A Little Learning

by Margot Early

  And Rory, sensible woman that she was, would probably suggest he get some therapy. But he’d had therapy.

  Therapy was not going to make him less angry at Janine.

  Therapy was not going to make any of it better.

  What made it better—or had seemed to make it bearable until he’d come to Sultan—was avoidance. Avoiding his children, and especially any instance in which he might tell them his real opinion of their mother, his recollections of her death, any of it, all of it.

  “I love my children,” he finally said. “I’m…angry about the way Janine died. I’d prefer not to share that anger with them.”

  Oh.

  Rory considered this. Couldn’t he spend time with his kids without Janine’s death coming into it?

  Maybe not. Maybe that would be difficult to avoid, indeed. Because it wasn’t necessarily the kind of thing people were supposed to avoid.

  “I lost it with Lauren last week,” he admitted. “I said too much.”

  “That must be difficult to keep from doing,” Rory reflected. “I have that problem in everyday life—without big issues at stake.” And Lauren, Rory reflected, considered her mother to be a heroine. A role model.

  It was possible that Seamus actually hated Janine. For buying a gun and then dying because of it.

  “Wow,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “This seems like a big issue. Really big. But Seamus, your kids need you.” The answer came to her even as she spoke. “They need to be with you more than they need not to see you angry with their mother. Maybe they’ll be mad at you for not loving her or supporting her memory the way they think you should. But they’ll be more angry—or something worse than angry—if you avoid them, rather than lose your temper in front of them.

  “It’s kind of like my situation, I think. My mom was being unfaithful to my dad when she died, and I think that’s part of why he’s never had much to do with me. It’s not…adult…to act that way.” One of her hands flew from the steering wheel to cover her mouth. Had she really said that about her father? Had she said that his reaction to her mother’s death—his treatment of her, his daughter—was immature? “I didn’t mean that. I don’t know what I mean. These aren’t easy things.”

  But Seamus was thinking about what she said. “You think I should just risk it.”

  “Well, you’ve got to talk to other adults, someone, about how you feel. Then, maybe you won’t need to talk to your kids about it. I mean, if I were a parent and my spouse bought a handgun, I would be frightened. I would be mad at him for making a unilateral decision. I think lots of people would probably feel the way you do. Have you ever talked to anyone about that?”

  “You mean a counselor? Yes. For quite some time. But I’m still angry, and I’m still not willing to go through the motions with my children, pretending that I think their mom was a great person. She was insecure and stubborn and seemed to have a native inability to listen. It makes me sick that Lauren sees her as the patron saint of all things wise and strong.”

  It was the first time Rory had heard venom in his voice. They’d reached his house, and now she slowed in front.

  “Wouldn’t you like me to help you carry everything into your house?” he asked.

  “I can manage.”

  “Did you find the python?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “So it’s not really safe for you to be there alone.”

  Rory shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. The chance of Lola reappearing and getting aggressive with me is slight.”

  “But such things do happen,” he pointed out.

  “I wish she would turn up,” Rory admitted. “Look, I have your number. I’ll call if there’s a problem. Samantha and Desert will be home in a few hours.”

  Seamus reluctantly headed up the walk, just as his SUV pulled up to the curb behind Rory’s car. Fiona was back with the children.

  Rory drove away, her mind on Seamus, on her initial prejudice against him, and on what really lay beneath his distance from his children. The problem was not what she’d imagined. She respected his wish not to criticize Janine in front of his children, but in his voice this evening she’d heard something close to hatred. His fear did not seem unreasonable to her. His feelings on the subject were neither mutable nor casual.

  She let herself in the back door of the pink house and switched on the mudroom light, then carried her gear inside and looked around.

  Lola was curled on top of the refrigerator.

  “Lola!” Rory said happily. “You’re back.” Remembering her promise to Seamus, she dialed the number of the Empire Street house.

  The voice of an elderly woman answered. “Hello?”

