by Chris Cander
“Gabriel!”
Somewhere to her right, there was a rustling in the brush. She couldn’t see if it was him, but it was enough to catapult her from her bewilderedness. “Gabriel! Gabriel!” She launched forward, screaming his name over and over as she ran into the wild.
Lidia crashed across fallen branches and ducked under low boughs, coming to the place where she thought she’d heard something, but found nothing there. Dizzy with fear and panic, she turned around. The next time she called his name, it came out garbled.
There were stories she’d heard all her life of mountain people who lived out in the woods in tar-paper shacks. Vagrants and crazies and moonshiners and all manner of nearly feral beings who refused to live in a civilized community. What if the stories were true? What if one of them had —
“Gabriel!”
Another rustling nearby. She sprinted to a pair of red maples and yanked back a handful of scrub brush, already imagining her serious little boy, crouched down and peering at some interesting creature.
She was partially right. Four or five speckled brown cottontail rabbits burrowed together, their long ears touching. The sight of them was so unexpected that for a second she forgot herself. She felt the urge to reach out and stroke their fat little backs, their little white tails. Gabe, look at this! she wanted to say. But Gabriel wasn’t there.
Panic rushed back in and she let go of the brush, which snapped into place over the sleeping rabbits. She looked this way and that, trying to decide. Then she saw his fishing pole lying in the dirt just a few feet away from where she stood. It was unbaited and unbroken, just tossed aside as if forgotten. Gabriel had wanted his pole next to his bed at night. He wouldn’t have thrown it down like that. The worms had been dropped too; the lid on the margarine container had come off at impact, and a small mound of dirt spilled out. The night crawlers were gone, either fished away or already digging under unfamiliar earth.
As she scanned the ground for clues — which way, how long ago — she realized that a path had been cut into the sedge and clover. She decided that Gabriel would go up and not down the mountain, so she took off running, calling his name as she ran.
It wasn’t long before she crested an incline and saw a garden and a cabin next to it. Even from within her adrenaline-fueled hysteria, she noted the neat rows of vegetables, the lack of weeds, the tended dirt. A line of smoke threaded toward the sky and blended into it. An odd comfort. She slowed down and could smell something cooking. Familiar and fragrant, like a meal her mother might have made once upon a time. She moved steadily forward, but as she approached, she began to wonder if she was moving backward instead.
Mama? she thought. But her mouth said, “Gabriel?”
She walked around the southern border of the garden toward the front of the cabin. The windows were open. Amid the smell of food, she could also smell paint.
“Gabriel?” she called.
“Mama?” His voice was muffled. She sprinted around to the front porch.
“Gabriel!”
There he was, sitting cross-legged on the porch, his mouth full, a half-eaten cookie in his hand. “Mama!” he cried, and smiled wide. “Look!” As he pointed to something in the near distance, she cleared the steps without even touching them. When she got to where he sat, she scooped him up, burying her face in his neck that smelled of baby shampoo and stream water, loamy dirt and sugar cookies. She burst into sobs.
After a moment, she pulled her face away and peered into his. “Are you all right?” His eyes were bright and fine. “You’re not hurt?” He shook his head and smiled. “Why did you run off like that? I didn’t know where you were! Don’t ever do that again, Gabriel! You hear me?” Then she yanked him through her anger to hold him close again.
“He only got up here about ten minutes before you did.” Alta’s voice behind her was calm and warm.
Lidia jerked her head up. She’d only had eyes for her son; she didn’t notice anyone else was there.
“He was chasing after this little rabbit here.” She held up the tiny thing. It looked just like the ones Lidia saw back near the stream. “I gave him a cookie, and was trying to get him to tell me where he lived. I was just about to take him down to town to see if we could find his parents.”
“I’m his parent.”
“So it seems.” Alta smiled. “You look a mess. Must have been frantic. Come sit up here and I’ll get you a cup of coffee.” She patted one of the two rocking chairs moving on its own in the September breeze. Then Lidia carried Gabriel over and sat down and leaned back into the slats. She could have been a little girl again curled up in someone’s lap for how comfortable it was. Gabriel wriggled in her arms and she let him down.
