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by Patsy Brookshire

  I grew more frantic in my determination to make Sampson a perfect child. I needed, wanted, David's approval of our son, our specialness. I was jealous of Amy and her power with David, her life with him before I came, and now, with Lily as their focus.

  I don't know what was worse, my scattergun anger, my jealousy, or that all the gentle love play with David dried up.

  There were many nights when he didn't come to my bed at all. His excuse at first was that he had to be up with Lily. When he was there, the intimacy wasn't. Always, I thought, tomorrow night... But it didn't happen.

  There was something else, something I didn't see until later. Always I'd made quilts, as my sisters did, but with me it had been more. An obsession almost. Where my sisters sewed out of duty and need, to me it was a joy.

  With David and Amy's appreciation my stitching took on a new meaning. I was an artist. Creative.

  Caring for Sampson, and Amy and Lily, left me no time or energy for quilting. The scrap bag by my bed was in the way. I stumbled over it and Sam got into it. I shoved it under the bed. Once in a while I'd sweep under there and hit the bag, making the dust fly.

  Nothing but babies.

  I loved babies, but...

  In my confusion I looked for someone to blame. Everything wrong must be because of baby Lily. I didn't blame her, I told myself in my lonely bed--just as lonely when David was in it now as when he wasn't--but before she came... If she hadn't come...

  If she hadn't been born...

  If she went away...

  My thoughts stopped there, guiltily.

  And then I got a letter from my sister Lydia. Her twin, Lucy, was getting married in September. Lucy and Jack were planning a honeymoon at the beach in Seaside. Did I know a nice place they could stay in Cannon Beach for a couple of days?

  I wasn't sure whether this was a thin excuse to get me to invite them to stay over with us. I could easily sidestep that. It wasn't my house. They thought I was the housemaid who took care of the kids.

  I read and re-read the letter until the sweat on my hands smudged Lydia's neat writing. I put the letter away in my bedroom drawer where I wouldn't be running into it.

  I didn't like the idea of Lucy being there at all. I didn't know this Jack, but Lucy was sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued. It would be impossible to explain why Sampson called me Mommy, and he looked too much like me for comfort.

  One morning in early August I was thinking about how impossible Sampson had become. I was washing the living room window that opened to the sea and watching a couple walking arm in arm on the beach. It was windy and they were snuggled close together. My heart hurt to see them. The pail of water was by my feet. Sampson walked over and deliberately, I'm sure of it, pushed it over.

  I jumped, and would have slapped him if the shock of the warm water on my feet hadn't triggered a memory. The water and the couple on the beach revived a fragment of the nightmare I'd had the night before and forgotten by morning.

  In the dream I was walking out into the ocean, carrying a baby, Sampson. He was wrapped in a partially finished quilt. The waves didn't get us wet. I wasn't cold. It was very peaceful. Without warning a huge wave swept over us. When it was gone so was the baby, but not the quilt. I looked frantically for Sampson, but I couldn't find him, I ran back to the house, screaming, "David! David! Sampson's gone."

  He looked at me oddly and said, "No he's not. He's right here." And there he was, smiling and cheerful playing on the rug.

  "Well, then, where's Lily?"

  "Lily?" he said. "Who's Lily?"

  "I guess it was Lily I lost," I said, "but that's all right, because now we'll all be happy again."

  Amy came up and kissed me on the cheek. "You're probably right, but it was an awful thing you did."

  I smiled and let the quilt float down to cover Sampson.

  That was all I remembered but it was enough make me know... I was wishing the baby dead. And Sampson gone? Right then I made my decision. I had to go away.

  It would also solve the problem of what to do about Lucy and Jack.

  I could see from the relief on David's and Amy's faces what they had feared I'd do to Sampson for dumping the pail over. Instead I just got the mop and cleaned up.

  The sooner I left, the better. I decided just that quick. When I'd come to the point of wishing a child dead, perhaps both of them, I knew it was all wrong.

