We recently changed the name of our two-acre place from Skunk Hollow to Hummingbird Hollow. Why the name change? First an anniversary update.
As reported on October 17, I turned 75 on October 17. No, that’s not a typo. Then on October 26, I celebrated what would have been my mother’s 102nd birthday. On October 31 I celebrated the 19th anniversary of my moving to Mendocino. I’ve now lived here longer than anywhere in my life. Then came the national election that made me glad I live in California. And on November 10, Marcia and I will celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary.
Fun fact: Marcia and I have forgotten our anniversary twice now in those seventeen years. We’re just so busy.
Now back to the name change. What didn’t we like about Skunk Hollow?
Well… when we first moved here to these two acres a mile inland from the coast (making it impossible to grow tomatoes, eggplant, or corn) we were delighted to find a family of foxes sharing the land with us. There was a mama fox, a papa fox, and every year they had kits, sometimes two, sometimes three. So cute!
Thus when we made our first batch of blackberry jam and I made the labels for the jars, we decided to call our little dip in the terrain Fox Hollow. And for some years that was what we called our place.
Then… no more foxes. We still used Fox Hollow on our labels for a couple more years, but we began to feel disingenuous referencing an animal that didn’t live here anymore. This feeling coincided with a plethora of skunks traversing our deck every day at dusk, these handsome beings stopping to drink from the water bowl in front of our statue of Ganesh.
And since we didn’t want to call our place Raven Hollow or Deer Hollow, though we have lots of both, we chose Skunk Hollow for our new name despite the stereotypical and only sometimes correct belief that skunks stink.
And then the foxes returned! For a year. So we switched back to Fox Hollow. And then the foxes vanished and so did the skunks.
Which brings us to the story of our lemon trees, two of which grow magnificently in two big tubs outside my office windows. These two lemon trees were some of the first trees I planted when we moved here twelve years ago. And because I planted those lemon trees (and two others) in the ground rife with redwood roots as all our ground is, they did not thrive. In fact, two of the lemon trees simply died and the other two grew into wimpy little bushes that never made fruit, though I lavished them with food and water and sweet words.
Finally after seven years I heeded the advice of local gardeners who had warned me I could never grow lemon trees in the ground here. I dug up the little survivors and transferred them into hundred-gallon tubs filled with beautiful soil and they grew into big robust specimens, set hundreds of blossoms, and made lots of glorious delicious lemons and became the favorite haunt of local honeybees.
And then the honeybees disappeared. Pollinators became scarce, lemons few. But we still got some lemons every year because one breed of pollinator did not disappear: hummingbirds.
Every day, several times a day, hummingbirds visit the lemon trees to sip from the few or many blossoms, depending on the time of year and the exigencies of fate. And this year, for the first time in five years, honeybees have been visiting the blossoms and there are dozens of juicy lemons to be had.
Not long ago, I took a break from writing and went out to the orchard to see how the apples were faring, and a great cloud of ravens rose from the trees, the ravens having pillaged those trees and carried away hundreds of the delectable orbs.
We saved enough apples to make two big batches of Apple Yum (delicious apple sauce), and the labels this time, for the first time in our tenure here, read Hummingbird Hollow Apple Yum.
The 2024 election is over. Donald Trump won the popular vote as well as the Electoral College totals and will be the next President of the United States. And what first came to mind when I woke into this new reality was that when I was eighteen and nineteen and twenty I was deeply involved in the anti-war movement (The Vietnam War), and had I been a college student in 2024 I would surely have been among those protesting the ongoing Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. And though I’m Jewish, I would never have voted for anyone supporting Israel’s crime against humanity.
I doubt Trump won because of Kamala Harris’s solidarity with Biden in supporting the Israeli slaughter of tens of thousands of defenseless people, but I do feel there is a karmic connection to that ongoing genocide and Harris’s loss.
In my musings this morning about the election, I was reminded of something I wrote and posted five years ago when I was supporting Bernie Sanders for President. I thought I’d include that post herein, recalling that it was the strategy of the Democratic Party to make sure Bernie did not win the nomination for President.
