The Good Fortune Harvest

The phone rings as I sip my coffee. Andy wanting to know if I can have lunch with him today. We didn’t get a chance to speak to each other last night, he offers.

“How are you doing Sis?” he asks me with genuine concern.

“I’m great,” I assure him.

“I just can’t fathom why you’d come back here,” he declares, then adds, “even though I am glad you did.” “I had a couple of minutes this morning where I was wondering the same thing,” I tell him and laugh. We set a time for lunch. I am cautious about sharing my ideas even with my beloved Andy. People around these parts have always been suspicious about that which they don’t know.

Before I go up to take my shower, I walk outside to the field and scoop some dirt into a plastic bag. The soil is black and glistens with moisture from the morning dew. I take it upstairs with me and place it in a box I have already prepared.

On my way to town, I stop at the post office and mail my package. It is only two blocks to Andy’s shop, so I walk. I am wearing a blue linen dress with blue sandals, one of the few outfits I could scare up that would be appropriate for lunch with Andy. He and Laura are so mindful of these things.

“You look lovely,” he says as I walk in the store. “Simply lovely.”

Everyone turns around to look, and I proceed through the store as if compliments fall naturally on me. Andy fetches his keys and within minutes takes my arm and guides me out the door. I don’t ask where we’re going, I know he has arranged something, he always rises to special occasions well.

He escorts me into the lobby of the Grand Hotel, one of our town’s most prized pieces of architecture. Built in 1880, the inside is a festival of crystal chandeliers and beveled glass windows. The worn cypress stairway looks as if it was carved out of one massive tree. We head in the direction of the Grill Room. The maitre d’ checks me out, perhaps, I think to myself, wondering what Andy is doing here with me.

Andy guides me effortlessly to our table, seating me, and bowing slightly before he himself sits down across from me. Always the perfect gentlemen, my brother.

“Lovely,” I mock him, raising my hands and saying, “simply lovely.”

“Glad you approve,” Andy whispers and winks at me.

A waiter walks up promptly and places a cocktail glass in front of him. “And you mademoiselle?” he asks me.

“Whatever he’s having,” I say, amused. Once the waiter walks away, I tease Andy, “Come here often?”

“Often enough,” Andy says.

We chit chat. He updates me on Jack’s affairs and the illegitimate children that he is sprinkling all over town (all girls); we order our appetizers and lunch, and I am getting the feeling that there is something more pressing on Andy’s mind, but I am in no hurry to bring it out of him. I am too busy taking in the room, the attentive service, the formality in the air that hasn’t existed anywhere I have been lately. I find it exciting and don’t want to lose the moment, but by the time we have finished our appetizers, Andy broaches the subject he has been dancing around.

“Laura tells me you don’t want to go to the grave,” he looks at me, brow furrowing in disapproval.

“What? So what if I don’t want to go?” I say to him, dismayed that this is the hidden agenda.

“Well, it’s just that…well it’s been so long for you, we thought you might want to go and…”

I just stare dead on at him. “Look at you, Andy. That man made your life a living hell. The real question is why would you want to go to his grave.”

He slowly wipes his lips with the linen napkin. He takes a thoughtful sip of his cocktail and pauses to look into my eyes. He speaks very deliberately, “I have forgiven him all, Constance.” Then he calmly picks up his fork and begins eating again.

World stops. I have forgiven him all, Constance. Why does that simple statement fall like an iron curtain around my very soul? I have forgiven him all.

“Good for you,” I make myself say.

Our entree arrives, and we eat in silence. I carry on a full length conversation in my head that goes something like this: “You do what you set out to do, Constance, ignore the rest. Laura and Andy so forgiving? I have forgiven him all, he says. It’s as if, even in death, my Father’s colossal presence still straddles their lives. How convenient to look back in blindness. Forgive him indeed. Better to forget and get on with your life.”

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