The Legend of Lady MacLaoch (2 page)

I was a version of Grandpappy—tall, green eyes instead of blue, and light-colored copper curls rioting around my head. We were the spitting image of some ancestor straight from . . . Well, straight from where, now?

It was only a few months later that Grandpappy went to the big orchard in the sky.

I flew home from college to attend the funeral at our small community church. The reception room was long, filled with tables of food and people old and young. Older generations reminisced to the younger ones, some who listened and some who didn’t.

I was eating a piece of pecan pie and emptying my mind of everything but the blissful nutty, sugary-salty, caramel-y pastry when my mother interrupted.

“Cole, why is it that you can’t dress like a lady? Are you trying to embarrass me?” My mother, too was holding a piece of pie in one hand and a fork in the other. I knew she would carry that piece around for a while, pretending to eat it, and then give it to my brother later, claiming it was her second piece.

I looked at her—perfectly pressed white slacks (risky business for her, since it was before Memorial Day) and a navy-blue, short-sleeved sweater with matching slip-ons, her short blond hair coiffed just so.

“What are you really learning up there in Portland?” she persisted. “I can tell you it’s not how to be a lady.”

I looked down at my outfit. My jeans were very nice, a spendy brand (though bought for a steal from the thrift store), and paired with a silk, expensive, slouchy tank in bronze that I’d borrowed from a friend, knowing full well that I’d need something to bring the jeans up to par. My hair was a manageable mass of coppery curls that had taken me hours to perfect and could all be undone if there was even the slightest change in humidity; I’d even done my makeup just right.

“Gee, thanks, Mother. Love you too.”

“Cole, I’m worried about you so far away. You know, I’ve been talking with your aunt Ruth, and she says . . . ”

Oh god,
I thought, tuning her words out.
Here it comes.

Portland, Oregon, was the “tree-hugger, Democrat capitol of the nation,” according to my mother. She worried about what that setting—known for earth, dog, and gay-and-lesbian friendliness—was doing to me.

“Wearing jeans, Cole? To Grandpappy’s funeral? You might as well just say that you are a—well, you know. I’m just worried about you up there. You have no drive for these things.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her. “Drive for what, Mother? You’re beating around the bush. Just be out with it.”

TJ sauntered up, a hilarity dancing in his eyes as he chewed boisterously—manners obviously forgotten or purposefully absent. “You know,” he said, around pie and whipped cream, “that she’s talking about your M-R-S degree.”

My mother looked knowingly across the crowded room, and I followed her gaze to Roger Bronson, all-star quarterback during our high school years and current-day oil-rig repairman.

“Mother, Roger is an ex-boyfriend from
high school
; one that was very sweet but incredibly unmotivated in life except for the pursuit of ass. Remember? That’s why I dumped him. He slept with Candice and Bernice while we were dating?”

“I think that’s a noble cause. Pursuit of ass,” TJ said, sealing my mother’s lips into a grim line of dissatisfaction with both of us.

TJ and I exchanged the look, a mental high five.

“Cole, he is the epitome of male, and you would have beautiful children,” she said, digging back at me.

“Yes, Mother, the epitome of male, and yet I still do not find him attractive enough to spread my legs and have him screw me out of a happy and successful future.”

TJ choked on his pie as my response had the desired effect on our mother. Her eyes narrowed to slits. Immediately I felt guilty. At nearly thirty I should not allow my mother to get a rise out of me. Though, in retrospect, I’d gotten very good at being an uncontrollable and willful child, and that gave my mother a perpetual rise.

“Fine,” she said, as my brother gave his empty plate to a little cousin and told him to throw it away. “If you want to live in Portland and become a lesbian, that’s fine, Cole, but don’t whine to me when you’re old and wish you’d had kids! Yes, which reminds me, TJ,” my mother said, volleying to him, “that if you have two cents, you’ll stay away from MaryJo while you are back at home. She’s a good girl. Whatever happened to Cindy?” At least she was an equal-opportunity meddler, not giving special treatment to her daughter over her son.

I tuned them both out. Looking down at my plate of half-eaten pie, I knew I didn’t have the stomach to finish it.

