The Smoke Jumper (44 page)

She introduced him to Amy, who squirmed and gave him a coy grin. He clearly didn’t know whether or not to kiss her and so he took her hand and held it in both of his and Amy, whose subtle reading of such emotional quandaries never failed to amaze Julia, reached up and kissed him on the cheek.

On the way home he sat pivoted in his seat, talking mostly to Amy in the back, about his trip and how he had been in Vancouver a few days ago and seen a rare white whale there in the zoo. He asked her about her school and she told him how she’d started horseback riding and was learning how to lope and gave him the names and descriptions of all the horses at the stables. By the time they reached home, the two of them were already friends and, while Julia made supper, Amy took him on a tour of the house, then led him down to the river.

Watching them from the deck while she set the table, Amy chattering away and holding his hand and her father in his faded denim shirt looking down at her, hanging on the girl’s every word, Julia had a vision of herself at Amy’s age, walking and talking with him in the park and feeling so protected and proud of him and proud too of herself to be treated seriously, not like some silly kid but like a grown-up whose views on life were just as valid as his own.

The cement footings of the rope-rail posts were still lying on the grass. Julia heard Amy telling him that they had turned out to be too heavy to shift and that Mom had been forced to concede that they did, after all, need to ‘get a man in’ to move them. It was a hint as broad as it was unintended and when they came back into the house, Julia’s father said he would see to it in the morning.

Sitting out on the deck eating their steaks by candlelight, with Amy still gabbling away, it occurred to Julia that this was the first time she had ever cooked a meal for her father and how, strangely, she felt herself to be as much his parent as his child.

At bedtime Amy asked if he would come upstairs and read her a story and while he did, Julia cleared the dishes. She went upstairs just as he was saying goodnight.

‘He’s lovely,’ Amy whispered after he’d gone downstairs.

‘Yeah. He is. And so are you.’

When she came downstairs her father was sitting out at the table again, smoking a cigarette. He said he hoped Julia didn’t mind and she said she didn’t so long as she could have one too. He gave her one and lit it for her.

‘She’s a great kid,’ he said.

‘Yeah. She is.’

For a while neither of them spoke. It was he at last who broke the silence.

‘Julia, there’s so much I need to apologize for, I guess I don’t know where to start.’

‘Why don’t we just take it as said. I guess I’m just a little puzzled about why now, after all these years.’

He stared at the table for a moment. Julia couldn’t stand the taste of the cigarette and stubbed it out.

‘Last year I got cancer. Skin cancer, a malignant melanoma.’

Oh God, she thought. Please. Not another death. He must have read the thought in her face, for he went on quickly, stubbing out his cigarette too.

‘No, I’m okay. They found it early. Well actually, Claudia, my wife—’

‘I know who she is, Dad.’

‘Of course you do. Anyway, she found it. And they cut it out and I’m fine. Really I am. But these things make you stop and think. You know? About the important things in life. And, with you and me, I don’t know, I realized I’d just been so dumb. To let things go so far. Let all that time slide by. Because the more you let slide, the harder it is to reach over it. Hell, I’m not saying it very well . . .’

Julia reached out and took his hand.

‘It’s okay.’

‘No, it’s not. Julia, I never met your husband, for Christsakes. I was never there for you when things were so hard for you. I can’t even pretend I didn’t know, because your mother always told me. She told me what a great guy Ed was and begged me to come to the wedding and Amy’s christening, even to the . . . to Ed’s funeral. But I’d just let it all go so far, let it all slide, and I was just too, I don’t know, ashamed or something, yeah, ashamed, to get in touch. And, God forgive me, I am so, so sorry. I feel such a goddamn fool. Because here you are, so beautiful and wonderful and Amy too. And . . . Oh boy, I’m sorry.’

He turned his head away and wiped his eyes. And Julia got up out of her seat and went to him and knelt beside his chair and put her arms around him and for a long time they held each other and wept.

‘I wish I could have another go at it,’ he said. ‘I’d do better next time.’

