Cloud Nine

‘That can be arranged,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ll deliver it myself in a silver sleigh.’

The girl giggled and sighed again, the sounds muffled by all the padding around her.

Sarah remembered her own college days. Too-thin sheets and scratchy old blankets had been her inspiration for starting her own business, Cloud Nine. She had dropped out of Wellesley after her freshman year. Opening her first store in Boston, she had stocked it primarily with down products made by her father, back on the farm.

The farm had been on the verge of failing. Her mother had died when she was fourteen. Sarah and her father never talked about it, but she knew she had saved him. She had gotten her own financing, come up with all the ideas, expanded into mail order, taken on lines from France and Italy to supplement the stuff from Elk Island. The original store remained in Boston, but after eight years and the last in a series of ridiculous love affairs, Sarah had expanded to this college-rich valley in upstate New York. She had been here for ten years now, and her father had all the work he could handle.

The telephone rang, and Sarah answered it.

‘Hello, Cloud Nine,’ Sarah said.

‘Happy birthday,’ the deep voice said.

‘Thank you,’ she said. Her heart contracted. She couldn’t talk. She had the feeling if she breathed or sneezed, the line would go dead.

‘I’m a day late. Sorry.’

‘That’s okay, I didn’t even notice,’ she lied.

‘What’d you do? Go out for dinner or something?’

‘I took a plane ride,’ she said. ‘To see the leaves. They looked beautiful, all red and orange and yellow, like a big bowl of Trix. I couldn’t stop smiling, it made me think of you, and I knew it would make you laugh. I mean, flying over this beautiful fall landscape and thinking of Trix. Remember when that was your favorite cereal?’

‘Huh. Not really.’

‘How are you?’ she asked. She could picture him, standing in the big basement kitchen, with a fire burning in the old stone hearth. Closing her eyes, she was back on Elk Island, could see the dark bay, the prim white house, the fields full of white geese. She could hear the waves, smell the thick pines.

‘Fine.’

‘Really? Do you still like living there? Are you honestly enjoying the work? Because –’

‘What about you?’ he asked, sounding sullen and accusatory. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m great,’ she said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes.’ She turned her back, so the college girls wouldn’t hear. ‘I finished chemo last month, and my X rays look good. There’s no sign of any tumor. I had an MRI, and the doctor says I’m all clear. Good to go.’

‘You’re cured?’

‘Yes,’ Sarah said, biting her lip. She was the most optimistic person she knew – ferociously hopeful – and had often been accused by the very party on the other end of being annoyingly cheerful. She couldn’t stop herself. She knew about statistics, five-year survival rates, worst-case scenarios. Here she was, saying she was cured, when she didn’t even know if there was any such thing.

‘Good,’ he said. A long silence passed, and then he cleared his throat. ‘That’s good,’ he said.

‘Is your grandfather there?’ she asked.

‘He’s out in the barn. I just came in to get some lunch.’ He cleared his throat again. ‘Just thought I’d call to say happy birthday.’

‘I’m glad you did, Mike. I miss you.’

‘Huh.’

‘A lot. I wish you were here. I wish you’d decide to …’

‘When’re you coming to Maine? I mean, Grandpa was wondering. He told me to ask. And to say happy birthday. I almost forgot.’

‘Was it his idea for you to call?’ Sarah asked suspiciously, feeling upset. She had been thinking it was Mike’s idea.

‘No. It was mine.’

‘Hmm,’ she said, smiling.

‘So, when’re you going to come?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. The idea of going to the island filled her with more anxiety than she knew was good for her. Her doctor had told her to avoid stress, that a centered spirit was her best defense. Just thinking about seeing Mike in the barn with her bitter old father, knowing that Mike had put himself under his tutelage, sent Sarah’s spirit careening.

‘Thanksgiving would be good,’ Mike said.

‘We’ll see.’

‘Are you too sick to come?’

‘No. I’m fine. I told you, I –’

‘Then why not?’

‘I said I’ll see, Mike.’

An uneasy silence developed between them. Sarah’s mind raced with questions, accusations, declarations of love. How could her son have left her to go there? From the day of her mother’s death, Sarah couldn’t wait to leave the island. She had let her father down, and even in his bitter silence he refused to let her forget. But Mike had gone to live with him while searching for connections to Zeke Loring, the father who had died before he was even born.

‘Excuse me,’ called the girl who had been lying on the bed. ‘I think I do want to buy some things. Can we call my mother to get her Amex number? I know she’ll say yes.’

‘Oh. Someone’s there,’ Mike said abruptly, hearing the background voices. ‘I guess I’d better go. Grandpa’s waiting for lunch.’

‘Honey, I’m glad you called. You can’t imagine how happy you made me,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s ten times better than any present I’ve ever gotten, even my favorite dollhouse when I was four, and I’m not kidding you, I loved that dollhouse, I played with it constantly, just ask my father …’

‘Bye, Mom,’ Mike said.

‘Bye, honey,’ Sarah said.

When she turned back to the girls, she was smiling. Her face was calm, her mouth steady. She nodded yes, the girl could call her mother. Handing her the telephone, she told her to dial direct, not bother charging the call. She was going through the motions of selling a quilt, cultivating the business of the girls at Marcellus College, the students who were her bread and butter.

But her heart was far away with her son, Mike Talbot, her seventeen-year-old dropout, the person Sarah loved more than her own life, the boy who was single-handedly planning to carry on the family traditions of quilt making and farm saving under the wing of her father, the wrathful George Talbot, of Elk Island, Maine.

It was at moments such as this that Sarah, writing a sales ticket for a three-hundred-dollar quilt, wished that she had just let the old farm die.

In the air with the mapmaker for the second day, Will criss-crossed Algonquin County eleven times. They plotted the Setauket River, the Robertson wilderness, Lake Cromwell, Eagle Peak, and the foothills of the Arrowhead Mountains. Will flew him over small towns and Wilsonia, the county seat. They counted windmills and silos, surveyed the patchwork of farms, fields dotted orange with pumpkins. He had climbed to six thousand feet, but on their way back to the airport, he flew one low circle over Fort Cromwell.