If the Moon Had Willow Trees (Detroit Eight Series Book 1)

by Kathleen Hall

  “Mrs. Tervo, how does it feel to be married?” asked Willie.

  “Oh, for cripes sakes Willie Johnson, give her a break. She hasn’t even been married an hour,” said Robin.

  “It feels good to hear you call me Mrs. Tervo. A little strange, but nice,” said Maggie.

  “Well, Maggie, you look like an evening of jazz on a New Orleans’ pier—full of music and love,” said Robin.

  “Thank you for the lovely compliment. I’ve never wanted a white gown and veil. This is the perfect wedding dress for me.”

  “Hey, Maggie. Welcome to the family. I’m glad my asshole brother had enough sense to marry up,” said Kenny. Kenny had Sam’s white blond hair and blue eyes. A little stockier, Kenny’s broad shoulders held a suit jacket like a mannequin. He was so ridiculously good looking it was hard not to stare.

  “Kenny, where the hell were you? We missed you at the JP office,” said Maggie.

  “Listen, Maggie, I know my reputation precedes me, follows me, hound dogs me. I want to be a stand-up kind of guy, but I’m a loser. Everyone learns sooner or later not to depend on me or trust me. Sorry. I wish it were different. But know I’m glad Sam had the good sense to marry you. You’re the best thing that’s happened to our family in a long time. I mean that, Maggie.”

  “Thanks Kenny. I’m not buying the ‘loser’ thing, but I’ll let you know if I think you’re acting like an asshole if you’ll do the same for me. Truth is, I’ve always wanted a brother.”

  “Christ, Maggie, don’t make me cry. It will ruin my tough guy reputation.”

  “Ah, well, tough guy reputations tend to be squandered. I want to meet the real you when we have some time.”

  “Sounds good. I’d like to meet the real me one day, too,” laughed Kenny.

  Maggie looked around the house she called home for the past five years. It felt different now that she didn’t live here. Blanche, Aunt Jo and Angelo were busy in the kitchen washing dishes, talking, gesturing. In the background, Maggie heard Aunt Minnie complain to Sam’s mother Maija that Jo never has real coffee and expects people to drink that instant dishwater. Willie and Robin were on the winterized screened porch playing air hockey with the five boys—Issie’s two, Eddie Jr. (7) and Raymond (5); and Clyde’s three, Clyde Jr. (7), Clive (5) and Carter (3). Uncle Cyp was conked out on the hammock.

  In the dining room, Sam, Clyde and Eddie were gripped by Issie’s outrageous sense of humor. Maggie heard Issie talking about her labor pains being three minutes apart when she and Eddie went to the hospital to have Eddie, Jr., saying, “When I heard the woman in the next room wailing with labor pains I told the nurse who was checking me in ‘sorry, I’ve changed my mind.’ I got up and headed to the elevators thinking no fucking way am I going to voluntarily commit myself to whatever the hell is going on in the next room. I may be a little obtuse, but I’m not psycho!” Although Eddie had heard this story a hundred times, he smiled in appreciation for his wild and crazy wife. For Sam and Clyde, it was their first ‘Issie Story’ and they were doubled over in laughter.

  In the living room, Kenny and Stella made an odd couple. Stella tall, thin, and reserved; Kenny shorter, muscular and restless. Yet, there was something in the way Stella leaned in to listen to Kenny that surprised Maggie. Stella was always so contained and protective of her space. This was different.

  “Maggie, my beautiful bride, I hate to interrupt your reverie, but your Aunt Jo wants to talk to us before we cut the cake. I think she’s ready to get rid of us,” said Sam.

  “Oh, husband-of-mine, I will follow you to hell and back.”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “No, but you can scratch that last statement. I was being a smartass and I should behave with more decorum on my wedding day,” laughed Maggie.

  “I’ll be ready to leave after we cut the cake,” said Sam.

  “And what then, Mr. Tervo?”

  “We drop decorum. According to the Play Bill, after the wedding cake is cut, Sam beds his beautiful and sexy wife.”

