He turned, smiled, pushed his chair back and started for her. “I’m glad you decided to join us.”
She didn’t have a vocabulary for describing scents, not like she had for the nuances of color, and she wondered about his faint suggestion of spice. Not cologne, something warmer and more masculine. How did you describe attar of man? “I’m glad, too.”
“The graves over there,” he nodded in the direction of the rocks, “they’re the aunt and uncle who raised Luessy?”
As much as she enjoyed his standing beside her, she still felt somewhat lighted-headed and moved on to the patio table and a chair. “Did Tory tell you about the graves? Mémé’s will says they’re to remain undisturbed for a hundred years.”
She’d dressed first in a long-sleeved cotton blouse over her cut-offs, a top with no cling over her shoulder, but she thought of how much spring weather she’d already missed lying in bed, and how quickly Prairie was growing and Jonah, Mable and Tory were aging. She wouldn’t waste one more afternoon wishing she were prettier and trying to hide herself. She tossed the blouse across the rose chair and reached for a cooler white T-shirt.
Now, Clay stood behind her doing the whole gentlemanly thing, pushing in her chair like he didn’t already have carte blanche to the library. How could he not be looking at her shoulder? He hadn’t missed her legs. Crossing the portico, she noticed his gaze going down, and up. For years she’d hated them, gangly and too long, and now here was a leg-man. Not that it mattered. He was not a potential partner. Tory was right, seven or eight years was too much of an age difference, and he had a PhD, and taught at the University. She was barely twenty, already a divorced, single mother who lived off the generosity of an aunt, and according to Dr. Mahoney, a victim of mindless depression.
He came back around the table, the corners of his eyes crinkling ever so slightly against the sharp sunlight. “I love your paintings in the attic.”
She struggled to keep from giving the too-big grin of the fool. “Thank you. My last professor thought I wasn’t challenging myself by always doing portraits.” She wouldn’t add, ‘of females.’ A female painting females—lesser on lesser. “I’ve been told they don’t fit any European model and fall into the category of folk art.” She grinned, “You don’t want to get me started.”
He settled into his chair. “I see them as allegory. They’re arresting, rather mythical.”
“You see what I’m trying to do. You’re good.”
One brow lifted. “‘Good?’ Good for a guy, good for someone who knows nothing about art?”
“Just good.”
“Okay, then.” They both chuckled at the other. “What would you say to hanging one in the university library? The one of Luessy atop the stack of her novels? We have a lot of wall space to fill.”
“You’re kidding?”
“I’m not. It’s the Luessy Starmore Library, and that’s a very arresting and unique painting of her, and it was done by her granddaughter. I think it more than qualifies.”
She wanted to reach across the table and hug him. Fighting tears, she looked out across the flowers. “I’d love it,” she managed.
“I hope I haven’t upset you.”
“No. It’s just things have been so crazy the last few months. Somehow, having even that simple picture displayed feels like a step forward. I’m grateful.”
“Tory says you’re mostly self-taught, and you learned a lot by copying figures from mythology?”
Something almost remembered skimmed Willow’s awareness, but slipped away ungrasped. “Tory has listened to my ranting for two months now.” Was that true? Was she having conversations she didn’t remember? “I did do a lot of copying. While other kids were running up and down soccer fields and splashing in swimming pools, I painted.”
“You didn’t use photographs of the women?”
She framed her face with her fingers, just as she’d isolated areas in art class. She cringed, remembering her hand and recovered. “I stole that idea from Frida Kahlo. The props and clothing come from the scraps of their lives I do know about.” A slight breeze funneled under the roof, and she watched it work like an invisible hand smoothing the front of his shirt. “Now your face,” she said, “tells me your life has been one big picnic.”
“Good guess. A picnic through and through.”
She studied him, half expecting the sun would strike him and he’d disappear like any mirage. “Do you write fiction or strictly biography?”
“I’d secretly like to write fiction, but I think I’d better stick to biography, research, and facts.”
