Farthest House (29 page)

He came back around the table, the corners of his eyes crinkling ever so slightly against the sharp sunlight. “I love your paintings in the attic.”

She struggled to keep from giving the too-big grin of the fool. “Thank you. My last professor thought I wasn’t challenging myself by always doing portraits.” She wouldn’t add, ‘of females.’ A female painting females—lesser on lesser. “I’ve been told they don’t fit any European model and fall into the category of folk art.” She grinned, “You don’t want to get me started.”

He settled into his chair. “I see them as allegory. They’re arresting, rather mythical.”

“You see what I’m trying to do. You’re good.”

One brow lifted. “‘Good?’ Good for a guy, good for someone who knows nothing about art?”

“Just good.”

“Okay, then.” They both chuckled at the other. “What would you say to hanging one in the university library? The one of Luessy atop the stack of her novels? We have a lot of wall space to fill.”

“You’re kidding?”

“I’m not. It’s the Luessy Starmore Library, and that’s a very arresting and unique painting of her, and it was done by her granddaughter. I think it more than qualifies.”

She wanted to reach across the table and hug him. Fighting tears, she looked out across the flowers. “I’d love it,” she managed.

“I hope I haven’t upset you.”

“No. It’s just things have been so crazy the last few months. Somehow, having even that simple picture displayed feels like a step forward. I’m grateful.”

“Tory says you’re mostly self-taught, and you learned a lot by copying figures from mythology?”

Something almost remembered skimmed Willow’s awareness, but slipped away ungrasped. “Tory has listened to my ranting for two months now.” Was that true? Was she having conversations she didn’t remember? “I did do a lot of copying. While other kids were running up and down soccer fields and splashing in swimming pools, I painted.”

“You didn’t use photographs of the women?”

She framed her face with her fingers, just as she’d isolated areas in art class. She cringed, remembering her hand and recovered. “I stole that idea from Frida Kahlo. The props and clothing come from the scraps of their lives I do know about.” A slight breeze funneled under the roof, and she watched it work like an invisible hand smoothing the front of his shirt. “Now your face,” she said, “tells me your life has been one big picnic.”

“Good guess. A picnic through and through.”

She studied him, half expecting the sun would strike him and he’d disappear like any mirage.
“Do you write fiction or strictly biography?”

“I’d secretly like to write fiction, but I think I’d better stick to biography, research, and facts.”

She hoped she wasn’t staring, watching him lean back, his arms relaxed on the arms of his chair. “Maybe you have a couple of pot-smoking colleagues who would make good characters.”

“My colleagues wear dark suits and think pot-smokers should be behind bars.” He waited, enjoying her amusement. “Actually, they’re great people. Tory hopes you’ll attend Briarwood in the fall. I wouldn’t want you thinking badly of us.”

Thinking of fall saddened her. She’d been too ill and uncertain to consider three months ahead. “Tory’s been an entire army of help to me, but I have no idea if I’ll still be here in the fall.”

“We have an excellent studio arts department, and they’d be thrilled to have you.”

“There’s just so much. All I can manage to think about right now is sitting in this chair.” She also wouldn’t mention how she could sit and talk to him for an eternity. “Your interest in Mémé is cool, but I have to tell you, she’d think all the library fuss silly.”

“Would she? I thought she loved attention?”

“What?”

Taking his time, he looked out over the portico to the roses and Jonah. “This incredibly huge house and the big garden—”

“She wasn’t Emily Dickinson,” Willow cut in, “but this isn’t Monticello either.”

“And the name? Farthest House on Old Squaw Road.”

“You must already know how the name came about.”

“I’ve heard one version. What do you think? Why build something grand and give it a name that to others is a joke?”

“Because it spits in your eye.”

He laughed. “Exactly. But why was that necessary?”

A cumulus cloud moved, blocking the sunlight and deepening the color of the roses. “Maybe she built it for her aunt or for the mother she never knew. I’ve never thought about it, which probably sounds weird.” She shrugged. “Actually, everything about being here is weird. I feel like I’m always dreaming, half loopy.”

She looked away and back into the eyes so like shiny river stones. “I can’t believe I just admitted that. Being sick rots your brain, makes you start babbling.” That admission was at least as bad as the first. Her eyes narrowed. “What I mean is, Mémé’s aunt rescued her. Now, here I am, at this house, rescued by my aunt.” A chill crawled up her right arm and passed over the scars she’d given herself. Her heart pumped a bit faster. If something happened to her, would Prairie then end up being raised by Tory? Had Farthest House sucked her back to die in its walls and hand Prairie over to another childless aunt? “You’re not going to put any of this in your book?”

