Austin turned out the light in their bedroom where Jenny stood at the window holding the drapes wide apart. A great, golden-yellow harvest moon lit up the night sky. Of all the houses on the planet Grandmother Moon’s enchanting face gazed with favor directly on their house. Through wind-tossed trees dressed in brilliant color, beams of light and shadow waltzed. Dancing moon beams foster magic, Jenny believed. A good sign.
They hadn’t found a time when they could go away together, the subject dropped; a need unmet. In hushed tones, warm with affection, she turned towards her husband. “We could pretend we’ve gone away together.”
Into the corner, one by one, he flipped a slipper from each foot, muttering in a tone laced with indifference. “Not the same.” His back was to her as he dropped to the edge of the bed.
Bruised feelings brought a crisp response. “Why must there be this wall between us?”
“No wall!” he shot back, turning away.
She turned away. To her, the wall as real as a gigantic, moon face mocking her. She drew the curtains closed. Moon spirits dimmed, dark shadows lengthened.
“If you want us to have sex, just say so.” Ss’s hissed like coiled snakes about to strike.
She drew her arms around her waist—a protective gesture. Lashing out would bring the same response. “I want us to make love the way we used to.”
He drew in a dissonant sounding breath. “You wanted things to change. Things have changed.”
That was true. She ached now for a past she would recapture if she could. Blame served no purpose. She must find a way around this barricade that change had put between them. Not an easy task when he wouldn’t face her; his silhouette, the rear view of a granite statue, knots in his back and shoulders conveying the tensions he suffered.
From a jar on her dresser, she took a dollop of soothing emollient into her hand, breathing in the heady aroma. A blend of almond oil, and lavender filled her head. Her own ache relieved, her touch could overcome a contentious mood. She reached out. “Let me rub your back and should—”
He grabbed her wrist, the look in his eyes wild and frightening. “No!”
The dollop flew from her hand landing on the carpet.
Stunned, her heart stopped a split-second, began pounded in her chest. Sinking to her knees, she scooped up the dollop. What had she done she hadn’t done a hundred times or more? He’d never reacted this way. Sitting back on her heels, she tried to find an answer in his face.
His face a mask, he turned away.
She rose from the carpet, fled to the bathroom.
As the days passed, she would come to see the look in Austin’s eyes that night was fear. He couldn’t let her touch him. Her touch would breach the wall he’d built to punish her.
When the time was right, he would allow a sterile sort of intercourse meant to make a baby; Daniel and the hope that there would be another child the thin thread holding them together. Otherwise, he treated her with a cool, polite indifference.
A lack of affection endured until a night when she was dreaming ... wanton images, primal yearnings. At earth’s edge and beyond, she hung suspended in erotic limbo.
Abruptly, the dream was interrupted when Austin spoke her name in a hushed but urgent tone. Taking hold of her shoulders, he shook her. “Hey!”
“Hmmmm,” she moaned, reluctant to leave an arousal so ravenously pleasing, yet torturously unfulfilled. “Dream,” she murmured, coming to a level just beyond, and sensing that her body was entwined with his. “I was dream—”
“Some dream!” His hands pushed against her shoulders, his body unyielding. In his eyes a strangely haunted look.
From the tone of his voice, she knew: she’d been acting out her dream. A distressing flush of warmth came with the intention to untangle; she couldn’t force her body to obey. Body and soul, she needed him, so desperately she’d risk rejection.
Motionless, his eyes held hers as though his arms embraced her. Yet he made no move to take her.
She drew in a breath. “Ohhhh.” Aching breasts upturned against his bare chest. She stroked him, caressed him. He resisted. She couldn’t turn aside a wild desire. Her mouth found his, a searching tongue compelled to find a joining. Silently, she pleaded, let it happen, endless seconds on the edge, while he held back.
At last, a heaving groan escaping from his throat, his mouth found hers, his hands stroked her breasts—a lover’s touch. Mercifully, he took control.
Austin’s morning shower, the sounds of him moving about, woke her. She looped an arm around his pillow, basking in his scent. The rhythms of her life restored, she reveled in an aura of completeness. A warm, foamy immersion washed through her as she lay in his arms sometime in the night. “I love you,” she whispered, fervently expressing the heat of the moment.
He didn’t say the words; it didn’t matter. His power lifted to the highest peak within that furtive place of wonder she could only reach with him. A tidal wave, though wanton-dream induced, had sparked their middle-of-the-night reunion. If only...
Daniel’s footsteps on the stairs jolted her from her reverie. She turned over, fixing a fuzzy gaze on the bedroom clock. Springing from the bed, she pulled on a robe and ran a brush through tangles before bounding down the stairs and into the kitchen.
