Hidden Dreams

by Darlene Franklin

  When they reached the end of the song, Winnie bowed, and Wallace clapped. A moment later they exited the bridge to bright sunshine. The tree branches strained toward the sky in search of life-giving sunshine. Winnie turned left, on a road Mary Anne hadn’t noticed before, and waved goodbye. “It was good to see you again, Miss Laurents! Sometime I’ll have to play my Al Jolson recordings for you.”

  “I’ll look forward to that.”

  Winnie trotted down the road.

  “You keep doing the most surprising things.” Wallace’s smile took the sting out of the way he shook his head. “Clarinda doesn’t quite approve of Jolson. When I first heard his music in college, I thought the angels in heaven couldn’t sing much prettier.”

  Mary Anne didn’t know what surprised her more: the fact that Wallace liked Al Jolson, or that he had attended college. His liking the jazz musician was the great surprise, she decided. Everything about him, except for the farmer’s overalls, screamed student. “Where did you go to college?”

  “The University of Vermont. Did you know it’s the fifth oldest college in all of New England, after Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and Brown?” He waved her stuttering response away. “Very few people outside of Vermont know that, but we’re quite proud of the fact in this part of the world.”

  Now that the sun was dropping low in the sky, the temperature had fallen with it. Mary Anne tugged the collar of her coat about her neck. She’d had quite enough of college boys in recent days, with most of them too eager to teach her things she didn’t want to know. No wonder Daddy had warned her against the lot of them.

  What would Daddy say about the man next to her? College graduate he might be, but she couldn’t imagine him enticing a girl into a speakeasy and then taking advantage of her.

  One bad decision had followed another on that terrible night. Would it haunt her forever?

  * * *

  Wallace had encountered his share of flappers. Even the most studious of the co-eds followed the fashions of the times. A few of them embraced the lifestyle as well. Someone was operating a speakeasy here in Maple Notch, and he had heard rumors of moonshiners. His grandfather, the town constable, would have brought that to a quick end. But Grandpa had fought his war, losing his arm during the Civil War, and Wallace must face his. He would fight with words and laws, and hope he never had to go to battle with guns. For the most part, the revelers went one way, and Wallace went his.

  In spite of her strange hair color and shiny new car, Mary Anne didn’t resemble the flappers he had met. Whether her fearful flight stemmed from innocence or guilt, she had disrupted his peaceful life. Since their first encounter, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  The fact that she liked his drawings pleased him more than it should. If Wallace spent much time around her, he wouldn’t finish writing the book by the editor’s deadline in mid-October. After supper, he would head to the abandoned cabin where his great-grandparents had once lived. He had food, firewood, paper and pen, everything he needed to get to work.

  Wallace’s hopes for a quick escape disappeared when Winnie arrived at the farmhouse in time for a late dinner. He hadn’t accounted for his sister’s propensity for telling a good story.

  “Yep, I caught them standing on the Courting Bridge, under the Kissing Wall.” Winnie rolled her eyes. “They were holding hands.”

  Howard Jr. and Arthur, Clarinda’s two boys, guffawed.

  “They were, were they?” Clarinda’s eyes twinkled, and Wallace wanted to groan. His older sister had quizzed him at every opportunity about the girls he met at college. She probably thought God had brought Mary Anne to the farm for a romantic purpose.

  Mary Anne’s cheeks had turned a gentle pink, but she stayed calm. “He was telling me some of your family’s stories. All I know about my grandparents is that they were among the first people through Ellis Island.” Her eyes flared slightly, as if she revealed an embarrassing detail. “It must be wonderful to have a family history as old as America herself.”

  Wallace took his family’s heritage for granted. The Tuttles were one of a handful of original Maple Notch families, along with his distant cousins, the Reids.

  “I think people who leave the only home they’ve known to come to America must be terribly brave. When they don’t even know the language...” Clarinda shook her head. “I speak a little French. Parlez-vous français, Mademoiselle Laurents?”

