At the Heart of the Universe (32 page)

Pep knows that there is a
real
risk now—of exposure. He's paid out many claims over the years on dumb Columbians done in by the cold—falling through ice, deer hunting drunk, hiking half-naked in the Berkshires. “Hurry, guys—we gotta get dry and warm fast. C'mon, family, move!”

Finally they come to a crumbling low moon gate, built centuries ago when people were much shorter. Even Katie and Clio have to duck under it. Pep, seeing it as a moon gate for a midget, bends almost double to do so. They find themselves in a mossy clearing, on one side of which, up against a dark cliff face soaring up into mist, is a small, wooden-beamed stone hut with a black-tile roof. It is so old, set so tightly against the mountain, that it seems part of it. The beams of the roof overhang the walls and glisten a deep greenish-black, as if they have lived a great part of their long lives under water. Much of the clearing is covered with moss, and the mossy walls and beams with patches of yellow lichen add to the watery feel.

As they hurry across the clearing, the sleet and hail suddenly lessen, though they still hear the wind and the pops of raindrops and hail hitting the crests of the pines. Clio immediately catches how the hut is placed so that the cliff gives shelter from the prevailing wind, rain, and snow.
Habitations tell everything about their inhabitants.
Look carefully. Seek her there. You will find her.
A hermit's hut, taken over after abandonment, a pragmatic structure placed romantically. A retreat.

Xiao Lu opens the door and gestures them inside.

The single room is dim, light coming through two small windows. The Macys stand clustered, in out of the rain, listening to Xiao Lu bustling around. A match is struck, a wick catches, a kerosene lamp glows. Another match, another glow. The room is small—maybe fifteen feet square—the smoke-blackened wooden beams rising steeply to meet the ridge line in a small square, from which hangs the anchoring base of the red stupa Clio glimpsed from outside.

Xiao Lu is bending to a barrel-sized iron stove that sits against a windowless back wall, the tilted exhaust pipe exiting up into the chimney of what looks like an old fireplace. She opens the door of the stove and uses a match to light shavings and kindling, then gestures to them to get out of their wet clothes, handing them towels and bringing over small quilts and a few of her own clothes and jackets for them. Pep holds up a pair of pants that only reaches his knees, and everyone laughs. Xiao Lu makes a gesture of closing her eyes to their undressing, and turns her back to them, tending the fire. The kindling is soon ablaze, and the pops and snaps of the sap smack against the walls.

To Clio the smell is intense—heavily pine and woodsmoke and kerosene and, more faintly, herbs, old incense, and sickly sweet overripe fruit. A rough table is placed against a wall near the stove, a kitchen table cluttered to its edges with mismatched plates and cups, and different kinds of tools, and a single piece of animal fur. Sagging shelves carry a few pots, a wok, some cans of food, and old dried flowers; dried mushrooms and garlic and ginger hang down from a beam. There is no obvious order—which at first disturbs Clio. On a hand-hewn bamboo bed are the rumpled waves of a wine-dark quilt. A single chair—the arms and feet made of polished branches and the back of pieces of carved, polished wood: one piece the golden sheen of maple, another the reddish glow of pine—reminds Clio of the modern chairs made by artisans in the Adirondacks. A missing slat gives the chair a face with a missing tooth. The floor is of old, pitted stones, each the size of a large wok, laid in packed dirt. Elemental and old—maybe three hundred years or more. The orange Day-Glo vest hangs on a hook beside the door, a call from the universal plastic.

The low-beamed solidness of the dwelling, the heft of the construction, the collection of used pots and pans and simple clothes hanging from lines, the recycling of anything and everything, the resurrection of found objects—all of this speaks to Clio of a skillful but crude dedication to getting by, day to day. She admires this young woman, not only for having made it alone here, but for the simplicity she has created. No car pool, no checkbook, no planning drop-offs and pickups and vacations, not even any
shopping
—lucky her! A worker's simple life. And then she notices, papering all the walls, long scrolls filled with elegant, sweeping calligraphy.

