L
ater that day, when Mark arrived back at Teeve’s, he started to pack his things in a cardboard box he’d found in the garage. When he put his box in the rental car, he noticed both the front and back floorboards were littered with empty Twinkies packages and bottles of Chocolate Soldier. The big surprise for him was that he didn’t even care, a sign that Ivy was rubbing off on him. In more ways than one.
“Honey,” Teeve said, “are you sure I can’t fix you something to eat? At least make you a sack lunch to take with you on the plane?”
“No, Teeve. They’ll feed me, but thanks anyway.”
“Any laundry you want done?”
“No, I guess I’m all set to go. I’ll have to stop at the motel, grab what I left there and settle my bill, then I’m out of here.”
“We’re going to miss you.”
“I’ll miss you. And Ivy. Do you know where she is?”
“In the backyard, I think.”
“Then I’ll catch her back there.” He embraced Teeve, kissed her cheek. “You take care of yourself. Ivy, too.”
“I will, honey. I promise.”
After Mark loaded his box into the trunk of his car, he went around the side of the house to the patio, where he found Ivy. She was staring off into the distance as she rocked in an old aluminum glider splotched with rust. As he watched her, he was reminded of something Kyle had asked him.
Do you know what it’s like to love a woman so much that just watching her breathe stops time?
When she looked up, saw him standing there, she brushed away tears.
“Aren’t you going to see me off?” he said as he scooted in beside her.
“No. I don’t want you to go, so I’m going to sit out here and pout until the sun goes down or it’s time to eat. Whichever comes first.”
Ivy tilted her head back, blinking rapidly, trying to keep the tears from falling.
“Ivy?”
“I just don’t think you’re ready to go back yet.”
“Why? Are we having chicken fried steak and gravy? If we are, I’ll have to miss my flight.”
“You know what I mean.”
“That’s what men don’t understand about women. You say ‘you know what I mean’ when we don’t have any idea what you mean.”
“You’ve been through a lot here. You found out about your mother. How she lived. How she died. That can’t have been easy. Then, you discovered more than you wanted to know about your father and you saw—”
“Ivy, Arthur McFadden caused a baby. That doesn’t make him a father. Think about this. You take a ceramics class, you make a . . . I don’t know. A bowl. A little bowl. Now that doesn’t make you an artist, does it? Or, let’s say you’re a kid—nine, ten years old. Your uncle is driving, puts you on his lap and lets you steer the car for a few hundred yards. Now, are you a driver? No.
“Was Arthur McFadden a father? No. He
caused
a baby. Simply contributed an ingredient. When it was finished, it was a baby. He caused it, but it wasn’t his. He was just the causer.
“Now, Gaylene
had
a baby. She carried it for nine months, nurtured it, gave it birth. She got up with it at night, nursed it back to health when it was sick. She read to it, sang to it, cried with it, laughed with it, kissed it. Loved it. Was she a mother? Yes. Hell, yes! And she was
my
mother.”
Mark looked away, but Ivy could see the muscles working in his jaw as he clenched his teeth. In anger or sadness, she couldn’t tell.
“See, this is what I’m talking about. You’ve got a lot of stuff in your head and you’re going to have to deal with it. Work through it.”
“And I will,” he said.
“How? Who are you going to talk to in California?”
“You, for one. Believe it or not, we have phones way out west, all the way to California.”
“Seriously, who’s going to help you out there?”
“We have therapists
and
phones. What do you think of that? Psychologists, psychiatrists, stress managers. Why, Ivy, it’s Hollywood. We’ve got bizarros who can make you remember being in the womb. I had a lady once with a poodle she couldn’t house-train. She paid five thousand dollars to some weirdo who claimed the dog peed in the house because when he was in the womb, the bitch carrying him had been bitten by a snake in the backyard.”
“You just made that up, didn’t you.”
“Yeah, but it’s a good story, isn’t it? I mean, it illustrates my point.”
“You know, when you need to talk, the best person is the listener sitting across the table from you, someone you know, someone you trust. Someone you have a history with who’ll hold your hand. Someone you care about.”
“Someone who has a belly that looks like a giant water balloon?”
She smacked him on the shoulder, then put her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek. “I just don’t want you to go.”
“I have to, Ivy. I’ve got a clinic back there. And it’s in trouble right now.”
