Farthest House (42 page)
Authors: Margaret Lukas
Clay, who raced both for Prairie and Robbie, who could save one by saving the other, who might lose both, had ten yards. His fear made Prairie stop, made her knees bend to nearly a squat, her arms lift higher for him, screaming now.
With each of his long strides, horror hammered deeper into Willow’s chest. Her ears roared. She struggled to her knees, felt her whole body rocking, even with her hands flat on the grass. Mary was on them now, had hit the accelerator, her pearly hands clutched the steering wheel, and her white wolf eyes narrowed. Around her neck was the ruined black paper chain she’d pulled down.
With the car only seconds from impact, Clay grabbed Prairie around her waist. Slowing enough to pick her up caused an unwanted break in his stride, not the clean
plant, pivot, and jump.
Prairie was in the air and nearly slipped from his grip. Secured by his other hand, her head tucked under his arm, he led with his head and free arm. His hips and feet followed the momentum as he jumped, striving for perfect parabolic trajectory, his shoulder turning, his back hitting on the far corner of the hood, his body tucked as he rolled off.
Willow ran. Clay lay immobile on his back, Prairie still in his arms, close to his chest. Willow dropped to her knees at their side and saw Prairie lift her head, a stunned look on her face as she reached for Willow. Clay’s squinted eyes proved bells rang in his head, but he was conscious. “Is she hurt?” he managed.
Only then did it register to Willow that she had heard a crash and students and faculty closed in, streaming like ants from across the grass, coming in all directions. Mary’s car was slammed into an oak tree, the front end as crumpled as newspaper, the windshield shattered.
50
They gathered in the kitchen over coffee and cookies, and Mable presided in her brightest gold caftan, smiling as if at her brood. Clay, bruised and with bandaged ribs, turned pages in a seed catalogue. Jonah sat on one side of him, and they talked about ordering and planting bulbs before the first frost. Jonah’s eyes looked so clear that my heart soared. Willow sat on Clay’s other side, enjoying coffee in a thick white mug, occasionally leaning into his shoulder, or dropping her hand onto his thigh. Prairie pulled pans from a low drawer. Several banged.
“I think she needs a puppy,” Willow said.
Jonah set his cup down, kept his hands spooned around the warmth. “Always good having a dog around.”
Willow watched him, her hands matching his in the way her palms hugged the substantial cup and its warmth. She’d never have tea again, would rid the place of the thin chinaware, and would make Farthest House hers. “We’ll get two,” she said. “Two, as much like Friar as possible. We’ve got more than enough space.” The idea excited her, and she leaned forward, drawing one foot up under herself, and sitting back taller. “Puppies are just the new life we need around here. Two from the same litter, so they can play together, but one will be yours Jonah, if you want. He’ll spend his nights with you. I owe you a dog.”
Jonah tried to hide his emotion. “Yup,” he said. “Your grandmother always had a dog.”
Mable leaned over his shoulder, “More coffee, old man?” She topped off his cup and took a place beside him. “Did you know?” she said to Willow, “Luessy’s aunt came from France? She had your back. She was a tall, striking woman.”
Clay winked at Willow as if to say, “See what you are.”
“What made you think of that?” Willow asked.
“I used to watch her,” Mable continued, “she moved like a long ribbon. Even in her eighties, she carried herself that way. She turned heads. Your grandmother, was a little rounder. The night you were born, Luessy walked through the house saying, ‘Amelie-Anais has returned.’ Like she was telling the rooms. I think it helped her accept your mother’s death. She was promising herself that we all come and go, and Amelie’s return proved Jeannie was all right. She took a piece of your umbilical cord and buried it out by those graves. She believed this hilltop belonged to you. She meant to return it to the aunt who saved her life.”
The information, though only some of it felt new, settled over Willow. “Mémé once said, ‘I see my dreams are true.’ That’s what she meant, isn’t it? She thought I was Amelie-Anais?”
Clay grinned, “Maybe you are.”
“That’s superstitious,” Mable said. “Though who wouldn’t be with a graveyard out your door and your drowned husband in the river at the bottom of the hill.”
Willow dared not glance at Jonah who turned pages, a thick finger occasionally punctuating an interesting plant. She wanted him to believe his secret was safe.
“I hear he was a louse,” Mable went on. “A drinking louse. Now,” she enjoyed every bit of information she supposed she possessed, “he drowned a year before my time here, but everyone knew Luessy couldn’t keep help because of him going after everything in skirts. They found his car there but never any sign of his body. By now, there wouldn’t even be bones twisted up in the tree roots.”
Jonah’s eyes went from pink gladioli to the steam rising from his cup.
“Then, after he drowned,” Willow asked, “Mémé had her name legally changed back to Starmore?”
“She’d always kept Starmore as her writing name.”
“And Starmore for Papa and Tory?”
“The aunt insisted. Luessy might have done it, anyway. Of course, she would have, but the aunt wanted everyone to be Starmores, and it couldn’t happen fast enough. She took to saying, ‘Tory Starmore.’ She changed both of Tory’s names and called them out every chance she got like she was trying to give her a new identity. A she-wolf that one. When she died, didn’t any of us believe it. We never supposed death could win out and take her.”
The phone rang and Clay stood first. “Yes, sir,” he said a couple of times into the receiver. “I understand.”
They watched him. When he said good-bye and hung up, he returned to the table. “The University’s official report is that Mary’s death was an accident. She lost control of her car while speeding through the campus, where she was not a student and was unfamiliar with the grounds. She hit a tree because of reckless driving. There will be a toxicology report as well.”
Willow stood, picked Prairie up, and walked to the window. Fall was in the air, but Damask roses bloomed in more proliferation than she’d seen all summer. “I wonder why she picked the day of Tory’s funeral.”
“The Omaha paper announced it,” Jonah said. “Front page. A nice article about Luessy and how her last child died. Yup, Mary must a seen it, too.”
“If she knew you’d be at the funeral,” Clay said, “away from Farthest House and out with Prairie…” he let the sentence drop. “She was likely at the service and followed us out to Briarwood.”
Willow turned back to the window. Behind her was her unlikely family, and she loved each one of them. Looking out to where the hill dropped away, leaving only the blue bowl of sky, she put her lips to Prairie’s ear, “Angels are coming tonight.”
Epilogue
Watching the group and their fondness for one another, I felt light. I knew Willow would heal. It would take time, but she’d go on and realize her dreams. I hadn’t come for her. I knew that, too. I’d come to see myself through the mirror of her life.
My lightness increased, a rolling sort of drifting, lifting up and out of gravity. Without a chance to think how I might say good-bye, I was simply losing my hold, and Farthest House was receding in a wash of warm colors. It wasn’t Thomas I needed to see. In another world Tory waited for me, and there Sabine sang my name.
Author Biography
Margaret Lukas is an instructor in the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Nebraska Omaha. She received her BFA from UNO’s Writer’s Workshop in 2004. In 2007, Margaret received her MFA from Rainier Writing Workshop in Tacoma, Washington. She is a contributor to
NEBRASKAland
magazine and an editor for the quarterly literary journal,
Fine Lines
. Her writing also appears online and in the 2012 anthology,
On Becoming
, published by the University of Nebraska Press. Her award-winning short story, “The Yellow Bird,” was made into a short film and premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. She is a recipient of a 2009 Nebraska Arts Council Individual Artist fellowship.
Farthest House
is her first novel.
