Threads
By
Patsy Brookshire
Uncial Press Aloha, Oregon
2010
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events described herein are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-60174-112-7
eBook ISBN 10: 1-60174-112-X
Threads
Copyright © 2006, 2011 by Patsy Brookshire
Cover Design: Andrew E. Cier
Front cover photo of Anna Gagne-Hawes
courtesy of Greg Chaney
Copyright © 2011
Trade paper edition published by Newport LAZERQUICK
in conjunction with Dancing Moon Press
All rights reserved. Except for use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author or publisher.
Published by Uncial Press,
an imprint of GCT, Inc.
Dedication
To Bob Chaney
Thank you for reading Threads, supporting, encouraging, and teaching me how to change a tire in case I should ever need to.
THANKS
One thinks when one writes a book that one made it all happen by oneself, but then a window in one's brain opens up...good heavens, it took a bunch of folks to complete this project! Therefore I say thank you to:
Sharon Bushard whose encouragement was constant, and whose spirit is my constant guide.
Readers and editors, in alphabetical order:
Gloria Miller Allen, Michelle Annette, Sharon Bushard, Bob Chaney, Fara Darland, Terry Goldade, Monica Goubaud, Susie Hatlevig, Avis Nelson, Perry Sams, Barbara Utterback, Chantall VanWey, and Dorothy Voreis. Of particular mention for her unerring attention to detail is Bonnie Brylinsky Chaney.
The incredibly patient women of our Focus writing group who listened, and critiqued this work: Margaret Arvanitis, Kelli Brugh, Mariah Matthews, Karleene Morrow and Sunshine Keck, I hope to give as much back to you.
My eleven aunts who, though none of them is Aunt Sophie, each contributed spirit and talent, giving life to her character, and who each, in her own way, encouraged me: Mary, Mabel, Lena, Lily, Bessie, Jessie, Virginia, Joy Brookshire; Wyona, Irene, Nellie Lackey. My six uncles, although none of them are Zack or Willie, did work these lives: Bill, Ernie, Edgar, Bob, Derl Brookshire; Morris Lackey.
My son Greg Chaney and my daughter Jennifer Chaney Haggerty, for your lifetime of patience with this and other writing projects.
My mother, Helen Louise Lackey Burton Brookshire, my father, Clarence Wilbur Brookshire and, sister Wanda Burton Bondi, from whose lives I took pieces for this story.
Curves women and co-workers who listened, and encouraged me with words and purchase! Rose Reed and Andrew E. Cier, of Newport LAZERQUICK who were patient and helpful.
To my Uncial Press editor, Judith B. Glad, I am everlastingly grateful for your touch of consistency and clarity. Thank you.
Last but never least, thank you husband John for morning coffee and the writer-sustaining gifts that you give me.
Threads, Part One
1. I've Never Told Anyone
She told me the story only once, over that Labor Day weekend, with such vividness and determination that I feel compelled to re-tell it, so that we can know the finality of it, and forgive the fragility.
Usually her tales were told as she worked about the house, or on her quilts. This one began that mid-Friday afternoon as we were picking blackberries. It was a beautiful September day, the time of year in Oregon when the seasons hang suspended--no longer summer, not yet fall.
Though she was old, her back was still straight and her face had a rosy, girlish joy as the berries piled up in the pail attached to her low-slung belt. A bee swung a bit too close to her face and she pulled back involuntarily, scratching her hand on the sharp briars.
"Cottonpickin' thunderbolts!" She shook her hand and sucked at the bit of blood that welled up. She laughed easily to herself, then looked over at me. Her rosy cheeks and soft black eyes--she was pretty, as I'd never seen her before. I'd never seen her as pretty, or homely, she was just Aunt Sophie, always there, and always the same.
"Annie," she said, a question in her tone, "did I ever tell you about David?"
I searched the family quickly, no David came to mind.
"No, of course I didn't," she went on, "I've never told anyone."
"Who is David?" I prodded as she seemed to sink into reflection. Was this a hint of the senility I was now on the lookout for?
"Aw, David," she said as if the name felt good on her tongue. She tasted it again. "David Andrew Smithers."
I could tell that the "Smithers" part didn't taste as well.
"Smithers," she said again, her lips wrinkling then smoothing with her smile. "Aw, well, he couldn't help that."
"What's wrong with 'Smithers'," I pressed, anxious lest she dismiss the whole thing before I found out who this David Andrew was that made her smile so.
"It's not artistic enough. David was an artist." Here she broke off. "How about we sit in the shade for awhile?"
There were still lots of berries on the vines. Aunt Sophie never stopped until every container available, plus her apron, was full, so I quickly agreed, knowing that this tale was somehow different, important. We settled ourselves on a grassy spot and leaned against the trunk of a large fir.
"Now," I asked lightly, "who is David Andrew Smithers?"
"David was mine."
2. I Know You're Busy, But...
It's unnerving to realize that I am not completely in charge of my future, that the past events and decisions made by another person can then wriggle their way into my life, affecting what I do today, and, what I do tomorrow. Such as the effect of these old, yellowed letters of Aunt Sophie's. You wouldn't think the words of a fourteen-year-old boy could spur me to spending my evenings at this typewriter, compelled to catch quickly the story of a family, most of whose members are long dead. I would much rather be out taking pictures or looking at the full moon with Roger, but as Aunt Sophie used to say, "First things first, Annie!" Agitating.