A tumbler of juice in his hand, Daniel stood at the counter, averting his eyes when she came into the room. Could he have heard them in the night, and wondered?
“I ... overslept,” she blurted, embarrassed in the presence of a boy becoming a man. Suddenly, the room lurched. She braced on the edge of the counter trying to clear her head.
Daniel seemed ill at ease. Or was his strange expression a reaction to her own discomfort. “It’s okay, Mom.” He took a bowl from the cupboard, ran his finger along the line of cereal boxes. “I’m having—ing—ing.” Choosing a box, he brought it to the table.
Was that chink, chink, chink hail pelting the windows, or corn pops on earthenware? In Jenny’s altered state, she couldn’t be sure. Vertigo, and thirst drove her stumbling to the sink, where she drew a glass of water ... drank it down. Within seconds her thirst quenched, her head began to clear. She’d gotten up too quickly, she decided, setting a pot of coffee to perk and taking the makings of a breakfast from the fridge.
She was so seldom ill. Yet this morning the sight and smell of food would make her nauseous. From the calendar that hung beside the phone, she was able to determine that her period was more than ten days late.
Could it be? One of the few times they’d been together—once is all it takes. ... No. She wouldn’t go down that path again, not yet. Too many times her hopes and dreams were shattered. Achy and unusually warm, her hands were trembling. Hormones raged in her blood; her body reacting, for whatever reason. In their bed, only moments before, she’d felt complete. ... How rapidly her mood had shifted.
“Mom.” Daniel raised his voice a level. “Mom!”
“What?” Her eyes shifted from the calendar. “I’m sorry, Daniel. What did you say?”
Last evening, he reminded her, they’d decided, after school he’d ride his bike to Olsen’s to have a tire replaced. Austin had purchased Daniel’s bike from a local shop because the merchant provided good service. At that moment, clean-shaven, crisply dressed for business, he walked into the kitchen.
“Another new tire,” he observed. “Your mom will take you down to Olsen’s after school.”
Surprised and somewhat aggravated, Jenny spun around. She had a full day at the shop. Last night, they’d agreed to a different plan. “He can go to Olsen’s by himself,” she said, an edge in her tone.
Austin fixed her with a withering look, snapping, “I don’t want him crossing busy streets alone.”
Where Daniel was concerned, his father tended to be overcautious,
“There’s a crossing guard, Dad,” Daniel interjected. “And I’ll walk my bike across.”
Jenny’s eyes shifted from her son to her husband. “We talked about this last night, and we agreed that Daniel could—”
“You two gang up on me,” he flared. “How much?” Fishing in his pocket for his money clip, he handed Daniel a twenty.
Daniel took the bill. “There’ll be change.”
“Keep it.” Austin’s hand ran down his face. A gesture that could change his mood and manner. “Lunch money, son.”
Why had he reacted this way? Jenny wondered. Thinking back over last evening’s events, she recalled. “Ohhh,” she gasped, “I forgot about the phone call. While we were talking to Daniel about the tire—”
“So,” Austin interjected, “the two of you decided he could handle this alone.”
“I thought you agreed.”
“Well I didn’t agree.” He yanked a chair from under the table then shoved it back. “I’ll have coffee, that’s all.”
It made him angry and resentful when she and Daniel made decisions he opposed. The smallest incident would set him off. Her hand trembling, she poured coffee in a mug and set the mug in front of him. Gone sour, the sweetness of their middle-of-the-night reunion. She fought back tears. “There are muffins and ... Please sit down. I’ll make whatever you want. I’ve been rushed this morning.”
“So have I.” A dismissive wave, he mumbled, “No time.” He and Daniel had a brief exchange while he sipped his coffee.
Daniel’s eyes kept shifting back and forth between them. He knew his welfare was a flashpoint where arguments all too often erupted. He wasn’t to blame, but how could he avoid feeling responsible, and uncomfortable. Collecting his backpack, he swung out the door. “Bye, Mom, Dad.”
“Keep your eyes and ears open, Danny,” Austin admonished.
“Be safe,” she called out after him, watching a gangly boy-becoming-a-man peddle up the driveway out of sight. Daniel was cautious; she needn’t be concerned. Austin’s apprehension was extreme because their son was an only. A terrible sadness crept into her soul. She shook off despair, turned from the window.
Austin had left the kitchen. A moment later he returned with his coat and briefcase.
“You’ll be home for dinner?” she inquired in as hopeful a tone as she could summon.
He pulled on his coat, brushed past her. “Don’t know. I’ll call.”
