Leaving Ashwood

by Cynthia Kraack

  “Alleluia.” My exclamation came out puny on volume and high with fervor.

  “Agreed.” Phoebe said entering the room. “It’s a huge relief to watch you toddle down the hall.” She unfurled a blanket and fussed with tucking it around my feet, legs, and up to my armpits. “I was a bit worried that by being here, I jinxed Christmas this year.”

  Faith stopped using my communicator and looked up with a puzzled face. I understood my narcissistic stepchild’s thought pattern, but didn’t feel strong enough to diplomatically explain Phoebe’s thinking to Faith. At that moment the holiday began as David, Amber, John and Terrell joined us with a tray that carried a teapot, hot chocolate, sweets, cheeses, and fruit.

  For a half hour, conversation ranged from the room’s velvet ribbon trim to gifts waiting to be purchased and how wonderful the weather felt for December. I listened, spoke sparingly and relished the realization of being on the mend.

  “Have we been able to convince Mom’s doctors that a Christmas tree in the living room won’t send her into sneezing and wheezing?” Phoebe asked after I admired a wreath cookie. “She didn’t have a negative response to the garland in the bedroom.”

  “Don’t be letting Frances or Lao know you snuck spruce in that room, or both our heads will be on a platter.” Terrell’s warning brought laughter from David.

  “Having picnicked with you in the middle of the blue spruce grove, I thought we were safe with a small experiment,” David said. “Still, we were probably lucky you didn’t react to it.”

  John excused himself and pulled Faith out with him. Left with three people I could trust to tell me the truth, I asked about Milan.

  Phoebe looked to David. “His condition is still critical but stable,” he said. “He is older, not in great health, and didn’t have the advantage of the timely antihistamine injection.”

  “I should talk to him.” My words came out slowly. “Where is he?”

  “In a private nursing facility,” David answered. “Still needs a respirator. His heart, lungs, and other organs were impacted.”

  “Will he survive?” Phoebe sat at my feet, took both of them into her lap and rubbed my toes.

  “His daughter told me the doctors say there’s a fair chance that he’ll be off the respirator by Christmas and sitting up by New Year’s.” David stopped. I could see him weigh words. “He won’t return to work.”

  “He’s always been a part of my world. Even before you, David.”

  “I know.” David didn’t elaborate on Milan’s condition or future. “We’ll invite Milan and his wife to spend time here when he’s back on his feet. He’s always loved Ashwood.”

  “How is this story being covered in the media?” For the first time I reached for news of the outside world although fatigue had begun to shorten my attention span.

  “It’s huge.” Phoebe seemed to take leadership. “International story about attempted assassinations in the American capitol. Lots of good pictures of you. Lots of calls for investigations.” She straightened the blanket, brushed off crumbs. “Your doctors have placed you off limits and there is enough security here to scare off even the craziest journalist.”

  “Has anyone claimed responsibility?” I coughed, remembered the first tickle in my throat that afternoon, reached for water.

  David, Phoebe, and Terrell looked at each other. I sensed there was an answer, but not one I would hear today. “Nothing definite,” offered David. Phoebe squinted and shook her head slightly. “I meant there’s only speculation. You shouldn’t be thinking about this.”

  I told myself I’d feel stronger tomorrow and would ask again. For the moment, I nodded and coughed and searched for my inhaler as I grew anxious that the cough would put me back into the cycle of losing my breath completely.

  Chapter 49

  Andrew and Noah made it home for the holidays. I felt my fragility in their gentle hugs. For the first time, Ashwood’s front door was closed Christmas Eve to all but family and close friends. We mourned Paul, we celebrated a marriage, and each other’s presence. Although I had little appetite for the wonderful food set out, I sat at the table for brunch both days and listened to the flow of my family’s story telling.

  On Christmas Eve night we recreated our annual tradition and watched greetings from many of Ashwood’s past workers in the dining room with Clarissa, Magda, Terrell, Lao, Max and their extended families. We chuckled at the chunky guys who had been skinny house staff, admired babies and husbands, felt proud of college degrees, knew we had supported the development of hundreds of good people.

  We had a white Christmas and shared breakfast with all the staff that called Ashwood home, including the teen workers who had no other place to be that morning. I remembered Christmases when the residence’s halls had been noisy with dozens of children opening two gifts each around a big tree decorated with a few strands of electric lights, ornaments from David’s home, and homemade garland. The past hung close.

  “So this is how your parents felt when they came to live with us,” I said to David on Christmas night. “The older generation learning to let go.”

  “They didn’t run a complex international company or head up a national commission at the president’s request.” He drew me close.

  “But they were grandparents many times and pulled their family through a catastrophic depression.” I wasn’t sure where my thoughts wanted to go. “I don’t feel as much part of the future as I did five years ago. It’s not bad, just different.”

  “After January first I’m dragging you back to Hartford, Ltd. We’ve got lots of future to explore.” He nuzzled my neck. “You looked beautiful today and we were all relieved to see you stronger.” I felt a gentle kiss near my ear. “You are really loved, Annie.”

  My dreams that night were of Ashwood, of coyotes running across snow, of children playing in apple orchards fragrant with blossoms, of rooms filled with familiar faces. When I awoke I wanted to kickstart recovery, to understand what had happened in Milan’s Washington, D.C., apartment deep in the Bureau.

  After David and the guys went to Giant Pines I called Lao and Frances. We met in the sitting area of the bedroom where we wouldn’t be interrupted.

  “I need to know what happened and what’s happening now.” I knew they had anticipated this question. “Stop sheltering me. I’m ready to move on.”