Grandpappy was gone. The thought fell like a lead weight in my stomach. And there I was arguing at his funeral. That was the way of it in our family, I supposed. I thought of my life if I were to do all of the things that my mother wanted me to do. I glanced over at Roger. He was nodding at something Dorothea was saying to him. My elderly aunt thought she had his full attention, yet his eyes scanned the room, looking for his next pursuit. I thought about what it would be like if he and I got married—all the mistresses he’d have; me pregnant and waddling around with a toddler.

No, I thought. I was being called elsewhere. I had no idea where that was or what I was supposed to do once I got there, but I would follow it until I felt right.

“Mother,” I said, interrupting her, “TJ’s way too old to be scolded.” She turned her gaze on me, and I turned the conversation. “Did you learn anything more about our true lineage before Grandpappy passed away?”

My brother gave me a thumbs-up behind her back and made his escape. “True lineage?” she repeated, her voice taking on an edge. “You know, Cole, if you spent half the energy you put into silly topics like that into finding a husband, you’d be happily married with kids by now, so don’t start. Not here.”

“I’m just asking—”

“Not now, Cole. For Christ’s sake! Your grandfather isn’t even cold in our memories and you want to drag this out now?”

“Mother, it’s not like I demanded to know if Grandpappy left me anything in his will. I just asked—”

The room suddenly had ears for our conversation.

“What’d you ask?” my father turned from some friends he’d been chatting with.

Hand on her hip, my mother gave me a look. It said,
Now you’ve done it.

“I was asking Mother,” I said, giving her an equal look back, “if we had learned anything more about our family lineage.”

My father shrugged. “We’re Bakers.”

“No. The whole Minary thing from Christmas,” I said, exasperated. Was I the only one who still cared?

“Nicole Ransome Baker, that’s enough. I told you, not here,” my mother cut in.

“Why? I don’t see why I can’t ask about our history—
my
history—now.” I punctuated my point by stabbing my fork into what was left of my pie. “Grandpappy was the one who told us!”

Exhausted by my family, I spent the rest of the evening walking the dusky rows of the orchards, all the while thinking that my flight back to Portland couldn’t come soon enough.

CHAPTER 3
T
he week after my graduation I made the decision to research my family history in full. When you spend two years researching and studying, the need to do it doesn’t just stop the day you graduate. Plus, the truth was, even through the final revision of my master’s thesis and its defense, I couldn’t stop thinking about Grandpappy’s revelation.

A search on the good ol’ World Wide Web for the Minary name’s home base returned a few possibilities, but the most reliable data seemed to point to a place called Glentree, which was on an island called Skye, off the western coast of Scotland. Convinced there was no better way to do research than in person, I bought a plane ticket to Scotland and made one last try for information from my parents.

My father would no doubt still be in the fields, leaving my mother to answer the phone. My timing was excellent—it was Wednesday, and Wednesday was bridge day. By this hour, my mother, an avid player with the local ladies of society, would be sauced up to her eyeballs.

“Minary. That’s right,” she said after the initial lecture on going alone to a foreign country. “You don’t like being a Baker? You know, Cole, when I married your daddy, I was proud to take his name. We are a respectable family, and if you spent more than a moment thinking about it, you’d see the same. Chasing some foreign name isn’t what I think your grandpappy would want you spending all your time doing, either. You should be proud of your Baker heritage.” She was relaxing into what I had long ago understood as her soapbox performance, one of her heart-to-heart moments wrapped in a guilt trip, the multiple cocktails no doubt helping.

“Mother, I am proud to be a Baker, but it’s not our heritage. Our heritage is this Minary name,” I said and waited. All I heard was paper rustling. “You understand that, right? That by blood I am no longer a Baker but a Minary?”

“You know, Ruby says that I ought to tell you this,” she said, ignoring me. I thought I heard the distinct sounds of ice tinkling against the sides of a crystal tumbler. “Ah yes, Minary. This is a copy of your cousin’s report that he gave to us. I was going to send it to you but just couldn’t do it. You always take things too far. Anyway, Minary is from the British Isles, probably Scottish . . . Your cousin found a name, lessee”—she slurred her attempt at “let’s see”—“his name is—”

“A name!” I shouted in a fit of frustration and excitement. “You have a name?”

“Yes, yes, dear. I’ve had it for months. And don’t get so excited,” she said, taking another swallow of her drink, the tinkle echoing through the phone. “It’s unladylike.”

