Chapter 9
AUNT Jeane and Uncle Robert didn’t arrive until almost noon the next day. Grandma had been pacing the floor for hours, describing all sorts of scenarios as to what might have happened to them on the road. When they finally drove in, both of us were overjoyed.
Aunt Jeane was the closest thing our family had to a rock. She was solid and steady—the same for as many years as I could remember. She’d never been able to have children, but had been a devoted fifth-grade teacher for thirty years. She had been a perfect aunt to my sister and me, sending us special presents on our birthdays, sewing Halloween costumes and ballet dresses. She lived about a half-day’s drive from the farm, but always made the trip to see us when we were in Hindsville.
After we exchanged the initial greetings, Uncle Robert wandered off to the living room to read the paper while Grandma, Aunt Jeane, and I sat at the kitchen table over coffee. Aunt Jeane put Joshua on her lap and cooed at him until he started to laugh.
We talked for a while about the unusually mild weather, and the details of Aunt Jeane’s trip up, and how pretty the Christmas decorations looked in the park in Hindsville.
“We need to get to work around here. This place could use a little Christmas spirit,” Aunt Jeane remarked, lowering a critical brow and looking around the house. “We should buy a tree and put it up. Mother, where are all the old Christmas decorations?”
Grandma pursed her lips and wrinkled her nose as if she had caught a whiff of something unpleasant. “The Christmas decorations are in that old trunk in the third-floor attic. But I don’t want any store-bought tree, and it’s too soon for a Christmas tree, anyway. We’ll cut a cedar from the pasture on Christmas Eve, like we used to. A Christmas tree shouldn’t come from town—it should come from the land.”
Aunt Jeane nodded patiently. “All right, Mother. But how about if we get the other decorations out, so the house will look nice when everyone else gets here? It’s been years since this place has been decorated for Christmas. It would be good to see all those old things again.”
Grandma nodded. “Yes, now that I think about it, it would. Maybe some neighbors will see the lights and stop in. Back in my day, that’s what folks did. Every night of the week before Christmas, folks kept a pot of cider or hot cocoa on the stove, and neighbors would just stop in and visit and bring Christmas cookies or loaves of bread. Then we would wrap up something for them to take home. Some nights we would go around and visit other folks’ houses—maybe five or six in a night—and we would come home with good things to eat, or sometimes a little present for us children. We would ride the babies on our sled if there was snow . . .” She sighed, looking out the window, seeming to drift into the past. “It doesn’t seem right that there isn’t any . . .”
Aunt Jeane and I sat waiting for her to finish the thought; then we just looked at each other and shrugged.
“Well, how is teaching this year?” I asked finally. Aunt Jeane always had some funny story to tell about her fifth graders.
This time, she only looked down at her hands and shook her head. “One of my kids was removed from her parents by social services. I’ll tell you, it’s awful the kinds of families some of these children come from these days.”
Grandma huffed, obviously put out at being left out of the conversation. She never liked having to share Aunt Jeane’s attention. “Things are no different than they ever were. Only back in my day, there was no welfare agency to take care of people’s problems for them, and we didn’t air all our dirty laundry on television.” She raised her lecture finger into the air. “When I was in the fourth grade, I had to miss most of the school year taking care of my mother.” She lowered her finger as if she had forgotten why she was telling the story. “That was a hard time. Father was away fighting in the war, and mother lost a baby boy. She sat rocking hour after hour, crying for that baby and saying her heart was broken. It seemed like the world was coming to an end all around us. Oh, it was a bad time.”
“Mother!” Aunt Jeane scolded in a tone so sharp it made me jump. “You’re drifting off again. We all know that story, and there isn’t any reason to tell it again now. It just makes everybody sad.”
Grandma looked at Aunt Jeane for a moment, then lifted her chin, stood up, and walked toward the door. “I need to finish my article,” she said, but I had a feeling she was hurt by Aunt Jeane’s rebuke.
Aunt Jeane shook her head at Grandma, then sighed. “I’m sorry, Kate. I didn’t mean to start up with her.” She turned to me with an expression of monumental sadness. “I swear, she is getting more addled every time I see her. Half of the time she can’t even carry on a conversation anymore. She gets halfway through a sentence and forgets what she was saying.”
It bothered me to hear her complaining about Grandma. “She’s just a little excited because you’re here,” I said, hoping to make her see that Grandma wasn’t ready for Oakhaven Village just yet. “She’s doing a lot better lately.” She hasn’t flooded, burned down, or blown up anything in over a week.
