by Keith Weaver
“Look at this, Maria.”
Maria gazed at the class photo, and it took her only a couple of minutes to find him.
“It’s Joe!” she exclaimed loudly, then looked around guiltily.
Turning back to the photograph, she gazed at it for several minutes. A large smile spread across her face, then tears were coursing down her cheeks.
“He was such a wonderful, handsome young man!”
They stood in front of the picture a bit longer, then wandered out of the building. Maria wanted to know where Sanford had studied, and he showed her the buildings where his classes had been. They strolled back across King’s College Circle to Hart House, Sanford bought them a cup of coffee each, and they sat at one of the small outdoor tables, sipping.
The following day, Sanford said to Maria “Today we’re going for a plane ride”. There were questions and objections, but Sanford just herded Maria along, and she smiled at the fabricated mystery. At the airport on the Toronto Islands, Sanford had chartered a small plane and pilot for a day. They took off and they flew over the city, to a steady monologue from Sanford. They flew over Stanley Falls, over the lakes and forests in central Ontario, over part of Georgian Bay, over Niagara Falls, and back to Toronto along the shore of Lake Ontario. It was a day that left Maria dumbfounded.
And they spent two weeks at Joe’s place.
This was the hardest for Maria. Joe’s essence was everywhere, and she spent an hour just walking through the house, touching everything. She had known Joe only in Italy, and seeing the context for his life in Canada delivered to her the combined shock and delight of learning a whole new side of someone she had known intimately.
“Let me give you a proper tour, Maria”, and she smiled and nodded eagerly.
The kitchen and the library were the first stops.
“This place was a second home to me”, Sanford said, running his hand over a shelf in the library.
“Joe said that you sat here and read”, Maria said, pointing to the large wing chair.
“I did. But Joe also educated me here. I think I learned more in this room than in all the school rooms I have ever sat in.”
Maria wandered along, looking at the books. The love, the wistfulness, the gratitude at seeing something that she had probably seen only in photographs, were clearly written on her face.
They drifted outside. Joe’s garden dominated the area behind the house, and in its order and completeness it spoke eloquently of Joe.
Maria turned when she heard the “woof” that had become so familiar to Sanford.
“And this”, he said, “is Reggie”.
Maria moved toward the dog, his tail wagged, hesitantly at first, then in welcome.
“Reggie”, she said, and knelt down to greet the dog.
Reggie was now in full welcome, and he began licking Maria’s face while she wept and hugged him, knowing how Joe had loved all his Reggie dogs.
They walked through the barn, and Maria ran her hands over the wood-burnt names of the cows.
“This is where you and Joe milked the cows?”
Sanford nodded, but wanted to get away from the barn as soon as he could, away from the thing that was trying to hook into his brain again.
Over the next few days, they weeded Joe’s vegetable garden, Maria picked flowers from Joe’s flower gardens and arranged them in attractive bunches in the kitchen, and the three of them prepared meals together.
Most memorably, they spent time in The Recipe Cops. In Respighi’s Copse. On her first visit, Maria just sat on one of the large bench stones and took in the place. The pine needles underfoot were soft, springy, and provided natural acoustic damping. The pines sighed, above and around them. The great pieces of limestone were smooth and cool. She hummed snatches of tunes from The Pines of Rome. And all around was quiet, seclusion, sanctity.
“Joe told me so much about this place, so many times, how you and he loved to spend time here …”, and her voice faded as she gazed around at the large pines and up into their branches, listening to their whispered secrets.
“But now that I’m here … I can hardly believe it. It’s beautiful!”
She ran her hand over the large cool table stone.
“He told me about having these stones made, and how they were put together, and how you both poured cups of water over them …”
“The Recipe Cops”, she murmured, after a long pause, almost in meditation.
There was another long pause.
“Joe is here”, she said quietly. “This is the place to say goodbye to him.”
And then they talked about the new life, unexpected until just a few weeks ago, that now stretched before the three of them who remained.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Walter Cimaschi, whose advice and suggestions make it look as though I know more Italian than, in fact, I do.
My thanks to my wife, Maggie, my strongest and most sympathetic critic.
