Setting: Werner House on Deer Hill, 1 June; 9:45 AM
Scene: The friends have arrived after driving down from Robert’s current house north of Wickersfeld. They pull in and park in front of the old house; the first house on Deer Hill ever to have been built from 19th century plans found in a book called Palliser’s American Cottage Homes (1878). This house set the precedent for later houses at Four Willows, Norwest Farm and Westfarm, which were all built from plans from this same old book.
Getting out of his car, hesitant yet energized, Robert springs up onto the piazza of his natal home – two steps at a time – slipping the key into the familiar old cover-locket latch. John is close on his heels and lays a comforting hand on the Poet’s back as the door is unlocked. They wait together for the rest of their friends to join them.
“The house is so tall,” Octavia muses as she gets out of Geoffrey’s car, “at least seems so_ standing right here in front of it, don’t you think?”
“I suppose it is,” Geoffrey agrees, though not having same sense if it, being more familiar with the house and property.
“Come on up, everyone,” Robert invites.
Octavia and Geoffrey start up the stairs, and are almost on the piazza, when Vincent says, stopped at the bottom of the stairs, recollected in a memory, “I used to stand here, and watch you, Robert, go on up these stairs and onto that porch_ those nights, to where you’re just now standing_ and then you’d turn and say ‘goodnight’ to me.”
Robert nods in affirmation, suspended in a sudden strange happiness.
“I can almost see it,” Vincent avers.
“I feel it,” the Poet says, suddenly en-swirled by memories flowing into and out of the house around him. “Well, you’d better all come in,” he says with an expectant sigh.
Lori Ann takes Vincent’s arm and together they walk up the stairs, onto the piazza and_ into the house, following Octavia, Geoffrey and John, their host holding the screen-door for them.
Inside they find themselves in a hallway, with the old library on their left and a parlor to the right. Ahead of them the hallway leads into the rear rooms of the house. The space they are in is empty and open. They see only an old wall-mirror over the mantle in the parlor, and nothing but a little end-stand in the hall, where Octavia guesses an old-fashioned telephone might once have been stationed. ‘Black with a rotary dial,’ she thinks to herself.
Moving to their right, they enter the parlor and immediately notice the antique paneling in which the room is décored. “Is it original?” Octavia wants to know.
“It is,” Robert avers. “It’s been kept up and oiled regularly.”
“It still smells of_ ‘Mahogany’?”
“I think so, John. I’m not sure.”
A sense of something like homecoming warms the Poet as his friends explore the first room they have entered. They look quietly around. Vincent motions to John silently to come over and stand in the light coming in through colored squares of glass in a panel at the top of the windows fronting the window-seat. Together they stand and admire the light for a moment, and then look out through the windows. “It almost feels like’yer in the woods, here,” John observes.
“We always tried to keep trees growing close to the house. My folks didn’t believe in ‘lawns’ full of nothing but grass. There was plenty enough room around the house for practical matters, and for us kids to play in. We had the woods too; of course—the whole of Deer Hill.”
“The hardwood floors have a wonderful tone,” Vincent observes, walking back and forth a bit.”
“They were replaced in the late 60’s; the flooring isn’t original, for the most part. But we tried to remain true to the original ‘feel’ of the house and used the same woods anywhere we needed to replace a board or more, and eventually the floors in whole rooms. _Whittier Construction did the work,” Robert says, glancing gratefully at Geoffrey, “and charged us only for materials.” Geoffrey nods back a “you’re welcome” for Angus, Allan and their crews.
“I remember the hotel having these kinds of interlaced floorboards; a style typical of the early 20th century, I think,” Vincent opines.
“Could well be,” Robert agrees, squinting to squeeze out a tear coming to one eye.
“Robert,” John offers, “I think I remember where your bedroom was,” pointing upwards.
“I’m sure you do,” the Poet says, with a slight sob.
“Robert?” Lori Ann asks, “are you alright?”
“Yes_ No_ will be,” he sighs, viscerally moved.
“What’s the matter?” Vincent asks with deep care in his voice.
“I_ … Have we ever been here before; the four of us, as four, in this house? In my old natal home?”
There is a potent pause as his friends wander over memory-land attempting to recall an instance of their ever having been ‘four’ there in Werner House.
“I don’t think so, Robert,” Lori Ann hesitantly confesses.
“No, neither do I,” John agrees.
“Yet here we are, now,” Robert says, recovering himself. “I think that realization just hit me. I don’t know why it hit so hard_”
“After all we’ve been discussing,” Lori Ann suggests, “is it any wonder you’re affected by being here?”
“I was here, in this room, with Cordelia after the Fire,” Robert recollects.
“This is where you and I visited,” Vincent says, “_in those awful days.”
“There are ghosts, here, mother,” Robert avows as if she were with them, “but of the good kind,” he avers to his friends. “Remembrance, recollection… lead to re-sourcement.”
Octavia stands solitary near the door of the parlor, affected by the sensed-intimacy and care connecting these Four Friends, and wants to say something, or ask a question, but knows she doesn’t want to intrude on the moment.
“I remember your mother meeting me at the door, when I came to see you,” John says to the Poet. “She was always so gracious toward me_”
“And you would come up to my room_ and I’d sit on my little wooden chair – where I pretended to write stories and such at my little play desk! Ha! Already dreaming of being an ‘author’_ at that age! Though I didn’t even know what the felt-aspiration meant_ much less how to realize it?! _And you would sit on my bed and we’d ‘visit,’ as mother called it.”
“We’d talk ‘around’ the Fire, of course, and I’d tip-toe around what I was doing with the family_ neither of us wanted to talk too much about that,” John remembers. “_Then we’d go out for walks in the woods_ and I’d listen to your stories.”
“And I’d show you where some of the scenes took place,” Robert says, remembering.
“There was an old-blasted-tree somewhere on t’other side of the Hill_” John recollects.
“It’s actually still there_ up above Westfarm,” Robert affirms. “_Though all but rotted away now_”
“And you would crawl into the old trunk and tell me ‘bout Elves and strange night-visitors_ and a Stag with a little third antler between’is other two big antlers_ I can’t believe I’m remembering this! – and it was in the shape of a cross?”
“I saw it, one time_ I’d swear it was a real deer_ an albino,” Robert avers. “I didn’t make it up. I actually saw it.”
“There are stories of an Old White Stag in our family’s journals, Robert,” Geoffrey avows, “on the Hill, from the early 20th century.”
“Then I might’ve actually seen it?!”
“You may well_ no doubt its offspring,” Geoffrey suggests. “The albino gene may well be passed down from generation to generation?”
“And there was something else,’ John says, “you told me of a great old bear – a brown bear! – that you had seen while holed up in the trunk of that tree one day.”
“By-god, yes!” Robert exclaims. “It was huge. Its haunches were muscular and I sensed her power as she passed the hollowed tree. She looked in at me_ and smelt me from about a yard off_ and then went on her way.”
“Wow,” Vincent exclaims in quiet awe.
“Are there really brown bears around here?” Octavia asks, as concerned as surprised.
“No, there aren’t,” Geoffrey says, a little shaken by Robert’s story.
“But I saw it,” Robert insists.
“I believe you,” Geoffrey allows, nodding a little nervously.
Octavia, noticing her colleague shaking slightly again, steps into the parlor and takes his arm in hers.
“I want to go upstairs with you all,” Robert then indicates with some intensity. “I want us all to go up to my old room, as friends. _I don’t know what we’ll find up there_ it might have a bed in it or it might be bare_”
“Let’s go,” Vincent urges, sensing the deepening of their togetherness in this ‘new’ venue. _’new’ to them as four. “Lori?”
“As always_” Lori Ann gladly agrees, a bit strangely-unsteady on her feet.
Robert turns and leads them out of the parlor, in solemn procession, back the hall to the stairs that lead up to the 2nd floor.
“Up here is where my sisters and I had our rooms; our ‘worlds.’ Of course,” he says, as he leads everyone up the old familiar staircase, traversing the landing, which creaks under them as if in an invitatory, “over there would have been Lesley Eve’s room, had she lived, to the left here was our parent’s room, then,” walking quietly down the hall, “in here on the right was the room shared by Brenda and Rachel_ and then, finally, here is my old room.”
