Gathering Lies. Meg O'Brien

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      Jane seemed to hunker more inside herself. She didn’t respond.

      Amelia turned to Timmy and asked where Kim Stratton was.

      “She’s having dinner in her cottage,” Timmy answered. “She did say she might join us later for coffee.”

      Amelia harrumphed, then made small talk with Timmy about Thornberry, while Jane, Grace, Dana and I listened. Timmy sat every night at the head of the table, and as I’d noted to Dana, she didn’t seem particularly comfortable to be there. She seldom took part in our conversation unless asked a direct question, and I recalled that she had seemed a bit shy when I was younger. I wondered silently if she’d rather have dinner alone than with a group of edgy writers.

      “I abandoned the bed-and-breakfast years ago,” she was saying now to Dana. Her hand went to smooth her short gray hair, a large diamond ring reflecting light from candles and sending sparkles around the table.

      “It was far too much work,” she continued. “Not that this isn’t, but since you all do your own laundry and housekeeping, it’s quite a bit easier.”

      A staff member—either Lucy or one of the two administrative assistants—brought lunches to the six cottages every day at noon, setting them on the porches without knocking or in any way disturbing the writers. Lunches were hearty soups or stews and homemade breads and muffins. At dinnertime, each writer brought her own basket back to the farmhouse and filled it with whatever she wanted for breakfast the next morning—eggs, bacon, muffins, fruit. Each cottage had its own small kitchen, and residents fixed their own breakfasts. There was no charge for any of this.

      Thornberry, I’d been told by Bill Farley, was one of the most luxurious writer’s colonies in the country now. Timothea was a former patron of the arts from Seattle, a woman who had always wanted to help other women find their place in the writing world. When she had first sat me down at her dining room table with pad and pencil all those years ago, I hadn’t known this. I thought she was just being nice to the lonely kid with her nose in a book.

      Now I understood the genuine kindness that lay behind Thornberry’s latest incarnation. There were no “page police,” no monitors of one’s work. The only thing Timothea asked was that the women who came here grow in some way that might further their talent. How they did that was their own business. They might take walks in the woods, keep a journal, help out with the organic farming, or even—if they wished—simply feed the two resident goats.

      The conversation this night, dominated by Grace as usual, turned to politics. Since my life in Seattle had been saturated with troublesome politics, I had difficulty participating. But Grace was young and brash. She liked to mouth off for the sake of mouthing off, reminding me of certain teenagers I’d defended over the years—though Grace was clearly in her mid-to late-twenties.

      “We’ve got to fucking bomb them,” Grace said firmly. “It’s the only way.”

      This brought me out of my woolgathering long enough to wonder who she was talking about. Iran? The cornfields of Iowa? Anything could be turned into an enemy by this woman, I had learned.

      Dana jumped in with an obvious attempt to change the subject. “Lucy, I love the way you use herbs in your cooking,” she called out to the cook, who was putting cookies for dessert into the oven.

      “Thanks,” Lucy said. “You’re writing about herbs, aren’t you? We should talk one of these days.”

      “I’d love to,” Dana said. “It’s not all about herbs, but they’re a large part of it. It’s about using what nature gave us, to heal—something even doctors are beginning to believe in.”

      “Doctors!” Amelia, the poet, said scornfully. “I’ve never in my life gone to a doctor that I didn’t end up sicker than I was in the first place. And to add insult to injury, they put you in the poorhouse doing it.”

      Dana smiled. “That’s how I got started on my book. I was sick, and as a writer, I couldn’t afford insurance. I began to study herbs and what they could do.”

      “I don’t give much ground to herbs, either,” Amelia muttered. She tapped her forehead, and her short white curls bobbed. “It’s all in the mind. Doesn’t matter what you take, it’s in the mind.”

      “Oh…” Jane began uncertainly, “you mean, you could take either prescription medicine or herbs, and depending on which one you believed in—”

      “Turnips!” Amelia snapped. “You could take turnips, woman! It doesn’t matter what you take, it’s all in the mind.” Grace cast a contemptuous look at both of them and went back to stabbing her pork.

      Dana, who didn’t eat meat, picked at her vegetables. An awkward silence filled the kitchen, and Jane stepped in again, changing the subject. Laying down her fork, she stretched and sighed.

      “What a wonderful meal! You know, I can’t believe I’m here. After the PTA, the constant laundry, the carpooling—this is heaven.”

      “Don’t tell me you don’t have a house full of servants,” Grace taunted.

      “No. No, I don’t,” Jane answered slowly. “I have a once-a-week housekeeper, that’s all.”

      “But a house that’s big enough for an army, I’ll bet,” Grace replied, zeroing in. “You people with your big houses, big cars, big everything—you’re ruining the world.”

      “Grace!” Dana said softly. “You can’t just lump everyone—”

      “Don’t give me that!” Grace interrupted. “It’s true. The rich are responsible for most of the ecological problems in the world. Everyone knows that.”

      “Well, we don’t have to talk about it now,” Dana said mildly, casting a sympathetic glance at Jane. “Can’t we, for once, just have a nice dinner?”

      “And just exactly when would you recommend we talk about the way the rich ruin the world?” Grace pushed. “What nice dinner would you prefer to ruin?”

      Jane, turning a deep shade of red, stood and carried her plate to the sink. “I think I’ll turn in early,” she said.

      I felt sorry for her. And just as sorry for myself. There were times when I thought I couldn’t stand another dinner with these women. Always fighting, arguing, picking on each other.

      All but Jane, who tried, but didn’t have the ongoing fortitude to stand up for herself. And Dana, who did her best to keep the peace.

      The rest, excluding Timmy, reminded me of children. Women in their twenties, thirties, forties, even seventies—going on five years old. Put a bunch of women together on an isolated island, and see what you get.

      Later, I told myself that if I’d known how bad things could really get, I might have made a point of enjoying my “final meal.”

      Jane would echo my thoughts. “If only I had known…” she would say numbly, over and over—though even she knew it was bad form to write that in a novel.

      We were in the living room of the farmhouse when it happened—Grace, Amelia, Dana and myself. Jane had gone back to her cottage, and Kim Stratton hadn’t shown up at all. Timothea and Lucy were in the kitchen, cleaning up.

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