Palouse - 40. Chapter 40

Chapter 40

Come With Me, David – February 1996

The Next Morning

It was the next morning, shortly after breakfast – breakfast that Stan and Kat had made for the family, 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. She immediately left by the kitchen door. 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 with a stern, determined look on her face, pacing, each step a gravel crunch. 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.

David’s had admonished Micah 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 hold long enough, David realized.

David wasn’t dreading this confrontation; he knew it wasn’t going to be a pleasant experience, but he was ready for it. 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 David to follow her. 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 warmed by the sun. The farm road ran between the 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 used the term ‘son’. She spoke of Robert and Micah as if they were blood brothers David’s realization throttled the angry retort he had started to make. Betty had had the perfect opportunity to disown her adoptive son, and she hadn’t. Even though Micah had walked away from everything she wanted for him, she referred to him as her son. There was no hint of any other relationship but mother and son. 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 recreate a “normal” world again for her prodigal son. 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 for Spokane.”

“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. Betty had tears in her eyes, too – from the awful chagrin she felt at expressing her anger so violently. But, her anger had dissipated into embarrassment.

David took a deep breath and made a decision. It was going to be a long shot, but he knew instinctively that it would work. He turned and continued down the farm road. “I want you to come with me now. 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. Once the trail reached the creek bed, it turned 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 almost a year ago. 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, Betty. I’m not a religious person; Micah is. But I know that God would never disapprove of love. The New Testament is a tribute to love, acceptance and forgiveness.”

It was time, David thought, to go a different direction, to try a different tactic; he didn’t want a theological discussion. “I want to tell you a story, Betty. It’s about a Student and a Boy, a Boy was raised on a farm similar to this and in a town similar to Endicott.” David 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 brilliantly for his age and had an intense internal sense of dedication. He loved playing and practicing. He loved learning new pieces of music. He and the composer would meet in a place such as this.” David’s arm made a sweep to encompass where they were sitting.

“The Boy grew better and better, but soon the life in music began to consume him. He had left no time for everything else, for balance in his life.

“Maybe it was hormones, maybe he was just growing up, but the Boy began to realize that he was missing something in his life. He had overcommitted to his music.

“What had made the Boy so special was the innate talent plus that commitment he’d made to it. He’d dedicated himself to his music. Now, the talent remained, but that commitment began to suffer. And he found that without full commitment, his playing not only wasn’t as brilliant, but he wasn’t enjoying it as much. The Boy wasn’t happy.

“Music had been the focal point of the Boy’s life, and behind him, encouraging him to greater challenges and successes, trying to prevent any distractions, trying to make him realize his greatness, his mother continued to push his career in music. Though maybe she saw he was troubled, she ignored what she might have seen because she wanted it all for him. The boy began to resent the mother’s pushing, and he was becoming confused and increasingly rebellious. 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 them.

“So, confused, upset, getting no empathy 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 full 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 he 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 the spark that had 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 – mainly lethargy. He was simply drifting, giving up on his talent.

“HeHThe Boy was not happy. He ended up going to a college that was pushed on him, taking classes he wasn’t interested in and had no reason to take. The Boy was basically living day to day, letting the currents take him wherever they would.

“That was the 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 a 10-year-old Micah on the street in Colfax when she was late that day years ago flashed through Betty’s mind. She remembered the tears of happiness at the sight of him playing his violin, oblivious to his surroundings. Tears started to well in her eyes as she sat next to David, but these were different tears.

David went on. “It was the first time in a long time that the Boy was faced with someone to remind him of his past – and to remind him of 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 had endured. 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.”

David looked at Betty to see that she had closed her eyes in concentration, nodding her head. “The Student, however, didn’t have to accept what the Boy had become. Even though the Student had long loved the Boy, he loved him partly for his extraordinary potential and partly for what he is.

“On his part, the Boy had mixed feelings about the Student. The Student was a link to his days of glory – but also to the disturbing things of his past. The Boy knew that the Student had been witness to the beginnings of the downfall – to the days when he still thought he could get by his talent alone.

“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 the Boy was in – the Student still loved him. The Boy knew also 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’d had admiration and adoration – maybe worship – but real, romantic love had eluded him. The Boy had had lots of 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 molded in a previous time. The Boy had fallen fast, but he couldn’t go home and ask forgiveness so that he could open a new relationship with his family.”

“But he didn’t have to ask forgiveness,” Betty said.

David smiled to himself, realizing he was on the right track. “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 the Boy 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 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 stopped. It was the end of his parable, his improvisation. There was silence except for the sound of the wind through the leafless trees and across the stubble of the wheat above them. David and Betty 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,” Betty said.

“He said he would come, but only if I was 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 reconstruct his life in music but in a different personal context – with me and a relationship that gets stronger by the day.”

They sat on the rock in silence side by side. An animal rustled in the brush; a hawk flew high overhead.

“I’m not leaving him, Betty.”

Betty pursed her lips, brushed the hair back away from her face with her hand and used the silence to think.

“He could stay at home temporarily until he came to his senses,” Betty said. “He could choose to resume his music. He could choose a woman to live his life with. Music and a family -- that’s one choice he could make.”

“That’s one choice you want him to make, of course, but you need to think if you will have anything but a small role in his music in the future. Your role in his music life ended in a bitter and maybe not repairable way – on both yours and his sides.” David responded.

”Another outcome if he came home to Endicott,” David continued, “is that he would fall into the rut of the past, resuming the life dedicated to short-term pleasure. Maybe he would knock up some girl and have children in an unhappy marriage. In this outcome, his love for you, though, would always carry an element of resentment, and probably without music.

“There is a second choice, Betty. 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. If you listen hard enough,” David said, “you can hear Bach in these rocks, which have absorbed his playing over the years. And Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky.” 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.” David stood and reached down to help Betty to her feet.

“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 and the trickle of water it held 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, and the phase would pass.

She hadn’t considered that maybe 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 extraordinary 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 she thought Micah had become: a college student working on a practical degree, his music probably in the past. She didn’t hate him – she was his mother, after all – but the love, though still great, did not burn as strongly in her, she thought.

She realized 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 her passion that came out as anger against Micah after his downfall. Yet Micah’s career in music was always her ultimate objective.

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 above, 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 the 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 other temptations of his home town; in his bitterness, he would search them out.

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 with Greg and Rachel, and now she faced the same issue with Micah and David.