The Lyre and the Lambs

by Sydney Avey

  R

  “I’m going now,” I call to Roger. He comes out of the kitchen where he’s been cleaning up the lunch dishes. I walk into his arms and wrap myself around him while he strokes my hair and kisses the top of my head.

  “You are such a good guy,” I smile up at him. “I’m so lucky to have you.” As I say these words, I think about Laura. Her luck ran out the day Fred banged his head too hard on the ground in a stupid football scrimmage that triggered something demonic. I thought of the years she spent trying to arrange their lives to accommodate the anxiety and darkness that descended on the joyful athlete she had married, the one who came home from the Army as damaged goods. Love hurts.

  On the drive back to Laura’s, thoughts tumble in my head. Although I am trying not to think too much about the awful moment that Laura and I spotted a dark figure misplaced in a tree, I re-live the experience anyway. Something in Laura knew where she would find Fred. Except for pre-dawn walks to the creek with Goldie, when Fred wasn’t in his cubicle at work he stuck close to home.

  The brain cannot anticipate what image the eyes will send when it sees the unthinkable. In that moment, I flailed about for every possible explanation of the dark, sack-shaped form: A clump of mistletoe, too low; an owl, too big. Then the rising sun sent a shot of pink light through the tree that landed on Fred’s bright white calves and feet, exposed to the air like a young boy’s lower legs would be if he rolled up his pants to go fishing. It was a shot Laura took in the heart.

  I turn off replay and choose a new tape. How did people do this before the relatively new technology of videotape gave them words for this concept? Silly thought, they just did. It’s a meditation technique. I flood my heart with images of Valerie’s wedding that took place a year ago.

  Valerie was married at the Glass House she built on Lundy Lane. The house was not quite finished. She had switched her attention to the landscaping in anticipation of the garden wedding of her dreams.

  After that sad moment in my bedroom in Carmel, Valerie had thrown herself into her work and into designing and building the Glass House. I’m the one who was responsible for the name. She had wanted to call it Moragarena West, after the Basque tradition of giving a house a family name combined with something that marks the setting. Moragarena simply means the Moraga Place. When I saw the plans, I remarked that it was a lot of glass. I took to calling it the Glass House and the name stuck. It was a pretty name to my mind. It should not have been a surprise to me that the neighbors did not see it that way.

  A year after Andy married a hometown girl who loved all things equestrian, Valerie received a phone call from Pilar. It seems that all things equestrian included the hunky horse groomer, the equivalent of a Menlo Park pool boy, I suppose. Of course, that’s not at all how the ever diplomatic Pilar put it.

  I have come to love Pilar, but I’ve never forgotten the calculated manner in which she controlled how I came to know the truth about the family Leora hid from me. Even after Father Mike helped me see how much better it was that I put the pieces together myself, I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the role Pilar seems to play in engineering the outcome of things. That’s what makes her such a good champion for Basque interests in Kern County.

  Pilar suggested to Valerie that the timing might be good for her to show up at the next MCBCS Board meeting. The Board would be discussing how to allocate funds from a grant Valerie helped write. Pilar let drop that as Valerie had missed quite a few of the meetings in the past year, she was probably unaware that Ander had just been through an acrimonious divorce. Valerie swallowed her pride and drove to Bakersfield.

  Vulnerability is not one of the Moraga women’s primary character traits. Valerie has inherited her father Henry’s optimistic nature and her grandmother Leora’s stubbornness. She has an anything-is-possible outlook on life. For his part, Andy sensed this was his moment and made a smart choice not to employ his considerable negotiation skills. Instead, he let his pheromones do his talking.

  A cheating wife had not destroyed Andy’s natural confidence and good humor. Valerie and Andy spent time on his ranch shaking their heads in unison over the fickleness of their exes. Andy had released the groomer from his services with a severe punch in the eye, and then sold off most of the horses. He was freer to spend more time in Los Altos with Valerie. For her part, Valerie made no demands. This man would make a terrific father. She would let him figure out the details.