Katie looks around. The thick smells of pine needles and earth—
like when you turn it up in spring
—and smoke left over from a wood fire are familiar. She's puzzled—but then she gets it.
It smells like Mary's Farm!
Suddenly she is back there, staring up into Velcro's eyes and hearing
cheep! cheep!
and seeing, stuck to the beam overhead, the nest and the clamshell mouths of the baby barn swallows. No nest here, but things hang from the beams,
everything's disorganized like Mary but you
know
she knows where everything is, and nobody's gonna say, “Don't touch!” or “Be careful!” or “Don't get dirty!”
She touches a rounded old wooden beam in the wall. Under her fingers is the same smooth, friendly curve as the old barn wood of the stables.
She's staring back at me like she wants to read my mind for what I think. Try mental telepathy. I'm thinking of Mary who's really cool in a live-off-the-land way and maybe you're that way too?
Katie waits, but Xiao Lu shows no response. It's hard for Katie to read her—she either smiles and laughs or looks stern. Katie still feels embarrassed by her own “meltdown” on the trail, and looks away, staring at the big rough tiles on the floor.

As Clio helps Katie slip out of her drenched clothes and dries her with a surprisingly fresh, pine-scented towel, she looks more carefully at the dozens of scrolls, some six feet long, the black-inked Chinese characters stepping down from top to bottom. Some scrolls are yellowed with age, others bright, the paper reflecting the firelight. Before a window is a long table polished to a deep mahogany, the only bare surface in the room but for, at one end, a neat arrangement of brushes and inks.
This, now, is a glimpse into an artful order, a soul. How to reach her? It?

Soon warmth is radiating from the stove. Xiao Lu has poured water from a big plastic pail into a kettle, which she's placed on the stove. Despite Clio's—and Pep's—distaste for clutter and dirt, they are starting to feel the wonder of going from wet and cold to warm and dry, a shared sense of gratitude not in the head or heart but in the fingers and toes. Xiao Lu pours the boiling water into four unmatched cups. As she passes by, there is the strong scent of her sweat. In the cups, steam spirals up. She sprinkles dark tea leaves into the first two cups. When Katie motions “no,” she stops, thinks, and adds something different to the hot water. Katie waits for it to cool, then tastes it carefully. To her surprise, it's good.

“Tastes a little like Sprite!”

“Great,” Pep says, “just great.” He's feeling uncomfortable, embarrassed at his panicking on the logs—and half-panicked again about how the hell he'll make it back—and the low beams and dirt and clutter are revving up all of his other pet worries. He's always been sensitive, prone to harmless phobias, and to discover another one, a harmful one, now, is infuriating. He tries the breathing exercises Clio has taught him, and starts to calm down.

“Oh God, a
spider
! A huge spider lookit the size of it!”

Spiders are the one kind of animal Katie can't abide, and Pep rushes to control the situation. “Ignore it, Kate-zer. They can't hurt you.”

“
Some
can! Some can kill you!” Katie cringes. Xiao Lu bends and shoos it away, carefully.

Clio nods to her—sensing the Buddhist respect for all living things.

Xiao Lu doesn't see it; she's still focused on Katie.

Clio says to Pep, “A reincarnated soul.”

“Yeah, well, if she thought it was a reincarnation of that mother-in-law of hers, she might have treated it differently.”

Clio smiles at him, and then calls out, “Xiao Lu?” Xiao Lu turns, and Clio points to the tea and smiles. Pep smiles too, and gives her two thumbs up. This embarrasses Katie, who tugs his thumbs and hands back down.

