The Oak Leaves

by Maureen Lang

  He brushed a kiss on her shoulder. “Remember sermons we’ve heard about the reason God let us have free will . . . to teach us to love? Without choosing love, it’s not really love.”

  She remembered but didn’t say anything. God loved her; she’d known that forever. She just didn’t feel it.

  “I have to remember that now, Tal,” Luke whispered. “Because if I don’t, I’ll start doubting God is really good. And if I doubt that . . . well, I can’t . . . I won’t let myself.”

  Talie’s heart beat hard. “I do doubt it, Luke. A good God who loves us gave us . . . this?”

  She heard him breathe evenly beside her, though her own breathing was erratic.

  “That’s just it. Wasn’t it because of His goodness that He gave us this free will to begin with? The one that had to come with all the bad stuff in order to learn the good? And a way out of the bad stuff . . . through His Son?”

  Talie didn’t want to argue the philosophical nuances of their faith. Nor, though, did she want to feel the way she was feeling. As if God didn’t love her the way He loved others. Others with healthy kids.

  “Isn’t the way He loves us the way He wants us to love Ben?” Luke went on. “The way He wants all parents to love their children? Unconditionally?”

  “I do love Ben that way, but . . .” She didn’t want to say it. She didn’t want to reveal the worst about herself, even to the man who had promised to love her until the day one of them died. Maybe especially to him. And yet she felt compelled to continue. “But Ben may never love us back, Luke. He may never be able to show it if he does or know how to say the words.”

  “So . . . our love should be based on what we get in return?”

  “No, of course not. But isn’t it harder to love someone who can’t love you back?”

  “I guess that’s what will make our love more like God’s. He sees every rotten thing we’ve ever done in our life and loves us anyway. If Ben is here to live what everybody on earth would call a meaningless life, without productivity, without cognizance, then it’s those around him God must want most affected, touched, changed. Because He loves us.”

  “Funny, I thought we were loving each other and Him well enough before all this.” But of course it wasn’t funny at all.

  Luke turned Talie to him. His face hovered above hers, earnest. “I’m struggling with all this too, Talie. But Ben will be able to show he loves us. Somehow.”

  She couldn’t help but smile, to hang on to what she saw in his eyes. He might be struggling, as he claimed, but there was something beside that struggle that gave her hope. Something she couldn’t define, except maybe . . . strength. “That’ll be enough then.”

  40

  There is an old Irish proverb that says, “Happiness follows simplicity.” Perhaps, if I may bend this proverb a bit, happiness follows the simple. Royboy is almost never without a smile. There are days I need to learn from Royboy.

  I am sitting in the morning room, and as I write I can see Peter and Royboy from the window. They are playing a rather unconventional game of tenpin, with Royboy rolling the ball from an illegally close distance to the pins. Peter resets them whenever Royboy hits any, cheering him on every time he does not. Royboy rarely knocks any over, but I see my brother’s happiness in the familiar flap of his hands. His mouth shapes into what I call the “fish-face O” to make sounds only Royboy can achieve. . . .

  “Tea still hot?”

  Cosima looked up to see her father enter the morning room. It was still early, just past ten. Father was dressed like any English gentleman, with white drill trousers, polished shoes, a dark blue morning coat, and a waistcoat with the collar kept in place against his neck by a small, white cravat.

  “Yes,” she answered, holding up her cup and taking a sip.

  Her father took tea but ignored the ham and eggs kept warm over a lit trivet. He joined her on the settee near the window. “Peter has proven himself a fine young man in the two days he’s been here.”

  Cosima nodded. She had no doubt of that.

  “I suppose you know he’s asked to speak to me this morning.”

  “He said he wanted to,” Cosima replied. “I didn’t know when.”

  Her father lowered his tea and faced Cosima rather than the window. “My guess is he wants to inquire how I decided to marry your mother, given the circumstances were somewhat similar. You should know I want to be perfectly frank with the boy.”