Aunt Jeane clearly wasn’t ready for me to come to Grandma’s defense. “I guess I’m just expecting too much. It’s natural to be more impatient with your parents than with other people.” She laughed. “Of course, after all those psychology classes, you’d think I would know better.”
We laughed, and I considered telling her about Grandma’s book, but I quickly changed my mind. I found myself hoping Grandma wouldn’t tell her either. I wanted it to remain our secret.
“So, staying here hasn’t been too hard on you and Ben?” Aunt Jeane asked.
“No. It’s been a good chance to slow down and think about what’s important.” At least for me, it had been. “Ben was gone working most of the time. I’m hoping this break over Christmas will give him and Josh some time together.”
Aunt Jeane narrowed her eyes like a hawk zeroing in on a target. “Where is Ben, this noon? I thought he would be here.” The way she said it made her sound just like Grandma.
I pretended to be busy adding sugar to my coffee. The truth was, I was embarrassed and disappointed that Ben wasn’t home to greet the guests. After last night, I’d hoped things were going to improve, but one call from a client at 7 A.M., and he was up and gone to the office first thing despite the facts that there was company coming, there were a million things to do, and Grandma was in a nervous snit. We had made love until late in the night and talked about old times, and I thought that meant we were reconnecting. I thought he would spend the morning with Josh, but Ben had barely seen Josh since he’d come home. I guess that fact hadn’t even occurred to Ben.
“He’s at his office,” I said finally. “I was hoping he’d be back by now. He must have gotten tied up with something.”
Aunt Jeane clearly smelled a rat. “You two having a fight, or something?”
“No.” Which was true. “He got a call from one of his clients this morning, and off he went.”
“And?” Aunt Jeane probed. I wondered why she was pushing so hard and if Grandma had told her about the problems between Ben and me.
Aunt Jeane laid a hand on my arm, and the next thing I knew, I was spilling the whole story. “I guess I’m just disappointed that it didn’t occur to him to stay home and help get things ready here, or to spend a little time with Josh. You know, he hasn’t even seen Josh in over two weeks, and it didn’t occur to him to stay around this morning and put the client on the back burner for the day.” I sighed, wondering if Aunt Jeane would think I was being petty and self-centered. “I understand that he’s a perfectionist about his work. I do. I love my job, too, but it’s not my top priority anymore. Just once in a while, I’d like us to come first with Ben. It seems he and Josh barely know each other. Josh hardly even notices when Ben comes into the room. That just isn’t right, and it isn’t fair to Josh.”
Aunt Jeane quickly put on her psychologist’s cap. “Well, Kate, lots of men don’t feel that child care is their responsibility. For years, society has been telling them they’re good fathers if they make a good living and show up on Sundays for dinner. I see it all the time with kids at school. A lot of dads think they’re doing their jobs because they make lots of money. Moms, too, for that matter. In the meantime, their kids are lonely and needy. They don’t have anyone to go to, and they end up disrespectful and mad at the world. I’ll tell you, things have changed in the thirty-six years I’ve been teaching.”
“I don’t doubt that.” I could tell I was in a hornet’s nest, so I started trying to back out. When Aunt Jeane got stirred up about something, she didn’t quit easily.
She raised a finger into the air, looking frighteningly similar to Grandma. “I’ll tell you, it isn’t bad schools that are to blame for the problems kids have today—it’s insufficient families and lazy parenting. People don’t put their children ahead of themselves. You are right to think hard about your priorities, Kate. Do what you can to bring Ben around.” Pausing, she looked at her finger, then slapped her hand over her mouth and started to laugh. “Listen to me. I sound just like Mother.”
I burst into giggles because that was exactly what I had been thinking. “I guess it runs in the family.” I motioned to Joshua, who was pointing his finger, trying to examine the buttons on Aunt Jeane’s shirt.
We laughed some more, and Joshua squealed and waved his arms. Aunt Jeane bounced him, smiling and chattering. I was struck again by what a shame it was that she’d never been able to have children. She would have been a wonderful mother and grandmother.
“Speaking of family,” she said finally, “have you heard anything from your father?”
I shook my head, feeling guilty, though I didn’t know why. “I called and left messages twice, but I don’t know if he’s coming.”
“If you called, he’ll come. He’s just staying away because he thinks you don’t want to see him.”
