by Pamela Morsi
Vern nodded.
“But our life is so good,” Sonny said. “It’s so good, I feel guilty about it. I feel desperate to hang on to it. I don’t want anything to affect it.”
“I know,” his father told him. “I’ve been there. I’ve been exactly where you are.”
“And?”
“It’s a golden time,” Vern said. “There are blocks in every life that are that way.”
“How can I keep it this way?”
“You can’t,” Vern told him. “You’ve got to enjoy it while it’s happening. Try not to rush through it or waste it. But you can’t cling to it, either. If you cling to it, the gold turns to ashes and you’ve got nothing to hold on to.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes,” Vern told him. “When you were here with us, our boy, almost grown, almost a man, you were everything that we wanted in a son. You were our life and we were so proud.” He smiled as if just the memory evoked pleasure for him. “Phrona and I were living that golden time. Can you imagine now how she felt when Dawn, an outsider, tried to come and steal it from her?”
Sonny hesitated a moment, thinking, remembering.
“Is that what it was like?” he asked.
“Yes, that was it exactly,” Vern said. “I know it looked as if she was a snob about Dawn’s background. That she was unwelcoming and unfair. But Phrona was just trying to hang on to her golden time. And that insistence could have easily separated her from you and your family indefinitely.”
Sonny nodded thoughtfully.
“So what do we do?” he asked.
“You enjoy life as it comes,” Vern said. “You have to recognize that everything is temporary, but have confidence that ultimately it comes around again.”
It was good advice.
Shortly after that conversation, Dawn and Sonny had Paul and Tonya over for a backyard barbeque. Paul was still with the company. He’d gotten a couple of great promotions and now had lots of responsibility and was making fabulous money.
Their son was an active toddler and Tonya was pregnant again. She sat in a lawn chair, making jokes about walking blimps and swallowing basketballs. Sierra and Dakota, both feeling like little mothers at age nine and ten, entertained the curly-haired two year old.
The kids were having a great time, fully occupied with each other. The talk among the adults was lighthearted and family oriented. Tonya finally called her husband to task.
“Paul,” she said. “Are you going to show Sonny the drawings that you brought or are you planning to chicken out?”
Her husband flushed slightly.
“What drawings?” Sonny asked him.
Paul hesitated for only a moment, glancing at his wife. “You know that accident a few months ago where the guy was killed when the feller buncher tipped over on the steep grade?”
Sonny nodded. “Prescott Ornsby,” he said. “The guy was a loudmouth, not always the most popular man at the logging site. But his ex-wife depended on his child support for three kids.”
“I was at a site not that far away,” Paul said. “As a company administrator, they paged me and had me go over to the accident scene to represent management.”
“That’s good,” Sonny said. “I think it helps everybody if top brass doesn’t pretend that nothing is happening.”
“Yeah,” Paul said. “It was my first experience with anything like that. And I have to say, it affected me.”
Sonny nodded.
“I came home that night and I talked to Tonya about it,” he said. “And she talked about her father and her family’s experience.” He paused. “It was good to talk, but I couldn’t quite get the memory of it out of my mind. I’m a engineer, really. I can do the corporate thing, but I think about things in terms of mechanisms.”
“Yeah.”
“I kept thinking about the accident and I came up with an idea for a better stabilizing system for the feller buncher,” he said.
Sonny eye’s widened and his mouth broadened into a smile. “That’s great!”
“I thought so, too,” he said. “But I couldn’t get anybody at the company interested in it. I thought they could take it, get a team to work on it, maybe present it to the equipment company as something we’d like to have added to our machines.”
“I don’t think it will go that way,” Sonny said.
“It hasn’t,” Paul admitted. “I couldn’t generate even a wisp of interest in anybody.”
“They won’t want to add more cost to their equipment,” Sonny said. “Even if it theoretically would save lives, it wouldn’t be proven and it would hurt the bottom line.”
“But I think it would work better,” Paul said.
“Then you’ve got to sell it to the equipment company and let them sell it to the users,” Sonny said.
“Why would the equipment company want to retool and make their old equipment obsolete?” Paul asked.
“They won’t,” Sonny told him. “Innovation isn’t easy. But if we can show that the technology is safer, we can get affected groups to insist upon implementing it.”
“You mean like the union,” he said.
Sonny nodded. “The union, the insurers of the company, the insurers of the equipment makers. If you build a better mousetrap and you refuse to use it because of cost concerns, then your culpability, if overrun by mice, goes way up.”
The two men spent the next hours with the draft drawing spread out on the dining room table. Tonya and Dawn ended up cooking the hot dogs and burgers. The guys could barely be bothered to eat.
“I knew it was going to be like this,” Tonya said as she handed Sonny a juicy burger on a bun. “I knew if you guys started talking about it, Dawn and I would finally get some time to ourselves.”
They all laughed at her joke. The guys tried to be a bit more sociable, but were ultimately given permission to talk shop.
