TREASURE IN THE FIELDS OF MEMORY

by Carole W

“Any word from Vincent?” Catherine scanned the narrow beach. Dozens had gathered with her on the shore, clustered here and there in murmuring circles. He’d have stood out had he joined one. And the arched entrance at the far end of the strand? It was well lit, but there no familiar shadow loomed. “All the other crews are here. I know he was working the farthest out … but shouldn’t he be back by now?”

“You would think,” Father replied, both hands on the smooth wooden knob of his cane. His chin raised, crows’ feet deepened at the corner of his eye. On his toes, she imagined, beneath the hem of his long ceremonial robe, the better to see over the heads of those milling about between them and the anticipated point of arrival. “He received the message to meet us here  – that was … three hours ago? – and said he’d pack up his tools and leave right away. I sent Pascal to check the pipes in case he was reporting any, ummm, delay, and now I don’t see him either.”

Catherine turned, eyeing the towering flowstone formation at the other end of the grotto. Snow-white, rippled, and glistening, it earned every bit of its bestowed name, Icebound Falls. “Maybe he took another route? There’s a tunnel behind the cascade …” A narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel of twists and turns where the pipes could not run. “And a hidden entrance that comes out … there.” She pointed to the cove-like niche on the other side of the watercourse, the niche with its soft sand floor and a hiding place for a stash of quilts and pillows.

Father peered at her, his expression a tangle. She discerned … surprise? Had he not known about the passage? Questioning? How could she know? And was that … just the quirk of a smile?

“Is there, now?” he drawled.

She dropped her hand, hoping Father couldn’t read the heat she felt rising to her cheeks as anything other than concern.

With Mouse in tow, Jamie materialized at Father’s side, interrupting his low, clucking chuckle. “People are getting a little antsy,” she reported.

As if on cue, the chatter rose in pitch and pace, the once-smaller groups becoming two, then one, migrating to the edge of the rushing sluice. Children knelt on the limestone bank of the stream-way, daring and testing each other – who could hold a hand in the icy, eddying water the longest, who could plunge an arm deepest into the froth.

Mouse shifted foot to foot in the fine white sand. “Should maybe start without?”

A clasping hand appeared on Mouse’s shoulder. “Start without who?” Vincent said, a smile in his voice … and in his eyes as his gaze sought Catherine’s. “I’m here.”

“Okay, good!” Mouse cried, clapping his hands, managing a tricky twirling hop.

“Yes, good.” Catherine took his arm. The tips of his hair were damp, she noticed, and his clothes were fresh from the laundry chamber. She breathed in the warm amber scent of him, honeyed and gold-gilded.  “Let’s get this party started!”

“A party? I must have misinterpreted the message. I felt a level of … urgency. A summons I dared not disregard.”

She nudged him with her hip as she led him toward their friends congregated near the calcite waterfall. “Well, I wanted it to be a surprise! But I don’t for one minute believe you didn’t run into someone along the way who spilled the beans.”

“You know your people well, Catherine. Tell me, though. What’s the occasion? I promise no one disclosed that.”

“Well, it’s Labor Day, so my office is closed. And I started thinking … everyone down here works so hard for the good of the community …”

“Far and away the best prize life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing,” Vincent tendered.

“Yes, yes, I agree,” Catherine replied, giving him another nudge, this time with her elbow. “Teddy Roosevelt phrased it – and you quoted him – well. But as I said … I started thinking … You all deserve to be celebrated. And I remembered going to my great aunt’s house in Roxbury for the holiday. A picnic on the grounds, they called it. There’d be all sorts of food – late summer corn and early fall apples … I’ve told you, haven’t I, that Dad grew up near Maple Bank Farm?”

She didn’t wait for his answer.

“It’s one of the oldest family farms in the country. Still in operation! He worked there summers – in the orchard, mostly, but they sold vegetables and eggs out of the bed of a pickup truck and he’d ride along. A Helper! Anyway, there’d be games set up for us to play – croquet and a badminton net, a pile of burlap bags for sack races. Long tables of cookies and cakes and pies. Huge thermos jugs of lemonade. And over in the shade of the big tree … homemade ice cream we’d all take turns cranking. The peach was divine.”

“I can almost see it,” Vincent said and his hand closed over hers where it rested in the crook of his elbow.

He smiled down at her without a trace of wistfulness. Her accustomed thought – I wish you could have – faded away before it gained full form.

