Kathy Little Bird (30 page)

I sniffed. “Smells good.”

“Let’s investigate, shall we?”

We went into the kitchen, a marvelous kitchen, with a breakfast nook. It was painted a cheery yellow-and-white, so even on the gloomiest days it would give the effect of sunlight.

Then I spotted tea things laid out on a little rolling tray. Everything was prepared, there were dainty slices of cake, and the kettle was still warm. “It will be ready in a jiffy,” I said. “Talk about a welcome!” I reached my arms out to him. “We’re going to be happy here.”

We had our tea and cake by the fireplace and watched the logs crumble and embers nestle in its heart. Afterward we washed up in the yellow-and-white kitchen with its trim of oak. I washed and Abram dried. It was like playing house.

I didn’t want to leave—ever. But Abram said it was closing time and the Wertheimers would be waiting for us. “They’re up the street a few blocks.”

Their house was of the same fieldstone. Most of the buildings around here were. The feature that distinguished it was a roof so steep that it reached almost to the ground.

We were met at the door. I found it hard to believe I was seeing them for the first time, they were so like Abram’s description. John had a rufous cowlick that wouldn’t be plastered down, and his bright eyes took in every detail. Lucinda was the tall, gaunt keeper of the flame. She spoke with asperity, but everything she said and did was kind.

I realized that it might be hard for them to welcome me. After all, his daughter Laura had been Abram’s wife. Their kindness to me was proof of their devotion to him.

I was given a small room under the eaves, and cautioned not to bump my head on the sloping ceiling. That night I drew a homemade quilt over me. The stitches were large, like a child’s. I wondered if it was Laura who had selected and worked at all the crazy pieces that went together so well.

In the morning I stared into a window pane of small cut diamonds; a multitude of Kathys looked back at me, iridescent, quivering with rainbow.

In the three days I stayed with the Wertheimers, they were unfailingly thoughtful and loving toward me. And that could be said of the friends that dropped in. I was welcomed by everyone. I felt ashamed remembering the nightmare.

The following day Abram brought a letter from my father. He was flying in this evening. He wrote that nothing could
make him miss my wedding. I kissed Abram and kissed the letter. I couldn’t believe this was me, Kathy, who was the center of so much love. Here they were, Abram, my father, friends. And not a single one employed by me.

Abram and I went to the airport and I was proud to introduce the two men in my life. With the first handclasp they took each other’s measure, and I could see they would be friends.

We brought Erich back to the little flat behind the bookstore. The three of us spent the evening talking, getting to know each other. My father wanted to know what had happened at the benefit concert. I began by explaining the Fort Laramie treaty. “So, you see, it was to right the wrongs done the Indian…”

My father smiled. “And a wonderful opportunity to sing your Cree songs. How amazed your mother would have been, and how proud.”

“Really? You think that?”

“That’s what I think,” Erich said.

The next morning my father walked me down the aisle to the strains of the organ. Abram waited beside the minister. My father put my hand in his.

T
HANK
God for a Mennonite marriage. It was solemn, heartfelt, and over by eleven. There was plenty of time to catch the plane to Vancouver, then ferry to Victoria. I love boats; I loved standing beside Abram, my face to the wind, my hair blown back. Victoria was a quaint little city with flower
boxes at every window. We had dinner at the Hotel Victoria and rented a car for the drive to Tomahawk, which signaled to us the honeymoon had begun.

We were shown to a little cabin, but it was too late and too dark to glimpse the water or the scalloped curve of the cove. That would wait until tomorrow. Abram being Abram, one of our two grips was packed with books. He rummaged in this, found the volume he was looking for, and read to me for over an hour until, conscious of his body warmth, I was the one to press against him.

There is something about body warmth, and something about Abram. He let me make the advances, allowed me to stroke him, to rouse him from dreamy somnolescence. He showed me another dimension of love, touching me with wonder as though he were the first man and I the first woman, and this had never been before.

It hadn’t. Not like this.

My boy scout husband was wild as Mum’s Mohawk ever was. We fit ourselves into each other in every way we could think of. Rapture followed each experiment. Tides, waves, and swells caught us up. Such moments are like birth, like death, like heaven.

Mrs. Willems, Abram’s wife, loved being married to Abram. It extended to everything. I loved the beautiful little bay we were on. I loved the fact that the bottom steps of our cabin were covered when the tide was in. The magic of that first night continued to wrap our days.

Lazy days. The main event was to take a boat out, Abram at the oars. I navigated across a drowned forest, past stumps,
blackened stags, and moss-entangled branches through which small fish swam. The challenge was not to rip open the bottom of the boat. I leaned far over the side, trailing a hand in the water. Schools of minnows passed beneath, wheeling for no apparent reason, darting in the opposite direction. Like me. I had been as fast-moving, phoning my agent before breakfast, doing photo shoots, attending galas, preparing concerts, singing club dates, lending my name to foundations—and all the time this calm little cove reflected its pines with only an occasional flash of silver as a fish broke the surface. Whoa! We almost got snagged. “Hard right!” I called, and Abram swerved.

“Time out of mind, Shakespeare calls it.”

My bookish husband had the history of the planet and the development of stars at his fingertips. He didn’t give a rap for the world I came from. He couldn’t understand why anyone would want to amass money.

“Think of all the books you could buy, Abram.”

“I don’t need first editions. The content is all that’s important, and I can get that, no matter how ragged the cover.”

I had been the one to dream of presenting him volumes with gilt edges and silk-watermarked endpapers. He didn’t want that at all. He told me more about the Wertheimers. “John has a decidedly philosophical turn of mind. So while he interprets scripture, you probably noticed it is Lucinda who runs the house, pays the bills, and makes sure he doesn’t confuse Sunday with Monday.”

