The Ring - Chapter 13

 

 

HENRY WILLIS

“I DON’T MIND keeping the dog longer than we originally agreed. Tell your Mom to take care of herself,” Henry told Bethany. His mobile had rung just as he unlocked his car door. He resisted asking how the weather was in Europe, knowing that was a trite question. He quite enjoyed having the pooch around.

He whistled for Camille to stop her sniffing and hop in the back seat. It had been a long day and he was tired. They arrived home from the monthly meeting of his sales agents. This time the conference room was where there was a catered dinner. The staff had a choice of cod or lamb.

He usually held these monthly meetings in a restaurant, varying the towns so everyone would have a chance near their office. This time his decision was based on not leaving Camille alone too long. There had to be advantages to being a boss and making the dog happy was one.

Earlier in the day, the temperature had been spring-like. Now in typical New England fashion, it dropped a good 20 degrees. Henry wished he had taken his coat that morning. Having spent all his life in the Boston area he should know better to be prepared.

Climate change was often a news topic, but New Englanders were used to minute-to-minute changes. Okay, hour-to-hour.

Camille ran around the yard trying to decide where to pee.

“Hurry up, Muttsaball.” Henry had given the dog a new nickname. His yard was surrounded by the clichéd white picket fence. A mailbox was by the gate and while the dog toured the front yard, Henry gathered the mail.

Once inside the house, he called the dog who bounded in, drank from her water dish and hopped on the couch ignoring the pillow bed that Margo provided. She had already eaten well from the lamb served to Henry’s staff having turned her nose up at the fish.

Henry shuffled through his mail, dropping the advertisements directly into the wastepaper basket under the table by the front door. He left the other envelopes in an ever-growing pile.

When his wife was alive, she had been a neat freak. He found those habits she’d nagged him about were hard to break even five years after her death, at least as far as the advertising was concerned. The other envelopes he had taken from his files and needed to double-check before chucking them. Maybe some evening when there was nothing on television.

More bills these days came with codes to pay electronically or were automatically paid. One had his name but no other address. Probably shoved in the door. He reached for the letter opener that he bought at a Denver conference.

The handwritten note said:

I need to talk to you. Not a medical emergency.

Just a family matter.

Heather

Henry knew he served as a substitute father to Medora’s girls. Sometimes he served as a financial advisor, more to Margo than Heather. Her husband was in charge there.

The cuckoo clock in the dining area struck ten and played Nearer my God to Thee. The bird in the clock would now sleep until seven in the morning.

When his wife bought the clock, she had not checked to see what songs the clock played. They had been on vacation in Gruyères, Switzerland, when she had zipped into a souvenir shop. She zipped out a few minutes later with the clock which specialized in simple hymns which even non-religious people knew. Anna had decided the light melodies were pleasant enough regardless of any religious connection.

It was ten nineteen, too late to call Heather. He’d do it in the morning.

*

The alarm went off much too early the next morning: 6:00. Had Henry not had an appointment with three clients looking for an apartment building to renovate he’d have gone back to sleep.

Camille, who had learned how to dominate the bed, rolled over and looked at him as if to say, “It’s too early.”

“Not that early,” Henry told the dog. He was surprised how quickly he had adapted to talking to her. He felt she understood by the tilt of her head.

There were threads of light out his window. He seldom pulled the shades, liking to check the sky through the different seasons. His view was of a small wood which could not be developed. Someone after WWII had not done a good job dividing up the farmland that made up this development.

In the bathroom he just finished shaving half his face when the doorbell rang. Wiping the shaving cream off and grabbing his bathrobe he started downstairs, calling “I’m coming, I’m coming,” as Camille barked her way ahead of him.

Heather stood at the door. “I know it’s early, but I need to get to work.”

She had pulled her car behind his. The engine was running and although it was cold her scarf around her neck was unwound and her down coat was open.

Henry thought good, it all meant he didn’t have to invite her in which he would have done almost happily had it been another time. “What can I do for you? Your note said ‘urgent’.”

“I need you to get my mother’s ring back from Margo.”