  They were still watching me as I put the mop away. We were all quiet, even Sampson. I think Amy sensed it. My face always betrayed me.

  "I have to leave." I didn't know how else to say it. There was no sense edging around it.

  David was the first to react. Maybe Amy was waiting to take her cue from him, to see what he wanted.

  "What are you talking about? You mean go away?" But he knew what I meant. And there was no conviction in his voice. I think he was relieved.

  "Here. And now." Maybe I'd hoped for pleading, tears. If he'd begged me to stay, maybe... But he didn't.

  Amy came over and put her arms around me. "Sophie, it's not necessary. Give it a few days thought. You'll see I'm right." For the second time I saw the look of sadness I'd seen only once before, the night she took me into her home. I was surprised, for I would not have done the same in her place. Yes, I think of her as Saint Amy.

  "No. I've got to do this. I can't go on."

  "It's been all right," David protested. "True, it has been a little rough lately." He defended. his position.

  I raised my eyebrows. He could have said, "You've been rough," but he didn't. I knew and so did they.

  "Maybe it's been all right for you and Amy, but not for me."

  He started to protest but I stopped him. I shook my head and put my hand against his mouth. "I just can't do it. I tried." I looked from him to Amy. "We tried. And it didn't work." I moved towards Amy, but the look on her face stopped me.

  Her eyes were guarded, her jaw firm and fierce. Fear. She swallowed, and stepped towards me.

  It was odd, but what I noticed just then was the sound of the wind moving through the trees outside the window. Moving through us as well.

  "What about Sampson?"

  I knew the answer to that. I'd always known it, from the first time I saw her holding him. She loved him as much as I did, perhaps more, differently. The only way I could keep my vow to protect him was to give him up. She would be a better mother to him.

  "Sampson will be just fine. Here. With you."

  "Sophie." She came to me now, her eyes and face softening, "Be sure. Are you sure you want this? Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

  "I know. It doesn't matter that I wish it were different. I joined into this arrangement against my better judgment. You can give him what I can't--two parents. At home he'd be considered a... You know."

  David winced.

  "People here think he's yours and my people think so too. It would only make things terrible for him if I took him with me. Please understand."

  Amy didn't understand. She struggled to keep a neutral face but the tightness around her eyes and face relaxed. She would never understand, but she agreed to my decision. Was glad of it. Sampson was hers too. I don't think Amy would have ever left her child, which was why I felt safe leaving him with her.

  That doesn't mean I think I made the wrong choice. It was the right one for Sampson. At that moment, that was what I cared about. Circumstances are different for everyone. In our case it would have hurt him more to take him with me into a world that would never have seen him as I did. Today things are different, and maybe I'd do different, but I don't know. Water under the bridge.

  31. You'll Be Back

  Amy helped me pack. I didn't take much besides my clothes, some shells, Sampson's booties I'd made before he was born, and my scrap bag.

  David went into town and arranged a ride for me with a couple who were going over to Seaside, where I could catch the train to Portland. When he came back I was ready. Amy came downstairs with the Beach quilt.

  "Soph
ie. You forgot this."

  "No. It's Sampson's. Keep it. Maybe he'll want it someday. Tell him you got it from a lady who helped take care of him when he was a baby."

  "I'll do no such thing. How, pray tell, would we explain you to Sampson when you come back?"

  "I won't be back."

  "Sure you will," David spoke up, turning from the door where he was setting my trunk and boxes before carrying them up to the road where the Seaside people were picking me up. "As soon as you get to Portland you'll realize your mistake. When you do, I want you to come right back." He'd clearly decided to act as if the whole thing was just a temporary situation, that when I came back I'd be fine again and so would everything else. Whether he really believed that or not...

  For a bright man he was good at deceiving himself. And me, for a while.

  A horn honked from up the hill. Mercifully, the children were asleep. I went upstairs while David and Amy carried my baggage up the hill.

  Baby Lily was lying beside Sampson, her feet jammed into his back. I straightened her out, moving my hands against her legs ever so softly. She stirred slightly. I kissed her forehead, "I'm sorry little one."