  After their wedding, Valerie cut back her teaching schedule and Andy started soliciting clients in the Bay Area. Real estate attorneys with track records helping property owners get a fair shake when governments exercise eminent domain are in high demand in this booming region. The Bay Area is outgrowing its rural roots, which makes it ripe for lawsuits. But while his practice here is growing, their family is not. No baby yet.

  R

  I pull my car into Laura’s driveway and am surprised to see that Father Mike’s newest old vehicle, a split screen Volkswagen bus, is still in the driveway. When Father Mike was comforting me after my mother’s death, I came to understand that he carefully monitored the time he spent inside my house. We would sit at the kitchen window where he was always visible. We laughed about Carlo Santorini next door. When Carlo trimmed the hedge between our houses, the shears must have slipped. It looked like a small window had been cut in the hedge about the height of Carlo’s eagle eye.

  Michael Andrew Matheson, I learned, taught high school before he was deemed mature enough to answer the call to the priesthood. It was unfortunate he had not married young, as most of the other seminarians had. He lost that option when he entered the seminary.

  The divinity school weighed the risk of ordaining a single man against the possibility that welcoming the son of an esteemed bookbinder might lead to a generous endowment and allowed him in. After all, there was every hope he might pick up a wife shortly after he completed his studies.

  Although Father Mike proved himself an asset to the Episcopal Church in America because of his strong commitment to Reform Catholic Christianity rather than Revivalist Protestantism, he never did marry. The Diocese assigned him to a failing mission church with an elderly population hoping he could attract new blood, but church politics were changing. People were beginning to reject the liturgy that Father Mike so deeply loved in favor of a social justice devoid of a Godhead. So it wasn’t surprising that a number of Father Mike’s own parishioners supported the city’s plan to annex the property Saint Matthew’s stood on for an expansion of the adjacent grammar school to include recreation facilities and a senior center. But as the number of people who attended services dwindled, the number of those who came to Father Mike for counseling grew. Apparently, that included Laura. I had not known.

  I knock at the door. Goldie is barking on the other side. I push the door open and walk through, carrying my overnight bag stuffed to overflowing with enough clothes to allow me to stay several days. Laura and Father Mike stand up quickly and he prepares to leave. Of course he would stay with her until I returned. What was I thinking?

  The sun is setting behind the hills that are visible from Laura’s front picture window.

  “Walter Schwartz dropped by,” Laura tells me. Then she laughs. “Was that an eye roll, Dee Russell?”

  Walter is our city councilman and Gunther Dold’s presiding puppet. Gunther has been unrelenting in marshaling the councilman’s support to harass Valerie and Andy over so-called code violations while they try to finish the Glass House so they can move in before winter.

  “What did he want?”

  “To offer condolences, of course,” Laura gives me a wry smile that quickly turns smirky. If my dear friend can smirk at a time like this, I think she is going to be okay.

  “Of course,” I say. “Laura, have you called your family in North Carolina yet?” Laura wilts. “Okay, go take a bath while I heat some soup and if you’re up for it after that, we can come up with a plan.” Laura is happy to be told what to do. She heads down
the hallway, Goldie at her heels.

  The sound of water filling the tub plays a comforting tune in the pipes as I sort through cans in the pantry and come up with some tomato soup. That and a fried cheese sandwich will warm my friend’s stomach. I had tucked some Valium into my purse before I left the apartment. I want to make sure she gets a good night’s sleep.

  The smell of lavender bath salts wafts into the kitchen when Laura appears, hardly able to keep her red puffy eyes open.

  “Laura, let’s wait until tomorrow to contact your family. I don’t think there is much chance anyone else will get to them first, do you?” Laura shakes her head and I take that as consent. I think about turning on the nightly news for distraction, but a little voice warns me that Fred could be a news story.

  We eat in comfortable silence and then I open my purse, shake one tiny pill from a full bottle into my palm, and offer it to Laura with a smile of encouragement. She takes it, goes to the sink to pour herself a glass of water, and goes to bed. I’m exhausted but I have one more thing to do tonight. I sit back down at the kitchen table and reach for the telephone. Valerie answers on the first ring.