“Why would he think that?”
She dropped her chin as if she couldn’t believe I was asking. “Kate, you haven’t so much as called the man in years. You didn’t send him a birth announcement for the baby, or any pictures. You didn’t call when Josh was born or during all that time he was in the hospital. Your father had to find out about Joshua’s progress secondhand. What was he supposed to think?”
I stared at a warped board on the kitchen floor, feeling as if we were speaking two different languages. “What?” I muttered, trying to find reality. “Did he tell you all that?”
“He’s really hurting over it.” She skirted my question, but looked at me directly. “And you’re hurting over it, and your sister is hurting over it, and Grandma is hurting over it. So am I. We’ve let ourselves fall apart these last few years. This family needs to put itself back together before any of us can be right again.”
“I don’t think it’s possible to put us back together,” I confessed. “I can’t believe you even got Karen to come, but you can be sure she isn’t coming here to kiss and make up.” Karen blamed Dad for the fact that Mom was emotional and driving too fast when the car accident happened. A few Christmas cards had been the extent of my sister’s contact with the family since then.
“She and James are putting in for time off so they can be here.” Aunt Jeane’s voice was steady—as if she were laying out a map of things to come. “That is a start. Have a little faith, Kate. Open your mind a little. You may be surprised.”
Cold dread gripped my stomach, churning it like a boiling pot. “I wish I could.” To hash things out with Dad and Karen was to go back to the event that began our separation.
Aunt Jeane stroked my hair just as Grandma sometimes did. “Kate, it’s time. Six years have gone by. Have you even been to visit your mother’s grave since you’ve been here?”
“No.”
“Then it’s time.”
“I know.” I thought about what Grandma had said. It seemed like the whole world was coming to an end around us. Why did I feel that way? Why did it seem as if gathering the family here would bring about something terrible?
I tried to push the answer into a dark corner of my mind and lock it away. But I knew. Gathering the family would bring back my mother’s death.
And that was when the world had ended for all of us.
Aunt Jeane put her hand over mine as if she understood. “I know it’s hard, but it’s time we let go of all this grief. We can go to the cemetery now, while Grandma is busy in the little house.” She looked hard at me. “Just you and me, all right?”
I nodded, and we quietly gathered our coats, slipped Joshua into his carrier, and left without telling anyone.
Looking at Joshua lifted my spirits as we made the trip to the family cemetery, which was on the back side of the farm on a hillside overlooking Mulberry Creek. For a hundred and thirty years, members of my father’s family had been buried there. Legend said the site had been selected by his Cherokee ancestors because all four horizons were visible. Shaded by ancient oak trees and circled by a weathered iron fence, the cemetery had the feeling of sacred ground.
Aunt Jeane entered first, clearing overgrown honeysuckle vines away from the gate, then stepping inside. She went to the grave of my grandfather and lovingly brushed the leaves away from his side of the stone. She left covered the side that waited for my grandmother, as if to promise we would not need it soon.
Standing outside the fence with Joshua in my arms, I gazed at the hillside, remembering it filled with cars and people with dark umbrellas. So long ago, but yesterday in my heart. The grief was fresh and untouched.
Drinking in the cool afternoon air, I remembered further back—to a time when this was no more than an interesting place to play and a spot where we occasionally came with Grandma to put flowers on Grandpa’s grave. I remembered a day when Karen and I read the ancient headstones, contemplating the fact that children were buried here, some only babies. The idea made us sad, and we went somewhere else to play. If you are lucky, you know a time in your life when graveyards are that easy to forget.
Rustling leaves announced my entrance into the graveyard. Aunt Jeane glanced at me, then went back to cleaning Grandpa’s gravestone with a rag. I knew she wanted to let me make peace with my mother’s death in private.
I walked forward and stood a few feet from my mother’s grave, staring at the headstone and thinking of all the pain attached to it. Resentments rose like sludge dredged from the bottom of a riverbed. They mixed with sorrow and left a strange taste in my mouth. I was angry that she had died and left us in tatters, that with her went the last thread that stitched our family together. I was sad that she was gone, that there would never be another chance for us to talk, that she would never hold Joshua, or read him a bedtime story, or weave a chain of daisies for him. I was sorry that I had wasted so many chances to call her on the phone and just talk. I was bitter because we had let our lives go by in such a hurry that we never got to know each other.
