by Sharon
But I've never told her that, he thought. I've never said that to her. Tonight I will. Tonight I'm going to say to her, "Thank you for all you went through to have my children."
Laughing came from the kitchen—howling, more like. Susan had said something to make Fanny and her aunt Mary and grandmother laugh hard, and then Rachel put in her bit of a joke and bent them double. And then Anna murmured something thoughtful.
Like a mending wound, it was getting better between Rachel and the rest of the family, although when she came to stay it was for no more than a day or two, almost as though she didn't dare stay any longer or she might not be able to leave again. And with him she kept up a barrier that neither of them seemed able to breach. When they tried to talk to each other, they fought. He couldn't get over how tough his twins had been, those oldest daughters of his, how they'd stuck to their guns no matter what, one to choose the life she'd wanted, the other to choose the love.
He had Susan back now, and was thankful for that. With Rachel, he didn't know. He just didn't know. He prayed every day that she'd be saved. It was awful hard looking at her, belligerent, desperate, and plucky, to think God could harden His heart against her, that He had to know how she was and maybe make allowances.
It had been a mistake to blame her writing. That wasn't what had made her leave. The writing was a talent, God-given. It was her spirit that had made her go, to see what was outside, and if it was better.
Two writers in the family. Think of that. Once he'd said to Alan, to make him smile, "Two writers is too much for one family." It was strange how Rachel had gone in one way looking for freedom and Alan went in the other, and they'd both found it. It meant something; he couldn't think what. He'd have to get it sorted out in his mind.
Rachel had turned around in the kitchen, and she was staring at him, just as if she had the idea he was thinking about her. She hesitated. She wiped her hands on her apron, taking longer than it should have.
Again he felt that helplessness and that yearning. He smiled at her. She stayed solemn, like she was thinking about something else. Then she swung around and marched from the kitchen. His heart sank.
Something made him look over to the screen door, and he saw her there behind it. She pushed open the door, let it slam at her back, and sat down at his side.
"Hi, Pop," she said.
It was the first time she'd sought him out since her banning. He felt thrilled and at a loss. "Hi yourself."
"It was a nice rain."
"It was just what we needed," he said.
And because they couldn't talk, not without a fight, they sat there side by side and were quiet together, watching the sun come out, and in a while his hand came over and held hers.
From the window above his desk, Daniel watched the breeze comb wetness from the alfalfa, wrinkling the hay in wings of white shadow. It'd be dry enough to mow later, and in the meantime, he could put. his accounts up to date… unless Joan came back from riding in the rain with Luke and distracted him, which would be fine too.
For him, life was nearly perfect.
He was able to worship in the gentle, severe faith of his ancestors, one that had brought him serenity since childhood, in spite of his reservations, and if he could do that, and farm, and read, and have love, that was perfect. And he had love.
Susan and Alan had plenty of company, old friends with luggage tags stamped LAX, LGA, CDG. They came out of curiosity at first, now for the fun of it, as though to a chicly rustic resort, to mock and admire and find rest and talk late into the night.
Joan was the most frequent visitor. She came when she could between films and Susan's refrigerator filled with Pepsi and Perrier and the hall outside the guest room smelled of face powder and perfume. She adored the children, brought them whimsical expensive presents, fairy tale games from Germany, Scandinavian puzzles, chocolates in gold foil.
Most of all she came for him. She played at farming like a French queen at a Versailles, dairy. She followed his footsteps while he plowed, went sledding with him by moonlight, cried when she left.
He'd tried to keep it in perspective in the beginning, and for him perspective had meant that he would not bring his passion for her to physical completion. Except then one night he'd come into his bedroom to find her wearing nothing but his hat, and she'd asked him if he thought black felt flattered her. He'd discovered then there were limits to his virtue.
"Oh sweet girl," he'd said, sometime during the night, "will you marry me?" He'd stopped her answer with his kiss so she wouldn't have to refuse him aloud. He knew her answer already. Wife is a four-letter word he'd heard her say sometimes, and I could never give up the glitter.
They didn't make it harder for each other by planning tomorrow. They loved in the fullness of the present.
He didn't anticipate a miracle. He'd never thought it was easy for God to intervene in nature. There was a balance to things. Maybe to answer a prayer for rain in Ohio stuck Kansas with a drought.
So he must learn to accept the idea that he wouldn't grow old being able to wrap himself in red hair.
Daniel looked up from a seed bill when he heard his screen door creak open and crack shut. He came into the kitchen to find Joan sitting on the kitchen table beside a cherry pie. Her legs were flecked with damp grass and her halter top was shining wet. Luke grinned and gallantly put up his hat to cover her chest.
Then Luke left and she took off the halter and squeezed it out in his hair. When he took her in his arms, this time he didn't shake away the hope that if there were any miracles floating around up there, he and Joan just might snag one.
The rain had ended.
Early-afternoon quiet crept into the old upstairs bedroom. Sunlight broke through a side window, channeling in a wand over the plain bedstead, the cotton quilt, and Alan Wilde's denim jeans.
He was, in every sense, at peace.
