Finally Ben comes down and drifts around the groupings. He’s trying to see everybody, participate without being seen. I’m worried how he’ll react when the girls greet him. He’s only this year gotten up his nerve, his tolerance, enough so Madame Le Moine can kiss him on the cheeks when we arrive. Mike’s the first to see him.
‘Holy Jesus, Ben! You’ve grown another six inches since I last saw you. Now I’m your little brother. How tall are you anyway? And that’s some beard you’ve got there.’
He goes over and puts his hand out for Ben to shake. Ben, hands to match his feet, long thin fingers, strong hands, gives a good shake; but he can’t get himself to look into the eyes of any person with whom he’s shaking hands. It’s too personal, too intimate. He tends to look down, or at an oblique, about two feet beside and three feet behind the other person. Mike knows Ben enough to respect this.
‘He’s somewhere over six-two now, Mike. I had to stand on a chair to cut his mark on the post for the millstone boom. He passed both of us last summer.’
Nicole and Maggie see Ben. Nicole comes over, she swings the dangling end of her scarf across her neck, shakes her head to get her hair over her ears and behind her shoulders.
‘My God, Ben; you’re a giant. You can’t be my little brother. Holy cow, I’m the baby in this family again, for sure. What happened?’
She closes in on Ben with her arms out. She doesn’t even come up to Ben’s shoulder. He lets himself be hugged, hands limp at his sides and his head too high up for her to try a kiss. She steps back, staring at him from head to toe.
‘My God, I can’t believe it; he even has the beginnings of a straggly beard there. Maybe you’ll be the new Santa, you and your hairy brother can fight it out for first elf.’
Maggie’s standing behind Nicole. She puts down her banana bags on a snow spot, all the rest is mud.
‘Hi, Ben. You’re getting so handsome, I almost wouldn’t recognize you. I’ll bet the girls at school chase you all the time.’
She gives him a brief hug. She doesn’t try to kiss him although she’s tall enough. With a valiant effort, she might manage a shot at his beard. But from the way Ben leans out from her hug, she gets the message.
Ben takes the banana bags from Maggie and Nicole. They carry the sleeping bags. Mike has his stuff under his arms. There’s nothing left for Loretta and me to carry except some wrapped Christmas presents from in back of the car and a duffel bag full of something, maybe extra warm clothes, I hope. We pack them under our arms; I’m praying the Atari set is there and that the cassettes are the ones Ben wants, Combat and Space Invaders. He definitely doesn’t want any of the sport ones, soccer, Ping-Pong, tennis. I’m sure it’s okay.
We decide to go around onto the dam. With all this junk it’d be hard to get up the narrow stairs and through our trap door. Besides, I want them to see how beautiful the pond is; also, how I’ve cleaned the ivy from the roof, swept the leaves off the porch, tied the roses to the wall.
On the dam side, it almost looks like a real French country house, with French doors opening from the upper grange onto the dam and a stone terrace along its length. The other side, the road side, where the car is parked, looks square, hard, high and cold. Nicole and Maggie are still rattling away a mile a minute with Loretta. Just before they go down the stairs, Lor stops and turns.
‘Look at this, girls, have you ever seen anything more beautiful?’
The two of them hug their sleeping bags to their chests and look out over the pond. For some reason there are small crystalline outgrowths, growing in tiny clumps like butterflies all over the surface of the pond. There must have been some condensation that froze. Each crystal reflects like snow and refracts so it’s almost blinding with the direct white light, sprinkled with tiny spots of blue, red, purple, even yellow.
‘Good God. It’s like Disneyland or Fantasia or some kind of sci-fi flick. It’s practically psychedelic.’
That’s Nicole, I mean Nickie. Maggie stares entranced.
‘It’s so beautiful. We used to have it like this up in Idlewild, California; in the mornings sometimes. But let’s get inside, I’m freezing.’
Ben and Mike behind me stand as if hypnotized. Both of them have bare hands and both hands loaded. They don’t put down their loads, only stand there.
‘My God, Dad! I forgot how beautiful it is. It’s so easy to let things get out of your mind. I’ve been sort of afraid to come. What with Thierry having his accident and Henry Carron dying of cancer and then Madame Le Moine almost dying with a stroke. I was worried if I could handle all those changes, if it would ever be the same.
‘But look at this.’
‘Madame Le Moine’s fine now, Mike. She has her memory back and most of her strength. She’s been asking about you. She was just over to see us yesterday. She was even out there watching when you all came in, but didn’t want to interfere. She’s still the same wonderful woman.’
‘You mean she was there and we didn’t even say hello?’
He stares into my eyes, then starts as if going right over to make up for it. Ben steps forward.
‘It’s all right, Mike. She understands. You can go see her later.’
Ben walks past Mike.
‘Don’t worry. I looked up at her and made a sign with my hand to show I saw her and she pushed down with both her hands as if she were shushing me, didn’t want to interfere. Madame Le Moine understands things, Mike.’
Ben goes past me and down the steps. Mike comes close. ‘Jesus, Dad, he’s so serious. Is he always this way?’
‘Most of the time. He’s a very serious person, Mike. He’s so conscientious he makes me, the mad compulsive, feel like a blithe spirit.’
We step carefully down the cracked steps into the mill. I’m sorry I missed the girls’ first reaction when they went in, but I’m glad to’ve had a moment somewhat alone with Ben and Mike. For some reason I’m a better father for boys than for girls. At least it seems that way to me. It’s hard to know if this is true, but I get more complaints from the girls, or maybe girls complain more than boys.
Lor’s expert in the way she complains, no whines no bitches; just a constant niggling; reminding me about things that need to be done, keeping me in line, watching over; like automatic drive. She’s always saying ‘Let’s do this’, or ‘I think we ought to do that’, but mostly these are projects for me. Maybe that’s the way it is in all marriages, I don’t know, I probably don’t care. God, I wish I had a better grip on things. Mostly, I wish I had a better grip on my marriage.
When I come in the door, I can barely close it behind me. There’s a fairly narrow gap between the table built over the millstones still in place, and the millstone with the Christmas tree jammed in its center. Three sleeping bags and three banana bags have been straight dropped, plugging the gap. I don’t know whether they walked through and dropped the bags behind them or dropped, then stepped over. Actually it’s as good a place as any. They’ll need to take the bags upstairs sooner or later and the bottom of the stairs is right there.
I think for a minute before I say it, the idea seems so natural, so logical.
‘Okay if I put your bags and things upstairs?’
There’s