Light Afflictions

By Elizabeth S. Graham

Who was Louisa Gates and how did she die? LIGHT AFFLICTIONS is a family saga, which traces its heritage back to the Mayflower. Louisa’s sister, Emmaline returns to the family homestead, Beloved Acres, to finally scatter Louisa’s ashes. Why did her sister’s choices seem so diametrically opposed to the other seemingly stalwart members of the Gates clan, beginning with her great, great, great grandfather who bought the rocky farmland in Hartland, Vermont and who created a home for so many generations? Who were some of these other family members, and how were their lives interconnected?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elizabeth S. Graham
• Release date: Feb 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311019974

Elizabeth S. Graham

Elizabeth Graham is an actress and screenwriter. She has published articles in Exceptional Parent, American Journal of Medical Genetics, American Journal of Diseases of Children, and she edited The Screen Actors Guild Young Performers Handbook.

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PROLOGUE

Dear family:

Enclosed in this album are all our ancestors’ letters and notes. Some of them are really fragile so be careful. I have transcribed everything - and added some narrative history. This album is my gift to you, and I hope it helps to make up for the trouble I have caused you. I guess I am the only bad apple in the Gates family tree. I have only myself to blame. Maybe one day you can file me away in Mom’s famous light affliction department and go on about your lives.

Louisa Gates

McLean Hospital

I

BELOVED ACRES

1995

The two-tone yellow station wagon barreled along the dirt road blending smoothly into the gray Vermont March morning. Patches of snow lay scattered on the frozen leaf-strewn maple forest floor. The wagon rounded a sharp curve and then veered left into a deep forest thick with hemlock and tall pine. Like a horse headed to the barn, it gained speed and emerged onto a narrow ribbon of a driveway. As it traversed open pastures, a pale crescent hologram of sun appeared, and by the time the car reached the top of the hill, the frame house and barn at the end of the road were bathed in the pale gold of dawn. The driver, an attractive woman in her late thirties or early forties stepped from the car. In what was either a needed stretch or a sign of victory, she raised her arms over her head and drank in the cool morning air until it seemed her lungs would burst. It was rumored that a rebellious uncle tried to switch the name of this place to Maple Tree Farm just after the Civil War. The Gates family never did take well to changes, especially change of a radical order, and for as long as anyone could remember this farm had been called Beloved Acres. The young woman’s great-great-great-grandfather, Zelotes Gates, bought 300 of those beloved but rocky acres in 1793, farmed in that splendid southern Vermont valley, and built this frame house at the top of the winding road that had never been called home to anyone other than his direct descendants.

Inside the house, Deedee Gates paused for a moment before dropping a sticky ball of dough into a steaming kettle of hot fat.

Good lord. They certainly got an early start all right, she thought. She called into the next room. Nancy, did you hear a car?

Do now! came the reply. I swear he heard them coming all the way down to Four Corners.

He was George Gates, Deedee’s husband and great, great grandson of Zelotes Gates.

Sixth sense, Deedee muttered, wiping her hands on a faded 1963 World’s Fair dishtowel.

Like many aristocratic women, on reaching her seventh decade Deedee Gates fulfilled her genetic potential. Her premature silver hair, stunningly out of place for years, now seemed as natural as rain. She had become remarkably at ease with herself. At this point in her life there was little that caused much of a change in her outward demeanor. But on hearing the car door slam, her chest rose perceptibly faster. She paused, closing her eyes for a second. Her cheeks reddened fleetingly. And that was that. She turned off the stove, refolded the dishtowel, and with four long strides she marched onto the porch.

Emmaline stood by the car watching her children, Hadley and Sam, barreling across the frozen lawn toward their grandmother’s open arms. Each time she returned to Beloved Acres she was struck with the same ambiguous feeling of both continuity and incompleteness that somehow she was watching a scene that would never quite be played out. How many times had she and her sister, Louisa, run toward the porch to be welcomed into the warm kitchen by Grammie and Auntie? Surely her own father had been greeted in the same way as he made his way home from school over the hills from Woodstock, as had her grandfather and his father before him, feeling the same sense of home and security. But what always tweaked her imagination was the question of how the creator of all of this, Zelotes Gates, would respond to each generation that continued to be drawn to this place, so prevailing in its domesticity that lives were caught like sun in a spider’s web.

~

Tucked in the top drawer of the Birdseye maple desk in the parlor of the house was a letter from Zelotes Gates to his brother, Zadock, dated 1802. In it, in exquisite pen he wrote, I guess I shall build a frame house on the hill, the cabin becoming too small. This had always been somewhat of a joke in the Gates family, for the records show that by 1802 Zelotes and his wife Margaret had five children. The cabin must have seemed small indeed.

And so, during what was considered the coldest New England summer ever, Zelotes and his family and neighbors built the farmhouse, undaunted by snow flurries in mid-June. That they built it well was obvious, and judging from some early watercolors and later brown and weathered photographs, except for a few outbuildings that have come and gone and the addition of a bedroom dubbed the new chamber though now well over 100 years old, the house itself had changed little from Zelotes’s day. It was a white colonial with a central chimney. The actual front door faced the driveway, but it was never used, as everyone entered from the porch, which faced the south pasture. As children, Emmaline and her sister, Lulu, spent hours on the porch. It was the best place to watch the torrential summer thunderstorms come steamrolling over the field. They loved to fill the glass jelly jars Auntie would let them have as the water streamed out of the rainspouts. Lulu poured them over her head mimicking White Rain shampoo commercials and would play for hours soaking wet. On hot summer days they’d sit and crochet with Grammie in her wicker rocker as the bees droned in the wisteria that shaded the end of the porch. The hot smell of new hay clung to their damp T-shirts. When they got good and bored they counted flies on the sticky tape that hung from the rafters.

