by Grace Sammon
The next morning starts with unneeded apologies and welcomed thanks for the night before. He traces the half-dollar size, round locket around my neck and asks about the inscribed initials, clearly not mine. I tell him it was my mom’s. That she had given it to Ryn, but that it is mine until I can pass it to her. He notes the little dents in it and I smile sharing that as an infant I had played with it as it hung around my mom’s neck and bit into it and that Ryn and Adam had done likewise leaving the little dented teething marks my mother and I so cherished.
I point out the picture on my dresser of the three-year-old girl perched on a stone ivy-covered wall, clearly in a photography studio. She’s dressed in early 1920s attire, ridiculously huge bow on the top of her head, broad collared shirt, skirt, and little button-up-the-sides shoes that come to the middle of her little girl leggings. The gold locket is around her neck. My mom.
Unexpectedly he throws back the covers, pops out of bed, grabs the picture from the dresser, closes the flue, and gets back in bed all in one seamless short motion. Not so short that I don’t have time to admire his body, the firmness of his ass and legs.
After admiring the picture and placing it on the bedside table, he opens my locket revealing the picture of my mother, as I knew her, on one side and a very young, smiling Ryn and Adam on the other. Closing it reverently he begins to kiss between my breasts where the locket rests, just over my heart. He goes up to my shoulder, lingering on my neck. Suddenly, my fist clenches. He works down my arm with lips and tongue. With his fingers he slowly unclenches my fist, kissing the little crescent cuts made by my nails.
Exquisite tension, then, peace.
the blur
T
he next weeks fly by in a blur. Sonia and Erica approvingly comment that I am walking around smiling a lot. The semester started with an improved class schedule the Dean and I worked out. My university teaching is packed on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The rest of the week I work on the dissertation re-writes and The Grange Projects. There have been multiple visits to The Grange, and I have a few more conversations under my belt with the women. I’ve drafted a letter to Ryn and Adam that I just want to read one more time before I send. Mostly, Roy and I are surprised, delighted, and a bit amused at “dating” at our ages.
Life unfolds. The new space is so comfortable, just the right balance, in my opinion, of the old and the new. It’s perfect with small areas and large. It feels like a comfortable home, not a communal living space. The eco-friendly features are seamless. Tobias’ birthday was the first official dinner and that felt just right, too. It was a low-key event at his request. Low key, that is, if you consider there were fifteen of us for dinner at the bamboo-constructed, spacious table that can hold twenty.
The evening was flawless except for some uneasiness I sensed from Malcolm. He seemed to be trying just a tad too hard to be jovial with Gene. Later, he avoided sitting anywhere near him at dinner. Presents were kept to a minimum. I gave Tobias one of the carved birds I brought from Africa. Allison and Malcolm gave him a “coupon” for going out on The Tug with them any time he pleases. Sonia and Erica gave him a deck of “conversation cards.” Like playing cards, they have various words, phrases, and topics designed to prompt conversations. Tia and CC gave him a photograph of the three of them with Joan picnicking down below the cliffs on the beach. It was the last photo ever taken of her.
Sonia took the naming of the new house “The Eves” in stride, only feigning abject disgust that her Casa Verde wasn’t chosen. I think she’s actually proud that I’m engaging here, engaging in anything.
The Grange Project finally has focus. During my visits I’ve asked if the women would mind showing me their new bedrooms. Margaret Mary is the first to say yes. When I visit with her, she has simply placed the items in the same order as from before, just in a larger space. The room is still starkly simple.
“I like this room,” she says. “I like the light and how it plays on the walls during the day. The other room felt so familiar, though. When I entered the convent in the early ‘40s they called our rooms ‘cells.’ Did you know that? It sounds peculiar now but there was something so Spartan and pure in how we tried to live. That’s why I picked the small room under the stairs in The Grange house. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how we, as nuns, lived in community. I realize that this sense of Spartacism is, at least in part, CC’s motivation for all of what I thought of as ridiculous innovations here. Now all the ecological soundness makes sense, I quite love this place. You see, Jessica, none of us is done.”
When I am invited to Elizabeth’s room, I have no way of comparing it to what she had at the old house. Here at The Eves her room contains a walker and a chair that helps her stand, a bed for Pavarotti, and newspapers and books everywhere. The room somehow feels heavy and cumbersome. The furniture is not so much arranged as simply dropped in place. NPR is playing on the radio. She invites me in and, with difficulty, lumbers to her chair, Pavarotti going to her side.
“I try not to make him-a work when we are in here together. He has a lot to support and move around all the other times. After my stroke it just made sense to get help. He’s been perfect.”
“I was listening to NPR in the car on the way down,” I tell her. “I didn’t know you would be a fan. I was figuring you to be a Pavarotti listener. I thought of you when I played ‘Three Tenors’ the other night.”
Her response takes me by surprise. “Thank you for thinking of me. I think of you when you are not here, too. I’ve never liked opera though. I know Tobias loves playing it, but it has never been something I’ve enjoyed. I guess I’m not a good Italian in that area. My parents never understood my aversion to it.”
“You don’t like opera, but you name your service dog Pavarotti?”
