1503951243

by Laurel Saville

  “Who’s we?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Other than you and Darius, who else is out there? How many kids, how many adults?”

  “Quite the inquisition.”

  “Just a conversation.”

  “Right. Well. The number changes. The mix changes. We have just a couple of kids right now. There are four other women besides me. One has a teenage daughter. They all live there full-time. And Darius. And Sally. But she’s not really part of our program. She just rents a room there, I guess. She’s like Darius’s cousin or something. I don’t know. That’s what he said. We’re supposed to just leave her alone. Anyway, the rest of us do everything together.”

  “Women, children, and Darius. You can see how folks might get the wrong idea,” Dix said.

  “Women and children are vulnerable in our society. They are the ones most in need of sanctuary,” Miranda said. “And sanctuary is what we provide. Sanctuary and healing.”

  Dix winced. That was not her voice. Those were not her words. She was channeling someone else, repeating phrases and ideas given to her. She had never been given to this kind of psychobabble. “And how does Darius provide ‘sanctuary’?” Dix asked, trying not to allow his tone to become exasperated.

  “He does many things. He leads us in spiritual exercises. Things like meditation. Focused breathing. Becoming more conscious of our energy flows. Looking for energy blockages. He guides us, teaches us the truths he’s learned through his extensive studies.”

  “That all sounds perfectly groovy,” Dix said. “What about, you know, school for the kids?”

  “We are homeschooling. Traditional education is tied into the dominant hierarchy, and we’re trying to create a different path for people, a different way to be in the world. Darius provides us with a place to step away from the material concerns of our consumer culture so we can recapture and reconnect to natural abundance. This is the core of what The Source is all about.”

  “The Source?”

  Dix was accustomed to seeing the occasional back-to-nature, tie-dye-clad hippie around town. Had seen flyers for various spiritual retreats that promised everything from “rebirthing” and cures for illness to simple peace of mind and happiness. But this was different. What Miranda was describing was more of a commune. Dix was starting to think that the gossip and suspicion he had heard grumbling around town was more accurate than he’d originally allowed. He was starting to think he’d given this guy far too much benefit of the doubt. He began to worry he was taking advantage of people. And especially of Miranda’s naïveté.

  “Yes, that’s what our sanctuary is called,” Miranda said.

  “Does he ask for money? How is this place supported?”

  “We sell crafts and goods at the farmers’ market and at shops.”

  We. She’d never sold anything at the market, but she was already claiming kinship with things they did before she had even joined them. Now she was part of a “we” that was not their “we,” the “we” of Dix and Miranda.

  “That can’t bring in enough to support that many people,” he said.

  “We live simply. We grow much of what we eat.”

  “Still.”

  Miranda cleared her throat. She tossed the tofu into the pan, where it sizzled almost like real meat. “People are encouraged to give as they can. What they can.”

  Dix held his breath.

  “Sometimes this might be a particular skill. Other times it might be money, yes. To go toward programs and upkeep,” she explained with a practiced casualness.

  “But he owns the property. He gets the advantage of the upkeep, the improvements,” Dix said.

  “Gifts, Dix. We each give what we can, what we choose to, what comes naturally to us, without expectation of return. That’s what a gift is. The reward is in the giving itself, not in the expectation that you will get something by giving something.”

  Dix wondered how much she’d given Darius. She had far less than people thought she did. She was not savvy about financial matters. She’d never had a reason to be. Until the house of cards her father built had crashed down. But even that hit she had felt emotionally, without it really registering financially. He recognized that this was partially his fault. He’d taken care of her. She had no real expenses. She had perhaps stepped too quickly from her father’s home to his. He would not ask her if she’d given Darius money or how much. Her money was hers to do with what she liked. He also sensed that any discussion on that topic would lead to an argument. Neither of them had the temperament for arguments. More than anything, he was worried about her drifting away from him, from them as a couple, and felt a misstep on his part would send her even farther out into Darius’s sea.

