by Jan Surasky
“I’d be glad to Max. I think a walk in the fresh spring air would be just the thing to revive me.”
The Yard was literally deserted as we strolled its grassy grounds save for some lights burning in corners of the almost empty buildings. Max walked slowly, the scent of spring air all about us, the gardens lit by tiny little lights that gave them an eerie glow, and the sky above us dark and still, a new moon in the midst of crowds of stars.
As we neared a very small path, now lit only by moonlight, Max took a sharp right, motioning me to follow. We walked through bowers and bowers of trees until we came to a small clearing. “This is where I spend most of my time when I don’t have my nose glued to a book in the dorms or in the library.”
I surveyed the clearing. Grass a little less manicured than the rest of the campus, gardens sporting the blooms of spring, a bulb garden with the vibrant hues of carefully chosen tulips, the golden yellow of daffodils, and grape hyacinths lining its borders. And, all surrounded by stately oaks, maples, hickories, and elms. A flowering mountain ash stood in the corner and an ancient weeping willow hugged the far end.
Max beckoned me toward a wrought iron bench set in the middle of the clearing. The small plate fastened so securely to the back announced the donors as the class of 1918. Max motioned me to sit.
We sat, both of us in wordless wonder contemplating the stars. Max broke the silence. “I have found peace here, Annie May. In this little spot. More than I have ever known.”
“It is beautiful,” I said.
“I am an only child of parents who have succeeded in what they set out to do but had very little time for me. It’s not that they meant to neglect me, it’s just that they were very driven.
“I was shifted from one relative to another while they made a name in Europe or elsewhere. I was raised by nannies and sent to boarding school at an early age.
“My classmates made fun of me because I had bad skin, had a stutter, and was very shy. My skin cleared thanks to a caring doctor and my stutter disappeared after a lot of hard work on my own, working in secret with exercises I found in books. But, the memory of the taunts stayed with me.
“I came to Harvard because my father was a Harvard grad and my mother a Radcliffe alum.”
“Do you like it here?”
“I like it as well as any other place. But, I feel lost. I didn’t rush a fraternity because I thought I wouldn’t get in. And, the independents seem to keep to themselves.”
“Maybe they’re just scared like you are. Maybe if you made the first move they’d join you in some cause or study group.”
“I never thought of it like that. I just keep thinking they’re sneering at me underneath like the boys in boarding school.”
“Jamie seems to think a lot of you.”
“Jamie is different, Annie May. He’s friendly and outgoing. He’s good through and through. We hit it off from the start.”
Max looked at his watch and rose. “I guess I’ve bored you long enough. We should get back to the dance before they think we’ve left for good.”
“I haven’t been bored, Max. You’re an interesting person. I know you’re going to go somewhere someday.”
“Thanks for the faith. Most girls are turned off by serious talk.”
Our walk back to the dance was filled with detours. Max was anxious to show me every building he had frequented since he’d been at Harvard. He was especially fond of the government building. And, history seemed to fascinate him.
“I was thinking of a double major in history and government. But, my family for generations have been business moguls. And, I don’t think I have the personality or stamina for politics.”
“I think you can be whatever you want. Back home we set the bar pretty high. I have beaten boys at horseshoes who have been champions and outrun a number of them.”
“Well, I’ll keep it in mind. But, I don’t want to disappoint my family.”
When we arrived back at the dance the crowd had thinned out and the band was getting ready for their final number. Carrie and Jamie were still dancing even though the music had stopped.
Max led me to the dance floor. “Let’s take one last spin,” he said, as he whirled me around in a perfect fox trot to the strains of “Good Night Ladies.”
We walked back to Eliot, the balm of the spring air gently wafting about us, Jamie with his arm securely around Carrie. The new moon, so visible in the clear sky, signaled to me a beginning. Perhaps I had gotten into Syracuse.
As we entered the Eliot dorm room I kicked off my shoes. The residents of the room were mysterious only by their absence. Their presence was everywhere.
I carefully moved several bottles of expensive perfume to lay my small belongings on the carefully appointed cherry dresser, cherubs carved into its two upper drawers and a cherry-framed mirror set atop it. I said a hasty goodnight to Carrie.
As I turned down the bedspread and opened the shades to see the stars, the weariness of the day settled in. I decided to count rest stops instead of sheep and map out the journey back home. I knew it would be a difficult goodbye for Carrie.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Summer brought both Carrie and Will back home, Carrie to Sandler’s Drugs in town to make sodas and hot fudge sundaes for the teenagers who gathered there in the heat of a late afternoon or evening and Will back to farming. Georgie was excited to show Will the fort he had made in a tree with the help of Uncle John and the art project he had done by himself waiting for Carrie’s approval.
As for me, I was busy planning out my freshman year at Syracuse where I had finally been accepted. It was worth the wait. The course work looked exciting and I could see there was so much I could learn about books and the great authors who had written them.
The meadows were filled with wild flowers and the deep yellow of the black-eyed Susans and the pure white of the summer daisies wound their way through the tall grasses of the meadows along with the soft, pale yellow of the buttercup and the muted lavender of phlox.