“Jessica, he is a Rottweiler. When I got him, I was calling him simply ‘Rotti’ but soon it turned into Pavarotti. It was a good play on words. You and I share a love of words, Jessica. It’s one of the things that attracted me to the law. The power of the words we write—the words we speak.” She takes Pavarotti’s ear and tugs it gently.
She takes note of my locket and pulls a remarkably similar locket from beneath her shirt. Like mine, the distinct color of 18-karat gold. Like mine, hers is initialed. Like mine, it is the traditional gift given to newborn Italian baby girls of a certain era and of a certain means.
As we smile at each other, a deepening bond growing between us, I think of Joan’s comment to Tia. Angels to watch after us when our mothers are gone.
Indeed.
Elizabeth is all about business this morning. She thinks she has found a way to focus my interest in this place and she’s right. She suggested I start writing articles about the changing face of The Grange, getting word out about its development as it relates to the physical, sociological, and ecological. From her chair-side table she digs through a stack of newspaper clippings and finds an article with a web link for The Council for Green Buildings and the annual contest that honors design and construction using eco-friendly and sustainable materials.
“Write about-a this,” she urges me. “Write about-a us. This is an interesting phenomenon, I think, us all living together, learning, and changing. Even Margaret Mary no longer complains about the Loveable Loo.”
Later, in the kitchen, Jan has piles of books out on the dining table, accompanied by recipe boxes, and a propped-up iPad. Deirdre is there as well going through Tobias’ “conversation cards,” tossing them as she reads through them into a wide-mouthed glass vase. “A penny for your thoughts this morning, Deirdre?”
She recognizes my inference, remembering our conversation from a few weeks back. Good.
“I’ve convinced Tobias that these cards are a very good idea. He thinks we all talk more than enough, I am sure, but this will focus our conversations. Goodness knows, dear, we live together but we don’t really know each other that well yet. Look, here’s a card that reads ‘match the adjectives below to the people
in the room.’ Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
Jan looks up from her work. “We put up with her,” she says, laughing at Deirdre.
“You can laugh all you want, Jan Kiley, but the rest of The Eves all voted, and tomorrow ‘Breakfast Bowl Banter’ begins. If you don’t like it, you should just be happy that the others didn’t also approve my suggestions for ‘dinner dialogues’ and ‘loquacious lunches.’” She can’t control her own giggling at the positively pleasant plosives.
Trying to remain neutral on the breakfast banter, and also trying to understand the relationships that are building here, I control my own laughter and introduce my idea. Elizabeth’s idea really, to write about The Eves. They approve and suggest I talk to CC, who had wanted to write something for the local paper about going green at The Grange but hadn’t gotten to it.
Jan suggests that there could be peak opportunities for writing if I wanted something more than just the living green focus. She’s working on fleshing out a calendar of events for the year. The Eves, as they apparently now refer not only to the building but to themselves, have approved having Tobias’ birthday be an annual event that will live on in perpetuity as the day commemorating the starting of The Grange Project.
Tia has asked that the next big event be an annual “Mothers’ Day Planting of the Crops.” Her request was based on the fact that each year she and Joan planted the small family garden on that day, hands digging in the fresh warm dirt, with full smells of the forsythia and lilacs around them. Everyone agreed to this, thinking it fits in nicely following Earth Day in April. It’s often too early for large-scale planting in April. By May, Mother Earth has warmed up enough to plant. The Harvest, of course, scheduled already. The only other event they are considering, and this is what has prompted all Jan’s digging this morning, is a possible “Juneteenth Celebration.”
“Juneteenth, really? What’s that?” I ask.
“Well we got quite the story on that when Jan proposed it,” Deirdre responds. “Let me see if I can tell you. Jan, tell me if I am remembering this.” She continues, her voice altered, like a narrator setting a stage. “The story is filled with murder, intrigue and injustice. Picture it—it’s 1865, two years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Executive Order freeing the slaves. For two and a half years after Lincoln’s order, in Texas, slaves remained slaves. It wasn’t until a general—I don’t know his name—arrived in Galveston and announced the war had ended and the slaves were free. No one knows why it took two years to get the news. That’s where the murder and intrigue fits in. In any event, dear, there was, understandably, a large celebration. The general arrived and read his proclamation on or about June 19th and that’s how we got Juneteenth.”
“Very well done, Deirdre,” Jan says looking pleased. “That is indeed how we got Juneteenth, the oldest nationally celebrated remembrance of the ending of slavery in America, and an official state holiday in Texas.
“Deirdre, I think you should help me plan it and convince the others that we should do it. It will be a lot of work, but I want to open it to the whole community, not just the Black folk. I want it to be a communal event anyway, with everyone bringing food. If we don’t make it too formal, hopefully, we won’t have to get a lot of permits and such. Elizabeth is checking on the legal end of things to see if it can work. The whole theme of Juneteenth has been gathering together, doing a little thanksgiving, focusing on education, and highlighting achievements. We Eves are doing all that anyway, why not put that all in the context of a great barbeque topped off with strawberry soda?
