After River

by Donna Milner

  But it was his eyes that held me. His eyes were the colour of a blue-green ocean, an ocean I had seen only in my imagination. When he blinked, they closed and opened slowly, almost as if the thick, surprisingly dark, eyelashes were too heavy for his lids. I later heard Mom describe those eyes, saying he had lashes that ‘most women would kill for.’

  ‘Bedroom eyes,’ our neighbour, old Ma Cooper, would snort after she met him.

  The stranger smiled as Mom opened the gate, a smile that crinkled into premature crow’s feet around those aquamarine eyes. He set his guitar case down, shrugged the canvas bag from his shoulder, then held his hand out. ‘Good afternoon, ma’am,’ he said, the ‘a’ in ma’am stretching out with a hint of a drawl.

  ‘Nettie,’ Mom smiled back and took his hand. ‘You can call me Nettie.’

  ‘Nettie,’ he repeated. Her name slipped from his lips and into the air between us. It came as so much more than a word. It came soft and warm, a musical note.

  ‘And you must be Richard Jordan,’ Mom said, her hand still resting in his.

  ‘River,’ he said. ‘My friends call me River.’

  Listening to his voice I knew. I knew right then why my mother had hired him sight unseen. His voice was his recommendation. His voice was hypnotic, mesmerizing, as soothing as a familiar melody.

  ‘River,’ Mom repeated. ‘I’m happy to meet you.’ She let go of his hand then turned to me, ‘And this is my daughter, Nat.’

  ‘Natalie,’ I corrected her. I wanted to hear him say my whole name. I wanted it to last as long as it could. I wanted to hear it slide from his tongue, onto his lips, and caress my ear the way my mother’s name had. I wanted to take it in and keep it in my memory.

  He held out his hand to me. ‘Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Natalie,’ he said.

  And my name fell flat into the still air, thudded, and was gone. No magic, no music, just vowels and consonants. Three flat syllables. Nothing more.

  He captured my hand in a firm grasp, where it went limp from the heat of this stranger’s skin. I stood there frozen, tongue-tied, suddenly feeling conscious of my childish ponytail, my jeans and loose T-shirt, and my tomboyish looks, of which up until that moment I had been proud. I jerked my hand away and held it behind my back.

  My mother hurried to fill the silence. ‘Well, now,’ she said. ‘Well, River, come with me and I’ll show you your room above the dairy. You can get settled, put your things away, then come back to the house for something to eat.’ Mom’s sure-fire solution to everything; fill their bellies and get to know them while they’re off-guard.

  River picked up his bags and together they headed to the dairy. Buddy followed at their heels, his tail wagging. As they passed the rose arbour I heard River say, ‘That’s a beautiful garden you have there, ma’am.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Did you know that Jacqueline Kennedy had a rose garden when she was in the White House?’

  ‘I’ll bet she never had to prune it,’ my mother replied with a laugh.

  Pruning that garden was always an ordeal for Mom. Once a week, from spring to fall, she put on Dad’s oilskin mackinaw, leather gloves, and rubber boots. Then she attacked those rose bushes with the vengeance of a warrior. Still, the angry thorns found their way through her armour, leaving tiny tell-tale streaks of blood on her delicate skin.

  I often wondered what it was she thought about while she hacked away, muttering under her breath, and arguing with the bushes as if she expected them to talk back.

  ‘Roses, Natalie,’ she once stated after emerging from another losing battle, ‘are highly overrated flowers.’

  That afternoon I watched as my mother and the stranger strolled past the rose garden. An unexpected breeze carried the fragrance of the blossoms through the heat-thickened air. I stood by the gate feeling forgotten, excluded, shut out of whatever it was that made my mother laugh.

  As they made their way across the farmyard, it struck me that something about these two together looked familiar. And then I realized that, from behind, River resembled Boyer. The hair colour, the carriage, seemed similar to my brother’s. Boyer in hippie clothes. The thought made me smile.

  Walking along beside River, Mom looked like a young girl, her hips swaying with a lilt I had never noticed before. For the first time in my life, I resented my body, my inheritance of my father’s frame and blunt features. For the first time I felt something for my mother other than adoration.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘WE WEREN’T POOR,’ my mother often said about that time in our lives, ‘we just didn’t have any money.’