  “Mom, what happened? How is Laura? How are you holding up?”

  “How did you hear about it?”

  “Ivy called me. She said that Mr. McMillan had been found dead in the backyard at dawn this morning. It’s been all over the news. Mom, I would have come but Ivy suggested it might be better if I didn’t. She said all the neighbors were out in front and we all know how inflammatory my presence has been lately. She didn’t say that but I got the message.”

  “Bless her heart. Ivy wasn’t one of the gawkers. She waited until everyone left and then caught me as I was leaving and offered her help. I love that woman.”

  The pie set in a box on the front porch sits on the counter. The box also has a casserole we can reheat tomorrow.

  I tell Valerie what I know, but it doesn’t take a PhD to understand the message a man dangling from the end of a rope leaves. If there’s not enough drama in the circumstances of Fred’s life to satisfy people, I suppose they will have to content themselves speculating on the events of his death. I have no idea how the news got the details of Fred’s mental state. Interviews with his colleagues at IBM I guess. It makes me sick.

  “I guess you’ll stay with Laura for a few days?”

  “Father Mike will be around to help too.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “It doesn’t?” By now, the sun has gone down and I’m sitting in the dark. That’s a fitting metaphor for much of my life. “Why not?”

  “Because Laura has been volunteering at the community center in a Bible study Father Mike has been leading for a group of unwed teenage mothers.”

  “You are kidding!” I flash back nine years to when Valerie brought the ire of the neighborhood down on her head by suggesting she might start a halfway house for unwed teenage mothers on Lundy Lane. Maybe she wasn’t kidding. “How do you know this?” Why do I not know this?

  Love’s Price

  Love’s Price

  Laura’s calm facade has cracked open like a discarded chrysalis. Cocooning grief takes flight. We sit on the patio and I watch her revisit dashed hopes and dreams that never came true. She comes to rest on a bitterness that neither one of us knew she had in her.

  “How could he do this to me?” She beats her fists on her knees. “How could he be so selfish? I made him the total focus of my life and he left me in this ugly way.” She spits out the word ugly like a nasty pill.

  God give me the right words.

  “Fred loved you Laura. I don’t think he was able to think past the pain he must have been feeling to understand how awful this would be for you.”

  “I know. He told me over and over that I would be better off without him, but it’s not true.”

  “No, it’s not true.” Do I believe what I just said? Laura walked on eggshells for years to keep from doing anything to trigger Fred’s dark moods. It will take time for her to get to the place where she’ll remember the boy she fell in love with, the goofball she told me Fred used to be. The only thing I can do is try to distract her.

  “Let’s talk about the next few days. You really do need to call your family.”

  “Ugh. Dee the reason Fred and I moved away from North Carolina was to get away from my family. I love them but they all had opinions on how Fred and I should cope with his illness.”

  “Well...”

  “Oh God, Dee, I don’t want them to know he committed suicide.”

  I almost tell her that they don’t have to know, but I have such strong feelings about keeping these kinds of secrets. How might my life have been different if I had been allowed to know I had a father and a twin sister in Spain?

  It’s not the same. Laura doesn’t owe anybody this ugly truth, not while it is still raw. That’s what I’m here to do, help her figure this out.

  “Okay, let’s think about this. Who are you closest to in your family?”

  “My brother.”

  “Is he someone you can confide in? Would he help you deal with the rest of your family?”

  This turns out to be a brilliant plan. Laura’s brother James grew up with Fred. He’s the rare intuitive male who doesn’t need to have the details spelled out for him. He’s also the family peacemaker, understanding and respectful of the idiosyncrasies of the Scotch-Irish Montgomerys, but equally protective of his sunny-natured, open-minded baby sister.