May 2, 2020
Bernie and Precious Dream
I’m voting for Bernie Sanders and contributing to his campaign because he is the second person in my lifetime (Jimmy Carter the first) who wants what I want for our society and the world and has a chance, however slim, of becoming President of the United States. I hope you vote for him, too.
Twenty years ago, I wrote a song called ‘Precious Dream’. Marcia and I recorded the song on our CD So Not Jazz ten years ago. When the CD came out, we gave some concerts and ended each of our shows with a performance of ‘Precious Dream’.
Many people said the song would make a good campaign song for a dream candidate yet to materialize. And now Bernie Sanders has materialized and here’s hoping our precious dream can at least start to come true.
Yesterday was Halloween. In a few days there will be an election I believe will either mark the beginning of a major disaster for America and the world, or will give us one more chance to make some substantive changes to help the country and the world move back from the brink of war and unimaginably terrible climate disasters.
*
I’ve been giving a little money to candidates I admire who are involved in very close elections for House seats and Senate seats around the country. When you give candidates money online with a credit card, you hear from those candidates again and again asking for more money. And because I feel this election is so crucial, I gave a little more money to those candidates, hoping to make a difference in the outcomes of their races. I’ve now given way more than I intended to, but then I’ve always been a soft touch when it comes to trying to help save the world.
In their follow-up pleas for more money, much is revealed about these candidates and the states where they live. It seems all the people I’ve given to are decent, hardworking, patient, open, idealistic, intelligent, and dedicated to helping everyone, not just wealthy people. None of the candidates I support are racist misogynists, and all of them are running against racist misogynists being funded by… you guessed it… racist misogynist billionaires.
The choice has never been clearer, yet apparently lots of people want to be represented by racist misogynists who say climate change is a hoax and all our problems are caused by women, people of color, gay people, poor people, and environmentalists.
*
My mother was a devout member of The League of Women Voters and was the first person to point out to me that polls do not measure voter turnout, which is the main determinant of who wins or loses elections. When turnout is big, the kinds of candidates I’ve given money to tend to win. When fewer people vote, racist misogynists funded by billionaires tend to win.
This is all to say I hope you’ll vote and encourage your friends (especially those in swing states) to vote for decent, hardworking, patient, open, idealistic, intelligent people dedicated to helping everyone, and not to vote for horrid self-serving schmucks funded by… you guessed it… horrid self-serving schmucks.
Amidst the uproar of a world in chaos, I was born seventy-five years ago. Now in these more peaceful times… no, wait. Other way around. In those peaceful times in 1949, I was born, and seventy-five years later…
So, yeah, I’m seventy-five. I’m writing a book and composing piano tunes, and today Marcia and I schlepped ten wheelbarrow loads of oak into the woodshed and put out the garbage cans and tied the lids down to dissuade the bears, and I’ll bake some cod for supper to have with quinoa.
*
I remember when it became possible to make a recording of my music on a cassette tape recorder and give a cassette of my music to someone else, and it was a miracle. I remember when the very first photocopy shop opened, maybe the first one in the whole world, and I made ten copies of a collection of short stories and gave the collection to ten people, and that was a miracle, too.
*
I was born at Saint Luke’s hospital in San Francisco at 6:33 AM on October 17, 1949. I was ten months in my mother’s womb. Otherwise I would not be the double Libra I am, whatever a double Libra is. My parents took me home from Saint Luke’s to the little house they’d just finished building in Mill Valley, which in 1949 still had an active mill turning redwood logs into lumber. My parents bought their lot and built their house in Mill Valley for 7000 dollars.
*
I make a point of asking people on their birthdays if they have any words of wisdom they’d like to share, or if not wisdom then something to chew on. Since I am the birthday person today I asked myself if I had any words of wisdom to share. What came to mind was the upcoming election and the many other elections in my lifetime won by horrible people who did all they could to enrich a tiny percentage of the population at the expense of everybody else while doing nothing to slow the ruination of our planet. And I remember the days after those elections feeling sad and distressed and wondering why we keep choosing avaricious dishonest people as our leaders, and then I got back to writing and playing the piano and schlepping firewood and cooking supper and being a good friend and trying to live lightly on the earth.
