Gourdfellas Read online

  If Karen could hear my thoughts she’d roll her eyes and proclaim me sappy. I smiled as I cupped the rounded bottom of the dipper gourd in my hand and turned it to see all its bumps and markings. Vines, that’s what it needed, twining up the graceful neck and joining at the top. I marked two long curves, selected a stylus for my pyrography tool, flipped on its transformer, and pulled on my respirator mask. Beyond sappy, she’d say, but Karen wasn’t here to watch as I closed my eyes and said my version of a prayer of thanks for the gourd and for my part in transforming it.

  Still in that peaceful state, I reached for the gourd. And was nearly startled out of my chair by the shrill of the telephone. My first impulse was to ignore it, but I thought about Susan, alone, maybe even afraid. I reached for the receiver.

  “Lili? Hi, it’s Connie Lovett. I’ve been knocking on your door but I guess you didn’t hear me.”

  Her graciousness and that trace of Southern drawl kept the accusation out of her voice, but a flush of guilt crept up my cheeks. Tuesday. Today was Tuesday, my regular appointment teaching her how to work with gourds.

  “I’m so sorry, Connie,” I said as I walked through the hall toward the kitchen. “I must have been lost in gourd space again.”

  By the time I’d finished my sentence, I was pulling open the door. The rain had stopped and the sun shone brightly behind Connie. She looked good today, for someone undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. The treatments had turned this beautiful, energetic woman with snapping dark eyes and the clearest porcelain skin into a pale but brave version of herself. She stepped inside, gave me a quick hug, and adjusted the bright blue scarf that covered her head.

  “Well, you’re here, and I’m glad. I’m so excited I could hardly eat my breakfast. Can we start? I don’t want to take up our time chatting when I could be learning.”

  She seldom spoke about her illness these days. We’d met the summer before, when we both reached for the same watermelon at a farm stand outside of Hudson. One laugh led to another, and Connie and I started meeting at The Creamery for coffee and conversation most Thursday afternoons. A social worker with cases all over lower Columbia County, Connie had to learn how to treat herself with the same care she offered to her clients after she got her diagnosis in February. “Just be my friend,” she’d said after I asked her how I could help. “Don’t treat me like a sick person.”

  I’d honored those boundaries she’d established, shutting off the questions and the sympathy she clearly didn’t want.

  “Then I guess you’re ready to cut your first gourd,” I said as she followed me down the narrow hall to the studio.

  “Can’t wait! I’ve been dreaming designs, and I’ve started a scrapbook to collect ideas. I’m so excited about this.” She stopped in the doorway and shook her head. “I hear you were with Susan at the hospital.”

  “Doc says she’ll be fine. I still can’t believe that anyone would think that you can get what you want by hurting someone who disagrees with you.”

  “All that person wanted,” Connie said quietly, “was to lash out at someone. The casino—that’s not what it was about. The person who hurt her was angry in his heart. I want the casino to be defeated, but I wouldn’t get physical about it.”

  “You’re right. Listen, let’s forget all that for a while. Pick your gourd, Connie. Any one. Look. Touch. Smell. Whatever moves you to choose one of these babies.”

  “Oh, Lili, this is like my birthday and Christmas, but better because I don’t have to write thank you notes afterward.” Her eyes shone with pleasure as she moved from shelf to shelf, a tentative hand exploring the surface of one, then another gourd. When she picked a medium-sized pear-shaped gourd, her face glowed with pleasure.

  “I know,” she said happily. “The first lesson is cutting a straight rim. I can’t wait to make waves and—”

  “Straight cuts this time. First you have to decide where you want the cut to be.”

  I watched as she looked intently at the bumps and the coloring, turned the gourd, set it on the work table and knelt until it was at her eye level. Then she touched it about two-thirds of the way from the base.

  “Great, now set the gourd on the table and then make a stack of books at the height of the cut. That’s where you’ll rest the pencil, and then you turn the gourd against the pencil, and voila! A perfect, even, straight rim.”

  Laughing, Connie followed my instructions. I showed her how to adjust the respirator mask so that it was snug yet comfortable, then demonstrated how to make a starting cut with the Exacto knife and how to control the small jigsaw.

