If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities.
—Maya Angelou
Chapter 24
Cathy February
Three months, the family court judge decreed.
Thomas and I had three months to prove we could be parents. Three months to decide if we were able to deal with the realities of everyday living. Three months to find out if we could earn the trust of two little girls who wanted desperately to believe we would always be there for them in a world where no one had ever stayed.
Renovating Granny’s house became the challenge that defined us.
Thomas set up a bachelor campsite inside my barn. At night we made love there; during the day we argued passionately. We agreed the house needed wiring, central heat and air, indoor plumbing, more closets, and bigger rooms. But that was like agreeing the universe needed stars and planets. Okay, how many, and where? We struggled for compromises.
The least hint of disagreement—even our most placid debates—sent Cora and Ivy into a quiet froth of anxiety. They feared we’d abandon them and each other at any moment. Nothing we said could reassure them. We knew we were soulmates. They didn’t.
Cora talked out loud to her imaginary friends, asking them, ‘Thomas and Cathy would never, ever get mad at each other and go away, would they?’ and Ivy secluded herself in the bedroom she and Cora shared, hiding behind books and a small laptop computer that would access her favorite chat rooms on the Internet the moment our phone line was installed.
Even our pets sometimes seemed fearful and insecure. The puppies chased the cat, the cat terrorized the puppies, and the rooster sequestered himself in the screened sleeping porch, peering out at us with one-eyed alarm from a light-bulb-enhanced nest Thomas nailed high on the wall. He crowed loudly every morning at dawn, as if calling for help.
“We’ve named these dogs, but only because you told us to,” Ivy said. Thomas and I turned from hanging curtains in the living room to find her and Cora standing in the hallway entrance, each holding a puppie. Since we’d noticed both of them avidly petting the puppies when we weren’t looking, it seemed a good bet they secretly loved their new pets. But Ivy wouldn’t even admit she wanted a puppy, and Cora seemed afraid to love another small, needy soul.
Thomas stepped down from a ladder, carefully avoiding a tangle of extension cords and cardboard packing boxes on the floor. The room was a jumble of new lamps, accessories and furniture. “Well, let’s hear the decision. Their names?”
“I named mine Marion,” Ivy said.
“Marion?” I asked, perched on a stepping stool with yards of drapery fabric in my hands.
“After Marion Mahony Griffin. She worked for Frank Lloyd Wright. She was an architect. Thomas told me about her.” Ivy shrugged. “I’ve decided I want to be an architect. Like Thomas and Marion. So . . . I named my puppy Marion.”
“A good name,” Thomas said gruffly.
Cora hugged her puppy to her chest. It licked her chin happily. “I named mine Half-Pint. From the book Cathy started reading to us last night. Little House on the Prairie. If me and Ivy have to move to a new home one day, can we get one on a prarie?”
“You won’t have to move,” I said, with tears in my throat.
“Well, just in case we do, I want a prarie with covered wagons and buffaloes and dragons, but only the tame kind.” Cora nodded firmly. Ivy frowned. Carrying the puppies tightly, they went back to the bedroom they shared.
The month before, I’d asked the spirits of my mother and grandmother to help me name two orphaned puppies. Now, they had. I turned and looked up at Thomas, whose face was a miasma of emotion. “Do you believe God gave us those puppies because Cora and Ivy needed them as much as the puppies need Cora and Ivy?”
“I’ve seen no evidence that God cares about children or puppies,” he said grimly. “But if He gives us half a chance, we can save them. We just have to figure out how.”
Thomas drew up a sketch for a new front gate directly over Granny’s grave. It would be made from remnants of chestnut lumber torn out when we began expanding the house’s tiny bedrooms and kitchen. If we ever agreed to do that. The gate was about the only mutual victory in the debate. He and I had very different definitions of the word expand.
We stood outside with his impressively detailed gate sketch in hand, looking from it to the worn stepping stones over Granny’s resting place. “At least it’s a start,” I said tartly. “Today a front gate, tomorrow, indoor plumbing. Hmmm?”
