by Grace Sammon
She says the latter with an attempt at humor. This may be the only time I have ever seen Sonia close to tears.
“I need you to do this, Jessica. It is written.”
Speechless.
“Sonia, I can’t. I’m not good at it. You know that. I failed so badly with Ryn and Adam. She deserves better, she deserves you.”
“Jessica, do you think I would do this without talking to Erica? Yesterday she spent the afternoon learning about all the documents, how they are used, and when they would need to be used. She understands that there are three years before she is eighteen and can execute this all on her own. She also understands that she will need someone to help her, and she wants that person to be you. She was so clear yesterday, saying how she has missed the ‘you’ before the trial. I think she knows you have avoided her. Maybe I am just being her mother here, but I think she knows it is because it feels too much like being all together again. We both miss the old Jessica.
“You did not fail Ryn and Adam. I know the mother you were to them. Creative, fun, generous. You drove the carpool, were the Scout leader, planned the trips, made adventures, and introduced them to care for people with less than they had. James did not do that, you did. You planted gardens on Mother’s Day, gave them their first jobs. There were art projects and music lessons. You paid for everything when James left you in the lurch and the child support stopped. I do not understand why you did not do what I told you and tell them. They should know what their father did, and that their father was ready to hang them out to dry.
“Do you remember the time one February, it was freezing out, way too much snow, and we were so tired of winter? You put Bob Marley music on, turned up the heat, and lit the fireplace. You invited us over and we all got in our bathing suits, put beach towels on the floor and had a ‘we need summer’ party?
“In high school you were still there with their activities. In college you were the one that drove them across country, set up their apartments. There was such joy in how you parented, and they turned out to be amazing. You know that. I would want that for Erica, and she would too. You have the room. Jessica, it is time.”
“Sonia.” I can’t speak.
“Jessica, I have written this. Please, for me, let this be true. I want this. If I have an accident and become incapacitated, if I die, I need you to make the decisions for me. I do not want Erica burdened with that. You, above all, will know what to do.”
Then, the tension is broken. “Greetings, greetings!” Roy.
Sonia and I break into peals of laughter. She, most uncharacteristically, kisses me on the top of the head, saying she has to run, that she will see me soon, and that she is glad it is my left foot that snaps, because I can still drive to Martinsburg and help “your new BFF, Allison,” out on her new project.
Without a pause, she gives Roy a peck on the cheek as she darts by him, telling him that he should be nice to me today because I have finally run, and because I will not be doing it for quite a while.
Unlucky. Lucky. I am both.
oh, would some power the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as others see us
S
onia whisks out the door, a new promise between us, as Roy deftly moves around my kitchen, launching into a running monologue. “Jes, sorry about the leg. Sonia texted me to pick up ice packs. I’ll put them in the freezer. I bought one of those medical freezer packs too. Hey, Jan sent up this piece of pie from last night for you. You should have stayed through dessert at least. It’s really neat watching all the dynamics unfold down there.”
“Good morning, to you too, Mr. Gillis. I understand that we have to add ‘baker’ and ‘baker-cheat’ to our list of your skills,” I kid him. “Get some coffee and join me. You have me captive this morning,” I say to him, indicating the crutches and ice. “This is the time to go over the renovations you recommend, and, perhaps, for you to tell me about the rest of your skills so they are not always a surprise to me.”
He pours coffee and joins me on the window seat, Gabler moves from my lap to his. I realize I’ve barely studied him in all the months he’s been here. He’s taller than me by a bit. I’d guess six feet, yet he’s somehow compact, neat. Today he’s wearing simple jeans, expensive belt with a Southwestern-looking buckle. An outdated, but attractive, plaid shirt, cuffs rolled at the sleeves. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in a coat or sweater. He’s just this side of handsome. I like watching his hands move, and like the sound of his voice as he enumerates his attributes.
“Well, let’s see, I make five dinner meals, period. Well, actually only the entrées. I like to bake cookies and pies. Yes, I cheat, on occasion, with Pillsbury pie crust. I play the trombone and the trumpet. I like watching all sports. I play tennis and golf and would love to play football again.
“Oh, that reminds me, Malcolm and Allison are watching the Ravens game on their boat Sunday. It’s supposed to be a warm weekend. Their boat is a great spot to hang out. If it gets cold, they will turn the heaters on. I don’t think we will be moving the boat out into the bay unless we get a very early start.
“By the way, Ali seems quite taken with you. They asked me to invite you to come. Just a head’s up, Allison doesn’t like to be distracted during the game, so not a lot of chit-chat. They always have a crowd. Ali is an amazing cook, so there will be lots of food, and more than enough alcohol. What do you think? Would your leg make it impossible? I could help. Think about it. You don’t have to decide now.”
I’m ready to decide but have been given a “get out of jail free” card by Roy’s lack of a need to make an on-the-spot decision and by his quaint rambling.
He continues. “Let’s see, what else about me. I worry, all the time, about almost anything. I have three boys. Well, grown men, really. I wish I was closer to each of them, but that’s not on any of their agendas. I’m more content than I have ever been. I’ve done pretty much everything I’ve wanted to do, except have a lasting relationship with a woman.