  “But you’d better tuck your scarf in,” I said, pointing to the dangling ends of bright blue cotton that hung over her shoulder.

  In response, she pulled the covering from her head. “Nobody else but Mel has seen me like this.”

  I smiled and pushed back the lump in my throat so that I could say, “Well, you look gorgeous. I mean it. Your eyes stand out and your head’s such a lovely shape, and those earrings are the perfect touch. You’d captivate presidents and rock stars just the way you are. But now let’s captivate this gourd, okay?”

  For an hour we lost ourselves in the concentration of work. She cut the rim, scraped out dried fibers, sanded the inside with a focus that I’m sure she used to bring to her clients.

  “Oh, dear, I have to run, Lili. Doctor Axelrod gets so busy. I hate to screw up his schedule.” She grabbed her scarf from the chair and deftly wrapped it around her head.

  If I didn’t know her, I might have missed the fleeting expression of apprehension that flickered across Connie’s face, replaced by a crooked smile.

  “Did I tell you?” she said. “No more endless chemo drip, at least for a while. We’ve started something new. A pill, can you believe it? This one sounds good.”

  “Fingers crossed, Connie. See you next week.” I squeezed her shoulder and walked to the door with her, watched as she got into her car and waved before she drove off.

  These Tuesday sessions were going to be harder on me than I’d anticipated. I wanted to give her the respite she craved. I wanted to hug her tight and keep her safe.

  Chapter 3

  The daffodils Were a surprise. First three, then nine, and finally hundreds of them appeared in clusters around the three acres on which my cottage sat. I wondered whether Tom Ford, the mutual fund manager who had paid me for a huge corporate writing job by transferring ownership of the house and its three acres to me, was the person responsible for such a glory of sunshine. As I walked the edges of my yard with my afternoon cup of Earl Grey, I pictured him wearing a pair of worn jeans and a soft flannel shirt, sandy hair held back by a baseball cap as he bent over, trowel in hand, preparing the earth and then setting each bulb in its damp, earthen nest.

  But of course that wasn’t an accurate picture. Or, if it was, I had no way of knowing that. Never having met the man despite endless telephone and computer communications, having seen no pictures of him, knowing not one single person who had ever been in his presence, I could only conjure fantasies. Lately, I realized that each new imagined version had much less to do with Tom than it did with what was bothering me, or intriguing me, or exciting me on any given day.

  This afternoon it was the profusion of daffodils. The sky still glittered with the hard blue of winter and the clouds had sharp edges. Even the light felt cold until it landed on the daffodils and their cheery yellow. They were a declaration of possibilities, and they pushed away thoughts of the casino, of Connie, of Susan for a while.

  But my mind didn’t stay quiet for long. Sometimes it felt as though I’d traded too much to do in Brooklyn for too much to do in Walden Corners. The parts of my new life were beginning to add up to more than one whole. I surely couldn’t add one more thing, but what could I give up?

  Certainly not my gourd work—the joy of learning new techniques, of figuring out what images and colors and shapes and textures I wanted to explore. Not the friendships, first with Nora, and then with Susan, Melis
sa, and even, after a rough start, Elizabeth. I couldn’t pay my bills without the freelance writing jobs. Seth? Give up the man who cooked for me a couple of times in the past six months and loved the same music I did, and surprised me with the intensity of his feelings about the travesty of CEOs who made thousands of times the salary than the workers? Not yet. Surely not my once a week sessions as a volunteer mediator, which satisfied a deep need to help others and do something that took me totally outside of my own musings. Not teaching Connie.

  And not my thirty minute daily walks. They’d led to the unexpected bonus of discovering the yearly cycle of nature. I was stopping not only to smell the roses, but to watch the daffodils go from tight green buds to this profusion of happiness.

  This afternoon, I didn’t have much time to contemplate nature. I had a mediation case scheduled at three, and I had to leave in ten minutes. I combed my hair, checked that my sweater didn’t have any rips or stains, and was about to leave for Hudson when the phone rang.

  “Lili?”

