Jan Karon - In the Company of Others

‘We’ve had a postcard from Moira. Hired cars are too dear in Positano, so she’s getting about on a Vespa.’

‘Holy smoke.’

‘Ti sei bevuto il cervello is her war cry, she says, to Italian drivers.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Loosely translated, Have you swallowed your brain?’

They had a small chuckle. ‘Anything at all from the Garda?’

His question put the instant worried look on her face. ‘They can find nothing to go on, they say. I don’t understand…’ She pulled forth a scrap, gave him an innkeeperish smile.

‘Well, then,’ he said, prepared to hurry off.

‘The dining room must be lonely,’ she said, ‘without the anglers. Will you join us in the kitchen this evening for supper? Dr. Feeney will be here for his house call, you know, and Seamus is with us. It’s our family night; we do it each month.’

Hadn’t she said innkeepers are ever forced into the society of guests? Perhaps he should decline. And yet, he wanted to join them in the kitchen. ‘Unless you hear back from us, we accept with pleasure.’

‘Grand!’ She took a deep breath and drew herself up and smiled her old smile, revealing a healthy store of what his mother called ‘milk-fed’ white teeth.

‘I’d like to take a pot of tea up to Cynthia,’ he said. ‘If that’s convenient.’

‘I just gave a knock to deliver your laundry, but no answer. I looked in and she’s sleeping. Shall I carry it up?’

‘No, no, I’ll take it up in a bit. No hurry.’ He would have mentioned Cynthia’s loss of sleep from the pestering ankle, but Anna would have said she was sorry and off they’d go on a rabbit chase.

She seemed hesitant, smoothed her apron. ‘You said you would tell me about Dooley, how things… went along for you.’

She glanced at her watch. ‘I’ve a few minutes off the clock. Would this… be a good time?’

‘A very good time,’ It gave a small pleasure to be asked-he needed the work.

‘If it isn’t asking too much,’ she said.

’Not at all. I like to talk about Dooley.’

Her green eyes were luminous. ‘Please come, then.’

They turned left before the dining room, then right, and proceeded along a narrow hall with a bank of windows. The close passageway smelled of something cooking on the red Aga.

‘Smells good,’ he said.

‘Bella’s cooking this evening. Italian is her favorite cuisine since she was little.’

A blue door then, which she opened with shy pleasure.

‘My Ibiza,’ she said. ‘Please go in and make yourself comfortable, I’ll only be a moment.’

He stepped into the room, heard her clogs sounding along the passageway.

He looked at the tall windows clouded by rain, at images pinned to the wall, of gardens, flowers, reproductions of paintings-one by Cecil Kennedy, whom he admired. He searched for the legendary ladybug that appeared in all of Kennedy’s remarkable paintings of flowers, and there it was, of course.

On a long worktable, trowels, pruners, gloves, clay pots stacked by size-the usual detritus of the earnest green thumb. Above the table, pencil sketches tacked to a corkboard. Garden designs. He looked at a large sketch in which islands of space were identified in block letters:

LODGE. KITCHEN GARDEN. LANE GARDENS. HIDDEN GARDEN. BLUEBELL WALK. ORCHARD. MASS ROCK-the elements tied together by a winding pathway.

Facing the windows at the end of the room, an artists’ easel and a high stool. At the end of the table, a jumble of paint tubes, brushes in a Chinese vase, a smeared palette, a tole pitcher filled with roses. A bloom gave way as he stood looking; petals fell silent as nuns to the stone floor.

She came in with a tea tray and set it on the table. ‘There!’ she said, slightly out of breath.

‘I can see why all of Sligo wishes to visit Ibiza.’

‘’t is a great clutter, I’m afraid.’

‘That’s its charm.’ He felt happy in some new way. ‘I didn’t know you’re an artist.’

‘I’m not, really. Just trying to get the hang of it, but there’s never enough time.’

She poured two cups of tea, handed one to him. ‘No one comes here but myself, and that all too rarely, so I have but the one chair-like your Mr. Thoreau. Please sit; I’ll bring my stool.’

She picked it up and brought it over and was perched on it before he could set his cup down and give a hand.

‘I was after converting it to a guest room,’ she said. ‘We could use it in the busy season-but Liam won’t allow it.’

‘Good fellow,’ he said, taking the armchair.

‘So please tell me, Reverend…’ She looked suddenly worn. ‘How did you do it?’

‘With prayer. A lot of prayer.’ He sat back in the chair, inhaled the fragrance of the steaming tea. ‘With patience, too, of course-but not enough. As for love, I had no way of knowing how to love a wounded boy-perhaps because I had been a wounded boy myself, I don’t know.

‘We think of love as warm and cozy, and that’s certainly part of it. But it was hard to muster those feelings toward someone who vented his lifelong rage on me. I felt pretty sorry for myself, sometimes.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’ Her hair was old copper in the rain-washed light.

‘It’s not the sort of thing romantics wish to hear, but I found that in the end, love must be a kind of discipline. If we love only with our feelings, we’re sunk-we may feel love one day and something quite other the next. Soon after he came to live with me-he was eleven years old at the time-I realized I must learn to love with my will, not my feelings. I had to love him when he threw his shoe at the wall and cussed my dog, love him when he called me names I won’t repeat, love him when he refused to eat what I’d cooked after celebrating and preaching at three Sunday services… you get the idea.’

She fixed him in her steady gaze.

‘And so I enjoyed the warm feelings, the stuff of the heart, when it was present between us, as it sometimes was, even in the beginning. And when it wasn’t, there was the will to love him, something like… a generator kicking in, a backup.

‘I learned over a long period of trial and error to see in him what God made him to be. Wounded people use a lot of smoke and mirrors, they thrust the bitterness and rage out there like a shield. Then it becomes their banner, and finally, their weapon. But I stopped falling for the bitterness and rage. I didn’t stop knowing it was there-and there for a very good reason-but I stopped taking the bullet for it. With God’s help, I was able to start seeing through the smoke. I saw how bright he was, like your Bella, how talented, and how possible it was for him to triumph over so much that hounded him.’

He took a sip of tea, and realized he was trembling.

‘To put a fine point to it, Anna-I stopped praying for God to change Dooley; I asked God to change me-to give me his eyes to see into the spirit of this exceptional broken boy.

‘I started talking to Dooley as if he were bright and industrious and savvy and trustworthy. I believed it was already real, that he was already whole and able to love. And all I can say is-it began to work… for both of us.

‘One day he was sent home from school for beating up a classmate. He’d given him a good drubbing. Turns out, he did it because the boy called me a nerd.’ He laughed; he loved this story. ‘Imagine that. I felt twelve feet tall. The little guy had gone to bat for me; it was a bloody miracle. Did I send him to bed with no supper, ground him for a week? No. Right or wrong, I thanked him. I was never so touched.’

‘How good,’ she said, laughing a little, weeping a little. ‘How good.’

‘There’s no quick fix, Anna. It’s all in increments, the same way our roses grow. Winning someone who’s never won anything themselves-it’s a long road, and we don’t always get it right-not by a long shot.