  Cosima looked at him and smiled, placing a hand on his wrist. For a moment she considered his choice of words—not that he intended to be frank, only that he wanted to be. “Neither of us would have you be any other way, Papa. I’ve held nothing back from my own perspective. If Peter is to marry me, I’d rather have him expect the worst and be delighted if it doesn’t turn out so bad, rather than the other way around.”

  Shifting his cup to one hand, he put his free hand over hers. “Have I told you, Cosima, how proud I am of you?”

  Sometimes it was good to feel like a child again, under a parent’s approval. “Thank you, Papa.”

  Soon Peter and Royboy came in. Both were dressed comfortably, the only way Royboy ever dressed. Peter’s white linen shirt matched Royboy’s, as well as his casual dark trousers. After good-morning greetings, they helped themselves to breakfast. Cosima made sure Royboy used a plate and utensils and reminded him about not stuffing his mouth. He behaved so well she wasn’t sure if she was relieved or worried. So far Peter had seen only the positive end of Royboy’s spectrum.

  Decla came for Royboy after breakfast. He had to be taken to the privy on a regular basis or he would forget until too late. After that, as Decla had been doing since Royboy’s birth, she would serve as tutor and nurse, spending time reading and playing what games he could enjoy. Decla had patience with Royboy that outlasted most others’.

  The room quieted once Royboy was gone. Cosima decided she should leave in order to give Peter and her father privacy.

  “I would like to write a letter, Father, Peter. So, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  Both Peter and Cosima’s father rose the moment Cosima did, but Peter, next to her, lightly touched her hand. “Must you go?”

  “Perhaps now would be a good time for you and my father to speak. I’ve no wish for my presence to influence the questions—or answers—in your discussion.”

  “But I imagined you would be part of it,” Peter said. “This is our decision together, not mine alone. I think you should be aware of each piece that goes into the future we decide.”

  Cosima was eager to stay but looked at her father. “Father?”

  “I have every intention of being honest, with or without your presence.”

  “Very well.”

  They settled in the white wicker chairs that overlooked the expansive back lawns and crops beyond. Cosima had missed this view: the green plots separated by darker green hedges, rolling hills that lay so meticulously designed.

  But as she took her seat and sent up a familiar prayer of thanksgiving, she added one more plea. Please, Lord, help all of us hear and say what needs to be heard and said.

  “Sir,” said Peter as he pulled his chair closer to Cosima’s, “I find I’m in need of fatherly advice since my own father seems to have lost the common sense I credited him with. In any case, I would perhaps value your counsel more, since you’ve faced and lived what Cosima and I might see before us. Cosima told me there were rumors about her mother even before you married, and yet you married.”

  “Yes, that we did. Though I must say . . .” His voice drifted off as his gaze fell on Cosima. “Some of what I say may be hard for you to hear, coming from your father. I don’t think it’s easy for a child to think of a parent as anything but that and not simply a person like everyone else, full of flaws.”

  Peter reached over and took Cosima’s hand. “I believe the best thing is for you to hear this, no matter how hard.”

  She shook her head and glanced between the two of them. “Swooning and fits—
is that what you expect if you’re both honest in front of me?”

  Peter grinned. “Either one sounds feasible to me, given my knowledge of Beryl’s and Christabelle’s behavior.”

  Cosima smiled, knowing he jested. She welcomed his attempt to calm her, knowing they would discuss things most other people never had to face. “Let me assure both of you I’m quite up to all and whatever I need to hear.”

  “Very well then, Cosima,” said her father. “I shall start by telling you that when I first met your mother, the last thing I intended was to consider marriage.”

  Cosima looked at him, surprised, but dared not say a word for fear of either of them thinking she was already failing her own declaration.

  “I’d come to Ireland to escape all thoughts of marriage, you see. Just twenty-two years old. I came because it was the one place my parents would disapprove of most. I know you’re both acquainted with my mother, and I assure you I have no wish to influence your feelings for her. Yet I cannot help but give you my opinion: She is demanding, narrow, judgmental. Adheres more readily to rules than any form of grace—does not, in my recollection, know the meaning of that word.