He lay at an angle, hands under his head, his son a pleasant chunky bundle on his chest. Everyone should have moments like this, when time had no importance.
He heard the breeze in the corn, the muffled chirr of the refrigerator. A dove crooned near the woods. His little boy hiccuped in his sleep.
The baby wore only a diaper. His warm, rounded limbs were outflung in sleep, and they felt to Alan like an embrace. He loved every detail of this small body, the puffy bottom lip, bluish-pink eyelids shut over Hershey-bar eyes, the curls as soft and as bright as rook feathers nuzzling his skin.
The baby had been born in this bed. Alan had thought that Susan would be safer in a hospital. It had been his only serious conflict with her family since he'd bought the farm. How could he be so hard, they'd wanted to know, surrounding Susan with strangers at a time like that? What was so safe or comfortable about making a woman take a trip to the hospital in the midst of her labor? The baby had ended the argument by coming quickly, and two weeks early, right in the middle of Christmas dinner. As Susan's mother said, there was scarcely time to get off her apron. "I just did it to get out of doing the dishes," Susan said after. Carolyn's crayoned card, with every letter a different color, was still tucked in the frame of the mirror. It read: "WELCOME, I LOVE YOU, DEAR BABY."
There'd been a time—he could barely remember it now—when he couldn't understand how people could bring children into the world, when it had seemed like a cruel and selfish act, when families had seemed to be a combination of fable and Freudian nightmare. That was a different him.
Contrary to popular wisdom, native caution, and hard experience, he'd given up everything to be with her in the Midwest near her family. He had let go the career, the houses and cars, the jazzy perks of fame. "Dear Katelyn," went his note, "I'm checking out of Hotel California." No one he knew was quite able to assimilate it. Studio stock had begun to fall minutes after his agent had made the announcement.
It was just as well for the movie that he'd allowed it to open first. By everyone's definition, it was a good one to ride out on. It made money and netted Academy Award nominatio
ns for screenplay, score, set design; it took an Oscar for special effects. Nothing for direction—that was appreciation for you, Alan thought. It meant little to him now. It only amused him.
He'd even scored with the critics. They'd dubbed it Alan Wilde's eerie fairy tale. "Each shot so lovingly framed, so visually arresting, so intimate, one almost feels embarrassed viewing it. No director has ever approached technique with more originality. But newcomer Susan Peachey runs away with the film with her sheer playful charm and abounding joie de vivre." Those less enamored of the film said it was a closet Gothic, "Alan Wilde in a public identity crisis."
"Alan Wilde has discovered sentiment, God help us all." And his favorite: "Never have we seen a director more carefully restrain his impulses toward greatness than Alan Wilde. In this film, it almost catches up with him. We still wait for the man to find himself."
For the man himself, the wait was over. For his old friends, the change had been difficult to accept.
Susan had just learned she was pregnant when Katelyn arrived by surprise one morning, in response to an open invitation. By chance, and maybe it was a little much, she had her first view of Alan behind a horse-drawn plow. Making a corner, he saw the rented white Chrysler New Yorker, with Katelyn, in a black Persian-lamb hip-length jacket, staring at him over barbed wire.
When he'd gotten close enough to hear she said, "Oh, dear God, Alan, how can you?" Taking in the Levi jacket and boots: "You've only done this because you know it's such superb theater. If you have suspenders under that, I've done with you." He had flashed open his jacket to show that he didn't wear them. She'd pointed at the. plow. "Is that difficult?"
"The horse does it all. I'm strictly luggage. Come and try."
Lamb jacket and snakeskin heels went into the Chrysler, and in her stocking feet she let him put her ahead of him between the shafts and position her hands on the plow handles. He clucked to the bay mare, flapping the lines. With her meticulously cared-for chestnut hair blowing in his face, he was showing her the way the furrow of rich earth grew from the pasture, saying, "You don't have to bear down on the handles. The plowshare is designed to cut into the ground by itself," when he realized something was wrong. He turned her around, and found she was crying, her face white and furious.
"It's such a waste," she said. "It's such a bloody waste. This is not a sane way for you to spend your time."
He pulled the horse to a stop and stood with her like that, resting his elbows on her shoulders; then, with affection, his chin on her head.
"I can't make horror movies, Kate. I don't feel any more horror."
"For God's sake, who asked you to? Characterization is your strength. You can make any kind of picture you want."
"I've left a lot of money back there, invested in good movies."
"Throw a stick at the San Fernando Valley and you'll hit a thousand fools who want to lose money making movies. But try to hunt up someone with honest creative energy and you'll go begging. They need you, not your money, and all you want to do is grow vegetables and turn into one. You came here for her, but what are you doing for yourself?"
He smiled. "I'm writing a play."
There was a long pause. She rubbed her wet nose against his jacket sleeve, and said thickly, "Is it any good?"
"You read it and tell me."
She read it later at the farmhouse, her coffee turning cold. Set before the Civil War, the play was about a feisty and intrepid family escaping slavery, making its way north to freedom in Canada on the underground railroad, staying with Quaker farmers, under taverns, in the back room of a bordello. It was a story about liberation, and, surprisingly, a comedy.