“I’m pretty constant, Jes. What you see is what you get. What about you?”
“I don’t know, what do you see, Mr. Roy Gillis?” I regret the question the minute it comes out of my mouth. Reaching for the crutches I decide to deftly move the conversation in a different direction. Roy, solicitously, wants to help me move, tripping me up in the process.
So much for deftly! “It’s OK, Roy, no need to help.” I gasp and giggle, as I right myself out of his arms. “I’ve got a few things to do in my office. I’ve got to scoot upstairs, literally. Every time this happens, I can’t quite manage the steps and the crutches, so I wind up bumping up the stairs on my behind. The first-floor bathroom should have gone in years ago. Roy, if you could, just take the crutches up to the top of the stairs, I can get it from there.”
He, of course, obliges, taking the crutches as I bump up the stairs. I get the crutches at the top of the stairs and go to my office. I don’t remember printing and posting the picture of the spoons and the pottery but straighten it now on the cork board. I send a few emails to my students, and one to Sonia, “I am awestruck, thank you. Yes, of course, I will do this. You had better not make me need it! I love you, both of you. Tell Erica.”
I line up my next set of meetings at The Grange, one with Sydney and, nervously, set up a conversation with Margaret Mary. I make a note to bring my disconnected quilt squares with me. Maybe the quilt will be a starting place for us. I’d much rather start with Tobias. There’s something about him that keeps calling me back. I just want to spend more time with him. I decide to shoot him an email, not letting on that I know what was said last night, I ask if he can give me a tour of the full property and if he will, please, take me to the graves.
I get back to the top of the stairs ready to descend, pausing at their bedrooms. Is it time, as Roy says, to let Ryn and Adam’s rooms be redone? Their rooms are too much like they left them, and not enough like how they would be if they still came and used them. Erica, here? The pri
ce of that is too much to bear.
Bump, bumping down the staircase on my bum, crutches under one arm, I am not anticipating Roy, Gabler in his arms, ready to ascend the stairs and ready to answer a question I posed twenty minutes earlier.
“Jes, I don’t know you as well as I’d like, but this is what I see. I think you are complex. I think you are wicked funny, smart, and quick. You go to sarcasm a bit too readily, but it is never at anyone’s expense. I’ve never seen you be cruel or cross. I think you have a good eye for detail and appreciate fine things. I like the way you always have interesting factoids. I think you drink more than the average bear, and that you have your reasons.
“I think it’s a very good thing that you are walking and running. If it’s not too forward, I like the changes I see in your body as a result of it. I think you are beautiful. I think, if you let yourself, you will make a difference at The Grange. I think it will make a difference in you. I have been watching you for almost a year now. I have not pushed, but after watching you the other night at dinner, hanging out on the edge, with so much to contribute, I want to push, a bit. I watch as the others react to you. I don’t think you see it. They want to be with you. They want to tell you their story. They see an amazing you. So do I, Jes.
“I think there is a back story. I think there is something you are leaving out. I hope you trust me with it. I think you deserve this house, finished. I think you deserve to be loved. I think you deserve to be happy. I’d like to be a part of that, with no demands.”
This all feels like an uncomfortable confluence of events. Sonia, Roy, the notes I’ve begun to make from the interviews with the others. This is sooo not supposed to be about me, way too uncomfortable. Move on, change focus.
“Well, I do declare, Mr. Gillis, I think you flatter me.” I say in my best Scarlett O’Hara impersonation, hoping to make light of all this.
“Jes, there are just times in our lives when odd things come together, in a good way. I hope this is one of them.” Turning from me and going back down the stairs, he says, “Come on Beast. Let me feed you so the Southern Belle can rest her ankle.”
Dumb struck.
I decide, clumsily, to re-ascend the steps, dragging the crutches with me as I hear Roy, below, feed the cat. He shouts up that he sees my Africa trip information has come. He adds that he thinks it’s really brave of me to go on this adventure by myself.
Do I have a choice? In my office, email screen up, I take some travel-sized vodka bottles from a drawer and pour them into an abandoned, empty coffee cup from some time ago. I carefully type in their email addresses, knowing from the non-profit website they are still operative.
Dear Ryn and Adam,
I love and miss you beyond measure. I wonder each day how you are. The thought of you spending one more Christmas away from me brings me sadness beyond words.
I do not know how to say I am sorry in more ways than I have already done. I am going to Africa in a few weeks. It is as far away as I can think to go without wanting, or expecting, you with me.
Sadly, I know, too, that you will be with me even there, as you always are. While in Africa I would want to see you marvel at what we would see. I would want to lie in our tents and listen for the roar of lions. I would want to, simply, build more memories together.
Everyone is telling me how brave I am to go to Africa, alone. I’d love to discuss that with you. Would they be saying that if I was headed for Paris or Rome? Do they say it because it’s Africa, and if so, what does that say about perceptions? Do they say it because I am a white woman, travelling to the ‘dark continent?’ Does this raise questions of racism and classism because of Black people, or poor people, or because there are lions and tigers and bears? Oh my!
