by Donna Ball
“So?” Lori challenged. “The point is, they’re my choices!”
“Sometimes,” Cici said carefully, “when we’re in a new place, doing new things, it’s easy to forget who we are. I just think it might be good for you to spend a little time away, thinking about things.”
“I can think about things just fine on the ski slopes, thanks. And you don’t have any idea who I am. What makes you think you can judge me?”
Cici could feel herself losing the battle to be reasonable. “I’m your parent. When I see you about to make a decision that could ruin your life, it’s my job to pull you back.”
“I’m not going to ruin my life! And who are you to talk about making bad decisions, anyway? You gave up a great career, a gorgeous house, an entire life to go live in the backwater of Virginia and raise goats!”
“Sheep,” Cici corrected shortly. “And I don’t think I appreciate your tone.”
“You don’t even have toilets! Come on, Mom, just because you’re into this crazy menopausal fantasy about life in the country doesn’t mean I have to be sucked into it. I’m young! I want to go to Aspen!”
For a moment Cici did not know what to say, and the silence between them stung. Then she said, coolly, “We have toilets.”
Lori puffed out a breath. “I’m not your little girl anymore, Mom. You can’t do this to me.”
Cici exclaimed, “For crying out loud, I’m not planning to lock you in the attic and slip you food through a slot in the door. It’s just ten days at Christmas with your mother, for Pete’s sake!”
Lori said, “I’d rather be locked in the attic.”
Cici pressed her lips together, wound the cord of the telephone tightly around her index finger, and then let it drop again. At last she said quietly, “You’re right. I guess you’re not my little girl anymore. Because the girl I knew would never talk to her mother like that.”
“Mom, come on . . .”
Cici shook her head briskly, as though to clear it. “Look,” she said, “I can’t force you to come home. God knows, I can’t force you to want to. But the door is open, and you’re always welcome.”
“Mom, don’t be mad . . .”
“I’m not mad,” Cici sighed, “just disappointed. We’ll talk later, okay?”
“Does that mean I get to stay here for the holidays?”
“It means,” Cici answered tiredly, “you get to decide.”
Bridget’s face was full of sympathy when Cici hung up the phone, and Cici spread her hands in resignation. “Well, I guess I really screwed that up.”
Ida Mae, scraping batter in a loaf pan, commented, “Spoiled kid. Don’t surprise me none.”
Bridget shot her a quelling look, and turned back to Cici. “I’m so sorry. She’s not coming home for Christmas?”
“She thinks I’m throwing away my life,” replied Cici, and lost the effort to temper that with a smile. “Who knows? Maybe she’s right.”
“Oh, Cici,” Bridget began, but Cici stopped her with an upraised hand.
“No, it’s okay. I’m just a little annoyed with her right now. I’ll get over it.” She took her coat from the back of a chair and started toward the door. “I’d better get back to work. The wind is really kicking up out there and I want to get the roof patched before the temperature drops tonight.”
“I’ll be out in a minute to hold the ladder.”
Cici waved her off. “Stay here where it’s warm. I’ll call you if I need you.”
And because Bridget knew Cici liked doing things by herself, she did.
“It’s called the Renaissance School of the Arts and Sciences,” Shep explained, “and I’m the new administrator. Our first classes don’t start until September of next year and already we have a two-year waiting list.” His smile was that of a man who had waited too long to share a secret as he deftly undid the elastic loop on a file folio and pulled out a large color brochure.
“Just look at this place, Linds.” He spun the brochure around and unfolded it for her. “Everything is state-of-the-art. Pre-K through twelve, student-teacher ratio ten to one, a computer lab NASA would envy . . . I could go on, but you can see for yourself.”
Lindsay’s eyes grew wide as she turned the pages of the expensively produced promotional piece. “An entire school devoted to the arts,” she said, her voice filled with wonder.
“And sciences. Our philosophy is a balanced education—which means every student will be exposed to a full curriculum in the arts. And I’m interviewing now for a director of Visual Arts.”
Lindsay tore her eyes away from the brochure to look at him, astonished. “You don’t mean . . . me?”
“I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have,” he told her. “Our program directors are all working teachers, not out-of-touch academics with too many letters after their names and too little classroom experience. This is a school run by teachers.”
“I love this school,” Lindsay said fervently.
“All our program directors are required to log twenty hours a week in the classroom, so it’s not as though you’d be giving up teaching, either. But think about it, Lindsay. You’d get to develop your own visual arts program—design the curriculum, choose the textbooks, equip the classrooms, hire your teachers—all from scratch. And the pay . . . well, let’s just say that condo overlooking the harbor you’ve always wanted doesn’t have to be a dream anymore.”
She sank back against the chair, regarding him with a puzzled half smile. “So. Did you just pop out of a magic lamp or something? Are you going to disappear after my third wish?”
His expression softened, and he reached again for her hand. “It depends on what your third wish is.”
This time she withdrew her fingers before he could clasp them. “This can’t be about us, Shep. You know that.”
He said, “That’s not why I came here. I miss you. I want you to come home. But I’m offering you this job because I want the best for the Renaissance School.”
