A Father for Philip (2 page)

“Jeff and I,” she corrected, absently
wondering what the child psychologists would have to say about the name he had
chosen for his latest imaginary friend. Would it be that in having chosen one
which could be a diminutive of his own surname he was acting out a need to have
a brother? “Stay away from the Anderson house, too,” she admonished “Remember,
it’s private property even if no one lives there.” And to get to the river,
he’d have to cross the fence between them and the Anderson place.

“I just play in the woods, Mom. No one
cares about the woods. No one even goes there. Just me and—just Jeff and I.”
And me, she thought. I used to play there, too, even when Mrs. Anderson was
still alive, and he’s right. Nobody cares about the woods. Not good
pasture-land, and not good trees for logging, so that part of the Anderson
property had always been left alone.

~ * ~

Later, Eleanor ran a comb through her
hair then walked up the path to the farmhouse, the house in which she had spent
her childhood. She knocked at the door which had once been her own, and in a
sense, still was.

Kathy Robbins opened it and smilingly
invited her landlady into the big, warm kitchen. “Ellie, come on in. Bill’s
just bedding down his new baby. Coffee is on. Where’s Philip?”

“Watching a video.” She cocked her head
questioningly. “New baby? Morning Glory’s foaled?” Kathy’s grin was answer
enough. She reached high over her head for coffee cups. “Didn’t anyone ever
tell you not to do that?” Eleanor said.

“Old wives’ tales.” Kathy scoffed with a
grin. “Bill’s mother’s full of them and Bill, darn it, believes her. I hope his
absorption with the foal will take his mind off his impending fatherhood for a
day or two.” Kathy went on about Bill and his delight in his mare’s offspring.
At length she subsided and looked carefully at Eleanor. “What’s the trouble,
Ell? Book not doing so well?”

“No, the new book’s doing just fine.
It’s Phil, Kathy. He’s got another imaginary friend. That got me thinking.
Maybe I should move into town so he’d be close to school and his friends,
instead of keeping him way out here in the country, so far from other kids.
But, where would we live? Rent is so steep these days. And then there’s
pollution, crime, drugs, all those things I don’t want him exposed to.”

She sighed. “I keep wondering if Grant’s
right, and I should send him to a boarding school. It’s just that he’s so
little.” Her voice cracked slightly and she rubbed her forehead as she tended
to in times of stress.

“Of course he is,” said Kathy sternly.
“He’s way too young to live anywhere but with you.”

“But he is lonely,” Eleanor replied,
more in answer to herself than to her friend. “Holidays must be awful for him,
like weekends and after school only lasting much longer. I wish you’d hurry up
and have that lump in your lap. It might not be playmate material for a few
years, but at least he’d have another small person to take an interest in. I’ll
try to talk him into coming up to visit Morning Glory’s baby in the meantime.”

“Good luck with that.” Both women
laughed. Horses, probably even baby horses, were not high on Philip’s
like-list.

“If said lump puts in an appearance before
the end of June it’s going to have to find some other family. We simply won’t
be ready for it.” Kathy refilled the cups. “But about Philip, Ellie, it can’t
hurt for him to have imaginary playmates. He gets along well at school with the
real kids, and lots of children have pretend friends. Not just only children,
either.”

“No,” said Eleanor, her tone wry. “Just
lonely children. As a teacher, Kath, what do you think about sending kids away
to school? Is it good for them? Especially,” she added, “kids who have no one
at home to play with.”

Kathy considered carefully before she
answered. “Maybe, but personally, I can’t think of one child from my teaching
days who would have been better off away from his family—except those who came
from awful situations with very bad families, which is not the case here. When
I apply that notion to Philip, think of him being sent away from here, away
from you, I can only see him being terribly unhappy. So maybe he is a little
bit lonely. Spring Break only lasts ten days and three of them are gone by.
It’s not going to kill him, Ellie, to have an imaginary friend for the next
week. Who is it this time? Spidey, or someone who turns green and bursts out of
his clothing, or changes from car to space-ship at the flip of a switch?”

Eleanor laughed. “You’re way behind the
times! Super heroes are a whole different breed now. I can’t even begin to keep
up with the new ones. But this is just an ordinary kid, by the sound of it. His
name’s Jeff. They’re building a log cabin together. I suppose I could put a
stop to it, but it seems a shame to keep him out of the woods. He’s like his
father in that respect, loves the trees, the birdsong, the seclusion.” Her
mouth quirked into a wry smile. “Poor kid gets it from both sides. I loved the woods,
too, when I was a child. I wish he’d start taking an interest in the farm, in
that way, he’s like me again. I couldn’t have cared less about milk production
or anything of that nature.”