“Jessica, we should have documentation on how this place is evolving. If it’s not written down, it’s all too quickly forgotten. When you are back up in DC, check out the Smithsonian website. They’ve been doing Juneteenth celebrations for years. If this gets approved by the others, you’ll definitely want to include it in any writing you do.”
The Smithsonian? I don’t know about Juneteenth. Why, I wonder. I thought I took Ryn and Adam to every activity I could at our wonderfully free, amazing museums. Missed this, I guess. At that, I hear Adam in my head teaching and scolding me about my lack of understanding of “white privilege.”
Driving out today I decide to stop at the M and M. I haven’t picked up the fiber for my knitting lessons and I’ve carried my quilt squares in and out of my car and house more times than I can count. This, however, is not the day to add those efforts to the list. I just need more coffee. Articles are already taking shape in my head. I’ve always been lucky when it comes to writing. Book and article titles come to me. I can see the way the type sits on the page. After a few hours or days, or, in the case of my dissertation, years, I can pretty much sit down and simply write. The words come easily, the internet access points, both common and university-access related, make the research needed pretty easy. I can’t remember if it was my kids or Erica that started calling the immense amount of information instantly available on the Internet “magic,” but it has become a part of family folklore that continues today. Erica can frequently be heard saying, “Bringing you, from the magic of the internet…” and then adding the factoid or piece of information that is relevant.
Elizabeth has given me the application for the green building award and thinks it should be accompanied by an article. I want to shop that idea around to see if I can find a publisher. The Calvert paper would be an easy sell, local news, global perspective, but I’d like to see if I can shop it to Washingtonian or Baltimore magazines. Smithsonian magazine feels like a better fit given all the aspects of the story, but it’s much more of a stretch. I can see the title already, “Living Gray and Green in America.”
the same and then some
D
ays turn to weeks, weeks to months, and Roy, the ever constant, now says he loves me. In response I tell him, “I like you a considerable amount.” I don’t return his “I love you.” I’m not being cruel, not playing hard to get. I just can’t say it. I see the way he tries to respond to my “considerable amounts” by making a joke. I know he wants more. More than I can give, at least right now. Always, always, there is the sense of loss, the sense of need, the sense of desperately wanting to somehow heal this split with Ryn and Adam.
Roy has been more than patient. I do like him so very much, a considerable amount. Why can’t that be enough for right now? Besides, what does love, falling in love, and being in love mean at this age? Does he experience the same giddy “butterflies in your stomach” that I did when I’ve fallen in love decades before, but don’t feel now? Does he have that sense of desperation to see me, as if you can’t breathe until you are together? I’ve had that. I finally came to understand that wasn’t love, it was what it is called, desperation. Does he feel and value what I do? With him I have near perfect contentment, satisfaction, peace. I love our bodies together, how our hands reach for each other in the night, that my head fits perfectly on his shoulder. There’s the pleasure of watching him cook, the knowledge that I will always win at Scrabble and he will almost certainly win at cribbage. The pure smile that comes to my face as I hear him enter with his “greetings, greetings,” is that love?
It seems so different at this age. There’s no denying, nor need to deny, our pasts. There’s an understood delusion that we still look young, that my breasts don’t sag, and his stomach doesn’t protrude, and that we actually both look beautiful waking in the morning. We know, understand, and manage our own finances. There is no naïve thinking that our lives stretch forever before us. We value each day. We appreciate and worry about the very real finite nature of declining health, long-term care, assisted living, and nursing homes.
We talk about everything except what love means. I’d hate for him to think there are not butterflies, that I am not desperate. It’s wonderful to have someone who so avidly cares about the progress I am making at work, with my writing, and running. Pick a topic, Roy will be interested, and I am interested right back. It is always delightful to be together. I love the sheer fa
ct that there is no drama to it. It just is. I love playing at lustiness, feeling wanted, prized, and desired. I want to fool myself that time will just stop, and we will always be exactly as we are, no older, no less hale.
It’s fun to be a couple. I had so forgotten that aspect of dating. We see Malcolm and Ali and have spent the night on the boat. They continue to be both the most hardworking and likeable of people. You always feel immediately at home with them. Gourmet meals and casual ones are created effortlessly from whatever Ali has on hand. It’s always a party with rich conversation. One night we took some of the ‘conversation cards.’ It made for a really good night!
More recently, we’ve been spending time with Gene and Sydney. Yes, Gene and Sydney! I’m so pleased. It started on moving day at The Eves and with Sydney’s barely perceptible shake of the head asking me not to interrupt their conversation. It seems that when Gene made the decision to leave Martinsburg College, he had job options, life options. Enter Sydney the life coach. He was honest with her about Ali being a large part of the motivation to leave as well as his embarrassment that the two of them had let themselves go someplace they had no right to go.
Gene and Sydney talked over several sessions about what he saw as his life plan, life options, desires, and needs. He was clear that he wanted to stay on the land, committed to Tobias like a son to a father, committed to keeping the tradition of this land and to having a hand in the ongoing development of it. He also liked the security aspects of his work and had offers to transfer those to both the Calvert and St. Mary’s police forces. What became clear to both of them was that they actually had an awful lot in common. Through email exchanges and golf cart rides along the cliffs, the life coaching stopped and the living a life with each other in it started.