Her Father's House (23 page)

“Oh, I'll like it,” he had said. “I'll like it very much.”

Late in the evening after everyone had departed, the now-united family went up to sleep for the first time in the big house. For a few minutes, Jim stepped out and stood on the porch. The moonless night was silver, and utterly still. Not a leaf moved. And a perfect peace descended, a peace such as he had not felt since leaving New York, which seemed a century ago. Perhaps indeed he had never felt such a peace.

“What a day,” Kate whispered, coming up behind him. “What are you feeling? What are you thinking?”

“All day I've been feeling as though I had just won a long battle. I'm thinking of a quotation.”

“You and your quotations! Tell me.”

“It's from Stonewall Jackson, something like this. ‘Let us cross the river and rest in the shade.' Well, I've just crossed the river, and now we will rest.”

Chapter 16

T
here were times when Laura liked to be alone in her room. She liked to look around at the things she owned, the pink bathrobe hanging so that it would show on the inside of the open door, the jewelry box that played music when you opened it, and, most important, the diary that Dad gave her last year for her ninth birthday.

Red leather, with a key, it lay right out on her desk. And if she locked it, nobody would be able to read her secret thoughts. She often liked to read what she had written, as if it were a story in a book.

I love to read. There are all sorts of things in books that can make you forget your troubles, like the broken finger that hurt so awfully. And I remember I read the story about Eskimos and igloos that almost made the hurt go away. I read every day when I come home, except sometimes when I feel sleepy, I don't read. I stretch out on the floor and look at the beautiful ceiling with white clouds on it. Then I can think about the summer when you float on the lake and look up at the sky. You wonder what is really there, in the sky. Doesn't there have to be something? I wonder whether Felicia the cat, who lies beside me on the rug, ever thinks about things like that. Dad says that of course animals think, but we don't know what they think.

People always ask why I named my cat Felicia, but it's a secret, and I don't tell them. Felicia is Rick's girlfriend's name, and one day I wanted to make him angry. Only he wasn't angry. It's funny how he's gotten to act like a grown-up since he's been in junior high school. When I say things, he sort of looks at me the way grown-ups do, as if they were thinking how cute you are, you little kid. But sometimes I get angry because I am not a little kid, I'm ten. But I don't really mind because Rick is really my friend, even more than some of my best friends like Megan and Julia in school.

One day I saw him naked. I didn't know he was in his room, and I opened the door. I don't know exactly why I went in. I think I was looking for the candy that he hides. He's not supposed to eat it because it makes pimples when you're in junior high school. I hope I never get pimples. He jumped and grabbed a towel, but I saw. It looked funny. I guess he told Mom because she said I should remember to knock on doors before I go in. You know better, she said. But she said I shouldn't feel bad about seeing Rick. It wasn't bad, only impolite to look at people when they have no clothes on. So I don't think much about it anymore, only sometimes, because it did look funny.

Rick and I do good things together. Now that I'm ten, I don't have to ride the pony anymore. Dad promised me a horse, and we're going soon to look at a small mare that will fit me, or I'll fit her. But we're going to keep my pony. He has lived here all his life, so now he should stay and just enjoy himself in the pasture. Dad says an animal isn't a piece of furniture that you can sell or give away without hurting its feelings.

Dad says that the white rabbit who stays on our front lawn eating grass most of the time was probably an Easter present to somebody who didn't want it anymore and just dropped it off along the road. It doesn't play with all the brown rabbits that are wild here. Maybe they don't like him, but I do. I miss him when I don't see him for a few days, and I hope he hasn't been run over or eaten by a dog.

When I get my horse, I'd like a pinto like Mom's. Then I'll go riding when everybody else takes the long trail up through the hills. I was there once when I rode with Dad on his horse. I was very small then, but I remember it. When you get to the top, you can see a big waterfall, far down. It makes you dizzy to look so far down. You can't get there to swim. It's too wild. But you can tie the horses and have a picnic on top of the hill.

I like the things we do. A lot of my friends don't do the things we do. Rick says so too, about some of his friends. Last Saturday we planted two magnolia trees. One is Rick's, and one is mine. They look like little sticks now, but one day they'll be enormous and have pink flowers. Rick and I are responsible for them. We have to water them and put mulch, that's a silly word, around them. They haven't grown much yet, but Dad says we just planted them last Saturday.