Robert stands at the entrance to his denuded childhood sanctuary. Before them is an old-fashioned dressing room, stationed between his and the room where his two oldest sisters had sojourned together in their life's time. There is a definite hesitation amongst those gathered in the hall behind him, holding them back from entering that poetically ‘sacred’ space.
Octavia looks into the sisters’ room, as she finds herself standing right at the doorway, and asks, cautiously tender, “What did your two sisters die of, Robert?” _recalling that Evelyn had been uneasy and probably unready to talk about it, on the spur of a moment.
An emotional coldness seemed to freeze the hallway, as if winter had suddenly descended on a mortal Heart, as Robert confesses to his friends, “fright, I think.”
“Fright? Of what_ or who?” Octavia asks, startled at the Poet’s confession.
“We don’t know. I was working on the Christmas Tree farms in the daylight hours and working at the Five-and-Ten downtown in the evenings by ‘56. I was eighteen. I was not yet in college, you see, as I needed money. … Brenda Mae was eight when she started being afraid of the woods in late ‘54. She said there were ‘people prowling out there’ that scared her. My dad and his friends from work scoured the Hill numerous times, and Huson and Morganna – the Managers of the Christmas Tree Farms – had asked the Wickersfeld police if they would reconnoiter the Hill from time to time. Two to four officers at a time would drive in, park at the burned-out Whittier House, and then walk up and over the Hill from there. They never found any evidence of anyone_ ‘lurking around.’ Dad kept his eyes open, though, for any loiterers or perhaps teenagers who might have been out partying on the Hill.”
“Did they ever catch anyone?”
“No, Geoff, they didn’t. But Brenda Mae got more and more ‘paranoid’ as time wore on. She thought she was being ‘watched’ through her bedroom window. And you realize, Norwest Farm wasn’t right up the road, then. It was all woods to the western hooves of the Hill.”
As Robert says this, Octavia steps with care into the girls’ bedroom and goes to the window. “I can’t see much beyond the parking area and that old carriage house down at the road. … I can understand how a young girl might get spooked in a situation as enclosed as this property.”
“Mom and dad shuttered her window_ I think you can still see the frame for the shutters_ around the sash?” Robert points tremulously into the room, as if to direct Octavia’s gaze.
“I do,” Octavia says, examining the window ledge and sides.
“How did she die?” John carefully asks his old friend.
“Slowly_ she just became weaker and weaker until she couldn’t get out of her bed. Our doctor was called in, over and over again, but he had no answer for us. He put her on vitamins, of a sort, I think, and we all waited for her to recover, but she never did.”
“How did this affect her older sister?” Octavia asked with concern.
“Brenda Mae was 10 when she died. Rachel Mae was four years older. She was heart-broken by our little sister’s death. The family mourned and grieved, but then all seemed ‘well enough’ for about a year_ until Rachel Mae began walking in her sleep. She would walk about through the house at first, at which point mom and dad could still gently wake her and put her back to bed. But soon_ she started leaving the house at night. Once this began, I would come back to the house after work and stay up on-watch so mom and dad could get some sleep. This went on for about nine or ten months. Doc Fern gave her some kind of sleeping-draught and she seemed to stop ‘roaming,’ as my father called it. They had moved her back to Lesley Eve’s old room after Brenda’s death, as the memory of our middle sister’s death was much further removed from our memory_ having happened back in ’45.”
“Then what?” Vincent asked pensively.
“One night she got up and got out of the house without anyone noticing. We found her bedroom window open when we went to check on her, having heard some kind of ‘sounds’_ but she hadn’t fallen out of the window by accident, as we feared. We went searching for her_” Robert sobs two or three times, free tears run down his face, “but she wasn’t found ’til morning, drowned, in Willow Creek.”
Geoffrey shook visibly. “You’ve never told me this.”
“No_ I’ve never told you three, either_ but yesterday when you told us how Julia Rebecca died, Geoff, I remembered_ I remembered it all.”
“O dear God,” Lori Ann gasps.
“You had forgotten?” Octavia asks.
“No_ how could I? But, more or less, over the years, it receded into memory. The trauma faded with time, and with me.”
John reached out a hand, and Robert strongly grasped his friend’s in his own.
“That’s why my parents left the Hill. After that, that’s why we never returned. We lived a little better from the rent from tenants in the 60’s, but we rarely visited. … Mom and dad left the Hill just about one-year after Rachel Mae’s death.”
“And that’s why you hesitate returning to live here,” Octavia surmises, fairly confident in her intuition.
“Yes, probably,” Robert says, still clasping John’s hand in his own.
Vincent offers Robert his hand in turn, which Robert also takes in a strong grip.
“I need to sit down, here, friends,” Robert says.
‘You’re shaking,” Vincent notes, concerned.
“Let’s all go into my old bedroom, here, and sit down. I need to sojourn here for a while. I need to stop and rest_ here_ with you all with me. I am having vivid recollections of my sisters_ now that the memory has been shaken awake again_ and that time is so ‘close’ to me_ I feel I need to recollect myself a bit. Can we?”
They gladly do as Robert bids. They step into his bedroom, denuded of furniture but for one wood chair, and begin gathering into a circle, readying themselves to sit down on the floor.
“I don’t know if I can get down there,” John opines.
Everyone sympathizes with John, aware of his age.
“You can sit in that chair over there, John_”
“That’ll do_” the older man says and goes to bring the chair – the only piece of furniture in the room – in from its station against the bare wall into the circle forming by the gathered-together.
Before everyone starts getting down onto the floor, Geoffrey says, “Just a moment,” and goes to open the window, “it’ll change the stale air, and let some coolness in, as the day’s getting hot.”
Everyone realizes, then, that the unventilated house seemed so much warmer than it no doubt was outside. “Thanks,” Robert allows.
Then, as Robert and Geoffrey sit down, followed by Octavia_ “Oh_ this isn’t as easy as it used to be,” Lori Ann realizes, gesturing toward getting down on the floor.
“Here,” Vincent says, “let me ‘hoist’ you down.”
“Goodness, thanks!”
Vincent puts his arms under Lori’s from behind and gently settles her down to the floor.
“O hell,” John says, “can you help me down, too?”
“Ha, sure!”
“Now,” John says, “if only my legs’ll bend in the right way. E-gad!”
Vincent ‘hoists’ John down, and the old engineer finds he can actually still sit ‘cross-legged.’ “Though I may never get up again,” he quips.
Everyone in the improvised circle laughs gently with heart-felt sympathy, and Robert says, wiping the last tear from his face, “nothing’s easy anymore, is it?”
“Nope, it isn’t_ ‘Kid!” John retorts, smiling Robert in the eye, the interchange eliciting another round of gentle, reality-accepting, laughter.
These antics having lightened the mood a bit, they sit together for some minutes, quietly, Robert immersed in a strong flow of resourcement in deep recollection, memory rising vividly out of his soul-well. Through the open window they all hear the sounds of birds – especially Cardinals, Sparrows and Black-Capped Chickadees. A Song Sparrow comes and lands on the windowsill, chirruping, then flies away again.
“Wonderful,” Lori Ann whispers in response to the visitation.
Geoffrey then begins to hum the melody of a chant he knows, from the Gregorian tradition, as an offering. John says quietly, “that’s beautiful, too.” Having found it accepted, Geoffrey continues to hum the chant and, slowly, everyone in the circle feels a release of tension. Breath after breath of air comes in through the open window, freshening the room. Slowly entering into a meditative mood, Vincent, Lori Ann and Octavia join in humming the chant. After a few repeats, Robert then hums a line of improvised harmony above the main melody line, and a thrill flashes through every soul in the circle! They continue in this way for just-over half-an-hour, quietly improvising and flowing, with the birds in the trees outside ornamenting their hummed chanting with their own native songs. They reach a state of peace no one had anticipated.
…
At some point their humming comes to its natural dénouement, though the birdsong in the world beyond their circle continues unabated.
Robert then takes a deep breath and says, as if continuing a conversation from somewhere in memory-land_ “We dealt with the deaths of my sisters_ we grieved, we mourned, dad and mom and I talked about our loss and how we wanted to move on, remembering Brenda and Rachel in every way we could_ we consoled one another for two or three months. I was their last living child_” he said, looking to each of his friends in turn, then confessing, “they wanted nothing to happen to me, I felt. _They later told me so. I had just started college at that point. When at last they announced they were moving into a small house in town, I was so glad for them_ but all along I felt we were leaving something of ourselves behind.”