I never again wanted to make that mistake in my life. Closing my eyes, I hugged Joshua to my chest and prayed that I would be there to care for him as he grew up, to cheer him on at Little League games and graduations, to kiss his cheek when he married, and to someday be a grandmother to his children. . . .
I was glad when the creak of the gate told me Aunt Jeane was ready to leave. Turning away from the stones, I walked to the car and climbed into the passenger seat, feeling numb.
She knew what I was thinking and didn’t press me about my feelings. Instead, she concentrated on the living. “Your mother would have wanted us to do what we can to patch this family back together.”
I sighed. “I know.” But I’m not sure it’s possible. “How long do you think everyone will stay?”
“A few days probably. Your dad might want to stay longer now that he’s retired. He’ll probably want to stick around and get to know this baby.”
I scoffed bitterly at that, wondering if we were talking about the same person. He’d never been interested in getting to know his own children.
“Katie, you need to consider what is best for your son.” Aunt Jeane’s retort brought me up short. “It isn’t right to keep him from his grandfather because you are angry. Yes, you will make an empty space in your father where Joshua should be, but you will also carve a hole in Joshua where his grandfather should be. As he grows up, he will feel that he was not good enough to warrant his grandfather’s attention. Your son deserves to know the love of his family.”
I nodded, feeling ashamed. Aunt Jeane had Grandma’s way of putting you in your place.
Looking out the window, I felt the essence of my mother around me, like a spirit. Silently, I promised I would do everything possible to heal the family and to keep the farm. I knew that was what she would have wanted. The farm was the one place in the world where my mother really seemed to be at peace.
I took a deep breath and told Aunt Jeane what I was thinking. “Since we’re talking about family, I want to say something about Grandma.”
Aunt Jeane gave me a strange sideways look as we pulled into the driveway of the farm. “All right.”
The car crept closer to the house, and I could see Grandma standing on the porch watching us curiously. I hurried with what I had to say. “I think you and Dad are wrong in wanting to move Grandma Rose to a nursing home. She doesn’t want to leave the farm.”
Aunt Jeane’s mouth straightened into a stubborn line that reminded me of Grandma’s. “Kate, don’t let her play on your emotions. I know she doesn’t want to leave, but the fact is she can’t live here alone anymore. She’s a danger to herself, and she can’t even drive anymore. If anything happens, she’ll be trapped here alone. This move is for her own good.”
I straightened my shoulders, trying not to feel like one of Aunt Jeane’s fifth graders. “I’m not letting her play on my emotions. I’m not stupid, Aunt Jeane. I know she’s trying to manipulate me, but I also understand some things I didn’t before I came here. This farm is her heartbeat. She won’t leave willingly. If you force her away from here, you’ll be killing her.”
Aunt Jeane turned to me, looking surprised and wounded. “I’m not trying to hurt her, Kate, but there isn’t any other way.”
“Ben and I can stay a few months longer,” I rushed on, though I knew I shouldn’t offer without talking to Ben again. “I’m not ready to go back to work yet anyway. We’ve figured out some ways we can cut our expenses for a while.”
Aunt Jeane stared at me, openmouthed, clearly shocked by my offer. “And after that?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. Glancing out the window, I saw Grandma advancing on the car and I knew we had to end the conversation.
“It isn’t fair to you and Ben to . . .” Aunt Jeane stopped in midsentence, jumping in her seat as Grandma opened the car door and stuck her head in.
“You should have told me you were going for a drive,” she complained. “I might have come along.”
Aunt Jeane just shrugged and climbed out of the car. “You were busy on your article. Besides, we only went to the cemetery. I’ll take you back this evening if you want to go.”
Grandma stepped away from the door, nodding at me with a profound expression, as if she knew how much the trip meant. “No. I was out there last Sunday. I can wait a while longer.” As I walked around the car, she laid a hand tenderly on my shoulder and whispered, “Good for you, Katie. Next spring we can plant Mrs. Owens’s flowers there. It is good soil.”
Aunt Jeane looked at us, narrowing one eye suspiciously and tapping the knuckle of her index finger to her lips. She shook her head as we walked to the house. I had a feeling she thought Grandma had bewitched me and that I was in need of an exorcism.
When we stepped onto the porch, Grandma motioned us toward the front door. “Now, don’t go in through the kitchen. The floor is wet in there and the front bedroom. I just finished mopping.”