When Katelyn was finished, she kissed Susan and said, "For this he was born."
One year later, the play had opened on Broadway, and it was still playing to almost full houses.
The baby made a tense movement and woke up, depositing a shiny thread of drool on his chest. Realization must have hit that he'd been tricked by Machiavellian stratagems into napping, and his pixie face puckered to cry. Then he seemed to change his mind and poked his fist in his mouth, teething drowsily on it with sore gums.
"Hi, mouse."
The baby chewed ruminatively, staring thoughtfully at him before glancing suspiciously around the room.
"Ma-ma?"
"At Grandma's. She'll be home soon."
The baby pulled the soggy hand from his mouth, examined it, and used it to explore his father's face.
Slowly stroking the satiny hair, Alan said, "Let's get up and get you a new diaper."
"No." The long-lashed eyes were stern. He was entering a negative stage—normal, Susan said. Alan gazed back at the baby, marveling that anything so small could have a distinct personality.
"Want to get dressed?"
"No."
Really fascinated now, Alan asked, "Want to play?"
"No," was the quietly satisfied answer.
"Want a million bucks?"
"No."
"Want to grow up and have hot sex with starlets?"
"No."
"Want a cookie?"
"N—" The gears of a year-and-a-half-old brain clicked silently into action. Eyes narrowed briefly in cunning, and then the face ignited into the fabulous smile that never failed to make Alan's heart feel as if it were turning over in his chest. Susan's smile.
"Yes!"
When they were done with the peaches, Susan walked with her grandmother west of the barn to the slough pasture to look for black raspberries—black caps, Grandma called them. She had a special way she liked them, made into sauce for dipping bread in.
Grandma told her about the old days, when Susan's great-uncle had been a bee finder. He'd chase those bees through the woods to get to a bee tree, and when he did, he had such a way with bees, he could reach right down into the hive without getting stung.
Images from the story took hold in Susan's imagination while she rode home on horseback. She liked that about living, that just when you thought you'd heard all the stories, new ones came along. Rachel would write the story down, Alan might too, and it would be saved, while it might not have been otherwise. When you saved stories, you held onto time.
It was important to hang onto time. She felt a little blue, because when she'd taken Grandma home, it had been hard for the frail legs to climb the steps, harder even than last month. After each step, they'd had to take a rest, and Susan had wanted to hold her grandma and hang on tight.
Lord, thank you for giving me these days with her.
Warmth and a murmur of comfort surrounded her.
When she got home, she wanted to be with Alan and her son.
Her house had kept a good smell from the rain, fresh and cedary. Wooden houses had a way of reminding her that they'd come from a living thing.
She came in quietly, on the off chance that Alan was writing, though that wasn't likely, not with the baby. He usually wrote early in the morning, tapping the fertility of his mind, where there'd been dreams only moments before. That was a change. Back in California, he used to get out of bed to business and coffee and write tired. Now the writing came first, catching his best.
No. He wasn't in his office. The word processor was off.
She sat at the Steinway and began to play her half of the Pachelbel "Canon." It was something Alan liked to do, make up one-piano duets they could play, and they often played for her family. Ordnung wasn't so strict here on instruments in the home, so it was all right. Alan said the people here were the most appreciative audience he had ever seen, instrumental music being so rare and special to them. Alan had even coaxed her dad into accepting a record player and some albums of band music, and she'd caught him sometimes listening and tapping his toe to the melody.
On winter evenings she and Alan played in front of a bright, fragrant fire and the music seemed to stay close and wrap them in warmth. When they played in spring at sunset, the music seemed to stretch far out and become part of the pink and gold and violet of the air. B
oth parts of the duet were complete in themselves, but brought together they expanded with new life and richness. Because the farm covered a lot of space, whenever one of them needed to call the other, a loud piano solo would do the trick.
Before long Alan came into the house, with the baby under one arm and the Lop under the other. He held the baby up to her face for a kiss, and then put him in the playpen with his toys. Alan joined her at the piano, sitting close.
He came right in with his part, knowing where she was in the piece. Each time he played differently, altering the mood and flavor. Three years she'd been playing and still she felt all thumbs. She never could get over his ease and excellence.
He liked to play so their hands would touch, cross each other, caress, but today that didn't last, because he began to play with his hands covering hers. Lightly, thrillingly, he played his fingertips up her bare arms and then lay her down slowly backward on the piano bench to bring his mouth down over hers in a long, sensual kiss.
Her sisters came by for the baby. Her mother wanted to spend some time with him. So Susan walked with Alan, soaking up the summer.
The sky was hazy on the horizon, blue as chicory flowers higher up. Below, the earth had turned the raw, powerful colors of summer. Cardinals made scarlet flickers in the cottonwoods, and turk's-cap lilies nodded over the creek bed. Sometimes one of them stepped on a fallen plum or a crab apple, and the scent would stay on their shoes. Farmers had gotten back to the fields, and the pungency of new-mown hay ascended from the raked windrows to make floating bands of fragrance in the breeze.