The Eves

by Grace Sammon

  By the way, I really enjoyed meeting you at the harvest. My mum was Italian and listening to you reminded me of her and so many of my relatives! Plus, my grandmother always used to say “what do you have to do” the way you do. I had forgotten that. Thanks for bringing up that memory.

  Please check with Tia on the schedule she’s set up. Hope to see you soon.

  –Jessica

  Hit [SEND].

  From: JMBarnet@google1.com

  To: SoniaCortezphd@Martinsburgcommunitycollege.edu, photobug@google1.com

  Subject: Thank you

  8:20 PM

  Hey Sonia and Erica,

  Erica, I haven’t had a chance to tell you how amazing your photos of the harvest are! Pretty impressive. Really moving. Thank you, more than you know, for sharing them. I’ve got the one of Joan’s empty chair over my desk. Yes, Erica, I figured that out.

  Sonia, you can see from the other E that things are in pretty good shape for next steps. Thank goodness Tobias has this “flow” attitude and Tia doesn’t seem all that into creating something specific. A lot less pressure. Thanks, lots, for this.

  Don’t feel you have to come to the Allison Beck meeting, but you are, of course, more than welcome.

  And, yes, I did find my dissertation files on my old laptop and yes, I’ve made an appointment with the Dean. If Erica wasn’t included in this email, I’d tell you what a pushy thing you are ☺. See you on our walk tomorrow. Erica, see you at dinner. Soon!

  Love,

  –Jessica

  Hit [SEND].

  From: JMBarnet@google1.com

  To: Cathryn8561@aol2.com, Adam8561@aol2.com

  Subject: I miss you

  Dearest Ryn and Adam…

  I stop typing and stare at my still hands on the keys. Thoughts, not words, spill over the screen.)

  I get up from my desk, “Whatda ya hafta do, eh, Gabler? Come on downstairs. I know, I know, I’ve kept you waiting a long time for dinner. We’re usually in the kitchen a lot earlier than this.”

  Down the hall, past their bedrooms, around the corner, down the stairs, past the closet. Roy’s taken the door off for sanding and refinishing. Memory chest visible on the floor. There’s progress on the roughed-in bathroom under the stairs. Gabler, ahead of me, meowing loudly for dinner. Pour vodka. Feed Gabler. Pour vodka.

  Opening the back door for some fresh air I see the “missing” recycling bins. Roy must have thought this is a far better place for them than the front porch. I make a note to ask Roy if he can replace the steps from the porch to the yard. I’ve thought they were too rickety for years. The way these houses are set on the property makes it so my first floor is actually a whole story above the yard. The basement opens to the yard. These kitchen steps go a long way down. Fixing them is a good idea. I also need to ask Roy if he knows a good landscaper. The rear yard is a bonus, but it really needs attention.

  It’s a fairly warm night. DC is so funny this way. You can have all four seasons in a single day at this time of year.

  “Hey, Gabler, after you are done, come back upstairs. I’ll be on the roof.” Pour vodka, go upstairs. In the office I grab the quilt from the back of the chair, open the window and crawl out on the roof above the porch. It’s not lost on me that this is not as easy for me to do as it once was.

  Leaning back into the room I grab my glass and pull the side chair over making it easier in case Gabler wants to hop up and come through and join me. It’s been years since I’ve been out here. Impossible not to remember the storytelling and the campouts or the time Adam decided to disobey a punishment, for what I can’t remember, and sneak out of the house from up here. I’m so lucky to have found this spot. Leaning against the wall of the house I take in the sounds of the traffic on 16th Street, people walking below, and music coming from somewhere over at Columbia Road. Big city, small town, cozy neighborhood. Safe. Still an escape.

  Gabler joins me, nestling against me for warmth. We sit quietly together. A gentle breeze is coming from the east. “No sounds from the zoo tonight, Gabler. We need a west wind for that.”