Thomas chuckled darkly. “Stick to the details.” He tapped his drawing with a fingertip. “All right, we agree on the design and the materials of the gate. Since it’s going to double as Mary Eve’s gravemarker, I suggest we put a brass plaque on the top crosspiece.”
“Yes! That’s a great idea! It can read, ‘Mary Eve Nettie. She Smiles Down On Our Flush Commode.’”
He arched a brow. “Or how about, ‘Here lies Mary Eve Nettie. An original design, with solid integrity. She didn’t believe in turning closets into bathrooms. She also didn’t believe in sliding glass doors, track lighting, or white baseboards on antique maple floors.’”
“She would have liked white baseboards,” I said between gritted teeth. “They’re cheerful.”
In the midst of the madness, I decided to take up baking. If I could make biscuits, surely I could make a family.
“Pile up the flour to look like a little volcano,” Ivy relayed from Delta one cold February afternoon. Ivy sat on the kitchen counter, a cell phone to her ear, listening to Delta at the café.
“Done,” I said, doodling a lava crater into a mound of white flour in a mixing bowl.
“Now add the baking soda and the salt.”
I poured the ingredients into the crater. “Done.”
“Now add the lard, she says.”
I scooped creamy white lard from a gooey brick and raked it off my fingers into the volcano of flour. “Done.”
“Now scrunch it all together until it’s, like, ‘crumbly.’” I scrunched. “Now, add some milk to make it doughy.”
I added the milk. “Houston, we have lift-off of the biscuit dough.” “Now roll it out on the floured board, she says. About an inch thick.”
“I can roll,” Cora offered anxiously, standing beside me on a stool.
I plopped the dough on the board and handed Cora the rolling pin. Chewing her lower lip and huffing a little with the effort, she rolled out an apron of dough.
“Tell Delta we have achieved a flat doughy thing on the board,” I intoned.
Ivy told her, listened, then relayed, “Now cut out the biscuits with your clean tomato cans.”
I handed Cora one can, and I took a second one. We pressed neat round circles all over the dough. Thomas, watching from behind us, said loudly so Delta could hear, “The biscuit prototypes are relatively symmetrical and consistent. Looking good.”
Ivy waggled the phone. “Delta says put them in the greased baking pan.” We arranged the biscuits. “Now, just pop it in the oven for about twenty minutes, or until the biscuits look golden brown.”
Here’s the terrifying part. My hands shook as I looked at the hulking, stainless-steel, propane oven we’d installed. I nearly dropped the pan. Thomas rescued me. “I’ll do the honor,” he said. He slid the pan into the oven and shut the oven door.
“Biscuits!” I proclaimed weakly, applauding. “For the first time in twenty years, this house has Granny Nettie’s biscuit recipe cooking in the oven!”
Ivy clicked the phone off. “Delta says don’t be upset if you don’t get it right at first. She says there’s magic in biscuits and they won’t be right until you get the magic in your hands.”
“How hard could it be?”
Twenty minutes later, Thomas took the perfect-looking biscuits from the oven. As the cook and heir to the Nettie biscuit throne, I got the first bite.
My mouth filled with flaky crust followed by a center of hot, gooey, raw dough. I spit the biscuit out. “Da
mn. I’m no good at this. I’m scared of the oven, I don’t know how to cook, and I’m never going to make this work!”
That one thoughtless remark made Cora burst into tears. Ivy hopped down from the counter. “It’s our fault, isn’t it?” she hurled at me. “You don’t know how to be a mom, and somehow we’ll get blamed for it.”
I held out my hands. “No, no. I promise you, I’m just upset about me, not you. I didn’t mean—”
“Yeah. Sure. Right.” Ivy grabbed Cora’s hand, and they retreated to their bedroom.
“Let me talk to them,” Thomas said. He headed after the stricken girls. I grabbed the phone and called Delta. “I can’t do anything right. Just now I said the wrong thing and the girls are having a nervous breakdown because of it. I can’t even make biscuits. My biscuits suck. It’s all symbolic.”
She snorted. “Well, what did you expect? An overnight miracle? Families take time to build. And so do biscuits. If your heart’s not peaceful, they won’t turn out right. When you really come to believe in yourself, the biscuits will know it. And so will those girls.”
