Palouse 40
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Chapter 40
Come With Me, David – February 1996
A Day Later
It was the next morning, shortly after breakfast – breakfast that Stan and Kat had made, as Betty stayed away. They were finishing their coffee when Betty appeared at the kitchen door.
"Come with me, David." It was an order from Betty, not a request, and it was said with a determination that brooked no compromise. David contemplated for a few seconds how to react. Stan was about to intervene, but David waved him off. "I'm ready for this," he said. "It has to be done if there is any hope for peace between Micah and Betty."
Betty was waiting for him on the driveway, pacing, each step a gravel crunch, with a stern look on her face. Betty had been barely polite with David since their arrival. She had bristled when Micah insisted they sleep together in his and Greg's room. She had stalked out of the room when Micah had unthinkingly given David a light kiss in the kitchen.
She had not heard David's admonition that he and Micah had to "cool it" for a few days. It was only going to be for a short time, he had said. But the admonition didn't come soon enough, David thought.
David wasn't dreading this confrontation; he knew it wasn't going to be a pleasant experience. As he started out the door, he saw that Betty had started down the lane that led to the fields, her jeans-clad legs striding forcefully, expecting to be followed. Her sharp-paced walk had carried her almost to the end of the cottonwoods that bordered the road to the wheat fields before David caught up to her. They walked side by side, Betty with a look of grim determination on her face, David with a look of questioning.
They had walked a quarter of a mile before Betty finally stopped, turned to David, looked him tightly in the face and said: "I don't like this."
"What?" David knew what, but he wasn't quite ready for the turn of events.
"You know damn well what." Betty said, though the curse word didn't ring natural to her or to David. Swearing was not normal for her, and what she said caused her to hesitate. Her emotion had driven the word out of her mouth, but she became visibly uncomfortable as she listened to herself.
The hesitancy was enough for David. "You don't like me loving your son?"
Betty turned and started walking briskly again across the farm road, now thankfully open to the sun, that ran between the open field and the trees that lined the riverbed below them on the right. David had to rush once again to catch up.
"I already have one son who's a homosexual. I will not have another. Do you understand me?" Each of the syllables of the question was spat out as if a metronome was keeping time.
David did not fail to notice how Betty spoke of her sons. She spoke of Robert and Micah as if they were blood brothers, a realization that throttled the angry retort he had started to make. Betty had had the perfect opportunity to disown her adoptive son, and she hadn't. David realized then the depth of her love for Micah – something that matched his own love – but he had not been prepared for it. To David, it was as if Betty thought a split between David and Micah would cause Micah to return to "normal." What Betty considered normal and what David did were clearly at odds.
"I want you to leave," Betty continued, "and I want you to leave quietly before this goes any further. I want Micah to have a normal life, and I want him to take up his violin again. If you leave quietly this morning, he won't get hurt as much. I'll tell him you had a phone call from your parents and you had to leave."
"Even if I did leave, you must realize that Micah would follow me. He would be at my folks' house almost at the time that I got there if I were to go there."
"You don't know that."
"I do know that. We are deeply in love and committed to one another."
"Well, you can still stay friends, but that's all."
David began laughing. "You don't really believe –" His words were interrupted by a hard slap from Betty's hand. David's hand went immediately to his cheek, and tears smarted from his eyes.
"Oh, God, what did I do? Please forgive me." Betty pulled David's hand away to look at the red spots that were rising on his cheek. "I'm so sorry." She looked at David, who had tears in his eyes – not tears from the slap but tears of sorrow.
David turned and continued down the farm road. "I want you to come with me. I have someplace to show you," he said to a shaken Betty. They walked silently for another quarter mile, where a small trail led down from the road to a hollow that ended where the creek dropped into the Palouse River. David marched at a stiff, determined pace, feeling secretly avenged that Betty was straining to keep up. The trail dropped down into the creek bed, then followed it upstream. About a hundred feet later, David climbed up on a large rock and reached back to help Betty up.