She sighed. “Maybe Grant’s right when he
says Philip needs a man’s firm hand to give him some discipline.”

“But,” Kathy pointed out dryly, “Grant,
for all that, is the one who advocates sending him away so some school can do
it. Why doesn’t he try himself, starting, of course, by using some of that
patience he expends on his precious horses?”

Eleanor shrugged, not willing to discuss
Grant or his inability to relate to her son. “Oh,” she lamented, “where are the
days of coloring books, crayons, finger paints and pop-up books?”

As she walked home Eleanor waded through
the long grass she really should get cut, and star-gazed, remembering the early
days of her son’s life, thinking back upon what it had been like as a new
mother, age twenty, alone save for her father and infant son, never giving up
the secret hope that somehow some time, David might come back.

Where had he gone? Was he dead as her
father had maintained or was he simply gone from her, unable to face the
thought of being tied down by a wife and child? The David whom she had married
at the age of nineteen, whom she had loved so intensely, and who had loved her
enough to browbeat her stubborn old father into letting them marry, had not
been that kind of man.

He must be dead, her mind told her,
while her heart denied it even after nearly eight years of silence from the
jungles of Ecuador.

“Where are you?” she whispered to the
stars above. “Are you anywhere in this world? Should I have you declared
legally dead, or should I keep on waiting, hoping?”

Hoping for what? she asked herself as
she had nearly every day. Hoping for the return of a man whose face was
disappearing from her memory, a man who, if he did come back would be totally
different? But people never change that much, she argued with herself. I
haven’t forgotten. I’ve never forgotten entirely. I can still hear his voice in
my dreams even though his face has gone from me.

But what good are dreams, Eleanor?
You’re twenty-seven years old. Time is passing. And Grant, will he wait
forever? Who cares? whispered a small voice deep inside her. Who cares what
Grant might do?

In the house, Eleanor sat with Philip
for a few minutes, then made him his usual bed-time snack—toast and peanut
butter—and supervised his getting ready for bed. After a story, a hug, and
several stalling maneuvers on his part, she gave him a final good-night kiss,
turned off his light, and closed his door. Then, she opened it again. “I’m
going to sit outside for a few minutes, honey. I’ll be in the arbor.”

His mumbled, “’T’s’okay, Mom,” told her
he was nearly asleep.

She smiled. He played so hard he slept
like, well, a played-out child.

Outside, Eleanor sank to a bench and
leaned her elbows on the table. She propped her chin on her hands and let her
mind wander back… back to the past, to the day when she first met David.

~ * ~

She’d wandered away from the house that
day, needing to be alone, full of the vague sadness of a March morning after a
storm. During the night the rain had come, thundering onto the farmhouse roof,
beating into the grayish slush left from the last—hopefully the last and not
just the latest—snowfall. When she awoke the world was new and clean, the earth
black and fruitful-looking, the sky clear and the alder trees just shaded pink
with the first touch of buds on gaunt, bare limbs. Eleanor strolled toward the
creek and stood for a time looking into the rushing brown freshet, and a
longing arose in her breast, an aching need to flee, to rush and tumble
headlong into life as the waters at her feet raced away into the distance to
join up with the Fraser River. There, combined with the thousands and thousands
of other small creeks, streams, and steep, narrow rivers all over the hills and
mountains of British Columbia, it poured into the Pacific and spread far away.
Distant lands would feel its touch, foreign tongues would speak over the sounds
of lapping waves.
Oh!
How she longed
to join those fast-moving, restless waters.

She jumped across the creek, left its
exciting springtime babble behind and made for the edge of the forest, heading
for her quiet place, her place for dreaming.

She entered the forest, walking silently
upon the thick carpet of needles covering the path. The moss beneath her feet
was thick and damp. Mud splashed the backs of her legs, but Eleanor cared
naught for that. Who was there to see her? Who was there to comment on the
appearance of this girl whom no one loved as a woman longs to be loved? And who
had no one of her own to love as a woman needs to love?

Her private place, her little glade,
welcomed her with a single shaft of sunlight and Eleanor sat upon a damp log
near a small dogwood tree, not yet in leaf. She put her elbows on her knees,
her head in her hands. Her long hair fell forward to obscure her face. At the
sound of a male voice saying, “Hello. Are you real, or something left by the sylvan
gods for me to find?” Eleanor’s head flew up. Her hands swept the hair back
from her face and she stared up at the tall young man who stood not ten feet
away.