Obviously, I had a long way to go.
Thomas
I was now the man of a ragged little family. That family consisted of two subdued, uncertain little girls who’d never learned to trust a father-figure, a chaotic menagerie of rescued animals, and the obsessively determined ex-movie star I loved more than my own life, despite the fact that she agonized over every element of our house renovation, our relationship, the girls’ happiness, and her inability to perform the simple yet profound act of baking edible biscuits.
Cathy and I collided in the barn every night despite the deep cold of a mountain winter. After the children and the pets were asleep we rolled each other in a makeshift bed of sleeping bags and quilts. She urged me to move into the house; there were, after all, three bedrooms—one for her, one for the girls, and one for a guest. But I didn’t want to test Mrs. Ganza’s patience.
“You’ll freeze out here in this barn one night,” Cathy protested.
“No, I’ll build a campfire with all that firewood I bought for the house. If you’re never going to use the living room fireplace, I might as well burn the wood myself.”
Her face went pale. “I’m not ready for a fire in my own living room.”
I pulled her deeper into my arms. “Try it. Just once. I’ll be there right beside you. Nothing bad will happen. I swear to you.” An empty promise. No man can protect his loved ones from every quirk of fate. I still hadn’t made peace with that fact. I hadn’t been able to save Sherryl and Ethan, so what made me think I could make bold promises to Cathy and the girls? I said the words and I wanted to believe them. I had to try.
She pressed her face into the crook of my neck and shivered. “All right. A fire. Agreed.”
As snow covered the ridge in white, I carried an armload of firewood into the cottage’s living room. It was now a comfortable, if chilly, enclave of leather couches, thick Turkish rugs, fat oak side tables, russet drapes and big lamps waiting for electrical outlets. I began stacking logs in the berth of the newly unboarded fireplace. Soon I sensed eyes boring into my back, and when I glanced over my shoulder I saw Cathy standing there staring in nervous dread, with an anxious Cora and stern Ivy flanking her. Cathy, dressed in baggy faded overalls, a striped sweater and one of Delta’s The Lard Cooks In Mysterious Ways aprons, held a fire extinguisher in her hands. The puppies and the cat sat by her feet. Ivy and Cora wore baggy overalls and striped sweaters, too. My matching tribe of worried girls. If Cathy was afraid of something, the girls picked up her signals. Cathy tried to hide her phobias for their sakes, but Cora and Ivy had sharp instincts.
“You’re sure the chimney is in good shape?” Cathy asked.
“Absolutely. Clean, solid and it draws air upwards like a wind tunnel. Perfect.”
Cora looked up at her plaintively. “A fire in the fireplace would be fun.” She looked down at her puppy. “Half-Pint says, ‘Let’s sit by a fire just like Laura Ingalls did.’”
Ivy grunted. “Anything to get warm. Marion’s got frostbite on her paws.” She scowled at the living room’s gyrating space heaters.
I met Cathy’s worried gaze. “It’a no-brainer. We have to make a fire pronto. Marion has frosted paws.”
She feigned a cheerful smile. “Okay. Then what are we waiting for?”
I piled kindling under the logs, pulled my old man’s lighter from my jeans’ pocket, and started the fire. Orange flames crept up the wood. The good scent of oak wafted into the room. Cora and Ivy looked up at Cathy, whose face went stark white, emphasizing the red spiderweb of scars on one side. “Come on,” Ivy said to her quietly. “It’s okay to be scared.”
Slowly they tugged her to the hearth. I held out a hand. She gave me the fire extinguisher, and I set it by a pair of iron tongs I’d found in the barn. Cora and Ivy settled on the hearth beside me. The puppies snuggled by their feet. Cathy sank onto a fat leather couch that faced the blaze. In the soft, flickering light, her anxious, beautiful, scarred face reminded me of that emotional night at my cabin, and I shifted to hide my erection.
Outside, night began to cover the snow, a small herd of deer nibbled corn we’d thrown out, and the raccoon rummaged around his plate on the porch, eating leftover cat and dog food. The cat stretched out on the couch beside Cathy, purring. Cats don’t worry about existential danger. They simply seek the heat.