She backed up a step, then held her ground, longing to recapture the middle of the night connection. If she could tell him how she felt. Nausea and a warm flush flooded through her. “Austin.” She must be a wretched sight, she thought, losing confidence.
He hesitated in the doorway, his back to her.
“Last night ...” Searching for the right words, she hesitated. Wonderful? Old, as Daniel would say. A beautiful reunion? Before she could decide, he shifted his briefcase from one hand to the other, muttered in a voice so cold and foreign she felt as if he’d struck her.
“A man has needs.”
She spun away from him, her voice quivering with emotion. “And a woman doesn’t.”
He heard, but closed the door without a word. She held the sobs inside until his car had left the driveway. Dropping into a chair, she struggled for control.
She was not neglecting Daniel, nor her husband. He’d burdened her with unreasonable demands. When she couldn’t measure up, he set about to punish her. Was there no way she could end this vicious cycle? Give in to his demands. He’d have no reason to punish her. But then, how could he respect her. She couldn’t respect herself. She rose from her chair, wiped away salty tears. Herbal tea would calm her. She had a house to straighten, errands to run, no time to indulge a heavy heart or a body raging with hormones.
Stepping from the shower later that morning, a twinge low in her abdomen, followed by a gush of menstrual blood. Grief would seep into the darkest corners of her heart. And in her mind, a pervasive sense of failure. Swallowing the sob that rose in her throat, she wouldn’t give in to pain and sadness, a failure she could not annul. She had a life to live.
Days rolled over into long, lonely nights, until the evening sparkling jewels on blue-black velvet—a magnificent display—drew Jenny to her back porch, where she had a clear view of the heavens. A space so vast, light years between the galaxies and Earth, the stars were constant. The Creator, she believed, had long ago devised this glorious sight as comfort for a heavy heart. Under a blanket of stars, she felt safe.
For eons back in time, her people reached out to nature spirits as they gazed upon constellations above her now, marveling at their beauty, living out a lifetime by celestial laws before the laws of man were known.
Her eyes in the sky, her hand on the railing, she dropped down on the middle step, the Milky Way close enough to touch: Ursa Major, Minor; within the frames of Mama Bear and her cubs, the big and little dipper rested; the alpha star, Rigel, knee of the great warrior, Orion, son of Poseidon, Greek god of the sea.
As a girl at Gran’s knee, she’d learned to find the sky-bird heroes of native mythology. Birds, the creatures representing good and evil: Cygnus the swan, a cross in the northern Milky Way, Corvus, the raven, Crus, the crane, its alpha star a blue-white light, its beta, a red star. Monoceras, the unicorn, a life spirit; Lupus, the wolf—in native mythology, the beast of death.
Up past his usual bedtime, Daniel came to the screen door to say a sleepy goodnight. He and his dad had watched a space adventure on TV. “Good night.” Jenny relaxed, rotating her head in circles before lifting her eyes again to the heavens. This still, clear night would bring about that rare and precious moment when she could grasp the essence of a people long-dead but not forgotten; Greek, Roman or Iroquois, through the ages, awe-inspiring civilizations. Zeus, the highest ranking God in Greek mythology fathered many sons and daughters in the building of his empire.
In a by-gone life, she could have been a maiden admiring Pegasus, the great winged horse. Or Andromeda the willful daughter of Cassiopeia, within the great square, her throne a guide throughout centuries that human life has read the stars. Finding one within the other, as a native mother would have read the clusters, Jenny read the night sky. A native mother would have feared the unknown just as she felt apprehensive in the modern world. Star gazing brought a sense of continuity, a kind of peacefulness. Native peoples found nature spirits in the constellations. The ancient Greeks and Romans built a hierarchy of gods and goddesses, the most lustful cast of characters yet devised.
“Are you avoiding me?”
Austin’s challenge from behind the screen startled Jenny. “No … star gazing.” She focused on the brightest of the planets: Venus.
He pushed open the screen, walked out on the porch. “We’re watching Star Trek on the tube; you’re out here taking in the real thing.”
Austin and Daniel had a standing appointment to watch the show when Austin was home. When he wasn’t, the two watched separately, later they’d discuss the episode. She enjoyed their spirited discussions, kept silent.
He dropped down on the top step, elbows resting on his knees, his feet in running shoes resting on the riser where she sat. “Nice night.” He lifted his eyes to take in the sky. “Wind’s blown away cloud cover.”
“Mmm, humm.” There had been little of consequence they could say to one another that wasn’t said in anger or restraint. Or worse, the cool politeness into which their marriage had sunk. They avoided contact. Tonight, under the stars, he’d come looking for her. For the past few days, Jenny suspected her husband mulled a problem more personal in mature than the mundane issues he faced daily in his work. Had he come to a conclusion? She focused upward, until he found the words.