  Pure confusion flooded Mary Anne’s face. “Uh...I guess not.”

  Clarinda lifted her shoulders in a delicate shrug. “I’ve heard some people speak only English after they arrive, wanting to blend in with the melting pot that is America. But I think it’s a pity, myself. Not many people here speak two languages well. Even after four years of studying French at the seminary, I doubt I could survive in France without a translator by my elbow.”

  After that, conversation turned to other channels. Wallace left early, promising to return Winnie to Aunt Flo before retiring to his cabin. Upon his return from town, he pulled Howard’s car into the yard and grabbed his things from the backseat, heading for the old cabin at a brisk walk.

  The old Reid cabin was the perfect place for him to sharpen his focus on his goal, to shut their unexpected guest out of his mind.

  Chapter 6

  On Friday morning, Mary Anne imitated Clarinda through each step of making biscuits from scratch. After Mama’s death, Daddy did all the cooking, but he lacked the patience to teach her. He took over laundry as well, and all the other tasks women usually did, without a complaint. Tears stung her eyes.

  “Something’s troubling you.” Instead of rolling the biscuits out, Clarinda patted them flat with her floured hands. “I’ve got a good ear for listening, if you want to talk about it.” She handed a glass to Mary Anne after showing her how to cut biscuits with the rim of an inverted tumbler.

  How Mary Anne wished she could unburden her heart to this kindhearted lady. But talking about Daddy’s death would involve explaining about the money and the trouble it had caused. That part was best kept secret. “I’ve got some things on my mind, that’s all.”

  Clarinda made cutting out the biscuits seem effortless, but the ones Mary Anne cut clung to the edges. “What do I do with the leftover dough?”

  “Roll it back into a ball and pat it flat again. You try it.”

  Mary Anne coated her hands with flour but she couldn’t get the dough flat. One of the biscuits looked like a right angle, rising from the seashore to the mountains. As long as she was making a mess of things, she plunged ahead, rolling the leftover dough into a single semi-round shape.

  Clarinda studied the biscuits. She tapped the recipe card Mary Anne hadn’t looked at once against the countertop. “The recipes for shortcake and coffee cake, almost anything made with flour, are a lot like this, with some variation in the amount of butter and sugar and such. Other things require eggs. You’ll get the hang of it.” She slid the sheet with the biscuits into the oven. “Next time I’ll let you make the biscuits by yourself. Anyone who loves biscuits and gravy the way you do needs to know how to make it for herself.”

  “Do you always make so much?” Mary Anne gawked at the number of eggs Clarinda broke into her mixing bowl. After ten, she lost count.

  “Sometimes more, when Wallace is eating with us.”

  Wallace hadn’t returned, then. A cloud slid across the sun, blocking the sunshine from the window. She felt his absence more than she expected.

  “He’s over at the cabin, working on his book.”

  His book? He had left the house for several days to read?

  Clarinda laughed. “He must not have told you about his pet project. A publisher is interested in the book he’s writing about the animals and birds in northern Vermont.”

  The sketch Mary Anne had seen Wallace draw must be part of this project. “I can’t imag
ine writing a whole book.” Or wanting to write one.

  “He takes it very seriously. He says no one has done a proper study on the subject, and if we’re not careful, we may end up losing animals we take for granted. The way the hunters killed almost all the buffalo and the passenger pigeons have all died.”

  Worry about animals dying seemed unimportant compared to the tenements in New York, but maybe farmers never knew the sting of hunger. “That’s interesting.”

  Clarinda laughed. “You sound like Howard. He thinks now that Wallace’s finished school, he should either get a proper job or settle down on the farm.”

  An ordinary job would never satisfy the man who took the time to watch a pair of geese and reproduce them with such precision. Mary Anne could see that. “Is it for grown-ups?”

  Clarinda shrugged. “Yes, but Wallace has a way of putting things into words everyone can understand. You don’t have to be a university professor to read it.” After a glance at the clock, she slipped on an oven mitt and brought out the biscuits. They lacked the uniform color of Clarinda’s biscuits, ranging from almost burnt to barely done.