  My mother sounded anxious. I immediately thought about my father and his Parkinson’s disease. He had learned to live with the shaking, but was still terrified of the occasional episodes when he froze, unable to move or even speak. “Yes, Mom. What’s wrong?”

  “Neil.”

  A relieved laugh escaped before I said, “Mom, I know he’s going to be on the road a lot, but this is his dream. Let him enjoy it in peace. He’s wanted to play for the Mets since—”

  “He’s in the hospital.”

  The room did a wavery spin, and I leaned against the wall for support. “He’s going to be all right?”

  Her silence gave me too much time to imagine awful things. Finally, she said, “Yes. If you mean will he live, and will he have all his faculties. But he’s got a compound fracture of his tibia.”

  “Damn.” I should be grateful that my brother was alive. Instead, I was furious. I resisted the impulse to slam the receiver down and go back out and wander among the daffodils. “What happened?”

  “He was so happy, Lili. He came over to say good-bye. Brought his two big bags to the apartment, and then he ate a tuna fish and lettuce and tomato sandwich, brushed his teeth, hugged me and promised to hit a home run his first game for me. He didn’t want me to come downstairs, so I watched from the window. Next thing I knew, some doctor was on the phone. I can’t stand it. I’m going to lose my mind here.”

  Exasperated, I snapped, “This isn’t about you, Mom. How did Neil get hurt?”

  “He was at the airport. Getting his bags out of the trunk. Some geezer from New Jersey lost control of his car and pinned your brother against a concrete column. You don’t have to be mean to me. That won’t fix Neil.”

  “You’re right. Sorry.” I stopped short of a full apology. “Where is he?”

  “He’s at New York Hospital, you know, over on the East Side. The team doctor’s with him. I’m going there now. I wanted to call you girls first. Charlie and Ellie won’t be home for three days. I can’t reach them until then.”

  My brother Charlie and his new wife Ellie were on their honeymoon somewhere in Costa Rica. My sister Anne, who put the most distance between herself and the rest of the family, lived in Fairfax, about forty minutes from San Francisco, and had a terrifically busy and supremely well-ordered life that had little room for the rest of us, except on Christmas, my father’s favorite holiday, Passover, which my mother observed to celebrate her contribution to the family’s diversity, and birthdays of numerical significance.

  “I’m coming down, Mom.” I hadn’t stayed in my parents’ house since I was twenty. “I’ll stay at Karen’s, so you and Dad can have your quiet. Dad know yet?”

  “No. I’m going to tell him now. He’ll be glad you’re coming. We can’t protect him from everything but we can help comfort him. I love you, Lili. I’m glad you’ll be here.”

  “I love you, too, Mom.” And I did, despite our often prickly exchanges. If only she would figure out why she had to drink to deal with the world. If only I could accept that part of her without letting it put a gaping chasm between us.

  First, I phoned the mediation center and told the director that I’d have to reschedule because of a family emergency. She wasn’t thrilled, but in true mediator style she acknowledged my dilemma, asked for a couple of alternative dates and times, and then wished me good luck. I threw some clean underwear and a couple of long-sleeved cotton tees into my backpack, watered my plants, turned on the timer so the lights would go on and off at normal people hours, and headed for my car. I was halfway down the drive when I screeched to a stop.

  Neil would love daffodils. I gathered enough to fill a large vase, wrapped the stems in wet newspaper and a plastic bag, and headed for the Taconic Parkway.

  He looked so peaceful I almost backed out of the blue and beige room, but his voice drew me forward.

  “Sunshine in a jar.” His voice was weak, his smile goofy and good-natured. “They smell nice.”

  “Well, sure, better than bleach and bedpans.” I set the daffodils on the windowsill and reached for his hand. As soon as I saw the apparatus hooked up to my brother’s right arm, I understood. Neil Marino was high, self-administering a painkiller, probably morphine, and turning the world into his own private funhouse. With the oxygen flowing into his nostrils and the drug into his veins, he was protected from the worst of it. Or so I thought.

  “I’m out for the season. They have to pay me, but they had to fill my spot on the roster. They did not let a single blade of grass grow under their spikes. You were right, Lili. You knew.”