  Aunt Jo’s bedroom was like a scene from Dr. Zhivago—snow white walls, blinds, drapes, sheets and furniture with an eggplant colored velvet duvet. In the corner, a gold filigree coat tree held Aunt Jo’s panoply of shawls. On the bedside table was a small photograph of Aunt Jo and Phillip Xavier, the man she lost to World War II.

  When Maggie and Sam knocked, Aunt Jo hurried them in, closed the door and said, “Please, sit on the bed.”

  For a few minutes they looked at one another. No one spoke. Then Sam said, “Aunt Jo, we can’t thank you enough for this reception. We got to spend the evening with family and friends, people we love. It was perfect.”

  “Oh, Sam, I was thrilled to give you this party. You may not know how much arm-twisting I had to do to get Maggie to agree. I’m warning you, she’s one stubborn Canuck.”

  “That she is!” said Sam.

  Aunt Jo was holding an envelope in her hand and began flapping it up and down. “Okay, I thought I was prepared to give you this gift wrapped in my heart and carried by inspired words. But, here I am numb of heart and lost for words.”

  “Auntie Jo, it’s okay. We love you,” said Maggie.

  After clearing her throat a few times, Aunt Jo began. “My beautiful Maggie, when you first came to live here I was so afraid. We hardly knew each other, but I wanted this to work for both of us. I wanted us to get along—maybe end up liking each other enough to stay in touch after you graduated.” Aunt Jo began flapping the envelope again as tears spilled down her cheeks. “From the start, I began to think about you and what you might need or want. I looked forward to seeing you at the end of the day, talking with you. As the days passed, I realized I was becoming someone else. I didn’t expect the joy you brought to my life, or the emptiness I’d feel when you moved out.” Aunt Jo looked at Maggie and saw her tears, then she began to sob, “Oh, Maggie, I didn’t bargain for falling in love with you and I’m doing a piss-poor job of telling you how important you’ve been to thawing my ceramic heart and teaching me about life.”

  Maggie stood up to hug Aunt Jo. Sam felt salt forming in his eyes.

  “Oh, Auntie Jo, I know. I feel the same. I worked so hard to resist the temptation of turning you into my mother.” Wiping her nose with the back of her hand, Maggie laughed then said, “but you’ve always been that and so much more—my aunt, my friend, my mentor, my landlady!

  “Well, screw the landlady. I want to give you and Sam this gift. I’ve been planning it for a long time. I thought it would be for graduation but decided it was more important to give it to you now.” Aunt Jo handed Maggie the flapping envelope and said, “This is for you and Sam.”

  The wedding card was simple—gold embossed lettering on the front read Congratulations to The Bride and Groom. Inside, a handwritten note read, To Maggie and Sam, May your lives be filled with all the love, joy and adventure the world brings your way. Love Always, Aunt Jo. A check for two thousand dollars with the notation rent plus interest slipped to the floor. Maggie picked it up and tried to hand it back.

  “No, my sweet girl, this was always my plan. The bond we have and the love we share is ours to keep. This check is for you and Sam to spend however you’d like. No strings. Gifts should never have strings.”

  Just then Angelo pounded on the door and stuck his head in the room. “For Christ sake, they’re demanding we let them eat cake. What the hell? Are you guys having a goddamn séance in here?”

  Robin’s masterpiece rose from the center of the dining room table like a prophecy—five stories of alternating round white cakes and square chocolate cakes. Frosted in green, and decorated with silver and red, each two-layered cake was unique in its design, brilliant in its otherness. At the head of the table, Clyde was holding a knife decorated with a silver bow, a sprig of mistletoe and a few small cranberries.

  “Before Maggie and Sam cut into this work of art by Robin Johnson, I’d like to offer a toast to the bride and groom, two of my best friends. How this happened
, I have no idea. As much as I’d like to take credit for introducing them, I can’t. As you all know, these two unlikely suspects met during the heat of the riots, and like all love stories, there was that one pivotal synchronistic moment when Sam decided not to shoot Maggie. After that it was a wild three-legged burlap bag race to the altar. Maggie pulling one way, waiting for Sam to come up with something better than a lease for married housing as a proposal. Sam pulling the other way, thinking the $110 deposit on the cinderblock apartment was better than reciting a poem or proposing on bended knee. It was hard to watch. You ever see two people with one-leg each in a burlap bag heading in different directions, or spinning counter-clockwise to move forward? It was a sorry sight. I couldn’t take it anymore. I laid it out for Sam. I said, dude, if you want Maggie, you need to ante up more than a month’s deposit on a cellblock. Women want love, commitment, fidelity and someone to take the trash to the curb. It’s more like a life sentence.”

