A Little Learning

by Margot Early

  “I was hoping for your input.”

  “Actually, I’d like to choose a gift for her myself,” Rory said. She would present Lauren with belly dance treasures selected from her own collection. Maybe… Her imagination went wild. Giving Lauren a coin bra, for instance, would affirm Lauren’s maturity. And tribal belly dance costumes were beautiful.

  “I know that,” Seamus said.

  “Seamus, she wants something from you. Something special that you choose.”

  Rory told him about her conversation with Lauren before leaving Telluride. She admitted, “It makes me want to say, ‘Okay, we won’t get married until you’re happy with the idea.’ But that’s crazy. I just never expected this, and I suppose I should have. I thought she liked me—and she does like me. But she considered me a friend, and she sees this as a betrayal.”

  “She’ll get beyond it,” Seamus said.

  “I don’t know. It seems related to her loyalty to her mother, which is understandable.”

  “You think so?” Seamus said. “To be perfectly honest, lately I don’t understand Lauren at all.”

  *

  WHEN HE’D HUNG UP, Seamus considered everything that Rory had said and thought about her anxiety over Lauren’s attitude.

  Something for Lauren. For her birthday.

  The seed of an idea had been planted in the studio, when Beau had said, Koneko’s evil. She’s Lauren’s character. That’s what she wanted. She said, ‘I want to be someone bad.’ Koneko’s really bad.

  Yes, years ago, Lauren had told him that she wanted her Ki-Rin character to be evil.

  And he had obliged. Koneko was a demoness who wished to kill the dragon boy Ki-Rin, in order to have the power of the sacred nature sites he protected. But why was Koneko as she was, tough and angry, unwilling to be intimidated by a dragon or anyone or anything else? Janine. Lauren. Did Koneko somehow embody the two of them?

  But why, why was Koneko evil?

  He considered his desire to make a character for Rory; in some ways, that character was already formed. But he needed to set aside his plans for the fire goddess.

  Koneko, Koneko, Koneko… Something entirely Lauren’s.

  He knew now what he would give Lauren for her birthday. He would take her shopping, choose a gift with her, something she could keep forever. Jewelry, perhaps. But that would not be her main gift, the gift that might not be finished for two years.

  Koneko needed her own story, her own movie. Already, Seamus knew her to be a likable villain. Ki-Rin’s audience sympathized with Koneko, and it was unclear why, except that perhaps through the medium her insecurity came across. This story must explain her. As his mind wrapped around various possibilities, he also turned back to the question of why Janine was as she had been. What had formed her into someone so…

  Frightened.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  WHAT HAD FORMED Koneko?

  What had formed Janine?

  What was Lauren becoming?

  These ideas whirled in Seamus’s head. He wanted to work, yet in the past his studio had been the place he escaped to. Now, he wanted to work in the house—in the house where Janine had died, in the house where his children slept, and lived, and used their computers. Yes, the idea of moving to Sultan had been tempting. But he needed to clean house here, first. Or make his peace with this place. Or understand what was here and what lay beneath it.

  Rory had given him the courage to begin.

  Maybe if he understood Janine, he would not hate her anymore.

  She must have been the way she was for a reason. The next morning, he called Rory on her cell phone and caught her working at the school office. He said, “I want to know why Janine was the way she was, and I’m wondering if she told women things she never told me. Will you ask your friend Samantha about anything Janine might have confided?”

  Rory didn’t answer at once. Then her low, almost boyish voice said, “You mean like an assault or something?”

  “Anything.”

  “I don’t think Samantha knows anything. She just told me that she suspected Janine had, I think she said, ‘been through some stuff.’ What was her family like?”

  He heard a drawer slide open and then close.

  “She was one of five sisters. A middle child. She used to talk to her sisters on the phone. Her parents are still both alive. They’ve come to visit the kids, but not often.”

  “What are they like?”

  “Extremely academic. A very competitive family—the sisters competing for their parents’ attention. You know. All her siblings have graduate degrees. One of them is a professor at Yale.”

  “Good grief.” A hesitant, “You know I’ve never finished college. Barely started.”

  He did know that. She sounded unsure of herself—because she had no university degree?

  Seamus had graduated from Cooper Union. What did it mean to him that Rory had never finished college? Was it a gap of some kind? He did feel a difference between them on that level. But Rory could do so many things he could not. She was a gifted dancer and performer, and she knew the backcountry around Sultan exceptionally well, perhaps almost as well as her father.

  Well, half as well as her father, at least, which was saying a great deal.

  He said, “I think you deserve an honorary degree in mountain terrain studies.”

  She laughed. “Maybe.”

  Now she sounded preoccupied. “Seamus, I don’t think you’re going to find any answers about Janine by digging into things you don’t already know. If there’s a dreadful family secret, how do you expect to learn it? Yes, if you ask me, she sounds like people I know who’ve been sexually assaulted—or maybe she had been in a battering situation. She was afraid. And it was probably critically important to her not to be hurt again.”