  Whenever we seemed to get a little ahead, according to her, my father went out and bought more cows or equipment. Still, the only thing I remember her complaining about back then was the lack of a ‘decent family photograph’.

  I keep the results of my father’s giving in to her lamentations in an old shoebox along with the stray snapshots that I keep promising myself I will someday put into an album.

  The family portrait was taken back in the sixties, by a travelling photographer. Every September or October, a large blue van, a mobile studio, showed up in the empty lot next to the Texaco station on Main Street. It drove Jeffrey Mann, the local photographer, crazy, to see people line up outside that van. Every year he would complain to anyone who would listen, how, ‘Those carpetbaggers come into town and pillage all my Christmas business.’

  One fall afternoon in 1965, the year before River arrived, my father returned from town and handed Mom a flyer. ‘What d’ya think, Nettie?’

  Mom took the glossy pamphlet and studied the prices. ‘Not bad,’ she mused. ‘They even have Christmas cards in these packages,’ she added wistfully. ‘But I just don’t feel right taking business away from Jeffrey.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be like we were taking business from him if we can’t afford it in the first place,’ my father said. I watched my mother struggle with the temptation of finally having a family portrait done.

  Two days later, under the cover of darkness, we stood outside the parked van, waiting our turn to sit in front of the blue-sky and fluffy-cloud backdrop. Afterward, Mom was plagued with guilt over her perceived betrayal. Whenever the Manns came out for a visit, she snatched the portrait from the piano top and stashed it in her bedroom. But the ‘chickens came home to roost’, as Mom’s friend, Ma Cooper was fond of saying, because my mother, not being a calculating woman, sent out her Christmas cards as usual that year. She was horrified to realize, after she had signed and mailed that year’s unique cards, that one for Jeffrey and June Mann had gone along with the rest of them.

  Everyone was dressed in their Sunday best for that photograph. Yet every time I look at it I can visualize a scorch mark on the back of Boyer’s shirt. And I remember how he found me standing at the ironing board in tears before we went into town that evening.

  ‘I burned your shirt,’ I wailed when he came into the kitchen after the milking. I couldn’t look at him. I wasn’t afraid Boyer would get angry. He was never angry with me. But I hated the thought of disappointing him, and I had just ruined his favourite shirt.

  ‘It’s just a shirt, Natalie,’ Boyer said gently, ‘it’s not worth your tears.’ He lifted my chin and smiled at me. ‘An old shirt could never be as important to me as my girl is.’ He handed me his handkerchief. ‘Besides,’ he added as he turned and picked up the scorched shirt, ‘they take the picture from the front.’

  Anyone looking at the finished portrait would smile at the hodgepodge of bodies that made up our family. We looked like we were thrown into a blender and came out in a menagerie of shapes and sizes. Mom and I sat on a bench with Dad and the three boys standing behind us. Boyer was twenty-two when the picture was taken. With his blond hair and blue eyes he was the only one of us who truly resembled Mom. Except for his height. He was six foot tall – two inches taller than Dad, who stood on his right.

  Dad was bluntly handsome. Like a rugged John Wayne, his looks only improved wi
th age and the inevitable map of laugh lines marking time on his sun-scorched skin. Morgan and I inherited his dark eyes and brown hair – ‘mouse-turd brown’, my father called it.

  Morgan stood on the other side of Dad with the same laughing eyes, widow’s peak and strong jaw. But unlike Dad, he was short and stocky. At seventeen Morgan was only five foot six. He would grow no taller. Carl was fifteen years old, all hands and feet that he had not finished growing into. As usual, he stood right beside Morgan, dwarfing his older brother. Carl was the anomaly, with his red hair and freckled skin, a throwback, Dad often teased him and Mom, to some married cousins on Mom’s side.

  How easily we all smiled for the camera. The smiles of a family who – though they knew no excess of money – were aware their lives were as rich and sweet as Mom’s freshly churned butter. I wonder if any of us has ever smiled that openly, that honestly since? Even Mom, who was camera-shy, and usually had to be coaxed to say ‘cheese’, smiled with a pride barely held in check.

