by Summer Wood
Wearily, Len rose.
She threaded his arms through his shirt. She snapped the buttons together with tenderness and care. He pulled on his jeans and Willow fastened the buckle of his belt. Then she sat him in the armchair and she gently eased on each sock, fit each boot to each foot, and wept.
“Go,” she said, pointing to the door.
And Len did.
Willow slept then, for some time. She was pretty sure a day had elapsed—a whole day of sun and heat and brilliance and the night that followed it, lost to her—and that when she woke it was not the same dawn but a new one. It helped her to believe that. It seemed to lend a kind of hope to the prospect that she might make it through.
She finished packing, and then there was one final thing to do.
She sat at her desk and opened the box. Slowly, thoughtfully, Willow gazed at each of the photographs. She spread them across her desk so that no one obscured another. Her son Teddy at nine, the lead in the school play. David at thirteen, stiff in a suit and tie, going off to a debate tournament. Emily before she could walk. All three of them holding a large carved pumpkin the year she left, grinning their goofiest grins, the black patch covering Teddy’s eye. Dozens of photographs, her children caught posed or candid by the camera lens, alone, with each other, with Ross, with herself, all together as a family, without the slightest thought that harm would come, that something—a small thing, really, what did it matter?—would rise up to split them from one another, send them to live separate lives.
And the one that didn’t match. The little blond boy in the baseball jersey and cap, eating an ice cream cone on a set of cement stairs, his mother beside him.
Willow shuffled the others gently back into the box and closed the lid. The last one she left before her on the desk. She drew a sheet of paper from the desk drawer and lifted a pen from the cup. Dear Wrecker, she began.
It seemed important to me to leave you this photograph. I think you can guess who the people are, in it.
She didn’t know how, exactly, to speak to him of this. But she was leaving, now. She had to do this. For him. For Lisa Fay. For Melody, she hoped; and not against her. Willow dipped her head and continued, trusting to what would come.
By now you may have already met your mother. If so, she will tell you the story herself. If not? I hope that one day you will meet her, and that you’ll give her the chance to explain to you what happened, and why, and what it meant to her. It’s not for me to do that. I can only tell you my story.
Willow leaned back in the chair. She wasn’t sure why she needed to tell him this. It didn’t concern him, really. He didn’t know these people. It was possible that he would never meet them. But if she showed him this—that she had made a mistake, and that she knew it, and that it had nothing and everything to do with love—maybe he would understand that there were things that happened that could not be helped, and that all they could do was go on.
And so she went on.
When I was not very much older than you are now, I met a man. We got married, and after a little while our son David was born. After David came Teddy, two years later. And then, four years after Teddy, Emily was born. Ross was a good father. I was a good mother. Our kids were good kids. Ross and I had our disagreements but we never let them get in the way of being parents.
And then one day (a Sunday, I remember, because I was driving the children home from church), something happened. The car hit a patch of ice and spun out of my control and went over an embankment. And the kids were fine. Miraculously, the kids were fine. Except Teddy, who was 12, and it was just that a piece of shattered glass from a Coke bottle he’d held in his hands found its way to his face. It lodged itself in the fold beneath his eye. And even though I got them all out of the car and up the embankment to the road and flagged down help and got Teddy to the hospital, my son lost his vision in that eye.
Willow lifted the pen from the paper. Her hand was shaking slightly and she placed the pen carefully on the desk. She hadn’t told this story to anyone for so long. Not since all those times of repeating it in the courtroom, to the evaluator, to her lawyer.
The accident had changed her. It had changed the way she could mother them. She became fearful, smothering the children more than they could tolerate. The boys were growing older and needed the room to branch out on their own, needed to take chances. And she and Ross—things fell apart between them. Ross drank more. One night, when he’d had so much to drink that his speech slurred and his skin flamed an ugly rose color, Ross turned to her. His voice was thin and incisive, a hot wire laid upon her brain. It was your fault, he said.