David sat, then drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. His auburn hair shone in the clear sunshine as he pushed it back from his face. He turned to Betty, who had seated herself stiffly beside him. "Micah brought me here. This is his amphitheater. This is his personal place, his sanctuary. This is where he plays his violin for God, because God produced a place of amazing acoustics in this little hollow.
"Micah said I was the first person he had ever brought to his place. He was giving me the honor of coming into his sanctuary just as he let me come into his heart – after a lot of soul searching and maybe even some prayer. This place was, he said, where our hearts could be fused in peace and tranquility in front of God."
"But God would never approve of him and you together."
"That's where you're wrong. I'm not a religious person; Micah is. But I know that God would never disapprove of love.
"I want to tell you a story, Betty. It's about a Student and a Boy who was raised on a farm similar to this and in a town similar to Endicott." David took a deep breath and scanned Micah's sanctuary with his eyes. He didn't know exactly where this was going, but he had an idea, and he had to speak.
"The Boy was talented to a fault; he played a musical instrument exceptionally well for his age and had dedicated himself to being the best he could be. He loved playing and practicing. But as he grew better and better, he was balancing his music against everything else in his life, and that balance eventually became tenuous. Pressures outside his music began to tip that balance away from his practicing, away from his commitment to the violin.
"What had made him so special was his innate talent plus the commitment he'd made to it. He'd dedicated himself to his music. Now, while the talent remained, the commitment began to suffer. And he found that without that commitment, his playing not only wasn't as brilliant, but he wasn't enjoying it as much. This could have been due to simple burn-out, or it could have resulted from too much focus on only music. The Boy didn't know, but he knew he wasn't happy.
"Still, music had been the focal point of the Boy's life, and behind him, encouraging him to greater challenges and successes, preventing any distractions, his mother continued to push. She saw he was troubled, but she wanted it all for him. He was beginning to feel the change of balance in his life, he was beginning to resent the pushing, he was feeling confused and increasingly bitter. The Boy tried to talk about it, but never had the conviction or words to say how he was feeling or to penetrate his mother's zeal and ambition. She didn't understand his need for balance in his life. She was euphoric at his accomplishments and couldn't see past that.
"So, confused, upset, getting no encouragement at home other than pressure to continue to grow and perform as a musician, the Boy finally snapped. He couldn't stay committed to his music against the seductive pressures of friends, girls, sex, drugs, basketball and the like, and the music he made wasn't as good without the commitment. The Boy reached a point where he couldn't satisfy his mother, couldn't satisfy himself, couldn't stay committed to his music, and so he made a decision: He'd give up his music and enjoy being a young teenage male. This wasn't an easy or happy decision. He made it, however, and suffered the consequences. Without his music, with having to contend with being sent away for his final year of high school, the boy lost something of himself. The boy lost his spark which made him the person he'd been. After his high-school graduation, he returned to his parents' farm, but with no ambition, no drive, no interest in the future.
"HeHThe Boy was not happy. His frame was broad but shallow, and after his rebellion in high school, events simply dragged him down until he gave up on his talent, on himself, and was simply drifting, unmotivated. He ended up going to a college that was chosen for him, taking classes he wasn't interested in and had no reason to take. The Boy was basically living day to day, letting the winds of chance blow him wherever they would.
"That was a situation when a Student that he knew from years earlier encountered the Boy by happenstance on the streets of a college town. The Boy was using his great musical talent to earn spending money, with his hat on the sidewalk in front of him: busking. The Boy believed he was content in this undemanding existence."
The memory of Micah on the street in Colfax when she was late that day years ago flashed through Betty's mind.
David continued: "It was the first time in a long time that the Boy was faced with someone to remind him of his past – and the gap between what he was capable of and what he was doing then, on that morning, on that sidewalk. It was the first time since the disappointment that he had caused his Mother that he really felt the gap. He knew that his Mother had sublimated her own lost ambitions in the Boy's career. And he knew the cost that she was enduring. He didn't know, sadly, that a good Mother will accept what her son had become, no matter what that is and no matter how trying acceptance might be, because that is the duty of a good parent.
