the side of the woods toward the beginning of the front field. “Now I’m thinkin’, May-May, that you can take the first three or four rows and plant all the flowers you want. You go through those flower catalogs and circle what you’d like, and we’ll go from there.”
“Really? That’ll be expensive, won’t it?”
He winked. “I got a little tucked away. It won’t break the bank.”
“If you’re sure.”
“Oh, it’ll be nice having all that color around the place again. I’d forgotten how flowers tell me how much God loves me.”
“I’m not—”
“Well, really now, honey, they don’t need to be that pretty and that different from one another, do they? They could be, say, just as green as the grass and the leaves and still feed the honeybees. And now, let me show you something, just because.”
He offered her his arm and she threaded hers through as they walked up the hill and into the woods, the path she’d seen him take with the dogs day after day. They soon began an upward climb.
“If you get tired, I’ll stop so we can rest.”
“My legs feel a little rubbery,” she said. “I’ve been in the house too long.”
“Do your knees still hurt?”
“They do a little. I figure I may never really get over the discomfort. And most likely arthritis will set in there.”
“I hate to say it, but you’re most likely right about that.”
After about twenty minutes they arrived at a clearing atop the hill, what was, really, one of the foothills of the Appalachians. Before them an entire world spread out, the trees still bare, limbs sliding against one another in the breeze, the higher mountains bluing the distant horizon. A golden sun brightened the peaks; indigo shadows deepened the valleys. And birds. Singing and swooping above the bare treetops and diving close to the arboreal floor.
“Look at the world, May-May. It sure is a pretty sight.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Doesn’t it just fill your heart with wonder?” he asked.
“Yes, it does.”
“Wooh!” he exclaimed, and he pressed a hand to his heart doing that crazy rhythm. “I think I need to sit down for just a minute or two. That walk took it out of me.”
They sat and looked before them, the dogs plopping down beside them. He knew she was feeling something. He found he could tell now and he didn’t know why, or even how. It was just a sense he had.
“But it’s not the whole world, is it?” she said. “Not even a mere sliver. Even less than that.”
He knew she was right. He just never knew how to come to grips with it.
“Just a dot in the eye of God. And who cares about a dot?” she continued.
He felt the blood drain out of his face, and sweat broke out on his forehead.
“Are you okay, Claudius?”
“Oh, I’ll be fine, just fine.” He hated these strange heart things.
It didn’t last long. He’d just been doing too much.
After a lunch of fried potatoes and onions, she suggested he lie down for a bit of a nap.
“I think I’ll do just that, May-May. Would you mind milking Eloise?”
“I’d be happy to.”
He had no idea whether or not she could. But it just didn’t seem to matter. Eloise would understand. She was that kind of cow.
He was cooking the steaks several hours later when May came into the kitchen, freshly showered, hair slicked back and wet. It would dry and hang into her eyes and she’d keep pushing it back with her hand. She told him she hadn’t decided whether to cut it short or let it grow out, that right now it was in that “in-between stage.”
“Eloise didn’t seem to mind my fumbling fingers on her udder, long-suffering bovine that she is.”
“She’s a sweet little cow.” He turned one steak over, then the other. They’d better be good. He’d never spent twelve and a half dollars on meat for one meal in his life!
“I just rested my head against her flank, feeling the warmth of her. I never knew how much a person could love a cow!”
Yep, the meat was browning nicely, and the irony of cooking beef while talking about loving cows wasn’t lost on him. “She’s a good old gal.”
“She seems like the nice shy woman who gained more weight than the rest of her classmates and never felt comfortable at the reunions.”
He laughed. “You really are a writer, aren’t you?”
“I was.” She sighed. “A journalist.”
“Maybe you should start up again. I’ll bet that journalist is still interested in your story. Maybe you should just write it down.”
“I don’t know. I also threw some feed to the chickens and fed the goat. Why do you keep that little goat around? He doesn’t give us milk or meat.”
“Because he’s funny. Got no other reason.”
>
“Maybe I need to spend more time with that goat!”
The next morning May pulled down her new recipe book as Claudius slid into his muck boots. An envelope poking out from the pages caught his eye. The letter from the reporter. He pointed at it.
“Maybe it’d be good to finally talk about it, honey. To someone who doesn’t know you.”
“I don’t know, Claudius. I mean, what if it brings it all back? I’ve been pretty good at forgetting everything here.”
He knew it had to be otherwise. “It’s been a mask, May-May. A pretty little mask, and I’ve been honored to walk along with you, but someday—”
“I know. I’ll have to face it.” She lifted the right corner of her mouth. “But it hasn’t been so bad shoving it aside, I have to say.”
“It’s easy enough to do. Let’s remove that ivy tomorrow and give them roses some room to grow. That might be an easier first step than inviting some writer we don’t know over for tea.”
She laid a hand on his arm and thanked him.
But she laid the letter from the writer, Eugene Damaroff, on the hoosier. “Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to at least think about it.”
Tomorrow was laundry day, so she gathered the week’s clothes. A few Tshirts and flannels, work pants, jeans, and the big white granny panties Claudius just laid on her bed without a word. And Playtex Cross Your Heart bras. He guessed that was the kind Violet wore. It embarrassed the tar out of him to purchase those in town, and it might have set the tongues to wagging, but Claudius just said,
“Heard of a woman who’s down and out.” And Ruthie, standing beside him, bore him out, saying, “That sure is the truth!”
So much for the platinum blonde college girl with the deep tan and designer handbags, whose every move emitted a jangle of jewelry and a puff of perfume. As much as he loved her, there was a part of him that grieved that little slip of a thing who drank too much and liked to kiss the boys.
The next morning they ate a quick breakfast of Shredded Wheat, the big biscuit kind, and milk from Eloise. “Seems to me the milk you got out of her is better’n mine,” Claudius said.
“You’re the nicest person in the whole world.”
“Well, I don’t know about that.”