  “This is Rory Gorenzi,” she said, watching Lola stir slightly, looking toward her. “Is Seamus there?”

  “Yes.”

  A moment passed, and Seamus picked up the phone. “Rory?”

  She told him about Lola. “I’ll watch to make sure we don’t lose her again, but it’s rather difficult to carry her without three people. It’s warm up there, and she looks as though she wants to stay where she is, actually.”

  “But I don’t think you should be alone with her,” Seamus put in. “Do you?”

  “It would be extremely unusual if anything happened,” Rory reassured him. No, the situation wasn’t ideal, but it could be remedied when her roommates came home. “I’ll call Desert on her cell phone right now.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ll see you soon.” He hung up.

  Desert didn’t answer her phone. Rory had just finished leaving her a message when a knock sounded at the back door. She opened it and Seamus came in—he was so tall and sober and seemed so competent. Something warm and unnerving rushed through Rory.

  “Your father’s coming, too,” he said. “So we can move her.”

  “She doesn’t actually weigh that much,” Rory said. “I was thinking of when there are three women. That’s how many we need to move her in case she gets, you know, restive.”

  A moment later she heard a knock at her front door and hurried to answer it. Her father stood there. “Um. Hi,” she said. “This really wasn’t necessary.”

  “I was seized with a desire to see the great Burmese python before it moves away,” he told her.

  Yes. The grapevine. No secrets in Sultan.

  Without comment, Rory led him through the living room with its antique furnishings, which Desert intended to sell with the house, and past the ornate staircase with its Victorian moldings. He admired the iron stove in the hall and the decorative radiator. “Lovely place,” he said as they stepped into the kitchen and he saw the patterned linoleum that Desert had so carefully uncovered. “I’m astonished she’s selling.”

  “Actually, she’s begun to fantasize about antebellum mansions in the south. Though I don’t think she’ll have much time on her hands for a while.”

  “Ah,” said her father, glancing up and spotting Lola, peacefully sleeping.

  “Well,” said Rory. “Let me go downstairs and make sure her water dish is full and everything.”

  “Fine.” He turned to Seamus, and together the men admired the kitchen light fixtures. “This is a showplace,” Kurt said. “She’s asking half a million, and the market will bear it. I had no idea it was like this inside.”

  Her father. Her father had come to help her. What conclusions he was drawing about a woman who needed help because of an escaped Burmese python was another question. She’d spent most of her life assuming that her father disapproved of her. But now that she was actually working for him—well, he didn’t treat her as though he disapproved of her. He was simply aloof.

  Was he angry with her mother for dying?

  He must have been angry with her for betraying him with another man. Rory had always known that. But she’d assumed that he extended that anger, unfairly, to her. What if he, like Seamus, feared speaking ill of her mother in front of her? What if he was protecting her from his anger toward her mother, just as Se
amus tried to protect his children?

  *

  “THAT’S A BIG SNAKE,” Kurt remarked to Seamus while Rory was downstairs.

  “Too big,” Seamus agreed. “It belongs in a zoo, not in a house.”

  Kurt made no answer.

  Seamus said, “You must be proud of Rory.” He was fishing, fishing because of the conversation he’d had with Rory in her car. Her frank admission of how his children wanted his company and her sense of rejection by her father. He wanted to hear Kurt Gorenzi say that he did care about his daughter, that he thought she’d matured into a fine human being.

  Kurt simply looked at him. Then, he said, “Why?”

  Seamus could not believe his ears. “She can do so many things.” Don’t bluster, Seamus. “She has an amazing degree of knowledge of the backcountry. She’s great with children.”

  “You’ve said that. She is a remarkable human being, but I can’t claim to have had much to do with it.”

  That was better. Maybe that was regret in Kurt’s voice. No, it was simply acceptance of the status quo, of the reality he’d created.