“This house?” Octavia asks.
“This house,” Robert affirms. “I’ve always been more than a bit ‘homelost.’ _For you – John_ Lori Ann_ Vincent – the loss of home was experienced when the Fire took our ‘sanctuary.’ The Whittier House. For me, too. But for me, there was a second home-loss_ when I lost this place as a touchstone of deep memory in which I could dwell and remember. Over the years, as I’ve said, I began to come back out here to Deer Hill on morning and afternoon hikes – never in the evening or at night! – to see the ruins of the Whittier House, and sometimes did come up here _especially in the 70’s. I came to commemorate my sisters’ deaths; to affirm their memory—we had done all that was possible, at that time, to do for them. I began to think of possibly returning here after the Reunion. But now, maybe, it needs to happen.”
“You think so, Robert?” Lori Ann asks tentatively.
“Yes,” he says, then sits silent in his thoughts for another minute. “There is resourcement that needs to happen here.”
The moment comes when the gathered-together simply ‘know’ it to be time to get up off the floor. Robert stands up on his own, as do Geoffrey and Octavia. Vincent got up and then ‘hoisted’ Lori Ann up to her feet first and then helped John up.
“Thank you, my friends,” Robert says gratefully.
Everyone replies with a glad “you’re welcome.”
“Perhaps_” Robert suggests, “we – or I – could open up the house and let this fine, fresh air flow through it.”
“Good idea,” Geoffrey agrees and, taking the suggestion, humbly leaves the circle and quietly steps across the hall into the sisters’ old room, there lifting-up the surprised window from its long-standing resting place.
“This feels symbolic,” Robert suggests as the air begins to move in through and across between the two opened rooms.
Lori Ann, Vincent, John and Octavia all follow Geoffrey’s example, with Robert joining in the ritual, going into each bedroom and the bathroom, opening all the windows.
“It feels like I’m opening a tomb,” Robert quips and then guffaws loudly and uneasily at the idea.
“Will your family all ‘fit’ in here?” Octavia wonders in a felt anticipation.
“O certainly,” the Poet says. “Let’s see_ Mum can go in one of these back bedrooms, perhaps the one in which she and dad and his parents used to all sleep. I’ll re-take my old room. Sheldon and Veronica can have the third bedroom, over here, with baby, and hmm_ the girls can go in this fourth bedroom_ but what to do with Edmund? _Ah! As he’s only three, I suppose he could sleep in mum’s room or with his parents until he gets older. He can then share my bedroom, and then maybe take the ‘guest bedroom’ in the attic when he’s old enough! He’ll probably like that.”
Robert continues to muse as the last of the windows on the 2nd floor are opened, everyone enjoying the fresh air rushing in. They then go downstairs to open it up as well. “And!” Robert says, “the basement could be set up for Sheldon and Veronica’s architectural and landscaping office! _And I’ll take the library as my writing-room. _I think all my books will fit in there.”
Just as the last windows are thrown open on the 1st floor, there comes a knock at the front door.
“Oh_ who could that be?” Robert exclaims, surprised, moving to open the door as if he were already dwelling in the old house!
He pulls back the old oak door and finds “Hildegard!”
“Robert!”
“So good to see you. What’s up?”
“Someone said they’d seen vehicles going up the road, and so I came up to see who our company was!”
“Oh yeah_ it’s Lori Ann, Vincent, John and myself,” Robert says as Hildegard Whittier – co-owner of Whittier Construction – opens the screen door and steps into the foyer, pleased to see Robert and his friends.
“Hello everyone,” Hildegard says, politely, surprised. “Hi Geoffrey!”
“Hild! And this is my friend Octavia_ I think you’ve met?”
“Yep, we have_ once or twice_ Hi Ock!”
“Hild!”
“Well, we just wanted to make sure all was okay. When I looked and saw four cars up here as I was getting ready to go back out to today’s site, I thought I should check.”
“Thanks, Hild,” Robert says, always appreciative of how the Whittiers have long kept an eye on his old house when no one was in it. “All’s well,” Robert avers.
“Good!” Hildegard says, relieved. “Well_ gotta get into town. We’re re-roofing that old Historical Society building of yours, Vince_ this week, and then I have to lay some brick down at a new house out on one of those new streets_ ‘Tiger Lily Lane.’”
“Okay_” Robert offers. “Have a good day.”
“Oh-I-hope-we-will!” Hildegard replies eagerly in anticipation, waving them all goodbye as she steps back out of the foyer, down the steps off the piazza, heading away, walking briskly out the driveway and onto Deer Hill Road.
Robert looks after her, and then closes the door and, turning to his friends, says, “I think we might at least stay until the house is aired-out, if that’s okay? Anybody mind staying?”
No one objects; every mortal present seeming pleased with the idea.
“Then what shall we do?” John asks.
“Hm_ there are no chairs to sit on,” Robert observes, pondering possibilities.
“O yeah there are_” Octavia says, “In the kitchen! There’s a big table in there, too. I saw it when I opened the windows.”
“Good lord_ probably didn’t know how to get it out through the door!” Robert jests. “Shall we all go to the kitchen, then?” he says, acting the part of some last-minute host.
The gathered-together all gladly accept the suggestion, turning and going down the hall in fresh step, then being directed by their host to go to their left, along the stairwell and then right, into the kitchen.
“I love the lay-out of this house,” Vincent muses. “It’s a bit like a maze!”
The table and chairs Octavia mentioned are covered with old heavy sheets, which Geoffrey and Robert remove, folding and placing them on one of the marble countertops. The old-fashioned high-back wooden chairs that are revealed by the un-sheeting remind everyone of once-upon-a-time days. The table only has chairs along one long side and the two short sides, as it is set close alongside the outside wall facing the back steps. There is a bench behind the table being where the kids would have usually sat to eat their meals. The heavy, wooden table appears to everyone a ‘fixture,’ as if it had been “put in place before the kitchen was even finished,” Vincent opines, trying to fathom how it got there!
“How would anyone ever get it out – or in! – through either of these doors,” Octavia ponders, looking at the possible paths of egress.
“The secret is,” Robert says, “the table can be disassembled. But the nuts are covered over with little wooden plugs, so you don’t see them unless you really look.”
“Oh-h-h!” Octavia exclaims, searching under the edge of the table near her and examining one of the legs. “I see_ here’s’ a plug_ and here_another.”
“Look out the back, here, everyone,” Lori Ann invites, looking out of a window, standing at the counter along the back wall of the room, seeing one of her favorite sights from a different angle than usual.
As they all gather toward the windows over the big old ceramic sink, she asks Robert, “How old is that Walnut tree again?” _referring to a large-trunked, aged tree behind the house.
“Probably a hundred years_ we used to hang a swing on that old fellow when we were kids_ and there are a couple of old Hazelnut trees still living out there, too_ near the edge of the fields that stretch in toward town from here.”
“Is that the area I’ve heard referred to as ‘The Wastes’?” Octavia asks. “It was long littered with dumped cars, tires and other debris, wasn’t it?”
“It was_ it had become that, between the Fire and the Reunion,” Robert says.
“But the Whittier Company led the move to clean it all up, and now it’s county parkland, left un-park-i-fied,” Lori Ann says, explaining largely for Octavia’s benefit, as the rest of the gathered were familiar with the story. “If you look out there, from a higher vantage point, perhaps from upstairs, you’ll see all the small trees starting to come up out of the grasses; Birch and Elm and young Hemlocks. They were planted on purpose by volunteers, under the direction of local ecology groups. The grasses are left grow high. There’re wildflowers everywhere, and in late summer Steeplebush, Ironweed and Goldenrod galore color the fields over.”
“Dirt bike tracks, too,” Geoffrey laments.
“But there’s no dumping anymore,” Lori Ann replies apologetically, “and not really much littering; Park Rangers police it regularly.”
“It looks like a wild field_ and it just stretches from here to town?”
“It does, Ock,” Geoffrey confirms. ‘There are trails through it, though. One will take you to Old Town Cemetery.”