 

 

 

The Life of Sprout Blanchard

 

When meeting someone new she would stick out her hand and say, “I’m Sprout Blanchard."

Her mother had named her Esperanza. Esperanza, after her great grandmother who’d fled Franco in January 1939 by walking across the Pyrenees from Barcelona.

Her father didn’t like the name. People in their small New England town sometimes had trouble pronouncing it. Was the last syllable spoken as th or za?

Sprout was a perfect nickname because she was small as a baby and stayed that way all her life, never growing beyond five feet. However her personality projected a much bigger person.

As a child, she wanted to control her life. If her mother put pajamas on her, she would climb into her crib refusing bedtime stories. Later as an adult she couldn’t explain why.

In first grade at St. Joseph’s when the nuns called her Esperanza, if she answered at all, it would be to say, “My name’s Sprout.”

Sprout’s mother met with the principal, an embattled nun that would have been great as the head of a penitentiary for violent offenders.

“Esperanza, Maria Esperanza of Jesus, has been beatified. We can’t forget that she founded the Handmaids of Merciful Love and the Sons of Merciful Love. It’s a wonderful name for your daughter,” the nun said in refusing to the use the name Sprout.

Sprout’s mother knew neither the nun’s information of Sprout’s namesake or the romanticism of her great grandmother Esperanza struggling for freedom by walking in blizzards over mountains to France would change her daughter’s mind, but she felt she had to try. Sprout’s father merely shook his head and let his wife try.

When the nuns continued to call Sprout Esperanza and Sprout continued to sit at her desk, her arms folded, refusing to answer, her parents enrolled her in a public school where she excelled at Math and Science and did exceptionally well in other subjects.

As a tenth birthday present, the parents went to court to change her name legally to Sprout.

Sprout didn’t have many friends, in fact she had none claiming the other girls silly. When Mary Lou moved next door and was in the same class they shared the same interests and became besties.

In 1981 Sprout’s mother produced her second child, a daughter. Sprout’s father said he would name “this one” because he wasn’t going through another rebellion. He checked the most popular names in 1980 and they were Jennifer, Amanda and Jessica. He asked Sprout what she thought and she said, “Amanda, but I really don’t care as long as it’s not Esperanza.”

The sisters were nothing alike. As adults Amanda worked for a fashion magazine while Sprout, now Dr. Sprout Blanchard, became an archeologist. Her interest in archeology had been stirred, when at 12 she found an Indian arrowhead in the woods behind their home.

She met her husband Paul Reilly when they shared a grant to excavate a Viking mini settlement in Northern New Hampshire. This opened the door to PBS interviews, magazine articles in professional journals and a tenure track position at the University of Washington’s Seattle campus.

Sprout’s parents were relieved that their different daughter had found her professional and marital comfort zones.

Paul, knowing the story of Sprout's first name, took her to see a university presentation of Romeo and Juliet.

When Juliet asks "What's in a name?" he squeezed  his wife's hand.

"Everything," she whispered. 

 

The Grand Slam

 

Maybe my father loved the ocean and boats because as a little kid he lived on an island in Nova Scotia where his father was the lighthouse keeper.

Maybe he dreamed of owning a boat just because.

Married to my mother, who thought the ocean was something you looked at from one of Gloucester's beaches once or twice during the summer. 

For my mother social life revolved around Meadowbrook Golf Club, a few minutes from our house. Since my father loved golf too, that was not  hardship.

My stepmom was different. She listened and encouraged dreams. 

Although my father made a good living, two step kids, child support, a mortgage was reality that made buying a 28-foot cabin cruiser a dream - so he decided to build one in his Scituate, MA driveway. That he had never done much carpentry nor that he knew nothing about captaining a boat was not a deterrence.

The hull was delivered. The tools were bought. He went to work.

He took courses and read books and learned about engines and currents and whatever else he needed. 

Little by little the dream became reality. His neighbors teased him by calling him Noah. I do know he told me about leaving for work one morning to find stuffed animals lined up two-by-two to the boat. 