  While the biscuits had baked, Clarinda had whipped together the rest of breakfast, and now Howie and Arthur tumbled in, followed close on their heels by a cute tot with blond curls. The boys had dragged on blue jeans and shirts, and were ready for school.

  Arthur turned over a biscuit with an almost black bottom, but he just slathered extra butter on it. This breakfast proved no exception to the always lively meals, although Mary Anne found herself listening for Wallace’s quiet chuckle, his banter with his nephews, his light teasing of both little Betty and Winnie.

  Without his presence, the meal tasted a little bland. Clarinda offered to take Mary Anne into town or to go shopping for her. But the only things Mary Anne needed were car parts she wanted to choose for herself, and she wanted to avoid people until her bruises had faded.

  “I usually spend Fridays in town, but I don’t like leaving you on your own. Are you sure you don’t want to come?” Clarinda repeated her earlier question.

  Mary Anne shook her head.

  “I will see you this afternoon, then, after the boys and Winnie are out of school. Take whatever you want for food.” She reminded Mary Anne of all the items in the ice box and pantry, as if she hadn’t already explained the system to her guest.

  “I’ll be fine.” Mary Anne was looking forward to time alone. After a lifetime living in a crowded apartment, she craved time to plan, time to grieve, time to simply be. Here, if someone didn’t check on her at least once an hour, they seemed to feel they had neglected her.

  And Wallace has been gone since Tuesday. Mary Anne looked out the window, wishing she’d had the courage to ask Clarinda where the old cabin might be. But she couldn’t ask that, not without revealing too much about herself.

  * * *

  Wallace cut up potatoes and onions while his bacon fried in the pan. He added potatoes, cooked them to a perfect crispness, finished off the meal and cleaned the dishes. Now he would fill a giant mug with coffee and write down what he had observed that morning.

  Wallace’s habit of delaying breakfast would shock Clarinda if she ever found out. Dawn and dusk drew animals to the Bumblebee River like a bee to nectar. He loved watching the doe teach her almost-grown fawn the wisdom of the forest, or any one of the other animals bringing their young out.

  This morning a family of raccoons had caught his eye. Betty had broken a string of beads, and he dropped a few of the colorful orbs on the ground to see what the babies would do. From his post, he watched as first one curious nose, then another, approached the bright beads. When they reached for one with their paws, it rolled away, and they chased it until they finally grasped it.

  The mama raccoon kept watch. She sensed Wallace’s presence—she sent a furtive glance in his direction—but she didn’t warn the young ones away. The fact that she trusted him with her babies made him strangely pleased. After they finished their play and presented their gifts to their mother, the family escaped into the growing sunshine, their treasure safe in their possession. He jotted notes next to the sketches he had made.

  Did the color of the beads matter? The family cat, a girl, preferred pink to any other color. Maybe there was a reason girls liked pink. Mary Anne would look pretty in pink.

  He drew his mind back from dangerous waters. Raccoons were in no danger of extinction, so he should focus on different animals. He thought he had spotted a spiny soft-shell turtle once, and even cottontail rabbits didn’t appear as often as they used to. He’d love to catch sight of a silver-haired bat; he should set up watch in the cave where the Reids had lived during the Revolutionary War.

  Entranced by the raccoons, Wallace had lingered at the river longer than usual, and he was hungry. After he finished his belated breakfast, he sat on the front step to the cabin, leafing through the sketches of the baby raccoons at play. He wouldn’t mind spending an entire year following the little ones from birth to maturity. These woods held the possibilities for more books than a man could write in a hundred lifetimes. His problem was settling down to one.

  Today his pencil danced across the pages as he detailed the account of the baby raccoons. Maybe he could coax more beads from Clarinda another time, or maybe gather coins and beads and buttons. Study which attracted more attention.

