Hens and Chickens (29 page)

Gray dared Amber to race him to the woods, and gamely the college student lifted her long skirts and bolted after his skinny frame. Maude and Ralph, who were meandering along arm in arm, watched the antics of their grandson with obvious pride and pleasure.

Our heroine, Lila found herself at the end of the parade! Mike Hobart had left her in the dust, without even so much as a backwards glance. Even worse, he had left the field entirely open to his one-time rival, who now graciously offered up his arm to Lila. She took the proffered aid from Ryan MacDonald, laughing happily at the difference a day made.

The sharp, vigorous scent of freshly cut pine and balsam fir greeted the little group when they reached the edge of the woods, where Hobart had hewn a path to the big rock. The smell of the Maine forest filled our friends’ senses and they breathed deeply of the pungent nectar. “Ahhh!” expostulated Wendell, who was already walking on clouds with Rebecca on his arm; “ain’t thet smell somethin’ shaap!”

MacDonald appreciatively inhaled the biting scent of the pine and balsam. “Reminds me of Henry David Thoreau,” he said, glancing around the cool woods.

No matter where I am, the sharp scent of pine or balsam always brings to mind the romantic image of the Maine woods, a place Thoreau loved, and that I love, too. When I’m on my deathbed, if someone will just bring me a handful of balsam spills or a sprig of white pine, I know I will die a happy woman!

The Millett Rock, a huge gray boulder the size of the Sovereign Union Church, once had threatened to burst free from the forest floor but has been restrained over thousands of years by gnarled tree roots, lichens, moss, pine branches, rust-colored pockets of pine needles, and grasping saplings. These days the flat-top boulder looks much like Gulliver tied down by the Lilliputians. From a distance the rock looms between several towering pines and appears insurmountable. However, up close, natural hand-holds, foot rests and plateaus present themselves, making scaling the Millet Rock a pleasurable and doable challenge.

Hobart parked the ATV and utility trailer at the bottom of the big rock, and MacDonald quickly abandoned Lila to help Miss Hastings alight. The carpenter hopped off the four-wheeler and exchanged significant looks with his former romantic rival. The lawyer nodded his head meaningfully in Lila’s direction, and needing no further encouragement Hobart replaced MacDonald at her side.

Before she knew what was happening, Lila was being helped by the handsome carpenter up onto the first level of the rock, and she scrambled for a hand-hold, enjoying the feeling of the rough rock against her bare hand. She flipped her hat back so she could see better, and the hot sun on her head encouraged her onward. Exultantly she clambered up and up, eager to reach the view from the flat top of the Millett Rock. She glanced down at Hobart, who was supporting her from below. Their eyes locked, and Lila was consumed by the ardor revealed in his potent gaze.  She paused, and a worm hole in time opened up. Lila felt as though he had picked her up, tossed her over his shoulder and strode off into the bushes with her. She trembled at the touch of his hand on her ankle.

I so love you!
she thought.  

Hobart’s blue eyes darkened as if in response to her heart’s murmur. Lila registered his,
And I so love you, darling!
as clearly as though she’d heard the words aloud.

“Hey, what’s the holdup – up there!” cried Gray, from below. The worm hole closed. Lila giggled joyfully, and scrambled for the top of the rock.

“Watch the gap in the corner, darling,” Hobart cautioned her, pointing knowingly toward a six-inch crevice that threatened to split an ear away from the northern face of the big rock. My sources tell me that many a shoe, wallet, plate, fork and ribbon have met their demise in that crevice over the past 200 years, never to see the light of day again.

Hobart, satisfied that Lila was safe, returned to the bottom of the rock to help the others scale the heights. By 11:30 a.m., everyone was up to the top of the Millett Rock, “Oo-ing” and “Ah-ing” over the views, especially those of the Western mountains, outlined in indigo against the soft blue sky. Blankets were settled, pillows placed, dead branches tossed overboard, and the picnic was unpacked. Dainty cut sandwiches, stuffed eggs, fruit, cheeses, pickles, sweets and other delicacies were passed around, hand to hand, hand to mouth, joyfully, laughingly, teasingly, lovingly – as though this was the last supper and each of the picnickers was prepared to enjoy it to the utmost.