“I promise. The book is strictly about Luessy. I grew up reading her and Conan Doyle and….”

Willow lost track of the conversation. Jonah stood in the same place as before, but now he had a wheelbarrow. She’d missed seeing his slow slumping away and slow slumping back. She wanted to close her eyes, but she needed to stay awake, concentrate.

“…and your grandmother’s descriptions of the Midwest,” Clay was saying, “spoke to me.”

He’d taken off his tie and opened his top shirt button. Low on his throat, there in the bottom of that thumbprint indentation—given by the gods, myth said—she imagined his pulse. “So, you moved to Nebraska instead of Scotland Yard?”

“I couldn’t be sure Scotland Yard had as much charisma as Nebraska.”

She lifted a hand, held it between them. “Please…a Nebraska mystique? Corn and Herbie Husker? What about Bangor, Maine, or Seattle? Points farthest away from here.”

“I came from the East, the White Mountains area. Here you have incredibly wide open spaces, a lingering aura of the west, buffalo and sacred sites. Did I mention incredibly wide open spaces, nothing to stop the wind? Or a person who needs to put on track shoes and run.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Plus,” he said with a chuckle, “Briarwood offered me a job. It’s not easy to get that first tenure-track position. I couldn’t turn it down.”

“How did that come about?”

“I thought I was interviewing you.”

“I thought you weren’t.”

“I’d finished my PhD.” He glanced in Jonah’s direction, too, then back. “I only had one brother, he was gone, my parents were gone, and I wanted to start fresh somewhere new. When I read about the position, I immediately thought of the Luessy Starmore Mysteries and how she lived in Greenburr. I didn’t know she’d died. I thought if Greenburr was a town where she had the freedom to do that much writing, it would be a great place for me to teach and write.”

“And?”

“I applied, was granted an interview, flew out in the spring and was hooked: the town, the Victorian homes, old shops, people who looked you in the eye and said ‘hello.’ I fell in love. Farmers plowed and planted using huge pieces of machinery that rumbled down the roads, Tonkas on steroids.”

She wanted him to go on talking. “And?”

“Well, the whole area felt alive. Different from people running around in a city. On the Briarwood campus, flags whipped straight out on their poles, girls turned their faces into the wind, and their hair lifted off their shoulders. Everything moved, no mountains, no high rises, no boundaries of any sort to stop that wind. In every direction, I could see clear into the next state: Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, and South Dakota.”

“I’ve always loved that about Nebraska, being able to keep an eye on the folks in Colorado.”

“I could breathe. I came out of my first interview with the search committee and filled my lungs with air and knew I had the job. Even if at that point they had no intention of hiring me, I knew the job was mine. However the chips fell, their first ten choices all changing their minds about moving or suddenly dying of the bubonic plague, the job was mine. Maybe they still aren’t sure how I got here.”

Willow wondered why he hadn’t been able to breathe before he came to Nebraska, but she decided against asking. They didn’t know each other that well.

A bee buzzed too close, and she jerked back and saw the insect lift and disappear like a bead on the end of a yanked string. There would be others.

“You’re scared of bees?”

“I didn’t used to be. What about the library? How’d you get a project that big off the ground?”

“I didn’t. The money had already been raised, the plans approved for a larger library. Tory’s making too much of my contribution. I did write a persuasive letter suggesting the library be named after her, their local celebrity and a literary one at that.

“And that’s why they invited you to serve on the library committe?”

“
Invited
might not be the right word.
Assigned
might be better. Once you’re on a committee, and you actually show up to the meetings, you can end up with a truckload of work in your lap. Don’t forget, I’m working on her biography, so I’ve got ulterior motives. Being on the committee, I’m certain of selling at least one copy of my book to the library.”

He was fun. She couldn’t remember the last time she had such a fun and genuine conversation? He said more in fifteen minutes than Papa had in a year. “I take back what I said, Mémé would love the library.”

“I hope so. Wait until you see it. The back of the university butts into open land, acres they own and rent out as pastures and expand into. Some rich and childless widow bequeathed her farm, and the section the library is on holds a slew of massive burr oaks.”

The wide patio door opened, and Mable carried Prairie out. She left the door ajar, brought Prairie to Willow, disappeared back into the house, and reappeared carrying a tray with small dessert plates, milk for Prairie in a sippy cup, tiny pitchers of cream and honey, and a plate of cookies. Clay stood and taking a few long strides reached her and took the tray. He eyed the cookies. “You do this every day? Every single day? My mom baked a lot of cookies, but not every single day.”