“In other words, she is the practical one. They’re like bookends out of a Dickens novel and I adore them.”

We pulled our boat up on shore for a picnic. “Now tell me about his daughter, your wife.”

Abram thought about this for a while. “Laura was a really good person. Her mother died when she was quite small, and John and Lucinda raised the girl. Laura made little routines for our lives. Hot cereal in winter. Pancakes Sunday morning, and a walk after services. She did a lot of church work, helped organize socials, visited members who were ill, or who for some reason couldn’t attend services. She brought them books, did marketing, things like that. Her favorite occupation was at the daycare center, reading to the children. She was distressed that we had none, and never gave up hoping.”

“Do you think we’ll have children?” I asked.

“I’m sure we will.”

I peered into the picnic hamper—It would seem strange to have other children; I wondered if I could be a good Mum—cold chicken with mayo and relish, the whole picnic put together by the woman who ran the resort.

“We don’t do anything for ourselves,” I observed. “How does a honeymoon prepare us to be married?”

“Do you always complain when things are perfect?” Abram teased.

“Always. Inevitably and indubitably.”

“Indubitably? Where did that come from?”

“You shouldn’t leave books lying around. I’ll get to be as smart as you.”

We made love on sun-warmed sand and sifted it onto each other in cascades and showers. On the way back we made love in the rowboat and almost tipped over.

Another afternoon I was laid low by another of those headaches I thought I was through with. But we made up for the lost day. The next morning we went into the little town, which consisted of a gas station and a small cafe, with three or four houses scattered about. I’d noticed some lovely quilts hanging over a porch railing and went to see if they were for sale. While I spoke with the woman, Abram had a discussion with her husband, the filling station attendant. It turned out they were Mennonites, that there was a congregation here. I’d been talking to their little boy, four or five, with overalls hitched over one shoulder, bare feet, and a straw hat, too large for him.

I bought a quilt, and Abram arranged to rent a sailboat for the following day. When it was sailed around to our cove, the little boy, Jekuthiel, was the crew. So we invited him to come along on our outing. His father agreed, tipped his hat, and left. I took the child into our cabin with me while I picked up a sweater. He was fascinated by the TV, and jumped when I turned it on and it blasted into color and sound, but settled down when I convinced him they weren’t real people, that he could turn them off any time he wanted. Then I switched on our battery-operated radio, and again he was amazed. It was strange to find a pocket of the Middle Ages in the twentieth century.

Abram, Jekuthiel, and I got in the little boat, a trim fourteen-foot Sabot. Abram set her nose to the wind and we
seemed to fly. I hadn’t realized he was a good sailor. There were many things about my husband I didn’t know.

The water danced in diamond patterns and I trailed my hand. I must have dozed, for suddenly Jekuthiel was shouting, dancing up and down and pointing.

I stared in disbelief at a sea monster cleaving the water, making straight for us. Shiny and black, it was a whale, spouting from a blowhole. But this creature must be two blocks long. It was near enough for me to see oblong patches of white on its head. There was its head, fifty feet from us, little eyes peering…and further down the strait, its tail lifted from the water.

I didn’t know a boat could change tacks as fast as this one did. I grabbed Jekuthiel to keep him from flying over the side, and ducked to escape the boom. Were we modern Jonahs to be swallowed by a whale in Georgia Strait on our honeymoon?

Then I saw other heads rearing in what I had taken to be the monster’s underbelly. It was a school of killer whales. Abram and Jekuthiel were ecstatic. Jekuthiel wanted to pet them, Abram simply to look. I wanted to get to shore.

We let our passenger off at his home dock, saw his father in charge of him, and sailed back. That was all the adventure I wanted for that day, but there was more in store.

The last thing on our minds was the weather, but we should have been paying attention. A summer squall caught us; choppy whitecaps fought Abram as he headed back. Lightning streaks scissored the sky, thunder so close it reverberated through me. However, I knew it was the lightning I
should be afraid of out on the water. “Tell me about lightning, Abram.”

“I did.”

“I know, but I was eight and I didn’t understand it too well.”

“It’s like this, the clouds rubbing against each other generate static electricity.”

“Something like us?”

He grinned. “The lightning and the thunder start at the same moment, but since thunder lumbers along at the speed of sound, the lightning gets here first, almost instantaneously. Then you count, and wait for the thunder.”

Another light streak. He counted deliberately, “One, two, three, four, five.”

Bang. Almost on cue—thunder. “That puts the lightning flash at five seconds, about a mile away, a little more.”

“That’s good to know. Thanks, Abram.” I watched the rain bead and glisten on his arms. Abram has powerful arms for a bookseller. We landed, secured the boat, and ran for the cabin.

Once inside we stripped off our wet clothes and with a single impulse climbed into bed. Abram read aloud to me. Since our first night this had become our custom. We elaborated it into a game. Neither of us had played much as children; now we reverted to those kids we should have been. I was eight and he ten. Now we played. There was no schedule, no alarm clocks, no appointments, no courtroom, no accusations. Abram had banished them. It was amazing the
baggage I got rid of, like friends who disappear and take your money with them. That so-called real world was barred from intruding here.

Everything in the room outside the bed was designated “water.” You couldn’t get out of bed or you drowned. You had to have everything you might need: cookies, books, cokes, a bottle opener, and condoms.

I learned a lot about Abram during that rainstorm. He had in many ways moved past the beliefs of the Mennonite Church. His life was a search, an exploration. He took in and made part of himself the spiritual peace he found in identifying with nature.

And he pursued the philosophers: Aquinas, Frankl, Nietzsche, Sartre. The teachings of the Buddha were a way station. I pictured Abram assaulting unclimbed peaks, grasping ideas as handholds. I discovered he didn’t exactly read a book as much as argue with it. His questions and refutations filled the margins. It was the most active kind of reading imaginable.