  “Dix?”

  Miranda’s voice was tentative and serious, now more her own, the voice that was familiar to him. It drew him out of his private worries.

  “Do you want to come out sometime with me? See what it’s all about?” she asked.

  Dix felt a stubborn resistance rise inside him.

  “You could see how lovely it all truly is. You could meet Darius, the kids.”

  “Would I be welcome?” he asked.

  “Of course!” she said, turning to look at him, her broad mouth breaking into an inviting smile.

  Dix felt himself soften toward her.

  “Besides,” she said, going back to the stove, her voice now dropped into a more pragmatic pitch. “Frankly, we could use your expertise. You could give us some advice. We’re trying to convert a school bus into a bunkhouse. So we can house more kids. Maybe you’d have some ideas. You’re so good at that stuff.”

  Dix stiffened again. He had no interest in gifting his skills or counsel to Darius’s operation. He suspected they’d want him to gift materials and labor, too. He resisted the unwelcome thought that now Miranda, through Darius, was using him. Or trying to. Maybe it was just Darius using her to get to him, manipulating her and taking advantage of her good nature, gullibility, generosity.

  “More kids, Miranda?” he asked, avoiding responding to her invitation. “Are there any real social workers out there? Does this guy have any supervision, accreditation? He seems to be a doctor practicing without a license.”

  Miranda stared at him with an expression he had not seen before. She was suddenly cold, hard, and walled off. “I refuse to be brought down by your negativity,” she said sharply. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you all this. I knew you wouldn’t get it.”

  “I’m sorry, Miranda,” Dix said. He was sorry, it seemed now—for so many things.

  “This is the most important thing I’ve done,” she went on, scraping the stir-fry onto two plates. “I know it has value. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not real. It is real. It’s good. It’s right. It makes me happy. It helps people. I know it does.”

  He stepped to her and twined his fingers in her hair. She twisted her neck away from him. He rubbed her cheek with the back of his hand. She pulled away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “So am I,” she said. Her tone made it clear she was sorry for him, not herself. But she let him wrap his arms around her shoulders, rest his cheek on the top of her head.

  “I miss you,” he whispered.

  He wanted to tell her that he missed her not because she was gone so much, but he missed the her he’d once known. He missed the Miranda he’d watched blossom into a tentative young woman, the adult Miranda who wandered somewhat aimlessly in search of herself. He missed her softness and wide-eyed wonder. He tried tightening his embrace, hoping to find and release that internal gentleness that had been so abundant in her. Miranda held herself apart in his arms, stiff and unyielding. Dix also missed that, once upon a time, he’d been the source of her happiness. That their life together had been.

  She did not give in to his embrace, so he let her go.

  The next morning before he left for work, Dix brought Miranda, who was lingering in bed, a cup of coffee. She was
sitting up, propped against the pillows, staring off into the middle distance. She did not turn when he came back into the bedroom or thank him for the fragrant mug he set down on the bedside table. He sat on the edge of the bed. He brushed her hair from her face.

  “Miranda?”

  She sighed lightly but did not answer.

  “Miranda? I’ll come. I’ll see what you’re up to out there.”

  She turned to him then, but her pale eyes did not warm when they took in his face.

  “How about this afternoon? I can finish early and swing by before it gets dark?”

  She smiled at that, just a slight turning up at the corners of her mouth. She thanked him for the coffee. She lifted his hand from the bed and kissed it.

  There, he thought. That makes it worth the effort.

  He left her holding the mug in both hands and blowing on it. By the time he got to his truck, he admitted to himself that the real reason he was going was not to appease her but to find out what was going on out there.

  It was a cold, wet day. As Dix drove up the pitted drive, he noted that the plow had done a poor job against the early snows, and dangerous ice buildup was likely to follow for the rest of the winter unless they got an unexpected thaw and then started to do a better job. He told himself to alert Miranda to this. He hoped he’d not find too many other things to alert her to.