She drew in a breath, released it. “I’d actually be teaching art.”
“You’d have a full office staff and two teaching assistants.”
“And a condo on the water.”
He smiled.
She thought about her light-filled studio in the dairy barn, and how hard she had worked scrubbing the stone floors and whitewashing the walls, and how, even with the electric heaters at their highest setting, she could never get the temperature above sixty-five degrees these days. She thought about jogging along the waterfront and going to hear a real symphony, and taking in a movie whenever she wanted. She thought about cable television and high-speed Internet. And all she could say softly was, “Wow.”
He said, “Your contract would start in January. Would you like to see a copy?”
The waitress came by to clear their plates, and asked if they would like to order dessert. Shep turned the question to her.
Lindsay looked at the woman helplessly. “I don’t even know the answer to that,” she said.
The first thing Cici had noticed about life in the country was how different the men were from those in the suburbs. When she went into the hardware store they didn’t hover around, asking what she was looking for, following her from aisle to aisle as though afraid she might break something. When she went into the lumber store they didn’t stop their conversations or look at her as though she had just stepped off a spaceship, as she had half expected. When she purchased PVC pipe they didn’t ask if she was meaning to run hot or cold water through it, as though she didn’t know there was a difference, and when she ordered a stack of two-by-fours no one asked if she meant to use them indoors or outdoors, and when she bought a box of nails no one questioned whether she had meant to get galvanized.
What they did instead was simply ignore her. She was an intruder into a world that smelled like male sweat and hunting boots, tobacco juice and machine oil, and they could not, in good conscience, acknowledge her existence with anything more than the barest courtesy. Cici beg
an to like it that way.
Jake Senior and Jake Junior—the two Js of J&J Lumber—along with the clerk, the loading assistant, and the guys who hung around the woodstove in the office of the lumber store, grew used to seeing her once, sometimes twice, a week. They would tip their hats to her, silently help her load supplies, and occasionally take a reluctant, almost unavoidable interest in her work, as in:
“You ain’t gonna try to dovetail them joints by yourself, are you?”
And, “If you’re going to be cutting all that ash, you’re going to need a couple of new saw blades, too.”
And, “Now, if you want to try matching the hinges that are already on that door, there’s a fellow with a salvage yard over in Hendersonville . . .”
What they never did, and what she appreciated to the point of amazement, was ask if she needed any help, surreptitiously slip her their business cards, or offer their opinions about what was or was not too big a job for her to take on. It seemed to her the questions they sometimes asked about the progress of her projects were laced with an underlying hope that she would eventually break down and admit she was in over her head. But Cici thought that was a small price to pay for their lack of interference in her affairs.
So she was caught off guard when, as she was buying the materials to repair the barn roof, Jake Senior inquired, “You all planning to stay the winter, are you?”
Cici replied, surprised, “Where else would we go?”
He shrugged. “Winters can get kinda rough around here. Bound to get lonesome out there all by yourselves.”
To which she had just grinned and returned, “Thanks, but we’re not pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock. We’ll be fine. Put that on my account, will you?”
But now, climbing the shuddering ladder in a wind so bitter it made her gasp, she thought about that. Hadn’t there been a lost colony of settlers in Roanoke? Hadn’t one theory been that they had all frozen to death over the winter? Hadn’t another been that they had eaten each other to keep from starving? How deep did the snow get around here, anyway?
Maybe it was a little crazy for the three of them to plan to spend the winter in a hundred-year-old house in the middle of nowhere with no central heat and water that came from a spring. Not to mention no television or Internet or anything at all to keep themselves entertained. Already the short days and cold nights were making them irritable. What would happen when their driveway was under two feet of snow and Lindsay couldn’t just jump in her car and drive to Charlottesville and Bridget couldn’t get to the library to check out books and she, Cici, couldn’t even get to Family Hardware? And how much colder could it possibly get, anyway?
A sudden gust of wind actually shook the ladder as she reached the top of it, and blew her hair across her eyes, blinding her. Her heart thudded in her chest and she grasped the roof eave to steady herself. She could hear the limbs of the trees creaking, and the wind sounded like the screech of a jet engine as it sang across the mountaintops. She wondered if this might be a job better left for another day. If she hadn’t been so upset with Lori, she might have come to that conclusion sooner.
But the wind died down and she pulled herself up onto the roof. She had gotten the last piece of plywood decking on the roof by pulling it up into the loft with a rope, then pushing it through the hole and up onto the roof. All that remained for her to do was to position the plywood over the hole and nail it down. That would suffice as an emergency measure until she could get back up there with the underlayment and shingles.
Keeping to a careful crouch, steadying herself with her hands, she eased across the roofline. The hammer and nails were positioned beside the plywood, and she moved them out of the way. She got her fingers beneath the heavy sheet of decking, rocked it to its side for better maneuverability, and stood up.
Suddenly, from out of nowhere, there was a huge, thundering, crashing sound. Cici whirled, the wind caught the sheet of plywood and whipped it against her chest, and that was the last thing she remembered.
