Maud's House (5 page)

That morning I pulled up just as T-Bone turned up the volume on the radio. I heard the music swell into the barn, wrap itself around the cows and their udders and squeeze. As I stepped into the barn, I took in the comfortingly familiar scene: Tails swished. Milk flowed. Feet flew. The bottoms of T-Bone’s big rubber boots, which had taps nailed to them, clicked across the concrete as he hoofed from Holstein to Holstein.

Everyone in the county knew of T-Bone’s cows. They were consistent milk producers, and they always gave Grade A milk. The other farmers teased T-Bone: When was he going to call those agriculture boys at the University of Vermont to measure the effects of a floor show on dairy cows?

Dancing had nothing to do with it, T-Bone told them. It was the music. Music relaxes the cows. Cows aren’t so different from people, he said.

Leaning against the door jamb, the collar of my woolen jacket turned up against the autumn snap, I watched T-Bone and began to feel my nerves unwind. It was easy to sneak up on T-Bone while he was dancing. He was oblivious to everything. I knew the feeling, somewhere inside me, some muscle and bone remembered. But it eludes me, like T-Bone. I have never been able to paint T-Bone. I have made a thousand sketches of him. Not one is T-Bone. He is my one great artistic failure. I wish I could give him up. But I keep coming back.

The music lifted, floating up to the top of the barn, which seemed as high as a cathedral. T-Bone tapped and tapped. He was in a trance, in some kind of spiritual experience, a whirling scarecrow in flannel shirt, blue jeans, and Montreal Expos baseball hat. He was marvelous and when the milking was done and the show was over, I clapped my hands. He gasped for breath, now sweating in his long johns and flannel shirt, and smiled at me like a small, shy flower.

When I am at T-Bone’s house, he always feeds me. It could be the middle of the afternoon or the middle of the night and he’d insist a four-course meal is no trouble.

While T-Bone cooked pancakes, scrambled eggs, and sausage on the iron stove, I set the table. On the table were a pitcher of milk from his own cows, butter made from that same milk, maple syrup from his own trees, and cinnamon rolls from his own recipe. Muffins, croissants, French bread, coffee cake, rolls. Anything with yeast, flour, and butter is right up T-Bone’s culinary alley. He took up the kitchen detail at a young age; his Uncle Andre had been the worst cook in Canada.

The hotcakes disappeared as we silently traded sections of the newspaper. T-Bone devoured the news, from front to back, every headline and dateline. Car bombing, nine dead. Plane crash, one hundred sixty-seven dead. Price supports, dead. Summit talks, believed dead. American farmers, dead or dying. It was enough food to fuel a worrier of his caliber for a month. But T-Bone breezed through the paper immuned to catastrophe and mayhem.

Spending the morning with his cows and his dancing was, for T-Bone, like going to church or being downwind of a bonfire of burning marijuana. He was untouchable, protected by the euphoria that sang along his nerves and the peace that settled softly upon his spirit like a billowing blanket. As the day wore on and the experience wore off, he would begin to worry again, stew over me and milk prices and what those idiot politicians in Washington would do next. But for now, he was whole and happy. Salvation seemed as close as the milk jug at his elbow. When he was like this, I wanted to burrow close to his peaceful aura like a small animal seeking shelter from the winter wind. His calm seemed as real as concrete, capable of withstanding the battering of Odie’s tenacity, Wynn’s well-meaning nagging, and all the other guilt-laden vibes I had been receiving from the community lately.

I sipped at my coffee. T-Bone did not believe in beer for breakfast.

“I’m afraid,” I said. “They’re not going to leave this alone.”

He gathered the dishes, took them to the sink, and ran hot, sudsy water over them. His strong arms dived into bubbles up to the elbow. The muscles in his forearms worked as he sponged a plate clean of syrup and pancake crumbs, rinsed it, and stacked it in the rubber dish drainer. I collected a red checkered dish towel dangling from the refrigerator handle, snatched the slick plate, and began to dry.

“I haven’t painted in years, not real painting like I used to do,” I said.

“Years.”

“It’s not like I don’t want to paint. They think all I have to do is want it. That isn’t enough.”

“So tell them.”

“I have!”

“What are they going to do? Tie you to your easel?”

“Of course not.”