Georgie was by Will’s side the minute he got back home, talking farming, jumping into as many ponds as they had time for, and throwing sticks and balls for Jester to fetch. Uncle John had hired Will back, anxious to learn the latest in the techniques of sowing, the cross-breeding that was on the cutting edge, and the exciting advancements in farm machinery.
My graduation party had come and gone, attended by a multitude of relatives from as far away as Texas, anxious to soak up the lush valleys and hills of central New York, its many lakes, and its endless views of geological wonders. Cousins I barely knew stayed on to help with the dishes, camp out under the trees behind the corn and soy bean fields, and learn to ride bareback over at the Taylor farm.
Will had gotten me a journal for graduation and I was anxious to fill it. Mama was happy to have a full house again and I decided to make my way to the attic to escape her notice. As I crouched in the corner with the two small windows opened hoping to let the heat out, I wondered what our ancestors, so neatly tied up in the journals under the wedding dress, would think of us. Would they find us soft? Perhaps more spoiled than they with our modern conveniences, indoor plumbing, and a barn full of machinery to farm with?
I decided to open the last of the five journals. Its cover was nearly off the binding and its inside pages fragile. I carefully untied the ribbon holding it together and gently blew the dust off.
A note was written in Granny’s hand.
My Dear Children,
I am setting down the tale of a woman named Mirabela who was your great-great grandmother of whom I am a direct descendant.
Mirabela was born into a band of roving gypsies who roamed as outcasts from land to land in Europe. She was known as Bela by all who knew her because the gaiety of her laughter matched the sound of the church bells that called the townspeople to morning worship.
The gypsies survived by luring the townspeople to their camps with the promise of fortune telling and the beautiful gypsy music that enc
hanted them around an open fire. Bela learned the art of palm reading and how to uncover the mysteries of the crystal ball by helping the women set up the tables and collecting the gold coins the townspeople left behind.
Though Bela liked the freedom of the wandering gypsy band, she often yearned for a settled life like the townsfolk she saw who came to the camps for a night of music and dancing but returned to their homes where there was a chance for honest trade and schools for their children.
Bela kept her longings to herself since she admired both her mother, who was beautiful and raven-haired with ringlets that reached far below her shoulders, and her father, who was the leader of their gypsy band. At night she would watch her father fiddle and her mother dance, her jewelry and bangles gleaming in the moonlight, her brightly colored skirt forming the most beautiful patterns along with her lively step.
As the gypsies wandered, Bela heard tales of a land across the sea that had streets paved with gold and where all were welcome. When she reached eighteen years old, Bela left for America.
The entire gypsy band saw her off. They presented her with enough gold coins to pay for her passage in steerage on an ocean liner that was creaky but still seaworthy. Her mother gave her a crystal ball and her father a beautiful fiddle. The rest, her friends since birth, gave her many colorful scarves, a stew of onions, hot peppers, and slivers of beef and game, and some gold coins to help her make her way in what they saw as a mystical New World.
When Bela arrived in America, she found the streets paved with cobblestone and brick, not gold, and gypsies unwelcome. She did her best to hide her identity and pursued her quest to settle down.
She traveled west, working at menial labor, far from the cities that had shunned her. As she went, admiring the beauty of this new land, she came upon a settlement of only a few dozen people that neither welcomed her or shunned her.
There she settled, happy to have a place of her own. She took two small rooms over the general store in exchange for scrubbing the floors and watching the store at night when the owners went home to their small farmhouse a short distance away.
The town had no name and its main street held only the general store and a hitching post. Survival was hard-scrabble, pulling a few straggly crops from land that was barely arable, with hens and chickens and, if lucky, a goat or two.
Bela set up shop, pulling her crystal ball from the burlap sack she had so lovingly kept it in. At first no one came, but soon curiosity overtook their reluctance, and Bela was paid in chicken eggs and goat’s milk.
As the two traders in the town became her best customers, listening to her tales of the future almost nightly, word spread to the towns and cities they traveled to, bringing eventual crowds to the settlement that had no name.
Although the visitors were a motley bunch, some dressed in leather breeches and some in gingham with bonnets of straw and silk, others in plain homespun, they all brought some form of wisdom to the settlement that had so far known only hard-scrabble living.
They brought with them the knowledge of how to fertilize the barely arable land, and how to irrigate it when the summer sun threatened to scorch the crops they had so carefully sown in the spring.
As the number of visitors grew, the settlers decided to give their town a name. They called it Hope.
Bela continued to scrub the floors of the general store and as she did so she noticed a farmer of modest stature with sandy brown hair and eyes as blue as the azure stone she had seen her gypsy band gather in their travels. Despite her shyness, she asked him to dine with her in her two small rooms.
He introduced himself as Simon Westerveld but gave her no more information than that. She soon took a shine to him and he to her.
They spent their time eating the stews Bela cooked that she remembered from her childhood. He was enchanted by the peals of her sunny laughter that echoed the church bells she had left behind and she was grateful for the strength of his serious, caring nature and the twinkle that seemed to never leave his eyes.