  Seamus considered. He said, “Can you talk now, or is this a bad time?”

  “It’s fine. I’m looking for something. I can listen at the same time.”

  So he told her about Koneko; that Koneko needed her own story.

  Rory said, “That sounds like a great thing to do. For Lauren and for you.”

  “Yes.” He didn’t say that, to him, the character of Koneko represented some blend of Lauren and Janine, but he sensed that Rory already knew that; that she knew what the project would do for him.

  “Yes?” Rory said to someone else, not into the phone. Then, “I’ve got to go. Talk to you later.” And she hung up.

  *

  HIS KIDS WOULD RETURN to school in Telluride the following day. Even Belle to her preschool. Rather than going into the studio, Seamus would stay at home to begin outlining his project. He would do as much of the work on Koneko as he could from home; the home that was the root of so many of his own demons.

  Koneko had been born human, Seamus decided. She had chosen to become a demoness. Why? For power. Because in her family she was powerless. She was the youngest daughter.

  Why not make her older? The first to be given away in marriage, perhaps? He considered the notion, swept into the world of his creation, Ki-Rin’s world in greater depth. The story behind Koneko.

  *

  JAY NORRIS STOOD in the doorway of her office, and Rory was finally fully aware of the sounds from outside the office.

  Someone saying, “They’re on their way.”

  “Your dad’s collapsed.”

  Rory rushed from the room without closing the drawer of the filing cabinet where she’d been working. Her father lay in his office, crumpled beside his desk. “I can sit up,” he was saying.

  Carrie said just as emphatically, “And you’re not going to.”

  Rory came and knelt beside her father, unsure if she was welcome there, obscurely unsure if she ever had a right to be there. Her father was holding his left arm.

  Heart attack. She was sure of it, without knowing anything about her father’s cholesterol level or any other details of his health.

  Sirens pealed on the streets of Sultan, an unusual sound for the sle
epy little town.

  Rory sat beside her father, watching his face.

  Then she felt his calloused hand close over hers.

  She looked at him. “You’re going to be all right, Dad.” And she couldn’t remember ever calling him that before.

  “I know,” he said.

  *

  SHE DROVE TO Montrose, pausing on the way to call Seamus on her cell phone. He asked if she wanted him to come to the hospital, and she said no—it was better that he give his children what they need.

  From the hospital, she spoke with others on the phone. Her grandmother, Samantha and Carrie at the Sultan Mountain School.

  Physicians came and talked to her, and then she sat with her father while the doctors spoke to them both. Her father had had a heart attack, which fortunately had not damaged the heart. Rory listened to all the reasons in favor of an emergency triple bypass.

  He could have died skiing out to get me that night.

  He must have been experiencing symptoms for some time, Rory thought; symptoms he had shared with no one.

  Her father nodded his agreement to the surgery, which was scheduled for the following morning, and when the doctors finally left his room, replaced by a parade of nurses, he said, “Rory, I want you to direct the Sultan Mountain School.”

  “Now? I don’t know enough!”

  “You do, and you’ll learn more. I’ve already talked about this with Carrie, and she has agreed to help you learn the ropes. We’d planned to do it more gradually, but, well, I want you to take over now.”

  “I’m not going back to Sultan until you’re out of surgery and okay.”

  “Well, you’re not staying here through my convalescence. That’s where I need you—running the school.”

  “Carrie can run the school.”

  “Actually, she can’t. She has to make several trips to Canada over the next few months to see her family. Her mother’s ill. You two are facing a similar situation. And her family takes precedence, as indeed it should.”

  “Yes,” Rory agreed uneasily.

  The unspoken had, in fact, been spoken. Rory’s family should take precedence, as well.

  But Rory knew what running the Sultan Mountain School entailed. There would be no nights in Telluride with Seamus and his family. She simply could not afford to be that far from the school. Did she want to be director of the Sultan Mountain School? No question it was the best job there was for her; the best career opportunity she’d ever had.

  Of course, she wanted to do it.

  But she knew what an all-consuming job it was. A small part of her whispered that it was no job for a wife and mother. When would she have time for Seamus, let alone his kids? And Seamus’s work was in Telluride.

  “Will you do it?” her father asked. “Can I count on you, Rory?”

  She remembered that she had envied Desert when Desert’s father had needed her.

  And now Kurt Gorenzi needed Rory.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

  But what was this going to do to her relationship with Seamus?

  Surely she wouldn’t have to choose between her future husband and family and her own father’s need.

  “You’ll be coming back to work, won’t you?” she asked anxiously. Then swiftly she also said, “I’m sorry. Don’t think about that now. Just think about coming through surgery, and then we’ll help you with your rehab from there.”

  “I’m going to take care of rehab right here, Rory. I’m going to stay in a rehab facility. As soon as you know I’m out of the woods, I want you to get back to the school and keep it going. Put your all into it, because I know your all is exceptionally good.”

  *

  HOW WAS SHE GOING TO explain this to Seamus over the phone? Would it be any easier in person?

