Farm Visits

by Sheila Kelly Welch

“Are you sure this is the right road?” asks Matthew. As the blacktop turns to gravel, he slows the rental car to a crawl. We can hear pebbles pinging against the undercarriage.

“Yes,” I answer with authority although it’s been many years since my last visit to Gramma and Grandpa’s farm. I glance at my husband, note his determined hands on the steering wheel, and I almost thank him for this side trip that I’d expected him to veto.

We’re on our way back to New York from California, returning from visiting Brenda, our only daughter. We had celebrated her 40th birthday in her tiny apartment. I tried to entice her to eat a piece of homemade strawberry shortcake, always her favorite, but she had said, “No thanks.”

The road bears confidently to the right, looking well-traveled, but a narrow, rutted path continues straight ahead. “Don’t turn,” I say, and Matthew gives a grunt of resignation. We pass the ancient cemetery with a spindly wrought-iron, arching entrance but no gate. I remember searching weathered tombstones for family names one brilliant day when I was nine or ten and laughing with a friend. I look away.

It’s obvious now that this is the driveway or “the lane” as we called it when I was a child spending summers here. I recall tall grasses on either side and trees reaching across; high, leafy fingers touching, so the lane had seemed a verdant tunnel. Now, in early May, only a few of the bushes and trees have leaves, but along the creek bed, swamp willow twigs are drooping as though overwhelmed by the lushness of their golden greenery.

The barn is gone, I notice with a jolt. Just the sandstone foundation stands. Huge planks of old wood lie in piles where they will rot away. I imagine they’ve forgotten what they used to be.

Matthew pulls up the hill and onto a grassy area to the right of the white farmhouse that’s still standing with a determined, almost regal air. Surprising since I know all these buildings were abandoned long ago. He leaves the engine running, so I get out of the car quickly before he can suggest we turn around and head east.

I’d forgotten the chain-link fence that encircles the house and yard. With a locked gate? No, these must be new. Or maybe not “new” but added since I was here last. When was that? Brenda was eight that summer. Born in 1974. My brain stumbles as I try to subtract. No, I should be adding.

Brenda, our only daughter. Our only child. I reach out and steady myself by grabbing the fence. The metal is cold, and I stare at my old person’s hand.

Back in 1974, thirty-five had seemed old. We’d about given up on having children. Ten years we’d been married, and I’d just started a new job. I threw up on the first day. Attributed it to nerves. By the fifth day, I realized what was wrong – or right. Matthew bought sparkling cider to celebrate.

Brenda was such a healthy little girl. Compact and dark-haired, like Matthew. Quick to laugh or leap. Somehow she reminded me of the crickets that had invaded my grandparents’ farmhouse one summer. I would listen for their chirp then pounce, capturing them in two hands. Their tiny feet tickled in my palm, and I’d release them outside – a small flash of darkness and in one hop they were gone.

Gone. Brenda’s now gone, I remind myself. We had flown out to California when she finally admitted that the end was near. We celebrated her 40th birthday and stayed until the cancer won. I was drained of strength. Of tears. But Matthew was solid and dry. He hadn’t cried at all.

We had taken our time, helping her stunned friends with a memorial gathering, taking care of annoying paperwork. Without actually discussing options, we – Matthew and I – agreed that there was no need to rush back to New York since we’re both retired. A road trip, he’d suggested, might be good. And, I had thought, maybe even healing.

That summer when Brenda was eight, Matthew and I had a trial separation. Although he hadn’t been aware of it. He was in New York, blithely going off to work each day, blind to my emotional turmoil. I had told him that I needed to get away from the city for a while. I didn’t tell him that I wanted to leave him and the other man I thought I loved. So I had taken Brenda on a road trip heading west. She inherited Matthew’s sense of direction so was my backseat navigator. She had marked our route in lavender crayon and laughed when the open maps fluttered in the artificial breeze of the car’s A/C. California was our destination, but I’d told her about the farm. I’d done some research and knew the house was vacant. She’d begged me to include a day-long stop in Illinois.

She had loved the place. “Look at this, Mom!” She’d just recently quit calling me Mommy, but her voice still held the lilt of childish enthusiasm. She wanted me to look at everything: the old two-hole outhouse, the dilapidated dog houses, the cemetery, the little building that had been what Gramma called the summer kitchen. All of these were familiar to me but changed by years of human neglect. Brenda had hopped like a cricket, trying to see through the windows of the house. “Let’s go inside, Mom. Don’t you have a key? Didn’t you used to live here?”

“I don’t have a key. But I did spend summers here when I was a little girl and a bigger girl.” Later I’d tell her about finding kittens in the barn and about having my first kiss on the upstairs balcony. My summer memories were as clear as the water we’d pumped from the hand-dug well.

Brenda pointed to a For Sale sign, listing in the front yard.  “Mom! Let’s buy this place!”

I knew that Matthew would never want to live here. And that I wouldn’t want to live here with Rob. “Just the two of us, Brenda? Your dad would never leave New York City.”

She had looked shocked. “Oh. Then we can’t live here. Daddy would be too sad.”

Now I realize that I’m still clinging to the chain link fence. When I return to the car, its windows are open. “Done already?” Matthew asks gently. I nod.

I have trouble with the seat belt, and he reaches over and helps me hook it. For just a moment, our hands touch, and instinctively, our fingers intertwine.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

Matthew gives a characteristic shrug.

He drives the car away from the cluster of dilapidated buildings, and I say, “I brought her here once a long time ago.”

“Did you?” he says. “I think she told me about that.” His voice is neutral almost vague. “I recall she said she wanted to live here. Here? In the middle of nowhere.” He shakes his head. “Crazy kid.” I hear the sharp catch in his voice and then he begins to fiddle with the radio.

When we get back to New York I know he will finally cry. 

As we pass the cemetery, I think I smell her hair warmed in summer sun, and I can almost see our little girl as she races ahead of me playing a game she invented called Tombstone Touch. She was way too quick for me. I couldn’t win, even if I had tried.

We leave her there, always running. And always winning.