  But slowly, another possibility occurred to Seamus. He knows you’d like to sleep with his daughter. Of course Kurt wasn’t going to go overboard in his enthusiasm for the subject of his daughter’s merits. Seamus sincerely doubted that Rory was a virgin, but maybe Kurt found that having a friend who was little more than a decade younger than himself pursue Rory was too close for comfort.

  Well, too bad, Seamus thought. Understanding the reason behind Rory’s coolness toward him had given him room for hope.

  He glanced around the interior of the Victorian house with a new thought in mind.

  Desert was selling it.

  Furnished.

  Of course, his kids still had ties to Telluride.

  But Rory had made him believe that what they wanted most of all was the love and attention of their father.

  She emerged at the top of the basement steps. “Well, let’s do it,” she said matter-of-factly and drew one of the kitchen chairs over to the refrigerator and stood up. She stroked the sleeping snake. “Lola, wake up.”

  “They’re deaf,” her father said.

  “But they feel vibrations, and I think she might know the vibration of my voice. She has certainly encountered my scent before.”

  It was a simple and painless operation, Rory taking Lola’s head, Seamus her middle and Kurt the tail.

  “This is really overkill,” Rory told them on the way down the stairs. “Two of us could have done it easily.”

  “Or one,” Kurt said.

  “Yes, but that’s not a good idea—at least not without someone else around. They’re very strong. Snakes.”

  “What would an animal like this kill in the wild?” Kurt asked.

  “I’m not sure. Lola eats frozen rabbits, as you know.” Because of the rabbits in the freezer at the Sultan Mountain School. Her feelings about Desert’s departure were mixed. Rory would miss her friendship, miss dancing with her, miss her sense of humor. She would not miss Lola, or Desert’s annoying habit of assuming that other people should understand why she did all the things she did.

  Rory was envious of her housemate’s situation—no money worries, because of her wealth, and she was being invited back into her family. She was needed by her family. Also, Rory suspected that the experience of caring for her mother as her Alzheimer’s progressed would somehow help Desert, steady her, give her a sense of purpose and greater self-confidence, the kind of true confidence that comes from knowing one is useful, valuable. Needed.

  She secured the door of the vivarium, leaving the Burmese python inside.

  “She’s an impressive creature,” Kurt remarked, gazing through the glass at the snake. “I think I can see why your roommate’s reluctant to part with her.”

  Rory made no answer. She doubted her father actually did see why. Desert loved Lola as one loved a pet. Finally, she said, “They can grow to twenty feet and two hundred pounds.”

  “Wow!” exclaimed Kurt.

  “Yes,” Seamus echoed. “My son Beau was quite worried about this one possibly eating our puppy. That was my fault. For mentioning the chance.”

  Kurt smiled ruefully. He scanned the floor, as though looking for something, then eyed his daughter, and his expression was a bit troubled. “Will you get another dog?” he finally asked.

  She was touched. She’d never mentioned Gandalf’s death to him, and yet he knew. “I don’t know. Desert is the one who was allergic. But I may not be able to stay in this house after it sells, and a dog needs a fenced yard.”

  Seamus said, “Could we see… Maybe it’s not a good time.” After all, Rory hadn’t washed off her makeup or even so much as taken off her down jacket. “I’d love to see the whole house. Since it’s on the market.”

  Kurt nodded. “So would I. Perhaps another day? Or maybe you’ll have an open house for prospective buyers.”

  “Yes. Maybe,” said Rory, with sadness.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  DESERT DROVE AWAY from the house on the following Tuesday, with Lola carefully contained in her portable vivarium in the back of Desert’s Land Cruiser. She also pulled a U-Haul trailer, but she’d chosen to give many of her possessions to her friends upon departing. She’d given Rory several of her favorite hip belts for belly dancing and Samantha a metal cone bra made for her in New York. There were also earrings, rings from Africa, Bedouin bracelets, and many other personal belongings that had somehow been part of their life with Caldera.

  “We’ll choose a new name,” Samantha had promised. “Because even if we can find another dancer or more dancers, the troupe won’t be the same without you.”