Aunt Jeane glanced at me and frowned with disapproval, then stood back with her arms crossed over her chest as we walked into the dogtrot. I could tell this was a test, and Aunt Jeane was waiting to see how I would handle it.
“Grandma,” I said, “you know you’re not supposed to be mopping. Dr. Schmidt said light exercise only.”
Grandma slipped her hands into her apron pockets and pulled out a dustrag, shaking her head. “Well, the work has to be done.” She sighed. “And with you so busy, and Ben gone all hours . . .”
I could tell she was in her highest state of martyrdom, no doubt putting on a performance for Aunt Jeane, so I stopped her before she could go on. “But you’re not supposed to do it.”
Wringing the dustrag between her fingers, she pretended to feel guilty. “Well, after dust-mopping the rest of the house, I usually do wet-mop the kitchen.”
“You mopped the whole house!” I gasped.
“It had to be done. That coffee boiler went haywire again and made a mess all over the kitchen.” She sighed in a voice that sounded as if it were drifting from her deathbed. “That mess gets on there, and it gets ground around by everyone’s feet. The finish will become scratched, and we’ll be paying to refinish the floors.”
Clearly, I was supposed to be grateful that she had sacrificed herself to save the floors. Instead, I was ready to choke her, whether Aunt Jeane was watching or not. Once again she had flooded the kitchen, and she didn’t want to admit responsibility. “No digging up flower beds, and no mopping! I will do it. If your blood pressure goes any higher, Dr. Schmidt is going to put you in the hospital!”
Grandma gave absolutely no indication that she’d heard me. Instead, she wandered a few steps away and began nonchalantly dusting the knickknacks on a table. Her face was tilted stubbornly aside, as if I were no longer there.
“Grandma.” I heard the word come from my mouth as if I were addressing a child, but I was too angry to care. “I know you can hear me.”
She didn’t say a word, but batted a hand beside her face as if I were an insect droning in her ear.
My temper went up three notches, and I gritted my teeth to keep from losing it completely. Things had already gone too far, and it wasn’t doing my blood pressure or Grandma’s any good. It wasn’t helpful that Aunt Jeane was seeing the two of us at our worst. Taking a deep breath, I lowered my voice. “Let me do the floors from now on. Your face is all red. You need to go sit down and rest.”
She stood for a moment, then turned and shuffled away, muttering, probably not to me, about finishing her Sunday school lessons.
Shifting Josh onto my hip, I called after her as a peace offering, “Do you need me to drive you to town later so you can turn in your article?”
For just an instant, she stopped, and it looked as if a treaty might be signed. With a humph that was audible across the room, she continued on, calling back to me, “Oliver will come for me.”
Watching her disappear into the back room, I knew I had no future in diplomacy. I had succeeded in getting her away from the mopping, but I was now lower on her list than old Oliver Mason. And I had, most certainly, not impressed Aunt Jeane.
Aunt Jeane just sighed and shook her head. “My point exactly, Kate.” She uncrossed her arms and watched Grandma go. “She is just impossible these days. She’s lost her mind. Why in the world would you want to subject yourself to that?”
Looking at the doorway where Grandma had disappeared, I shook my head, wondering if I was out of my mind, too. “I don’t know,” I said, because I couldn’t possibly explain the way my feelings had changed since I came to the farm. “I just know it’s the right thing to do.” I couldn’t find the words for everything that had happened over the past weeks, and I didn’t want to. “After I feed Joshua, I’m going to town to see what’s keeping Ben,” I told her. But the truth was, I just wanted to get out of the house and clear my head. I was starting to feel as if I was crazy and everyone else in the family was sane.
I needed a reality check, so I called Liz at work. It was good to hear the receptionist answer. For just an instant, I had the sensation of being back home in Chicago.
“Hi, Andrea,” I said. “This is Kate. Is Liz in the office today?”
“Well, hi, Kate!” Unfailingly enthusiastic and perpetually cheerful, Andrea could talk faster than any person I had ever met. It was a running joke around the office. “We haven’t heard from you in a while. How’s everything going out there in the boonies? How’s your grandmother? Is she feeling better? John Ducamp called earlier today and wanted to talk to you. He wouldn’t let me put him through to Dianne. He said he wanted to talk to you. I sent you an e-mail. Did you get it? I hope he’s not going to withdraw his support. You know, that audit thing came out in the paper, and it’s made a mess of things around here, but I don’t know if that’s what Ducamp called about. He said he’d be out of town for a few days, but you could call him next week.”