It's midwinter now and the rain of the last week has let up to just a soft dripping from the eave over my bedroom window to the flower bed below, pooling in the dirt under the cedar chips. The fresh smell through the open window is a pleasant accompaniment to the annoying hum of this old typewriter. My entrance into the story I have to tell began on quite another day, just prior to an unusually warm Labor Day weekend a few years ago.
I had dropped by Aunt Sophie's place for a few minutes after work to see if there was anything she needed before I left for the holiday. The old gal threw me a curve. She asked me to spend the whole weekend with her. When I reluctantly agreed, I never intended to remain the full three days.
I had loosely arranged to spend Sunday and Monday nights in the mountains with Len.
Len. Another memory, but at the time he was very current and, I thought, was my future. By the stream by day and the cabin fire by night we would have "A wonderful experience", "Get to know each other better", and, I hoped, clear up some difficulties in our relationship.
And then Aunt Sophie, with her clear-eyed logic, said, "Annie, you're twenty-two and soon will be tied down with this Len fellow." She could never just say, "Len". "...and won't have time for your old auntie. You'll be busy with a house, and kids, and what all, and before you know it I'll be gone." She knew I hated any references to her age, or death. It was an effective way to get to me.
"Of course, I know you're busy, and you young people do have your own lives to live...."
I brushed that aside, even though I agreed with her.
"But I found a late patch of blackberries back in the woods yesterday, and, you know, what with my hip and all, I didn't get any jam or pies put up this year, and I just thought, wouldn't it be nice if Annie and I could do those up together." She was pulling all my strings now. "Remember when you were just little and weren't much more than a bother, and how you loved to help me?"
So I told her I'd see if I couldn't work something out, some time in, but I couldn't promise more than to see if I could get off work early at the photo shop. That would give us Friday afternoon and all Saturday but I already had plans for Sunday and Monday.
She seemed happy at that and I went home to my apartment not thinking much more about it. But late that night, after having suffered through an inane TV program while I waited, in vain, for Len--sensitive, emotional, black-haired, black-eyed Len, whom I planned to marry in the spring--to call, I went to bed. Instead of the sleep I craved, I started thinking about my aunt.
Aunt Sophie was nearing eighty. Our age difference had never mattered. She'd always been my best friend, the one who taught me how to dress: "Be neat, Annie. Simple, but always put a little thought into your clothes, a little flair."
She analyzed my shape. "You're going to be tall. You'll be able to wear just about anything, but stay away from frills. They'll just make you look silly. With that blond hair of your mother's, and your dad's sweet mouth you don't need to look any... Well, you're something enough."
She undertook to study my character. "You're going to make mistakes," she told me one afternoon as she held me to her soft chest and patted me on the back. I'd come home heartsick because I'd told a secret a friend had trusted me not to tell, and the friend had found me out. I was sad, and embarrassed. "But use them to improve yourself."
"Here," she took her hankie--white lace, it was--from where she always carried it in the belt of her housedress, and wiped my eyes with the so-soft cloth. Her sturdy hands were old even then, lightly dusted with brown spots. Purple veins from her wrists traced down her fingers. Long, wide hands, worker hands. Laying her face against my wet cheek, she said, "Dear Annie," and kissed me quickly.
"Friendship is so fragile, but somebody will trust you again, and, next time you will do better. I have faith in you." She said this firmly, so that I believed her.
With Aunt Sophie shaping me like a tender young pear tree, pruning here and there, and propping up my fragile limbs, I grew strong enough to stand up on my own, and felt that I could weather any storms.
She was old-fashioned but she was the only one who took the time to care, to notice me.
I owed her a lot.
I loved her deeply.
3. Elm Branches
Great Aunt Sophie was my father's mother's sister. She never married, so was sometimes referred to as, "Poor Aunt Sophie," at least by the more charitable members of the Elm family. This was a short list: two cousins of mine who left Oregon to move to far-away New York at a young age, to return to the bosom of the family in their late forties, long after Aunt Sophie's prime years. Someone else in the family, I remember Great Uncle Zack in particular, would snort, and say, "Poor Aunt Sophie my eye! I wish I could have got somebody to support me the way she did."
Aunt Sophie earned her keep. She lived with almost everyone in the family at one time or other and made a quilt for each of them. The quilts were personalized, depicting something close to the receiver's heart. They were beautiful.
Other than the New York cousins and myself, my Uncle Boyd was the only other relative who spoke up in his aunt's defense, and he did so from the distance of Washington, D.C. He provided her with the home she had lived in since she was in her fifties.
The Elm family had many branches--sorry, it's a family joke. Great Aunt Sophie, known to us simply as Aunt Sophie, had three brothers, Trevor, Zack, and Willie and four sisters, Lucy, Lydia, Mandy, and Herminie. Two of the brothers, Zack and Trevor, had never married.
