hand away but found she couldn’t move it.
“Oh, no,” she said.
“Let’s find a place to sit down,” said Grahm.
So began an acquaintance that in many ways proved too strong
for them both. And though they fought bravely against falling foolishly, pointlessly in love, they remained hapless victims. Even their most venomous arguments, accusations, declarations, and final good-byes resulted only in bringing them closer together, clinging to each other in exhausted defeat. Episodes of soaring exhilaration were succeeded by evenings of heroic despair—depressions so dank, clammy, and dark it seemed they would live the rest of their lives underground.
The one hundred miles of expressway and sixty-eight miles of back roads separating them became so familiar that it sometimes felt as though they lived in vehicles. During one emotionally momentous month Grahm drove to Milwaukee twenty-one times.
There was always something left unsaid. Telephone bills arrived in envelopes with extra postage. Their need for each other grew at a pace impossible to appease, like disease feeding on its own symptoms. They tried to save themselves by making rules: times to call and topics never to discuss because they contained labyrinths of meaning. They bought candles and vowed to let the burning of them determine the boundaries of their lovemaking, hoping in this way to leave room for all the other things they weren’t getting done. But they always forgot to light them, or ignored them when they burned out.
Cora hoped to be able to transplant Grahm from his rural surroundings into her clean, comfortable, and convenient urban apartment. But Grahm could not be separated for very long, it seemed, from his 246 acres of rocky, hilly ground and forty black and white spotted cows. It was as though he had been born with two umbilical cords—one attached to his mother, successfully severed, and the other to his great-grandfather’s farm.
Farming provided Grahm with a mission as urgent as it was unquestioned. The duty to save the family business infused him with an unwavering sense of his own importance, and he never struggled with problems of identity or other social anxieties. He was indispensable to his own quest. It was as if his ancestors gathered on an hourly basis to communicate from the Other Side: We’re counting on you, Grahm. Even the land seemed to conspire with the dead to
gain his unconditional loyalty, and as a result he simply revered the forty-acre stand of old- growth maple trees at the back of his farm and walked through it as if it were an ancient cathedral.
“It isn’t fair,” she complained. “My work, friends, family, everything that is me is here. Why should your life be more important than mine?”
“It isn’t,” he said. “But I have cows. You can’t just put out food for them as if they were cats.”
“When will I see you again?”
“I’ll call tomorrow.”
“Don’t leave now.”
“I have to.”
“Wait, I don’t want you to drive alone.”
It seemed the only way to end the madness was for Cora to move out of Milwaukee and into the farmhouse, which she did. She gave up her job with the insurance company, gave up her apartment and the friends she had made over the years but never saw since attending the performance by the Barbara Jean Band. She even gave up her family name, not wanting to be bothered with a hyphenated future, yet had every intention of going back to work after settling into her new home.
But settling took longer than she had anticipated. All of a sudden there were two children two years apart and enough responsibilities to fill two lifetimes. A natural process that began with vague, alluring images on the back wall of her mind ended in the numbing details of daily living, the currency of dreams spent on cooking meals, doing laundry, and making ends meet. Whatever remained of her youth evaporated in the worried heat rising from unending physical movements.
GATHERING
“Oh, no,” she said.
“Let’s find a place to sit down,” said Grahm.
So began an acquaintance that in many ways proved too strong
for them both. And though they fought bravely against falling foolishly, pointlessly in love, they remained hapless victims. Even their most venomous arguments, accusations, declarations, and final good-byes resulted only in bringing them closer together, clinging to each other in exhausted defeat. Episodes of soaring exhilaration were succeeded by evenings of heroic despair—depressions so dank, clammy, and dark it seemed they would live the rest of their lives underground.
The one hundred miles of expressway and sixty-eight miles of back roads separating them became so familiar that it sometimes felt as though they lived in vehicles. During one emotionally momentous month Grahm drove to Milwaukee twenty-one times.
There was always something left unsaid. Telephone bills arrived in envelopes with extra postage. Their need for each other grew at a pace impossible to appease, like disease feeding on its own symptoms. They tried to save themselves by making rules: times to call and topics never to discuss because they contained labyrinths of meaning. They bought candles and vowed to let the burning of them determine the boundaries of their lovemaking, hoping in this way to leave room for all the other things they weren’t getting done. But they always forgot to light them, or ignored them when they burned out.
Cora hoped to be able to transplant Grahm from his rural surroundings into her clean, comfortable, and convenient urban apartment. But Grahm could not be separated for very long, it seemed, from his 246 acres of rocky, hilly ground and forty black and white spotted cows. It was as though he had been born with two umbilical cords—one attached to his mother, successfully severed, and the other to his great-grandfather’s farm.
Farming provided Grahm with a mission as urgent as it was unquestioned. The duty to save the family business infused him with an unwavering sense of his own importance, and he never struggled with problems of identity or other social anxieties. He was indispensable to his own quest. It was as if his ancestors gathered on an hourly basis to communicate from the Other Side: We’re counting on you, Grahm. Even the land seemed to conspire with the dead to
gain his unconditional loyalty, and as a result he simply revered the forty-acre stand of old- growth maple trees at the back of his farm and walked through it as if it were an ancient cathedral.
“It isn’t fair,” she complained. “My work, friends, family, everything that is me is here. Why should your life be more important than mine?”
“It isn’t,” he said. “But I have cows. You can’t just put out food for them as if they were cats.”
“When will I see you again?”
“I’ll call tomorrow.”
“Don’t leave now.”
“I have to.”
“Wait, I don’t want you to drive alone.”
It seemed the only way to end the madness was for Cora to move out of Milwaukee and into the farmhouse, which she did. She gave up her job with the insurance company, gave up her apartment and the friends she had made over the years but never saw since attending the performance by the Barbara Jean Band. She even gave up her family name, not wanting to be bothered with a hyphenated future, yet had every intention of going back to work after settling into her new home.
But settling took longer than she had anticipated. All of a sudden there were two children two years apart and enough responsibilities to fill two lifetimes. A natural process that began with vague, alluring images on the back wall of her mind ended in the numbing details of daily living, the currency of dreams spent on cooking meals, doing laundry, and making ends meet. Whatever remained of her youth evaporated in the worried heat rising from unending physical movements.
GATHERING
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