Andrea paused for a breath, and I quickly cut in. “I’ll call his office and leave a message that I’m trying to get in touch with him. In the meantime, tell Dianne not to worry about it. I know Mr. Ducamp pretty well. I’m sure I can reassure him that nobody’s mismanaging from his endowment. Great, this is just what we need at the end of the year.” My head started spinning with office business, and I almost forgot why I had called. “So . . . is Liz in the office today?”
“Oh . . . ummm . . . no, she’s downtown. She’s down working on the stuff for the audit. I can page her for you.”
“No. Don’t bother.” I suddenly felt like an idiot for calling in the middle of a workday to talk about my grandmother. The past weeks had turned my brain to Jell-O. I always hated it when people interrupted my workday with personal business, and now I was the one interrupting. “I can talk to her later.” But I probably wouldn’t. The fact was that she couldn’t possibly understand, anyway. She didn’t know Grandma, and she didn’t know the farm, and she hadn’t read Grandma’s book. Liz was in another world—one where things were mostly black and white. In my family, there was nothing but gray area. All the normal guidelines were a blur.
“. . . all went down yesterday and looked at the Christmas trees, and watched everybody skate on State Street . . .” I realized that Andrea was still talking. “The trees are positively gorgeous this year and all the decorations are amazing, better than last year. They must have about a million lights down there on the buildings and in the trees. Too bad you’re not here. Yesterday, the Vienna Boys’ Choir was in town performing, and they were just wonderful. We listened to the concert while we ate lunch, and we were saying that you would have liked it.”
“Sounds like I would have,” I said, picturing all that she was describing and suddenly feeling as if I were back home, where things were safe and uncomplicated. “So, did Mr. Halsted send everyone free tickets to The Nutcracker again this year?”
Andrea laughed, and the sound strengthened my memories of home. I could remember that giggle echoing through the office at least a dozen times each day. Everyone said it carried like a bugle. “Yes, he did. We went last Friday, and it was too fun. Dianne, Liz, Kristen, and I shopped at Bloomingdale’s last week for dresses, but you know Liz was the only one who could afford a dress there, so the rest of us just scrounged. I wore last year’s. I figured nobody would know the difference. Besides, I was pretty happy to know it still fit. Anyway, the ballet was great, and Halsted had the whole section again. Paul even went this year.”
“Wow,” I muttered, trying to picture my boss, a died-in-the-wool analytical type, at the ballet. “I’m sorry I missed that. It would be good to see him loosen up a little bit.”
Andrea giggled again, then whispered into the receiver, “He claimed he didn’t enjoy it, but he was swaying with the music all the way through. I think he’s a frustrated ballerina.”
That made me laugh out loud. “Now I’m really sorry I missed it.” A strong twinge of homesickness pinched me unexpectedly. I felt like a kid left out of the playground games.
“Well, we thought about you. I took some pictures. I’ll send you some . . . Oh, well, I guess no point in that. By the time they get there, you’ll be back from vacation.”
I didn’t reply, just sat silent, wondering where we would be when Christmas was over, and thinking that my time at the farm seemed more like a life event than a vacation. It was as if I’d been gone from Chicago for months. . . .
“Oops, the other line’s ringing.” Andrea’s voice cut short the silence. “It was good talking to you, Kate. I’ll let Liz know you called.”
“Good. Thanks.”
“We sure miss you around here.”
“I miss you guys too. It was good talking to you, Andrea.”
Good didn’t describe it. It was an experience in altered reality, a temporary teleportation back to Chicago. “ ’Bye.”
I hung up the phone, keeping my eyes closed for just a minute, pretending I was on the other end of the phone shopping at Bloomingdale’s and watching the skaters on State Street. I had a strange sense of missing all the things that a few moments ago I had thought didn’t matter.
I felt a little like a wishbone in a tug-of-war. Stay or go, town house or farmhouse, executive or stay-at-home mom, glitzy downtown Christmas or Christmas pageant in Hindsville, ballet or dancing on the front porch with Ben and Josh. Go home and let Aunt Jeane move Grandma to St. Louis, or stay and try to help Grandma keep the farm. Forget what I learned about her over the past weeks, forget I read her book, forget about the fragile things and the yellow bonnets and the times when the roses grow wild . . .
Or listen and try to change.
Sometimes life moves so fast, the road splits in an instant, and you only have a heartbeat to decide which way to turn.
