Tea and Primroses (9 page)

I now know the answer to this question.

“What would you write of if no one ever sees it?”

I would write of Patrick.

“I would write of you.”

***

I must begin at my beginnings.

There was the little town of Legley Bay, on the northwest Oregon coast, and my mother and father, and my best friend Louise and her mother, Aggie, and my high school sweetheart, Miller, and chasing words in my slanted attic room. This was my small, contained world. These were my loves. For twenty-four years this was all I knew.

My professional writing career began in high school, when I convinced Mitchel Reed, owner of the
Legley Bay Legend
, to hire me to work for him after school. At first I simply assisted Mr. Reed by using my typing skills, honed on my mother’s manual typewriter I’d found years earlier collecting dust in the attic, abandoned when she’d married my father after attending secretarial school. But I quickly proved my writing talent when Mr. Reed’s one and only reporter abruptly quit to run off with the town’s married librarian. He needed coverage of Legley Bay’s Oyster Festival. “Could you handle it?” he asked me. I boldly accepted. “Now, it’s one of the biggest events of the year,” he said. “Don’t let me down.”

I agreed and went away, triumphant, my reporter’s pen in hand. I attended the festival with new eyes, different than the year before when I was merely a participant. Now I was a reporter. I must see with reporter’s eyes. I sampled oysters, I interviewed townspeople, I jotted down descriptions of the weather and booths. That night, I wrote my first article under the slant of my attic room roof, typing long into the night. The next day I presented it to Mr. Reed, with, I admit, more than a little nervousness. He used a red pen to slash sentences and superfluous words. “Succinct, Miss Mansfield. You must be more succinct. But you can write. I’ll give you that.”

After that, he let me start writing at least one article a week and then two. After a time, he sent me to cover all the local events and happenings and personal interest stories—what he called the heart of any small town paper. “I hate all this people stuff, Miss M. It’s all yours.”

When I graduated from high school, I left for the University of Oregon, where I majored in Journalism, but returned summers to work for Mr. Reed. He was the first person to tell me I could write. He was also the first person to tell me I had no future in journalism. “You’re not a reporter, Miss M.,” he said one day after reading an article I’d written about an abandoned baby left at the town’s Catholic church.

“Why?” I asked him.

“Because this article made me cry. Because you don’t stick to the facts.”

“But I did.”

“You most certainly did not.” He picked up my typed story. “Here’s the perfect example. ‘One can only imagine the desperation this young mother must have felt in order to do something as heart wrenching as abandoning her own child. We have no choice but to salute her brave choice rather than condemn it. This little baby will have a chance now to be adopted into a family of better stability and means. She’s given the adoptive parents a great gift.’” He looked up at me, waving the paper in the air. “You’re a writer, sweetheart, but not a journalist. But this thing you do—make your readers laugh and cry and cringe, hell even old crusty editors like me with a dead heart—that’s a real writer. Don’t waste it in journalism. Focus on those stories you’re always scribbling in your notebook.”

“But how will I make a living?”

“There’s a place for you on any small town newspaper, just like there is here. Keep writing these heartfelt columns and I’ll keep printing them. Write your stories at night and one day you’ll have a novel.”

So I returned to college that autumn and changed my major from Journalism to English with a minor in Creative Writing. I continued to work for Mr. Reed after I graduated, living with my parents in their ramshackle bungalow in the middle of town and writing my first novel in the middle of the night as he suggested. During my few moments of leisure, I spent time with Miller Byrd, my high school sweetheart, double dating with my best friend Louise and her fiancé Tim Ball. At night, I wrote. It was then I was most alive.

Two years passed, as they do, without our notice, until one day you wake and think, is this all there is? I was restless. I wanted to see more of the country. I wanted to live a little in order to write a lot. Just shy of my twenty-fourth birthday, I asked Mr. Reed to help me find something at another paper, preferably someplace far away, which he reluctantly did, reaching out to an old classmate, John Teller, who was the editor-in-chief of the paper in Greeley, Vermont. John hired me without meeting me after reading examples of my work. Could I be in Greeley by April? Yes, yes, I can, I answered without hesitation. Louise and Tim were to be married at the end of March, only two weeks away. I could leave after the wedding.