Mable stayed to pass the plates around and see her cookies placed squarely in the middle of the table. “I have to work to keep meat on this one.” She leveled her eyes on Willow. “Walnuts, dates, Jonah’s wild honey, good, rich butter, now you eat one.”

“They smell wonderful,” Willow said, though she had no desire to eat one.

Tory appeared with a second tray: a teapot and three cooling cups all with varied patterns. Erect in her chair and presiding, she passed a mug to Clay and the pansy cup to Willow. The flowers still took Willow back in time and made her feel a part of Farthest House. She wasn’t yet a burden to Tory.

“Cream?” Tory asked.

Before Willow could agree or refuse, Tory lifted the small creamer and poured. She asked the same question of Clay with the same absent-mindedness and added cream before he could refuse.

Willow felt Clay’s amusement, but she dared not look at him for fear of smiling and Tory catching their pleasure and realizing she was the cause. She reached for the honey jar.

“Please, start while your tea is hot,” Tory said. “I’ll only grab my sewing.”

Willow had braided her hair earlier, and now Prairie grabbed for the plait, bringing it over Willow’s shoulder. Captivated by the knobby feel, Prairie slid her chubby hands down the long bumpy rope. She grabbed again, higher this time, reading with her tiny palms the many things her mother’s hair could be.

The first morning Willow decided to braid her hair, rather than let it hang loose down the sides of her face, she hadn’t thought of Luessy’s long braid. She walked around Luessy’s bedroom with its cooler air and stillness, some slight touch making her wonder if the bedroom door had been shut all the years she was away. Time and isolation might explain how the room seemed to grow its own light and air. She trailed her fingers over her grandmother’s big pieces of furniture: the bed, bookcases, desk, and dresser with its aging mirror and what looked like water stains beginning to spatter the silver-backed glass. Mémé touched it all, she thought, and she imagined her grandmother’s liver-spotted hands and rounding knuckles. Mémé and the furniture had aged together.

Stopping in front of the mirror, she stood barefoot on the same carpet where Mémé had stood barefoot, likely even Jeannie, and the carpet where she’d stood as a little girl, when the world around her was carnival sized. Her fingers began braiding.

Now that she’d started wearing the single braid, she didn’t feel dressed until she’d made the three equal sections, layering the hair over and over, weaving in comfort and history, and calling up ghosts.

35

With Tory not yet returned, Clay swallowed the tea he sipped and set his cup down, his shoulders giving an involuntary shudder. “I do coffee.” He reached for a cookie. “This’ll help.”

Still holding Prairie, Willow laughed, touching her nose to Prairie’s in play. “He hates tea.” She believed she could see his mind already swinging back to his work, the way her mind so often swung back to her work hours after she’d cleaned her brushes.

“Would you consider Luessy a feminist?” he asked.

Prairie felt heavy in Willow’s aching arms. Willow took a quick gulp of her tea, “Ah, cream and honey,” and set her cup back before chubby hands could grab for it. “Would her being a feminist bother you?”

“No. The term wasn’t even popular in her day, at least not when she began writing. I’ve never felt her novels carried a political agenda, but being here,” his gaze went out over the garden, “the grandeur of this place is quite a statement for a woman of her time. Was it Jung who said our houses are representations of our psyches?”

She squinted as if Clay hadn’t heard himself. “What else would our houses represent?”

One side of his mouth lifted in an easy sideways grin. “You’d be challenging in a class room.”

Prairie squirmed to get down, and Willow fought to keep hold of her. Returning fatigue crawled up Willow’s back, and her stomach began to sway with an all too-familiar roll. She’d been out of bed too long. “Mémé believed in the power of finding and holding tight to a vision. She believed in work.” Willow’s words sounded loud and too forceful. She tried to fight her symptoms and relax. “Does that make her a
feminist
? What does that word even mean? Women with visions who work to achieve lives that males believe only they deserve?”

Leaning in, Clay watched her.

Her symptoms were always the same: headaches, nausea, and exhaustion. The tiredness, she supposed, came from the first two, which kept her from sound sleep. If she were to add a fourth, it would be moments of hyper-awareness, almost a dislocation from her body, and this, too, she believed came from her inability to keep food down and sleep soundly.

The door slid open, and Tory stepped out with her sewing. When she sat down at the table, and Clay who stood, sat back down after her, she reached into her basket and drew out the flat round form of a doll’s still-empty head. “You were only a child when Mom lived,” she said to Willow. “How would you know about her visions?”