  I looked at his sweet face and realized that the glazed expression was the result of a great effort to keep from crying. He probably felt little physical discomfort, but he was enough aware of his situation to know that more than his leg had been shattered in that stupid accident.

  “What did I know, sweetie?”

  “Homework’s not done until it’s in the teacher’s hands. That’s what you told me. Third grade.” This time, the smile that wrinkled his face made its way to the corners of his dark brown eyes. “I never forgot that.”

  “I said that?”

  I vaguely remembered reacting to the confused little boy who had brought home a D in math on his report card and couldn’t understand why. He was diligent about doing his assignments, but also pretty consistent about leaving the worksheets in his bedroom. He was insulted that Mr. Wallace didn’t believe that he’d done the homework. Five times in three weeks had earned him the D. Ten years older, I’d been eager to teach him the ways of the world.

  A large-bosomed woman with dyed black hair bustled into the room, ignoring me and cooing at Neil. Like most women who find themselves in my brother’s presence, she was already under the spell of his boyish good looks, a definitely manly physique, and the kind of self-effacing charm that can’t be faked.

  “Temp’s up a little, honey. We need to keep you quiet so that the drugs and some good rest can fix you right up.” Her blue eyes avoided mine, but it was clear the last part of that message was meant for me. She leaned closer to Neil. “Anything you need?”

  “Thanks, I’m fine. Mary, this is my sister, Lili. Lili, Mary’s been taking care of me since I got here. She’s got the healing touch. I’ll be right again in no time.” Neil’s voice, stronger at the start of his little introduction, trailed off and he sank back against the pillows.

  “Glad to meet you. Thanks for taking care of my brother.”

  Mary smiled a hello before backing away from his bedside. Neil seemed to have drifted off again into a drug-induced sleep. As Mary made notes on his chart and straightened the bedside table, I studied Neil’s face. At twenty-four he’d been on his way to his dream. That furrow between his eyes spoke volumes about the pain he felt, no matter how sedated. The breath I’d been holding for hours escaped in a huge sigh, and I grabbed my jacket and headed for the doorway, leaving Mary to watch over a sleeping Neil.

  Chapter 4

  “Se
e here, Where the x-ray shows several breaks? He needs a metal plate here.” The doctor pointed to a jagged gray line that looked like an Etch-A-Sketch rendering of a flock of geese in flight. “He may need additional surgeries. Or not. We’ll make that decision later. We’ll keep him here for a week, teach him to walk on crutches and how to get up and down stairs. When we release him, he’s going to need rest, physical therapy, and hope.”

  His head shaking more than usual, my father said what none of us could bring ourselves to ask. “Will he be able to play again?”

  The doctor’s face remained expressionless. “I left my crystal ball at home. I’m afraid I can’t give you a guarantee. The surgery is the first step. If he’s diligent about his physical therapy, it’s possible. If he’s not, he could spend the rest of his life with limited range of motion in that leg.”

  My mother hugged me. “Then the answer is yes, he’ll play again. My boy is dedicated. He’ll do whatever it takes. Thank you, Doctor Reichman.”

  But the man in the white coat didn’t join the celebratory round of smiles and hugs. He fingered the stethoscope around his neck, pursed his mouth, and then said, “Don’t expect him to be the same old Neil except with a broken leg. His dreams have been shattered, too, and that may prove harder to heal. I’ll see you again when we’re done in the OR.”

  Not the same old Neil? A rush of fear and sadness overwhelmed me. I couldn’t fix his leg, as I might mend a broken gourd. Nor could I demand that Neil face this challenge with a smile, or that the doctors give him a pill that would allow him to forget his old dreams and shape new ones that could be navigated with a limp. I could only offer my brother encouragement and practical help in the form of providing rides to physical therapy and doing laundry and other domestic chores for a while.

  For once, my mother didn’t have anything to say. She sank back into the leather chair in the family waiting room, her eyes damp with tears as she ran a finger along the seam of her jacket. Dad gripped my hand and held on. His palm felt warm and dry, like paper that had been left in the sun. After a few seconds, he pulled away and I noticed that he’d jammed his shaking fist into his trouser pocket.