No one describes the type of felicity found on top of the Millet Rock that afternoon better and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who writes in his beautiful essay
Friendship
:

“We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. (Despite) all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether … The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is a certain cordial exhilaration.”

An hour later, when everyone was stuffed, the group sprawled languidly atop the warm gray rock, luxuriating in the sensation of Emerson’s “certain cordial exhilaration.” Wendell dozed off. Rebecca, who had been sitting next to him, gently tucked her shawl under his head.

“Didja evah see such a bread pudding as my Maude’s?” Ralph cried, overcome with a rush of love for his wife. He threw his arms around his wife and squeezed her fondly. “She’s the best cook evah!”

Maude blushed, but for once she didn’t rebuke her husband for “spoiling the mood.”

“Hey, no shillyshallying!” teased Hobart, who was stretched out full length and resting on his elbow. He eyed his former employer with unabashed fondness—and not a little envy.

Lila felt her heart take flight at the look of longing in Mike Hobart’s blue eyes.
Someday?! Someday!

“Wonderful! Everything was just wonderful, dahrrrlings!” exclaimed Miss Hastings. Matilda squawked her agreement, and even Ryan MacDonald laughed.

Chapter 27

The Staircase Tree

That night, after the picnic, Lila experienced her worst nightmare since her mother’s death. Her stepfather “visited” her during the night, taunting her with words and looks too fiendish and sick for me to describe. Rebecca, who heard Lila’s cries from the bedroom above, rushed downstairs in the moonlight and found her young friend softly weeping in bed. “Oh, my dear, what’s the matter?” she cried.

Lila sat up, brushing the tears from her eyes. “I’m OK now, Becca,” she said, smiling tremulously. “I told him to go away and … he left!”

“He, who, dear?”

“My stepfather!”

“Oh, my goodness,” said Rebecca, sitting down on the edge of the bed and clasping her young friend’s hand. “
Can’t
you tell me about it, dear?”

In response, Lila scooted over in bed toward the open window, making room for her friend. Rebecca, needing no further encouragement, climbed into the antique brass bed that Lila had appropriated from the attic for her downstairs bedroom. The tired old springs
creaked
  with the weight of the new addition.

“Ooh, I hope it holds us!” Rebecca said. Both women giggled.

Lila drew in a steadying breath,
finally
prepared to share her burden with her faithful friend. However, Amber, hearing the commotion, wandered downstairs and into Lila’s bedroom, interrupting them.

“What’s going on?” Amber asked, sleepily.

“Nothing, dear,” replied Rebecca, propping herself up onto her elbow. “Lila’s just had a bad dream, that’s all.”

“Got room in there for me?”

There was a shifting of bodies, a giggle or two and further
creaking
as Amber climbed into bed with the two older women. She cuddled up next to the warmth of her mother, and Rebecca necessarily squeezed closer to Lila to make room for her daughter. The three curled up in Lila’s bed like peas in a pod.

Lila sighed, contentedly. “This is so nice,” she said. “It’s almost like I had sisters!” She felt herself relax. And before she knew it, she dozed off.

The three women slept together during the remaining few hours of the night. More truthfully, I should say that Amber and Lila slept, for Rebecca slept not a further wink. Instead, she lay sandwiched in bed between her daughter and her young friend, listening to their heavy breathing mingled with the sonorous chorus of peepers outside Lila’s open window. She reflected upon Lila’s words.
“I told him to go away … and he left!”

Rebecca wondered what Lila’s stepfather had done to cause so much anguish in her young friend’s life, and came pretty close at guessing the truth. However, in these early hours of the morning she also realized that Lila seemed to be making
progress
in some sort of healing, not
regressing
. It appeared to her now that Lila had been experiencing a kind of emotional and spiritual cleansing since she had moved to Maine. Rebecca began to suspect that
this
was why Lila had never been able to form meaningful romantic relationships, and that the healing was necessary in order for Lila to claim the love and joy that awaited her with Mike Hobart.

Spiritual forces were at work helping Lila heal, and Rebecca told herself that perhaps she should stop trying to direct traffic and concentrate on playing a supporting role. She promised herself (and perhaps a Higher Power) that, come what may, she would not push Lila or finagle events, but simply BE there, BE present; support and encourage and love Lila.