  Out here, in a cabin set far enough back from the road that no one bothered him unless they came on purpose, he regained a sense of what the world might have been like after creation.

  Free of sin and worry, and full of faith and joy and peace. The way God meant life to be.

  * * *

  Mary Anne counted the money in her suitcase. Even though she hadn’t dared to go to the bank to withdraw everything in her account, she had kept a large sum in her house. She had plenty to live on until she got settled somewhere. Thank You, God. Among other things, she wanted to give something to her hosts without raising their suspicions.

  Of more immediate concern was what to wear around the farm. In a fit of generosity, Mary Anne had given away her old wardrobe as she purchased new clothes. The only dress she had held back was her favorite, one of her mother’s dresses. If only for sentimental reasons, she didn’t want to let it go.

  None of her new dresses suited life on the farm, although she hoped they would be suitable for life in Quebec City or Toronto or Montreal. The larger Canadian cities probably followed the same fashion trends as New York.

  Thinking of Quebec City or Montreal, Mary Anne realized she had been foolish to think she could stop as soon as she arrived in French-speaking Canada. It took only one single question, “Parlez-vous français?” to uncover her lack of knowledge of the language. They spoke English in Toronto, didn’t they? If only she could read a map to figure out how to get there from here.

  Life on the farm hovered between the practical and the joyful. No one would call Clarinda’s dresses boring, but their splash came from color rather than cut. She hadn’t commented on the clothes she found in Mary Anne’s suitcase. Instead she had quietly added a few other dresses more suitable to daily life on a farm. Mary Anne was wearing one today.

  She wandered down the stairs and out to the living room. The bookcases drew her, and the privacy allowed her to explore to her heart’s content. They looked like the family that owned them, solid, with roots extending back for over a century, some worn, some shiny and new. She ran her hands over the bindings, treasuring the feel of the rough cloth of some and the smooth leather of others. Toward the bottom of the shelf, she discovered a cache of children’s picture books, obviously well-loved. She picked out one at random. The figures on the pages reminded her of stuffed animals: a teddy bear, a donkey, even a little pink pig. Maybe she could ask one of the boys to read it to her when they got home from school.

  Clarinda ran the household like a chauffeur treated h
is car, keeping it well oiled, shiny, in the best condition. Nevertheless, Mary Anne decided to run a feather duster along the bookshelves and over the tables in the living room, gathering up the pillows to plump them into softness. A tortoise-shell cat followed her, batting at the feathers with her claws. After finishing, Mary Anne sat on the couch and ran the duster in circles around the floor, encouraging the cat to play. She chased and pounced and dragged the duster out of Mary Anne’s hand. Scattering feathers across the floor, she ran in the opposite direction with a single prize feather in her mouth.

  Chapter 7

  Mary Anne stared at the swishing tail of the departing cat. Gathering the fallen feathers, she dropped them into the trash basket. So far her efforts at “helping” had resulted in burned biscuits and a ruined feather duster. Housework, two, Mary Anne, none.

  Every day she stayed at the farm, she cost her hosts money, from the doctor’s bill to the repairs to Wallace’s truck. If only she felt well enough to fix it for him. But why should he trust her with his truck? Girls weren’t supposed to know how machines worked.

  Mary Anne decided to eat lunch early. Cream waited to be churned into butter, but she didn’t dare try it. Grabbing a hard-boiled egg, she headed outdoors. She and Wallace had never made it to the family cemetery the other day, after watching the geese on their nest. If she started now, she could get there and back before Clarinda returned with the children.

  The road looked remarkably similar, whether heading to the right or left, but she felt certain they had turned left when they headed for the bridge. After topping off her canteen from the pump in the yard, she headed left. Empty fields on one side balanced the crowded forest on the other. She wished she had Wallace’s gift for putting pictures on paper. She’d love to capture this view with her pencil. The best she could do would be to take leaves back with her and run a crayon over the ridges to get their outlines. Maybe she’d come back with the children and do that sometime.