They were married shortly after and moved into the simple log cabin he had erected when he had come to the settlement of Hope.
Simon worked hard to provide for Bela and she for him. She took her fortune telling to the camps of the visitors that streamed in to hear her tales of the future. She played her fiddle for them in the moonlight and taught them the gypsy dances.
Soon there was gaiety in the settlement that had so far had none. Travelers came from all over to take part in the yearly fair the settlers set up to celebrate their harvest. Bela took in many gold coins with her fortune telling and fiddled the night away, dancing under the moon with skirts of the brightest colors and scarves about her long black ringlets that fell far below her shoulders.
Bela’s fortune telling brought many visitors to Hope and prosperity to the town. A hotel was raised next to the general store and a number of small shops along with it, including a blacksmith shop, a hardware store, and a small shop filled with the artisan works of the locals.
As the town of Hope prospered, so did Simon’s farm. As the years went by, there were many mouths to feed for Bela and Simon were blessed with many children, all who worked the farm as they grew. Simon was filled with pride as he raised a sign with large, black letters over the barn he had built behind the simple log farmhouse that read “Westerveld ' Sons.”
Bela and Simon lived a long and happy life. As Bela lay on her deathbed, she confessed to Simon that she had never been able to predict the future nor had she ever been able to see anything as she gazed into her crystal ball. But, she had seen the hope in the eyes of the visitors who had traveled to their town for her predictions and had not wanted to disappoint them.
Simon laid Bela to rest in the small family plot on a hillside beyond the fields and next to a meadow that brought many wildflowers in early spring alongside their two little ones they had lost to the scourge of scarlet fever.
Visitors streamed in to the gravesite which Simon faithfully tended to hear what they were certain was the voice of Bela’s spirit with predictions for the future. They left flowers and gold coins of gratitude which Simon gave to the schoolmaster for chalk and books for the schoolhouse which the townsfolk had built for the children of Hope.
Here Granny added a note.
For many years your Papa journeyed to the town of Hope to hear Bela’s spirit predict the future. He was certain that the omens she foresaw were responsible for our good fortune in the generous bounty we almost always reaped at harvest.
I closed the journal gently, careful not to disrupt its fragile pages, bound it with its ribbon, and laid it back in its place beneath the other volumes. I crept down the stairs and slipped out the kitchen door, the aroma of roast chicken following me as I went. Mama was preparing a send-off supper for the cousins who were leaving tomorrow at sunrise.
I kicked off my shoes and ran to the barn to pull off the pail from the rusty nail that had held it since my early childhood. I would go to Strawberry Hill and harvest the last of the berries. I ran through the tall grasses of the meadow now rife with wildflowers and a soft, summer rain that brought a gentle mist and fog to the horizon.
As I walked back under a muted sunset of mauves and pinks sharing a slightly overcast sky, I was lost in thought of my own as yet unfulfilled future. I picked up my pace as I went. Mama would need help in the kitchen.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The first day of classes at Syracuse University was a balmy Indian summer day, almost tropical. Buildings of stone with formal columns and rooftop turrets stood side by side with buildings that followed the simpler lines of modern architecture. Stately evergreens, sycamores and shady maples dotted the grassy quad, dwarfing the students who filled the crisscrossing sidewalks in a hurry to find a classroom before the bell tower chimes rang out the hour.
A gentle wind ruffled my hair and blew about the leaves of the trees as I searched for the Hall of Languages and the freshman English class I had been assigned. As I came upon it, t
hree rooftop turrets adding elegance to a weathered limestone façade, I climbed the steps and followed the stream of students pushing their way through a large front door, oblivious of the imposing pillars and the ancient-styled arch above it.
I found my classroom, the last at the end of a long, dimly-lit hallway, and settled on a second row seat. The boy behind me, tall and lanky, with a head of tousled brown hair gleaming in the morning sunlight streaming in through the long, large open windows, scoured the room and settled in beside me, juggling an armful of books and an open bag of peanuts.
“Care for a peanut?”
“No thanks.”
“I’m Jeb Westfield. From Brooklyn. Originally from Westchester County but my dad lost his business to a corporate giant.
“I suppose you think me forward, and maybe I am, but you looked friendly and I’m not about to get knocked under by a super sophisticate from Manhattan or Long Island. This place scares me.”
“Me too.”
“Good. Maybe we can form an alliance of two and keep down the pseudo stuff.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“We can talk about it over a coke after class.”
Before I could answer, the instructor put aside his papers and rose, waiting for the last straggler to come through the open door. As the seats filled, he closed the door and stood beneath the blackboard at the head of the class, his casual dress, black pants, black shirt, and black tied boots, a departure from the suits I had seen so far in administration.
“Hi. I’m Richard Anders. I’m a last year grad student and I will be your instructor for English 107 which is introductory English required for all freshmen.
“You will all be going on to major in a variety of disciplines. Our goal is to insure that you will be able to communicate with your colleagues and the public, if it is necessary, in clear and concise English.
“We will be covering the basic rules of composition and will brush up on grammar and language usage.