Vermont! I said the word over and over in my head, hugging a pillow on my narrow bed next to the slanted wall. Now my life would begin, I thought. Finally.

But first I would have to tell those who loved me.
I’m leaving.

I told my parents over dinner in our dining room with the faded rose-patterned wallpaper. It was a Wednesday. On Wednesdays we had meatloaf, made of ground beef and stale breadcrumbs, with ketchup dousing the top. My mother was an angry cook. In her thin and angular body that seemed to need no nourishment other than rage, she slammed and shoved and slapped meals together. Her food reflected this. The meatloaf was dry and crumbled on our forks before we could get it into our mouths; the ketchup was charred and tasted of bitterness; the peas from the freezer were cold no matter how long they boiled on the stove; the baked potatoes were slightly undercooked, with the texture of something cold and unyielding. But my father and I knew better than to pick at our dinner or move it around our plates. My mother had eyesight that noticed every small movement, immediately interpreted them as slights and catalogued them for combat use later.

“I was offered a job today.” Using my fingers, I scooped three peas onto my fork. The light was dim in our dining room, making the peas appear gray instead of green. When I was little, I used to think of everything in terms of our family unit. Mother, Daddy, Me: three peas.

My father, habitually quiet at dinner, exhausted by this time, having risen at dawn and worked in the cold sea air down at the docks, gazed at me in the way he had all my life—with a subdued pride. “What’s that, Sweets?” He held his fork in midair. His hands were dry and cracked from his work; I was forever rubbing lotion into them at night. “A new job?”

“A columnist at the
Greeley Tribune
. In Greeley, Vermont.”

“A columnist. Well, that sounds real good.” My father’s eyes, light blue like mine, were alive suddenly, the evidence of his physical exhaustion hidden for the moment. “Vermont. I always wanted to go to Vermont.”

“You already have a job,” said my mother. “A good one, considering your major.” My mother had no need for books. She was the calculating sort, endlessly scratching in the household ledger, skimping and saving whatever my father brought home.
No one can run a house cheaper than I can
, she had said to me just last week.
Your father should be more appreciative.

Daddy glanced at Mother with a slight smile. “Remember how I used to talk about Vermont? Got so your mother had to tell me to shut up about it.”

She didn’t respond to him. Her eyes remained on me and her voice was cold, her pinched face even tighter than usual. “What about Miller?”

“You could come visit me, Daddy,” I said.

“Wouldn’t that be something?” His fork was still midair and, seeming to notice it, he set it down next to his plate.

“Miller wants to marry you, Connie,” said my mother.

“I don’t want to marry him.” I paused, pushing my remaining three peas under a flap of potato skin with my fork. “I don’t want to marry anyone.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard.”

“Now, Mary—” my father said.

My mother talked over him. “You leave, you don’t come back. We’re not a hotel.” She pushed out from the table. “You hear that?” And then she was gone from the room. There was the sound of her heavy footsteps going up the stairs and then stomping into the bedroom, which was directly over the dining room. I lifted the flap of potato skin with my fork. The three peas were still nestled there. I squished one with my fork.

“This meatloaf’s worse than usual,” said my father. “What’s the word I’m looking for, Sweets?”

“Inedible,” I said automatically. This was a game we often played.

Slapping the table, he laughed, loud, almost manically. “That’ll do.”

“Daddy, be quiet.” I spoke in a whisper, stifling a laugh. “She’ll hear you.”

“Oh, be damned. I don’t care if she hears me or not.” But his laughter turned silent, his broad shoulders shaking.

“Daddy, stop.” A giggle escaped, and then I was lost to it as well. We laughed in silence until the tears streamed down our cheeks.

From upstairs, we heard the slam of the bedroom door. That sobered us for a moment but then we started in again, until we were worn out and we sat there grinning foolishly at one another.

Daddy got up from the table and began clearing the dishes. “Come on, Sweets, help me clean up and then I’ll take you to ice cream.”

“Really, Daddy?”