“Can I see the rabbit?” he said.
Alta put it down in front of him. “Remember what I said. He’s little and probably scared.” She glanced at Lidia. “Kind of like your mama is right now. So you be gentle.”
Gabriel offered the rabbit a bite of his cookie and it stretched out its neck and twitched its nose before declining. It turned away and hopped on long feet a few steps across the porch. Gabriel giggled and clasped his hands over his mouth.
The other rocking chair was halfway painted a cherry-blossom red and resting upside down on a flapping issue of The New York Times. A few drops of paint splattered the headline: “U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote.” The pungent paint smell mixed with the food — cabbage soup, perhaps — and fresh coffee made Lidia want to cry again. It was as if she’d gone back to the home her mother had made, or someplace even better.
Then Alta was standing next to her with a handkerchief and a steaming mug. “I’m Alta Pulaski. Gabriel already told me his name. What about you?”
“Lidia Kielar. I mean, Pollock. Lidia Pollock.”
“Stanley Kielar’s girl?” Lidia nodded and Alta smiled. “How long you been married?”
“Just over two years.”
“Takes a while to make the name stick.” She nodded, searching Lidia’s tired eyes. “I can understand that.”
Lidia looked down at the coffee. Smoke came off the top in a veil, as if it were trying to hide something underneath. She had a sudden desire to tell this stranger everything she couldn’t tell anyone else.
“I fell asleep. We were having a picnic. I didn’t think …” Fat tears rolled down her cheeks. “I’m sorry.” She laughed once, a hiccup, and settled back into the crying.
“Shhh, now.” Alta stepped closer and patted her on the arm.
“I’ve just been so tired is all.”
“It’s hard,” Alta said, still patting her in long, gentle strokes, the way she had the cottontail rabbit. “Being a wife and a mother. And you so young. I know it’s hard.”
“I shouldn’t have fallen asleep, though. Something could have happened to him.”
“Something’s always going to happen to people. Good and bad. You’re trying your best, I can see that. But you can’t always keep things from happening. Sometimes they just do.”
Lidia tipped her head up, slow enough not to discourage Alta’s motherly hand. Now that even her mother-in-law was gone — died the year before of heart failure — this stranger was the closest thing she had. She sniffed and used the handkerchief to wipe her eyes. Then she took a long sip of coffee. “Do you know what time it is?”
Alta turned her wrist and checked her watch. “It’s almost three o’clock.” She glanced at the sky. “Hard to tell on a day like this.”
Lidia gasped. “I didn’t mean to be out so long. I have to go get dinner started. I haven’t done a thing.”
Alta laughed. “I remember feeling like that back when. Always having to be on somebody else’s time.”
She shook her head. “Danny doesn’t demand anything. He’s good to me.”
Alta looked at her with a sad sort of smile. “I believe it.” Then she stood up straight and took a deep breath. “Does Danny like cabbage rolls?” Before Lidia could answer, Alta winked and lifted an index finger, then dis
appeared behind the slam of the screen door.
Gabriel chased the little rabbit around the porch, crouching down each time it stopped, mimicking its twitching nose and occasionally reaching out to stroke its fur. Lidia watched from the rocking chair and felt both very old and very young. She couldn’t decide if she should get down and play with Gabriel, or let herself into the cabin and offer to help this utter stranger. Her kitchen clanging and tapping clearly meant that she was dividing her dinner to send with Lidia back down the mountain.
Alta returned a few minutes later with a full sack. “I always make too much food. Old habits. It’s nice to be able to share it.”
Lidia stood. “How can I thank you for this?” She lifted her palm toward her son. “For …” She closed her eyes and shook her head.
“You just come back for a visit, that’s how. I don’t get a lot of visitors and I’d be happy to have some company.”
Lidia nodded and tried to smile.
“You’ve had a time of it today,” Alta said. “There’s cabbage rolls here, and some asparagus from my garden. Now where exactly did you leave your picnic things? I’ll walk you back and help you get situated.”