  Frances nodded to Lao who took the lead. “In a nutshell, the vice-president has been implicated in cooperating with a powerful coalition of multi-corps to stop the ethics board. Hernandez has announced she will not run for re-election. There is significant instability in the capitol.” He finished and looked at me.

  “My God.” I could barely whisper. “What did Milan and I do?”

  My friend and medical caregiver took my hand. “A majority of Congress is united behind one of your Senate supporters to fill the vice-president vacancy. Hernandez has no choice but to follow their wishes. She’ll be a hobbled lame duck with a strong watchdog in the room.” Frances’s fingers crossed my wrist, monitoring my pulse as she spoke. “Most Americans would say you and Milan are heroes who tried to stop wholesale power going to the multi-corps.”

  She turned my hand back over. “Breathe, Annie.”

  “I’ll have to go back and finish my appointment.” A small wheeze ended my sentence.

  “You’re not doing that.” Lao made his sentence into a parental command. “Hernandez has decommissioned you and turned your work over to a Senate committee.”

  “But I didn’t give my work to anyone.” Again Frances and Lao looked complicit.

  “There is language in the agreements you signed that allowed designated representatives of the federal government free access to all records and materials assembled by you under certain conditions.” I listened to Lao’s explanation and remembered Raima reading segments to me during a discussion. “T
wo criteria have been met—a significant threat of disruption within the government and your physicians have forbidden travel for an indefinite period of time.”

  A sense of responsibility for the national political storm stuck in my conscience. I took risks setting the congressional lions loose against the multi-corps defense of the U.S. labor market. I asked for the return of my data pad and communicator. Frances refused, but gave me a reader pad and permission to follow the outside world without becoming involved in its doings for another week.

  Chapter 50

  Management experts have always underestimated the wild element possible in changing the human condition. Sometimes change happens by accident, upsetting traditions that hold the pieces of fragile co-existence in place. It’s comforting to graph out how a decision or action will topple obsolete behaviors. But people are multi-dimensional and when boxes are shuffled some of them will drag their feet while others run faster than expected.

  Changing a democracy is even messier. Nothing happens unless trades are made between enemies as well as friends. My six months dabbling in the Washington, D.C., pond made me hungry to be where the big decisions about citizens’ rights were being made. Healing at Ashwood felt like crawling to the moon. I could have been part of the big debate about the U.S. as a government for the people and by the people versus a broker of people, services, land, and resources. But I had no choice.

  Illinois Senator Tyler Baye, a Democrat who became vice-president, wheedled permission from Frances to meet with me later in January. We talked about the ethics board’s files, about the economic advisors’ concerns over change, about the possibility of political failure. He was as persuasive as he was inquisitive. I wished him well.

  From my office I watched the Democrats pick out small chinks in the massive Bureau machine like re-instating parts of the Fair Labor Standards and limiting the role of big business in public institutions of learning.

  “Go for a walk, fire-breather?” Phoebe stopped by my office on one of the first warm days of March. She had a string of nicknames for my business and politic roles. “I’ve got time and I hear our mutual keeper wants you to get fresh air.”

  I took another look at news breaking about child labor laws before responding. “I’ve become a news media junkie.” She laughed and held out my jacket.

  “How does it feel to have your baby out of the house?” Phoebe had escorted Faith to Montreal in my place. “For someone who wanted to stay here and begin working, Faith is excited about eight weeks at McGill.”

  “She’s ready to learn how to live on her own.” I inhaled cool air, waited for a cough that didn’t happen. “The past ten months have been extraordinarily stressful for all of us. It was her first spell of living with uncertainty.”

  “I talked with Milan this morning.” Phoebe twisted her hair up on her head and jammed a pencil through the curls. “Did you know he turns seventy in June? I knew he was older than Dad, but seventy seems very old.” She stretched her steps. I did the same. “I’m going to visit him this weekend. Want to come along? We have to use secured transit.”

  Tulips had pushed up inches through the ground near the residence. Impulsively I locked my arm through Phoebe’s drawing one of the big laughs we all loved. “Sure.”

  “I’m proud of you, Mom.” She hugged my arm to her body. “When I was young, you were always in charge of everything—the family, the business, parties, whatever. I was surprised back in June that you had become a true business exec and gave Amber total run of the residence and human resources management. That was a major change.”

  “Clarissa’s been a good coach.” Phoebe’s eyebrows rose. “I knew that would surprise you. She challenged me over and over about using my time well and about giving people responsibility for their own issues.” We separated as the path became uneven. “I didn’t have any one to kick my butt about how I used time until she found her voice.”

  “Andrew sent me first designs for his house.” She turned back toward the residence. “I said I’d help supervise the building since I’ll be here for some time.”

  We walked peacefully, my thoughts jumping to the possibility Andrew and Phoebe would find a future together. Removed from the atmosphere of the Bureau labs, with the help of Frances, Phoebe was a fundamentally good person. She applied her intelligence and work talents to defining a good life.

  “Do you think we’ll have another depression if the Democrats get all the changes they want?” Her voice didn’t ask for assurances.

  “No. That’s rhetoric to scare people.” I believed what I said.

  “Exactly.” She loosened her hair. “I agree.”

  Before we went inside I assessed the big old stucco house, never made anything more than barely handsome over the years. But the red front doors were open. Pots of pansies lined the wide stone steps. People came to Ashwood for friendship, business, comfort, family. Some came for respite.

  “Tell me about your research,” I asked and listened to her vision of the future.

  Acknowledgements

  As the Ashwood trilogy closes, I am thankful to family, friends, readers and editors who have kept the story alive. For the third cover in this series, I thank Terrence Scott. For the major story editing, I am grateful for the work of Ben Barnhart. For their continued confidence in my work, North Star Press of St. Cloud is appreciated.