“Whoa_ I need to hike out through there sometime.”
“Perhaps when you’re here next, we could hike into town and back.”
“Great, Geoff! _What happened to all your other furniture, Robert?” Octavia then asks.
“For the house here? _Ah, most of ours dilapidated over the course of the sixties and seventies, being used by the renters as well as just being decades old. We got rid of it after the last renters left_ in ‘78. Shall we sit?” Robert invites.
At this they all choose an old chair around the antique rectangular Oak table that all-but-fills the kitchen.
“When we have professors or writers in,” Robert continues, “Whittier Furniture will rent us a room or two of chairs, beds, desks; whatever they want. If they’re staying for a season, they may bring a few pieces of furniture of their own. It seems the most economical. We don’t have to keep up and clean a whole house full of furniture.”
“I see,” Octavia says, nodding approval.
Seated around the heavy antique table, they look about the kitchen; taking it in and wondering what it would have been like to live in this house and have meals here, at this table. All except Robert, who is sweating and says, “I’m having a real experience, sitting here.”
“I bet you are,” Geoffrey says, sympathizing.
“This table’s original?” Octavia then asks for confirmation.
“It is. We kids used to sit around it with our parents and grandparents.”
Vincent and Lori Ann gently push their chairs back away from the table, into less of an eating position, to get a different perspective on the table and the antique room.
“I like that walk-way, there,” Octavia says. “Is that a pantry?”
“It is,” Robert confirms. “On the other side is the dining room. _And then over here is the little hall we came in by, beyond which is the bathroom.”
“Does it work?”
“Yes_ I think the water’s on. You can go and check if you want.”
Octavia gets up to check out the bathroom and calls back, “water’s on.”
“Oh good,” John says. “I’m next!”
After bathroom trips and more appreciative discussion of the vintage features of the kitchen, Octavia says, “The last 18 or so hours have been a real trip,” looking around in a kind of fascination at the people with whom she has spent most of that time. “I mean, and I don’t want you to take this wrong, I hope_ but I’m struck – even touched – by the intimacy between the four of you.”
The Four Friends smile and gently laugh at the observation.
“What’s wrong with that?” Lori Ann then asks, smiling_ knowing Octavia doesn’t intend to criticize them in the least.
“Nothing_ nothing at all. It’s just so… refreshing?” Everyone laughs agreeably, accepting what is meant. “_Especially between the three of you,” she continues, referring to the men.
“Is it?” Vincent asks, curious as to what Octavia means.
“It is_ that scene up in the bedroom_ there is true, genuine, ‘authentic’ – whatever you wanna call it_ affection between the three of you. You aren’t afraid to touch one another. You wrap your arms around each other in a way that doesn’t evince a fear of one another’s male bodies.”
John, Vincent and Robert smile, suddenly self-aware, at this observation, nodding affirmation at the fact being stated so plainly.
“That scene in the kitchen this morning, Robert_”
“Yes?”
“When Lori Ann came up behind you while you were cooking and wrapped her arms around you. That was striking. I thought, she really loves you_ But when Vincent then repeated the gesture_”
“At my bidding,” Lori Ann affirms playfully, smiling.
“_There was no uncomfortableness about it,” Octavia concludes.
“Vince at least didn’t rest his face into the nape of my neck,” Robert mock protests, smiling, “as Lori did.”
“No, but I could have!” Vincent replies.
Everyone smiles and nods at the playful truth.
“Would you have?” Octavia asks, a little more than politely curious.
“I could have. Robert, would you have minded?”
“Need you ask?”
“No_ I just didn’t think to do it,” Vincent explains. “Actually_ I’m a little taller than Lori, so_ my face is not at his neck-level.”
“So there_” Octavia revels, “that explains it, right?”
“Right!” Vincent says, laughing in agreement.
“Do you mind me making these observations?”
“No, not at all,” Robert and Vincent say almost simultaneously.
“And John?”
“No, I don’t mind. I been ‘analyzed’ before, and its fine,” smiling and looking to Geoffrey as if to implicate the ‘examiner.’
“The way you look at Lori and Vincent and Robert, John, I see a real love in your eyes.”
“That’s because there is,” John says, only slightly embarrassed at the admission. “I love them. _And do you know how hard i’tis for a man of my generation and background to say that so baldly?!”
“I think I do, John, but I don’t take you as typical of your generation_ not after last night and this morning.”
“Love is what binds us to the truth, my father – a congregational evangelical – oft said. And I believe it, because I’ve experienced it in many places and ways_ especially with these three.”
“Lori, your relationship with these three men?”
“Yes, what about it?” she says drolly, suspecting what is coming.
“Is it at all ‘romantic,’ I mean_ have you ever been romantically involved with any of them?”
“No, I’d say not. Not at all,” the elder lady says calmly, with confidence. “I love them, but I’m not ‘in love’ with them.”
“Not even Vincent?”
Lori Ann looks to her oldest friend and says, with candor, “No, never.”
“We used to think of ourselves as ‘Platonic Friends,” Vincent admits. “In school. We were each dating others, but never each other. Her parents thought sure we’d be married someday, and then when my parents hinted at it once, I told them ‘no way.’ Lori was my best friend, and we shared everything, but never romantically. I hung out with her at her house. She hung out with me at mine. We both hung out at the Whittier House.”
“Did you ever even ‘kiss,’” Octavia asks, and then says suddenly, holding up a ‘stop’ hand, “just kick me if I’m overstepping_”
“Ha_ I think we’ve kissed each other on the cheek from time to time, at least when we were younger,” Lori Ann says and Vincent agrees with a nod, “but never passionately. I was passionate about certain boys in school. I was later passionate about Abel _and then my lover, my second Eric’s father. Vincent had a couple serious flings with one girlfriend and then another while we were in school. But we remained ‘Platonic.’ That’s a word we heard in school and took it to ourselves.”
“Do you know what it means?”
“We do, now,” Lori says, with confidence.
“Knowing Robert as we do,” Vincent affirms.
“Ah_ I’m to blame!” the Poet mock declaims, smiling.
“Yes, you are,” Lori says, playing at being vociferous, “for so many things!” making an intense face at the Poet. “Like_” more seriously, confessing, “so many wonderful moments in my life.”
“We are Four-fold,’ John says with all his Heart and Mind.
“You’re like a family,” Octavia posits, again cautiously applying that term to them.
“No, we’re not,” John says, then simply affirming, “we’re friends.”
“I suppose our friendship has some similarities to a ‘family,’ in a way,” Vincent allows, “but we’re not ‘family.’ I’m all that’s left of my family. My sister died in a car crash in ’61, my parents and my aunts are gone. I’m the last Lyman, unless I marry and have kids in my sixties or, god help us_ my seventies! But what I have with John, Lori and Robert is much deeper than anything I could now have with a wife and kids.”
“Because you four have been friends for half-a-century,” Octavia says, obviously understanding and agreeing.
“Yes, I think so_” Vincent hesitatingly agrees, though he senses a ‘more’ to it that he cannot quite grasp to expression in the moment.
“I, too, have no family left,” John admits. “My dad died in ‘65, my mother in 19-70. I have one sister, and she’s in a nursing home with dementia, down in Springborough.”
“Is that why you continue to live down there?” Olivia asks, having been curious as to why he lives so far away from his friends.
“It is, in part_ I got her in there because I have rooms at the Merchantman on my Railroad Pension. I’d have to pay rent, anywhere else. But I can also visit living down there.”
“Robert and I have families,” Lori Ann then says. “They mean so much to us. But my friendship with ‘my three men’ is something else, isn’t it?” she says, looking to the Poet for agreement.
“I love my family as family,” Robert says, “I love my friends as friends. _There’s a difference between familial love and the love that characterizes friendship.”
“Though to be married and be friends with your spouse is certainly the ideal,” Octavia poses, “don’t you think?”
“True,” Robert agrees. “I always think of Jane Austen, as she argued for that.”
“So the distinction isn’t mutually exclusive?”
“No, it isn’t_ But there is a difference,” Robert suggests, “and I feel it whenever I’m around one or more of these three and one or another of our families.”
“It may come down to the fact of raising children; having that parental love and authority thing going on_” Octavia proposes.