Again they sit sipping in silence but for the rain on the roof. They are now inextricably linked, with so much to say—but there seems to be no way to say anything, no way to ask about her life, her parents, her husband and sister, why she left, came here—and no way for her to ask them either. Clio and Pep try through sign language to find out something more about her, try to exchange words to name things with her, but she doesn't seem all that interested in responding to them. She is only interested in Katie, and shows her how some of the utensils work, and how to stoke the fire. Katie walks around the hut with her but soon they reach the end of these utensils, these stokings, and Katie comes back to Pep and Clio, who are sipping from fresh cups of tea. The Macys have a sense of failure, and wonder if Xiao Lu feels it too. She sits sipping tea, staring at her child.

Katie feels itchy, bored stiff. Her birth mom is always looking at her, as if she expects something of her. Katie hates it when her mother does that, when anyone does that, makes her the center of attention. She swings her legs and counts and gets to eighty-seven and stops. She stares at the little black Sprite thingees floating in her teacup, tries to count them.

“Mom?” It sounds really loud when she says it. “Momma?”

“Yes, dear?” Clio is aware now of the power of that “Mom” and glances at Xiao Lu, wondering if she understands. What is the Chinese word for “Mom” anyway? Xiao Lu is looking at Katie intently—and then she glances at Clio.
Yes, she understood.

“Mom, I really, really wish we could ask her all kinds of questions, especially about my sister, you know like about her past and her life, but I don't know how.”

“I know, hon, we're all stuck, but it's important to just be here with her, spend time with her, and get to know her as best we can.”

“Yeah, it's getting me depressed. She lives really basic. She doesn't even have electricity here. And what does she use for like water?”

“You may have noticed, Kate-zer, that there's a lot of water outside?”

“She drinks the water?” Pep nods. “I wonder what it tastes like?”

“Don't,” Pep says. “She can. You can't.”

“Even when it's from the like Hima
lay
as?” Pep shakes his head. “Okay. But she's still really,
really
poor.”

“In some ways she's poor, Katie,” Pep says, “but not in others.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, even though she doesn't have a lot of the things we do, she seems happy, and we know a lot of rich kids and grown-ups—like in your class at Spook—who have just about everything, every material thing they want, and they aren't happy, right?” Katie nods. “So let's just see if we can find a way to be with her, just for a little while longer today, and then we'll head back, okay?”

“Do we have to?”

“We do. We have to get back to the monastery in daylight,” Pep says. “We can't risk the dark. So we've got maybe another hour. Clee?”

Clio is confused. She feels strange here, as if she senses danger—but she can't grasp what it is. Xiao Lu has wanted this for ten years, set it in motion, and now it's here but clearly it's not going well for her. In that glance was raw pain.
Once we leave, what's she left with? But better not leave abruptly, it could provoke her—she's small, but strong as hell. It's clear that she doesn't want us to be here or even exist, wants desperately to be alone with her daughter. Okay, try to engage her.

Clio looks around again. The only uncluttered space is the table with the brushes. Brushes all neatly laid out. Ink.
Her passion is calligraphy.

Xiao Lu still feels shaken. A minute ago, carefully watching Chun question the woman, she heard a word similar to the Chinese “Mama,” saw the woman's quick response and her glance at her—a deep cut of pain. All these years, and Chun is still so far away.
I'm disgusting!—a poor, strange woman living alone in the woods. Foolish woman! What made you think this would lead to anything?

Clio stands up. “Xiao Lu?” She points to a scroll, then to the table where the brushes are, indicating that she is interested in her calligraphy.

Xiao Lu nods, and gestures for the woman to come along. Then suddenly, as if of its own accord, her hand reaches out to Chun and she puts her arm around her shoulder, to lead her to the table.
This, my flesh and blood, this smooth-skinned beautiful girl—these two whorls from which her hair sprouted when I carried her inside. Two crowns like mine.
She stops and gestures to the man and woman, from the double crowns to the head itself, to streams of wisdom sprouting out in all directions—from her eyes, her lips—but they look puzzled, their big mouths a little open. She gives up. These people have no art. They are simple folk. She nods to Katie to come with her to the table.

Xiao Lu's hand feels weird on her shoulder, awkward and rough. Not moving, Katie glances at Clio.