“And you’ve got a Jaguar and a house on the beach and a grand piano.”
“Right. But somehow none of that seems as important to me as it used to. As it did before I came here.”
“Are you really coming back here?”
“Sure. That doctor who’s going to deliver your baby might need my help.”
“Your help?”
“Hey, I’ve delivered Rottweilers, wolfhounds, Saint Bernards and Great Danes. A baby? Piece of cake.”
“I’m scared.”
“No, you’re not. You’re just tired of being pregnant.”
“I’m scared of having this baby. It’s going to hurt, and I’m not good with pain.”
“Hey, you want to know about pain, let me tell you about my kidney stone. Having a baby is nothing compared to what I went through. Women go on about how it hurts to have a baby, but—”
“Smart-ass.”
“I’d better go, Ivy. I’ve got to stop by the motel and get to Tulsa. My flight’s at eight.”
“Okay, go on, then,” she said. “See if I care.”
“I hope you do.”
“You just wait and see. You’re going to miss me.”
“I already do.”
“Me too.”
They stood, kissed, then walked to the gate, where they kissed again. Not a “hi, cuz, how you doing” kind of kiss; not a “haven’t seen you in ages” kind of kiss. This was a passionate kiss between a woman and a man.
When they parted, Mark said, “Ivy, I hope you’ll think long and hard about your decision when this baby is born. You’d make a terrific mother.”
“Mark, commitment isn’t my strong suit.”
“I know.”
“Well, you’re one to talk.”
“But I think I can change.”
“You’d better go or you’ll miss your flight.”
Mark kissed her on the cheek, then patted her belly. “I’ll see both of you in the delivery room,” he said.
“You mean it?”
“Wouldn’t say it if I didn’t, ma’am. I never lie. Not to my horses, my cows or my women.”
“Oh, God,” Ivy said, laughing and crying at the same time. “You’re beginning to sound like a damn Okie.”
“So long, Ivy.”
“Bye, Nicky Jack.”
T
he christening was held on the back lawn of Hap and Matthew’s home on the first Saturday of April, a glorious, sunny day when Lorraine Leann Harjo was nearly six months old. Gaylene’s middle name had been Lorraine, and Leann was Teeve’s middle name, so the decision to name the baby was an easy one.
Ivy had wanted to have the ceremony in the spring, her favorite season. And for one of the few times in her life, she had insisted on perfection.
Swanson’s Funeral Home, which had provided the tent where the DeClare Ladies’ Auxiliary had served those who searched for little Nicky Jack Harjo almost thirty years ago, now provided the chairs arranged in a semicircle on the lawn.
The tall camellia- and magnolia-scented candles came from Making Scents, a new venture by the Ladies’ Auxiliary, who used the profits to help operate a shelter for abused women.
The Young Democrats, who had bought yellow ribbons to tie to trees back in 1972, now provided white ribbons for the pines, oaks and elms surrounding the lawn.
The DAR, still in competition with the Auxiliary, set up a table covered with an Irish linen cloth, on which they placed vases of fragrant violets and candytufts as well as a magnificent silver tea service. And, at Martha Bernard Duchamp’s insistence, they added a lovely antique bowl, which she filled with a punch heavy with Everclear, a drink both potent and aromatic with the familiar and overpowering aroma of Christmas trees.
Patti Frazier contributed the music to the affair, her accompanist one of Joe Dawson’s daughters, who played piano at the Abundant Life Temple. The piano was moved and delivered to the patio free of charge by four of the younger and stronger deacons at the AME Church.
Hap and Matthew were the hosts, of course. Hap met the guests at the front door, then escorted them through the house and onto the back lawn. Matthew spent all his time in the kitchen, wearing a white apron and chef’s hat. Despite the misgivings of everyone who’d tasted Matthew’s food before, Ivy had picked him as caterer. And he’d surprised them all, outdoing himself with luscious bacon-wrapped broiled mushrooms, cheese puffs, almond-and-cream-cheese canapés, tiny lobster croquettes and spiced nuts. For desserts he prepared hazelnut tortes, cranberry crepes flambé and poppyseed cake.
Three tables were set up on the patio: one for coffee, tea and punch; one for Matthew’s culinary creations; and one for presents for Lorraine, most gift-wrapped except for a large rocking horse carved by Jackson and Johnny Standingdeer, a project they’d been working on for more than three months.