“Maybe they’ll blackmail you. Unearth some indecent Maud Calhoun greeting cards.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

T-Bone washes dishes just as Wynn and I were taught in home economics. Glassware, silverware, plates first before the water turns too greasy, then pots and pans, the kitchen equipment that seldom touches the human mouth. When I wash dishes, I never pay attention to the order of things. I grab whatever is nearest to the sink. Wynn and the instructor used to shake their heads in despair during those silly practice sessions in the Home Ec room’s tidy little kitchenette. They said I showed a shocking disregard for kitchen protocol. I said the white kitchenette needed some color, maybe an avocado refrigerator for starters.

T-Bone finished the last pan, a heavy cast iron skillet, plucked the stopper from the drain, dried his hands, and headed for the office at the back of the big old farmhouse.

I trailed behind him.

His office is the cleanest, warmest corner of the house. No dust demons or rattling wind here. Actually, this long, spacious room started as three little rooms. But, like any true Vermonter, T-Bone couldn’t leave them alone. He knocked down walls, threw up big sturdy cathedral-like pine beams across the ceiling, lined the walls with book cases. Books, magazines, a complex stereo system I can’t even figure how to turn on, odds and ends—everything from a pine cone to a sample bottle of cow vitamins—run the length and height of three walls. The fourth wall is a wall of windows. They bring the outdoors in, the woods, the path, the birdhouse. The room has a wood stove, sofa, and cat. A computer hums on the desk. Agriculture magazines are piled knee-high in the corner.

At night T-Bone reads on the sofa because he likes being near the cat and this is the only room the cat likes. He reads whatever he grabs from the shelf, Jane Austen, W. Somerset Maugham, Zen. He has a weakness for Kerouac because he thinks Kerouac might have liked my old house. But, T-Bone said, he was glad Kerouac never passed my house. Kerouac surely would have stopped and started writing on the spot, going on and on as the pictures once had gone on and on with no beginning and no end. Yes, T-Bone said, he was lucky that Kerouac never saw the house, that Kerouac and I had never met.

T-Bone had loved my house, too. He was the only who never asked: “What is this supposed to be?” or “Why did you draw that?”. Unlike George, he knew the paintings were just vehicles to a place inside me—streetcars to self-definition. I believe we all have those places and, for some reason, we can’t keep ourselves from trying to get there. What happens when we get lost and we can’t find the road to creativity? We talk to dead husbands and spend our paychecks on Rolling Rock.

“No ropes, no guns, no blackmail. Then what’s your problem?” T-Bone said, settling behind the desk.

“I love them.”

“Ah.” He tapped on the computer keys and studied the screen. Some of the cows were due for vaccinations that week. He must remember to call the vet, he said. As if he would forget.

“I mean, in a way, they’re family. Families always think they know what’s best for you, and they aren’t shy about telling you what it is.” I flung myself on the sofa, bouncing off the cat. “Odie’s already given me a check for the supplies. And yesterday Reverend Swan dropped by with a cassette tape of ‘inspirational sax’. To help me get in the mood, he said.”

“Don’t worry,” T-Bone frowned at the computer screen and mumbled distractedly. “It’ll all work out.”

I glared at him. “You’re a real pain in the ass when you’re mellow.”

The traffic stopped, started, stopped again. I love sugar maples, I adore birches, I ogle oaks, but I sure wouldn’t drive two hundred miles to see their leaves die.

The trees crawled past the window of my ancient green van which was as exasperated with the pace as I was. It choked and rattled, scowled and threatened to dump me in the middle of nowhere with a hundred pounds of dead engine. The van and I hate people who ride the brake.

Twenty minutes. Forty minutes. An hour late. While Freda wore down the thick soles of her white, orthopedic shoes at the Round Corners Restaurant (“You think I’m going to let my arches drop? I’m taking care of myself for Lewis Lee.”), I was stuck in the funeral march of the leafpeakers.

It always amazes me that humans, who mix every conceivable color in their chemistry labs, seem astounded when nature manages to produce a hue other than green. I wouldn’t mind if they came because they truly loved the fiery reds, burnt oranges, and flaming yellows. I understand the uplifting quality of color. But, I suspect, the real reason the autumn people storm New England, as the bourgeoisie did the guillotine, is for the show, the chance to see a good aristocratic head roll. Their friends told them they really must see New England in autumn. The Experience was everything, according to the cocktail party circuit. It gives people something to chat about. Police see it all the time at auto accidents and fires. Today half the Vermont countryside was burning and drawing a crowd.