Of course it was her fault. Whose fault could it have been? She was driving the car. She had lost control. She knew it was her fault. She hadn’t done anything wrong, but she’d been in charge. Her children had been in her care. And one of them had been harmed in a way that could not be set right.
She did everything she could to set it right, and all it did was make things worse.
I’m leaving, Ross said.
Willow secured a lawyer. She couldn’t make Ross stay, but no judge would take custody from a mother. A good mother, who had done nothing wrong.
She’s unfit, Ross said.
Willow almost laughed. She was fitter than anyone, at anything. She was fitter than Ross.
As far as the judge could see, she was fit.
Our son was blinded as a result of her actions, Ross said.
Accidents happen, the judge said, and besides, he’s got one eye left to see through.
The children are afraid to be with her, Ross said.
Ross was lying. Wasn’t he? The judge ordered an evaluation. The children were questioned. They were old enough, the judge deemed, to choose which parent they would rather live with, and they chose their father.
Well, all right, then, the judge said, and let his gavel fall. Weekends and holidays with their mother.
We’ll fight it, Willow’s lawyer muttered. Don’t lose hope.
It wasn’t hope she lost. It was heart. No, Willow said.
What? Her lawyer was shocked.
I’m leaving, Willow said. Her limbs felt like lead but she forced them to move. They’ll be safe with him. Let them grow up normally.
No mother is not normal, he reminded her. You have weekends. You have holidays.
But she turned her back on him and left, and it had been eighteen years since she’d seen them.
She had not driven once in all that time.
Willow picked up the pen and bent over the page.
Later on, when my husband lost faith in and I were separated, our children were forced to choose between their two parents. At the time, I didn’t see the error of that. I was overwhelmed with shame and anger that they did not choose to be with me.
That was my mistake, not to see. And then I made a bigger mistake. I walked away from them. I told myself they’d be better off without me.
Wrecker. Listen to me. Don’t choose. Melody is your mother. Lisa Fay is your mother, too. It’s not fair, what happened to you as a little boy. But what happened to you after that
She stopped there. May have saved your life, she meant to write. But it hadn’t only saved him. It may have saved them all.
What happened after that was a good thing.
I’m leaving now to see if I can find my children. They’ll all be grown, now, which seems impossible. But if I can find them, and if they’ll see me, I won’t let the time we lost stop us from spending the time ahead in whatever kind of together they allow.
I hope I’ll see you again some day.
Love,
Willow
Willow set the pen aside. She ran the tip of her finger lightly along the deckled edge of the photograph, and straightened it beside the letter. Then she stood and slowly walked the perimeter of the yurt, pausing at each window to gaze at length at the view. She had been looking out these windows for eighteen years. It was time for a change.
Wrecker stood in the
motorcycle showroom in downtown San Francisco and let his gaze run over the shiny chrome of the new Triumph.
The salesman approached. “Hell, yeah,” the man said, tipping his head toward the bike. “If I were a young buck like you? I’d be riding something like this.”
Wrecker glanced at him. The man was balding, gone to pot, with bland hazel eyes and a manufactured smile. Wrecker pegged him for a Honda 750, with a fairing and a sound system and maybe a little trailer he towed behind for long road trips. “I’ve been looking at that Ducati,” Wrecker said.
The salesman stepped over toward the Italian bike and laid a proprietary hand on its gas tank. “This one? Hell of a lot of motorcycle. You’d want to be sure you could handle it.”
Wrecker had a bank check big enough to buy the Triumph outright. His inheritance, compounded quarterly for ten years. He thumbed the check in the front pocket of his jeans. As if life weren’t absurd enough already. An inheritance, from grandparents he never even knew he had. “How much did you say you want for it?”
The man chuckled deep in his throat. His eyes had an unexpected gleam in them. “This one’s a honey, brother. Open her up on the highway and you’d better be hanging on. One forty, one forty-five, and the motor’s just purring like a cat.” He patted the leather seat and fixed Wrecker in his gaze. “Listen to me. You buy this baby, she’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
Wrecker looked at the bike. Then he looked out the window.