“But even just between a married couple_” Lori suggests, “I think there’s a difference in the ‘love,’ and not just because of the sexual dimension to the relationship, either. I see it with Eric and Abelene, but_ I just can’t put my finger on it. Yes, they’re ‘friends,’ but there’s something else to it, too. _A_ different ‘kind’ of ‘love.’”
After a few moments of reflection, Octavia continues: “What do your families think of your ‘fourfold’ friendship?”
“Mine_ respect it,” Robert says with heartfelt gratitude toward his family, “_and are also somewhat in awe of it, as Sheldon has said on a few occasions after the four of us have been together at our house, and he was there with us_ at least in the house with us.”
“We’ve invited him to visit with us,” John avers, “but that makes’im a tad awkward.”
“I think he just wouldn’t know what to say,” Lori Ann suggests, given her experience of their interactions. “Though we’ve always inquired about what he was doing, about college and then his architectural work over the years, showing genuine interest; he just doesn’t come and sit down with us_ or anything.”
“He’ll talk with you?”
“O yes, he will do that_ but politely_ and then go about his own things to do,” Lori Ann observes.
“I think that may be something of a generational issue,” Octavia suggests. “You know? Some kids just don’t want to be part of their parents’ associations. _As we noted earlier?”
“I see that, too_” Lori Ann admits.
“Veronica said, one time, that our friendship was something ‘sacred,’ and she’d feel like she was intruding.”
“Interesting, Robert,” Octavia muses, feeling like she’s been invited into that ‘sacred fourfold’ through the events of the previous day, being quietly in awe of it.
“When I visit with Lori up here at Norwest Farm,” John then says, “I feel a certain connection with Eric. He’s been through a lot of shit; and so’ve I.”
“He respects you,” Lori Ann acknowledges.
“Hm_” is all John will say to that, puzzling it emotionally. “I haven’t spoken with’is wife much_ she ain’t been ‘round when I was there, I guess. And their kids are always playin’ ‘round. I’ve talked with Theodore some_”
“Who is?” Octavia asks.
“Eric’s son,” Lori Ann clarifies. “He’s eleven, now, and showing all kinds of interest in music, but also helping his dad out in the house-garden.”
“He seems to like m’train stories.”
“He does,” Lori Ann affiirms, “and he wanted to be at the railroad with us yesterday but didn’t get up on time! He’ll be with us next week. He really wants to ride the train_ and with you, I think, John.”
“Wish I could give’im a ride up in the engine cab, give’im that experience_ like I used to do for you three.”
“That would be so very cool. He’d love it.”
“If they ever let me pilot a train again,” John cautiously laments.
After a reflective moment, Robert says, “You see_ we’re talking about our families, Ock, and there is clearly a deep love there; between Lori and I and our own families, and from John and Vincent and Lori for our families. But it’s a different kind of love than we have with each other as friends.”
“Parental love_ familial love,” Octavia states. “I experience that with my own family and then I have friends that I’d say I ‘love.’ I just don’t know if I have a friendship like you all have with each other. _And that’s sad, I guess.”
“Sorry if we make you ‘sad,’” Lori says in a softly consoling tone.
“Don’t be_ there’s no need. I’m just struck by – as we said yesterday – the unusualness of your bond; what holds you together—the ‘what-is-it’ that binds you into one.”
“There’s that ‘primary’ philosophical question again,” Geoffrey notes.
“Yep_ It is!” Octavia agrees.
Those gathered-together ponder this distinction, reflecting in silent recollection for a few moments, the contemplative stillness then being elevated by John, who reiterates, “We are a ‘Fourfold.’”
“That phrase, John, is quite metaphorical, I think,” Octavia poses.
“Thank Robert for that, too!” John says, pointing an admiring forefinger toward the Poet.
“I take from things you’ve said – the four of you – that you get together a lot?” Octavia suggests.
“We do,” Vincent agrees. “In twos, threes, but mostly as four, now. I go down to visit John in Spring Junction. I come out here and visit with Lori Ann and her family. We – Lori and I – rendezvous with Robert at state parks, where we walk and talk to our Hearts’ content. But we always gravitate towards the four of us coming together, whenever we can.”
“We so look forward to it,” Lori Ann avows, gazing around at her friends, who nod in agreement.
“We go to movies together,” Robert avers, “once again, as we did back then,” obviously enthused at the fact.
“What kind of movies?”
“We’ve found we’re all interested in horror and science fiction!” Vincent confesses with enthusiasm. “_Among other things.”
“Cool_ I’m also a fan of those genres,” Octavia allows, wondering what it would be like to see a film with these four friends.
“Vincent or Robert will collect me down at the Merchantman,” John continues, “and bring me up for our get-togethers, so I don’t have to drive m’old jalopy _ Almost every other week, all four of us are together, somewhere_ doin’ somethin’.”
“And when we’re not,” Robert says, “I feel the connection between us. It subsists in our absence from one another. _It’s a strong ‘tie-that-binds.’”
“I so agree,” Vincent says, touched deeply by the affirmation.
“As do I,” Lori Ann affirms. “Me as well,” John adds, full of expression.
“You have a ‘true’ friendship,” Octavia says. “In philosophical terms, you have that rare experience of being involved with one another in ways that transcend utility and ‘pleasure for pleasure’s sake.’”
“’Unpackage that, will you?” Vincent requests, intrigued, using a term he’d heard Octavia using earlier.
“Well, let me use categories from ancient philosophy_ in which friendships come in a variety of forms. The basest – but still good and worth having – is that of utility; where you ‘know’ people who can do things for you, and that you are willing to do things for. But when there is no utility, you don‘t usually think of them. Yes? Then there’s the friendship based upon pleasure. You like doing things with someone you call a ‘friend,’ like going to a movie or shopping or going on vacation with them. You enjoy being around them, but they are essentially a reflection of your own ego. When there’s no pleasure-possibility, you don’t get together with them. Then there’s ‘True Friendship,’ which is rare, and which is a soul-bonding; a mingling of spirits, of ‘virtue,’ _but I don’t want to get into that sticky term, if I can help it! Ha! Most ‘friends’ people believe they have fall into the first two types. But then there is this third type; which may involve utility – you do things for each other and help each other out, yes – and it will certainly involve pleasure in one another’s company_ but its deeper.”
“Amen to that,” John says. “So_ we’re True Platonic friends!”
“Aristotelian, actually,” Octavia corrects, politely amused.
“Oh_ Aristotle was the student of Plato!” John states flatly, proud of the knowledge.
“For sure!” Octavia smiles.
“See_ we can’t help just learnin’ things from one another,” John affirms, “though we’re not ‘teaching’ or ‘mentoring’ one another, am I right?”
“We’ve learned a-lot from one another over the years,” Lori Ann, the teacher, says. “We learn by sharing what we love; what we’re interested in and passionate about_ experiences we have_ following up on this question from yesterday, Ock.”
“I see_ I understand completely!” Octavia says. “See this, too_ it’s amazing. I’m going to refer now to your Reunion,”
“Okay,” the Four Friends reply, almost as one.
“It’s one thing to have been friends when you were kids_” she pauses, “and I know, John, you were a young adult_ that just throws the whole scenario I was about to pose ‘out of whack!” Octavia shakes her head, smiling as her four interlocutors laugh lightly at the conundrum that they ‘are’ in the professor’s eyes. “But here goes! How did a rough-neck_”
“_That’s what I am,” John affirms, not in the least insulted.
“_An ‘uneducated’ – no offense intended – railroad engineer_ a Poet, a teacher and a labor organizer and businessman get back together_ even more_ remain such great friends, as they carried on with their lives, from middle- into advancing age?”
“What do you mean?” Vincent asks, mildly startled at the question being so clearly posed.
“You’re people who came back together from different walks of life_ different social classes_ and there’s not a hint of the biases that usually crop-up when people of different backgrounds like this try and be friends. Don’t you see it?”
“No,” Robert says honestly. “Though, yes, I admit to seeing that limiting factor in the culture around me. But not between us.”
