She liked them both, admired them. Since they seemed so much to want company she found herself at dinner with them once a week, every two weeks at the most. A few times she asked them to her house for dinner, but there were so many steps to climb and the two arrived so exhausted that she stopped. So then she would take fish or chicken or a pasta dish to their house. They would make a salad, serve berries from the garden for dessert.
After dinner, over cups of mint or jamaica tea they would sit around the table while Sam told stories. About the time Anna got polio, at a dig deep in the jungle in the Yucatán, how they got her to a hospital, how kind people were. Many stories about the house they built in Xalapa. The mayor’s wife, the time she broke her leg climbing out of a window to avoid a visitor. Sam’s stories always began, “That reminds me of the time …”
Little by little Loretta learned the details of their life story. Their courtship on Mount Tam. Their romance in New York while they were communists. Living in sin. They had never married, still took satisfaction in this unconventionality. They had two children; both lived in distant cities. There were stories about the ranch near Big Sur, when the children were little. As a story was ending Loretta would say, “I hate to leave, but I have to get to work very early tomorrow.” Often she would leave then. Usually though, Sam would say, “Just let me tell you what happened to the wind-up phonograph.” Hours later, exhausted, she would drive home to her house in Oakland, saying to herself that she couldn’t keep on doing this. Or that she would keep going, but set a definite time limit.
It was not that they were ever boring or uninteresting. On the contrary, the couple had lived a rich full life, were involved and perceptive. They were intensely interested in the world, in their own past. They had such a good time, adding to the other’s remarks, arguing about dates or details, that Loretta didn’t have the heart to interrupt them and leave. And it did make her feel good to go there, because the two people were so glad to see her. But sometimes she felt like not going over at all, when she was too tired or had something else to do. Finally she did say that she couldn’t stay so late, that it was hard to get up the next morning. Come for Sunday brunch, Anna said.
When the weather was fair they ate on a table on their porch, surrounded by flowers and plants. Hundreds of birds came to the feeders right by them. As it grew colder they ate inside by a cast-iron stove. Sam tended it with logs he had split himself. They had waffles or Sam’s special omelette, sometimes Loretta brought bagels and lox. Hours went by, the day went by as Sam told his stories, with Anna correcting them and adding comments. Sometimes, in the sun on the porch or by the heat of the fire, it was hard to stay awake.
Their house in Mexico had been made of concrete block, but the beams and counters and cupboards had been made of cedar wood. First the big room—the kitchen and living room—was built. They had planted trees, of course, even before they started building the house. Bananas and plums, jacarandas. The next year they added a bedroom, several years later another bedroom and a studio for Anna. The beds, the workbenches and tables were made of cedar. They got home to their little house after working in the field, in another state in Mexico. The house was always cool and smelt of cedar, like a big cedar chest.
Anna got pneumonia and had to go to the hospital. As sick as she was, all she could think of was Sam, how he would get along without her. Loretta promised her she would go by before work, see that he took his medication and had breakfast, that she would cook him dinner after work, take him to the hospital to see her.
The terrible part was that Sam didn’t talk. He would sit shivering on the side of the bed as Loretta helped him dress. Mechanically he took his pills and drank pineapple juice, carefully wiped his chin after he ate breakfast. In the evening when she arrived he would be standing on the porch waiting for her. He wanted to go see Anna first, and then have dinner. When they got to the hospital, Anna lay pale, her long white braids hanging down like a little girl’s. She had an IV, a catheter, oxygen. She didn’t speak, but smiled and held Sam’s hand while he told her how he had done a load of wash, watered the tomatoes, mulched the beans, washed dishes, made lemonade. He talked on to her, breathless, told her every hour of his day. When they left Loretta had to hold him tight, he stumbled and wavered as he walked. In the car going home he cried, he was so worried. But Anna came home and was fine, except that there was so much to be done in the garden. The next Sunday, after brunch, Loretta helped weed the garden, cut back blackberry vines. Loretta was worried then, what if Anna got really sick? What was she in for with this friendship? The couple’s dependence upon one another, their vulnerability saddened and moved her. Those thoughts passed through her head as she worked, but it was nice, the cool black dirt, the sun on her back. Sam, telling his stories as he weeded the adjacent row.
The next Sunday that Loretta went to their house she was late. She had been up early, there had been many things to do. She really wanted to stay home, but didn’t have the heart to call and cancel.
The front door was not unlatched, as usual, so she went to the garden, to go up the back steps. She walked into the garden to look around, it was lush with tomatoes, squash, snow peas. Drowsy bees. Anna and Sam were outside on the porch upstairs. Loretta was going to call to them but they were talking very intently.
“She’s never been late before. Maybe she won’t come.”
“Oh, she’ll come … these mornings mean so much to her.”
“Poor thing. She is so lonely. She needs us. We’re really her only family.”
“She sure enjoys my stories. Dang. I can’t think of a single one to tell her today.”
“Something will come to you….”
“Hello!” Loretta called. “Anybody home?”
Our Lighthouse
Hi! I was dreaming! But not a dream with pictures. I could smell my mother’s Swedish cookies. Right here in this room. Right here.
We lived in a lighthouse, me and my seven brothers and sisters, on the Sainte Marie River. There’s no place to put things, much less hide them, in a lighthouse, but my ma sure could hide cookies. I always found them though. Under a washtub. A loaf of banana bread in my pa’s boot!
Winters were hard, miserable when we had to move to town. To a one-room shack with a wood stove, all of us sleeping on the floor. My father worked in the train yards, when he got work. He hated it. He wasn’t a drinker, but he got mean in winter and beat all of us and my ma, just out of being worn out and cooped up, away from the river.
None of us could ever hardly wait for spring. Every day as soon as the thaws started we’d be down checking out the locks, waiting for the filthy ice to break up and the boats to go through.
Seems like we never actually saw the last ice melt. One day you’d wake up and you could smell it in the air. Spring.
That first day was always the best day of the year, better than Christmas. Packing up the dory and the rowboats. Pa would be puffing on his pipe and whistling at the same time, smacking us all on the head to hurry. Ma would just load and load the boats with gear she’d had ready for weeks, singing hymns in Swedish.
Our lighthouse stood right smack in the middle of the river. On a concrete slab over high craggy rocks. Waves crashed up over the iron door sometimes so we’d have to wait to get in. A ladder spiraled round and round, high, up to the tower where you could see the whole wide world.
Now the lighthouse wasn’t that much bigger than the shack in town. But it was cool and windows looked out onto the water and the forests on the shore. Water and birds all around. When the logs came crashing past us you could smell the sweet sap of pine, cedar. It’s the most beautiful spot in the entire U.S. of A. What