He had been where he thought he should go. When he arrived in the city he had gone to an arcade and played foosball all afternoon, let the chimes and bells of the machines and the shouts of the men and boys who stood shoulder to shoulder with him in the hall cover his thoughts with white noise. He had careened like a tourist from one district to the next, wearing down his rubber soles, flashing his transfer at bus drivers and Muni men. He snuck a bike past the monitors at the rental stands and rode it fast through mud bogs in the park. He went to the top floor of an old apartment building and threw glass bottles down the trash chute just to listen to them smash. He found a place in Chinatown where he could buy M-80s; he wired them to a makeshift raft and tried to blow it up offshore. And then he turned eighteen, and found himself standing in the rain outside the big stone building that housed the records downtown.
He could go inside. Tell them his name. And they would hand him his file.
He would learn about the prison, Len had said. He could go there, ask to see her.
But Wrecker had turned away. He had walked faster, turned corners with abandon. He didn’t know if he was running away from or running toward. Or which would work out better.
Wrecker blinked, and looked again at the motorcycle salesman. All of a sudden the only place he wanted to go was home.
“Maybe,” he said, backing toward the door. It had been over a week, longer than he’d ever been away.
He would give it some thought, he told the salesman. And then he stepped out to the street, settled his cap on his head, and pointed himself toward the Mattole.
Melody had driven the hatchback to Eureka, parked it in the lot of the Piggly-Wiggly, and used the pay phone on the corner to call her brother. “Jack?” she said anxiously.
If the answer were yes the news would have leapt out the minute he recognized her voice. “Hey, Mel,” he said.
Her hopes crashed. There was no place to sit down. She leaned her weight on the small metal counter and tried hard not to cry.
“I made your case,” Jack said. “I told him it was the right thing to do. I vouched for you, but he wouldn’t budge.”
Melody nodded.
“You all right?”
She had to focus on breathing. She’d been to see the man who held the note on the farm, and the best he could manage was a two-month extension. If she didn’t come up with the balance by then, he warned, he’d have to file for foreclosure.
“I tried, Mel. He said—”
“Don’t. Jack?” Melody put a hand to her forehead and looked out the glass at the clear sky. “Probably better not to tell me.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Listen. I could cash in some paper. Get you a grand or two.”
Melody shook her head. “That won’t do it. But, thanks. I appreciate it.”
There was a longer pause, and then Jack said, “Dad respects you. That you’ve made it on your own. He says he’s confident you can make it through this too, and that it’ll—”
“Tell him fuck you.” Her voice was sharp. “Okay, Jack? Can you remember that? Fuck you very much.”
“You’re back in the will, Melody.”
“A lot of good that’ll do me if I lose the farm.”
There was a charged moment of silence. “Okay, then,” Jack said. She could tell from the sound of his voice that someone had entered the room. “Okay. Good luck. I’ll talk to you soon.” And he hung up.
Melody pushed her way out of the phone booth, stuffed both hands in her jacket pockets, and forced back the tears she felt rise against her eyelids. How was she supposed to go about any of this? Willow was the one who held things together, who kept it all under control. She had finessed the financing all those years ago, had insisted Melody save for this day. Melody, who couldn’t keep two dimes lodged in one pocket for fear they’d talk each other into leaping out. But she had scrimped and saved and denied herself and put Wrecker’s less pressing needs on hold and squirreled away just enough to meet her end of the payment. She had worked shitty jobs when the Merc folded and got involved in complicated fruitless moneymaking schemes and had nearly killed herself and Wrecker those months they’d ventured into the soap-making business, the fumes unexpectedly overcoming them; and then she’d slowly paid those doctors’ bills, eked out enough to invest in the tie-dye equipment, found a way to turn a small profit at the end of an exhausting season of work. She had met her end of the bargain.