  Minutes after Desert had left, Samantha and Rory decided on the name Turquoise Sky, a tribute to the fall sky over Colorado’s mountains.

  The Realtor Desert had chosen loved the idea of an open house and chose Valentine’s Day as the date. If the house hadn’t sold by summer, they could host another one then.

  All that was required of Rory and Samantha was to keep their own rooms clean. The Realtor’s crew took care of the rest, cleaning furnishings and floors, carpets and upholstery and polishing the antiques. On the morning of Valentine’s Day they would bring in flowers, food and wine.

  Seamus’s family was a month into its course with the Sultan Mountain School. Beau had been promoted from intern to wage earner at the ski factory, and Lauren was teaching the tiny tots snowboard class every morning at eleven. Caleb was participating in junior avalanche school and competing in local snowboarding competitions. All the children had academic classes in the afternoon, now, with Sultan Mountain School teachers. Essays, creative writing, artwork and more were part of the program.

  Rory noticed that with Fiona Murray on the premises, she saw less of the Lee children but more of Seamus. Fiona, clearly, made it possible for Seamus to distance himself from his children.

  Seamus had taken to stopping by in the evenings, sometimes bringing her a cup of chai tea from the neighborhood coffee stand, sometimes just to tell her of something he’d seen in Sultan or something he wanted her to see. Or he’d use the excuse of the puppy, Seuss, whom Beau was taking to obedience classes at the Sultan Recreation Center once a week. There were only two dogs in the class, plus the instructor’s demonstration dog.

  Seamus would always invite Rory to come for a walk with him in the evening. And Rory would always refuse, even as she felt herself being drawn to him in every way. The physical attraction was so overwhelming that she longed to ignore professionalism and let the relationship go wherever it would.

  Finally, one evening when he’d invited her for a walk as usual, she tried to explain. “You’re a Sultan Mountain School client and I’m an SMS employee. It’s not…on. You know what I mean.”

  He’d nodded thoughtfully and had stopped inviting her for walks, but he continued to approach her in friendship.

  Rory told herself that he wouldn’t always be a client.

 
; But when he was no longer a client, he and his family would return to Telluride, unless her father’s plans came to pass. She knew that Kurt would like nothing better than for Seamus, his family, his studio and his employees all to move to Sultan.

  On Valentine’s Day, Rory worked as usual. She and Seamus went up to nearby Robin Mountain to telemark ski. They reviewed avalanche skills on the way, taking time to dig a pit that would indicate avalanche conditions in the area. Concluding that conditions were sufficiently safe, they skied for two hours. Rory realized while they were skiing that she had come to know his scent. Sometimes, he touched her, casually, appropriately, on the shoulder or back, to get her attention.

  At home after skiing that day, Rory quickly showered and then dressed in black wool slacks and jacket with a white blouse. Samantha wore a batik dress with a metal belt. The Realtor and caterers were in place before five, when visitors began to arrive.

  Carpenters had done a bit of work on some of the upstairs rooms and the house looked lovely. Old, but largely restored.

  Seamus and his children arrived without Fiona. Rory asked after her, and Seamus said, “She actually left today to visit her daughter and grandchildren.”

  Rory darted a look at him. “And you’re comfortable with that?”

  He flipped a hand, indicating ambivalence.

  Lauren came over to join them. “What is going to happen to your troupe without your friend?”

  “Samantha and I will perform without her. We’ve changed the name. If we find new troupe members, we’ll add them. But we have a functioning duo in the meantime.”

  “I wish I was good enough,” Lauren said.

  “You will be. You have a natural gift for dance,” Rory told her. “I think you can do just about anything you want, Lauren.”

  Seamus’s older daughter beamed. “If we lived here,” she said, “I’d want to work really hard at my dancing and staff spinning until I could be in your troupe.”

  Rory envisioned this for a moment, and knew that she was really envisioning something more, some closer tie between her and this girl. If I had a sister, she thought, I’d like her to be like Lauren.