I
was sitting by the gas-lit fireplace in my local library when a book on a table
caught my eye. It was the collected
correspondence of Maxwell Perkins and Marjorie Rawlings. As I read their letters I could hear their
long-stilled voices speaking to each other, and to me, across the expanse of
decades. I tried to check out the book,
but was told it was a reject from a book sale, and if I wanted it I would have
to buy it, so I did.
At home, I looked up Maxwell Perkins
on the Internet. A link led me to rural
Vermont and Perkins’ granddaughter, the novelist Ruth King Porter. Ruth was giving away her novels, asking
nothing in return but that readers post reviews on her website. I sent for
Ruth’s books, and a correspondence began.
I was scheduled to visit Ruth in spring, when her mother’s dying
began. I was rescheduled to visit Ruth
in autumn, when my mother’s dying began.
My mother was a chronic cancer patient whose condition turned terminal
in the autumn of 2013. Instantly I
cancelled travel plans and let go of my already-purchased bus ticket. As the local clinic stepped in to provide
practical assistance, a friend with a car offered to take me on a day trip to
Vermont. Encouraged by my mother, I
accepted the offer. “We are two
middle-aged women, both wearing glasses.”
I wrote to Ruth. “My friend is a
blonde with dark roots. I still think of
myself as brunette, but there is more salt than pepper in my hair, now.” Ruth wrote that she would be waiting for me
under the clock tower of Montpelier’s City Hall. I knew what Ruth looked like from the
photographs on her website.
My companion and I rode into
Montpelier on a gloriously warm day at high noon. I saw Ruth sitting on a bench under the clock
tower, scribbling in a notebook. Main
Street was packed with tourists, and we couldn’t stop the car in front of City
Hall. We found a parking space down the
street. My friend waited in the car,
while I ran down the block. “Ruth?” The woman on the bench looked up, and then
leapt up.
Ruth was a pre-hippie
Back-to-the-Lander, in her early seventies when I first met her. At our first encounter she wore a white work
shirt, faded blue jeans, slung a black money belt over her shoulder, and walked
like someone who rides horses a lot.
“Where’s your friend?” Ruth called, through the crowd of tourists blocking
the sidewalk.
“She’s waiting in the car!” I called back. I led Ruth to the car and the friend in
it. Ruth led us both on a tour of the
golden-domed state capital building. “I
hope we don’t run into my son.” Ruth
twinkled. “He’d be embarrassed by the
way I’m dressed. My son Louis works as
an aide to the governor.” When the tour
was over Ruth led the way, in her battered old car, out of Montpelier and higher
into the Green Mountains, where another world awaited.
Ruth’s
husband Bill and a second son, Robbie, rode on their tractors out of the woods
to greet us on the porch of a rambling farmhouse. Near the porch, three large dogs stiffened in
alert. On subsequent visits I would
watch, ruefully, as Ellie and Flora danced attendance on the impervious top dog
Chief. During this initial encounter
Ruth’s daughter Molly, an artist who lived, Thoreau-like, in a cabin she built
with her hands, bounded up a hill to join us.
The open and friendly faces of Ruth’s family smiled at me kindly. I’m sure they were aware of my situation,
though no one referred to it. Taut,
lean, Alabama-born Bill wiped the grime off his hands and stepped forward to
shake mine. I felt as though I’d stepped
into an illustration by Norman Rockwell.
As an early darkness fell my
companion and I crossed back over the fence we call a border, returning to
Montreal and my mother’s apartment.
“Hello sweetheart.” My dying
mother smiled tenderly. “How did it go
with the lady in Vermont?”
What could I say? I felt guilty at having left her, even for a
few hours.
I didn’t feel like relaying the details of an
excursion to Vermont.
Six
months later I returned to Montpelier by bus, and alone. Once more, Ruth met me under the clock
tower. For a few days in May I curled
under Ruth’s wing, sunning on her roof, sleeping in Max Perkins’ bed, waking to
birdsong and skimming the staggering array of autographed out-of-print books
dedicated by grateful authors to their engaged and caring editor. “Grieving is hard work,” Ruth would greet me
when, after a nap, I descended a steep staircase into her dark country
kitchen. Standing side by side in the
verdant meadow which was her front yard, Ruth stated, as much in amazement as
in sadness, “A year ago this time, both our mothers were alive.”
Ruth
King Porter is an American blueblood whose antecedents hark back to a woman who
held a door for George Washington. I am
the Canadian-born daughter of refugees.
My mother, a woman who survived three invasions and the Warsaw Ghetto,
later in life became prominent in Holocaust education. Ruth and her husband Bill were fascinated by
my family history, a history which many find repellent. Ruth did for me what I had done for my
mother; she listened and encouraged me to tell my mother’s story. When I read a book Ruth recommended, I
realized she had a deeper understanding of my background than I thought
possible.
Six
months after my first extended visit, I was back on the farm. Ruth and Bill acknowledged what would’ve been
my mother’s birthday by inserting and lighting large candles into holes carved
in a spectacularly tangled chandelier made entirely of logs. As we consumed hot squash and a pot full of peas
grown in Ruth’s garden, cold autumn rain and wind lashed the last leaves off a
forest full of trees outside the wall-size picture window. Inside, as we ate, the lit log chandelier
shone, the tree bark-shaded lamps glowed, and the wood stove burned.
Several
weeks later, nearing my birthday, which was a big one, by post I received from
Ruth a warm, multi-coloured scarf.
Inspired by the gift and the woman who gave it, the next day I bought an
attractive hat to wear with the scarf.
I
have been back to Ruth and Bill’s farm several times, since. In between visits Ruth does for me what her
grandfather did for Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe—and
Marjorie Rawlings; she writes to me and elicits writing from me, reading and
critiquing my material, encouraging, cajoling, indicating where and when she
believes I have veered off-track, and gently nudging me back. Clutching the psychic lifeline tossed to me
by the descendant of a legendary literary editor, I lived and worked alone and
in growing peace in my suburban Montreal apartment, producing a memoir of my
mother.
S. Nadja Zajdman is a Canadian author. Her short stories and non-fiction pieces have
been featured in newspapers, magazines, literary journals and anthologies
across North America, in the U.K., Australia and New Zealand. In 2012 Nadja
published the related short story collection Bent Branches, which spans four continents and seventy years in the
life of a family. Recently Nadja
completed work on a second short story collection, as well as a memoir of her
mother, the noted Holocaust activist and educator Renata Skotnicka-Zajdman, who
passed away near the end of 2013.
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