“You’re a Poet, Robert_ a very self-educated, erudite person. Here is John Smith_ coming from a coal miner’s background_ working-class as ever could be_ and a skilled laborer to boot; that’s how being an engineer would probably be categorized sociologically.” (John laughs out loud, but very considerate of the truth of what Octavia is saying.) “_and you have managed to overcome that ‘social distancing’ and come back together_ and then you have continued to be friends_ I’d call you soul-friends.”
“Anamcara,” Robert affirms, using a word he knows from Celtic traditions.
“Yes_ I know that word, too!” Octavia says with surprise. “As a social historian it just amazes me. I’m in awe of it. And the two of you,” referring to Lori Ann and Vincent, “are somewhat ‘between’ them in terms of social class and status.”
“I suppose we are,” Lori Ann says, “but we don’t think of each other that way_ not in the way our society might _does. I have known these men since I was a girl in my teens. Since our Reunion I have come to know them again. It doesn’t determine our love for each other; what they have come to do in their lives _or have done for a living—but you know I respect it, guys, right? – or what their ‘social background’ is_ I just care about them_ I know them as people_ individuals; yes_ each with their particular history—but not as social ‘types.’ I love them. And I think that’s the power of love. It embraces differences; it doesn’t wash them away! It takes in who and what a person is_ and allows us to continue living with each other_ for each other_ because of each other.”
“That’s a powerful thing to say,” Octavia then acknowledges. “If more people in our culture could think that way_ and care for each other_ regardless of class and cultural background … what a world of difference that would make!”
“I don’t care if John is so-called ‘uneducated’ – and I’m not saying you are, John, okay?”
“I know, Rob_ I never went to school after public, but I have learned a lot over the course of my life_ from all kind’a’experience and from you three in particular!”
“And I mean only ‘so-called un-educated,’” Robert continues, “because John is educated, Ock; he knows how to drive a steam engine! I could never do that without training; a practical education! And I think John, too, has a ‘soul’ trained up in that profession, which mine is not. He has had what could be called lifetime-experience-education; learning his trade and applying it. He’s just educated in a different way than I am!”
“I agree!” Olivia confesses, smiling at a distinction in which she has long believed.
“_Than Vincent is. _Than Lori is. He’s ‘rough,’ I know and love it, because it’s him. He can swear up a storm if I get him going, and I don’t swear much. He’s ‘rough around the edges,’ and can be ‘coarse.’ But I understand him, I hope_ and I love him.”
“And I love you, Robert,” John says again, and then, to everyone, “I’m getting real used to saying that today, aren’t I?” laughing pleasantly at the self-reveal.
“You are,” Lori Ann and then Vincent each aver; leading Vincent to throw his arm around his old friend’s shoulders for a few seconds, being seated next to him.
“And look at what he did at the diner last night, for that kid?” Robert says.
Octavia remembered, and what he later said about the waiter.
“He’s got real compassion for others, generosity and he is practiced at hospitality_ engaging the world around him with discernment,” Robert says with admiration.
“Most of the world isn’t like this,” Octavia says with respect. “Suppose I befriended one of the maintenance men in my building at the college? I mean, could we even have a conversation like you four do? My department might well ‘talk’ about us. People would think what they would_ ‘what’s this professor doing being friends with someone from maintenance?’ They’d try to justify it by assuming we were ‘distant relations!’ They might think we were having an affair! _Because that’s what our cultural formulas would tell them to think. When you cross age-status lines, it can only be for disreputable purposes, it’s assumed; to be able to do things you’re ‘not supposed to do.’ I’m friendly with Mr Tanner, but I don’t think we have enough in common to breach the class barrier. Not that I don’t like him_ as a non-academic ‘colleague’ working in our building.”
“You’re probably just too far along on your separate paths,” Robert suggests.
“That’s probably a-lot of it, I admit_ But is it just because you met when you were so young, then?” Octavia asks. “_Before the world sent you down different life-paths?”
“Perhaps, Ock,” Lori Ann agrees, “but I think there’s a precedent in the Whittiers.”
“Oh yeah_” Octavia then sees. “I’ve often thought, since meeting Geoffrey, that this family of his is very un-usual. Case in point, Hildegard,” she says, looking to Geoffrey. “She’s what?”
”A carpenter and a bricklayer, and now co-manager of Whittier Construction,” Geoffrey says, “since her husband’s retirement.”
“Yes_ right, but what else?” Octavia prods.
“An aspiring fantasy novelist, as we’ve said. She’s now a full member of the Deer Hill Literary Cloister.”
“And then there is Allan‘s branch of the Whittier Company; also in construction but also renovation and reconstruction,” Lori continues. “Then there are Christmas Tree farmers and the folks who run the Office Supply stores – which are ‘descended’ from the paper milling part of the old Whittier Company, if I’m not mistaken.”
“You’re not,” Geoffrey says, “that’s correct.”
“Then there are the other writers,” Lori Ann continues, “Daniel Westforth, Susan Jean and Geoffrey, here. There’s Llewellyn at Norwest; a professional photographer, and his wife, a dress-maker and free-lance designer by profession, and their kids, who formed a Celtic rock band with kids from Four Willows_” Lori Ann stops in her rehearsal, and then says, “a lot of diversity of occupation, and everyone is accepting and affirming of what the others do for a living_ all living on the same Hill together, often under the same rooves!”
“True_ from working class to white-collar to professional class occupations_ I agree. But the difference is,” Octavia poses, “they are family; they are not ‘friends’ in the sense that you four are. You four were not born into the same family. You came together_ in their social world, yes, and maybe that helped you to become friends; gave you a context that was perhaps more ‘open’ and non-conforming with regard to the usual class differences and societal mores so many of us struggle with_ even against. But you four came together_ and have come back together again – which is even more amazing – since the Whittier Reunion and your Reunion, having walked separately and gone your own ways_ for thirty years.”
“I see the difference,” Lori Ann acknowledges. “I see it.”
After a pause, Robert says, “You know what this friendship means to me, Ock?”
“Tell me, Robert,” Octavia invites, eager for the answer.
“At one level it means support_ we support one another,” Robert affirms.
“I saw that upstairs a little while ago_” Octavia asserts, “and all last evening."
“_Back in the 40’s and today, since the Reunion,” Robert avers, “it’s the honesty we have with each other that makes this friendship what it is. We know one another’s stories, and we appreciate each other as the people we are; the persons we have become.”
“Honesty facilitates Truth,” Octavia avows.
“Yes!” Vincent then says. “We don’t have any secrets from one another_”
“There’s no need for them,” Lori Ann asserts.
“No_ there’s not,” Vincent continues. “I can tell these three anything.”
“Yet there are private aspects to our lives, of course,” Lori Ann clarifies, “but that’s not the same thing as having secrets_ or being dishonest with one another.”
“Privacy is essential to mental health,” Octavia affirms. “And I think full disclosure between people may be impossible – or at least improbable – in any case.”
“It’s a culture-myth,” Robert avers. “‘I know everything about you, and you know everything about me.’ _That robs us of our basic mystery; the very fact that we are not ‘things’ which can be fully known.”
“I think that desire for something approximating ‘full disclosure’ oft comes out of insecurity and fear,” Octavia continues. “We are naturally afraid of what we do not know_ Thus we want to think we can know another person completely. Yet, the reality is, we are always getting to know each other, even after we’ve been together with someone for years _decades.”
“’Things’ can be known fully, ‘beings’ cannot,” Robert says, espousing one of his most basic philosophical intuitions.
“I like that_” Octavia says, admiringly, “and what you said about our basic ‘mystery.’ In some sense, human beings will always be a mystery to one another; as I see us. That’s part of the wonder of knowing people_ of the adventure of getting to know them.”
“Hm_” John muses, “we started off telling each other our stories, up to the point where we became a four-fold_ on that first camp-out. Remember? We kept doing that until ’49. Since our Reunion, we’ve just built’n’built ‘pon that original sharing.”
“It’s an evolution_ ourselves with one-another,” Vincent adds. “An ongoing story_ and who knows where it will end_ even at our deaths?”
“Everyone hopes to be remembered,” Robert poses, “and in that way – if we are remembered by anyone – our stories might even transcend the mystery of death.”
“That we could come together again after thirty years,” Vincent offers in response, “is evidence of how strongly built that foundation was back then, in the ‘40’s_ in those three or four short, intense years.”