I’ve reached an interesting phase in my writing of the novel currently occupying much of my psyche, a phase in which my acting chops come more and more into play. By acting chops I mean my facility as an actor, specifically an actor who enjoys becoming many characters simultaneously.
When I was a little boy I was fascinated by what made people funny or not funny, and by funny I mean humorous not weird. My Jewish grandparents were funny, my WASP grandparents were not, my mother could be funny if she was in the mood, my father told us bedtime stories with funny parts, and a few kids at school were funny and I studied their every word and gesture.
When I was six my humorous stories were popular with my peers, so much so that my First Grade teacher Mrs. Bushnell had me up in front of the class to tell stories while she rested i.e. took naps. I’d spin silly tales, play all the parts with great gusto, and most importantly make my classmates laugh.
One of the first things I learned from performing for an audience was that things I thought would be funny might not be, and things I never suspected were funny might be hilarious. The collective mind is very different than the individual mind, and once I’d gotten the collective laughing, almost anything I said would be perceived as funny by most of the individuals composing the collective. I also learned that relentless humor was unsustainable. Occasional excursions into more serious realms enhanced the eventual return to the funny stuff, as did well-timed pauses and silences.
And though learning to be a good stand-up comic storyteller was immensely satisfying, it was not until Sixth Grade that I experienced what it was to be an actor. That was the year a new girl appeared in our midst – Helen Reid. A comely young adult, light years more sophisticated than the rest of us, Helen was immediately beloved by many boys and a few girls. I had a crush on Helen, but the field was so crowded I dared not pursue her, not that I would have known how to pursue her.
Helen aspired to be an actress and was eager to put on plays. Had she continued to live in our school district and gone on with us to junior high, she could have tried out for after-school plays and certainly would have gotten leading roles, but Helen moved away after one momentous year with us, and for that year putting on plays at our school consisted entirely of what Helen could scare up on her own.
She enticed a few girls to dramatize with her, but boys were either disinterested or so inept Helen wouldn’t use them. And I was disinterested because I couldn’t conceive of having anything to do with Helen except to gawk at her from afar and hold my breath whenever she spoke aloud in class.
Then one day at recess Helen approached me and said, “Todd. I’ve found a marvelous little play I’d like to put on with you. It’s very funny and shrewd, and given your inherent charm, I think you’d be perfect opposite me.”
I remember wondering what inherent meant and smiling at the word shrewd, which I kind of knew the meaning of. And I remember how her sophistication washed over me and the delicious nuances of her speech and the exquisite grace of her gestures were so alluring I couldn’t help but stick my finger up my nose and say, “Me?”
She laughed her gorgeous sophisticated laugh and said, “Yeah you. We can rehearse at my house after school. Say yes.”
I must have agreed because soon thereafter I went to Helen’s house three afternoons in a row and we had cookies and hot cocoa and a marvelous sophisticated time rehearsing a short shrewd comedy in which we were a young married couple shopping together, and no matter what my young bride wanted I couldn’t deny her.
The slapstick component of the play was that Helen’s character kept buying things and my character had to schlep the ever-growing stack of packages until the stack reached such ridiculous proportions I was staggering under the weight and barely able to keep the edifice of packages from falling over.
Helen had most of the lines in the play, I was her adoring Yes man, and in the end I did drop all the packages, she was hilariously outraged, then eloquently forgiving, and the play ended with her… wait for it… kissing me on the lips!
Of course the play was a hit with our class and we were asked to perform it for the other Sixth Grade class and two Fifth Grade classes, after which for a few days I was a minor celebrity on campus and imagined Helen and I would run off to New York together and conquer Broadway, except I was eleven.
I was not in another play until my sophomore year in high school, after which I was in lots of plays and thought I might become a professional actor. After high school I spent some years exploring that option and chose to go another way, though I continued to act through my fiction. And the interesting phase I’m in with the current opus involves refining the scenes by acting them out with gusto.
Several drafts from now I will record the book for the audio edition, and during the recording process I will have an audience – Peter Temple, our wonderful recording engineer, and me – as we review the recording to hear if any lines want to be retaken or rewritten.