And then it was done - The Grand Slam, the name selected because he and my stepmom thought if they moored any port other bridge players might appear for nightly bridge games.

As the eldest child, I was selected to christen it. My then husband and I drove to Scituate where all my aunts and uncles were waiting. I took the champagne bottle and hit The Grand Slam...once...twice...three times before it broke. 

The Grand Slam was launched and immediately took on water. The hull was so dry from that the thirsty wood absorbed so much water my father feared his dream would sink. He spent the weekend bailing. It worked.

During the summer my parents lived on the boat. Aunts, uncles, friends took cruises with them up and down the coast.

I only had one ride. A storm came up and gave me the distinction of being the first sea sick passenger. I did enjoy being in port. 

My step sister was an asset. All my father had to do was have her start to tie up the boat in port and every strong young man appeared to help.

My father's dream was smashed literally by the blizzard of '78. Although The Grand Slam was well on dry land for the winter, the sea invaded land. Shards were found.

My father had retired to Florida and he and my stepmom had lived on the boat in the summer. 

No more.

In his late sixties, he wasn't sure that he had the energy to rebuild. It's okay to wake from having had your dream.

 

 

The Ring - Chapter 12

 

BETHANY STEINER

MUTTI IS SO stubborn, Bethany thought as the train with her and her mother left Paris. It was all she could do to convince her to come back to Stuttgart with her rather than fly home alone to the States. She’d need help with that ankle: her mother was feuding with her sister so Heather would be useless as a helper, and it wasn’t fair to burden Henry, especially now that her grandmother was dead.

Only five other people were in the car. Her mother had reminisced how modern trains were more like attached buses not divided into closed compartments for six people.

“How I miss chatting with people in those compartments with people sitting like they were in little rooms. Today’s trains are more like buses.” Margo arranged her crutches so they wouldn’t trip anyone.

Bethany watched them barrel out of the city and through the Parisian suburbs.

Papa would meet them at the Stuttgart train station. Mutti would stay with him not Bethany. “You can’t expect your mother to sleep on your floor,” he said as they were trying to decide what to do with Margo. Margo had not been part of those discussions.

Bethany was always amazed at how well her divorced parents got along despite her mother’s explanation that there was no reason they shouldn’t. They were friends with different passions and a shared daughter. Still, none of her friends with divorced parents on either side of the ocean had such a friendly pair.

Not that she was complaining. No matter which country and which parent she lived with, the annual transitions went smoothly. Because of the distance there was none of this one week here, one week there stuff that her friends with divorced parents suffered. The only thing both insisted on is whenever she changed countries she stay a year, more because of school than any other reason.

She found the changes interesting. The work was harder in Germany. They both started too early but only in the U.S. did she get lunch such as it was. That didn’t matter; it was speed eating. In Germany she had time to go home or to a snack bar with her friends and eat more leisurely.

Bethany suspected her father and mother considered part-time parenthood a bonus. Her mother would get lost in her art and her father could deep dive into his research. During her lifetime he had become a renowned scholar on the Vikings more by accident than career design.

During his year as a guest lecturer at Oxford, somehow, she never knew the how and why it happened, BBC filmed a series with him as the spokesperson which made his first book skyrocket to the best seller list in several countries.

She was proud of her parents and worried that she would never be able to match their accomplishments.

Despite dealing with two languages, two school systems, her marks, especially in the sciences, were always high, if not top next to it. Now she was doing research, granted as a lab assistant allowing her to work on her sub-projects within the overall grant.

There she had met Tobias, another lab assistant. She planned to introduce him to her parents since it was becoming apparent to both of them they were going to be permanent in each other’s lives. His parents lived in Berlin and they would spend Easter with them for the first time.

Tobias called them both Third Culture Kids, a term she’d never heard. Tobias explained they were raised in and outside their parents’ culture, dipping their feet in another culture and thus were never 100% of either, but their own third culture. And usually alone, that is unless they met someone who had the same experiences.

“I play like an American and work like a German,” she warned him, “but I make love like me. You’re a lucky man to have an international lover and a fellow scientist on top of it all.”