She hoped she wasn’t staring, watching him lean back, his arms relaxed on the arms of his chair. “Maybe you have a couple of pot-smoking colleagues who would make good characters.”
“My colleagues wear dark suits and think pot-smokers should be behind bars.” He waited, enjoying her amusement. “Actually, they’re great people. Tory hopes you’ll attend Briarwood in the fall. I wouldn’t want you thinking badly of us.”
Thinking of fall saddened her. She’d been too ill and uncertain to consider three months ahead. “Tory’s been an entire army of help to me, but I have no idea if I’ll still be here in the fall.”
“We have an excellent studio arts department, and they’d be thrilled to have you.”
“There’s just so much. All I can manage to think about right now is sitting in this chair.” She also wouldn’t mention how she could sit and talk to him for an eternity. “Your interest in Mémé is cool, but I have to tell you, she’d think all the library fuss silly.”
“Would she? I thought she loved attention?”
“What?”
Taking his time, he looked out over the portico to the roses and Jonah. “This incredibly huge house and the big garden—”
“She wasn’t Emily Dickinson,” Willow cut in, “but this isn’t Monticello either.”
“And the name? Farthest House on Old Squaw Road.”
“You must already know how the name came about.”
“I’ve heard one version. What do you think? Why build something grand and give it a name that to others is a joke?”
“Because it spits in your eye.”
He laughed. “Exactly. But why was that necessary?”
A cumulus cloud moved, blocking the sunlight and deepening the color of the roses. “Maybe she built it for her aunt or for the mother she never knew. I’ve never thought about it, which probably sounds weird.” She shrugged. “Actually, everything about being here is weird. I feel like I’m always dreaming, half loopy.”
She looked away and back into the eyes so like shiny river stones. “I can’t believe I just admitted that. Being sick rots your brain, makes you start babbling.” That admission was at least as bad as the first. Her eyes narrowed. “What I mean is, Mémé’s aunt rescued her. Now, here I am, at this house, rescued by my aunt.” A chill crawled up her right arm and passed over the scars she’d given herself. Her heart pumped a bit faster. If something happened to her, would Prairie then end up being raised by Tory? Had Farthest House sucked her back to die in its walls and hand Prairie over to another childless aunt? “You’re not going to put any of this in your book?”
“I promise. The book is strictly about Luessy. I grew up reading her and Conan Doyle and….”
Willow lost track of the conversation. Jonah stood in the same place as before, but now he had a wheelbarrow. She’d missed seeing his slow slumping away and slow slumping back. She wanted to close her eyes, but she needed to stay awake, concentrate.
“…and your grandmother’s descriptions of the Midwest,” Clay was saying, “spoke to me.”
He’d taken off his tie and opened his top shirt button. Low on his throat, there in the bottom of that thumbprint indentation—given by the gods, myth said—she imagined his pulse. “So, you moved to Nebraska instead of Scotland Yard?”
“I couldn’t be sure Scotland Yard had as much charisma as Nebraska.”
She lifted a hand, held i
t between them. “Please…a Nebraska mystique? Corn and Herbie Husker? What about Bangor, Maine, or Seattle? Points farthest away from here.”
“I came from the East, the White Mountains area. Here you have incredibly wide open spaces, a lingering aura of the west, buffalo and sacred sites. Did I mention incredibly wide open spaces, nothing to stop the wind? Or a person who needs to put on track shoes and run.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Plus,” he said with a chuckle, “Briarwood offered me a job. It’s not easy to get that first tenure-track position. I couldn’t turn it down.”
“How did that come about?”
“I thought I was interviewing you.”
“I thought you weren’t.”
“I’d finished my PhD.” He glanced in Jonah’s direction, too, then back. “I only had one brother, he was gone, my parents were gone, and I wanted to start fresh somewhere new. When I read about the position, I immediately thought of the Luessy Starmore Mysteries and how she lived in Greenburr. I didn’t know she’d died. I thought if Greenburr was a town where she had the freedom to do that much writing, it would be a great place for me to teach and write.”