Searching eyes found two bright stars—the heads of the twins in the constellation, Gemini. How accurately Austin’s star sign foreshadowed the two opposing sides of his nature.
His focus shifting to the here and now, he held out his hand. She put her left hand into his, his thumb and index finger sliding down her ring finger. “Where is it?” he asked, frowning.
“In my jewelry box.” She related how and why the wedding band came off.
“Get it sized to fit. Or we’ll get a new one.”
She said she wanted the ring enlarged, when her finger came back to its normal shape.
“How long?”
“Several more months, I think.”
For a moment, he looked at her, skeptically, then starring silently into the darkness, let her hand drop into her lap.
She massaged the digit where the imprint of a wedding band could be so clearly seen and felt. A woman does not callously forget a bond as enduring as marriage. In light of his reaction, had removing the ring been thoughtless? .... It had to be. A waste of energy indulging in regrets. She focused on a blue-green star, its name on the tip of her tongue until Austin could express his thoughts.
He cleared his throat, leaned back against the railing—a standoffish pose. “We have to come to an accommodation.”
She felt a throbbing in her throat. Accommodation another A word, like Available, a word that made her bristle. She turned to him, looking into his face; instantly she knew: Sex was the accommodation they must come to.
He looked away, avoiding her eyes, focused out there in the earthly blackness. “No reason we should be deprived.” Turning to her, as though gauging her reaction, he added, “either of us.”
Austin’s way, she thought, his dispassionate side: Reduce an emotionally charged conflict into a problem with a pragmatic solution. She knew his other side as well. Though in this moment, the way she studied him would be as cool and steady as the way he studied her. “No reason.”
“Good.” He drew back against the railing, content to have the thorny problem solved. And to his liking.
She focused on a far-off cloud of cosmic dust remembering the dream night, the wildness they’d shared at earth’s edge and beyond. They hadn’t made love since that night. And before that night, so many nights of flare-ups, or cool indifference, Austin smoldering not with passion—rage. “You’ve been angry with me.” Without meaning to, her eyes rolled. “It seems like forever.”
His eyes narrowed. “I’m not angry with you,” he insisted, trepidation in his tone. “Not exactly.”
An oppressive silence lasted a dozen strong heartbeats. “Disappointed in me then,” she ventured.
As if she’d touched a nerve, he came up straight with fire in his eyes. “I work my tail off to give you and Danny, this house, the life we have here.” A hand swept outward. “And what do the two of you want … Indian Lake!” His body quivered, like a shiver, expressing a burst of dismay. “I don’t get it.”
When Austin exploded, she shut down until the thrust of it had passed. And his anger once expressed passed quickly. A sulking displeasure did not.
How could he understand the lure of Iroquois blood, endurance of an ancient people through countless generations; The Lake as Mother, center, core. Into the darkness she murmured the belief that had come to be the center of her being. “The lake is part of us.”
He drew back. “And not part of me,” bitter undertones, his truth spoken into the darkness.
Opposing truths—his, hers—two separate worlds, light years apart. No shining path to bring disparate worlds together, without a searing crash that would blow their universe apart. And Daniel with it.
Jenny took in a breath, night air heavy in her lungs. She raised her eyes, the pathos of two centuries seeping deep within her spirit on this fateful night. Constellations, everlasting—one within the other, yet separate and apart—an unfailing guide, lessons of endurance, as long as human life had read the stars.
If only by a few degrees, she must alter her course in order to avoid a devastating clash.
Wary and silent, Austin watched her from the corner of his eye, then drew a hand from forehead to Adam’s apple, changing both mood and expression. “Well,” calmer, more circumspect, he went on, “We got off track.”
He’d put anger aside, it seemed. What she saw in the set of his jaw was determination to move on.
“We have an accommodation then?”
No words came to her, only a desperate need to touch him.
He took her hand from his thigh, guiding her into the space between his knees. Their lips met, an affirming kiss. She held him close, her kiss becoming eager. Though conflicted, her heart led the way. Accommodation would exact a price, and bring rewards. A balance. Tears came.
With his fingertips, he brushed the droplets from her cheeks. “Ahhhh, happy tears,” he whispered, kissing her face. “We have to get away, just us. What’s been happening here is not good.”
Under a blanket of stars, they could so willingly be lovers of one mind.
She nodded agreement. When? Their calendars were full well into the next year. And yet, tonight, they had explored the prospect of intimacy. ... Until the telephone’s, intrusive ringing, called a halt.