“I would agree,” Octavia allows. “Other people, having been friends in their youth and adolescence, come back together – at Class Reunions or perhaps in work-situations or at the gym – ”
“_Or on the Golf course,” Vincent interjects from personal experience, with a roll of his eyes.
“– and they are not able to cross the ‘picket fence’ standing between who they have become and the person they once were, before the world took them on its merry-go-round ride. Many such re-encounters would not result in a friendship that continues for the rest of their lives. _Though admittedly, some do.”
“It’s the close ties we forged back then and being fostered by the Whittiers; actively or passively – just being in their milieu,” Robert agrees, “that perhaps made it possible for the four of us to come back together again_”
“I am grateful for these men,” Lori Ann says. “They make life much more worth living than it would be without them.”
“That’s quite a thing to say,” John says appreciatively in response, suddenly touched.
“And I would say,” Robert continues, “that our honesty – and knowing one another’s stories – leads to a kind of freedom that many people do not have with one another, unfortunately.”
“Emotional freedom,” Octavia posits. “The freedom to be who you are with another person_ or persons. That deepens us or, as a colleague of mine says, ‘fertilizes the ground that we are.’”
“Whoa,” Vincent exclaims quietly in response to the offered metaphor.
“Exactly,” Lori Ann agrees.
“Would you say you have a strong sense of self-worth?” Octavia asks the Fourfold.
“I would say that if so, it’s our friendship that has allowed that to happen, and to be sustained over time,” Vincent posits, “despite all the things we’ve been through.”
“For me, too,” John agrees.
“I am who I am on my own, as my ‘self,’” Robert says, “I know myself, though never fully. In companionship with these three friends, I ‘see’ myself more fully, and know myself to have worth; in part because they value me. They always have. My family values me too – my mother and my son, my father when he was alive, Veronica and my grandchildren_ we gain self-worth from accepting ourselves_ as well as from others who love_ or simply ‘appreciate’ _us.”
Octavia smiles warmly and nods in full agreement.
“When I would doubt myself,” Lori Ann says, “during the time after the Fire and before our Reunion, thinking about these three and what we meant to one another, helped me through it, more than once. They allowed me to love myself as myself. I don’t know what would count for a ‘strong sense of self-worth,’ but I know I am loved, and that makes life more worth living than if I didn’t feel that.”
“Loving and being loved certainly contributes to our mental health, too,” Octavia avers. “I was struck, too, by what you said about gratitude a minute ago_ being grateful. Gratitude is one of those emotions which makes the soul ‘hum’ and keeps it ‘wet’ and ‘beautiful.’”
“Would you say this is why ‘thanksgiving’ – givin’ thanks – is s’important?” John asks.
“I would_” Octavia avers, “being grateful and offering thanks for your existence_ even if only to an impersonal universe – is something which seems to strengthen and anchor many of us in well-being.”
“I don’t think the universe is ‘impersonal,’ necessarily,” John muses.
“Do your friends know you think that?”
“We do,” Lori Ann agrees, and I’m with him, though Vincent is more with Robert, on the opposite stance.”
“Do you discuss things like this?”
“Of-course-we-do,” Robert affirms.
“Yes_ how could we not?” Vincent agrees.
“When you have friends as close as we are,” Robert offers, “everything about your life resonates with everyone else, and our differences are as important as what we share and believe in common. Understanding is another aspect of true friendship,” Robert asserts, “which we seem to have, naturally.”
“Though we have had our struggles,” Lori Ann admits.
“True enough,” Vincent agrees. “We’ve had our moments of misunderstanding and even arguments_ at times.”
“But they never last all that long,” Lori Ann affirms. “We work them out.”
“’We can work it out,’” John quietly sings, remembering a song he was fond of in his youth.
“Better to argue it out and come to a real understanding,” Robert avows, remembering such moments in their unfolding relationship, “than muss-around behind a façade of faked understanding that doesn’t help us come to terms with the way things are_ or could be.”
“I would always agree with that,” Octavia says, admiring the Poet’s philosophical principles. “If only more people could ‘understand’ that.”
“It’s so difficult to practice, though,” Vincent opines.
“You have to communicate_ and that’s scary to a lot of people,” Lori Ann adds.
“It’s still scary to us,” Robert confesses.
“It’s hard to know whom to communicate with,” Vincent says, “especially with new acquaintances.”
“We are all four ‘Lovers of Life,’” Lori proposes, “and so, perhaps, it’s easier for us to share everything. Our souls are aligned together in the affirmation of life, despite all the difficulties and problems and tragedies, the ups and downs of fortune_ and so we tread the path always with hope of taking the right ‘wye,’ to use John’s train analogy.”
“Oh_ what’s that?”
The engineer pauses a moment, and then offers, “I think of life as like a train-ride.”
“Of course you do,” Octavia allows with a gracious smile, “_But how do you mean that, exactly?”
“Well, I guess,” John poses, “You get on, somewhere, and it goes somewhere, and then you get off. If you’re at the stick you have some control over which switches y'take – which ‘wyes’ you choose, as Lori said – and where you may end up, but if you’re not, you get carried ‘long by other forces_ and may end up just wherever those in control take you.”
“I always like that analogy,” Vincent confesses, “it so characterizes us.”
“Good simile,” Robert offers.
“Life is the train, we’re the passengers,” John concludes, “whether or how much control we have over where we’re goin’_ an’I think us four have each had our hands on the stick of our lives, at times, and_ at other times_ the stick was ‘under other ownership!’ At our Reunion_ may I say it this way? _we took the stick back from those with power over us, and chose a wye which has led us to where we are today_”
“To being the Four Friends we are and have always been,” Lori Ann concludes.
“Yes, okay_” Octavia agrees, her mind turning on the analogy.
“Now, Vincent, you have another ‘analogy,’ don’t’cha?”
“Sure John_ I’ve told you_” Vincent allows.
“Please,” Octavia urges, “what’s your ‘analogy?’”
“Life is like train-trip; I like hearing John talk about that. For me, I often think of friendship, however, as also like a maze.”
“You think so?” Octavia asks. “Unpackage that, will you?”
“Well, it’s like_ being in a real friendship – and I’ve had a number of friends over the years, not just with these three – you are aware that there is a path to walk, but that path may diverge, and you may get separated and travel along different paths for a while; sometimes coming back together, for a time, sometimes never meeting up with them again ever. But, if you are friends, perhaps you will always wander in the same maze? Since coming back together, we have had to navigate this maze together, as four; the four we want to be – finding ways of being-together and staying together_ being the different people we actually are_ that we had become – as you pointed out – during that 30-year hiatus.”
“Being in the maze,” Robert offers, “requires commitment; valuing your connection with your friends more than other things that you might also value.”
“In that way,” Lori muses, “friendships are like romantic relationships? I have a commitment to my family – with whom I am romantically involved – and also to our Four-fold. … So far, the two commitments have not conflicted.”
“Another good simile,” Octavia says, pondering the possibilities of deeper understanding that it might open up.
This observation creates a brief lacuna in the discussion, after which Octavia asks, “Do you think you could ever admit another person into the Maze of your Fourfold?"
“It would be hard, I think,” Lori Ann poses, “but it might also be fruitful_ I mean_ we have tried to invite Robert’s son and his wife into our conversations, and occasionally there have been others we have wanted to invite into our – here’s another Robert-Geoffrey term – ‘being-gathered-together’ – so the desire, and even openness to it, is there. Whether or not it could actually happen is the question.”
“I think those outside of your ‘four-fold’ may hesitate,” Octavia suggests,” as you have indicated with Sheldon and Veronica, Robert – because they sense the close ties between you, and don’t know how to traverse that ‘magic circle.’”
“Apt metaphor,” Robert says, reflecting on their togetherness-as-four. “And what is a magic circle if not a metaphor for something that either contains something safely or keeps that which is within it, safe, from what is outside?”
“True, Robert_” Octavia agrees with the distinction. “And I think your ‘magic circle’ functions both ways; the magic circle of any true friendship_”
“_Don’t those who use magic circles have rituals of some kind that allow things – or beings – to cross in and out?” Vincent asks. “I’ve heard something like that somewhere, I think.”