They clogged usually deserted roads like mine. They came from big cities to the South and French cities to the North, loaded with enough camera equipment to keep Japan in business, two migrations of shutter bugs colliding in the hills and valleys of Vermont. They crept along the roads in every form of vehicle, motorcycle, big car, and bus. They stopped without giving notice and pulled out without looking. They made U-turns on narrow roads, curves, and hills.

“Oh, Harold, I want a picture of that one.” Snap. Click. Crash. “Harold, why don’t you watch where you’re going?”

“May I see your license, please?”

All to watch a few million leaves die.

Round Corners’ one real street—the only one with a center line maintained thanks to the state’s paint crew—is known as Highway 100 on the Vermont state map. Usually it was sufficient for the small town’s needs. However, it was not nearly enough highway for the hundreds of tourists who passed through on a bright, musty-smelling fall afternoon.

Since finding a parking space on the street would be impossible for the next two weeks, I automatically whipped in behind Wynn’s Cut and Curl.

Wynn Winchester was knitting. She sat under one of the shop’s two hair dryers, the bubble hood of the dryer flipped up. From the basket at her feet, I surmised the mysterious tangle of yarn dangling from her lucky needles was going to be a red sweater for Junior. A tiny sleeve hung over the edge of the knitting basket. “Wynn, I’m parked behind your place, okay?” I said, poking my head in the shop. The bell over the door jingled.

“Might as well. All the traffic has shot my business today. People don’t want to kick and claw their way to a perm. As if I could give anyone a nice curl even if they were feeling energetic.”

“Still having morning sickness, huh?”

Wynn motioned to a shelf of bottles and spray cans. “The stuff makes me sicker than a dog.” The hairdresser sighed, then suddenly brightened. She smiled and stretched her shirt tight across her stomach. “I think I’m starting to show. What do you think?”

I shrugged. “Looks like it to me.”

“There. I’ll tell that to the High and Mighty Harvey Winchester. He thinks I’m nuts, but husbands don’t know a thing. No matter how many of those baby books they read. A woman knows when she’s starting to show.” Harvey had been studying baby books ever since they learned Wynn was pregnant. He was a fount of information on breastfeeding, the formative years, and ear infections.

“How long does Harvey’s books say this morning sickness is supposed to last?”

“Harvey’s books says I’ll be out of the woods in another month. The doctor concurs. Until then, the women of Round Corners are just going to have to do without their fancy hair care.”

I shivered. Things could get ugly around here.

I crossed the street to the Round Corners Restaurant. As usual, the first thing I did upon entering the restaurant was inspect the cash register. The supply of Maud Calhoun greeting cards was low. Barns, mountains, cows. The tourists loved them, just as George said they would. I found a red crayon at the bottom of my purse and wrote MORE CARDS on an order pad, ripped off the sheet, and stuffed it in my pocket.

The bell over the restaurant door jangled behind me. I quickly stashed my purse and jacket under the horseshoe counter. Two men squeezed their bulky shapes on to stools at the counter. I poured coffees—one black and one with cream—and set them before Amos and Bartholomew. “Afternoon, boys.”

Freda, already making dinner salads in the kitchen, poked her head over the top of the swinging doors. “Maud Calhoun, you’re late, as usual.”

“Traffic.”

Freda pursed her lips and went back to filling salad bowls. “You look like hell,” she mumbled. “You need to lay off the Rolling Rock.”

I ignored her, leaning on the swinging doors. “Been busy?”

“Watching leaves is hungry business.”

“Good for tips,” I said, tying on a white polyester apron. “Had to park behind Wynn’s today; she’s not doing any perms for awhile. The smell gets to her.”

“Damn!” Freda patted her hair. She wore it swept up in the back, cascading into a fall of curls. She hated her straight, blonde hair and always said she’d die without a regular perm. Her husband Lewis Lee had never seen her without a curl in her hair. “By the time Wynn gets over morning sickness, I’ll look like something on the side of the road.”

This latest prenatal inconvenience hardly affected me. I was told my mother’s black curls had swarmed around her head like bees. I liked to think that she hadn’t been able to control her hair either. My hair gave everything the slip—barrettes, bobby pins, braids. But to keep the health department happy, I kept trying to strong-arm my curls into obedience with a coated rubber band.