“Nooooo,” Jenny moaned, clinging, letting him go too wrenching.
“I have to get this ... business.” With a quick hug and a suggestive slap on her back side, he freed himself, scrambled to his feet and dashed across the porch to catch the kitchen extension on the fourth ring.
A crisis with an order; one call leading to the next.
Wrapped in the warmth of their broken embrace, Jenny remained on the back steps, listening to the music of negotiation in her husband’s voice. There had been no lilting tones when he said that she and Daniel wanted Indian Lake. That tone had been dark and brooding. He wanted no part of the lake, or what it represented to her and Daniel. They had the blood. Austin didn’t. For him their attachment made no sense.
Did he honestly believe that she and Daniel didn’t value the way of life he provided? That wasn’t true. She must find a way to tell him, make him understand, defuse the seething anger she could sense in what he said and did. Could it be a fear of the unknown that Austin felt? A threat that wasn’t real? She listened to his tone of voice: calm, collected, in control. In business, people said that he was tough, but fair, hard-working, honest, focused. All the qualities a man in his position must possess.
She’d heard Austin say, these days, a man needs “an edge.” An edge being: an advantage, changing from one situation to the next. In his work, there were times when he’d get angry. And he’d developed strategies to overcome the source of his frustration. Was an obvious resentment of the lake a strategy, an edge? In the past she would succumb without questioning his motives.
Austin set the standards. The way of life they enjoyed was what he wanted. Or was it?
A few days later, he came home with a large box tucked under his arm: a telephone answering machine, new on the market. He sat down with the manual, reading instructions aloud while Daniel connected wires to their incoming line. Now they could screen phone calls, answer those that needed a response, better still, leave messages for each another.
Enthralled with anything mechanical, that same evening, Daniel became adept with taping and play back. Time would pass before Jenny gained a level of comfort with what, at first, seemed an intruder in the house. She told Austin the machine had been a fine idea, she was sure it would help all of them stay in closer touch.
Closer touch, an intangible ideal she strove to bring about. The balance—a harmony of body and spirit—almost within her grasp. A thriving business bonded with the Iroquois way of life, a healthy, happy son growing into manhood; a marriage in erratic throes of change, yet amorous. Attraction or accommodation, a weekend away could wait, moon tide wouldn’t.
She hadn’t planned to go to Indian Lake for the tribal Harvest Festival—avoiding a clash with Austin—until Gramps left a message on the tape. She returned his call to learn that he and the clan would be “disappointed” if she and Daniel didn’t attend. In addition, Aunt Winona had collected from the tribe a number of items for Jenny to bring back to the shop.
Peg said she should go, the trip would be “good business.” Jenny was torn. With Daniel she went back and forth; they weighed the pros and cons. In the end the week before the festival, they decided, weather permitting, they would make the trip to Indian Lake.
That week, Austin was traveling in Ohio. The night he called she told him their decision and invited him to go along. A silence ominous and telling.
He cleared his throat before he made a plausible excuse. His desk would be overflowing, he related, he planned to work that weekend, “get a jump-start on the week ahead.”
She said she and Daniel would be pleased if he’d change his plans, go with them. Grudgingly, he agreed to “think about it,” a departure from steadfast refusals. She dared hold out a shred of hope as they said a tentative good night.
Once the connection was broken, she was all but certain she and Daniel would make the trip alone
The day of the festival, skies were overcast. The-Lake-Where-the-Great-Mud-Turtle-Dwells exhaled summer’s warmth in tumbling clouds of vapor. Woodland trees had shed their leafy mantles; Pine and spruce a vibrant beacon through the murk. Too soon, the Old Man of the North would sweep into Twin Springs County. Beneath white blankets, this land would sleep. Not on this time of celebration, a tribute for the bounties of Mother Earth.
Ritual water drums, like throbbing heart-sounds, buoyant, bird-song twitters from a native flute, a melodic calling out across the water as Jenny and Daniel took part in an age-old processional. One of many somber families, dressed as had ancestors paddling bark canoes, they threaded their way through the narrows to the campgrounds where eight blazing fires encircled an abiding longhouse, their destination rising through a lifting mist.
Treading lightly on her sacred skin, many native souls would gather in this place, exchange a soundless greeting; a devout, unspoken commune in reverence to Mother Earth.
They beached Gramp’s old, reliable canoe, where a welcoming aroma reached her nostrils. Roasting over hardwood, wild turkey, pheasant, venison and small game. Jenny’s mouth began to water in anticipation of the mid-day meal. Daniel caught her eye, rubbed his belly. She touched her fingers to her forehead, a sign of understanding. There would be no mindless chatter in the campgrounds of the Seneca this day, or any other.