  Of course not.

  She checked into a hotel for the night and called him before returning to the hospital to be with her father.

  “Everything all right there?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “We’re all fine. Tell me about your father. How’s he doing?”

  She told Seamus about the scheduled surgery. Then she said, “He wants me to run the school in his absence. In fact, it sounds a bit like that’s his long-range plan, too.”

  Silence followed, lasting a second too long. “Well, that’s what you need to do,” Seamus answered.

  “I have a commitment to you—and the kids. I’m confused, but I know that he’s asked me to do this and I’ve said that I would. I should have talked with you first.”

  “Just out of curiosity, what would have happened if I’d raised objections?”

  The question startled her. She did not want to answer. “I…I have to do this.”

  “I know. It wasn’t a fair question.”

  “It was. I’m sorry I didn’t ask you.”

  But Seamus, listening at the other end of the phone, remembered Janine and other decisions that had been made without his input or his blessing. This is different. It’s reasonable for Rory to help her father. She wasn’t going to leave her job, anyhow.

  He knew, as well as she did, what running the Sultan Mountain School meant. It meant being on hand for emergencies, and it did not mean sleeping an hour away. It meant being available to instructors and clients who were out in the wilderness, even out overnight.

  His kids were just returning to school in Telluride and he couldn’t—wouldn’t—take them out again before the end of the year.

  Rory’s decision seemed to be forcing his hand, forcing him to choose between Telluride and Sultan. Not yet, not immediately.

  But eventually.

  Why they should have to choose between two locations little more than an hour apart baffled him. But that was the choice suddenly set before him.

  “You’ve agreed to help him until he’s ready to return to work,” Seamus clarified.

  “Well. I started to ask, but it seemed like putting pressure on him. And it’s the perfect job for me, Seamus. You know it is.”

  “Yes,” he said quietly.

  But he had signed up for something like this once before. And when Janine died, he’d vowed that if he ever married again, it would be to a woman who made decisions in conjunction with him. Not alone, and not decisions he’d have to live with.

  Now wasn’t the time to fight about it. Not now, while Kurt lay in the hospital, right before he went into a dangerous operation.

  But they would have to talk about this before they married.

  And he would need to be convinced that Rory wasn’t going to make decisions alone, the way Janine had.

  He said, “I’ll be there in the morning for his surgery. I don’t want you to sit through that alone.”

  “Thank you,” Rory said. “But you should get back before the kids are out of school.”

  “Fiona is here. Still, I understand what you’re saying.”

  “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” she said, sounding far away. And as uncertain as he now felt.

  *

  THE OPERATION WAS LONG; the wait, tedious. Rory wasn’t worried that her father would not survive the surgery and she knew he would do what was necessary to take care of his health. He was disciplined, and the heart attack had snuck up on him after years of eating high-cholesterol food and seeming to be fine. Rory had no doubt that he would change his dietary habits.

  What troubled her more was the unacknowledged distance between her and Seamus, a distance that seemed to have grown in just a couple of days. When she suggested that if he wanted to return to Telluride she could easily wait alone, he said, “Of course not. Why would I do that?”

  “You seem to be in another world. I figured you had your mind on Koneko, which is fine. I want you to feel as though it’s okay to work.”

  He shook his head. “I was thinking about something else entirely.”

  “What?”

  He regarded her thoughtfully. “I wasn’t going to bring it up now.”

  “What?” she repeated, sensing
that she might not like the answer.

  “We need to agree to make decisions together.”

  Rory blinked several times before realizing what he must be talking about. “You mean my decision to direct the Sultan Mountain School.”

  He gave a small noncommittal shrug. “Things like that.”

  This issue, Rory realized, would take some thinking through before she responded. It was tempting to tell Seamus that her career decisions would always be hers and not subject to veto by him. Sometimes, after all, decisions couldn’t be made together; compromises weren’t always possible. “What if we disagree?” she asked.

  “Then we talk about it and try to come to a reasonable solution together.”

  “Shall we pretend that I haven’t actually made the decision that I’ve made, so that we can go through the motions of discussing it?”

  “We’re going to have to discuss it, in any case,” he said.

  Rory knew he was right and she didn’t argue with his assessment. “If you’d like me to choose a job closer to Telluride when my father’s ready to go back to work, we should discuss that. But maybe we don’t have to talk about something that’s not going to be an issue.”

  “How would it not be an issue? If you direct SMS, you can’t live in Telluride. I think we both realize that.”

  “But my father may come back and take over again.”

  “You’ve said it’s his long-range plan to hand off the position to you.”

  “I didn’t say it was my long-range plan,” she answered. “I’m not Janine,” she added, then immediately wished she hadn’t.

  Seamus gazed at her for a long time.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “That I don’t think you’re Janine, and that we still need to discuss things.”

  “Maybe we should start with where you plan to live once we’re married,” Rory said.

  “With you,” he answered. “That’s where.”

  She relaxed slightly. “We can… We can call off the engagement, if you think that’s better.”