  Clyde’s deadpan delivery was flawless. Laughter was ignited and reached pitch perfect hilarity as friends and family doubled over, snickered and bellowed.

  Catching his breath, Kenny said, “Clyde, you’d have to be a fool to try to follow that toast and that would be me.” Everyone turned to look at Kenny who’d removed his jacket and loosened his tie. Sam grabbed Maggie’s hand and squeezed it. Mama Tervo crossed her arms. The dissipation of so much laughter left a canyon of silence. Kenny cleared his throat and heard the echo.

  “As some of you know, I’m not comfortable calling attention to myself or giving toasts. Right now, the silence in this room is turning my stomach inside out. But this is too important to keep to myself. Tonight my brother made the best move of his life. I’ve known this nimrod since I was born and I have no idea why Maggie would want to marry him. But, bro, I’m in total awe. Maggie, you’re the best thing that ever happened to Sam and our family. Welcome to the Tervo clan.”

  After the toasts, Maggie found Kenny and gave him a hug. “Thanks for the sweet words. I’m glad to be part of the Tervo clan and gain a baby brother!” Kenny grinned and nodded as Maggie made her way to the head of the table. A moment later, Mama Tervo tapped Kenny on the shoulder and whispered, “How many brews didja guzzle down today?”

  After the ringing of forks against beer bottles and glass tumblers, Clyde handed Sam and Maggie the knife to cut the cake.

  “At last. Free at last, free at last, lord almighty, I’m free at last!” said Sam as he gunned the engine of the Corvair. “Do you think Howard Johnson’s has sound proof walls?” asked Sam.

  “Why Reverend Tervo whatever do you have in mind?” said Maggie in her best imitation of a southern drawl.

  “No preaching, but I may want to get on my hands and knees and howl at the moon,” said Sam.

  9

  Ashes

  With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all of God’s children all over this nation—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics—will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at Last, Free at Last, Thank God Almighty, We are Free at Last.’

  —Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Grosse Pointe High School, March 14, 1968

  APRIL 4, 1968 ANTE MERIDIEM—Maggie took the day off to bring order to her life. That meant cleaning the apartment, washing clothes, updating her calendar, catching up on correspondence and sorting through the junk drawers, magazines and newspapers—four months of clutter. It seemed liked yesterday when she and Sam gave up the second day of their two-day honeymoon at Howard Johnson’s to pack and move into married housing. Which, in retrospect, was dumb on both sides, because packing and moving their combined worldly possessions didn’t warrant an entire day or the use of Willie’s pickup. The Corvair and Triumph would have been more than enough to haul their scant belongings.

  Maggie cranked open the windows in the kitchen and decided to have a second cup of coffee to watch the pale sun coax temperatures past the forty-degree mark for the first time that year. Thursday’s were Sam’s heavy day of classes from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and work from 6:00 p.m. until midnight. It was a good day to get things done. She’d skip her Great Classics course at two. Maggie sat down at the kitchen table and propped her legs on the other chair. Solitude, she thought, how long has it been since I’ve sat quietly—savored my own company?

  Other than her grandmother’s crocheted tablecloth, a wedding gift from Aunt Minnie and Uncle Cyp, Maggie had no trousseau to bring to the marriage. Although she balked at tradition and romantic notions about marriage ceremonies and rituals, not having a trousseau heightened the loss of her parents, her ancestral link. In August 1950, when Maggie was not yet five and Issie twelve, their mother and father disappeared in a sailing accident on the St. Lawrence Seaway. No bodies were ever recovered, and according to Uncle Cyp, neither the United States nor Canadian Coast Guard were able to draw any reliable conclusions about whether the mishap involved accidental drowning, kidnapping or murder.