"The Student didn't have to accept what the Boy had become. Even though the Student loved the Boy, he loved him partly for his potential and partly for what he is. Not unlike a parent does.
"The Boy had mixed feelings about reconnecting with the Student. The Student was a link to the good – and the frightening – things of his past, to his days of glory. The boy knew that the Student had been witness to the beginnings of the downfall, when he still thought this playing without commitment would continue to lead to fame and fortune, to personal greatness. But the Boy maybe didn't realize that the Student loved him in the past, and even on that sidewalk, in the vulnerable and unhappy state that he was in, he still loved him. The Boy knew that the Student loved boys and not girls." David looked over at Betty to see her reaction. But Betty seemed more intent on listening to the tale that David was telling.
"You see, the Boy was starved for real love. He hadn't experienced real love since his family's; he'd had others his age who maybe liked him or maybe liked who he was going to become, women who were willing to give him what he wanted sexually, partly because they wanted to share in his glory, but when his star started to fade, they began to run away. The Boy was left with casual acquaintances: people who did not understand the turmoil that the Boy had been through or was in the midst of.
"The Student did understand all that, and the Boy knew that the Student did."
"The Mother and the Father understood, as well," Betty said.
"Yes, they did. But the Boy's relationship to his Mother and Father had been frozen in a previous time. The Boy had fallen fast, but he hadn't fallen so far that he was forced to go home and ask forgiveness."
"But he didn't have to ask forgiveness."
"The Boy didn't know that. It was possible that the Boy might have remained forever in the undemanding, blank-white state that he was in.
"The Student presented him with a different dynamic – a dynamic of support and hope and unconditional love – something his parents could give him but something he could never ask of them, having been such a disappointment to them. The Student knew he could go home, but the Boy didn't and probably wouldn't do so.
"The Student offered a new beginning. The Boy found a home with the Student, and their relationship grew into love and mutual support. The Boy started to shuck off the self-doubt and grow into the person he had always wanted to be, using his art and talent. And when he was ready, when he was strong enough, he decided to go home again, taking the Student with him."
David paused – it was the end of his parable, his improvisation – and there was silence except for the sound of the wind in the trees and across the stubble of the wheat above them. They sat in the light breeze and the sun that cleansed some of the bitterness between them.
"I'm betraying Micah's trust by bringing you here, Betty. I don't think he would have brought you on his own. But to understand us, you need to understand the importance of this place. He told me he used to come out here with his violin and play for hours, all on his own, practicing and practicing. He said that in the music room he would learn the music. In his sanctuary, he would learn the composer. In his sanctuary, he could feel the presence of God.
"And then he stopped coming – for a number of years. Yesterday, he said he wanted to come back – to practice here again."
"I knew he would eventually find himself."
"He said he would come, but only if I came with him." David let this statement hang in the air, making sure that the silence afterwards held like a stop in music.
"Betty, I love Micah and he loves me. He's finding his way in the world again, and he's starting to rebuild his talents. Our relationship gets stronger by the day."
They sat on the rock in silence with each other but listening to the breeze.
"I'm not leaving him, Betty."
Betty pursed her lips, brushed the hair back away from her face and used the silence to think.
"He could stay here temporarily until he came to his senses. He could choose to resume his music. He could choose a woman to life his life with. Music and a woman. That's one choice he could make.," she said.
"That's one outcome of the choice you want him to make, of course. Another is that he will fall into the rut of the past, staying here and resuming the life of short-term pleasure. Maybe he will knock up some girl and have children in an unhappy marriage. His love for you will be an embittered one.
"There is a second choice. You can accept our relationship, become part of his musical renaissance and become part of his life again. If you want Micah, happy, back in your life, Betty, you have to accept him as he is and me as part of the bargain. You can have Micah, his music and his grateful love, but you will have to accept us both together.
