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She nodded, then stepped forward to hug me. She held onto me tightly a moment.
And then she said something to me that she had never said. "You're the rainbow after the storm, Alice. Always remember that."
She turned and started back to the house.
"Hey, call soon," my grandfather said and kissed me. He turned to quickly catch up with my grandmother to comfort her.
"C'mon, Miss Picasso," Aunt Zipporah said and got into her car.
I got in quickly. I wasn't going to look back at the Doral House. I was going to be strong and just keep my gaze on what was ahead, but I couldn't help it. I turned around.
They were already inside. I did feel badly for them. Aunt Zipporah was right about creating some white lies and putting hard decisions off for as long as possible, I thought. I shouldn't have been so
pigheaded about it.
"They'll be okay," she said as we continued down the road I had walked all my life. "It takes some getting used to, this living in a quieter house with just yourselves. But they've always been there for each other, so I'm sure they'll be fine."
"They've always been there for me, too."
"Sure, and for me and for Jesse. Dad was even there for your mother," she added.
When we entered the village, I looked hard at it all, and especially at the Harrisons' home. Their house was empty now, too. I gazed up at what had been Craig's room and, before that, my mother's. The curtains were closed, and it looked dark. In fact, despite the sunshine, the whole house looked imprisoned in shadows, trapped behind the bars of tragedy and sadness. No bright flower, no rich lawn and well-trimmed hedge could rescue it from what it was, what it had become and maybe would always be.
Now I truly wondered if anything could rescue me from who I was and what I was.
I gazed back as we left the village proper. Aunt Zipporah caught me saying my visual good-byes.
"It's funny how your mother and I used to make so much fun of the place. We had funny names for people and places, and she was great at imitating some of the village characters."
"Sometimes, you make it sound as if it was more fun than you thought."
"We did what we could. Your mother used to say Sandburg is so small the sign that says you're now entering Sandburg has you're now leaving Sandburg on the back," Aunt Zipporah told me and smiled.
"It's not small to me," I said. "It's been my whole world."
She nodded with understanding.
We were both silent then.
And as we drove on, I looked f
orward just like any explorer searching for signs of promise, for that Wonderland my name had promised.
11 A Home Away from Home
. Any college town has a unique energy about it. The school, its students and faculty become the lifeblood. So many businesses cater to their needs and profit from their existence. There's also that constant sense of rejuvenation, new students flocking in and bringing with them their excitement and high expectations. I even felt it during the past summers, when the student population was smaller but nevertheless still a major presence. It was such a dramatic contrast to quiet, sedate life back in Sandburg that I always became optimistic almost the moment we drove into the city.
Aunt Zipporah and Uncle Tyler lived in a unique, Swiss-chalet style home approximately five miles out of the city and away from their cafe. Uncle Tyler had bought the home from a well-known sculptor, who eventually returned to Switzerland. To give himself a sense of his heritage and homeland while he lived and worked here, he had the house built in the Swiss style. Behind it was a small building he had constructed to serve as his studio. It would obviously serve as an ideal location for my studio as well. It had good lighting, some long, large wooden tables, an oversized sofa and a half dozen chairs. The bathroom had a small stall shower. He even had a smaller kitchen there so when he was very involved in his work, he didn't have to leave his studio. Other than that, it was a very unimpressive, basic structure with nothing done to dress it up or cause it to give much more value to the property. The walls within looked unfinished, the windows were curtainless and the floors were cracked concrete. Some of the electrical wiring still hung loosely from the ceiling. My uncle left the studio exterior just as it had been, a basic light gray stucco.
Uncle Tyler was someone who liked to step a little to the right or left of what would be known as mainstream, whether that was how he dressed, which was usually a black leather vest, jeans and Westernstyle boots with a tight-fitting, faded T-shirt and a baseball cap on backwards, or what he drove--a restored small English car called a Morris Minor. Instead of signal lights, it had signal flags that came out of the sides when he made a right or left turn. It had a very small backseat and a floor shift. The year before, he'd had it repainted an emerald green.
The house itself, which I did adore, had a lowpitched, front-gabled roof with wide eave overhangs. There was a second-story balcony with a flat patterned cutout balustrade and trim. The exterior walls were made up of a patterned stickwood decoration. The color of the home was a dark coffee. Again, Uncle Tyler had found a house painter who could repaint the home in the unique shade.
Set on a little more than two acres with the undeveloped backyard, the house had a small front lawn and a dirt driveway. Neither the previous owner nor Uncle Tyler wanted to put down a hard driveway. Uncle Tyler liked the rustic look and thought it actually added to the value of the property because the only people who would buy such a house were people who liked that style. When it came to those sorts of things, Aunt Zipporah went along with all his decisions.
The master bedroom in the house was upstairs. It had only that bedroom and a guest bedroom toward the rear of the downstairs. That was to become my bedroom, as it had been when I had visited the previous two summers. The guest bedroom had two windows that looked out on the forest and high grass. I could see the studio off to the left as well.
When I stayed here before, I often saw deer grazing with no concern or worry, occasionally lifting their heads to look at the house and listen. One afternoon, I walked out the back door and drew as close as ten feet or a little less to a doe before she bolted and glided gracefully into the safety of the woods and shadows.