The next day he helped them clear the cement boulders of the post footings and fill in the holes and then cut the posts into firewood which they stacked in the barn. He was flying back to Seattle that afternoon and from there straight back to Europe. Julia and he had only a few more moments alone before he left. Amy had insisted on making them sandwiches for lunch and while she was in the kitchen doing that, Julia and her father sat on the deck drinking iced tea.

‘It’s a beautiful place you’ve got here,’ he said. ‘Do you see yourselves staying?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Maybe you should travel a little. It’s good to travel.’

‘Maybe we will.’

‘You could come and stay with us. See Europe.’

Amy appeared in the doorway with the sandwiches.

‘I want to go all around the world,’ she said.

They drove him to the airport where he made them promise to consider coming to stay with him and Claudia in Germany. It was sweet of him but Julia knew it would never happen and suspected that he knew it too.

His visit affected her deeply. It was as though a circle had been closed. In some mysterious way, it also seemed to release her, made her feel that it was time to take a step forward. A week later she gathered Ed’s clothes and shoes and gave them to a charity store in town. She cleared his things from the bathroom cabinet and boxed all the sheets of music so that they could be stored tidily in the bookshelves. And she gave his specially adapted computer equipment to the local chapter of the Association for the Blind.

School started again for both of them and Julia tried to fire herself with a new enthusiasm for her work but found she couldn’t. In class, she caught herself staring out of the window and having to ask her pupils to repeat questions that in her daydreams she hadn’t heard. The prospect of another cold winter and another school year with all its cyclical familiarity depressed her.

She loved Montana and if Ed were still alive, she would have been perfectly content to go on calling it home. But the truth was, it had always been more his place than hers. She couldn’t see herself spending the rest of her life there. Of course, it was Amy’s place too, the only home she had ever known. But the girl was young enough and bright and secure enough to adapt anywhere. As the fall closed in and the days drew shorter, so Julia grew steadily more restless and convinced that it was time for some sort of new beginning.

In her new mode of tidying and clearing, Julia had found some big boxes of photographs that for years she had promised herself to sift through and stick into albums. It was just the job for a cold and gloomy fall weekend and Amy was excited by the idea. They went into Missoula to buy six smart albums, came home and lit the fire and then settled in front of it on the floor with the photos spread around them.

Julia hadn’t realized how ancient some of them were. Some even predated her meeting Ed. Amy found a batch of Julia and Linda dressed up as hookers for a fancy dress party in Boston and laughed so much that Julia thought the child was going to do herself an injury. Julia pretended to be indignant.

‘I don’t know what’s so darned funny. That’s how we always dressed in those days.’

In one of the boxes there were photos that Julia had taken as reference for her painting and among them were those she had shot on her trip to Kenya, the summer before she met Ed. Amy was transfixed. They had talked about her African adventure before but Amy now wanted to know the story behind every picture and about everything else that Julia had seen and done while she was there. One of the pictures was of some lions lazing in a tree.

‘Did you really get that close?’

‘Uh-huh. We were in a truck, so, you know, we were safe.

Anyway, they eat so many tourists they get bored of the taste.’

‘Can we go to Africa one day?’

‘I don’t see why not. One day.’

Not long afterward Julia was sorting through some old magazines and came across the one with Connor’s article about St. Mary of the Angels, the rehabilitation center for child soldiers in Uganda. She put it aside and took it to bed that night and with Amy snuggled asleep beside her, read the piece again, trying not to rustle the pages as she turned them. She found herself staring for a long time at the picture of the ten-year-old boy, Thomas, so traumatized by what had happened to him that he could no longer speak.

The first time she had looked at it, a few months before Ed died, it had made her weep, but now it didn’t. In the accompanying article Connor wrote that the center was mostly funded by a charitable organization based in Geneva but that its resources were sorely stretched and that there was a constant need for ‘both financial and practical help.’

At first Julia thought maybe she could hold a fundraising event at the school, get her pupils to write to the children at St. Mary’s, even start some kind of sponsorship arrangement. Then she read the next sentence. It quoted Sister Emily, the center director, saying that she was always short of ‘properly trained and qualified staff.’ It set Julia’s mind whirring.