I’ve just completed the third draft of my novel The Farm at the East Cove Hotel. I printed out the three-hundred-page manuscript last night and I’ll let the tome rest on my writing table for a week before I return to the saga with pen in hand to discover what wants clarifying.
During this week of letting the pile cool, so to speak, I will give the editing department in my brain a vacation.
However, I know my unconscious self will stay on the job night and day interacting with magnetic electric sonic vibratory synaptic currents coming from hither and yon, so when I do take up the physical manuscript again I will be a different person, neurologically speaking, than he who wrote the book so far.
This is one of my favorite things – the work that gets done in realms beyond conscious knowing.
In a way, we are what we do. Or what we’re doing. When I’m chopping kindling and making a functional sculpture, I’m a kindling chopper sculptor.
*
In another way, we are what we are born as, and depending on what we experience thereafter, and how we respond to what we experience, we become who we turn into.
*
Then there’s the matter of eating, and the matter we eat. We are eaters. Unless we eat, we die. In this way we are no different than banana slugs or giraffes or each other. And eventually we die even if we keep eating right up until the last moment of our lives.
*
We decide to do things and wear certain clothes or not wear clothes or to worry about the horrible things humans are doing to each other and to the planet, or not to worry unless something horrible happens to us. Or we’re afraid to make decisions, afraid to change, afraid to take chances. Or we’re not afraid, but indecisive. Or we’re marvels of brave decisiveness.
*
We believe things. Some of us love politicians others of us hate. Some of us believe anything certain people tell us and never believe anything certain other people tell us. Our beliefs don’t necessarily have anything to do with truth, but come from wanting things to be a certain way even if things aren’t really that way. Most of the biggest problems facing us today are caused by people with power over others wanting things to be how they aren’t.
*
We are generous or not generous. We can’t be both. When did we become one or the other? Can ungenerousness be reversed?
*
Why did I want to write these words and share them with you? Because lately I’ve been feeling every living thing on earth, consciously or unconsciously, senses impending disaster, and I think this feeling of impending disaster is the Universe asking us to examine who we are and to see if we can do something, even the smallest thing, to help each other right now.
This is by far the warmest summer I’ve experienced in Mendocino since I moved here eighteen years ago. I’ve now lived here longer than anywhere I’ve ever lived. This amazes me since I moved here in late middle age. The days go by, don’t they?
The beach at the mouth of Big River, our town beach, is the most changeable beach I’ve ever gotten to know. Every year the river finds a new route to the ocean across the sand depending on how much sand has been deposited at the river mouth, how heavy the winter rains, and countless other factors too complex for my little brain to compass.
We like to go to the beach at low tide on mornings when the fog isn’t too daunting. The beach is vast at low tide and we can get to places inaccessible when the tide is high.
We hosted our friend Abigail as we do every summer when she comes to play cello in the music festival orchestra. Abi is British, fifty-nine, the mother of three, and a bright spirit. She’s lived in America for nearly forty years, yet remains British through and through, though she doesn’t drink black tea, which is shocking.
Marion, another Brit and our former neighbor, came from England and stayed with us for a week and will stay with us again for a few days before flying home to jolly olde. Marion is our age, seventy-four, a violist, the mother of three, grandmother of two, and does drink black tea. A chocolate lover and indefatigable walker, she took us on a long trek in the redwoods that took me two days to recover from. Marion and Marcia were barely winded by the trek and went trekking again the next day while I lay in a heap.
Last summer the huckleberry bushes hereabouts were heavily laden with fruit. This summer there are almost no huckleberries but jillions of blackberries. We are halfway to collecting thirty cups of blackberries from which we will make a good batch of blackberry jam. This also seems to be a good year for our prune plum tree and some of our apple trees. As the orchard fruit ripens, we must be on guard against marauding ravens. I have netted one of the apple trees that produces bright red fruit especially attractive to ravens.
Butterflies have been abundant this summer along with bumblebees and hummingbirds. I collected butterflies for a couple years when I was a boy, and to this day whenever I see a butterfly, I regret killing the ones I chased and captured for my collection.