“I have a hidden stash of cash for just this occasion. And I have a hankering for some rum raisin.” Holding dishes in both hands, he leaned over and kissed the top of my head. “My girl. So smart.” Taking the dishes with him, he headed toward the kitchen. “Vermont. Think of it!”

***

The next morning, I walked to Louise’s house. She lived with her mother, Aggie, in the oldest house in Legley Bay, a Victorian perched on top of a hill. On a clear day, you could see the ocean from their front porch. Louise had been my best friend since kindergarten, when on the first day of school I’d pummeled a boy in the face when he told Louise her dress was ugly. Since then, I’d been the lucky recipient of her undying loyalty. When Louise loved a person, she did it with her whole body. We’d gone off to the University of Oregon together after high school, along with her boyfriend, Tim Ball. Tim had a scholarship playing football. Louise majored in Home Economics, and although she was extremely intelligent and it mildly annoyed me that she wasn’t pursuing a more academically demanding degree, I kept it to myself. She learned to sew beautiful dresses, some of which she made for me, and delicious meals on a budget, and how to take care of a home properly. We were opposites, needless to say. But we loved one another fiercely, and without petty jealousies or small cruelties. I considered myself lucky to be her friend; she was a better person than I in every way. Perhaps it was our differences that allowed the other to be a supporter instead of a competitor. Louise was the first reader of all my stories, starting in second grade when I wrote about an orphan named Priscilla who opened her own pizza restaurant (she illustrated it for me, beautifully). Now, we were twenty-four years old and she was marrying “the love of her life” in just a few weeks. Which, honestly, had me worried. Tim Ball hadn’t been the same since he’d injured his knee playing USC at Oregon, blowing all chances to be drafted into the NFL. We’d all assumed it was his future. I’d imagined and hoped for it for Louise, knowing that she of all people would enjoy all the beautiful things that came from wealth. And because it would be so nice for her—she’d grown up poor with Aggie scrimping and saving and the two of them living on bean soup after her father died. I wanted Louise to have it easy. I wanted her to get out. But instead Tim had decided to become a cop and settle back in Legley Bay.

I found Louise and Aggie in the kitchen. Louise was sewing sequins onto her veil. Aggie was reading the newspaper. They both looked up and smiled when I came in without knocking. This was my second home. Actually, I felt more comfortable here than I did in my own. Aggie put aside her paper and stood, holding out her arms. “Vermont,” she said. “Well done.”

I let myself be cradled against her scrawny chest. Aggie was built like a board, flat and long. “My mother’s beside herself,” I said.

Aggie stiffened. “Well, don’t pay that any mind. You kids have to go live your lives.” I breathed in, hoping some of Aggie’s spirit would enter me, sustain me in times of doubt. She smelled of lavender. “You want some bean soup?” She took me by the shoulders, scrutinizing my face. “Just made a fresh batch.”

I smiled. Aggie was forever making a new batch of pinto bean soup. I knew it was partly financial – bags of beans were cheap – and partly that she hated cooking. Aggie preferred to spend her time reading or working in her garden. She was the only person I knew then or since who read four newspapers, including the
New York Times
, every day. “No, thanks, Aggie. Louise and I are going to take a walk on the beach. We need to talk through how I’m going to tell Miller.”

“Well, shoot, that poor boy should know he wasn’t made to keep up with you.”

“Mom, that’s unkind,” said Louise. She set down the veil and put her sewing needle in the pincushion that looked like a strawberry.

Aggie, seeming not to hear her daughter, continued speaking, moving away from me to the stove, where she took the lid off the pot of beans and stirred them with a wooden spoon.

“I want you to cut out every article you write and send it to us,” said Aggie. “I mean it, now.”

A few minutes later, Louise and I set out in Aggie’s old truck to drive ten miles south of town to a stretch of beach that was great for walking. There were houses scattered on the cliff overlooking the stretch of beach, the first of many to come of terribly expensive second or third homes of wealthy people from Seattle and Portland. We parked in a turnoff and made our way down the public walking path, careful not to slip on the wet stones and sand. It was low tide. We walked on wet sand, our arms linked. “Oh, I’m going to miss you terribly,” Louise said.

“Me too.”