Lidia reached out to take the sack, but Alta waved her off. “You take the baby. I’ll carry this.”
“Gabriel, it’s time to go,” Lidia said. Gabriel must have heard the reluctance in her voice, for he didn’t even lift his head in response. Lidia and Alta stood side by side, looking down at him. Neither of them seemed too hurried to force the issue either. After a moment, she leaned toward Gabriel and said, “You know, I think I might set that rabbit up here for a pet if it’ll have me. Then you’ll have something to play with when your mama brings you up the hollow to see us.”
Gabriel looked up at her and said, “I’ll come back.”
“I know you will, sweet boy.”
They gathered themselves and their things and set off down the path toward the stream. Without ado, Alta stopped and picked up the margarine container and tapped out the last bit of earth into the dirt. She lidded it and put it into the sack and then found Gabriel’s pole and gathered it as well.
Lidia led her silently to the blanket and basket and Alta lost no time in setting things to right. As she transferred the covered dishes from the sack to Lidia’s empty basket, she said, “This asparagus in here. I’ve been growing it now almost twenty years. It’s fresh cut so you just steam it and add some butter. You’ve never tasted anything so good. These cabbage rolls just need some reheating.”
Lidia turned to Alta in the falling light. “Thank you,” she said. And Alta, who hadn’t had a human embrace in longer than she cared to remember, brought her close and said, “You bring that gorgeous boy back to see me, hear?”
And Lidia nodded against Alta’s shoulder. “I will.”
Then she took Gabriel’s hand in one of hers and the full basket in the other and gave Alta a smile, bigger than any she’d managed all day, and turned down mountain toward the unbeaten path.
December 15, 1967
Lidia did return to Alta’s cabin with Gabriel, tentatively and with a fistful of wild onions and calico asters the first time, then again and again until their visits were frequent enough for Alta to pull down some of Abel’s childhood toys and keep them in the living room for Gabriel to play with.
On this cold day, Lidia bundled Gabriel into his warmest clothes and wrapped his head with a soft wool scarf that had belonged to her mother-in-law, until only his eyes and nose were uncovered. Then she walked him, hand in hand, down their street and across the tracks and up the hill toward Whisper Hollow, where Alta would welcome them with mugs of hot chocolate and tea.
“Oh, it’s a cold one!” Alta swung the door wide in spite of it, allowing a flurry of snow to enter along with Lidia and Gabriel. She bent at the waist and pushed Gabriel’s scarf back and pressed her cheek to his. “You’re like an icicle! Come get warm.” He wrapped his arms around her, mid-thigh.
“Hi, Mimi,” he said. He’d given her the name on their second visit, when they’d reintroduced themselves with polite details of belonging and heritage. “Mrs. Pulaski” was hard even for an articulate two-year-old like Gabriel to say, so he mispronounced it a few frustrating times until he resigned himself to a mightily abbreviated version that brought Alta nearly to tears and ruined any pretense of formality among them.
Meanwhile, Lidia slipped off her boots and, once Gabriel let Alta go, went to find his box of toys. She gave Alta a quick hug and then hotfooted it over to the couch across from the fireplace, where she spread an afghan over her legs. “Don’t make a mess, Gabe,” she said.
Alta called out a second later from the kitchen, “No, you go on ahead and make one, Gabriel. Your mother knows I don’t mind.” She came back into the room with a wink at Lidia and two full cups. Setting them both down on the coffee table, she turned the handles out so that each of them — Lidia and Gabriel — could easily reach over and pick their own up.
“Thank you,” Lidia said with chattering teeth. “How’d you do that so fast?”
“I heard you all coming a mile away. Voices carry better when it’s snowing. Like church bells at Christmas.”
Lidia blew the steam off her tea. Alta always put in a tiny bit of nutmeg and milk, and it was the only way Lidia would drink it now.
“Lidia, you don’t mind me telling you,” Alta said, sitting down. “But that child doesn’t need as much worry as you give him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I can hear you clear down the mountain telling him to watch his step and to be careful of this or that. I know you had a scare, but you don’t need to fuss all over him. He’s a smart boy. He’ll do fine.”