"If you don't accept our relationship, then you likely will have lost Micah and his music and your ability to influence his genius."
David looked across the ravine. "That's where we stand, as I see it."
They sat side by side, with the sun warm enough to put a sheen of sweat on their faces.
David continued: "I told Micah that I play Bach, but that he is a messenger of Bach – and a messenger of Mendelssohn and a messenger of Tchaikovsky. If you listen hard enough," David said, "you can hear Bach in these rocks, which have absorbed his playing over the years." David became silent again and cocked his head as if listening to Micah on his violin.
"Why does life have to be so difficult?" Betty said, aloud, but mostly to herself.
"Because relationships are difficult, and love is complicated. More so if the relationships and love are between two men."
"Would Micah mind if I stayed here, in his place, alone for a while? I'll meet you back at the house."
David got up. "I don't think he would mind. I'm sure he wouldn't." David stood, climbed off the rock. "I'll be back at the house. I'll leave if you ask me. But understand: that will probably cost you your son."
Betty sat and looked at this place that was a part of her son she knew nothing about. The bare cottonwoods hung over the creek bed, which had only a trickle of water in it at this time of year. The basalt pillars on all sides of this sanctuary stood like walls of an auditorium, and she knew why Micah must have liked this place.
She remembered the small boy that had been obsessed with his music – so much so that Stan had to tell her that Micah needed to stop practicing and play some basketball with his brother Greg in order to get exercise. Then she saw the swing to the other side, where the music became incidental to his life, and he became a teenager in Endicott, and basketball and girls and temptation became his passions. She had thought it had been the hormones.
She hadn't considered that maybe it was that the imbalance from his earlier life had to be evened out. But the changes had torn into her heart. It is so rare that a parent has such a prodigy of a child, and seeing the talent go to waste was more than she could take; especially her. For Betty, it was the next worst thing to seeing a child die before the parents did.
Before this weekend, she had reconciled herself to what Micah had become. She didn't hate him – she was his mother, after all – but the love did not burn as strongly, she thought, when he dropped his career.
She knew that part of her disappointment came from the loss of the career that she had sublimated into Micah. David's remark about her career cut short had reminded her of some of the passion in her that came out as anger after Micah's downfall.
And now...and now she faced this horrible choice. She knew in her breast that David was right: if Micah were somehow persuaded to stay home, his energies would dissipate, followed by the erosion of any hope for a career in music. The embers of creativity would turn cold. She knew that. She knew the old friends would hover around him, like the hawks in the skies outside her kitchen window, waiting for any sign of failing. The boys, now young men who were his high-school buddies, could be seen driving their large pickups through town in the early evening, parking them outside the two taverns where the clack of the pool games and the male alcohol hum and the sound of country music on the jukebox filled the evenings – until they went home, most of the time, to their young wives and children.
She knew local girls – some still in high school and some at her church – who only wanted to get married and were ready to lay their bodies down to achieve their goals – even if the consequence was a wanted or maybe an unwanted child. And there were women whose marriages already had fallen apart who needed a man to take on part of the burden of raising their children – women whose hoped-for careers had been cut short by pregnancies.
There were good women out there, but she knew that Micah would not be able to resist the temptations of his home town; he would search them out in his bitterness.
Could she face herself if what Micah became in his life was what he was at the end of his high-school years? If it was her pressures alone that would force him to come back to the farm – assuming she could even force him back in the first place? She knew the answer, but she was unwilling to admit it to herself.
The low, winter sun was dropping below the rim of the hollow as she drew herself up off the rock on which they had been sitting. She brushed the dust and dirt off the seat of her jeans and started back to the farmhouse. The trip was slower than the forced march out, and Betty took the time to ruminate over the last few hours with David and with herself.
She realized she was in the terrible parent quandary: how to reconcile the parent's personal feelings about a potential mate for a son or daughter with what her child wants – in short, how to be neutral despite her personal feelings. She was in the quandary both with Greg and Rachel and, now, with Micah and David.
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