By the end of the evening, Sonny had agreed to try to help Paul get some of the connections he’d need to build the new stabilizer and check it out.
“So are you and Paul now in business together?” Dawn asked as they crawled into bed that night.
Sonny’s mind was still in a whirl, going in a hundred different directions. Paul’s drawings, in their way, presented the newest, most exciting challenge he’d faced since he’d given up his forestry career to work for the union.
“I guess we are,” he said. “Don’t get your hopes up, Dawn. Things that work on paper don’t always work in the real world. And there are lots of hurdles before this thing has even a chance of becoming a staple of logging machinery.”
Dawn laughed. “I don’t care if it works or doesn’t work,” she said. “I’m just happy to see you doing something new and exciting. It’s good to have you thinking about something that might really make a difference instead of constantly having to plow into paperwork and politics.”
She was right about that. It did seem good.
REAL LIFE
33
School started that year as it had every other year. New place, new people, new problems to overcome. I had started so many new schools, faced so many new teachers and classmates, I could hardly even work up a sweat about it anymore. I made a point of joining the Science Club. I knew that’s where I’d find any geeky friends I might make. And I tried not to get too comfortable in my classes. I knew as soon as my records from my former schools showed up, I’d probably be moved to a Gifted and Talented curriculum.
Del took Spence and me to school and picked us up. That really was kind of cool. I’d had my mom’s boyfriends around before. But I’d never wanted any of them to be mistaken for my dad.
Of course, there were kids who thought that Spence was my little brother. But that wasn’t so bad, either. I’d decided that he was really all right for a guy so young. At school there was almost no opportunity to see each other. We had different classes, different lunches, different areas of the building. And after school it was easy for me to hang with him, even if he was a s
ixth grader.
For one thing, Spence had his own issues. He’d gone to Dogwood Elementary, in his mom’s neighborhood. All his school friends were going to middle school over there. But he was at Whittle Springs with me.
“It’s not like I’m a problem to Mom and Wiktor,” he told me. “I’m really helpful there. And when the baby comes, I could be even more helpful.”
I nodded, sure that it was true.
“Your dad is really cool, Spence,” I told him. “Why don’t you want to stay with him?”
“I do,” he said. “I do want to stay with him. But not because I can’t stay with my mom.”
We were waiting at the curb as the long line of cars took turns parking in the loading zone to pick up kids.
“That sounds like some kind of messed-up control thing,” I told him. “Your mom is doing what she thinks is best. Like it or not, it’s what’s going on in your life. You’ve just got to deal.”
“I know, I know,” he said, sighing. “I am being weird, but I can’t seem to help it.”
“Are you unhappy?”
He shook his head. “Not really, I like being with my dad. I’m glad I’m over here. It’s great having a best friend next door.”
“Hey, thanks,” I told him.
“I just wish I had more say in what happens,” Spence said. “It’s my life and I don’t get much input.”
I was sympathetic. “I used to feel the same way about my mom,” I told him. “I’d just be getting settled and comfortable and then one day, without so much as a whaddayathink, I’d come home to find that we were absolutely out of there and moving on.”
“It’s crappy being a kid,” Spence said.
I shrugged. “I think it’s not so different for the adults, either,” I told him. “It’s not like they’re really in control of anything. Stuff happens to them that they don’t want or expect. My dad got killed. My mom got cancer. They didn’t pick those things.”
“My parents picked divorce,” Spence said.
“Do you really think so? You said they fought all the time.”
He nodded. “Yeah, they did.”
“So maybe they couldn’t do anything else,” I said. “Do you wish that the divorce never happened?”
“Of course I wish that,” Spence said adamantly and then backed off. “I also like Wiktor and I see how happy he and my mom are. And Dad’s free to do the work he likes without having to worry about buying some huge, expensive house or paying for a country club membership. I like how things have turned out, but I can’t help wishing it was that other life, as well.”
Del’s car pulled up to a stop and we grabbed our book bags and headed for it.
Spence shook his head and sighed heavily. “I’m just confused,” he told me.
I understood that. I was confused myself.
Mom had started her volunteer training for CAVA. Her plan was to ride back and forth to the downtown office on the city bus with Sierra. That was a good plan. Except Sierra didn’t want to do it quite that way. She wanted to take the bus over to Seth’s neighborhood, so they could ride to school together. That added a full half hour to the trip. And a half hour was a lot for Mom.
She talked Sierra into sacrificing the morning ride. Mom was going to do the afternoon on her own.
Vern didn’t like Mom traveling on her own so he picked her up in the afternoons. He really wanted Mom to succeed at this. He thought it was important. I wasn’t so sure. What difference did it make if she did a job that nobody paid her for?
Vern and Phrona really encouraged her. So I figured they understood something about it that I didn’t.
Anyway, I could see that it was good for Mom having someplace to go every morning. I could also see that she didn’t always feel quite up to it, but she went anyway.
