Read Maud's House for Free Online Page B

dishes, I never pay attention to the order of things. I grab whatever is nearest to the sink. Wynn and the instructor used to shake their heads in despair during those silly practice sessions in the Home Ec room’s tidy little kitchenette. They said I showed a shocking disregard for kitchen protocol. I said the white kitchenette needed some color, maybe an avocado refrigerator for starters.
    T-Bone finished the last pan, a heavy cast iron skillet, plucked the stopper from the drain, dried his hands, and headed for the office at the back of the big old farmhouse.
    I trailed behind him.
    His office is the cleanest, warmest corner of the house. No dust demons or rattling wind here. Actually, this long, spacious room started as three little rooms. But, like any true Vermonter, T-Bone couldn’t leave them alone. He knocked down walls, threw up big sturdy cathedral-like pine beams across the ceiling, lined the walls with book cases. Books, magazines, a complex stereo system I can’t even figure how to turn on, odds and ends—everything from a pine cone to a sample bottle of cow vitamins—run the length and height of three walls. The fourth wall is a wall of windows. They bring the outdoors in, the woods, the path, the birdhouse. The room has a wood stove, sofa, and cat. A computer hums on the desk. Agriculture magazines are piled knee-high in the corner.
    At night T-Bone reads on the sofa because he likes being near the cat and this is the only room the cat likes. He reads whatever he grabs from the shelf, Jane Austen, W. Somerset Maugham, Zen. He has a weakness for Kerouac because he thinks Kerouac might have liked my old house. But, T-Bone said, he was glad Kerouac never passed my house. Kerouac surely would have stopped and started writing on the spot, going on and on as the pictures once had gone on and on with no beginning and no end. Yes, T-Bone said, he was lucky that Kerouac never saw the house, that Kerouac and I had never met.
    T-Bone had loved my house, too. He was the only who never asked: “What is this supposed to be?” or “Why did you draw that?”. Unlike George, he knew the paintings were just vehicles to a place inside me—streetcars to self-definition. I believe we all have those places and, for some reason, we can’t keep ourselves from trying to get there. What happens when we get lost and we can’t find the road to creativity? We talk to dead husbands and spend our paychecks on Rolling Rock.
    “No ropes, no guns, no blackmail. Then what’s your problem?” T-Bone said, settling behind the desk.
    “I love them.”
    “Ah.” He tapped on the computer keys and studied the screen. Some of the cows were due for vaccinations that week. He must remember to call the vet, he said. As if he would forget.
    “I mean, in a way, they’re family. Families always think they know what’s best for you, and they aren’t shy about telling you what it is.” I flung myself on the sofa, bouncing off the cat. “Odie’s already given me a check for the supplies. And yesterday Reverend Swan dropped by with a cassette tape of ‘inspirational sax’. To help me get in the mood, he said.”
    “Don’t worry,” T-Bone frowned at the computer screen and mumbled distractedly. “It’ll all work out.”
    I glared at him. “You’re a real pain in the ass when you’re mellow.”

    The traffic stopped, started, stopped again. I love sugar maples, I adore birches, I ogle oaks, but I sure wouldn’t drive two hundred miles to see their leaves die.
    The trees crawled past the window of my ancient green van which was as exasperated with the pace as I was. It choked and rattled, scowled and threatened to dump me in the middle of nowhere with a hundred pounds of dead engine. The van and I hate people who ride the brake.
    Twenty minutes. Forty minutes. An hour late. While Freda wore down the thick soles of her white, orthopedic shoes at the Round Corners Restaurant (“You think I’m going to let my arches drop? I’m