Final Strand: Chapter One

 

HAZEL

Chapter One:

The Letter

Maine

March 21st, 1979

The knock was not loud or sharp, but it caught my attention.

I pushed back my chair and walked across my dorm room and pulled open over to the heavy wooden door.  Standing on my threshold was the middle aged headmaster.  

“I’m very sorry, Miss Lewis,” he said in a brisk voice, looking down at the envelope he held in his hands. “I come bearing sad news. Your grandfather—”

He looked up then, into my face and paused mid-sentence.

“Oh, I have heard of you,” he said, his voice going soft and slowing down, “but they didn’t . . . You aren’t . . .”

He cleared his throat and shook his head, blinking his eyes behind his thick glasses.

“My grandfather?” I prompted.

“I don’t know what’s come over me.  Let me think . . .oh, yes,” he took a deep breath and said slowly, “I’m so sorry, my dear.  Your grandfather passed away two nights ago. Your mother was, as I’m sure you know, traveling.  And . . .your eyes . . . they are so lovely.”

“Yes,” I said, “thank you.  Excuse me, did you say my grandfather has . . . died?”

A strange tremor shook my hands.

“Yes, I’m terribly sorry.”

“And my mother?”

“Yes, yes, where was I?  Ah, yes, your mother was only informed this morning herself. ”

He stepped into the room, as if to reach for me, to pat me on the shoulder or perhaps even embrace me, but I moved away and he let his arm fall to his side.

He shook his head again.

“I’m sorry.  That was inappropriate. Excuse me.  Ahem. Yes, your grandmother, she sent up—I keep losing my train of thought, but your hair, is it natural?  It’s so perfectly blond.”

“It is, thank you.  Now please, will you tell me what my grandmother sent up?”

“Again my apologies,” he cleared his throat, his glasses sliding down his nose, as he ran a hand through his graying hair.  “You were not forgotten in your grandfather’s passing. Here is letter that was found beside his bed.  It was addressed to you.  Your grandmother sent it up this morning and asked that I inform you of your grandfather’s passing myself. Again, my condolences—your skin, it seems to glow, how is that?”

I just shook my head and found that for a moment I couldn’t quite catch my breath.  I felt a strange twinge of pain in my chest—as if my heart were squeezed and then let go.  I could not understand it.

He held out an envelope that he’d been holding.

“You are so, so lovely . . .”the headmaster whispered.

“Thank you,” I said, trying to take the letter.  He held on, not letting go.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone as beautiful as you.  Ever.  I’ve heard so many students and teachers talk about how mesmerizingly striking you are, but I thought . . . I believed they exaggerated.  Only, now, I realize, they didn’t extol your beauty enough and—“

“The letter,” I said, giving it a gentle tug.

“Oh yes, terribly sorry,” he said, his cheeks going a bright red as he blinked and slowly opened his hand, letting me have the letter.  

It felt heavy. 

I looked up, feeling the heavy gaze of the headmaster on me, his hand still raised as if he were going to reach out for me again. 

“Thank you,” I told him, as I stepped back and stood on the threshold of my room, motioning with my arm for him to leave.  He slowly walked out and stood in the hall still gazing at me as I quietly but firmly closed the door in his face.  

With the strange weight of the letter in my hand, I walked across my dorm room and placed the it on the windowsill.  With both hands I pushed the heavy window all the way open.  

I looked across the courtyard at the dead ivy blowing in the wind and the trees, still skeletal despite it being the first day fo spring. 

I glanced back down at the envelope with Hazel written in shaky handwriting across the front. 

He wrote this with his own hand, I thought.  

I couldn’t remember ever seeing anything he’d written by hand.  He was blind.  He had been since his youth and always, always typed everything.

I picked the letter back up, turned it over, and opened it.  There were three sheets of paper.  I unfolded them and spread the pages out on the windowsill, pressing down the creases.  The wind ruffled the paper as I began to read the typed words.

Dear Hazel, it began.

It has been a year since you last came to visit me.  Your grandmother, or Eve as you call her, tells me that you are very busy at boarding school and have decided to stay year-round to take advantage of the summer expeditions they do throughout Europe.  I think that if I had been given the chance, I would have traveled like you. I would have loved to see the world. I laugh here in my office—I would have loved to have seen anything when I was your age.  

Being blind, Hazel, is hard, at times even painful—especially when your mother was born.  I wept at my inability to see her features, the color of her hair, and the symmetry of her profile.  I ran my hands over her face, arms, hands, legs and feet over and over again until I learned their shape.  Even now, on the rare occasions when she comes to visit me, every so often, she allows me to run my hands over her face. I have been told that she looks just like Eve, your grandmother.  I know that it means your mother is beautiful. And everyone tells me that you look just like your mother.  I know that you are beautiful too.  I dare not run my fingers over your face or hands too often. I knew even when you were a child that this was uncomfortable for you. You would not say it, but I felt the rigid lines of your mouth and the stiffness in your shoulders and the tension in your hands.