Right or left . . . fast or slow . . .
My head started spinning again, so I gathered up Joshua, told Aunt Jeane good-bye, and headed for town to find Ben—just to talk, I wasn’t sure about what. I wanted somebody to tell me I wasn’t going crazy. That staying with Grandma for months wasn’t an insane plan that would ruin us all. It seemed strange, because I’d been so sure a day ago. One dressing-down from Aunt Jeane, one argument with Grandma, and one phone call to Chicago and I was doubting it all. Maybe I wasn’t as sure as I thought.
When I walked past the little house, Grandma was sitting on the porch, huddled over a meal of Dinty Moore straight from the can. Undoubtedly, the cold stew was intended to make me feel guilty for driving her from the big house—and it worked.
“We’re headed to town to see what’s keeping Ben.” I stopped on the path and held Josh up like a peace pipe. “These are the little booties you made for him. Aren’t they cute?”
“Y-yes.” A feeble voice and one squinty eye rose from the can of Dinty Moore. “Don’t let me trouble you. You go on about your business. I’ll be fine.” She huddled over her lunch and looked at me no more, her aged hands barely able to raise the spoon to her lips.
Swinging Josh onto my hip, I vacillated in place a minute, then decided to try one more time. “Are you sure you don’t want to go with us?”
Setting the can on the table next to her, she looked forlornly down the driveway, and I knew I was playing right into her hands. “No.” She gave a terrible sigh. “I’ll ride with Oliver.”
“We’ll see you later then,” I muttered, giving up. I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to say, anyway. I certainly wasn’t going to apologize for trying to make her follow her doctor’s orders.
I just walked away and left her there, sitting round-shouldered in the rocking chair, gazing down the driveway looking sad and lost. She was still there, in exactly that position the last time I checked over my shoulder as we drove away.
I wondered if the expression wasn’t completely contrived.
Driving the winding road to town, I thought of how it must feel to be unable to do the things you’d done all your life, how frustrating it would be to have to ask for help when you were accustomed to doing for yourself—as if you were a child again, only as a child you know you’ll grow out of your problems. For Grandma, the problems would only grow larger, the list of forbidden activities longer, the need for help greater. She was like a prisoner in a cell with the door slowly being boarded shut.
Rage against the dying of the light.
Now I understood those words. Grandma was angry with the passage of time more than she was with us—frustrated with her own body, and the fog in her thoughts, and her doctors telling her what to do, and her children trying to take away what was familiar.
I thought about her as I wound down the hill into Hindsville. I thought about how many times she must have descended that hill over the years, in the old Buick, in Grandpa’s old farm trucks, in a horse-drawn wagon before that. I thought about how familiar and comforting that view must be to her—the same town, the same gazebo, nearly ninety years of memories. Her feelings for Hindsville and the farm had to be so much stronger than mine for Chicago. Hindsville was the backdrop for her entire life. Chicago was little more than a ten-year career for me, some friends, and a sterile west-side town house that still didn’t have pictures on the walls or furniture in the dining room.
The two places didn’t compare. If I felt homesick for Chicago, how would Grandma feel when she was taken away from Hindsville—from the house with pictures on all the walls and furniture older than any of us?
My reasons for wanting to stay started coming back to me as I pulled into the church parking lot and took Joshua, sound asleep, from his car seat. I started feeling grounded again, rooted in family history and the familiarity of the place.
I touched the church cornerstone with my great-grandfather’s name carved in, as I passed. This place not only held Grandma’s history—it held mine. . . .
From somewhere inside, I heard Ben’s laugh and Joshua stirred on my shoulder, then sighed and fell asleep again. Opening the door quietly, I saw Ben sitting on one of the benches in the lobby, talking to Brother Baker. I stood in the entry and watched them for a moment, surprised to see them laughing and conversing about basketball like a couple of old friends.
The sound of the door shutting caught their attention, and Brother Baker stood up, looking guiltily at his watch. “Well, I should have started on my home visits a half hour ago. How are you this afternoon, Kate? Oh, boy, look at that sleeping baby. I’ll tell you, we sure have enjoyed having your husband around here. This church is too quiet most of the time.”
I nodded, thinking that it would be nice to have Ben at home instead of hanging around town. “I could send Grandma by a little more often to liven things up.”
Brother Baker laughed, then blushed red. “No, ma’am, that’s all right. A little Grandma Vongortler each day is about all this old building can handle.”