Though I keep saying I only want to write short stories now, I’ve been writing a novel for the last several months. This proves I’m not consciously in charge of what I create. I like the gist of what I’ve written so far, but sense the story is currently outrunning the poetry that wants to be in the lines. What, I ask myself on these warm summer days, is the hurry?
When I told Marcia the stories I am about to tell you, she said I should write them up and post them on my blog, so here they are.
Mattress Fable #1
We just bought a new king-sized mattress to replace our thirteen-year-old king-sized mattress. Marcia didn’t mind our old mattress, but I found it misshapen and uncomfortable and thought I would sleep better on a good new mattress. Marcia sleeps like a log every night, I do not.
When the new mattress arrived, two strong men carried the big thing into our bedroom, leaned it against a wall, and lifted the old mattress off the plywood platform and wrapped it in the gigantic plastic bag the new mattress came in. I was curious about why they were taking so much care with the old mattress and asked, “What do you do with these old mattresses?”
“Usually we take them to the dump,” said the man in charge. “But your mattress is in such good shape, I’m giving it to my girlfriend. She just got a new place and needs a bed. This is perfect. She’ll love it.”
Mattress Fable #2
When I was a teenager, circa 1967, the mother of a friend of mine was a professional painter and collage artist. She and her husband were wealthy and collected art by famous artists. Their large modern house was a veritable modern art gallery surrounded by a manicured sculpture garden.
One day I arrived at my friend’s house and found two burly guys had backed their big truck up to the front patio of the beautiful home to pick up things to take to the dump, including a king-sized mattress and box springs. My friend’s parents were also getting rid of lots of other stuff they had piled on the patio.
There was also on this patio, not far from the pile of things destined for the dump, a metal sculpture by an artist so famous his works were frequently shown in the Museum of Modern Art and in other prestigious museums around the world; and several of his monumental works were displayed on plazas in major cities.
I will make an aerial-view sketch of the sculpture in question with the disclaimer that sketching things is not my forte. As you will see, the sculpture was composed of three identical pieces of shiny silver metal, possibly aluminum, about nine feet in length and two-inches-square. Each separate piece was raised on legs (not visible in the sketch) about a foot off the ground, and each piece was quite heavy.
As is true of all works of art, beauty is in eye of the beholder. I would also suggest that whether something is art or not is also in the eye of the beholder. Which is to say, the two men loading the mattress and box springs and other stuff being thrown away did not distinguish between the stuff going to the dump and the forty-thousand-dollar work of art, and they loaded the three-part sculpture into their truck on top of the king-sized mattress and would have driven away with their load had I not arrived in the nick of time and informed them of their faux pas.
With great haste they unloaded the three pieces of metal and tried to arrange them as they were supposed to go. As it happened, I had been present at the gala unveiling of this sculpture (my friend’s mother hired me to ply the crowd with finger food) and I knew how the pieces went in relation to each other. By a second stroke of good fortune we got the sculpture properly reassembled just as my friend’s mother came out to pay the men for making the dump run.
Several morals come to mind: One person’s garbage is another person’s gold. One person’s gold is another person’s garbage. Art is subjective. Reality is subjective. Life can be a hoot.
Her antecedents Italian-American and French, Sophie Vacarro is thirty-six and has lived in Japan for three years as apprentice to master potter Arata Inaba. Sophie’s return to Mercy where she was born was prompted by her mother dying and leaving her house to Sophie, who otherwise would not have left Japan for even these few days she plans to be away.
*
“I love your hair long and pulled back like that,” says Grace, Sophie’s best friend since kindergarten. “You’re so slender now. You’re just exquisite. You must drive those Japanese men wild.”
“I work eleven hours a day, six days a week,” says Sophie, gazing out the window as they drive north on the coast highway, the fields full of wild mustard as they always are in the summers here. “I wear my hair under a bonnet at the studio, ride my bike home to my little apartment, make supper, read for a while, do some yoga, and go to bed. So I don’t have much time to drive the men wild.”
“I wish you’d call me more often,” says Grace, sighing. “I love getting your letters, but I miss hearing your voice.”
“I love you, Gracie,” says Sophie, smiling at her dear old friend. “You know I do. But calling you pulls me back here, and I don’t want to be here.”
