The Endless Forest
Page 67
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The little people ran back and forth in wild high spirits—their parents were going off for the whole night, and they could all stay together here with their grandparents and Lily and Simon. Even Birdie was in high good spirits. Since she had got her way about school she was much less irritable and kinder to her nieces and nephews.
From the kitchen came the sound of Curiosity’s voice raised in mock outrage, followed by high giggling that only ended when the door shut abruptly.
“Sometimes,” said Lily’s mother, “I think of this house as it was when I first came to Paradise. When my father was alive, and your uncle Julian. I wonder what my father would make of things as they are today. His grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”
“Would he be shocked?”
“Oh, certainly. This is not the life he imagined for me.”
Lily thought for a moment. “Do any of us have lives as you imagined?”
Her mother looked up, her expression thoughtful. “There are things I wanted for you, and ways I imagined that those things might come to be. You are the closest, I think, to what I hoped.”
“Because I went off traveling.”
“Because you went off to find your calling, and you were persistent, and look what has come of it.” She put a hand on a pile of drawings. “And because you and Simon are so well matched and clearly happy together.”
“And Gabriel?”
This time her mother put down her pencil. “Gabriel is not so much my child as your father’s, if that makes sense to you. He belongs here, and would be happy nowhere else. Birdie, on the other hand—Birdie, I think, will not be satisfied to stay in Paradise. She will end up in Manhattan or Boston.”
“In the short term,” Lily said. “But eventually she will settle much closer to home than that. She is as attached to you and Da as Gabriel is to the mountain.”
“I would like to believe that you are right,” her mother said. “But my reasons are very selfish. I like having all of you nearby. Not necessarily here in Paradise, but within a day’s travel. You are working your way around to Daniel, Lily. What do you want to know?”
She should have known that her mother would hear the things that she did not say directly.
“I’m worried about him. I know we’ve all been worried about him since he went off to join the militia, worried about his health and state of mind. But this is different.”
“You are concerned about Martha Kirby’s connections.”
Lily pushed down the first flush of irritation. “I am worried about his health and state of mind, now as before. I don’t understand how he could have fallen in love so quickly.”
Her mother studied her own folded hands. “There was a time,” she said, “when I thought he might take his own life.”
Lily jerked in surprise.
“I believe you were in France then,” her mother said. “The pain was much worse, and he came close to despair. Your father was with him quite a lot, and they talked. I think it was those talks that got Daniel through the worst of it.”
“You never wrote to me about this. Why did you not tell me how badly off he was?”
“Because I didn’t want you to come home for that reason. Daniel would have been very distressed if you had. He didn’t want every decision we made to be about him. I believe at one point he convinced himself that it wouldn’t be right to marry, and that’s when he asked your father and Ethan to help him build himself a homestead in the strawberry fields. He needed a lair, a place where he could retreat and tend to his own needs.
“Little by little, he did find a way to live again. He put all his intelligence and energy into the school, and he worked at learning how to hunt with knife and tomahawk. In time he started visiting friends, and going to Good Pasture once or twice a year. But there were things that never mended in him. His sense of humor. His teasing ways. He was such an open boy, with such a joyous nature, and there was nothing left of that. Until Martha came back to Paradise.”
“I came back too,” Lily said and she was immediately ashamed of her childish tone.
“And he is as delighted as the rest of us are to have you here,” said her mother. “But that day of the flood when he came into the kitchen and saw Martha—I happened to be looking at him in that moment. Something came back into his expression I had almost forgotten about.”
“Do you mean he was attracted to her?”
Her mother’s brow lowered, the look she reserved for times when her students were being studiously oblivious.
“I mean hope,” she said. “I mean that something he had closed off in himself and given up on opened up without any conscious effort.”
Lily said, “Surely you must understand, Ma. Her connections scare me. They must scare you too.”
“Does Martha scare you herself?”
Lily looked up in surprise. “No, of course not. I like her.”
“That’s all that’s required of you,” her mother said. “That, and showing some faith in your brother’s ability to make his own decisions. Now, I want to fetch the drawings you made in Paris and Geneva and those northern Italian villages. I think they will provide some more insight into this issue of multiple vanishing points.”
The folder she got out of the desk was full of sketches that Lily barely remembered doing. Many of them from the first few years in Europe when they stayed no more than a month in any one place. Bruges, Paris, Lyon, villages along the Rhine, and then the mountains in Switzerland. The long journey from Lake Constance to the sea coast and into Italy, where villages had been carved, so it seemed, out of the rock face and clung there stubbornly. Vineyards in the fall. The mountains that ran down Italy like a spine, the valleys that echoed with the bells of grazing sheep. Florence and Umbria, circling around Rome to visit ruins at Pompeii, and into the villages perched high enough to look out over the Middle Sea, the whole world a gauzy, hazy blue. The village called Porcile where they had stayed for weeks in a house built of stone, rented from the mayor, who was also the owner of all the orchards, a man who desperately wanted to discuss politics though he had little English, and their Italian wasn’t equal to the task. How cool it was in the dim rooms at the height of the day, and how in the evening the air was ripe with the smell of olives crushed underfoot and sun hot on tile roofs. And then finally Rome. The shock of it. The thrill of standing before the Coliseum. The little house with its gardens and grape arbor and the bed where she had conceived and lost and lost again.