The crowd was large, even more Harjos and their friends than had gathered for the family’s last funeral, that of Enid’s husband, Ben.
Lantana Mitchell showed up, looking younger and more glamorous than many thought she had a right to, but certainly not her plastic surgeon and, for sure, not her agent, who had sold her book for six figures, the title
Back to Life: The Story of Nick Harjo
.
Lantana was wearing a lemon-colored silk suit by Yves Saint Laurent and a diamond paid for by the proceeds of her book. She was accompanied by her new husband, Harold Madrid, responsible for the DNA testing proving that Arthur McFadden was Mark’s father.
Three of the domino boys were there, two actually in dress clothes—polyester leisure suits. Lonnie Cruddup had died of pneumonia the previous winter. And Ron John O’Reily, who often didn’t know where he was or why he was there, was wearing one of his old uniforms from American Pesticides, the company he’d retired from several years earlier. His dementia had progressed until the last thing he had to hold on to—the game of Shoot the Moon—had evaporated a few months earlier.
Johnny and Jackson Standingdeer had tried for a time to resurrect the game with some younger players but finally gave up. The game was not the same without Lonnie and Ron John.
Amax Dawson and his family were all present, as was Olene Turner and her gentleman friend, but he went largely ignored once Amax arrived.
Rowena Whitekiller had flown in from Chicago with her teenage daughter, Gaylene. Rowena had brought a camera and a bag of film, and she shot every roll.
Of course, not everyone who’d been involved in the Nick Harjo saga was present, and not all of the news of what had happened to them was pleasant.
On the day Carrie had admitted killing Gaylene, she had joined Kippy at the house, then put him in the car with her inside the closed garage. After she started the engine, she held him in her arms as she read
The Cat in the Hat
. They were both dead of carbon monoxide poisoning before they were found, proof that she meant what she said at the pond:
I
couldn’t never let them take Kippy away from me. I’d never let that happen.
O Boy was serving his time on death row at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, for his part in covering up Carrie’s crime with the murder of Joe Dawson.
Kyle Leander was in the Oklahoma Eastern State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, but according to those who heard from him, he seemed to be at peace and had become quite fond of the place, as they were “not stingy with Lortab, Demerol and Thorazine.”
But neither Carrie nor Kippy, O Boy nor Kyle, was on the mind of Lige Haney, who began the christening service that had taken days to prepare, as it included several verses from the Bible, the Koran and the Tipitaka, the holy book of Buddha; poetry by Maya Angelou and Maxine Hong Kingston; and quotes from essays by Thoreau, Louise Erdrich and the comic strip
Peanuts
, all of which Clara had typed in braille. And today, standing at Lige’s side, her silver hair grown long enough to curl softly around her face, she was radiant.
Teeve had made Lorraine’s christening clothes, a lovely long gown edged by Swedish lace and embroidered with tiny leaves of ivy along the hem. And she held the baby while Lige sprinkled Lorraine’s head with holy water that came from a natural spring and had been blessed in Cherokee by Johnny and Jackson Standingdeer.
When Lorraine felt the drops of water on her face, she looked surprised, then pleased, and, finally, she laughed.
As Lige concluded the service, he said, “Lorraine Leann Harjo, honor thy father, Nick Harjo, and thy mother, Ivy Harjo, which is the First Commandment with promise; that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.”
And everyone drawn together by love on that day and at that moment chorused, “Amen,” as Nick and Ivy held tightly to one another and their baby.
This book was set in Garamond 3, a typeface based on the Garamond font family created by type designer Claude Garamond (1490-1561), one of the master type founders and cutters of the sixteenth century. The Garamond fonts remained vastly used and very popular through the centuries because of their classic design and effortless legibility they offer to the eye. At the onset of the twentieth century the major foundries in the world modified most of the old typefaces to adapt to the changing technology of the times. The modern-day Garamond 3 was designed by Morris Fuller Benton (1872-1948) and Thomas Maitland Cleland (1880-1964), who based their work on seventeenth-century copies of Claude Garamond’s fonts by Jean Jannon (1580-1658). It was first re-leased in the 1930s and has been popular ever since as an all- purpose text face, working superbly for books and for display uses as well.