Lidia took a sip of tea and set it down on the table. Then she sighed and slumped down into the seam of the couch and pulled the afghan up higher. Gabriel was dumping pieces from two different puzzles out on the braided rug next to her.
“I can’t help it.”
Alta reached over and patted her on the shin. “You’re a good mother. I know how much you love him. How much you want to protect him.”
Lidia rested her eyes on her son and slowly nodded.
“My Abel was a smart boy, too,” she said. “Much as I loved him — love him — he was nothing like Gabriel. The way his mind works, the way he talks.” She jutted her sharp chin toward Gabriel. “That one’s really special.”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said before,” Lidia said. “But I don’t know. I don’t know if I can send him to that early school. My mama kept us home. She taught us herself as long as she could.”
Alta nodded. “It’s hard to let your babies go.”
“No,” Lidia said. “I mean, yes. That would be hard. But I don’t mean so much that as …” She lifted a finger to her teeth to work a hangnail. “I mean, it’s because he’s so …” She lowered her voice. “Different.”
Alta glanced at Gabriel, who was picking pieces out of a jumble and building a picture of a Union Pacific train coming around a mountain bend, without the benefit of a picture to go by. If he was aware of them talking about him, he made no indication.
“I won’t deny it,” Alta finally said.
“So what should I do?”
“You’ve got some time yet,” she said. “You’ll know.”
The snow fell, the fire burned, the tea cooled, the shiny black diesel locomotive materialized on the rug. Lidia breathed deeply and roamed her eyes around the now-familiar cabin. They lighted upon a small watercolor in a corner that she hadn’t noticed before.
It was of a willow tree bending toward a stream. Its bark was thick and even, its tendriled branches like yellow hair. It looked strong but somehow defeated, the way it dropped its leaves into the water, as though it was being pushed too hard by the wind and succumbing to the earth and stream below.
“Did you paint that?” Lidia asked after staring at it for a full minute or longer.
Alta nodded. “Seventeen years ago. Not
long after I lost … my love.” She looked at the painting with a slight squint, as though wincing. “I don’t mind telling you,” she said. “That’s the best self-portrait I ever did.”
Lidia looked at her, expectant.
“Willows grow strong and fast, and can absorb standing water like other trees can’t. But when they begin to die, they decay from the inside out. Looking at one, you can’t even tell if it’s gone to rot.” She shook her head and looked back at the painting.
Lidia said nothing but just sat alongside Alta in the comfortable quiet that followed, wondering what memories played behind her closed eyes, inexplicably certain that someday she would know. She had the sudden urge to confess to her the truth about Gabriel and Eagan and her constant, lonesome worry — of discovery, of her son’s monstrous conception, of his unsettling seriousness and mysterious commentaries — that manifested as a blend of nightmares and insomnia, leaving circles too dark for her young eyes.
She knew right then that if — if — she ever decided to tell anyone, she could tell Alta. But in the silent meantime, she tucked her legs up, closed her eyes, and waited.
October 27, 1968
Gabriel crouched on fat legs to help Lidia wrap tinfoil around a box that would be his Lunar Orbiter 5 costume.
“I’ll crash on the moon.”
“Of course you will.”
“I saw the moon before.”
“You did?”
Gabriel nodded.
“When did you see the moon?”
He grinned. “Yesterday night.”
Lidia let out a breath. Such questions asked of or by her three-year-old weren’t always so easily answered. Where he came from, why the sky was blue, who made up the alphabet, how fast someone can run, why people blink, how ducks can fly … They were endless, the questions. Lidia realized how little she knew, even though she’d been a diligent student — excellent, they’d called her. The simplest questions were forgotten amid the complex. How to hide the biologic manifestation of an incestuous rape, what to do with a feeble older brother, what to say to an awkward widower father, how to hide from her child-husband the somnambulistic terrors that sent her mind reeling back to the tile floor of her childhood bathroom.