From the kitchen came the sound of Curiosity’s voice raised in mock outrage, followed by high giggling that only ended when the door shut abruptly.
“Sometimes,” said Lily’s mother, “I think of this house as it was when I first came to Paradise. When my father was alive, and your uncle Julian. I wonder what my father would make of things as they are today. His grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”
“Would he be shocked?”
“Oh, certainly. This is not the life he imagined for me.”
Lily thought for a moment. “Do any of us have lives as you imagined?”
Her mother looked up, her expression thoughtful. “There are things I wanted for you, and ways I imagined that those things might come to be. You are the closest, I think, to what I hoped.”
“Because I went off traveling.”
“Because you went off to find your calling, and you were persistent, and look what has come of it.” She put a hand on a pile of drawings. “And because you and Simon are so well matched and clearly happy together.”
“And Gabriel?”
This time her mother put down her pencil. “Gabriel is not so much my child as your father’s, if that makes sense to you. He belongs here, and would be happy nowhere else. Birdie, on the other hand—Birdie, I think, will not be satisfied to stay in Paradise. She will end up in Manhattan or Boston.”
“In the short term,” Lily said. “But eventually she will settle much closer to home than that. She is as attached to you and Da as Gabriel is to the mountain.”
“I would like to believe that you are right,” her mother said. “But my reasons are very selfish. I like having all of you nearby. Not necessarily here in Paradise, but within a day’s travel. You are working your way around to Daniel, Lily. What do you want to know?”
She should have known that her mother would hear the things that she did not say directly.
“I’m worried about him. I know we’ve all been worried about him since he went off to join the militia, worried about his health and state of mind. But this is different.”
“You are concerned about Martha Kirby’s connections.”
Lily pushed down the first flush of irritation. “I am worried about his health and state of mind, now as before. I don’t understand how he could have fallen in love so quickly.”
Her mother studied her own folded hands. “There was a time,” she said, “when I thought he might take his own life.”
Lily jerked in surprise.
“I believe you were in France then,” her mother said. “The pain was much worse, and he came close to despair. Your father was with him quite a lot, and they talked. I think it was those talks that got Daniel through the worst of it.”
“You never wrote to me about this. Why did you not tell me how badly off he was?”
“Because I didn’t want you to come home for that reason. Daniel would have been very distressed if you had. He didn’t want every decision we made to be about him. I believe at one point he convinced himself that it wouldn’t be right to marry, and that’s when he asked your father and Ethan to help him build himself a homestead in the strawberry fields. He needed a lair, a place where he could retreat and tend to his own needs.
“Little by little, he did find a way to live again. He put all his intelligence and energy into the school, and he worked at learning how to hunt with knife and tomahawk. In time he started visiting friends, and going to Good Pasture once or twice a year. But there were things that never mended in him. His sense of humor. His teasing ways. He was such an open boy, with such a joyous nature, and there was nothing left of that. Until Martha came back to Paradise.”
“I came back too,” Lily said and she was immediately ashamed of her childish tone.
“And he is as delighted as the rest of us are to have you here,” said her mother. “But that day of the flood when he came into the kitchen and saw Martha—I happened to be looking at him in that moment. Something came back into his expression I had almost forgotten about.”
“Do you mean he was attracted to her?”
Her mother’s brow lowered, the look she reserved for times when her students were being studiously oblivious.
“I mean hope,” she said. “I mean that something he had closed off in himself and given up on opened up without any conscious effort.”
Lily said, “Surely you must understand, Ma. Her connections scare me. They must scare you too.”
“Does Martha scare you herself?”
Lily looked up in surprise. “No, of course not. I like her.”
“That’s all that’s required of you,” her mother said. “That, and showing some faith in your brother’s ability to make his own decisions. Now, I want to fetch the drawings you made in Paris and Geneva and those northern Italian villages. I think they will provide some more insight into this issue of multiple vanishing points.”
The folder she got out of the desk was full of sketches that Lily barely remembered doing. Many of them from the first few years in Europe when they stayed no more than a month in any one place. Bruges, Paris, Lyon, villages along the Rhine, and then the mountains in Switzerland. The long journey from Lake Constance to the sea coast and into Italy, where villages had been carved, so it seemed, out of the rock face and clung there stubbornly. Vineyards in the fall. The mountains that ran down Italy like a spine, the valleys that echoed with the bells of grazing sheep. Florence and Umbria, circling around Rome to visit ruins at Pompeii, and into the villages perched high enough to look out over the Middle Sea, the whole world a gauzy, hazy blue. The village called Porcile where they had stayed for weeks in a house built of stone, rented from the mayor, who was also the owner of all the orchards, a man who desperately wanted to discuss politics though he had little English, and their Italian wasn’t equal to the task. How cool it was in the dim rooms at the height of the day, and how in the evening the air was ripe with the smell of olives crushed underfoot and sun hot on tile roofs. And then finally Rome. The shock of it. The thrill of standing before the Coliseum. The little house with its gardens and grape arbor and the bed where she had conceived and lost and lost again.