“And you wanted to create the same for us here Below.”

It wasn’t a question, but she nodded, adding “I didn’t think I could hammer the croquet wickets into the stone floor, though.” She’d meant that to be funny, but she sensed he was considering how that might be accomplished.

“But Catherine …” he said after a few quiet paces, “surely you haven’t brought that much food down here?”

She laughed. “Maybe next year! The idea came to me just this morning. I was out early at Union Square … at the Greenmarket … and there they were. The best part of the holiday at Roxbury. Getting them down here was just a matter of logistics …”

“They?” Vincent surveyed the bare ledges of the cavern’s walls. “I don’t …”

“That’s because they’re in the water! You’ll see in just a minute.”

Almost through the anticipatory throng, almost at the bank of the stream, she hoped to tease the surprise as long as possible, but at his perplexed expression, she carried on.

“My favorite, the treat I looked most forward to, was the watermelon. They’d have been buried in metal bins full of crushed ice for hours, but at the end of the hot day someone would start hauling them out and slicing them up.” She sighed in remembrance, lifting her shoulders, letting them fall. “All the kids would take a wedge and go sit on the low fieldstone wall and take these great big bites … and then have a seed-spitting contest! One year I even won!”

She felt his retreat even before she heard his sharp intake of breath, before the shining light in his eyes dimmed. The muscles of his arm tensed; his enveloping warmth pulled back like an outgoing tide, so sudden, so strong that she rocked a little on her feet. She stared at him, a little open-mouthed she knew. And though he didn’t look away, he wasn’t seeing her. She knew that, too.

Rooted in place, as still as if a player of the swinging statues game she’d loved as a girl, he was elsewhere.

Softly, she called his name, once … then again. “Vincent? What’s wrong? Do you sense some kind of danger?”

He shuddered … visibly … the tremor ending with the shake of his head, the release of a rocky breath. “No, no danger.”

“Was it something I said?” In the space of seconds she’d replayed their conversation, drawing only a clouded blank.

Silent, he didn’t quite meet her searching gaze, and so she knew his answer.

She tugged him forward – and he allowed it – but too soon she’d have to let go of his arm.

The tumult of the stream rose as they threaded through the hushing crowd. The blustery waters sparkled, crystal with cold, the quieter rimstone pools studded with spheres – black-green, flecked with yellow – the anchors of summer. Moon and Stars melons, the farmer had told her. Stationed bank-side was the clever table Cullen had designed, slotted boards that slid together to make a stable stand, that came apart as flat boards, easily stacked and strapped for packing-out. Nomadic furniture, Cullen called it.

And behind the table … William, who clapped his hands when they edged out of the assemblage into his sight. He called her to his side with the tilt of his head – she’d be his helper, his Chef de Partie, overseer of the basket of tightly rolled napkins and the stack of turquoise Melmac plates if someone just had to have one, the server of slices. With the jut of his chin he signaled to Kipper who went down on his stomach to retrieve the first melon, Geoffrey and Eric holding his ankles in case he had to reach out over the water just a bit … too … far.

A festive cheer went up, a round of applause … and Kipper, on his feet, held the first heavy orb high over his head.

“Bring it on!” William boomed.

The rhythmic swish-swish-shink of William’s blade and sharpening steel was as bright to the ear as its silvery, arcing flash was to the eye.  Then … the first thwack, a crisp cleaving, a sweet-green aroma misting the air … Ruby wedges overlapped like fallen dominos along the edge of the chef’s table, each pebbled with rows of shining obsidian seeds.

Catherine reached for the topmost slice, planning … expecting … to present Vincent with the first …

But he was gone.

There was no way she could leave the party early, torn though she was. Concern and confusion underscored her enjoyment of the afternoon. She wanted to go after him, comfort him, talk it through. Wanted him to come back to the gathering having gotten over it, whatever it was, and promise he’d explain later. She was worried; she was distracted by that worry.  Had he expected her to follow him? Did he need her to have done so? He bore his burdens well – too well in her opinion – and it seemed out of character to leave her standing …

Except it wasn’t really. She wouldn’t count the ways, not now.

Calling attention to his sudden absence seemed inadvisable, though she chanced it …

Once with Rebecca, who would understand why she hadn’t asked Father.

“Did you see Vincent leave?”

“I didn’t,” her friend replied, posing no further questions, only reaching out to touch her arm.