“You heard that?” Willow asked. “Do you think Mémé was a feminist?”

Tory’s long fingers pinched off wads of batting and stuffed them into the narrow slit she’d left open at the top of the doll’s head. “She certainly lived in her own world.”

Selfishly
? Was that what Tory suggested? But it was ‘lived in her own world’ that most caught Willow’s attention. On her first trip to Farthest House, she stood on the big front porch with Papa, surrounded by geraniums while Friar tried to lick her face, and she heard Papa scold Mémé with nearly the same sentiment:
Willow’s got to live in this world right here.
In the years since that bright morning, she’d experienced so many extraordinary things that now she wondered what world was
this world right here
?

The slightest stirring under her feet caught her attention. Had something shivered beneath the flagstones? Not possible. She was just getting crazy tired. She shuffled her feet to rid them of the sensation and wished Prairie, who grew heavier by the minute, would sit still.

The conversation between Clay and Tory drifted away from her. She tried to refocus on them and at the same time hold on tighter to Prairie. From the floor beneath her feet, thin wires of energy, like nerves ticking, sent heat creeping up through her soles. She lifted her cup and sipped, noticing the shaking in her hands. Hopefully, neither Clay nor Tory had. The afternoon heat turned thick and damp over her. Somewhere nearby, bees buzzed, spun, and died. She didn’t wonder that she knew, she just knew.

Tory’s voice rose and fell. Clay asked questions, and Willow struggled again to jump onto the moving train of their conversation. But their words were big and cumbersome, leaving without her. Prairie squirmed, and tried to stand in Willow’s lap. Too much energy, more than Willow had in her tired arms. “Mémé gave me a belief in magic,” she blurted. The words were again too loud and likely too far from whatever they were discussing. She couldn’t stop herself. “If Mémé said, ‘Look, a fairy,’ I
saw
a fairy. I want that for Prairie. To give her a world with a Mother Moses around every corner.”

Tory’s eyes remained on her work, but Clay studied Willow. Gone was the sassiness and confidence she demonstrated only minutes earlier. Distracted, he took another sip of his tea and was forced to swallow. “Mother Moses?”

Settle down,
Willow coaxed herself
. Stay one more minute. Don’t leave at the stupidest time.
“The story’s too long,” she tried to sound casual. “Can I tell you another time?” The unrest beneath her feet had become a bulge. The cement grout crumbled and the corner of a stone lifted. Not possible, but sliding a foot, she felt it pass over the knob. She needed to talk, to use the few words she could still manage like a handrail. “Mother Moses is a bed spread. Mémé bought it from a former slave owner. At least the woman’s ancestors were.” She stopped herself; she was shortening the story.

“Another of Mom’s fantasies,” Tory said.

“Well, whatever her beliefs,” Clay offered, “she’s built a beautiful place.”

Two of Tory’s fingers were buried in her muslin and looked severed. “We all built this place.”

Willow wanted to pull Clay aside and repeat every word of Mother Moses’ story. She’d also tell him that before Mémé’s death, Tory and Mémé had a falling out, and Tory still carried hurt feelings. That conversation, though, would have to wait for another time. At the moment, Prairie kicked with her tiny shoes, sharp and bruising, flagstones moved beneath Willow’s feet, and the pounding in her head was warlike.

She broke off a small piece of cookie and put it in Prairie’s mouth. In a few hours, she wouldn’t be able to hold her head up and wouldn’t be able to take care of Prairie, making certain that Prairie stayed safe. Knowing the rest of the day, and probably the next, would mean crippling headaches and dry heaves, she’d stay as long as she possibly could.

She glanced down at the irritation beneath her feet. Thin black vines rose and reached for her ankles.

Tory let her work sink into her lap. “Willow, your face. Are you all right?”

Vines couldn’t be sprouting, Willow knew, and the realization that she was hallucinating deepened her fear. Was she losing her mind? Dr. Mahoney would shake his head and tell her to get a grip. “I’m fi-ne.” The last word singsong, waltzing.

“This isn’t a good time,” Clay said. He placed his hands on the chair arms and pushed himself up. “Why don’t I come back in the morning?”

The ivy crept, twining tighter and higher around Willow’s legs. She had to fight it and keep her panic under control. She wouldn’t break down in front of Clay, and especially not in front of Prairie. “Please, don’t go,” she said. He was stability, and hopefully, a weight to counterbalance the strange sensation at her feet. “I’m all right. Mable fixed all this.”