  Eventually, we go back in. I look at the computer screen. “Dear Ryn and Adam,”

  Hit [DELETE].

  the grange project

  T

  ia and CC have arranged a schedule that has me going first to the community college to meet Dr. Beck. In order to maximize time, I’ve taped four “notes for the ride” to the car’s dashboard.

  Allison Beck: focus on the link between the college and The Grange. Why did it start, what are the goals, how does she measure success, where does she see expansion?

  The Grange: Take tour with Tia and Tobias, get a sense of the sum of the parts. Ask to see the new construction, the cemetery, the cliffs, the sheep and llamas, the rest of the land. Listen to what they say as we tour. Be like Erica, make snapshots in your head.

  The Women: Get Deidre’s take on the wool project and Margaret Mary’s on the quilts. Besides Jan, is there anyone interested in doing the histories?

  (Elizabeth’s) Questions: What is your earliest memory? What do you remember from a story your mother or grandmother told you? What brought you the most joy? The most regret? What would you want your gravestone to say? Who is one person you would like to have a conversation with from your past? Are you religious—more so or less so than in your youth? Are you political—more so or less so than in your youth? What fills your days? What is most surprising about being your age? What would you say is your finest accomplishment? What do you want to leave behind when you die? Do you have children? [Note to self: What’s going on with Elizabeth and her urgency for me to do this project and capture these stories?]

  I’m hoping they don’t want to talk too much about their children and focus more on their mothers, but I am thinking that the importance of the story here is what gets said and what gets listened to between mothers and children. While it sounds wrong in my head to think of them as accomplishments, I’d certainly count giving Adam and Ryn to this earth as the best thing I’ve done, so, I better be ready for the women’s responses.

  I’m still mulling all of this as I near Martinsburg and The Grange. The little market is there on the right. I decide to stop for coffee before heading the few miles down the road to the college. Like the house up the hill, there is a core of an original building with additions. It still has post boxes for a few residents, but the community college’s post office has largely taken over for this area. The front porch is worn and echoes footsteps from long ago. I like how the old bell, displaced as you open the door, peals as it must have for generations, announcing arrivals and departures.

  Inside the market is lit with dust-filled, slanty sunlight coming through the small windows. Light operetta music plays in the background. There are two college-aged students behind the counter absorbed in texting, or tweeting, or Insta-something. However, both manage a, “Good morning” and, “Can we help you?”

  “Just looking around for a bit, I’m going to grab some coffee now, that OK?” They are already reabsorbed as I look around. There are the expected things, coffee, water, sodas, and cigarettes. Newspapers: Calvert County Times, St. Mary’s Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today. An assortment of snacks, various and sundry items, not quite a general store. And the unexpected ones—beautiful skeins of wool, dyed in rich colors like cranberry, blueberry, onion, and pea. There’s both lamb and llama wool. There is produce—fresh, canned, and dried. The wool, and most of the produce, has “The Grange” label on them.

  Neat.

  The music switches from operetta to opera and back again on a playlist loop of some kind. I pick up a jar of the dried beans with a soup recipe attached, refill my coffee, and head to the register. There is a large quilt hanging on the wall behind the counter. Although it’s asymmetrical in design it has a distinct pattern. Rt. 4 runs from the top to bottom of the quilt. The fields, house, cliffs, and Chesapeake Bay are off to the right. This market, then more fi
elds, and what I think is the Patuxent River sit at the far-left edge. The stitched words “Mikado Mercado” circle the store in the same Palmer penmanship hand I recognize from Joan’s frames. Along the bottom, in a different hand, it says “you are here.”

  “Great quilt,” I say to the kids at the counter. “Surprised at your choice of the opera music.”

  “Oh, Dr. Tobias asks us to play it until at least eleven. Most of the oldies have come through by that time. Plus, he says that a place with a name like this should be playing all Gilbert and Sullivan. You notice the name on the quilt? Two of the oldies made that when they changed the name two years ago. Kind of a cool name too. The Thatchers had a contest for the name change. A Spanish lady from the community college put this one out there. Mikado because it seemed every time she came in that operetta was playing and ‘Mercado,’ the Spanish for market. She said the Mikado would drive her nuts and she’d wind up singing it the rest of the day.”