The house shook. Bridget screamed and automatically covered her ears with her hands. Ida Mae dropped the empty bowl she was carrying to the sink, and it shattered on the kitchen floor. In the subsequent silence there was nothing but the sound of the wind roaring across the roof and the frantic barking of the dog outside.
“What was it?” Bridget cried.
“You check the front, I’ll check the back,” Ida Mae returned tersely.
They went their separate ways, opening doors, peering out windows. In a moment Ida Mae called, “Come look here! It’s a tree down! Took out half the conservatory!”
But when Bridget came racing across the house her face was pale and her eyes were wild and she barely noticed the tree limbs protruding three-quarters of the way into the sunroom. “Oh my God, it’s Cici!” she cried, snatching a blanket from the linen shelf. “Call 911!”
Shep said, “Obviously, I expect you to take your time thinking about it. It’s a huge move. And a huge investment for the school, too, so everyone has to be sure. It’s a five-year contract; I’d need to present the Board with a preliminary proposal for your department by the first of the year.”
“Wow.” Again Lindsay simply stared at him, and again he smiled.
“You’ve said that a lot.”
“Never meant it more.” She took a breath. “When do you need to know?”
“In two weeks.” And before she could speak, he raised his hand. “I know. Wow.”
It had been so long since her cell phone had rung that at first Lindsay thought the ring tone—Beethoven’s First—was part of the background music from the restaurant. It wasn’t until Shep raised an eyebrow and looked pointedly at her purse that she exclaimed, “Oh!” and fumbled for the phone.
As she listened, she felt her face grow cold and her lips become numb. She was already standing, her napkin fluttering to the floor, as she said, “What hospital?”
Shep stood, too, concern on his face. She snatched up her coat. “I’m on my way.”
“Lindsay, what is it?” Shep said. “Can I—?”
She was already out the door. She didn’t say good-bye, and she didn’t look back.
19
Mixed Blessings
The three of them lounged on Cici’s four-poster king-size bed, fat pillows plumped under their heads, watching a delicate mist of snow drift down outside. A fire crackled in the marble fireplace, scenting the room faintly with warm hickory. Heavy-lined polished cotton draperies in a Victorian rose pattern were pulled back gracefully from the three casement windows, framing a view of frosted mountains against pale gray sky. A rose wool shawl was draped casually across the arm of a delicately carved rocking chair in front of the fireplace, and a skirted table near it held a vase of yellow roses. The scene was much as they had dreamed about all those months ago when they first walked through the big sunny rooms: cozy winter afternoons and cheery fires, stacks of books and a pot of tea nearby, afternoon naps with nothing to disturb them but the tinkling sound the snow made on the roof. Except, of course, that Cici’s arm was in a cast, her chest was tightly taped to stabilize three broken ribs, and two pins held together her broken collarbone. And the yellow roses had come to her hospital room with a card that read, “Get well soon. We love you, Bridge and Linds.”
“Is it just me,” Cici said, gazing bleakly out the window, “or is living here less fun than it used to be?”
Bridget laid her head lightly against Cici’s. “When I think of what might have happened to you. Do you realize how lucky you are?”
Cici winced. “Not feeling all that lucky right now.”
“I still don’t see why you won’t let us call Lori,” Lindsay said. “She has a right to know. She should have been with you in the hospital.”
“Don’t be silly. I was home before she could have gotten here. There’s nothing she can do, and besides, after that fight we had, it would just seem like a play for sympathy.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
�
�Probably. But you promised you wouldn’t call her.”
“Don’t worry. If that’s what you want, that’s what you’ve got.”
“It’s ironic,” Bridget said after a moment. “We cut down the hickory tree. We trimmed back the poplar tree. But it was an oak tree that went through the window.”
“Not the whole tree,” Lindsay pointed out. “Just a big branch.”
Farley had come over with his chain saw and removed the majority of the tree branch, and boarded up the hole with plywood. Cici hadn’t been able to make herself look at the wreck of her sunroom since she had been home.
“Well,” she sighed. “At least oak makes good firewood.”
“But who’s going to cut it?” Lindsay said.
“On the other hand,” Bridget said, trying to sound positive, “if the branch hadn’t crashed into the house I might not have come outside to look for you for hours.”
Cici gave her a dry look. “If the branch hadn’t crashed I might not have fallen.”
Bridget’s expression fell. “Mixed blessings,” she agreed.
Lindsay took a deep breath. “There’s something I have to tell the two of you.”
They looked at her curiously.
“That day—the day of the accident,” Lindsay said, “I didn’t go to Charlottesville to Christmas shop. I went to Staunton to have lunch with Shep.” She held up a staying hand before either of them spoke. “And before you ask, the reason I didn’t tell you was because I was embarrassed.”
“Oh, we wouldn’t ask,” Bridget assured her.
“I’d be embarrassed, too,” Cici agreed, and they both watched her with carefully reserved judgment, waiting.
“He has a new job,” Lindsay said, “as administrator of a new charter school for the arts. He offered me a position.”