  “My mother introduced to the family the woman my brother John was to marry. Little did any of us know, but there was an initial misunderstanding, and Meg thought it was I she was to wed. I’m afraid I encouraged the misunderstanding when I guessed what she believed, and I invited her to meet me in an empty drawing room. I don’t know if I was more attracted to her than I was eager to best my older brother, but that was the beginning of what ended up being a rather nasty break in the family. My mother found us—simply talking, you understand, but alone. Quite unseemly.

  “Despite the embarrassment to Meg, she and I became friends, though she agreed to marry John. So they became engaged. He was, after all, the heir and I, as the second son, a mere commoner. And my mother is a hard woman to refuse. She had chosen Meg to be the next viscountess, and neither John nor Meg had much to say in the matter. I didn’t blame them—John or Meg.

  “All should have been fine, except that one day when Meg and I were alone, we kissed. It meant nothing, really, only an experiment, as we were merely close friends to that point. I thought it odd to have a friend in a woman, and perhaps she thought it odd to have a friend in me. It was a nice enough kiss, and I believe if we’d married we would have continued to be friends. But unfortunately my mother heard of my transgression and chose to humiliate me in front of John, accusing me of trying to steal his fiancée and him of being blind.

  “It was a minor incident compared to some of the arguments we had over the years, my mother and I. She had so little grace toward the flaws of others. But that disagreement was the last. I left and have never been back.”

  “Do you know, Father, that Grandmother has paid someone to give her reports of you? She must have cared, all these years, and missed you.”

  He nodded. “There were times I missed her as well.”

  “But did you know? About the reports, I mean.”

  “Yes, Melvin handles them. Wrote some of them myself, in fact,” he said with a smile. “Wanted to make sure the details were correct.” He addressed Peter. “Now what does all that have to do with the decision you must make, Peter? I hope, for one, to let you know what sort of mood I was in when I first met Cosima’s mother. Women were, at that point in my life, more trouble than tolerable. I had decided not to marry but instead to make the most of the investment money I brought with me—yes, to find fortune in the very place I knew would irk my mother most.

  “That was when I learned of this estate, Cosima. Your mother’s father had made it known he was willing to sell his land since it appeared his heir—your mother—was reluctant to wed. Her younger sister had married and moved north. At that time your mother had plans to join her and take her brother, Willie, with a hefty sum at her disposal, since her father intended to bequeath her whatever proceeds he received from the sale.”

  He leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs before him. “And so I came here first as a prospective buyer. The villagers thought I was interested in the land through marriage and not purchase, and so they quickly told me tales of Willie, the brother considered the village idiot. A harsh title, but his all the same. A harsh memory, too, of villagers perhaps overeager to spread their tales of a Kennesey curse.

  “I met your mother for the first time on a morning like this.” He looked out the window as if he were no longer in their presence but alive in another day, long before Cosima was born. “The sun shone on her hair, and it glistened like gold. She had a basket of flowers in one hand and a sketchbook in the other, and as I came up the lane, she dropped them both in the wind. We scrambled to catch the papers, and as I handed them back, I was struck—I barely saw the drawings, which might otherwise have impressed me. All I saw was her.”

  Cosima and Peter exchanged glances. She thought they both understood what her father had felt that day so long ago.

  “As I said, I’d been warned of the fact that she had a brother who was feebleminded. I was also told her sister had married years before and had a small child suspected of being the same. There were rumors of others on her mother’s side, another set of cousins also afflicted. Those two had been hidden away in an institution, but if that branch of the family had hoped to escape the stigma, they were wrong. No one forgot, and they made sure I knew it all. If I married a Kennesey, I might face the same.