  At fourteen, I was already a good two inches taller and probably fifteen pounds heavier than she was. Mom was five-foot two – oh, how she hated that song, or at least professed to. She was tiny, but not delicate. It was as if her small-boned body was made of steel. Gracefully strong is the only way I can describe her. She looked like good music should sound. Back then I’m sure I looked and moved like the proverbial ugly ducking, waddling under her mother’s beautiful wing.

  I wasn’t very old when I became aware of the fact I would never be beautiful, never turn heads the way my mother did. I grew up knowing that, unlike her, I would never be on the receiving end of appreciative glances from men, or the tight-lipped smiles of the women by their sides. It wasn’t until midway through my teenage years that I too began to covet my mother’s beauty. Not until after River. Up until that time I lived in the glow of hers. Even when others carelessly pointed out the difference.

  I believed I had grown immune to the shocked expressions that crossed people’s faces when they realized we were mother and daughter. But when Mom first introduced me to River on that summer day I was relieved to see no surprise, no hint of secretly comparing us, in those blue eyes. And I was grateful not to hear yet another rude comment about my lack of resemblance to my mother.

  The first time I overheard one of those thoughtless remarks I was seven years old. That winter I was chosen to recite a ballad at our school Christmas pageant. The poem about our town’s founding father, Daniel Atwood, was written by none other than my hero, Boyer Angus Ward. He coached me every evening for weeks before the concert.

  The first time I read the ballad I was sitting wrapped in a blanket at the makeshift desk in Boyer’s narrow attic room. ‘Won’t this make Mr Atwood angry?’ I asked. All I knew about the Atwood family was that they lived in a massive brick and stone house overlooking Main Street.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Boyer smiled at me from across his desk. ‘This is about the first Mr Atwood, old Daniel. Stanley Senior is his son and he’s nothing like his father. Stanley could be called a philanthropist.’ ‘Philanthropist?’

  ‘There’s your ten-penny word for the week,’ Boyer said and handed me his Webster’s Dictionary.

  The next day I took the ballad to school as my project for the concert rehearsal. When the teacher asked who had written it, I kept my promise to Boyer. I was pretty proud of that word too. Anonymous.

  Boyer and I rehearsed the verses so many times in his attic room that I could repeat them in my sleep. I still can. I know that the composition penned by a fifteen-year-old boy was not literary genius, but it was to me then and I felt a responsibility to do my brother’s words proud. The night of the concert I stood on the stage in the Atwood Elementary gymnasium-cum-auditorium and swallowed.

  Mom sat in the front row beaming at me as I waited to start. Beside her, my father winked and flashed me his white-toothed grin. Morgan and Carl sat in the back row making monkey faces. Nothing would have pleased them more than to see me trip over the words. But neither the silent jeers of my two brothers, nor having to repeat well-memorized words, would faze me. I focused on Boyer’s encouraging smile and began:

  ‘Oh, there are tales they tell at the Atwood Hotel,

  Between the card games and the chewing of snoose.

  And the stories go ‘round, how gold was first found,

  By Daniel Atwood, the Old Bull Moose.’

  I threw the words out into the air, directly to Boyer just the way he had taught me in his attic room. He nodded at each one as if he had caught it.

  His words flowed out of my mouth as easily as my mother’s hands danced across her piano keys.

  ‘The legends say Dan was a North Country man,

  And so big that they called him Bull Moose.

  From Alaska they say, old Dan ran away,

  To escape from the end of a noose.

  He arrived here by course on the back of a horse,

  And stopped to make camp in the cold.

  As Daniel stepped down on the harsh frozen ground

  He tripped on a huge nugget of gold.

  It took Dan no time to dig that first mine,

  Before long the first shaft was down.

  When the miners all came, old Dan had laid claim

  To the land for miles around.

  But he put them to work, just digging his dirt,

  And he started building this town.

  He built a sawmill and store, the hotel and more

  From the gold that came out of the ground.

  Oh, the miners went down, deep into the ground

  Why they did it I really can’t say

  Dan was generous, I hear, at Christmas each year,

  And gave them the day off without any pay.