The three of us laughed.
“I’ll tell her you said that,” I joked.
Brother Baker turned another shade of red and shook his head. “I guess I’d better get going on my rounds before she shows up and puts me on the path of the righteous.”
We told him good-bye, and he headed out the door, in an unusual hurry, I think, because he expected that Grandma Rose was right behind me.
Ben rolled his head from side to side, yawning. “Where’s Grandma?”
“At home.” I sat beside him on the bench, thinking that I should explain to him about the fight and why Grandma wasn’t riding to town with me today. I knew she would be telling her side of the story to whoever would listen as soon as she got to town. “I made her mad and she wouldn’t come to town with me.”
Ben looked as if he’d just bitten into a sour persimmon. “What happened?”
The accusatory tone of the question put me on the defensive. “I caught her mopping the floors, and I told her to quit.” I threw up my hands in frustration. “We got into a fight right in front of Aunt Jeane. If Grandma doesn’t stop acting like that, they’ll be shipping her off to the nursing home on the next boat. I’m telling you, she could outstubborn a mule!”
Ben thought that was funny. “You two should be a good match.”
“Ben Bowman, you’d better wipe off that smile. This is not funny.”
He cleared his throat and made a pathetic attempt to rid himself of the annoying grin. “Sorry. You’re right. It’s not.” Reaching behind himself, he pulled a folded-up newspaper from his back pocket and dropped it across my knees. “But you might want to read your grandma’s newspaper column before you lock her in the dungeon for being a crotchety old lady.”
Confused, I picked up the four-page Hindsville Register with one hand while balancing Josh with the other. The paper was neatly folded to the Baptist Buzz, by Bernice Vongortler.
This year, the Lord has indeed blessed us with the most bountiful harvest I can recall. Looking out upon the wheat fields and the hay meadows, I am often reminded of how much things have changed in my sixty-odd years as a farm wife. I am brought in mind of progress when I see fields planted in the blink of an eye and harvested with the touch of a button. Steel arms and hydraulics have replaced the strong arms of men, and one man can do the work that once required neighbors to come together. Where once we needed one another, now we need no one.
I think of my first threshing season as a farm wife, of men in plaid shirts and soiled overalls cutting the wheat, of women in flowered cotton dresses and starched white aprons laying billowing red-checked tablecloths over yard tables, and I wonder if this modern way is better. Perhaps the Lord did not wish our harvest to be easy. Perhaps hard work was a gift to gather us together.
This brings me in mind of something that was recently brought to my attention. While many of us are sitting down to bountiful tables this Christmas day, there will be families and shut-ins in our midst who will not have even the most basic Christmas meal. I remember the young boy on the mount who gave his meager basket of bread and fish and found that it could feed thousands. I have been wondering if perhaps the Lord did not create this challenge so that friends and neighbors might come together to share from our own harvests so we might feed the souls and the bellies of the hungry in our community this Christmas day.
In this hope, the Senior Baptist Ladies’ Group will be organizing a workday at the Church Annex building on Wednesday, December twenty-third, beginning after the lunch hour. All who would like to gather are welcome and should bring canned corn, cranberries, and dishes of dressing. Shorty’s Grocery has graciously agreed to donate twelve turkeys in the hope that many Christmas meals can be cooked, packaged, and delivered by those of us who have been given the ability to do so.
As we gather on Wednesday, I know we old folks will be blessed with memories of threshings, barn-raisings, hayings-in, and holidays past. I believe it is good for us to share these experiences with the young people who drive today’s tractors through the fields, reaping harvests in solitude, so they might understand what we once knew—that the volume of crops brought in is not the only measure of a harvest.
I sat staring at the paper for a while, then swallowed hard and cleared the tremors from my throat. “Now I really feel bad for picking on her.”
Ben patted my knee sympathetically, chuckling under his breath. “You should. She’s a saint and you’re an ogre.”
“She could turn a saint into an ogre,” I joked, handing him the paper. “I don’t think I’ll ever figure her out. I guess I should smooth things over with her when she gets into town.”
Ben gave me an evil sideways grin. “Aw, let old Oliver chase her around for a while. It’ll put her in the mood to make up. Just get it all settled before the twenty-third so we can get in on some of that turkey dinner.”
“Ben, you’re awful,” I said, and shook my head at him, wondering if perhaps he understood Grandma Rose better than I did.