The only thing we don't do is, we never go anywhere far away. It's because Dad hates big cities. Julia's family are all going to go to Washington in spring vacation to see the monument and the cherry blossoms, and maybe the president. I wonder whether they'll talk to him or maybe just peek at him over the fence. Anyway, I want to go too, but Dad won't and I am really angry. Really angry. Mom says I shouldn't be. She says Dad is the kindest man in the world, and I guess that's true. Yes, it is true.

Mom is very nice, too. She is hardly ever angry about anything. Dad isn't either. I mean really angry, like some people's parents who make them cry. Sometimes Julia Scofield's father is mean. He yells at her. So then she goes to her grandpop and grandma's house, and they make her feel better. Her grandpop is a doctor and he likes me. He says he knew me when I was two years old. I don't remember. He says that was when Dad brought me from Philadelphia. Once I heard Dad say to Mom that Dr. Scofield talks too much. But I don't think so. He tells jokes, and I like him. I wish I had a grandpop.

I wish all my family wasn't dead like my mother. I have her picture on my desk right next to this diary. I look at her picture a lot. I think she looks like somebody on TV. She has dark hair like mine. It's funny to think that she's the one who grew me inside her, and I don't even know her. Sometimes I wish I had red hair like Mom because I love Mom and I can't love Mother because I don't know her. But some days anyway I think about her, and I do wish I knew her.

Chapter 17

W
hen in a warm wind the browning leaves rustle to the ground, dusk comes early. Crickets are singing and birds are silent. In another month at this hour, the leaves will have rained from the trees, and it will be too dark to be reading on the front porch.

So Jim reflected as he sat with his tired legs stretched out and the book fallen open. This tiredness, though, was the healthy kind that comes after a long day well spent.

In the far fields, since early morning, the men had been planting seedling firs, while on the near side of the creek, they had been shipping young firs. With a nice combination of thankfulness and pride, Jim had watched the products of the farm being loaded onto trucks and driven away.

Now Rick was following them down the road. Jim had to smile. Ever since the boy had gotten his driver's license last month, he never missed an opportunity to use it.

They were going to miss him. Seniors in high school, now almost in college, were really wishing time away. At least most of them were, and it was entirely true of Rick. At dinner last night he had been full of information about the Appalachians, how millions of years ago these round, green mountains had been as high, rugged, and icy as the Alps, a fact that Jim had not known. No doubt Rick was going to be some sort of naturalist, a lover of the land as his father had been. And wistfully, Jim recalled his afternoons as umpire at the baseball games, the football games he had watched on the high school playing field, and the chess he had played with Rick on winter evenings.

Yesterday they were children, today they are adolescents, and tomorrow they will be their independent selves. Speaking of younger adolescents, he thought, surely his Laura was a textbook example! Thirteen now, and feeling very grown up, she often made droll remarks that brought a chuckle to Jim. And sometimes, as was only to be expected, she tried his patience.

“What are you thinking?” asked Kate.

So light were her steps, he had not heard her coming behind him. “Thinking about the kids. Sit down. I miss you when you're not next to me. What have you been doing?”

“Preparing seed for next spring and jotting down some ideas for a catalog. It's high time for us to advertise, Jim. We need publicity. We need to settle on a name. Foothills Farm—how does that sound? It just popped into my head a few minutes ago. I've been thinking that we should go someplace for real advice. Maybe to Atlanta, or who knows, even New York. What do you think?”

“About the name? Not bad. Foothills Farm. But as to going to get advice, it won't be me who does it, Kate. I'll talk to anybody on the telephone as long as needed, but I won't be seen.”

“You're still so sure about that?”

“You know I am, and that's final. What's Laura doing?”

“The last I saw, she was on the telephone, as usual.”

He laughed. “What on earth can she talk about with those girls, whom she sees in school five days a week?”

“Darling, you were never a thirteen-year-old girl, so you wouldn't understand.”

“Oh, there you are,” said Laura, banging the screen door. “I've been looking all over for you, Mom.”

“I was at my desk in the cottage up till five minutes ago. What's on your mind?”

“Well, I'm really upset. Everybody's going someplace during Christmas vacation, and we're not.”

“Everybody is?”

“Well, not everybody. But Susan is going to visit her cousins in Denver, and they'll go skiing. Beth is going to Florida, where they have palm trees, and you can swim in the ocean. Gerry and Jane Parks are going to New York, and we're not going anywhere. We never do.”