A solid vein of grief ran like an unmined ore straight through the center of Melody’s heart. Bow Farm was the only place she had ever lived that felt like home. It had made a mother of her. She’d turned the corner from a wild, unhappy youth to a middle age that felt like something she could settle into, something that would let her, even, even, okay, blossom, was there a better way to put it?—late bloomer that she was, let her grow into someone she wouldn’t mind spending the rest of her life with. As.
Alone, maybe. Her son gone AWOL, furious with her—and her best friend falling to pieces.
Melody stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and pictured what they stood to lose. Her ramshackle barn. Ruth’s kitchen, clean as a whistle. The little clearing upslope of them all where Wrecker had started to build himself a house. A home. His home, a home he could count on for the rest of his life. Every little patch of ground was soaked with who they were. And if they lost that?
Melody shoved her hands deeper in her pockets and kept walking.
Wrecker hitched a ride with a cement truck that got him as far as their turnoff from the Mattole Road. He hoofed it the rest of the way.
The hatchback was gone from its parking spot. He felt a little stab at its absence. He trudged down the hill and pushed his way through the farmhouse door. Ruth looked up from the lump of dough she was kneading at the kitchen table and Wrecker tried to read her expression. Something was wrong. “Meg?” he asked, his heart in his throat.
“She’s fine. She’s home with Len.”
He flashed her a tentative smile.
Ruth wiped her hands on the sides of her jeans and came around the table. “I’m glad you’re back.” She hugged him. “I missed you.” She held on to the sleeves of his shirt and stood back to look at him. “You don’t look any older. But happy birthday, anyway.”
Wrecker shrugged. “Not so happy, really. Nobody made me a cake.” The corner of his mouth tilted up in a grin. “You still could, Ruthie.”
“Maybe I will. Chocolate, with chocolate frosting. That’s what I’ll do.” She squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll never lose weigh
t living near you, boy.” Ruth crossed back to her dough and resumed kneading. “Did you find her?” she asked casually.
Wrecker’s face clouded. “Did Melody say something?”
“She did.”
“She shouldn’t have.”
“Maybe not. But you don’t really think she could keep a secret around me, do you?” Her eyes crinkled, and then softened into seriousness. “Listen. Why don’t you go see Willow?”
“I’ll talk to her when I’m ready.”
“I think you should go now,” Ruth said gently.
Wrecker turned sharply and poured himself a glass of water from the tap. He opened the refrigerator door and studied its contents. Ruth kept a tender eye on him.
“Leave it alone, Ruthie,” he muttered, and walked outside.
The yurt had suffered in the last few seasons. Flickers had taken a new interest in it and had hammered sizable holes in much of the cedar trim, and the waterproof top had proved no match for the rain that drenched the Mattole Valley. The deck was softening with pockets of rot. Wrecker stood outside in the meadow. There was a stillness that said no one was home. He called Willow’s name, and when no one answered Wrecker climbed the steps and ducked through the door.
Inside, a corner of the floor was stacked with moving boxes. The shelves were empty. All of the books had been packed away. Willow had broken the loom down into its composite pieces, gathered them in bundles with twine. The place smelled of lemon oil. Wrecker made a circuit of the room. It seemed smaller, so much plainer, without her. He had never noticed how shabby it had become. He had not been there in some time. He and Willow—it had never gone easy for them, but he hated the thought of her leaving. And then Wrecker paused at the old trestle table she used as a work desk. There was no way he could miss the sheet of paper addressed to him. Or the photograph beside.
Wrecker felt his anger rise. He hadn’t asked for this. If he’d wanted to know, he’d have gone to find out on his own. He looked around in a mounting fury. The yurt was a flimsy structure, never meant to last this long. He could rip it from its anchors, send it asail in a stiff wind. He could burn the place down. He could destroy the letter before he glanced at it again and never know its contents.