Asked the same, then, of Pascal who jumped to the ground from his elevation on a granite outcrop where he’d judged the younger children’s seed-spitting efforts. “I’ll check with the sentries,” he said, the words tossed over his shoulder as he bustled off.

She watched for his return, and soon Pascal was back, in cavern’s entranceway tapping his drumsticks together to gain her attention, his subsequent mimed report an unconcerned shrug of his shoulders. No notification of any trouble.

Catherine turned in a slow circle. The assemblage was thinning, still merry. Relaxed, she perceived. Fêted, she hoped. Many thanks were called out; more than a dozen hugs were received. His chef’s knife and steel stowed in a strapped leather roll tucked under one arm, William directed clean-up operations the wave of his free hand. The winners of all the different contests were called upon to carry the baskets of tableware and the galvanized tubs of watermelon rinds back to the kitchen. She hadn’t thought to shop for prizes, but she’d do that … tomorrow … and she’d make them special, too.

Mary slipped an arm around her waist. “This was a good thing, Catherine. We needed it.” Her embrace tightened for a moment. “I noticed Vincent … left.”

“He did, and I don’t know why. Do you?”

Mary sighed, then took a breath to speak … only to sigh again.

Catherine turned to face her. “Does he not … like … watermelon?” So much so he can’t even be around it?

“As a boy he loved it; all the children did. It was a rare treat in those days. But let me think.” A finger to her lips, her thumb under her chin, Mary pondered her question. “Once he gave his slice to Pascal who’d dropped his in the sand … thanks to Mitch … and once when there wasn’t enough for everyone, Vincent was the first to let his portion go to a younger child. That happened more than once. Such a generous boy he was. But after that, when he was older? I don’t have any clear memories of him with melon in his hands.

“He’s not allergic, is he?”

“That would surprise me.”

“Well, I have to find him. I don’t know where to start looking, though.” The Great Falls, the Whispering Bridge, The Mirror Pool? The possibilities were too many. “Any ideas?”

Mary’s smile was soft, her gaze steady. “Start where you’d most like to be with him.”

Catherine picked her way along the lip of the first tier of rimstone pools to the other side of the calcite falls. She’d imagined the two of them lingering as their friends left the party, slipping away unnoticed to their soft-floored snug, quilts unfurled, pillows arranged just so. But now, from within the protective arms of the niche, she slipped through the narrow crevice, passage to the tunnel behind it. A low-burning torch was ensconced on the chiseled wall and in the distance, a warm glow seeped into the passage. The twists and turns had been left lit for her.

This was the way, a more private way home, home to the corridor of his chamber. A shortcut if you didn’t mind the close-quarters, the rubbled floors, and the last steep, stone spiral.

She hung her jacket on a sharp crag of granite outside his doorway, the red wool a flare against the gray, a signal for privacy. With a warning gaze to any potential passersby cast right … then left – Don’t even think about it – she ventured in.

And there he was, on the edge of his bed, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped. He raised his head when she stepped through the arch only to bow it again as she approached. She sat beside him, as close as she dared, and with a gentle urging turned his face toward hers.

She studied him. A flush crept from the rolled collar of his sweater to his cheeks, staining them a hot burnt sienna. Below his ear, his usual athlete’s pulse jittered, and his hand, when she took his in hers, lacked confidence. No bond was necessary to know his feelings. He was embarrassed.

“Why did you leave, Vincent?”

She was met with a too-familiar silence.

“You’ve been here for hours, but you knew I would come. You left the passage lit for me. Doesn’t that mean you want me to ask?” Will flight always be his response? Can we work toward the loving, verbal equivalent of fight?

His furthered silence was a gravity she would resist.

“We were talking – or I was – about my childhood, about a picnic on a summer afternoon,” she continued. “You were there, with me; I could feel it … and then you weren’t.”

“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language,” he murmured. “Henry James.”

Another quotation, but at least he’s talking.

She pushed past the deflecting curtains he tried to pull closed.

“What did I say to hurt you, Vincent?”

Another silence stretched between them. The bed creaked with his shifting weight. His hands moved to his thighs, scrubbed to his knees and back again, once, twice …

“You didn’t … hurt me.”

She listened hard, striving to catch even the slightest emphasis he might place on a word. You. On that she heard a tenuto, a note on a piano slightly sustained. You didn’t hurt me.

Someone else had, though, and her reminiscence had triggered some deep, private pain. She parsed the words she’d spoken, ran the scene through again in her memory until its breaking point.