He looked thin almost to the point of
emaciation. Her eyes took this in even while her heart began a wild and
tumultuous thundering, feeling like the brook running away with her into
unknown territory. His gray eyes stared into hers for a long aching moment, and
then he smiled. “My truck’s broken down. The engine overheated and now it won’t
start. I was following this trail, looking for civilization.”

The resonance of his voice should have
come from a much deeper chest than the bony one under the green Forest Service
work shirt.

“I… Where?”

“Where do I expect to find
civilization?”

“No.” She stood, laughing, and brushed
off the seat of her jeans. “Where is your truck broken down?”

“On the forestry road. Just through the
trees there. I was surveying the old fire-break,” he said. “Checking it out to
see if it needed widening or culvert repair or… whatever, and now I’m stranded.
Can you tell me where I need to go for help, or do wood-nymphs not know about
mundane things like that?”

“Oh.” It took Eleanor a few moments to
collect herself. “I… I’m sure my dad can help.” It hurt to speak. Her heart
still thudded painfully in her breast, and those eyes, those intense, slate
gray eyes under the thick brows and dark shaggy hair refused to release her.

She needed to get away from him but did
not know why, knew only it would be better to go than to stay the way her
heart, her blood, her every nerve cried out for her to do.
Stay! Stay! Stay!
Her heart pounded out the word with each beat.
Emotions tumbled through her, frightening, powerful, overwhelming. “I’ll, um,
go get him.”

“Wait!” he said urgently as she whirled
to run. He reached out and took her hand. His felt enormous, cool and hard.
“Wait.” She looked back at him over her shoulder. “What’s your name?”

“Eleanor,” she whispered. “Eleanor
Barnes.”

“Eleanor.” He said it slowly, savoring
each syllable as if it were sweet. “Eleanor,” he repeated. “I’m going to marry
you.”

Now, many years later, Eleanor sat in
the rose arbor David had built for her, remembering those words.
Eleanor, I’m going to marry you
. The
words had echoed and reechoed through the empty caverns of her heart, flooding
and filling until she was no longer empty, no longer aching with the unnamed
and unnamable needs of an early spring day, but spilling over with something
just as unnamed, just as unnamable but equally potent.

That day when he’d made his startling
declaration, she’d gasped, put one hand to her mouth and fled, casting a couple
of disbelieving looks back at the strange young man who’d come out of the
forest. He stood watching her go, the smile still upon his gaunt face, his eyes
still glowing with the light from within. Eleanor had run all the way home that
day, and her father, who’d been fifty-four years old the time of her birth, the
birth which claimed his wife, looked up from nailing a new board on a broken
stair-railing. At seventy-three, he had sparse hair gray. His skin hung loosely
upon his frame as though waiting to be filled out the way it had when he was
young. “Where have you been, girl?” he demanded. “What are you doing running
around outside when there’s work to be done?” He seemed oblivious to the bed
sheets flapping on the clothesline not far from where he toiled.

“I went for a walk, Dad. The day’s much
too good to waste inside. I met someone in the woods on the Anderson place. His
truck’s broken down.” Eleanor heard her own words rush out breathlessly. From
its heat, she knew her face was flushed. Her eyes felt bright, too, and she
lowered them before her father’s keen stare.

“What is it, Ellie?” he asked sharply.
“Did he scare you?”

“No!” Then, more sedately, “No, Dad. I
was running because... because it’s spring.”

A gnarled and gentle work-worn hand
stroked the deep rich chestnut of her hair, and George Barnes said, “Yes,
Ellie-girl. Spring days are for running. Your mother was the same, you know.
The same in looks, the same in manner. Then when it seemed we would never have
a child, she stopped running, stop singing and laughing and I thought my heart
would break. But one more time, girl, just one more time, she ran to me,
laughing, looking exactly as you look today. It was the day she told me you
were on the way. I picked her up and carried her back to the house and from
that moment on I looked after her, cared for her as if she was made of glass...
And what good did it do me? But I have you, girl, to take her place. So like
her you are, Ellie, so—”

“Dad,” Eleanor interrupted gently. “The
man on the forestry road?”

“What? Oh, yes. I’ll go take a look, see
what I can do.”

“He said his engine overheated and now
it won’t start.”

“Right. Probably sprung a leak in the
radiator. I’ll take a bucket and fill it from the creek over that way.”