  Old Bull Moose they say worked his whole life away

  Just hoarding each cent he could save

  Until he fell to the floor of his company store

  And became the richest man in a grave.

  Now Stanley’s the man, the son of old Dan,

  With his fortune he plays fast and loose.

  He still runs the old mine but spends most of his time

  Making up for the Old Bull Moose.

  So at Christmas this year, raise a glass of good cheer,

  For the gold that came out of the ground,

  And to Stan, who they say, now gives it all away,

  And to Old Bull Moose who founded this town.’

  When I was finished I couldn’t tell if the laughter that rippled beneath the applause was at the words, or me, but Boyer’s smile was enough.

  After the concert, the wise men in their father’s bathrobes, the angels with their tinselled halos, Christmas trees, stars, and sugarplums, waddled off the stage. I followed the flow to the back of the now brightly lit room where parents, teachers and performers milled among tables laden with cookies, cakes, and cups of punch. As I grabbed a paper plate I glanced up and saw Boyer at the back of the room by the exit doors talking to Mr Atwood and an auburnhaired boy about Boyer’s age whom I had never seen before. As I wove my way through the crowd towards them I heard my name. I was torn between the curiosity of what Mr Atwood thought of Boyer’s poem, and wondering why my name had been spoken. I peered over the heads of my classmates and spotted Mrs Royce, the wife of the pharmacist, talking to our neighbours, Ma Cooper and Widow Beckett.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Ma Cooper said. ‘That was Nettie Ward’s daughter.’ The bun at the back of her head, the size of a cantaloupe, bobbed up and down as she spoke. She was a huge woman, Ma was, the kind of woman who left a wake when she walked out of a room. The only dainty thing about her were her tiny hands and feet. I always thought her feet looked too small to carry her enormous bulk, but every Monday morning she, along with Widow Beckett, walked two miles out to our house.

  They looked like a female versions of Laurel and Hardy as they came up our road, Ma rolling along in her rocking gait while the willowy thin Widow hurried along beside her taking two steps to ea
ch single stride of Ma’s. These two were fixtures in our kitchen each Monday. Along with our laundry, as members of the Catholic Ladies Auxiliary, every week the three of them pressed and mended uniforms for the girls of Our Lady of Compassion.

  Although the sign over the oak gates leading to the building next to St Helena’s hospital read ‘School for Girls’, I had yet to see beyond the hedges that surrounded the grounds. And Ma Cooper’s many veiled comments only left me curious about the mysterious girls who lived in the dormitories.

  There wasn’t much going on in town that Ma didn’t seem to know about. And she brought all the local news into our kitchen each week. My father called the Monday ladies the ‘steam team’ because, as he said, ‘There’s a lot more steamy gossip going on in that kitchen than ironing.’

  Mom said it was usually just harmless talk. ‘What’s more interesting to talk about than people?’ she asked. But more than a few times I heard her challenge Ma Cooper on the accuracy of the latest rumours while she punched into dough rising in a porcelain tub so enormous she sank into it up to her elbows.

  Widow Beckett usually said very little, letting Ma Cooper keep her position as the authority on local goings-on. The widow was never far from her friend though, and could be counted on to agree and encourage her. And sure enough, after the Christmas recital, there she was, standing next to Ma Cooper, nodding at her friend’s words.

  ‘Nettie Ward’s, daughter? Really?’ Mrs Royce replied to Ma Cooper. ‘My, she certainly doesn’t look anything like her mother, does she?’

  Widow Beckett responded with a silent tsk-tsk shake of her head. I moved closer to them as Ma Cooper leaned in, and in a voice that was meant to be a whisper, but was not anywhere near to it, said, ‘Homely as a mud fence, that one.’ Then she straightened up and added with a strange note of pride in her voice, ‘But her teacher says she is brilliant.’

  Thanks to Boyer, and his penny words, at seven I already had a large vocabulary. I knew the meaning of lots of words, but ‘homely’ was not one I had come across. Still, I knew it could not be good when paired up with ‘mud fence’. I made my way to the back doors, but Boyer was gone. I stood up on my tiptoes and scanned the room. Suddenly Mom was beside me. ‘What is it, Nat?’ she asked.