He lowered his body back into the chair, but his hands still gripped the arms. Willow concerned him. “I’d love to hear more about your paintings.” And to Tory, “They’re something, aren’t they.”

As Willow watched Tory pinch off more batting and work it into the doll’s head, she knew she couldn’t really discuss her paintings. She could talk about the paintings’ esthetics, color and line, but she couldn’t discuss what they meant to her spiritually. That, like a hundred other secrets she needed to keep, including the green/black growing up her calves, was private. She wiped cookie spittle from a corner of Prairie’s mouth. Struck by a sudden realization, the shaking in her hands increased. The paintings were not just a way of saving her life; they could save Prairie’s as well. She took another sip of tea, praying the liquid would work as a tonic. When she couldn’t keep Prairie from standing, she kept hold of her daughter’s hands, letting the punch of little shoes strike again and again.

Beyond the portico, the air had become a hot brilliance. Willow turned from the light and felt a sort of slippage in time that might have meant five seconds or five minutes passed. The conversation had moved ahead, and she felt addled and embarrassed. At the same time, evil continued to climb from beneath the flagstones, wanted to pull her down, and wanted her to know.

Now, she did want Clay to leave. He couldn’t stop what was happening, and she didn’t want him seeing her like this. Another time, they’d get together and toss a football. She’d throw the ball so straight and hard the pigskin would pop and sting his palms, and he’d know she was there.

“No, he’s not from here,” Tory was saying, as she looked out at Jonah. “He’d been accused of a murder in Omaha, and Mom brought him here to save his life.”

Other than his bug story, Willow had never heard anything of Jonah’s past and never wondered about a life before Farthest House. The realization was painful.

Clay wrapped his fingers around his nearly full cup, a thumb tapping on the handle. “What happened?”

“He was accused of killing a white woman. How, or why, Mom got involved, I couldn’t say. Many people believed him guilty, but she used her name, and well, there he is.”

The vines clung, turned Willow’s ankles blue, and made her calves ache. She fought to keep her mind off them and on the conversation. “A white woman?” Was killing a white woman more heinous than killing a
black
woman? “Was she
pretty,
too?”

“She was blonde, and I hear quite beautiful,” Tory said. “There was talk of a lynching. The Willie Brown incident was still fresh in everyone’s minds, and many young men believed they had missed a good time. They wanted their faces on the front page of the newspaper, too.” She paused, kneading the doll head in her hands and smoothing out the stuffing. “Jonah is still the only suspect.”

“He couldn’t have murdered anyone,” Willow said. Her voice cracked. She turned to Clay, “Don’t put that in your book.”

Tory plopped her muslin down. “Willow, really.” She glanced sideways around the edge of the table at Willow’s legs. “What are you doing?” When Willow didn’t answer, she spent another moment watching her before turning away. “She’s likely right. Jonah doesn’t seem the type to have killed a woman, though it was believed his father was in jail at the time for murder. He had no other family. And he
was
working that day, raking leaves for the woman. His rake was the murder weapon.”

Clay pushed his cup back. “When was this?”

“1932.”

“The lawless thirties,” he nodded. “The era of mobs, cover-ups, and Saturday night lynchings. He’s been here ever since?”

Between Tory’s pushing and stuffing, she managed to finish her tea. “Nowhere else to go. I imagine that for years he was afraid of showing his face back in Omaha, tempting fate as it were. Getting a traffic ticket, even walking on the wrong street, might have ended in arrest. He owed us, too, for Mom saving his life.” She smiled to herself. “When my brother, Willow’s father, started police work, he was determined to prove Jonah’s innocence. He couldn’t do it. He stewed over records for years, questioned people, but he couldn’t find any evidence to clear Jonah. That should tell you something.”

This was news to Willow, and squinting against the brightness, she looked out to where Jonah worked. The outline of his figure looked hazy in the heat and his straw hat made of gold. He couldn’t have murdered anyone, even if he didn’t want her and Prairie around. However, if Tory believed he had, maybe that was one of the reasons she and Mémé fought.

Prairie squirmed, this time nearly falling from Willow’s aching arms. Thin drops of sweat ran down the sides of Willow’s face, and the vines were more insistent. They weren’t real, couldn’t be, and struggling against imaginary wolves only spread them through your house and filled your closets with growls. She needed to put Prairie down, but she’d waited too long and couldn’t trust herself even to set her on the floor without dropping her. And what then? Tory and Clay were deep in their conversation and not paying enough attention to notice if Prairie crawled across the yard and out of sight forever.