Your grandmother does not like to be touched either.  Just like your mother, she allows me to touch her only rarely.  She lets my hand to rest on her arm and lets me lean on her as we walk from place to place, but that is it.  She does not seek my touch. She endures it.

This is not how human beings live, Hazel.  

We thrive when touched. 

We hum. 

We sing. 

Our souls commune in that fleshy meeting point between two bodies.

There are things you should know, Hazel.  About your grandmother. About your mother.  You don’t talk—you three women of my life. You move in silence, saying only the words necessary to proceed through this subsistence you call living.  I call it existing. 

I am old. 

I am probably dying. I do not regret this. 

I have lived a life rich in so many ways. But not rich in love. 

I do not want this for you, Hazel.

I didn’t want it for your mother or your grandmother, but it is their fate.  I do not believe it is yours.

Though my eyes do not see, my heart, that fragile organ inside my chest that even now jumps and skids, sees far more than colors and shapes.  It sees the essence of souls.

I thought your mother’s music would be the making of her.

It wasn’t . . . 

But you, Hazel, I have hope for you. . . 

Hope for me? What did this mean?

I continued reading.

I am asking you to do three things for me—an old and dying man.

First, and perhaps the hardest, I ask you to leave your prep schools with high walls and small, elect classes of students who move in circles removed from the normal life lead by most, and come home.  Home by the flowing river and rustling leaves of tall trees shading the whispering grasses. Home.

Second, there are things hidden, cloaked from you, from your mother and grandmother, that you need to know—need to discover.  I do not know what these things are, but I feel them, I can see them in my mind as tangible bonds that keep you removed from the messy and miraculous facets of living.  Discover what binds you.  It is easy to think you know someone . . . but until you ask them about themselves, asking ready to listen and hear, you cannot know them.  Ask them about themselves.  Talk.

Third, and finally, is to ask you to write about what your mother and grandmother tell you.  Let that low, steady burning fire inside you ignite these words and illuminate their souls.  They have them buried deep inside—show the world the shape and scope of those hidden essential natures.  Let your words be heard by as many ears as possible.  I feel old and yet, things seem clearer than ever and I have learned to listen what my heart tells me.  It is telling me for you to share your writings with others. 

I know these requests of mine are hard to hear and much of me to ask. But I feel it in my very bones, it is time to come home, Hazel.  Come home and live here in these woods, by this river, flowing by me, changing ever changing in color, in texture, in height.  Come home to me, Hazel.

With a heart aching with love for you, my beautiful Hazel,

Grandpa

  Every phrase was in my grandfather’s style, words full of emotion; his vocation as a poet obvious in every word.

I looked out at the window at the cold and lifeless world, my grandfather’s final request running through my mind:

Come home to me, Hazel.  

I could almost hear his soft and deep voice as I read those words.  I could see in my mind his aging fingers moving across the keys, typing these words to me.  

Hands that would never type again.

Why would he want me to come home when I had been living year-round at my boarding school for the past ten years?   

My parents both traveled so much, the house in Chesterfield where I was born was more of a rest stop between trips than a home.  For me, it was a place I went to so rarely I would have to reacquaint myself with the house each visit.  For the past six years,  Auburn Prep had been more like a home to me than that house ever had been. 

“Are you serious?  It's 40 degrees outside and you have the window open?”

I turned to find my roommate, Astrid, walking towards the me.  

“I am sorry,” I said, but I did not shut the window.  

“Even though you don’t feel the cold,” she yelled, “I do! You’re so blind and numb to everything around you.  You don’t even notice anyone but yourself! Do you even know how many people are in LOVE with you?  No.  You don’t.  Everyone thinks you're so freaking gorgeous . . .but they have no idea that under your perfect hair and skin and face, you’re just a frozen shell of a human!  You feel nothing!”

She stamped her foot and threw her arms wide.  

“Did you even know that Steve was my boyfriend?  Mine!  Until you decided to go on the same study abroad as him, he was all over me.  Now he’s dumped me like I was nothing because he thinks he’ll have a . . .  ”

She kept yelling, but I turned back to stare out the window.  She did this often, yell and make a lot of noise about whatever was bothering her which was almost always me.  After either throwing pillows or bedding or both, she would leave, slamming the dorm door behind her.

When the pillows started hitting the wall beside me, I turned away from the window and walked over to my desk and sat down to finish my calculus problems, blocking out her tantrum.  

I stared at the numbers and letters of the first problem but I couldn’t make sense of any of it. 