“And?”
“I applied, was granted an interview, flew out in the spring and was hooked: the town, the Victorian homes, old shops, people who looked you in the eye and said ‘hello.’ I fell in love. Farmers plowed and planted using huge pieces of machinery that rumbled down the roads, Tonkas on steroids.”
She wanted him to go on talking. “And?”
“Well, the whole area felt alive. Different from people running around in a city. On the Briarwood campus, flags whipped straight out on their poles, girls turned their faces into the wind, and their hair lifted off their shoulders. Everything moved, no mountains, no high rises, no boundaries of any sort to stop that wind. In every direction, I could see clear into the next state: Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, and South Dakota.”
“I’ve always loved that about Nebraska, being able to keep an eye on the folks in Colorado.”
“I could breathe. I came out of my first interview with the search committee and filled my lungs with air and knew I had the job. Even if at that point they had no intention of hiring me, I knew the job was mine. However the chips fell, their first ten choices all changing their minds about moving or suddenly dying of the bubonic plague, the job was mine. Maybe they still aren’t sure how I got here.”
Willow wondered why he hadn’t been able to breathe before he came to Nebraska, but she decided against asking. They didn’t know each other that well.
A bee buzzed too close, and she jerked back and saw the insect lift and disappear like a bead on the end of a yanked string. There would be others.
“You’re scared of bees?”
“I didn’t used to be. What about the library? How’d you get a project that big off the ground?”
“I didn’t. The money had already been raised, the plans approved for a larger library. Tory’s making too much of my contribution. I did write a persuasive letter suggesting the library be named after her, their local celebrity and a literary one at that.
“And that’s why they invited you to serve on the library committe?”
“Invited might not be the right word. Assigned might be better. Once you’re on a committee, and you actually show up to the meetings, you can end up with a truckload of work in your lap. Don’t forget, I’m working on her biography, so I’ve got ulterior motives. Being on the committee, I’m certain of selling at least one copy of my book to the library.”
He was fun. She couldn’t remember the last time she had such a fun and genuine conversation? He said more in fifteen minutes than Papa had in a year. “I take back what I said, Mémé would love the library.”
“I hope so. Wait until you see it. The back of the university butts into open land, acres they own and rent out as pastures and expand into. Some rich and childless widow bequeathed her farm, and the section the library is on holds a slew of massive burr oaks.”
The wide patio door opened, and Mable carried Prairie out. She left the door ajar, brought Prairie to Willow, disappeared back into the house, and reappeared carrying a tray with small dessert plates, milk for Prairie in a sippy cup, tiny pitchers of cream and honey, and a plate of cookies. Clay stood and taking a few long strides reached her and took the tray. He eyed the cookies. “You do this every day? Every single day? My mom baked a lot of cookies, but not every single day.”
Mable stayed to pass the plates around and see her cookies placed squarely in the middle of the table. “I have to work to keep meat on this one.” She leveled her eyes on Willow. “Walnuts, dates, Jonah’s wild honey, good, rich butter, now you eat one.”
“They smell wonderful,” Willow said, though she had no desire to eat one.
Tory appeared with a second tray: a teapot and three cooling cups all with varied patterns. Erect in her chair and presiding, she passed a mug to Clay and the pansy cup to Willow. The flowers still took Willow back in time and made her feel a part of Farthest House. She wasn’t yet a burden to Tory.
“Cream?” Tory asked.
Before Willow could agree or refuse, Tory lifted the small creamer and poured. She asked the same question of Clay with the same absent-mindedness and added cream before he could refuse.
Willow felt Clay’s amusement, but she dared not look at him for fear of smiling and Tory catching their pleasure and realizing she was the cause. She reached for the honey jar.
“Please, start while your tea is hot,” Tory said. “I’ll only grab my sewing.”
Willow had braided her hair earlier, and now Prairie grabbed for the plait, bringing it over Willow’s shoulder. Captivated by the knobby feel, Prairie slid her chubby hands down the long bumpy rope. She grabbed again, higher this time, reading with her tiny palms the many things her mother’s hair could be.