“I don’t believe you,” says Grace, her eyes filling with tears. “I think you’ll love Mercy now that your mother’s gone.”
“I always loved Mercy,” says Sophie, glad to be talking about this. “And I love you and Cal and Jeff and all my friends there. It’s not about that. It’s about giving all of me to being my master’s apprentice, so one day I might be a master, too.”
“You already are a master,” says Grace, emphatically. “When I set the table with your plates and bowls and we drink our coffee from your mugs, I can feel your mastery.”
“I’m glad,” says Sophie, not wanting to argue. “I’m glad you love them.”
*
Grace drops Sophie off at Ontiveros Realty in downtown Mercy to sign papers for putting the house on the market.
“As you wished, we gave everything in the house to the Salvation Army,” says Conchita Ontiveros, a vivacious gal in her fifties. “Then we had the place cleaned, the yard made as beautiful as we could, and now we just need your signature on these documents and we can put the house on the market. Should go fast. It’s a tear down but in a very good location, and the market is so hot we’ll list it at eight hundred thousand, get multiple offers, and then have a bidding war. I’m guessing it will go for a million two. Maybe more. So after the mortgage is paid off, you should clear close to a million.”
“I really appreciate this,” says Sophie, who has never had much money. “And you’ll deduct your expenses from what I get?”
“Yes, of course,” says Conchita, gathering up the pages. “Have you been by the house?”
“I might go by later on,” says Sophie, her tone suggesting otherwise. “Thank you for everything, Conchita.”
“Thank you for choosing me to help you,” says Conchita, shaking Sophie’s hand. “How long will you be in town?”
“Just a few days,” says Sophie, fighting her tears. “See some friends. Walk on the beach. Have fish & chips at Big Goose. And then I have to get back to Japan.”
“Do you love it there?” asks Conchita, who can’t imagine living anywhere but Mercy.
“I do,” says Sophie, smiling at the thought of riding her bike to her master’s studio in the cool of morning. “Very much.”
*
That night, Sophie and Grace and Grace’s husband Cal and their seven-year-old son Jeff have scrumptious fish & chips at Mercy’s premier pub Big Goose, and dozens of people come to say hi to Sophie who was a beloved checker at Walker’s Groceries from the age of sixteen until she left for Japan three years ago.
As they are finishing their meal, a big handsome man approaches their table, and Sophie stiffens in fear because when she left for Japan this man was a lunatic living in the forest and scaring the daylights out of everyone when he came into Walker’s to buy food.
“He’s okay now,” whispers Grace, giving Sophie’s hand a squeeze under the table.
“Hey Grace, hey Cal,” says the man, smiling at everyone. “Hey Jeff. Hi Sophie.”
“Hi Galen,” says Sophie, holding her breath.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he says, placing his hand on his heart.
“Thank you,” she says, stunned by the change in him.
“You look great,” he says, gazing in wonder at her.
“You look great, too,” she says, laughing nervously. “You look like Hercules.”
“I lift weights now,” he says, laughing self-consciously. “With Carlos Garcia and Sheriff Higuera. Hey I hear you live in Japan now. That’s wonderful. I’m working in the kitchen at the East Cove Hotel. Genevieve is training me to be a sous chef.”
“That’s fantastic,” says Sophie, astounded by how charming he is.
“You should come for lunch while you’re here,” he says, nodding excitedly. “My treat. Bring Grace. The food is… I just learned this new word. Nonpareil.” He laughs self-consciously again. “I’m probably saying it wrong, but…” He takes a deep breath. “I wanted to tell you that when I was a boy and you first started working at Walker’s and I’d come in with my mom, I always made her go through your line because I thought you were so pretty and you were always nice to me. And then when I got out of the Army and was so sick for all those years, I still would only go through your line because you were still nice to me and…” He struggles to find the words. “I could feel the sane part of me wanting to talk to you even though I couldn’t, and your kindness really helped me. So…” He shrugs. “I just wanted to thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she says, overwhelmed. “We’d love to come to lunch. Tomorrow?”