  I listen as Laura works out the details of the next few days with James. He will inform the family of Fred’s unexpected passing and assure them there is no need for them to travel to California, a foreign country as far as they are concerned. He will avoid mentioning that Laura plans to have Fred cremated and laid to rest in California. As an only child, Fred has no family. His parents died in the big Outer Banks Hurricane in 1933, when he was in his twenties.

  Laura’s concession is that she will visit her family for the holidays.

  “I know they are going to want me to move back, but I won’t do it.” In an uncharacteristic gesture, she juts out her chin. As much as I love the old Laura, I think I will have much to appreciate about the new Laura I have just glimpsed.

  R

  Father Mike is at the house every day helping Laura make all the arrangements. He so clearly has the situation firmly in hand that I don’t feel bad about suggesting to Laura that it’s time I go home. I’m a little hurt when she agrees so quickly.

  As I drive down the lane, Valerie’s Pontiac convertible is parked in the driveway in front of the Glass House. If she and Andy ever do get pregnant, that car is going to have to go. I pull up behind her car and see her silhouetted in the long, narrow entryway that leads to the most attractive feature of the house--the spacious interior atrium with floor to ceiling glass on three sides.

  An Eichler home redefines the way people live in a house. Light in the atrium flows to a large, open living and dining area and spills out to the back patio. Three bedrooms are located on one side of the house behind the atrium’s only solid wall. The fourth bedroom in front of the house has full access to the atrium. Shoji screens can be pulled for privacy, but if they are left open, anyone approaching the house can see clear through to the back patio through a window Valerie inexplicably chose to add in front.

  A smallish galley kitchen serves a dining area, and a large garage and small hobby room book-end that busy space. Andy and Valerie must be planning to fill this house with a sprawling family of children who don’t care to eat much. The kitchen, well appointed as it is with all the latest appliances, seems like an afterthought. That fits; Valerie isn’t much of a cook.

  Bring the outdoors in! That tag line does a pretty good job of explaining the raison d’etre of an Eichler. What’s less clear to me is why this appeals to Valerie. As she leads me through the house, pointing out the recently installed terra cotta-colored ceramic tile on the floor and the new mahogany wood paneling that warms up the living
and dining room, we end up in the spacious corner bedroom that opens onto an inviting private patio.

  “Do you like this room?” She has an odd expression on her face, tentative.

  “It’s very nice.”

  “It’s big, don’t you think?” She folds her arms across her chest and give me an encouraging smile.

  “It’s big.” I nod, and head for the door.

  “Look, Mom, it has huge closets!” Valerie does a little presentation dance. I’m waiting for a ta da! Instead, she scoots ahead of me to point out the proximity of this bedroom to the second bathroom.

  “And look at this; there’s a little hallway that leads to this bedroom and bathroom. When you shut the door, it’s almost like a separate apartment.”

  “With no kitchen.” I’m getting an inkling of where she is headed.

  “Yes, but, there is something else I want you to see.” We cross through the atrium and the family room into what the plans labeled a hobby room, but Valerie calls a studio.

  “Look at the light in this room, Mom.” Valerie is doing a sales job on me. I’m just not quite sure what she’s selling.

  “Okay Valerie, spill it.” Valerie has one of those open faces that play emotions frame by frame. Her expression clicks from wide-eyed, what-do-you-mean surprise, to grimacing you-got-me guilt to determined okay, let’s-get-down-to-business acceptance. She puts a finger to her lips and raises her eyes to the heavens, searching for the right way to ask me the question I’ve just figured out she wants to ask.

  “I would like you and Roger to think about moving into the Glass House with Andy and me in December.”

  R

  Roger’s reaction to Valerie’s outlandish proposal is not at all what I expected. It just points out how really different we are. When Valerie suggested this cozy arrangement my response was, you’ve got to be out of your mind! Fortunately, I’ve learned not to say the first thing that pops into my head. Instead, I said something like, “Well, that’s an interesting idea. Let me talk to Roger about that.” One of the nice things about having a husband is that you can blame them for decisions you’ve already made. But Roger is siding with Valerie.