  I pay with my credit card and use my finger to sign the screen when asked. Ha, fingeriture, they called it. A finger signature, who knew? The technology is a stark contrast to the circa 1900 National Cash Register machine alongside it.

  Getting in the car I look up at the Mikado Mercado sign.

  Sonia. Ubiquitous Sonia.

  Martinsburg Community College sits just back from the road and is a large sprawling campus. Like most colleges of this type, it’s become increasingly important to the community. State universities, like Maryland, are harder and harder to get into and frequently require getting a two-year academic base at an institution like this before entering a full college or university. Many of my own students have come through Martinsburg, too. Driving by some of the buildings it’s clear that the trades are also well represented. The automotive, HV/AC, horticulture, and health science buildings are clearly labeled. The main campus building holds the student center and all the student services. The Dean’s wing is off to the left. I pass Sonia’s office, door closed. It’s okay that she can’t make the meeting.

  The door to Dr. Allison Beck’s office is ajar. Tapping lightly, I open the door to two people standing close together behind the desk, looking out the window. The sense that I’ve interrupted something immediately dissipates as they turn to me with broad welcoming smiles.

  Allison is a tall, big woman. Big, but not heavy, very fit-looking. Irish-Middle European complexion, reddish gold hair, about my age, maybe younger. The Black man, I learn, is Officer Gene Martin, Director of Campus Security. He is, by every measure, perhaps the most stunningly handsome man I have ever seen, distractingly so. Young Denzel Washington in-the-flesh beautiful.

  With ready smiles and quick handshakes, they come out from behind the desk. We quickly introduce ourselves. Gene leaves abruptly.

  Despite his speedy exit I still have the sense these are both people you like instantly. I’ve always marveled at that instant likability some people have. How do they do it—make you feel both instantly at-ease and eager to spend more time with them?

  “Oh my, he’s stunning.” I blurt out, embarrassed that I started on such a superficial level. “I’m sorry if I interrupted.”

  “Not at all, Gene is a very attractive man. He gives me regular reports on campus security and identifies students with specific problems who need special attention. He’s a pretty amazing guy. I’ll be very sad when he leaves us for a new job in the coming year.

  “Come in and sit down. I’m so excited that you are going to be working with all of us. Sonia talks about you all the time. You are going to be a great addition to the team!”

  I didn’t know it was a “team” and Sonia talk about me “all the time”? She’s barely mentioned Allison to me other than she helps connect students up to Sonia’s projects. Odd.

  I lay out my series of college-related questions for Allison, and she fills me in on the goals of the community service involvement. As she talks, I take in the neat and orderly office, multiple Post-It-Notes on a calendar board, and a display case filled with Baltimore Ravens paraphernalia. Allison begins.

  “It started as a simple collaboration with Sonia. She needed to create some special projects for the American Studies major. I knew about the Thatchers through Gene. It was an easy match. You probably didn’t notice Gene’s last name, ‘Martin.’ He can date his family back generations to when Samuel Martin, the largest land and slave owner in the area, bedded one of his slaves, producing Gene’s bloodline. It happened all the time, of course. With the exception of Gene and his two nephews, all the original Martins have moved on leaving Gene’s family as representative of Martinsburg’s heritage. His and Tobias’ family go back to that time.

  “Do you follow football? Gene played a short while for the Ravens before an injury sidelined him. Anyway, he and Tobias have an arrangement about the Martins’ use and leasing of acres from The Grange. He helps out up there often—he helped bury Tobias’ wife, Joan, last month.” She seems wistful.