  “I was frightened, I suppose, in a way. But I was young and foolish too.” Cosima’s father looked at Peter and added, “Perhaps like you. Full of youthful invincibility. In my case, I further reasoned that since it was not my intent to marry, having a family was unnecessary to me. But I was raised in the strictest home, where breaking the rules was unthinkable, and so there was no question that if I wanted to keep company with Cosima’s mother I should marry her. And why not? I thought. Unlike you, Peter, I had no legacy, no responsibility nor even old hopes for the future. And so, rather flippantly, I suppose, I shrugged off the warnings and asked Cosima’s mother to marry me. What had I to lose, since a family had never been my goal?

  “’Twas perhaps a mix of love and lust in the beginning, I grant you, but before long the love was the stronger of the two. We had our Percy and then you, Cosima, and for a very short time I thought life could be no happier. Willie was with us, but we had plenty of help to care for him. Tales of institutions were grim, and we gave no thought to sending him away where he might be mistreated. Do you know, in some places patients are herded to an open room where a visitor might, for a fee, view and laugh at those who cannot help themselves? That is no place for a human being made in God’s image—on either side of the viewing wall, if you ask me. There was no choice but to keep him, you see. He was a kindhearted soul.

  “And so our little family was established, and our farm grew more prosperous. It seemed to us people didn’t talk anymore of the Kennesey curse. We were happy, and happy people are less often the subject of gossip, or perhaps happy people simply notice it less. We had friends and went to parties and lived a life more simple and serene than I imagined possible.

  “Until Percy showed signs of being slow-witted after all. ’Twas the curse again, and it sent your mother into an insufferable depression. That was the worst of it, perhaps worse than realizing I had a son incapable of carrying on. A son I loved more than I ever expected. It seemed once I had my family there was now nothing more important to me. Still, I had Cosima to carry on for us, who is bright and healthy, and I’ve always found comfort in that. For your mother, though, it was unbearable. She loved me, you see, and wanted to give me a healthy son.”

  He took a sip of tea, as if the words had sapped his mouth dry. “We lived this way for what seemed forever, but in retrospect I recall it was only a few years. Cosima, do you remember the days your mother never left her room?”

  She shook her head. “No, Papa.”

  “A memory no doubt plucked from your brain by the Lord Almi
ghty.”

  “What brought her out of it?” Peter asked.

  Cosima’s father shrugged. “To this day, I cannot say. It was a slow process, to be sure. She began eating again, allowing my company. We were like strangers, and we visited as if I were courting her. It took time, but we regained what we’d lost.”

  “Did she blame herself for the way Percy was, Father?”

  He nodded. “But after a while and after she began reading her Bible again and returning to church, I think she accepted that the Lord God is ultimately in control. That He is still good, even though we live in a world that sometimes isn’t. One day she looked at me and said perhaps it was a blessing to have Percy, since it made her long for the day he will be whole, in heaven. Can something making us long to be with the Lord be so terrible?”

  Cosima’s father looked at Peter. Resting his forearms on his knees, he entwined his hands together and stared a long moment before speaking. “We’ve had to face a future for our sons that no parent would choose. There were times, for both of us, that we believed joy would never be a part of this household again, not only when we realized the curse was upon us, but also after we lost our Percy. Rowena was wrong to have done what she did, even if she thought she could somehow remove the curse with her action.

  “With time, though, we learned to live with the invisible scars. And Royboy . . . he is limited, that’s true, and a sad life for us to see what he’s missed. But we love him because he is the purest kind of person, one who trusts implicitly, who offers unlimited grace even when we’re cross with him—sometimes unfairly cross. In Royboy, I’ve found the grace my mother never could give me.”

  He sat back, rubbed his palms on his knees, and looked away then back again. “Does he add to our lives? Not in the way most would want, but in a way that makes us remember how blessed we are to have a sound mind.” He sighed then spoke with a lighter tone. “You know, I’ve never considered myself a funny man. But in my son I have a ready audience, whether I’m witty or not. He may not be able to tell me the love he feels, but he shows it in his smile and ready laugh, every day of his life. I’d give my life to have him whole, but as that cannot be, I accept him as he is and wait, with my wife, for that day he will be whole. In heaven.”