“I have an idea,” Jim said slowly, while Laura's blue eyes, those alert blue eyes so disconcertingly like Lillian's, were turned up toward him. “Why don't the three of you pick a place and take a few days off during winter vacation? I'd like to take time off myself, but there's so much to do here that I don't see how I can. I'd love to have you all do it, though. I really would.”

“You always say that, Daddy. You have to go, too. You're always too busy. Everybody's father goes. Why can't you? You have to.”

“I told you I really have too much to do here. This is a very big, busy place.”

“Other fathers have busy places. Susan's father is a lawyer, and he's very busy.”

“Well, that's not quite the same, Laura.”

“Lawyers are very busy. You don't know anything about them. How would you know without being one yourself?”

You might almost, if you wanted to, find this amusing. She was so in earnest, and so logical in her arguments.

At this point, Kate intervened. “I'll tell you what, Laura. We'll take a short trip for starters. You and I will go to Atlanta. I have some errands there, and you need a winter jacket. We'll have a good time.”

“It's not the same as all of us going someplace. Why can't Daddy go to Atlanta with us?”

“Because,” Kate said, firmly now, “because he can't. He knows what he can and can't do. You mustn't bother him like this.”

Funny how she listens to Kate every single time, Jim thought, and only most of the time to me; she knows she can wrap me around her little finger, but she also knows when she can't.

“Can I go to the drugstore for a cone? Jennie called and asked whether I'd like to. She's driving some kids to the village. Can—I mean, may I go?”

“Of course. Have a double. Go ahead,” Jim said.

As soon as Laura was out of hearing, Kate asked the question he expected her to ask. “Can you really not go to Atlanta with us, Jim? Whom will you meet in a crowd so far from where you used to live? You hear how much it would mean to Laura.”

“Maybe I'm being unreasonable, I don't know. Anyway, it's getting too dark to read. I'm going inside.”

“I haven't told you,” Kate began when they settled in their usual chairs, “but Laura looked up Philadelphia on the map. She wants to see the house where you lived when she was born. I'm only telling you this now because she's going to ask you about it.”

“Oh my God, I wish she would drop the whole subject once and for all.”

“An odd thing happened, too. Rick heard her, and you know he's so grown up and hardly ever quarrels with her anymore, but he got really angry. He yelled at her: ‘Will you shut up and stop bothering your father about that? Stop complaining, I'm sick of listening to it.' I suppose you are, too, Jim, but she's only a child, a very dear one, too.”

“Yes,” he murmured.

“I wish you could be less fearful. I wish for your own sake. It's not that we have to take trips, of course not. I don't give a hoot what other people do, and anyway, Laura's only pointing out a very few. Most people in town can't afford to go places every time there's a school vacation. No, it's your fear that makes me sad. It's eleven years now since you came here, and you see that nothing's happened, even when they had those photos on the milk cartons again last June. You haven't committed a murder. There's a limit to the money they'll spend on your kind of case.”

“Don't be impatient with me, Kate.”

“Darling, I'm not.”

“It's because of her and you that I'm so terribly afraid every time there's talk of leaving this place even for a day. I never thought of myself as being especially cowardly, so it's strange that I can't get rid of the fear.”

“Cowardly? That's the last thing anyone could accuse you of. So let's drop the subject. Read your book.”

Such is the miracle of books that on a quiet evening in a familiar room, you are not there at all; you are in Tibet, or perhaps at the South Pole, struggling on an icebound ship. Then the clock chimes, a door slams, and you are back in the room.

“Who's that?” Jim asked.

“Just Rick.”

“Where's Laura?”

“She came in half an hour ago.”

“Then let's lock up. It's been a long day.”

When he passed Laura's room, he almost always remembered not to look in. That dreadful photograph on her desk was in the line of vision. Obviously, she could see it all the while she was doing her homework. He wondered what her thoughts might be. As for him, that young woman with the luxurious dark hair and perfect teeth always seemed to be grinning. He wished that something would happen to the picture, that the dogs would chew it up, or that somebody would steal it.

Oh, thank all that's holy for the gift of Kate, for her strength, her honesty, her laughter, her soft skin, her lips, and her open arms. So he went in to where she waited and firmly closed their door.