Aunt Winona greeted them beside the Deer clan’s campfire where, discretely, she drew them aside. Before the rituals, she confided, there would be adoptions. Daniel had been chosen.
Delivering the message in a customary understated manner, the Mother of the Deer clan returned to her place by the fire. Gramps came to warm there. From the expression on his face, Jenny knew he’d been a party to a well-kept confidence.
“Chosen,” she repeated under her breath, the full impact of the clan Mother’s words swelling within. Her heart skipped, her eyes welled-up with happy tears. There had been no outward sign, no premonition that this would be the occasion when her son would be adopted into her clan and tribe. Though the weather had been threatening, they made the trip. Had they not come to the campground on this fateful day...? What was to be, was meant to be.
For a brief space of time, she felt suspended, supported, on the wings of a great white bird, oblivious to time or place. And then the beating of her heart fell in sync with the rhythm of the drums. She turned away so no one would see an outburst of prideful emotion. This day, she was a Seneca raised in the Iroquois way.
Daniel, though equally pleased and excited, followed her lead.
Adoption ceremonies had been held at previous gatherings of the clans that she and Daniel had attended. The rituals didn’t change; they knew what to expect. A simple, solemn rite serving dual purposes: The induction of new members; a recitation of clan and tribal history.
On each of these occasions, Jenny Dawn of the Deer clan gained a deeper sense of belonging to the ages. Encircled by her clan, she felt the ages passing from her spirit into Daniel. And from this day forward, belonging to the ages remained a part of her no matter where she went, in this world or the other.
A November-cold and drizzling Saturday evening, three weeks before Thanksgiving, in the house on Summit Avenue, the Penn State, Southern Cal game played on the TV. At half-time, Austin walked into the dining room where Jenny stuffed a large, flat box with crumpled tissue paper.
“What’s all this,” he asked, stopping beside the table.
Wrapped gifts and a spray of flowers tied with lacy, gold-edged ribbon—a decoration Jenny copied from a craft magazine—sat ready for shipping.
She looked up from her packing. “Holiday gifts for Marjorie and Barney. And a spray I’m sending for their front door.”
“Ahhhh.” At first, he nodded approval, then a frown wrinkled his brow. “Hummmm?” Between his thumb and index finger, he smoothed the creamy petal of a blossom; one of a dozen she’d ordered from her supplier. “This isn’t a Christmas flower.”
She stuffed a wad of tissue paper into an empty corner of the box. In the back of her mind she knew, her work remained a sore subject, she was cautious with her choice of words. “Magnolia on the front door is a southern tradition.”
“You made this for my mother.”
She hesitated a moment before she answered truthfully. “Florida is Deep South, and your mother is ... well, Marjorie comes from the South.”
The box was ready for the spray to be rested on tissue paper; Austin, a far-away look in his eyes, held the flower petal in his fingertips. On their last visit to Sarasota, Marjorie had spoken fondly of her childhood in Kentucky. Daniel found her reminiscence fascinating, and encouraged her to tell more. Later, Austin had remarked how unusual it was for his mother to talk about her past.
As though he’d come to a conclusion, he released the flower petal, stepped back. “Mother will like this.” He lifted his eyes from the spray, smiled at her, turned and walked toward the kitchen. “You do nice work.”
The comment he’d tossed so casually over his shoulder left Jenny in a state of pure delight; the first time ever he’d acknowledged much less complimented one of her creations.
On the Monday evening of Thanksgiving week, Austin called from the office to say an order was in trouble; he had to get on the road, make a meeting at the plant in West Virginia the next day. He’d planned to be at home that week, and now he’d have be away until late Wednesday, the day before the holiday. “You’d think they’d give a man a break,” he fumed, disenchanted with demands his work imposed.
A temporary state, Jenny decided. Austin’s work was who he was. “Ohhh, I’m sorry too,” As though a mental block had rolled away, the words she’d tried to put together since that night under the stars came tumbling out. She said, of course he had to go. No one was more skilled at managing a problem; no one more capable of bringing in an order than he was. She respected what he did, Daniel admired him, and in a larger sense, the order was important to the business as well as the people of Welborne.
Austin kept silent through it all. “Yeah!” he replied, after several, heavy seconds. He chuckled. “You laid it on a bit thick, Couch. But, I needed that pep talk.”
“I meant every word.”
“Yeah, thanks ... for the ... vote of confidence.” A smothered burst of laughter meant he’d made peace with an inconvenient trip.