She watched with a deep affection as her
father walked away, slightly bent yet still moving strongly for all his years.

Having never known her mother, except
through her father’s stories, which he repeated over and over to her, as if
afraid he might forget, Eleanor had what may have been more than the usual
amount of love for her dad, and he, on his part, loved his daughter beyond all
else. She was his life.

When he had been left a widower with an
infant daughter to raise, he had flatly refused all offers of help from the
neighbors, according to the late Mrs. Anderson from the neighboring farm. Many
times her father had told her raising her was no trouble. He merely did it the
way he would’ve raised orphaned calf, with good common sense, plenty of food
and exercise, and outsized portions of love. She always laughed at that and
asked if he really felt affection for orphaned calves, and read them bedtime
stories, hugged them and cuddled them like he did her. “Of course, I did. All
young things need hugs and pats so they know someone cares about them. It
worked on the calves, and it had worked on her.

Eleanor had grown up knowing little
beyond her own immediate locality, and if a longing built in her now and then
for far places and new sights, as it had this morning, she would always push it
back and look around, happy with her lot.

When Eleanor finished high school and
graduated with honors and talked about further education, the expression on her
father’s face had quickly changed her mind. Her guidance counselor argued that
every woman needed a university education. She’d been tempted, of course. The
thought of fusty old professors and exciting, younger, ones, huge libraries
filled with the knowledge of the world, of parties, roommates and dormitory
life had sounded like heaven to her, and what would—
must
—come after… Learning about the world, seeing it for herself…
All that had been brought tantalizingly close by her counselor’s words, but her
dad had sacrificed so much already, she couldn’t bear to leave him like this.
As compensation, he’d brought in cable TV and finally, the Internet, though
that meant putting up a satellite dish on the barn roof.

She had become a wonderful cook over the
years of her teens, an excellent housekeeper. She sewed, knit, gardened. Her
flowers were a riot of color, her vegetables abundant and flavorful, and she
worked long hard hours willingly beside her aging father, helping him to run
his dairy farm. Throughout her high school years, and in the past year, since
she had been at home all day boys and young men had come to call, but each came
only once, until there were no more left to come at all and Eleanor became as
much of a recluse as her father.

But today! And Eleanor wrapped her arms
around herself, spun in a dizzying circle, and laughed aloud at the hens
scattering and cackling in her path. Today she had met someone whom she knew
would not be put off by her irascible old father.

How can it happen like this? she
wondered. And what is it, exactly that has happened?

She knew a little later when a Forestry
Service pickup truck drove into the barnyard and the lanky young man climbed
out. Her father got out of the passenger side and the two men stood talking for
some time. Suddenly the young man put a hand to his head, swayed on his feet
and old George put out a hand to steady him. Her father spoke, and Eleanor
could not hear his words, but she could see concern reflected on his face. The
young man answered, George spoke again, and the other shook his head, still
holding the side of the truck. This time her father did not bother speaking. He
grasped the green clad arm, draped it over his stooped shoulders and half
dragged, half carried his burden toward the kitchen where Eleanor stood staring
out the window.

“What is it?” she asked, as they came
through the doorway. “Is he sick?”

“The boy needs food,” George replied.
“Look at him— skinny as a rake, almost fainting from hunger. Well, don’t just
stand there, girl, get cooking! I’ll get some brandy.” As George stomped out,
Eleanor stared at the young man slumped on a chair.

His eyes danced with laughter and he
winked at her. “I had to see you again,” he whispered. “This was the only way I
could get invited to lunch. No! Don’t back away. You have been chosen.”

As George returned, he leaned back
again, looking wan. Eleanor scurried to do things at the stove.

“What did you say your name is, boy?”
George asked . Eleanor paused in her task of making sandwiches.

“David Jefferson, sir.”

“Yes. I remember now. This is my
daughter, Ellie.” Eleanor stirred the thick, homemade vegetable beef soup as it
heated.

“No, sir. Eleanor,” David said, and
again his resonant voice caressed her name. “Don’t call her ‘Ellie’, please,
Mr. Barnes.”

George’s flint-eyed stare raked the face
of the young man. “What’s it to you?”

“Eleanor is going to be my wife, sir.”

“Huh? What? The hell she is.”

Eleanor held her breath. “Yes, sir,”
came the confident reply. “You’ll see. Just wait.”

“What do you do, boy, besides set out to
work with a leaky radiator and overheat engines?”

