SEVEN

The next day a yellow moving van made its way slowly up to our house. The driveway wasn’t that steep, not like a giant hill, but it was long and in one spot curved sharply to the right. In the elbow of the curve, a fat old oak tree looked like someone had taken a giant razor and scraped off a bunch of bark, exposing the flesh in the exact spot where a car might come too close. The driver was trying hard to avoid leaving streaks of paint on the tree.

Mama ran from the house, trotting down the steps, saying, “Oh, thank God, thank God” to herself, as if the perils of living without her own belongings had almost sent her to an early grave. She ran right past me and waved her hands frantically, directing the driver to pull close to the front porch. I have to admit, I experienced a flicker of excitement myself, knowing my own pictures and pillows and the rest of my books would be here. But on the heels of that came a vision of Mama ripping down the portraits and replacing my ancestors with stuff Peter had let her take from the house in Georgia. Stuff that didn’t mean anything.

I ran inside, slipped into the parlor to grab Benjamin off the wall, and lugged him all the way upstairs to my room, stashing him in the back of my closet.

“Sorry, Benjamin, it’s only temporary.” I moved a flattened box in front of him so no one peeking in my closet would see that I’d hidden him there.

The movers finished before lunch. Mama’s cherry-colored love seat sat in the center of the huge family room, like a tiny neon light in the middle of the Arabian desert. The mismatched chairs and hard couch had disappeared. Stacked boxes created paths for us to move between the rooms.

“We’ll deal with all that stuff later,” Mama said from the kitchen. She unwrapped china plates as gently as one might unfold the petals of a daffodil. “Look, sugar, our things are here.”

I’d never paid much attention to Mama’s attachment to “things” before, but right then it really bothered me. It wasn’t like the china had been passed down from her grandmother. It was all stuff Peter let her buy with his credit card. It could be replaced as easily as it was purchased, unlike the paintings of my ancestors.

“What are you going to do with the portraits?” I asked.

Her face clouded over. “Something. I don’t know. I don’t care about them today.”

She smiled at a gold-rimmed saucer and put it on the counter next to her set of those little tiny cups people use to drink that really strong coffee. Mama said that stuff was thick as mud and tasted like the bottom of a horse stall, but she always made sure those cups were brought out of the cabinet when company came for dinner.

“Maybe the library would like them,” I said.

“Okay.”

She hadn’t even heard me.

“Because my daddy donated the library to the town, so maybe they’d want them.”

“Good.” She set a creamer and sugar bowl on the counter. “Maybe they’ll come pick them up. You can ask next time you’re there.”

I got up close to her face. “Did you even know he donated that library?”

She looked at me like I was silly. “Your daddy did all sorts of crazy things, sugar. It doesn’t surprise me one bit. If you want them to go to the library, that’s fine. They’re yours. Otherwise they’re going to live in that barn until next July when we move, because decorating is my department.”

Deacon and Quince stopped by that afternoon with an envelope for Mama. “This is for August,” he said. “Thought you might want it early.”

Her eyes flashed and her whole body stiffened. She glanced quickly at me, then stuffed the envelope inside a drawer and slammed it shut.

“Thank you.”

For all her proper manners, the one thing Mama never could control was the way she changed when someone humiliated her. I had no idea what Deacon might have done, but it didn’t matter. There was no reasoning with her when she got like that in her head. That icy voice of hers gave her away.

“Is there anything you need help getting moved? Any boxes you want me to take upstairs?” Deacon asked.

She turned her back to him. “We’re fine.” Short, clipped words.

“Okay, if anything comes up, you know where I am.”

Mama rolled her eyes. “Indeed we do.”

“Wait!” I said. “Can you help me?”

Mama’s head flew up. “With what?”

“Moving the portraits to the barn.”

She stared like she had no idea what I was talking about, even though we’d just had the conversation a few hours before.

“They’ll be out of your way,” I said quickly.

She shrugged and cut a straight line with a knife across the top of a box. “Suit yourself.”

There were seven portraits, not including Benjamin, who might be suffocating up in my closet. I brought each one to the front porch, and Deacon carried them across the yard with Quince trotting at his heels. When he came for the last one, I followed them all the way inside the barn.

It was dark and cool in there. The smell of turpentine and something sweet lingered in the air. The whole middle was empty, just a broad floor made from smooth, creamy stones. Two wooden sawhorses and a bunch of rusty tools leaned against a wall. Near an opening in the back, a blue tractor faced out to the field, with clumps of green grass clinging to the wheels. Patches of sunlight pushed through dusty windowpanes, spreading streaks of yellow across the stones.

I tilted my head back and followed a three-quarter walkway around the second floor, turning a full 360 degrees. It felt like standing in an old church, one where God had been waiting for me a long, long time.

“I like it in here,” I whispered. “I like it a lot.”

Deacon watched me, still holding the last portrait.

“It’s like I should remember,” I said. “We lived here for a few months when I was little. But I don’t remember this place.”

“Not everything needs a visual memory,” he said. “Sometimes moments come to us by smell or sound or even taste.”

He leaned the picture against a wall near the others, then climbed a staircase and returned with a tarp. “I’ll get boxes tomorrow and move them upstairs. They’ll be there whenever you decide what to do with them.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry Mama was rude.”

He shrugged. “It’s okay. She’d rather be in charge of her own money, but I’m the trustee. It’s my job to see to it things are done according to the way your father wanted.”

“You’re the trustee?”

“I am.”

“I thought a trustee was someone official, like from a bank, or a lawyer. Not just a regular person.”

Deacon laughed. “Glad to know I’m regular. I’ve wondered for a long time. A trustee just means I handle the aspects of your father’s estate where you and this farm are concerned. Your mama will either get used to it or she won’t. But don’t worry about me.”

I walked slowly back to the house, thinking about what Deacon had said. Feeling obligated to another person humiliated Mama, and when Mama was humiliated, she lashed out. That mean streak of hers had embarrassed me more than once in my life, like the time a new track coach chewed me out in front of all the parents for getting a bad grade, which meant I couldn’t compete. Mama’d lit into her so fierce that woman could probably still feel the burn. But, like she had told me, living in Vermont was only for one year. A person can do almost anything for a year.

That night, while Mama was in the shower, I wrote a quick letter to Peter. I wanted to let him know we didn’t have internet yet, in case he was wondering why I hadn’t emailed. On the last line I said, “We have an extra bedroom, just in case you and Albert ever want to come visit.” I wrote out his name and our old address on an envelope and ran down the driveway in my slippers to put it in the mailbox and flip the little red flag up. Just to be safe, I’d stuck four stamps across the top so it would go fast, all the way to Georgia.