“Mother,” I said, before she could get any further with her favorite line of reprimand. “The name?”

“Oh yes. It says here that the name your cousin found actually came off of the back of a photograph. Did you know that that was what started this all? He thought he found a picture of his daddy as a boy in a box full of old photos, so he showed Grandpappy. Turns out, that was what he was asking him down there at the end of the table—who this man was, and how they’d gotten the picture to look so old! Well, it turns out that they aren’t teachin’ cursive in schools anymore ’cause his name was right there on the back! Ha! Can you believe it?” Her drink gave strength to her
Carolina accent.

I took a deep breath. “That’s nice, Mother. So what was that name on the back of the photograph?”

She took a sip of her drink, smacked her lips, and said, “Iain Eliphlet Minary.”

CHAPTER 4
S
cotland is like my university town of Portland—it rains. A lot. And based on the breakfast that sat before me on my first day in the little town of Glentree, Scotland, food and drink were the staples for keeping the dreariness at bay. I stared at the food—a bowl of porridge (offered with or without whisky, but definitely without the
e
in
whisky
), eggs, sausage, toast, bacon, grilled tomato, and potatoes—and it stared back at me in challenge.

Carol, my host and owner of the stone, three-story Victorian-era townhome where I was staying, moved about the breakfast room tidying up after the other guests, who had already left. The room was small and quaint, with old wooden tables polished to a shine and vases of flowers filling the space with their own brand of cheery sunshine.

Carol had wild auburn hair and a warm, motherly attitude that I knew could change at a moment’s notice, should something or someone get out of line. She was married to Will, whom I hadn’t met yet because he did the cooking. They had bought the townhome to turn into a bed-and-breakfast as a fun retirement project. I had gotten all that by the time I took my first sip of tea.

“Carol,” I asked as I mopped up the remnants of my egg yolk and sausage with a piece of toast, “is there a historical society in Glentree?”

Carol paused a moment. “Historical society? Like the history of Glentree?”

“Well, not exactly. I’m doing genealogy research.” Thinking about it, I amended, “Yes, I suppose the history of Glentree would be a good place to start.”

“Your family started on Skye? Well isnae that lovely. Let me see. I’m not really sure but ye should probably want tae visit the library first. ’Tis a good place tae do research, aye. Oh! And truly each castle on the island has deep history as well and might be a great source of knowledge.”

“Excellent.”
Castles,
I thought dreamily, and pictured myself sitting at an ancient desk, thumbing through volumes of antiquated texts, surrounded by the intoxicating musk of old books. “Thank you, Carol. Do you have the names of the castles I shouldn’t miss?”

“Aye, well, I would ask the research librarian at the library, Deloris. The ones I can think of are Castle Laoch, Dunvegan, Eilean Donan, and Clan Donald has Castle Armdale and a very prolific history as well.” Carol tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Come now, what is your ancestor’s name? Maybe with a stroke o’ luck, I’ll have heard o’ him, aye?” she said and winked at me.

I smiled back at her. “That would be some luck. His name is Iain Eliphlet Minary,” I said, careful to roll the
r
, as they did here.

Carol’s hand dropped. “Who?”

“Oh, uh. Iain Eliphlet Minary,” I said again, wary of her reaction and thinking that I’d just sworn in Gaelic.

She relaxed a little. “Oh, I though ye said Minory, spelt with an
o
.” She shook her head and gazed out the window, her face taking on an unusual look of profound regret and stern curiosity. “No, I havenae heard o’ them.”

“Oh,” I said. I’d been hoping for something more. Minory was almost identical to Minary and a possible lead in my research.

She smiled down at me, her usual demeanor returned. “Take a look at the library. That and the castles will have historical documents ye can look through. More tea?” she asked.

I nodded. “I’ll do that. Thanks for your help, Carol.” It still felt like there was something she was avoiding, though. “Is everything OK?”

“Oh, ’tis nothing dear.” She smiled nervously. “Only, the library is located just outside o’ town on Viewfield Road. I’d hate for ye tae get lost, bein’ that ye are my guest and all.” She stopped, then added hastily, “But if I were ye, I would not say I was daein’ research on Minory to anyone who’s a MacLaoch. And whatever ye do, don’t go to Castle Laoch and mention it either. Castle Laoch is owned by the MacLaochs, ye see?”