William Wharton - Tidings

It took three automobile jacks, two levels, several inclined planes and half a heart attack moving that stone against the wall, then constructing our fireplace on it. The fireplace is heavy, more or less squared-off stone, rounded, projecting into the room, sort of a Dutch oven, with a throat resembling the entrance to a cave.

The smell of the fire, our mini-tree, the pine boughs, burning candles fills everything. The second night of Christmas is upon us. And I still don’t know what to do. I’ve got to tell Lor, it isn’t fair to just let it go on like this.

Later, when we’re tucked in bed listening to the roar of the waterfall from the pond, the crackling of our fire, the deep breathing of Ben sleeping on a cot in front of the fire, Lor does her usual just-before-going-to-sleep ‘sigh’ and says ‘I guess we’ll hear from the girls tomorrow; they should be in Paris today.’

I think to myself that in less than an hour Ben will be fifteen. It won’t be long before we’ll be having all our Christmases alone, if we’re lucky enough to stay together. Right then, for the first time, I realize I’ve lived with Lor almost twice as long as I’ve lived with anybody else in my life. Since my parents are dead, and I’m an only child, I’ve known her longer than anybody else. She’s the closest thing to a ‘reality’ I know.

The day after Christmas will be our thirtieth anniversary.

Next morning, while we’re having breakfast, Madame Le Moine peers into the damside door and knocks. She’s come all the way around up onto the dam and down our narrow, slippery, stone steps. I’d made arrangements for her to get the number if anyone phoned and tie a dish towel on her door handle. I can see her door easily from our west window and I’ve been checking regularly for it the past few days.

Madame Le Moine recently celebrated her eightieth birthday. Five months ago, she had a stroke which left her partially paralyzed and with failing memory. She’s almost completely recovered now, but definitely shouldn’t be running around delivering phone messages in this mud and snow.

We’re bullheaded about not having a phone. We dislike the invasion of privacy a phone, a TV or a radio allows. We were the first to have a toilet but are now the only ones without a TV, a phone or a radio. We’ve given Madame Le Moine’s phone number exclusively to our kids and a few friends. I know it has to be one of ten people when Madame Le Moine stutters out – ‘Tell-ey-phon.’

I invite her in. Loretta skims along the dam to Madame Le Moine’s house. It almost has to be Nicole just as Nicole knows it’s Lor who will answer. I could go into my aversion to answering phones here, but I won’t. I think it has to do with voices from anywhere out of nowhere.

I seat Madame Le Moine in the rocker before the fireplace beside our miniature tree. I give her a cup of tea with two lumps of sugar, whip out my cuff and take her blood pressure. Madame Le Moine is rocking and smiling.

Lor introduced tea into this village. Before we arrived, it was coffee, strong, or, un canon , a glass of wine, also strong, or naöle , super-strong one-hundred-proof alcohol made from fallen fruit; a regional version of marc de Bourgogne.

When the villagers did get hooked on tea, only the women, I should say: that is, Madame Calvet, Madame Le Moine and Madame Rousseau; Lor was shocked to find they were pouring her Christmas gifts of Twining’s Earl Grey breakfast tea into the bottom of a teakettle, and boiling it. They’d all be dead in a few years from tannic acid poisoning.

After that, Lor initiated the village women into the entire routine: start with cold water, stop just as it comes to boil, rinse out pot with hot water, dry pot, the correct amount of tea, three minutes steeping. She’s even got them drinking it straight, without sugar or cream, something she hasn’t even seduced me to, a very seductive woman in many ways, but not that seductive. Next thing she’ll have them knitting tea cozies.

My contribution to the village, besides toilets and septic tanks, has been ‘blood pressure’. Every day, whenever we’re here, I have informal morning clinic, taking blood pressure, pulse, listening to old hearts rattling along behind shriveled titties. Once in a while, one of the men, Pierre Rousseau, Claude or Philippe, will sit for me. I think they feel it’s good for them, healing; therapeutic blood-pressure measuring.

Madame Le Moine is convinced she wouldn’t have had her stroke if I’d been around that summer instead of off in America. I do feel somewhat guilty.

Whenever she’d be more than eighteen over ten (the French measure in centimeters not millimeters) I’d pop her with a fivemilligram Valium and a diuretic. It’d usually bring things around in a day or two. It’d also bring around other things: eggs, a fresh-killed rabbit, lettuce, potatoes, tomatoes, string beans. It’s hardly worth our running a garden. Pumping a rubber blood pressure machine bulb’s a hell of a lot easier than hoeing hard earth and hauling water.

I roll down Madame Le Moine’s sleeve, give her the good news – dix-sept sur huit , 170 over 80 (maybe the stroke helped), look up and see Lor come smiling through the door, humming and singing.

Anyone who didn’t know Lor would assume she is the bearer of good tidings. After years of experience I’m reserving judgment. Loretta could interrupt a little song to announce the fall of Rome, the death of the president, the onset of terminal cancer or the end of a marriage. She tends to sing when she’s scared, depressed or confused, to buck up flagging emotions. The trouble is, she also sings, hums, skips when she’s happy about something. It can be very disconcerting. It’s skipping which gives the real clue; she came down those stairs rather light-footedly for a woman in her late forties, so I’m not expecting the worst.

‘It was Nicole. They’re all fine. But Nicole’s luggage got lost in the transfer at Frankfurt so they won’t be down until tomorrow morning.’

I’m sorry they won’t be here for Ben’s birthday but perhaps it’s better this way. We can give all our attention to him.

Actually, at the functional level, Ben is an only child; he has practically no remembrance of the other kids living at home. They’re more in the order of distant aunts or uncles.

It’s tough for Ben having his birthday jammed up so hard against Christmas, especially with our anniversary the day after.

Also, it’s good they’ll be late because I want to varnish; I feel a strong varnish mania coming on. I varnish the way some people clean out garages or attics, wash cars or windows, shine shoes or silverware. It’s a way to smooth life, straighten raging emotions out when I’m mixed up.

And I know I’m really confused. Right up to lately, I thought I was handling things okay, that it was going to be all right, but now I’m not so sure.

I keep telling myself it’s only because I don’t want to hurt Lor. But it’s more than that. I don’t even want to think what my life would be like without her.

At bottom, I’m very selfish. I’m afraid of the words, the words that will be said. I know they can never be taken back. I’m not sure I can trust myself and I don’t really know what Lor has on her mind, what she’s thinking.

Something in me just doesn’t want to close in on the reality of what’s happening. I hate to think of myself as a coward but I guess I am. Lor seems to be taking all this so much more easily than I; I’m sure she’s suffering, it’s more than I can bear, just watching her. It would be so much better if she’d bring it out, talk about things with me. That’s more the way she usually is. I’m the one who’s usually evasive, who can’t bite the bullet, or whatever you’re supposed to do.