Perhaps thatminister DOES know what she’s doing!
  Rebecca thought.
These things DO take time.

Healing doesn’t happen miraculously overnight, except in the New Testament. And this was Lila’s life, not a work of fiction; but a dog-gone, dragged out, dumbfounding LIFE.

One of my favorite books is a collection of letters, “Waiting for God,” by the French mystic Simone Weil. (I actually
do
read some of the books on the many shelves in my church office.) The title is taken from a recurring theme of Weil’s, a translation of a Greek phrase,
“en hupomene”
– “waiting in patience,” or “patiently enduring,” a neatly turned phrase that means so much more than the literal translation suggests. This is not just everyday “waiting for bread to rise” or “waiting for the grass to grow.” The phrase suggests a hopeful waiting, in expectation of a wondrous event, or the kind of waiting that’s necessary during the emotional and spiritual healing process of a friend or loved one, such as Lila Woodsum.

These things DO take time.

The next morning, Lila and Rebecca rose early, abdicating the bed to the slumbering Amber. The two huddled together at the kitchen table in the early-morning light. Over several cups of coffee, Lila poured out her childhood history and the gist of her meeting with me to her faithful friend. The older woman listened quietly through the entire revelation, only reaching out occasionally and squeezing Lila’s hand. For her part, Lila was able to relate her entire story with nary a sob or a tear. At the end she was almost cheerful. “The nightmares are terrifying when they happen, because they seem so REAL,” Lila concluded. “But afterwards I feel so much better!”

“That’s how I feel after a good cry!”

“Eggs-actly,” said Lila, wryly. “For my part, I am cried out.”

“Oh, it was such a brave and yet
awful
thing your mother did! I wish I’d known what truly happened at the time,” Rebecca cried. “I could have done so much more to help you, dear!”

Lila, who was not normally demonstrative, reached out and hugged her friend. “You did everything you could, Becca. And I can never, EVER thank you enough!”

Tears came to Rebecca’s eyes, but she said nothing. She was too emotional to talk. She daubed the tears from her face with the paisley cloth napkin at her place setting, which she had recently sewn to match the new tablecloth.

The two friends sat in companionable silence in the cozy kitchen. A soft, spring rain fell outside. Occasionally, the south wind pushed a spray of moisture against the window, and the water dribbled down hitting the wooden sill with a desultory dripping.

“Mmmm, that was a great picnic, wasn’t it?” said Lila, toying with her coffee mug. With the elasticity of youth, she had already leaped from the past to the present, wondering how soon she would see Mike Hobart again.

Rebecca smiled. “Wasn’t Ryan handsome!” she exclaimed.

“Omigod, he looked so silly in that straw hat! I can’t believe he drove all the way up here just to make me that crazy job offer.”

“I think there was more to it than a job offer, Lila. I think he honestly wanted to
see
you again.”

Lila tittered. “We’re not going to have the old ‘Ryan cares for you conversation’ again, are we?”

“No, no!” Rebecca said, laughing. “I’m not on
that
bandwagon anymore.”

“I thought you were backing a different horse these days, Becca. You should have seen the look on your face when you walked in and found the three of us joking around on Saturday!”

“I
was
surprised, I admit. But it was a pleasant surprise. I was expecting rather a different outcome!”

“Ryan never had a chance with me romantically, and I think he knew it. But he’s a good friend.”

“Poor Ryan! He’s a good man, but he’s not the man for you, dear.”

“Mmmm,” said Lila, picturing the handsome carpenter, helping her up the Millett Rock yesterday. Her heart swelled with love as she relived the passion emanating from his bright blue eyes.

“But … are you sure you’re doing the right thing, dear, turning down
double
your old salary? It
was
a fabulous offer Perkins & Gleeful made.”

“I am totally sure! THIS is my home, now,” Lila proclaimed. She glanced around the kitchen that Rebecca had made so homey with her domestic efforts. “You’ll have to take me out of here in a box!”

Rebecca shuddered at the implication of Lila’s words. “Oh, don’t say that!” she cried. “It sounds so horrible! Besides, we never know what might happen to us in life, what future choices we might have to make.”