She also continued to see Del. He took her out on a date nearly every weekend. And he came over to see her several nights a week. They’d sit on the porch or the patio and talk about nothing. Spence and I put the Nature Sounds Receiver on them several times, but it was never anything worth listening to. He talked about his job and she talked about CAVA and occasionally they said something about one of us kids. But mostly it was more interesting for Spence and me to just talk to each other.
I got home in the afternoons before anyone else. I’d put my books up, change into some jeans and a T-shirt and usually do homework while the house was still quiet. Mostly Phrona was home. Sometimes she’d be puttering around the kitchen. Others she’d be tending her plants. But most usually, she’d be in her office doing genealogy.
After homework I’d sit out in the office and listen to her. She had so many stories. There was not a smidgeon of the American past that her family or the Leland family hadn’t had a part in. Her stories really brought my dry, old middle school history book to life. I’d never really been fascinated with history. It just seemed like a lot of reading, but now it was like I knew people who lived back then.
Mostly I just knew Lemuel and Essie. I kept searching for evidence of them, state after state.
It was the first chilly day of fall. Phrona had the heater on in the office. The room was small enough that it didn’t take that much to get the chill out of the air.
“I’m going to run into the kitchen a put on a big kettle of stew,” she told me. “And I’ll stir up some corn bread. Stew isn’t much good without corn bread. Do you want to come with me?” she asked.
I shook my head. I still wasn’t a great fan of kitchen duty. Phrona was really exacting and she knew how things ought to be done, but she never made me do any of the really boring work.
“I’m almost finished with the census records,” I told her. “I might as well get that done and then…well, at least we’ll know we were wrong about that.”
“Okay, then I’ll be back in a half hour,” she told me.
I had just turned my attention to looking through North Carolina records when the phone rang.
Phrona hadn’t had time to get to the house yet and when she didn’t pick it up, I did.
“Hello.”
“Oh, hello,” the voice said on the other end of the line. “This is Mildred.”
“Hi.”
“Is this Dakota?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And how are you doing, sweetie? How is school? Are you making friends?”
“Uh, well, I’m fine,” I answered. “School’s good. There’s lots of kids.”
“That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. What are you up to this afternoon?”
“I’m looking at some census records online,” I said.
“Oh, that is so dear,” Mildred said. “Your grandma told me that you were helping with her genealogy work.”
“Yeah.”
“So how is your mother? Is she still volunteering? How about that chemo? How many more of those treatments is she in for? Is your grandma there? I need to talk to her.”
Quickly I sorted through the questions. “My mom is still volunteering. I think she really likes it. She has another two months of chemo, and Phro…and my grandma just went back to the house,” I said. “Let me buzz her and she’ll pick up.”
I hit the little intercom button on the bottom of the phone. A second later, Phrona picked up.
“Hello.”
“It’s for you, Grandma,” I said.
I’d said the word for Mildred, really. It hadn’t been for me or for Phrona; it had been for some woman I hardly knew. Yet even after I hung up the phone the sound of my own voice sort of reverberated through my head like some delayed looper of the brain.
Grandma. Grandma. Grandma.
It was a fact of life. That’s all it was. Phrona Leland was a line on my family tree. She was my father’s mother. And whether I was unwilling to give her that title, filled as it was with all kinds of homey expectations and mushy cultural baggage, didn’t change it from being so.
I remembered a woman Mom worked with named Kelly. She had a daughter my age, but she had her little girl
call her by her first name. I’d asked Mom about it.
“It makes her feel younger.”
“I could call you Dawn,” I suggested.
She eyed me critically. “Not if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life in time-out,” she threatened.
“You don’t want to feel younger?”
“Feeling younger can’t even compare with how wonderful it feels to hear the word mother and know that it’s meant for me.”
I wondered if Phrona, my grandma, might have felt the same.
I finished North Carolina and was looking through the records for Kentucky. I was going to do it.
I was going to start calling her Grandma. All these people in these genealogy lines, they were all grandmas and grandpas, some of them with nine greats in front of that name.
I was going to do it, I decided. I was going to walk into the kitchen, while she was there cooking. There would be no one there but just her and me and I’d call her Grandma. If she didn’t like it, I’d know it right away and it would never happen again.
After a half hour, I marked Kentucky off my list. I was done. Lemuel and Essie were nowhere. I tried every state but Tennessee. I should try Tennessee, just to be able to say that I’d looked everywhere.
I pulled up those records, and like every other time, I put in the first of the names. Leland. It yielded hundreds of individuals, many of them I recognized from other parts of the family tree, but not one named Lemuel or Essie. The same with Clafford. Milbanks were even more numerous than the Lelands and Claffords. Finally I put in Medford, Essie’s maiden name. It was the last possible choice in the last possible state.
In bright blue letters the citation came up Medford, Lemuel C. Washington County, Jonesborough Township.
It had to be someone else, I quickly reminded myself. Medford was a common family name and Lemuel was typical of the times. There is no way that this could be my Essie and Lemuel, living less than a hundred miles from their families. Just two counties over from ruin and scandal.