  As he got out of his truck, freezing rain spit in sharp taps against his face. He waited for Miranda to appear. While looking around, his eyes involuntarily lit on the mistakes and the poorly executed, the out-of-level and the un-thought-through. The siding patches that were uneven and made with the wrong sort of wood. The lopsided concrete blocks under the trailer hitch that would sink in the first thaw and cause the camper to topple over. The porch supports set on flat rocks instead of Sonotubes. The half-done tree-house platform with the poorly secured blue-tarp roof that was snapping in the wind. The bicycle and lawn tractor left in the yard instead of under cover in the barn. Dix had expected a bit of a duct-tape-and-baling-wire approach, but not this degree of patched-together work. It looked like something a bunch of unskilled teenagers had done. He reminded himself that that was likely exactly what it was.

  Miranda appeared, smiling widely, pulling a wool hat over her head as she came out of the farmhouse. She looked happy. It pained him to recognize this, but it was true. Then he wondered what sort of happiness it could be if she had found it out here, in this rough hollow, with this man he suspected was nothing more than a New Age charlatan peddling feel-good bromides. She ran down the steps, grabbed his hand, and led him from place to place like a child on visiting day at school. She showed him the henhouse that would not keep out a fox, the new garden plot planned for spring in an area bound to be far too wet, a couple of ornery goats in a stall that needed mucking out. She rattled on, excited about all the things he knew would never come to pass—the chicks would be eaten instead of growing into hens, the plants would mold instead of bearing fruit, the goats would get diseases in their feet. He kept quiet.

  She took him into the school bus, the one they wanted to convert to a bunkhouse. Most of the seats had been torn out, and a few foam mattresses and sleeping bags had been tossed about. Miranda gestured here and there, talking about imaginary desks and curtains and double-decker bunk beds. Dix immediately noticed an offending odor. He sniffed. Miranda stopped talking and stared at him. Kerosene. He sought the source of the smell. An old heater with an open flame was tucked into the rear corner.

  “Miranda,” he said, warning in his voice.

  “Don’t start, Dix,” she said, her hands up and her head shaking.

  “Sweetie,” he went on. “It’s the heater. It’s dangerous. Too close to the wall. Unprotected. And the fumes.”

  “Do you always have to immediately find what’s wrong, Dix? Do you have to be so negative?”

  Dix stared at her, uncomprehending. “It’s not negative, Miranda. It’s dangerous.”

  She rolled her eyes with an exaggerated motion. “Whatever,” she said. “We’re not going to be that stupid. We’re not children out here.”

  Oh yes, you are, Dix thought. What he said was, “I thought you wanted my help.”

  “That’s not help,” Miranda insisted. “That’s just bad vibes.”

  Dix stepped away from her, moved the heater away from the wall, and kicked at a piece of foam mattress that was in danger of melting.

  “Forget it, Dix,” Miranda said, annoyed. “Let me show you the house.”

  They crossed the muddy yard, Miranda no longer holding his hand but striding out in front of him, and went in the back door to the kitchen. It was a small space, already crowded with four women working at the stove and a tin-top table, pouring a bright-green, strange-smelling concoction from battered pots into mason jars. They wore skirts with leggings and heavy wool socks and kerchiefs over their roughly cut hair. Dix wondered what Miranda might look like dressed and shorn as they were. The thought made him shudder. Miranda didn’t really introduce him but pointed at the women and ticked off words that must have been names, but which seemed to Dix more like nouns removed from their rightful object.

  Sunshine and Violet, Luna and Willow.

  These were words that belonged to bright and beautiful things, not to these young women who had dumbed down their looks and personalities with drab clothes and sour expressions. Dix looked around for teenagers, the youth they were allegedly helping, but saw none. Miranda asked someone, Heather or Moonlight or something, where Darius was.

  “He’s unavailable,” was the woman’s blunt answer.