  “Back to how this all started. What we noticed in the first project was how energized the students were when they got to apply what they learned in real-life situations. We also saw that when we identified students at risk of failing or of getting into trouble, the experiences, including the simple exposure to a set of ‘other mothers’ really seemed to make a difference. You probably know what it’s like, how you can tell your own children one thing a dozen times and they don’t hear it or do it. Then suddenly someone else says the same thing and it’s brilliant!”

  I groan silently as she continues.

  “So, I just started expanding the projects and the experiences. Sonia thinks I’m bossy. I tell her I just have better ideas!”

  She says this so easily, and with such mirth, and with the absolute conviction that she is right.

  “I really got focused when I read a USA Today article about regrets and aging. Reading the headline, I anticipated that as we age, we regret the loss of our looks, mobility, friends dying, and things like that. I was dead wrong. What the article pointed out was that the regrets were not current. Older Americans mourn events that are decades old. They regret a road not taken, a talent not followed, a missed chance, a relationship that wasn’t fixed. Older Americans want peace of mind more than anything else. Sure, they worry about the other things too, and they worry about money and family. But most older Americans reported that it was the old regrets that mattered.

  “I thought, if I can provide an array of experiences to the students, they can make better choices. I’m thinking, better choices, fewer regrets. It’s reverse engineering in a way. I want our young students to turn into content old people.

  “I went to Sonia and told her that I thought it would help the oldies at The Grange if we started getting more students involved up there. I think that is the first time she told me I was ‘bossy.’ I knew it really was a good idea. The USA Today article went on to say that if, as we age, we fill our lives with purpose and meaning, we have less time to ruminate about the past and are more satisfied in the present. That seemed pretty straightforward.

  “Mostly, I want to be connected to The Grange because I like the spirit of the place. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not interested in taking my place among the oldies, not yet anyway, but with my own parents gone I find myself surprised that I like the sense of having these older adults in my life. I’ve asked myself whether it’s because it makes me feel younger to be around the oldies, staving off my own aging, or because I like the people and a sense of history. I think it’s both.

  “My husband, Malcolm, and another contractor are doing most of the work on the new house. Have you seen it yet? It’s splendid. I’ll be over there this afternoon picking him up. If you haven’t seen it yet we’ll give you the grand tour.”

  We finish up with some data points about the number of students involved over time and a promise to see each other this afternoon.

  Sitting in the car I make some notes about first impressions and open questions. I can’t dec
ide if this is becoming more simple or more complex as I learn the ever-expanding cast of characters. Regardless, I’m sure there’s a complex story here, and I’m pretty sure I’m not on anyone’s team.

  jan

  “G

  oing with the flow” happens rather immediately. I get to The Grange House and there is no general meeting or gathering as planned. In fact, it appears no one is home with the exception of Jan. Sleeves rolled up, I see the start of the tattoos Elizabeth alluded to when we first met. They are intricate and mono-chromatic against her brown skin. Symbols and totems I don’t understand run up and around her arms. She’s in the kitchen, singing with, what can only be described as, “wild abandon.” Dolly Parton’s “Travellin’ Through” accompanies her. The smells coming from the bubbling pots, nothing short of amazing.

  “Good morning, child, come right in!”

  We’ve barely met, and I am her “child.” I recognize that it’s a customary, colloquial statement in the Black community, but still, I’m mindful of it. It feels kind.

  “I went over your questions and think they are a good start. After losing Joan I’ve been giving these kinds of questions a lot of thought. Can you hand me one of those spoons?”

  As I approach the pottery jar crammed with wooden spoons, I ask if she thinks they have enough of them.

  “Now, that’s an interesting question and there’s an interesting answer. It seems, in deciding what to bring with them to live here, most of the women brought their wooden spoons. Lots of them were their mother’s or their aunt’s. The olla is something I gave Joan years ago. It’s an antique from the Hopi pueblo in Arizona. I worried that it would break. But Joan insisted that these jars were made to be used. I love all the spoons crammed in, multiple cultures and cooking histories jumbled together. Imagine how many meals were made with these, how many mothers’ hands held them. What stories they could tell!”