“Is this …” She lowered her voice to its softest whisper. If this were his secret, she’d let no one overhear. “… about watermelon?”

The tension fell from his shoulders as if in a rush he’d dropped his cloak to let it puddle on the floor. The static charge in the air sparkled away – fireworks glittering back to earth. She would swear she heard him chuckle.

“When you put it that way, Catherine …”

She was sure now. A humbled vibration rumbled up.

“This is ridiculous,” he said, shaking his head on a fading huff. “I am ridiculous.”

He met her gaze.

“Yes. It is about watermelon … and Lisa.”

He’d never told anyone – not Father, not Devin in the one-sided conversations he cast out to the universe, not the journal he’d just started to keep – about that day, the last time he’d allowed himself the treat of a ripe, sugary melon. No matter that he’d loved the taste – the crisp crimson facets, the burst of sweet light. No matter the fun they’d had, he and his friends, sitting side by side on a ledge, the black seeds laughingly discharged, sailing over the sand, the distance to be noted, measured, and a winner judged. That year, he had won, and not by mere inches, he told her. He’d been hailed as The All-Time Champion of Seed-Spitters. He was the one to beat, he’d raised the bar, he was the high score on a pin ball machine – whatever that meant. And they’d danced and jumped and jostled each other, kicking up a cloud of dust and hooting just to hear the echoes.

But his joy was short-lived.

Until that year, Lisa had enjoyed all their childhood competitions, though he’d realized later she hadn’t participated in their games for months. That day, she’d steered clear of the ledge – mostly boys, he admitted – knotting with the older girls who rolled their eyes at the younger rowdies … if they deigned to look at them at all.

But Lisa had looked and he’d seen her looking and the look on her face …

He swallowed hard then, but went on without prodding.

She’d stared at him with squinted eyes, with lips that turned down. Even at a distance, he’d seen her nose wrinkle. At the table where she sat with her new …

“Clique?” Catherine supplied, when he faltered with word choice. “Coterie?”

For a moment, blinking, he seemed to not recognize her. He drew a breath to continue …

At the table – with her new circle – he’d watched Lisa pick up a spoon and scoop all the seeds from her slice of watermelon into a neat pile on her plate, then use a knife and fork to cut neat cubes before taking the first, daintiest bite. Afterward she’d dabbed at her lips with a napkin … all the while watching him watching her.

He’d felt like a brute. Coarse and cloddish. A barbarian. Boorish and vulgar. How had he not known how others saw him? The scales had fallen from his eyes. It was the end of his innocence. Brought to his knees by a watermelon, he would never take another bite. He would never – could never – admit why.

“Until now,” he murmured.

“So,” Catherine observed, once he seemed spent of story. “Lisa apparently got over it. You two were … close.”

He shrugged, a wryness touching one side of his mouth.

“Vincent … have you ever thought that maybe, just maybe, Lisa wasn’t always a nice person?”

He brought her hand to his lips, touched them to her palm… folded her fingers over the still-warm place. “No. Yes.” He chuffed. “I think … it just doesn’t matter anymore.”

“I have to say, I’m grateful to Lisa. In a way,” she added in a rush. “You have impeccable manners, Vincent. I find that incredibly attractive.”

His gaze left hers to search out something on the chamber’s floor of brooding interest.

No. No going back, Vincent.

“You know, don’t you … I see you and find you beautiful.” With that, she kissed him to make sure he’d heard her … believed her.

When they broke apart, their movements mirrored. She brushed back strands of hair from his cheek and jaw; he tucked a lock behind her ear.

“If I bring down another watermelon, will you have some?”

He tipped his head. His eyes crinkled at the corners. “I hear there are seedless ones now.”

She was cheered and encouraged by his grin. At some point, maybe not today, maybe years from today, she begged the universe, let this be something we look back on with some level of lightheartedness.

She offered her own smile. “Well … … Since we’re both winners …”

His brows arched in question.

“Of our respective seed-spitting contests,” she clarified.

“Ahh.”

“We deserve a prize, don’t you think?”

She stood up, and he reached for her. “Don’t go, Catherine. Please.”

“Oh, I’m not going anywhere without you.”

Slowly, she unfastened the clasps of her cabled sweater.

The buttons of her flannel shirt underneath? He took care of that.

______________________

Title: John O’Donohue. For Light. From To Bless the Space Between Us. 2008.