~

It was too cool for flies on this day in March, but Emmaline knew they would probably appear later in the day, revived from their crevices in the attic by the warmth of the sun on the windows. There they would bang against the attic windows in the heat of the afternoon and end their short-lived day on the floor where Deedee would vacuum them up later in the spring.

Sam, I swear you’ve grown a foot. What on earth did they feed you there? Deedee enveloped the children in her long arms.

Hadley, extricating herself from Deedee’s hug, mustered a fair Australian accent, Crocodile.

Yeah and Vegemite, added Sam.

Well, whatever it is, you look so good I could just eat you both up, Deedee said between noisy cheek kisses.

Emmaline Gates Hamilton and the children had spent the past year in Australia where Emmaline’s husband, a microbiologist, served a postdoctoral fellowship. Although Deedee had dreaded their separation, she now realized the year had passed more quickly than she ever thought it would. But then, the last year had seen so many changes, it was no wonder.

Mom!

Emmaline arrived on the porch.

Setting down the kids’ knapsacks she embraced her mother. The slight blush on Deedee’s cheeks returned for a moment as she unconsciously examined her daughter as mothers do from birth on, letting no detail escape.

Oh, darling. How are you? Gosh, what time did you leave?

The screen door to the porch opened and Nancy Colt, a pleasantly plump woman in her sixties, stepped onto the porch to embrace Emmaline.

Really early. We can’t spend the night so I wanted to get in a full day. It’s good to see you, Nancy. I know you have been such a help to Mom.

Nana, where’s Ethan? Sam interrupted.

Still up at the sugarhouse. He’s been boiling all night. Go on up so he can see you’re here.

The kids took off at a run, thrilled to be out of the car at last. Deedee’s eyes followed them as they disappeared toward the pasture and then into the woods. Suddenly, as if waking from a dream, Well, goodness, Em, for heaven’s sake come in. She swung open the screen door.

Emmaline asked, How’s Dad?

It was Nancy who answered, He’s been at sixes and sevens ever since he heard you were back. I’ll go get him. We were just finishing a shave.

They all entered the house passing through the mudroom. It was lined with rubber boots and sneakers above which hung a couple of pairs of old bear claw snowshoes. A shelf held some ratty gloves and mittens, some ski hats, sunglasses and a tarnished brass bugle.

Does he know, Mom?

Know what? asked Deedee.

About tomorrow.

Well yes, of course. He hasn’t mentioned it though… Did you mind coming home without Harry? Emmaline hated the casual tone her mother often used to change the subject.

She unbuttoned her wool jacket and hung it on a peg over her mother’s parka.

Yeah. But it made sense. It’s summer there and the kids were through with school. Harry’s almost finished in the lab. He should be back in a month or so.

They reached the kitchen and Deedee turned on the gas under the donut kettle.

I hope I’ve made enough donuts. I can’t seem to fill Ethan up in sugaring season. She turned to face Emmaline. He’s so thrilled you’re back, Em.

Has he been a help?

Oh lord yes. I never could have kept your father this winter if it hadn’t been for him. Nancy and I just can’t lift him anymore, even with the two of us.

Emmaline exhaled, God bless Nancy.

She feels worse than anyone about this transition. Like she’s failed him somehow after all these years, said Deedee.

The transition that Deedee spoke of was a euphemism for the extended-care nursing facility George Gates would be entering the next day. It was as if by her choice of words, Deedee could will away the urine and disinfectant smells, the gurgling, rasping coughing and sighs of the hopeless elderly. Transition sounded so much better than putting him away.

But Emmaline knew there were no appropriate words to describe her mother’s profound disappointment. She had rallied against the inevitable tomorrow for these last exhausting years. For Deedee this was surrender, a challenge not met, and perhaps a reminder of another one.

As Emmaline looked around the kitchen, she realized how hard it would be for her father to no longer spend his morning hours here, reading the Vermont Standard, his back warmed by the stove. The farm kitchen was the largest room in the house. It was a sunny, square room with windows facing east where a sloping meadow met the woods. She and Lulu used to terrify the breakfasting household by sledding down the hill on their flexible flyers, stopping just short of the side of the house. The maple floor of the kitchen slanted in an easterly direction. A marble placed in the corner had no trouble making it to the other side of the room without a push. Emmaline imagined that many of the ancient family members whose photographs and daguerreotypes marched along the plate rack at the top of the kitchen wall had some difficulty in maneuvering the peculiarly angled kitchen floor in their later years. As a child Emmaline loved looking up at the faces of her relatives. Auntie and Grammie never tired of recounting stories about each of her forebears, and she and Lulu would enhance the tales with their own versions if they were deemed lacking in color. Louisa, in particular, wove her kind of special Lulu fabric into the family history, and even now Emmaline had difficulty separating the Grammie and Auntie version from Lulu’s.

Just then, Emmaline heard a series of thumps as George Gates’s bent form appeared in the entrance to the living room. He grasped a cane with one hand while Nancy, her arm around his back, guided him into the kitchen. His right hand and arm shook with tremor. He was the victim of Parkinson’s disease and was slowly and inexorably being cheated out of all motion. Though his face was rigid and mask-like, his watery blue eyes sparkled with intelligence. His gait was shuffling, his voice weak and monotone.

Emmy, welcome home.

Daddy! Hugging him warmly, Emmaline planted a kiss on his cheek. It’s good to be here. How are you, Daddy?

Fair to middling for an old duffer.

Just then the screen door slammed and Hadley and Sam arrived with commotion, their voices loud with