My grandfather was gone.  

I’d never see him again.  

Hear his voice.  

Have him rest his hand on my shoulder as I guided him down the stairs of Safe Haven after a long day of writing.

Why had I not gone home for Christmas break?

I couldn’t even remember now . . .

The window slammed shut making me look over at Astrid, whose face was red and her yelling had grown louder.

“Do you hear me?”she yelled, her arms out wide.  “I hate you!  You stole the one boy I cared about in this hellhole of a school. Steve was mine. He made me happy. I used to make him happy, but not anymore.  You . . . You!  I can’t live with you anymore and—”

I held up my hand.  

“Please stop,” I said.  And she did.  Her mouth open, her eyes wide, shocked that I spoke.  It was the first time I ever had in the middle of one of her fits.  

“I have no interest in Steve, whoever he is. I’ve never encouraged anything.  And you can tell him I won’t be on that study abroad. We only have three months left together before I go . . . home.”

I wasn’t going to Italy?  I had said I was going . . .  home?

I had this strange sense of dizziness.  What was going on?

“Where do you even live?” she asked, her hands falling to her side. “You are always here! You stayed in a hotel at Christmas because they closed the dormitories for cleaning instead of going home.  Do you even have parents?”

“Yes. Yes, I have parents and . . . Chesterfield.  I live in Chesterfield, New Hampshire,” I said and I felt a strange tug in my chest, like someone tapped it.  

And just like that, I could see the river my grandfather wrote about, flowing smooth and dark, reflecting the sky.

“Where is that? Mars?  I’ve never heard of that place ever and I’ve been almost everywhere in New England.  It must be one of those tiny towns . . .”

Once again, I stopped listening to her.  I looked at the letter sitting beside me on the table.

Home . . . why had I said I would be going home?

I shook my head and waited until Astrid gave up and left before I sat back on my bed and just let the news and the words in the letter sink in.  I did not move until I the room was dark and I realized I had missed dinner.  I stood up and got ready for bed, knowing from past experiences that Astrid was probably not coming back until she knew I was asleep.

That night I had the first dream. 

A village from long ago, perhaps England in the 1700s.

There was a girl in a long simple dress who looked familiar.   Perhaps she looked . . . like me, only younger and her face was rounder and she looked like someone who smiled all the time.  She was surrounded by young men and women her age, teasing and laughing and walking through the village.  

Standing on the side, in his dark shop, stood a tall young man with wavy brown hair and broad shoulders.  He leaned against the wall, his arm braced against the door, watching the girl who laughed walk by.  He watched her long after she moved down the lane and stepped into the bakery.  

He sighed and walked back into his blacksmith shop and began again hammering out the farming tools he was working on, his gaze returning now and then, to look down the lane the laughing girl had walked.

As the days passed, the blacksmith came to the front of his shop each day and watched as the girl walked by, her blond hair swaying down her back, her laughter filling up the alley way.  He stood there, leaning against the door, studying her as she moved away from him.  

She didn’t notice him.  

The seasons changed, from spring to summer, summer to fall and finally fall fell  into a dark and cold winter—and at last she saw him. 

At first, along with her friends, she’d tease him, asking him why he was alway so serious.  

He said nothing, just nodded his head and slowly, moved back into his shop and began hammering again.  

As the days passed and the cold winter again turned into a budding spring, she found she walked slower and slower by the shop and began looking at him more carefully.  His brown hair had golden highlights; his eyes were dark green; his shoulders, they were so broad and strong.  Everything thing about him became things she wanted to look at longer and longer.  

She found reasons to walk by his shop not once, but twice, sometimes three times a day.  Each time she passed, he would stop and walk to the front of the shop and lean against the door and nod to her as she passed.  

Her heart skipped beats.

Her belly filled with butterflies.

The air felt fresher, more fragrant and rich.

At last, she stopped and asked him to talk to her.  

He did.  

Simple words but enough and both their hearts beat faster.  

And they both smiled, their faces transformed into something beautiful.  They felt something wonderful fill them and made them invincible and strong and brave.  This emotion was precious and glorious and it filled their hearts to overflowing.  

“I will walk you home,” he said, putting down his tools and moving to her side.  He reached down and took her hand, as if he had every day before and would every day to come.  

It felt like coming home . . .

The sunlight woke me, too bright for my eyes.  It didn’t matter, all I could see was the girl and boy from my dream walking hand in hand. I felt something flutter in my chest when I thought of the way they smiled at each other.  

I rubbed my eyes with my hands and got out of bed, dressed and went to class.  

It was just a silly dream.  

And yet, throughout the day, I felt a strange sinking and rising in my belly when I thought of the green eyes of the blacksmith from my dream.