  Sampson was hard to leave. I didn't know if I could. I tucked the light blanket up around his shoulders and felt the little muscles in his arms. I tugged at his hair on his forehead, smoothed it. My hand traced his face, ran under his chin. I wiped off the bit of little-boy slobber that was there, wiped it on my shoulder. I leaned over quickly and kissed the back of his warm neck; I can taste it today, salty. "Goodbye little love. Son. My little Sampson. Be happy."

  Blindly I got out of the house and wiped the tears away before I got to the car. But they started again. I hugged Amy hard. She had tears, too. "Good luck, dear Sophie."

  And then, despite the couple who were watching all this with big eyes, I threw myself in David's arms and kissed him wildly. "David. I loved you so much."

  "Please come back, Sophie. Please." He held me tight. "I love you too."

  I got in the back seat as quickly as I could, a curtain of tears between me and them.

  "Please, let's go now." I was sobbing. It was terribly embarrassing, crying in front of strangers.

  We left.

  It took forever to get to Seaside. The couple gave up trying to have a conversation with me. They were kind. She patted my shoulder. He helped me with my ticket and with getting onto the train. I barely know how it was done.

  I sat alone looking at the different greens and shapes of trees as we passed through the forests. The train was slow; nevertheless, I was in the Portland station before I was ready. Would I have ever been ready?

  Before getting on the streetcar, I called Mandy in Gresham to have Zed meet me when I got off. They were glad to have me back because Mandy was about due with Boyd. We had our hands full, what with all the kids, and the canning and the new baby, and such.

  I've been here most ever since, but a part of my heart has always been in the fog and mist of the coast, with my other family.

  32. Some Things to Remember

  Aunt Sophie said, with no particular emotion in her voice, as if she hadn't just been telling me that extraordinary story, "And now you better be on your way or you'll be late." She walked me to my car.

  "Wait," I said after I hugged her. "Did you ever regret it? Did you ever go back, see them, see Sampson, or David, or Amy?"

  "Of course I regretted it." She looked away, but simply, as if examining a dying rose bush. "Almost as soon as I got to Mandy's, as David said I would. I missed Sampson terribly. I worried constantly, for a long time. Whenever a letter came I feared something might have happened, and when I didn't hear, it worried me even more.

  "I suffered terribly. You can't imagine. There was no one to talk to. I had to hold it all in, pretend everything was perfectly normal. But at night when everyone was asleep I tormented myself, asking whether what I did was right or wrong. Whether I'd wronged Sampson. That guilt was the hardest to live with."

  She looked at me clearly, directly. "No, I never went back. I had enough to do here, and after I waited a few months... It would have interrupted too many lives."

  "But the cards, the letters?"

  "Oh, at first I wrote often and they wrote back, and then, oh we wrote at Christmas time, like people do. You saw the letters. Too much hurt."

  She opened the car door for me. "There is a little more to tell, and I think you want to know."

  "About Sampson?"

  "Yes, but now you've got to be on your way." She was now very anxious to close it and have me gone. I put my hand on the door to hold it open.

  "Tonight, I have free time after I get off work. I won't be able to sleep unless you tell me. He's my cousin. Tonight after work? I'll pick something up from the grocery and feed you dinner, okay?"

  "All right. But don't worry about dinner. I'll make that stew that you like."

  At that I let her close the door. I rolled down the window. "I'll pick up some bread. You've got to let me do something." It was always so hard to do something for Aunt Sophie.

  "All right, you bring the bread. We'll have stew and bread."

  "And Sampson. We'll have Sampson for dinner, too?"

  At that she smiled such as I'd never seen from her, even when she'd first began talking about David. Clear, deep in her eyes.

  "Yes, Sampson," she agreed. "We'll talk. Then you'll know it all." She rolled her eyes. "Get going now." She whacked the hood of my car with the flat of her broad hand. She made me laugh.