That was exactly her field. She thought of what Amy had said about wanting to go to Africa. She put the magazine down, switched off the light but couldn’t switch off her head. She lay awake almost the entire night thinking about it.

For days she didn’t mention it to anyone. It was an absurd idea. How could she uproot them both, take Amy out of school and go waltzing off with her to Africa? What about all the danger and disease? It was out of the question.

But try as she might, she couldn’t shake the idea that somehow it was meant to be. What an extraordinary experience for a child it would be, to see another continent, to get to know another culture and another people. What a great adventure it could be for both of them. And it wasn’t as if it was going to be forever. A few months, a year at the most. Like a long working vacation; like working for WAY in the old days. She wouldn’t even have to give up her job at the school; Mrs Leitner would let her take a sabbatical, she was sure. They could rent out the house, which would pay for the trip. And they would both come home with their lives enriched.

By churning all this in her mind for many days and nights, Julia managed to turn what had begun as a hare-brained fantasy into a serious, worthwhile proposition, bursting with benefits for all concerned; something which wasn’t merely possible but which positively demanded to be done.

She agonized about how best to broach the subject with Amy or whether she should mention it at all until she had checked things out more. In the end she came right out with it. They were having supper at the kitchen table, eating one of Amy’s favorites, spaghetti with pesto sauce.

‘Do you remember how you said you’d like to go to Africa?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Did you really mean that?’

‘Sure I did. Why?’

‘Well, I’ve been thinking about it. Maybe we should.’

‘You mean, like, a vacation?’

‘Well, yeah. We’d certainly have a vacation. We could do a safari, see all the animals.’

‘Hey, Mom! Are you serious? Wow!’

‘But I was also thinking that maybe I could work there for a while.’

‘What, we’d, like, live there?’

‘Maybe. Just for a while.’

‘How long?’

‘I don’t know. A few months, maybe.’

‘Where?’

Julia had the magazine ready and pushed it across the table.

Amy glanced at it and went on eating her spaghetti.

‘I already saw that. Is that where you’d work?’

‘If they’d have me. Did you read it?’

‘Sure. I always read Connor’s stuff. Is that where he lives?’

Julia laughed. ‘Oh, no. I think he was just visiting. I don’t know where he is right now. Where was that last postcard he sent you from?’

Amy frowned, wrinkling her little nose. ‘I think it was . . . India. Is Uganda like Kenya?’

‘It’s right next door. People say it’s even more beautiful.

They call it the Pearl of Africa.’

‘The Pearl of Africa.’

‘So, what do you think?’

‘About what?’

‘About you and me going to help these children in Uganda.’

‘I get to help too?’

‘Well, I’m sure there’s plenty to do.’

Amy shrugged. ‘Cool.’

‘You mean you’d like to?’

‘Sure. May I have some more spaghetti?’

Julia found the phone number of the charity in Geneva and called them. An efficient-sounding woman with a French accent said yes, they did indeed need properly qualified counselors at St. Mary’s, in fact at the moment they were desperate for them. She told Julia that the organization had an office in New York and gave her the address and number.

Julia called Linda in New York to get her reaction, half expecting to be told she was insane. Instead, Linda asked a couple of questions, weighed things up for about a second and a half and said, ‘Go for it, girl.’ Why not bring Amy to New York for Thanksgiving, she suggested. Julia could visit the charity’s office and check things out.

What Julia forgot to say was that she hadn’t breathed a word about the plan to her mother who, ever since she had heard about Julia’s father coming to visit, had been a little snippy. When Julia called to say they were coming to New York, instead of sounding pleased, her mother immediately took offense that they would be staying at Linda’s apartment in Greenwich Village rather than with her in Brooklyn. Julia tried to explain that as it was going to be Amy’s first trip to New York since she was a baby, they wanted to be in Manhattan, in the thick of it, so that they could do the whole tourist bit - Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, ice skating in Rockefeller Plaza.