  Raymond and Anna Soulier co-published an independent radical newspaper in Toronto, L’Empereur Est Nu—translated, “The Emperor is Nude.” Considered a liberal rag by the conservatives, L’Empereur promoted the secession of Canada from England. Based on old copies of L’Empereur, most of the stories garroted the United Kingdom for its callous bigotry and mistreatment of indigenous people in its colonized nations, including Canadians. One news article claimed: “UK’s aggressive takeover of weaker nations is necessary to feed its pathetic national ego and royal burlesque theatre.” The monarchy was, after all, an easy target and the paper routinely lampooned the obscene cost and peril of pretending a monarchy made sense in the 20th Century. Under the byline: “Surfing the Moat,” L’Empereur poked fun at world leaders who went along with this ridiculous fairy tale. At the end of the byline, the reporter proclaimed: “Putain, l’empereur est nu!” Words Maggie and Issie adopted as their secret slogan during their years with Aunt Minnie and Uncle Cyp; words that sent them into dizzying giggles.

  To say L’Empereur exposés took no prisoners would be a gross understatement. Fact checking was expensive and nearly impossible. The acid test was, “Does this information sound reasonably true and will it sell papers?” No friends to the social and political conservatives, Maggie knew her parents were harassed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; the MI5 in the United Kingdom; and, at times, the CIA in the United States. Twice their home and the pole barn printing shop in the back were raided while the family was visiting relatives in Windsor. Issie remembers Raymond telling Anna to behave as if their home phone was tapped.

  Their parents’ trip along the St. Lawrence Seaway was to celebrate their fifteenth wedding anniversary. Their only vacation without their daughters in five years. Jacques Ruivivar, a family friend and wealthy patron in Toronto, generously sponsored and promoted L’Empereur and loaned his ocean-worthy sailboat to the Souliers for this trip—as he had for a number of the Souliers’ family vacations to Nova Scotia. Maggie’s father, an expert sailor, had navigated the Great Lakes and the North Atlantic since his teens.

  Because the kids were minors, the court relied on the Souliers’ Last Will and Testament to award custody of Issie and Maggie to their Uncle Cyp and Aunt Minnie. Both girls would have preferred Aunt Jo, but she was unmarried, and according to other relatives, not ready to raise two children. Two years after their parents’ disappearance, Issie found a copy of an old Toronto Tribune hidden away in one of Aunt Minnie’s linen chests in the fourth-floor attic of her Windsor home. Issie tucked it under her sweater and raced to the third-floor bedroom she shared with Maggie. The front page of the Tribune was covered with photos of Raymond and Anna at protest marches and fundraisers. The headline read: “Revolutionary Secessionists Subject of Manhunt.” The article explained: “Authorities have reason to believe that Raymond and Anna Soulier were involved in acts of international espionage and contraband.” These same sources claimed the Souliers’ radical newspaper, L’Empereur
Est Nu, “was a cover for criminal activities.” The Tribune went on to say: “MI5 and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police conducted a thorough search of the couples’ home and confiscated all materials important to this inquiry.” According to a statement made by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Spokesman: “the Souliers’ bank accounts and investments will be attached. In addition, all possessions and all real property, including the house, its contents and the printing shop, will be sold to offset the cost of the investigation and the search for Raymond and Anna Soulier.”

  Issie now preserved this yellowed newspaper in a plastic container in her small crawl-space attic in Westland. Maggie thought about the many times she and Issie planned to conduct their own investigation, but life kept them busy with school, ballet, piano, lacrosse and all the extracurricular activities Aunt Minnie collected to keep them occupied or, as she said, out from under foot. Yet, every time Maggie thought about the circumstances of her parents’ disappearance (she never said death), she regretted she and Issie were not old enough or persistent enough to do some digging. Maggie wondered if Jacques Ruivivar was even alive.

  Looking at the clock, Maggie said, “Holy crap!” She’d spent almost forty minutes wandering through the tendrils of her mind. Each tendril hung on to some truth, belief, idea—real or imagined—didn’t seem to matter. She was struck by the fact that her little apartment with Sam was her first real home since her parents disappeared. Aunt Minnie’s house never felt like home because Aunt Minnie treated it like a museum. Maggie frowned to herself thinking, even Uncle Cyp, after fifty years of marriage, acts like a tenant.