“I made a pot of vegetable-beef stew,” Cathy said, nodding stiffly toward the shadowy hall, toward the tiny kitchen with its evil gas stove. “It tastes like salty tomato goo, but when you mix my burnt biscuits into it, the effect is a kind of, well, heartily semi-edible.” She kept trying to bake biscuits and the biscuits kept giving her the finger.
“The stew’s not so bad,” Ivy lied sincerely.
“Half-Pint and Marion like your biscuits,” Cora said. “Better than chew bones.”
“I’ll eat a few spoonfuls of stew without making a face,” I promised.
Her mouth quirked. Still staring fixedly at the fire, our first family fire in the fireplace, she had to admit the house wasn’t going to burn down. Settling back on the couch warily, she nodded. “A fire in the fireplace of Granny’s house. Okay. It’s a good fireplace. Nothing to worry about.”
The girls smiled. So did I.
Sometimes just pretending to feel safe will get you through the night.
Attaching arms to the Venus de Milo. Straightening the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Painting both ears on Van Gogh. Adding rooms to the Nettie house.
Tampering with classics seemed so wrong to me, no matter how much I agreed in principle. But the old cottage needed more space. We had to decide on a blueprint soon and get construction underway by spring. I could hear my old man’s voice. If you haven’t got the guts to do the job right, you don’t deserve to do it at all.
I secluded myself in the cottage’s empty third bedroom for hours every day. With only a space heater to fight the room’s chill and a clamp-on utility light for illumination, I hunched over a crude drafting board I’d made from plywood on two-by-four legs. On large sheets of paper I sketched and discarded dozens of designs. The crumpled paper littered one corner of the room. Occasionally the cat and the puppies snuck in and pounced on the pile for fun. At the end of each session I gathered the wadded balls and burned them in the fireplace so Cathy and the girls couldn’t sneak a peek.
They watched me with anxious silence. Cathy couldn’t quite figure out what to say to Ivy, who didn’t care for girly things, and she coddled Cora too much, like a damaged doll. One morning, as I donned a coat to drive the girls down to the schoolbus stop at the Trace, Cathy held out a trembling hand for the keys. “What kind of mother can’t even drive her kids to the schoolbus?”
I put the keys on her palm then cupped my hands around hers. “Are you sure you’re ready to brave the Hummer?”
“No, but I’m going to try. I never rode a bus. I went to private schools, and the servants drove me
. But I always wished I rode a bus, and that I had a mother to take me to the bus stop. So . . . I’m driving the girls to the bus.”
She stared at the Hummer as if it were a bull she had to wrestle, but from then on she drove Cora and Ivy down to the Trace to catch the school bus. If she rolled so much as one tire of the Hummer past that point, she broke out in a sweat and had to take a pill. Cora and Ivy watched her worriedly, as always.
“How will Cathy know when it’s okay to believe in happy things?” Cora asked me. “Is there a magic word we can say?”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
Every afternoon she went back and picked the girls up. When she realized the bus driver and kids were craning their heads to get a look at her, she began shielding her face with hoods, scarves, and sunglasses. At our Saturday night poker game Pike drew me aside. “You think Cathy’ll ever get over the hood thing in public?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“The kids on the bus are talkin’. Word’s gettin’ around. We don’t want Mrs. Ganza to get wind of it. Those kids see Cathy sitting there in the Hummer every day with a scarf draped over her head, looking like a terrorist or the Grim Reaper or something. I mean, there’s nothing strange about wearing a head scarf in the wintertime, but the way she does it, with the sunglasses and the scarf pulled low over her eyes, it just looks weird. Folks in Turtleville are starting to joke about Michael Jackson living here.”
I tried to talk to Cathy about the cover-ups, but she cut me off every time. Just as I cut her off when she tried to soothe my dilemma about the house design. She hid from the world, and I drew imaginary houses.
One afternoon while Cathy picked up the girls I slaved over yet-another unsatisfying idea. When Cathy returned I heard two sets of frantic footsteps in the hall. I suddenly realized the puppies were barking outside. Ivy flung my door open. “Cathy needs your help!”