“They do, as wicchan friends of mine have told me,” Octavia confirms. “So, to continue along the contours of the metaphor, now that we’re exploring it, perhaps what you four need is a ritual – mental and practicable – to allow others to come into your circle from time to time, either temporarily or maybe_ eventually_ permanently? That is_ if anyone would ever need to be included; if you met someone you found yourselves seriously wanting to invite into your Fourfold.”
“Curious idea,” Vincent says, reflecting on possibilities coming to mind.
“But perhaps we’ve stretched this metaphor out as far as it will go,” Octavia concedes.
“Perhaps,” Robert agrees, though he continues musing on the idea of ‘rituals’ for allowing someone else into their intimate circle.
“I just don’t think it would be possible, at this point, really,” Lori Ann proffers.
“It will probably never happen,” Robert agrees.
“Is it too much to say that we are ‘one soul,’” Vincent then poses.
“Perhaps that’s what the ‘fourfold’ metaphor you all use means,” Octavia suggests. “That is_ you are four, but you are also one.”
“Ha_ we’re a quadrinity!” Robert exclaims.
“Not a bad metaphor,” Octavia avers, “You are each your own person, and yet in-relationship you are one. Four-in-One and One-in-Four. So, yes_ Vincent_ I think you could metaphor yourselves as ‘one soul,’ so-long as you don’t gloss over the fact that you are – at the same time – four discrete individuals. I’ve seen, over the last 24 hours, what differentiates you as much as being awed at the ‘oneness’ you have together.”
“Deep shit,” John says, nodding as he reflects on the idea, and smiles, much to everyone’s amusement.
“Not of the ‘bad’ kind? _I hope,” Vincent playfully asks his friend.
“Nope_ not a’tall.”
“If you don’t buy this, John,” Octavia offers, mock-seriously, “I’ll withdraw the metaphor.”
“O no, it’s a good’n. I was just ‘pon-der-ing.’”
“I see very clearly that you have not collapsed yourselves into the relationship – of being ‘One’ – that you have maintained your individuality. That’s good, I think. _Healthy. It’s sad to see a dominant personality making almost a carbon copy out of the less-strong person or persons in a relationship.”
“I have always felt that we’re equals,” John confesses. “There’s no power-trippin’ here_ no one is the ‘leader,’ we come together as four-in-one.”
“I definitely agree,” Vincent avows.
“Another thing about us,” Robert continues, “is that we trust one another. I trust these three with my life.”
“That’s important,” Octavia agrees.
“I can go to them with anything. We can discuss anything. And even if we don’t always agree, we can learn from disagreement. _I never feel like I have to hold back if I need to talk about something.”
“I feel the same,” Vincent says.
“So do we,” John says, looking Lori Ann in the eye and nodding with her.
“After our experience at ‘that place,’” Vincent stops for a moment_ and then continues, “‘the Deverson place,’ Geoffrey called it_ there were whole evenings we spent trying to reconcile ourselves to what had happened. We helped each other work it out_ until we came to some – ‘reconciliation’ – with our experience of that strange series of events.”
“After the Reunion – ours as well as the Whittiers’ – we shared our stories again,” Lori Ann says, “we told them_ just as we had up atop Deer Hill way back when_ and spilled everything.”
“Boy do I remember_” Vincent avers. “_It unfolded over weeks_”
“I told all my sad tales, and so did each of you,” Lori Ann says.
“And our happy tales, too,” John avers, “though they were much fewer in number…”
“It was a time of ongoing confession and mutual learning,” Robert avows, “learning about one another all over again, and what we’d gone through. _Building trust and securing the ‘safe space’ in which we dwell with one another in Earth & Spirit. It was a process of resourcement; returning to the taproot of our life-together_ and rebuilding it_ re-tapping it_ as it were_ like a wellspring.”
“Like you were re-grounding your relationship after thirty years,” Octavia suggests.
“That’s’bout it,” John agrees, nodding.
“Each of us, our life history, and our life together_ and our lives apart_” Vincent then observes, “it’s all a maze.”
“And a-mazing,” Octavis affirms.
The Four Friends look around at each other appreciatively, sharing their sense of being something ‘unusual;’ as had first been urged at the diner the night before. As they see themselves reflected in each of their other friends, they realize they have learned things about themselves and their relationship in the process of this dialogue as it has unfolded. For a minute that seemed like many, everyone around the antique kitchen table is immersed in quiet reflection.
“I’m just glad to have gotten to know you all a bit,” Octavia then admits.
“Are you gunna write a book about us, huh?” John asks, at which everyone laughs heartily.
“NO_ I wouldn’t dare. So don’t tempt me,” she adjures, with a sincere laugh. “This wasn’t a formal, planned interview, and_ I am edified by hearing – and sharing in – your stories. Thank you.”
Glances and smiles are shared around the table, and a sense of completion comes over the gathered-together.
“Quite a revealing discussion,” Vincent opines.
“Amen to that,” Geoffrey says.
“What do you all think?” Robert asks.
There is a pause, after which Lori Ann says, “I think this has been … illuminating?”
“Quite!” the Poet agrees.
“We do talk about our relationship,” Vincent assures Octavia, “amongst ourselves. I have long wondered what the deep bond is_ I know there is a love between us that I don’t experience with anyone else; but last night and this morning has brought up a lot of things that we will now, no doubt, reflect on_ together and alone.”
John says, “Thanks, Octavia, for gettin’ us all goin’.”
“You’re certainly welcome,” the professor says, “so good to hear your stories!”
The other three friends thank her in turn, and then Robert says, “So perhaps we’re at a turning point, here, huh?” looking to his friends, feeling a deep satisfaction.
“I think I have said all I can say, for now,” Lori Ann admits.
“Me as well,” Vincent agrees. “I’m satiated_ as well as ‘satisfied.’”
“John?”
“I’m okay Robert_ this was really good. I’m ‘zooming’ as you would say.”
“Humming,’ is what I’d say.”
“That’s it_ I’m ‘humming,’” John agrees, shining a bit, his friends all smiling at the polite word-play.
“Well, if the conversating is over,” Robert suggests, “perhaps it’s time to close the windows and _go our ‘merry’ ways?”
The gathered-together look to one another for assurance and agreement, their nods and smiles becoming runes of closure to their unexpected adventure in remembrance, recollection and resourcement.
“Great!” Octavia says. “So amazing to be with you all last night and this morning. Thank you again!” she says as she stands up from the creaky old wooden chair.
“So_ perhaps we could close up the house, now, before we go?”
At Robert’s suggestion, the gathered-together go about the house – full of a serene thoughtfulness – re-closing all of the windows. Lori Ann and Vincent and Robert go upstairs, the rest making the circuit around the first floor, shutting and locking windows.
Gathering in the front hall, hugs and handshakes are shared all around, after which they disembark from the house to stand about on the piazza while Robert locks up. He lays his hands on the old wooden doors and says, softly but aloud, “I shall return, soon,” as if the house could hear him, then closes the screen door.
The others are moved by his emotion and his now heartfelt intent to return to his too-long-lost boyhood home. As he turns around to face his friends, he says, “I just have to talk with the family,” and shrugs his shoulders, smiling with hope-in-expectation, as they all walk down the front steps together.
“What a beautiful day,” Vincent observes, to which everyone assents. “Hot but so green and clear_ the humidity must be very low.”
As they walk to their cars, John says, “Well, I guess I’ll see you all at the trains next weekend?”
“You will,” Lori Ann affirms, “if not before, and I hope Eric and my gran-kids will be with me.”
“That goes for me, too,” Robert avows.
“John,” Octavia says, turning to the old engineer and taking his rough, strong hands in hers, giving them a firm shake, “such a good meet; and congrats on your success with the book. I’ll be pouring over my copy all this week, I’m sure!”
“Hey, I’ll be at that kiosk at the station all summer, ev’ry weekend, prob’ly, so come by an’ see me.”
“I will!”
Amidst ‘goodbyes’ and ‘farewells,’ the gathered-together go to their cars and, still waving and gesturing their ‘farewells’ to one another as they open doors and slip down into their driver- and passenger seats, they cannot help feeling immersed in a sea of thought and feeling; sensuality and intellect being so well-wedded throughout their conversation that they each begin their departure feeling oned with one another and yet being each their own person in their own being-in-becoming.
No comments:
Post a Comment