Good vibes traveled though the wires. She was happy the words had come together then, and at the right time. It could make a difference.
“Well,” Austin concluded, more resigned and in control than he had been. “I gotta’ go. I’ll call you.”
“I’ll be waiting for your call.” Jenny whispered, remembering intimate, late-night connections they’d shared so often in the past. “Be safe.”
He did call, that night and the next. They talked about their day and the day ahead, implicit was a longing for the nights they’d be together.
Thanksgiving was held at the Tracys’ that year. Lita and Clay flew in from Seattle for an extended weekend visit. Jenny had prepared the quest room. Her only regret that during their visit she couldn’t take time on some of their busiest days leading up to Christmas.
Lita volunteered to help out with the customers. Her letter said that working side by side with Jenny would be a change of pace. “A lark.”
“A lark,” reading from the letter, Austin said aloud. A sardonic chuckle causing Jenny some concern.
Instead of sulking—the way he often registered disapproval—he’d bought tickets for Clay, himself and Daniel to attend an outer-space exhibit at the Planetarium. Several recent incidents led her to believe that Austin could be coming to accept the life she’d made outside their home. Up to now, a reluctant accommodation.
After dinner that balmy Thanksgiving, the family retreated to the Tracys’ living room with their coffee mugs. Too stuffed to play outside, Daniel and his cousins were hanging on the side porch where they’d been rapping about sports and school, and girls. Jenny and Robin were in the kitchen slicing pies into serving pieces.
Looking for a refill, Austin strolled into the room. Just as he came upon the scene, the conversation on the side porch took a sudden, unfortunate turn to the subject of adoption.
Jenny’s blood ran cold.
Austin overheard enough to catch the gist: there’d been a ceremony on the reservation—an adoption ceremony. The clan had chosen, Little Beaver, as his Seneca name. One day, he planned to build a cabin on reservation. In the spring, he and his Seneca cousins would build a bark canoe—a coming-of-age rite among the Seneca. Description of tribal rituals was forbidden and Daniel didn’t violate the sanction.
A look of stunned betrayal spreading across his face, Austin throttled his coffee mug. Turning on Jenny, he stormed. “You did this!”
She’d dreaded the day he would have to be told about Daniel and the clan. She’d put off the revelation, trusting there would come a time when Austin could accept that Daniel belonged to the clan. This was not the time.
Now she had to face him, summon the strength to confront him. “Not here,” she warned in a low, forbidding tone. Robin would hear; the boys would not. Nor would the family scattered throughout the small house and otherwise engaged.
Dark eyes seething with rage, he was aware enough to comprehend that this was not the time, or place. Full force, he slid his coffee mug the length of the counter, striking her outstretched palm. Without a word, he left the kitchen, and the house to walk—a cooling off—with no one else being the wiser.
It wasn’t over. Jenny knew they wouldn’t speak of it again until their visitors had left. On Sunday afternoon they drove Clay and Lita to the airport; Daniel went along. At bedtime, she faced the consequences of deception. Expecting the inevitable, Jenny walked into their bedroom, pushed the door closed, leaning against its, unyielding surface.
Standing by the window, fists clenched, Austin turned abruptly; the look in his eyes awful to behold. “You put my son in your clan without my knowledge and consent!”
His son! Like a wall of fire, her defenses flared. “That’s not the way it happened.”
“Ohhhh? Ahhhh, Ha!” he scoffed. “And how did it happen?”
His mocking tone threw her for a moment. Yet before she spoke, a clear thought came. If she told him how it came about, he could blame Daniel. She couldn’t let that happen. “Daniel was chosen,” she explained. “It’s an honor to be chosen.”
“You did this to spite me,” he shot back. “Everything you’ve done since…” He didn’t have to finish; they both knew he was thinking: Pam. “Everything you’ve done since has been to spite me. This ... this is … over the top.” Shaking his head, he turned away.
She closed her eyes, an ache so deep she could neither breathe nor answer his charges. And in his frame of mind, there were no words, no explanations he would accept. She swung open the door, stepped out in the hall, closing the door behind her.
Two weeks later, on a Monday afternoon, she arrived home from an errand to find that Daniel had taken a message from Austin: he’d be out of town, left the number of the place where he could be reached. Jenny went to the refrigerator, began assembling items for their supper. Daniel continued to read from a notepad where he’d taken down the rest of Austin’s message.
“Dad said, to remind you about the office Christmas party, Friday night, Petroleum Club. Buy a new outfit … wear the emeralds.”
That sounded like an order, Jenny thought, with a flash of resentment. There hadn’t been a moment’s peace in her marriage since Austin heard the word adoption. Her arms loaded, she shifted her hip against the refrigerator door. “Your dad said ... what?”