Now, I am just being silly. There are no tigers, and I’m not sure about bears. I just miss our debates and your humor.
Brave? Bravery would mean admitting that you didn’t die in the crash, that you’ve just chosen to be dead to me. It is just too hard to stay here and face another holiday, knowing we could be together, but will not be. It is not the going that is brave. I am going to hide. I am a coward. Bravery would mean staying and facing the silence between us. Bravery would mean accepting that it is, somehow, ok, and that someday, you will forgive me and come.
It’s been three years now. I miss you each moment.
I know you will visit your dad this holiday. He always makes sure I get multiple pictures of you during your visits. I’d like to think he is trying to be kind, but I know it’s to bring home the fact that, even in prison, he gets to be with you, and I am excluded. That sounds harsher than I mean it to be. You all look delightfully happy.
I hear Sonia’s voice in my head. “Jess-cee-ka, do not sound like an old bitter woman. Bitter is ugly. Bitter is something you choose. Better sad and angry than bitter, Jess-cee-ka. No one wants to be around bitter.”
I delete the last paragraph and go for trite.
Adam, you have grown so tall! I love the beard, you look really handsome. Ryn, it looks like you are growing your hair long again. I’m wondering if you ever braid it. You look very fit in your last picture, like when you run marathons. I am running again or was until this morning when my roll-over ankle snapped, again.
Again, I hear Sonia editing my words. “Do not try to get their sympathy. You will look manipulative.” I leave it that I am running again.
I am sorry for everything. If I could take it back in an instant, I would. If I could have taken the fall for your dad I would have.
I cannot understand that you have chosen this path of erasing me from your lives. I wish I could tell you my side of the story.
Merry Christmas. Be safe, have fun. I loved you from the moment you first grew under my heart. I will love you even after it has stopped beating.
- M
Wait.
Hit [DELETE].
Wait.
Breathe.
Bumping down the stairs, I round the corner on crutches. It’s early in the day, I eye the vodka bottle. Roy’s on the back porch. Leaning against the countertop, I ask him what he is working on. He says that he noticed the porch and back stairs really needed to be replaced so he was taking measurements. He adds that he has set up an appointment with a landscaper to discuss salvaging the yard.
Of course, he has. Putting the vodka bottle under the counter, I ask him what time I would need to be at the boat on Sunday in time for us to pull out into the bay and still catch the pre-game show.
He’s promised a crowd. I can still hide.
the dash -
O
ver the next few days I take advantage of my injury. The messed-up ankle has provided the opportunity to get a good start on the doctoral dissertation research up-dates, easier, and far less engaging, than I would have thought or hoped. My mind is elsewhere. Finally becoming Doctor Jessica Barnet doesn’t seem important.
Being laid up has also given me the opportunity to do the Africa trip preparations I fretted about being able to get done. I’ve downloaded books to read—West with the Night and Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone. Also the PBS biography on the famed archeological family, Louis and Mary Leakey and their son, Richard. I’ve watched Robert Redford and Meryl Streep in Out of Africa at least three times.
“I had a farm in Africa…” is the opening line of the movie. Erica does quite a good and dramatic imitation of this, making Sonia and me laugh and delight in her talents. “I ha-d a fa-rm in Af-ri-ca,” Streep’s character says it, and her life unfolds. I try to imagine myself transformed and wonder what that would look like.
The possibilities at The Grange also keep tantalizing me. I’ve made a chart of all The Grange women’s names and ages, my initial observations, anything that I feel is important that they have said, or I have learned. I try to remember what Elizabeth said that first night as we sat in the barn and put her descriptors of the women in the boxes.
It felt right to i
nclude Tobias and even Joan in the chart. I’ve left blank squares, not knowing if others, like Gene Martin, should be included. That, of course, opens the possibility that the story, however it unfolds, should also include Sonia and Allison, and Malcolm. And Roy?
Roy? He keeps rumbling around in my head. I certainly averted what looked like a pretty direct request to get together. He, being a gentleman, let me side-step the issue, literally. Not so easy to do on crutches. I smile at myself and keep ruminating. What’s going on with him, all these months at the house and suddenly a shift? What’s going on with me?
Clearly, when I told him my story the thought crossed my mind to have sex with him. That would have fit the pattern—drink vodka, drink more vodka, have sex—one more way to avoid dealing with the fact that it is easier to pretend they are dead rather to admit to myself, and others, that they are really just dead to me, and they choose each day not to be with me.
Easier to tell this lie, than admit to the truth. I botched the most important of relationships. I’ve been judged and condemned by my own children. I’ve lost them in the process. So much easier to tell the story, see others’ shock, have them understand my pain. It is as real as if they were dead, worse, really.
This way, it’s nice and tidy. Easier to tell my story than deal with the endless questions about what happened, why don’t you see your children, are they coming for the holidays, are you going to visit them, did the kids call for Mother’s Day, what’s this one doing, where is the other living. Endless. Easier to tell this story than watching others judge me or feel their scorn. Scorn followed with a touch of leprosy-like avoidance. I saw it all in the first year. Someplace in the middle of year two I made up the story. It didn’t even feel like a lie.