“I’m studying silviculture. I have a job
with the Forest Service for the summer. I’ll be working in the area for the
next few months. You’ll get used to me.”

George said, “Hmmph,” and the meal was
finished in silence until Eleanor offered second helpings, which David
accepted.

“Where do you live?” Presently, George
pushed the sugar bowl closer to his young guest after Eleanor served coffee.

“In town. In a rooming house. The meals
are nothing like this. For breakfast, I got cornflakes.”

“Hmmph. Not the kind of food a working
man needs.”

“No, sir, it isn’t.” David Jefferson
drank the last of his coffee, then stood. “Thanks for the lunch, Eleanor. When I
get the radiator fixed, I’ll be back.” Reaching out to George, he offered a
handshake. “So long, Mr. Barnes.”

“Hmmph!” George said again.

And David had come back. He came back
that very evening to take Eleanor to the movies. George said, “No, she’s got to
help me with the milking. Machine’s broken down.”

“I’ll milk, too,” said David, and did.
When they were finished, he said, “Go get changed, Eleanor. I’ll fix the
machine while you do it.” He did that, too, and as David washed up, Eleanor
could see her father eying him with grudging admiration.

Three weeks later Eleanor bowed to the
inevitable and agreed to marry David. George, however, continued to hold out,
and in spite of this David won his permission to build a small house for
himself in the hollow below the farmhouse, secluded by a grove of poplar trees.
“Don’t mind renting you the land, Dave,” said the old man. “I’m not using it.
Maybe, in time, we could even sell off that quarter acre to you.”

“We’ll live there George, Eleanor and I,
when we are married. You can visit us anytime you want... Within reason,” David
had added sternly.

“You are not marrying my girl, boy!”
George had said and said, and said again, right up to the day of the wedding,
and on that day what he said was, “So you married her, boy. But remember this:
she’s my girl. I’ll share with you if I must, but just don’t you ever try to
take her away. Do that and I’ll fight. I’ll win, too,” he had added. His tone
made his words a warning.

With his arm firm around Eleanor’s
waist, David had replied, “She may be your girl, George, but she’s my woman.
Where I go, she goes, and not you or anyone else will stop her. So don’t go
laying down any laws you won’t be able to enforce.”

But someone else had stopped her,
Eleanor reflected as she sat there in the rose arbor on that cool April evening
nearly eight years later. Her son... Her son and David’s, had stopped her—and
then it was too late.

She could still bring back the wonder of
that late August afternoon when David had come upon her grubbing in the roots
of the scraggly little rosebushes at the foot of the arbor. They had been
married a four months and already she thought she knew every nuance of his
voice, every expression of his face; but today there was something different, a
special tenderness, a deeper timber in his tone and the suppressed excitement
as he laughed at her labors, saying, “Never in a million years, sweetheart,
will those roses cover that wood. You planted them at the wrong time of year.”
The slats of the arbor were raw and unplaned, stark in their newness, glaring
yellow again as the backdrop of leafy poplars.

Eleanor smiled up at him. “You’ll see,
my love. They’ll grow.”

He had drawn her to her feet and kissed
her then, and hand-in-hand they had ambled over the little brook, past the back
of the farmhouse and into the dark forest to the little glade where they’d
first met. And that day, in that glade, with all the wildly sweet passionate
love between them, they had created life...

And David Philip Jefferson had never
laid eyes upon Philip David Jefferson, for that afternoon as they lay in each
other’s arms on the thick, soft moss of their forest bed, David explained the
excitement she’d seen in his face.

He had been offered a year’s
student-exchange position by the government of Ecuador. This would count as
credits toward his doctorate in silviculture, and he wanted to accept. How did
she feel about it?

Eleanor’s excitement flared up, equal to
his. Far-away places! This could just be the beginning. Of course he should
take it. When did they leave?

Though she felt grief at the thought of
having to leave her father, it was only for a year, and the wonder of a life
that would allow her to walk hand-in-hand with her husband through the forests
of the world far outweighed that.

“Sweetheart,” David said, there in the
shade of their dogwood tree, “I leave tomorrow. All I need to do is call the
program manager and let him know.”

She hadn’t been able to hide her dismay.
“Tomorrow?”

“I know I should have told you sooner
the possibility existed, but I was so afraid if there was time for discussion,
your father would try to hold us back. You’ll have to stay until I can find
place for us to live, but then I’ll send for you. It won’t be long,” he
promised, his eyes filling with undisguised lust. “I can’t live long without
you.”