The first morning Willow decided to braid her hair, rather than let it hang loose down the sides of her face, she hadn’t thought of Luessy’s long braid. She walked around Luessy’s bedroom with its cooler air and stillness, some slight touch making her wonder if the bedroom door had been shut all the years she was away. Time and isolation might explain how the room seemed to grow its own light and air. She trailed her fingers over her grandmother’s big pieces of furniture: the bed, bookcases, desk, and dresser with its aging mirror and what looked like water stains beginning to spatter the silver-backed glass. Mémé touched it all, she thought, and she imagined her grandmother’s liver-spotted hands and rounding knuckles. Mémé and the furniture had aged together.
Stopping in front of the mirror, she stood barefoot on the same carpet where Mémé had stood barefoot, likely even Jeannie, and the carpet where she’d stood as a little girl, when the world around her was carnival sized. Her fingers began braiding.
Now that she’d started wearing the single braid, she didn’t feel dressed until she’d made the three equal sections, layering the hair over and over, weaving in comfort and history, and calling up ghosts.
35
With Tory not yet returned, Clay swallowed the tea he sipped and set his cup down, his shoulders giving an involuntary shudder. “I do coffee.” He reached for a cookie. “This’ll help.”
Still holding Prairie, Willow laughed, touching her nose to Prairie’s in play. “He hates tea.” She believed she could see his mind already swinging back to his work, the way her mind so often swung back to her work hours after she’d cleaned her brushes.
“Would you consider Luessy a feminist?” he asked.
Prairie felt heavy in Willow’s aching arms. Willow took a quick gulp of her tea, “Ah, cream and honey,” and set her cup back before chubby hands could grab for it. “Would her being a feminist bother you?”
“No. The term wasn’t even popular in her day, at least not when she began writing. I’ve never felt her novels carried a political agenda, but being here,” his gaze went out over the garden, “the grandeur of this place is quite
a statement for a woman of her time. Was it Jung who said our houses are representations of our psyches?”
She squinted as if Clay hadn’t heard himself. “What else would our houses represent?”
One side of his mouth lifted in an easy sideways grin. “You’d be challenging in a class room.”
Prairie squirmed to get down, and Willow fought to keep hold of her. Returning fatigue crawled up Willow’s back, and her stomach began to sway with an all too-familiar roll. She’d been out of bed too long. “Mémé believed in the power of finding and holding tight to a vision. She believed in work.” Willow’s words sounded loud and too forceful. She tried to fight her symptoms and relax. “Does that make her a feminist? What does that word even mean? Women with visions who work to achieve lives that males believe only they deserve?”
Leaning in, Clay watched her.
Her symptoms were always the same: headaches, nausea, and exhaustion. The tiredness, she supposed, came from the first two, which kept her from sound sleep. If she were to add a fourth, it would be moments of hyper-awareness, almost a dislocation from her body, and this, too, she believed came from her inability to keep food down and sleep soundly.
The door slid open, and Tory stepped out with her sewing. When she sat down at the table, and Clay who stood, sat back down after her, she reached into her basket and drew out the flat round form of a doll’s still-empty head. “You were only a child when Mom lived,” she said to Willow. “How would you know about her visions?”
“You heard that?” Willow asked. “Do you think Mémé was a feminist?”
Tory’s long fingers pinched off wads of batting and stuffed them into the narrow slit she’d left open at the top of the doll’s head. “She certainly lived in her own world.”
Selfishly? Was that what Tory suggested? But it was ‘lived in her own world’ that most caught Willow’s attention. On her first trip to Farthest House, she stood on the big front porch with Papa, surrounded by geraniums while Friar tried to lick her face, and she heard Papa scold Mémé with nearly the same sentiment: Willow’s got to live in this world right here. In the years since that bright morning, she’d experienced so many extraordinary things that now she wondered what world was this world right here?
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