“The Christmas party … ”
“After that, Daniel.”
“He said, ‘tell your mom, buy a new outfit, and wear the emeralds.’ “
“Was that the way he said it?”
Daniel nodded.
It was an order. And she didn’t like the way he’d used their son. “Supper will be ready in fifteen minutes, Daniel.”
Time was precious; she had no opportunity to shop.
Later that evening, she decided to make do with a seldom-worn outfit she’d come upon going through her closet. With this outfit, she could wear the emeralds; emeralds he would surely notice, not a dress.
All that week, Austin didn’t call.
Friday afternoon when she arrived home from the shop, he was already there and waiting—cool, polite and dressed for an evening out. “Cocktails at six; dinner at seven,” he admonished, looking at his watch.
“I’ll be ready.”
He drank too many cocktails, but covered well; on a festive occasion, no one took notice. To his colleagues, he made the appropriate comments. The office had weathered a difficult year, everyone agreed; they praised Austin’s steady leadership for keeping them on course. He danced with every woman at the party, charmed them all. Watching him conceal a dark mood, Jenny couldn’t shake a shadowy foreboding that her husband was about to turn his life, hers, and Daniel’s upside down.
Fraught with tension over rain-slick city streets, the drive home icy silent; an immense sense of relief Jenny felt as the car came to rest in their driveway shattered by a sickening thud.
Austin’s fist came down, hard, on the steering wheel. “You’re acting as if you resent being my wife,” he sputtered.
“I won’t take orders from you,” startled, she retorted. “And I don’t like the way you’re using our son.”
“A man in my position has an image to uphold. A manager’s wife maintains that image,” he insisted, thumping the wheel with the palm of his hand. “And I’m not using Danny.”
The image. She knew the image all too well. A growl of frustration escaped her throat.
He didn’t look at her, glaring into the darkness beyond the windshield. “That line you handed me ... respecting me ... my work. What a crock a bull!”
He was too angry to be reasoned with, she was too exhausted to try. Lights were blazing in the house. After midnight, Daniel was still up. “Could we try not to fight in front of him?”
Austin shot her a contentious look. “You’re the one who’s spoiling for a fight.”
“You’ve had too much to drink.”
“Not enough! ... Damn it!” He flung open his car door. Slamming it behind him, he dodged streaks of sleeting rain to the back porch.
Jenny groaned, “Ohhh, rrrrrr.” Her head dropped into her hands. Tears of anger smarted in her eyes, and a hurt so devastating she could neither think nor move. She hated the way he treated her—like a naughty child.
A tapping at the window snapped her from self-pity.
“Mom,” Daniel called out. “Dad said I should bring an umbrella.”
“You know I’m with Austin on this one,” Robin reminded Jenny. Robin had let it be known that Austin should have been consulted before the deed was done. “Pure horror,” the way she described the look on his face that day he’d overheard the boys discussing adoption.
That evening, she and Jenny were speaking on the phone. Robin had called to invite them to join the Tracys on Christmas Eve; Rich’s folks and Uncle Vic would be there. Jenny said that at the moment, she and Austin barely spoke. Austin liked the Tracys’ extended family. Their old-world traditions and easy manner could put him in a festive mood. So, Jenny said they’d try to be there.
The cousins talked of other things—a general catching up on one another’s busy lives. As they were signing off, Robin couldn’t help but issue one last piece of unsolicited advice. “Swallow your pride. Apologize.”
Jenny said she’d think about it. She’d known Robin all her life. Still, Robin neither understood nor sanctioned Jenny’s connection with the lake, and through the lake, the traditions of the Seneca/Iroquois. How could she expect Austin to appreciate the bond she felt? A bond infinitely stronger now that Daniel was a member of the Deer clan. This bonding with her heritage Austin must accept in time. If only time could make the difference.
They couldn’t go on this way: him believing she’d deceived him. And worse, she’d been disloyal. He’d come to suspect she’d take Daniel away, while she had no intention of taking Daniel from his school, his friends, the life he loved; an environment where he was thriving. Nor would she be forced to defend the actions she’d taken. Time. She must be patient, turn aside his disapproval, wait for him to think this through and come around. The shop kept her occupied, kept her mind from dwelling on the worst they could inflict on each other.
All the while, she walked on eggshells in his presence, staving off a major blow up. And she was troubled about Daniel; the toll this rift was taking on a boy so in tune with his parents’ highs and lows.
Austin stayed away; he didn’t call, he drank too much. She trusted in a life force more powerful than he was to keep him out of harm’s way.