  Thinking about her mystery as I made my way through the heavy noon-hour traffic, I was amazed at the number of clues her house held to that past life. The quilt on the upstairs bed with embroidered shells and the outline of Haystack Rock, and two small children at the base looking at the tide pools. The shells in the kitchen. And the booties on the dresser in her bedroom. We'd teased her about a past love, but never seriously. It had been a joke. I wondered now how she had felt when we teased her. "Poor old Aunt Sophie" had always been there for us.

  Sure, she supported herself with her sewing machine, doing mending and alterations, and quilting, quilting, quilting, until we wondered that her eyes didn't give out, but no one in the family ever gave it serious consideration. We were proud when she won a first prize at the State Fair one year for a quilt she made out of silk ties, but we never took it as seriously as she did. Even when the demand for her creations took off, so she was able to sell the large backlog that she had and had more work than she had hours for, we counted it as just luck. Never thought of it as art.

  What could be more important than our lives, what we thought about this and that? It was Aunt Sophie's purpose to be there for us. We never questioned it. I'd been as selfish as Len was. What made us happy should make her happy too.

  After work I headed to her house for dinner and story. My thoughts returned to her when I stopped at the deli for bread. How about a hearty rye? Not what we usually had with her stew, and not something I would have bought for her before, though I was fond of it. Now I thought of her in a different way. A woman with experience in the varieties of life, indeed more experience than I, a twentieth century woman.

  When I pulled into her driveway I saw another car there, a blue Land Cruiser with a tracing of rust on the bumpers. It had the look somehow of a traveling vehicle, a practical but fun wagon. Stickers from tourist places--Trees of Mystery, Grand Canyon, et cetera--on the back window.

  No one in the family owned a car like that.

  I grabbed up my purse, camera and the sack of bread. I heard a whisper of voices from inside and rapped lightly. Aunt Sophie didn't answer.

  I figured she couldn't hear me so I turned the knob and walked in. "Hello? Aunt Sophie?"

  My heart was pounding and it irritated me. This was my Aunt's house. No strange voices should be here and getting me so nervous.

  The front door opened onto her living room where there was a couch and a couple easy chairs. On the couch were a man's jacket, a paper bag,
a small suitcase. Hmmm.

  I went on through to the dining room. No one there, so I dropped the bread onto the table. The voices came again, a male voice, and Aunt Sophie answering. It sounded like they were outside, beyond the kitchen. I left my purse and camera on the kitchen counter and followed the voices through the kitchen and out the screen door.

  Aunt Sophie and a man both knelt by the flower bed just beyond the back door. He was digging with a trowel. Aunt Sophie was holding a jar of water out to him as I approached, noticed by neither of them.

  He laid the trowel aside and reached into a short bucket at his left, fishing for a plant I could see but didn't immediately recognize.

  From the doorway, I said, "Aunt Sophie, what'cha doing?"

  They both jumped, and water sloshed from Aunt Sophie's jar. They turned to look at me, so that their faces were side by side. I saw double.

  He was Sophie's son, no doubt about it.

  The angular faces were the same, the hair swept back so that the little peak at the hairline showed. Hers was white, his still mostly black but with some gray streaks, and a little longer than the norm for men his age, but full and bushy ending right at the nape of his neck. A long neck, like Aunt Sophie's.

  Both pairs of blue eyes looked at me, both mouths smiled. They were comfortable with each other in the garden, where the sun shined and the birds chirped.

  "Oh, my." It was all I could say.

  They both laughed.

  "You're just in time, Annie," Aunt Sophie gestured towards the wooden path that ran through her garden. "Set yourself down while we finish planting these wild strawberries. Sam brought them to me from home."

  Home? I was unsettled by her reference. Aunt Sophie belongs to me--this is her home. With an inner shake to straighten myself out, I sat on the lawn. In moments I felt grounded again. She was still mine. Then she presented him to me as a bonus, her surprise.

  "Annie, meet your cousin, Jonathan Sampson Smithers. My son."

  I know my eyes went wide at "My son", even though it was obvious.