“Pinch me, I’m dreaming,” says Grace, pretending to swoon. “Lunch at the East Cove Hotel?”
“Without taking out a second mortgage?” says Cal, pretending to swoon, too.
“Yeah tomorrow would be perfect,” says Galen, laughing for joy. “Just not Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. And last I heard, tomorrow is Thursday.”
*
The next morning after breakfast, Sophie goes to Walker’s and says hello to all the people she used to work with; and while she’s there, more of her former customers come to greet her and express their condolences and ask about her life in Japan, and she is brought to tears again and again by all the love coming her way.
*
In the elegant dining room of the East Cove Hotel, Sophie and Grace whisper to each other about how incredible it is to be here. And to crown their incredulity, Genevieve Moreau, the world-renowned chef and owner of the hotel, comes to their table to tell them how happy Galen is that they’re here.
Genevieve, tall with graying brown hair in a bun, smiles at Sophie and says with her French accent, “After all those thousands of times you served me so well at Walker’s, it is my pleasure to have you and your friend dine with us. And of course you know I bought many vases from you at the farmers market and there is at least one in every room in the hotel. People are always asking where we got them, so if you ever return to Mercy and open a studio here, I would be glad to sell your pottery in our gift shop.”
“I’m honored,” says Sophie, blushing. “And… we can’t decide what to get.”
“Shall I choose for you?” says Genevieve, nodding to imply the wisdom of doing so.
“We’d love that,” says Sophie, turning to Grace. “Wouldn’t we?”
Grace nods, unable to speak.
“Excellent,” says Genevieve, bowing to them. “I will bring you appetizers to start.”
*
At meal’s end, Genevieve presents them with a plate of four handmade chocolate truffles to have with their coffee.
“Would you like to join us?” asks Sophie, sensing Genevieve wants to tell them something.
“I would love to,” says Genevieve, signaling for a bus person to bring her coffee.
“My master loves chocolate,” says Sophie, her eyelids fluttering as she tastes the incomparable truffle. “I’ll take one of these back to Japan for him. He’ll be thrilled.”
“I would like to commission a large vase from your master,” says Genevieve, nodding graciously to the young woman who serves her coffee and replenishes Grace and Sophie’s cups. “For the entrance to the dining room.”
“I’ll tell him,” says Sophie, taking another bite of the fabulous chocolate. “Right after he tastes your truffle.”
They laugh and Genevieve says, “I cannot tell you how happy you’ve made Galen by coming to lunch. He’s been singing all morning, and he has a lovely voice, and we’re all amazed because he’s never sung for us before.”
*
Her second night in Mercy, Sophie goes to the Mercy Players Theatre to watch a spirited production of the comedy classic Ellen Is The Problem; and in the foyer after the play Sophie heaps praise on her friend Maureen McGillicutty who played the part of Ellen.
“Look at you,” says Maureen, hugging Sophie. “You’re so svelte, and with cheekbones to die for. You could be in Vogue. Say something in Japanese.”
Sophie says something in fluent Japanese.
“What does that mean?” asks Maureen, giggling.
“It means you were a flame on the stage tonight,” says Sophie, remembering being in a play in this theatre ten years ago, and how she loved acting more than anything she’d ever done. “And you stole our hearts.”
“Oh God,” says Maureen, hugging Sophie again. “How long are you here for?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow morning,” she says with no regret. “I’ll come for longer next time.”
*
After breakfast the next morning, the town cloaked in fog, Sophie carries her suitcase out to the car just as Galen arrives on his bicycle and presents her with a little wooden box containing four chocolate truffles.
“Thank you, Galen,” she says, marveling at how beautiful he is to her. “My master will be very pleased.”
“Some people just love chocolate,” says Galen, wanting to say something else but not knowing how. “Me? I never was big on chocolate. I mean… I like chocolate, but… I really love fruit. There’s nothing so good to me as blackberries right off the vine. You know what I mean?”
“I do know what you mean,” she says, looking into his eyes. “I love blackberries, too, with chocolate.”
*
On the jet flying back to Japan, for the first time since leaving Mercy three years ago, Sophie opens her heart, just a little, to the possibility of one day living in Mercy again.
