Page 42 of Thursdays at Orange Blossom House
‘Would I be standing out here in this old leotard if I didn’t?’ Grace Maud smiles archly at them both.
Patricia gives her a funny look. ‘You know that I support you too, don’t you?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Grace Maud hears the snap in her tone; she doesn’t like being caught off guard.
‘In there, ’ Patricia nods towards the house, ‘we were talking about someone being a pain in the neck. That’s your chance, you know? To actually talk about that pain-in-the-neck person. It might help you.’
Grace Maud considers this. ‘Help me with what?’
‘To lessen the pain.’ Patricia shakes her head and laughs softly. ‘Are you always this difficult?’
‘Yes.’
Grace Maud glances at Dorothy, whose eyes are wide. Just like her heart. Dorothy has trusted her almost from day dot. Patricia is a clear-eyed, clear-minded sort of person. Perhaps Grace Maud wouldn’t be burdening them if she identifies that pain in the neck by name.
‘It’s my son,’ she says, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She can hear Sandrine telling her tostop leaning, you are throwing out your pelvis!‘Tom. He, uh …’
She feels the whole story sitting in her chest, over her heart, forcing its way up into her neck, her jaw, her head. She feels her disappointment in him, her anger that things have gone so awry, her inability to articulate this clearly even when she has a willing audience, because to say it out loud feels enormous, like she’d be letting it escape into the ether and there would be no chance of containing it. Controlling it. And oh, how controlling she’s had to be all these years, to keep things together.
‘Go on,’ Patricia urges kindly.
Grace Maud’s sigh is freighted. ‘He wants to buy another property. Expand the business. Which is fine in principle. But he didn’t tell me. He told the bank manager. He told theneighbours. Before he told me. And I’m the one whose name is on the title.’
She stops, not wanting to remember what Tom said that day but knowing she has to, because she can’t avoid the truth or the past.
‘This is my history. My father worked the property. His father. It would have gone to my brothers, but they …’ She looks at each woman in turn and sees only receptivity. ‘Died. World War II. Or thereabouts. And my sister is gone too. So it’s mine. Tom started working with me when he was in his twenties.’
She thinks of the scrappy young man so lean that his jeans fell off his hips, and the sturdier, middle-aged proposition he’s become. Her son. Grown up. In charge.
‘We worked it together,’ she continues. ‘Then I backed off. I was past retirement age. It’s his now, although I still own it. But he wants to build an empire, I guess, and he needs to borrow to do it. It’s just easier to do it when he doesn’t consult me.’
Patricia presses her lips together. ‘You feel like you’re not useful any more,’ she says. ‘Or, rather, that he doesn’t see any use for you.’
Grace Maud holds her gaze. ‘That might be it. Or maybe I think he doesn’t respect what his forebears built. Doesn’t think it’s enough.’
‘Do you wish you hadn’t let him run it?’ Dorothy asks. ‘I mean – do you think he’s doing a bad job?’
‘No,’ Grace Maud says quickly, because she knows it’s the truth. ‘He’s doing a fine job. But I suppose …’ She winces. ‘I’m his mother. I guess part of me thinks I should be able to tell him what to do, except he’s not a little boy any more and I can’t control him any more than I can control the moon. And even though I wanted the place to be his to do with as he wishes, I still have my loyalties to my father. To my grandfather.’
Suddenly she is a child again, standing next to Ellie Maud as they watch the cane burn, hearing her father giving instructions to their brothers, passing on the knowledge his father gave him.
‘Their ghosts are watching me,’ she says. ‘And I’m letting them down if I give up on the place.’
‘You could feel that way,’ says Patricia. ‘Or you could see it as passing the farm on the way it was passed on to you, just differently. Not to take sides,’ she adds, holding up a hand in peace. ‘Just to offer a perspective.’
‘I’m sorry this is so hard for you,’ Dorothy says. ‘I wish I had a solution to suggest. But I don’t know anything about farms.’
Grace Maud smiles wanly. ‘You don’t want to. They’re more complicated than they seem.’ She shifts her weight again and sees the light in the studio go out. ‘We should move on.’
‘Okay,’ Dorothy says meekly, stepping back onto the path.
‘Let us know what you decide,’ Grace Maud adds, and Dorothy looks quizzical.
‘About your options,’ Grace Maud explains. ‘For a baby.’
‘Oh.’ A pinch appears on Dorothy’s brow, then disappears. ‘I will.’
‘Whatever you decide, it will be the right thing,’ Patricia says, then she glances at Grace Maud. ‘Not that I can say the same thing to you. I don’t think you like having that pain in your neck.’