Trevor never had a chance. In late 1917, at age seventeen, he went off enthusiastically to join the "War to End All Wars." By the spring of 1918 he was dead, shot, it was said, by a French housewife. The full story was never known and the family didn't seek details, it being enough to cope with the fact that Trevor had been dispatched by an ally. But it wasn't hard to figure out. Trevor had been of a terror at home with a number of neighboring women and girls, so the family had reason not to look or question too closely.
Scandal was abhorred by the Elms. "Ignore the unpleasant or uncomfortable" was almost a family motto. The grief this caused can never be measured, certainly Aunt Sophie paid a high price to maintain it.
Trevor's death shocked the family but particularly left its mark on his younger brothers, especially Zack who took it bitterly. Ever afterwards his affection for anyone or anything was tempered with a grim reserve. He must have secretly admired Trevor's rough reputation but didn't have the guts to carry it off, just enough to be dangerous when thwarted.
Zack never married. He remained highly visible within the family, passionately unmarried, but he always had a girl friend, a new one. Never seemed able to make up his mind whether he loved women, or hated them.
We sisters were wary of him. If one of us admitted she'd made a mistake about anything, big or small, he'd sneer, "Just like a woman." In private, he would borrow money that he seldom repaid. We stopped loaning him money after a while, which, of course, made him mad at us. He was our brother, so we loved him, but we didn't trust him.
The other brother, my Great Uncle Willie, married young but only had two children, the New York cousins, before he was killed in a logging accident in 1925. His wife sold their small farm, took the girls to the big city and made a small splash of brilliant spangles in what the family snidely described as "The Theater."
Two of Aunt Sophie's sisters, Lucy and Lydia, were twins. Each married boys they knew from town and produced three children, whom they neglected and smothered in spurts, depending on whether they were drinking heavily or rediscovering religion. They did both frequently. The third sister, Herminie, married late, being nearly twenty-seven. For a while it had been feared she would be another poor spinster like Sophie. But she married a good man and had one child, the only real criminal the family ever produced. The boy was attracted to what he considered stagnant money in banks. He'd been unable, after stealing it, to resist setting fire to the building, using the President's desk as a base, and wills, mortgages and the like for tinder. He wasn't brought up much in family discussions.
The pride of the family though, for having kids, was my Grandmother Mandy, who married at fifteen and in the next twenty-five years gave birth to eighteen children, one of whom was my father. Only fourteen of them survived entry into the family, but these fourteen grew from healthy and lusty kids into healthy, lusty and often hell-raising, adults. Naturally enough these children of Mandy's, and the other married sisters and brother, produced even more children. Aunt Sophie was never without resources.
As Mandy's older sister, Sophie's career started naturally enough with the birth of Araminta, Mandy's first child. Mandy was barely sixteen and nervous about the whole affair. Her husband Zed, my grandfather, ran the local bar. He spent the event in town. His customers helped him celebrate the birth.
Aunt Sophie delivered the child and declared her to be, "Rather ugly but she has nice hands and feet." Despite Mandy's protests she stayed to help with the canning and never returned home.
By late 1918 Mandy had four children. Aunt Sophie had helped birth them all, including number four, my father, Wilber.
For some reason no one knew but everyone gave thanks for, Mandy didn't have any children for the next few years. Some cynics said that with the war over Zed didn't need to keep producing dependents. Whatever the reason, it gave everyone a much needed rest, at least temporarily.
Aunt Sophi
e stayed until Wilber was walking and then, with no new births on the horizon, she went to Cannon Beach, where Willie and Zack were working on the roads. She kept house for them for some months and "worked out" for a couple of years. That was the story the family knew, and the one I'd grown up with. I never suspected, because I was, naturally more interested in myself than in her life, that there was more to those years than I knew. Incredibly more.
In that time she knew love.
4. Walking Carefully
"You know that Mandy had Zed, and the twins had Jack and Edward, and even Hermie eventually got her Zorba." Sophie wasn't asking me. It was a statement of fact.
I nodded.
"Well, David was mine."
She took a deep breath, settling herself more firmly onto the ground. "He was mine, but he belonged to someone else."
This is Sophie's story, hers and David's.
* * * *
The winter your father was learning to walk, I got a letter from Zack. He and Willie were batching it in a small cabin at Cannon Beach. Zack wanted me to come down and keep house for them. The ocean was beautiful in winter, he said, and they had a grand view from their window. It would be a big help if I could just add a feminine touch to the place. He meant do all their womanly work for them, of course.
It sounded romantic to me, and Mandy had been kinda testy lately. The winter supplies were in and she could handle the kids and Zed by herself, now that she was all of twenty, so I went.
When I got there it was the middle of November, but warm. The cabin was bigger than I expected, with two small bedrooms. Willie and Zack shared one and I had the other one all to myself. After all the years of sharing a bed with either a sister or one of Mandy's kids, it felt good to have a whole bedroom all to myself, let alone my own bed. It was just a simple cot, with a straw mattress. I wanted to make a quilt for it so Willie made me a frame to work on. While the boys were at work, after I had my chores done, I'd get out my scrap bag, which goes everywhere I do, and cut pieces.
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