  “Really?” Miranda was undaunted. “Are you sure? He was expecting us. He wanted to meet—”

  The woman shook her head, averted her eyes, and placed a top on a pot with a clang.

  Dix knew he was unwelcome. He began to wonder if Miranda was as well.

  “Bummer,” Miranda said, affecting a childish pout as she turned to Dix. “We’ll have to come back again when he’s here. He wanted to meet you! He wanted to ask you about some building stuff.”

  They stood awkwardly in the kitchen. The women moved slowly, silently, methodically, around them.

  “What about Travis?” Miranda asked the room in general. “Is he here?”

  The women shook their heads.

  “He has an interest in carpentry,” Miranda told Dix. “I wanted him to meet you.”

  Dix put his hand on Miranda’s arm. The room was cold. He wanted to go. He wanted Miranda to come with him. She let herself be led from the room. They walked carefully over the slippery ground back to the truck.

  “Are you going to follow me home?” Dix asked.

  “Later,” Miranda said. “I want to help them finish up.” She closed the truck door on him. “Go ahead and eat. I’ll probably be late.”

  Dix rolled up his window and watched her walk away. He started the truck and was just about to put it into gear when he had an unsettling feeling. Miranda was already at the front door. She closed it behind her. Light drifted through the window out into the darkening day. Dix kept looking. It took a few moments for his eyes to find what some other sense had known was there. A figure, a dark-haired man, came into view, a subtle silhouette against the dim glass of an upstairs window. Dix felt as if he were in a deer stand and a buck had slowly materialized in a patch of woods he’d already been staring into for some time. The man’s body was turned to the side. Clearly, he was hoping to see without being seen. Dix’s mouth opened, but no sound emerged. The other man let the curtain drop and disappeared.

  Because she was rarely in the house, Sally absorbed what was happening at The Source through scattered clues and snippets of overheard conversation. One evening, she noticed that the garden had gone to weeds, and produce was being left on the vine where it was undoubtedly rotting in the unusually wet weather. Then, a few nights later, she tiptoed past a “community gathering” in the living room as she was on her way upstairs. She heard Darius’s voice coming through her floorb
oards, patiently scolding the assembled women and teenagers for not “honoring the garden and its bounty” by caring for it properly. She listened as he told them that he was busy writing a book about their efforts and The Source’s way of life, a book that would sustain them with its expected sales, so it was their job to keep the garden prolific. Within a few days, the kitchen calendar was updated with chores, as well as meals laid out by day and person.

  Another time, she came across Sunshine or Moonbeam—she could never keep the names the women gave themselves straight—comforting Lily or Violet, who was crying in deep gulps because she’d let one of the goats, or maybe it was the cow, get loose. The animal had injured itself on some old barbed wire, which had apparently necessitated a costly visit from the vet after their home remedies and balms had failed and the wound began to ooze and stink. The vet stitched things back up and administered antibiotics, which the women feared would somehow contaminate the milk and cheese they were planning to make.

  Then there was the night, as Sally smoked a cigarette in a dark corner of the porch and watched through a dirty, cracked-open window, she saw everyone gathered in the living room. One woman sat on a chair at the center of the group, and one by one, each person described her flaws and failings. Every complaint was punctuated by the eventual call and response, “I do this with love,” to which the seated woman, her head hanging down and her face obscured by hair, responded, “I accept your correction with love.” These “correction” sessions became standard practice. Darius would gather the women to impart some piece of instruction or wisdom Sally recognized he had filched from one of his self-help or pop-Buddhism books. Then he would end his little speech by calling out someone for “correction.” She was struck with dumb awe at their clumsy efforts to improve one another. Yet she did not intervene. She knew anything she did would be received with hostility. And she didn’t care enough about any of those people to step in. She saw the entire enterprise as some kind of comic and consensual adult camp for the spoiled and searching. For her, it had become entertainment.