The Potter's Daughter (Literary Series) (8 page)

Will was not only sketching
butterflies and trees.
 
At times
Emily would look up from her sketchbook to find that she had become the object
of his study.
 
Her body would go
warm under Will’s blue gaze.
 
On
Will’s square jaw, a constant sultry smile that Emily could not resist to
mirror.

Emily sketched everything.
 
For Emily each page in her sketchpad was
a prototype for a painting.
 
Emily
sketched with pastels when she could because the true subjects for Emily’s
paintings were not the objects themselves rather the colors in the light within
and around them.
 
She lived in a
universe of varying shades of illumination and her passion was to capture them.

Will’s father commented that he did
not ever remember seeing Will sit still for so long as when Will posed for
Emily by the lake.
 
When Emily gave
Will the watercolor portrait he told her that the radiating color made him look
some how courageous and that the wondrous waterscape could have been some far
off sea and not Willow Lake at all.

Emily stayed up late with Will as
he tended the kiln.
 
She told him of
her plans to collect sunrises from different places around the world.
 
They spoke of Notre Dame and the Seine,
the Pyramids and Sphinx, Crete and Knossos, and The Great Wall and The
Forbidden City.
 
Will wanted to go
to all of the places where Bellen pottery had gone before them to gather
sunrises as well.
 
Will and Emily
together listed all of those places they would pass along the way so as not to
miss the sunrises of the Mediterranean or Caribbean while their ships sailed in
the early hours.

William Bellen was a sweet, kind,
generous boy and Emily Allen was falling in love.
 
William had no need for a fall.
 
Will’s heart belonged to Emily Allen the
first time she stepped into the studio.

Will and Emily never talked about
September.
 
When time came for Emily
and Mary to go back to school, Will and Tom stayed up with them all night and
then saw them off.
 
There were no
tears or long faces.
 
The boys saw
the girls off with the same upbeat energy and humor that had been with them all
summer.
 
The girl’s car was not even
out of site when the boys put their hands on their hips and looked at each
other.
 
Will scratched his head.
 
Emily and Mary were both feeling the same
way.
 
All four of them already
feared the absence of each other’s company.

Emily and Mary wrote the boys often
telling them about the classes they were taking, the activities they were
involved in, and campus gossip that really meant nothing to anyone in Willow
Lake.
 
Occasionally Emily sent Will
sketches of the world around her and he would pin the puppies, hippies, and
university buildings on the wall.
 
Emily even sent a sketch of Mary once.
 
Will gave the portrait to Tom.
 
Tom bought the beer that night.

Will and Tom were not big on
writing so they decided to climb into Tom’s car to go see the girls.
 
The girl’s parents allowed them to live
in a small off campus bungalow their senior year.
 
Emily made buttered noodles and bread -
the bread burnt - and Mary made chicken.
 
Will and Tom bought the biggest bottle of cheap red wine they could
get.
 
Friday night was a feast and
Saturday was a headache.
 
Will and
Tom had never been to the university before so the girls said they would give
them a tour of the campus, which never happened.
 
None of them left the bungalow until
Sunday when the time came to drive back to the lake.

Tom’s car turned out to be not very
dependable.
 
Returning back home to
Willow Lake the car broke down and would not run again.
 
This did not deter Will and Tom.
 
They made their next few visits to see
the girls by hitching to the university until Tom’s father took pity on
them.
 
Tom’s father had said that he
appreciated the boy’s determination yet there would be no benefit to anyone if
they were found frozen at the side of the road.
 
The boys themselves had thought that
would happen on more than one occasion.
 
Tom’s father lent them his car every other weekend to get them through
the coldest months.

The year could not go by fast
enough for Will.
 
When the weather
got warmer, Will started hitching again so that he could see Emily as often as
he could.
 
Emily missed a few
classes yet still graduated in May without her parents being the wiser.
 
Then Emily and Mary went back to the
lake for another amazing summer.

 
The four easily fell back into the
routine of boating, swimming, late night bonfires, shared six packs of beer and
steaks from the IGA.
 
Will and Emily
worked side by side each day and Tom and Mary spent their time together at
Mary’s cabin.

In the fall, Will took on some
shifts at the IGA and Tom added some shifts to his normal schedule.
 
The girls wondered why the boys were
spending so much time working rather than spending the precious little summer
that was left with them.
 
The boys
told them that they were trying to scrape together the money for a car so that
they would not have to hitch the extra distance this winter to see girls in the
city.
 
The city was much farther
than the university.

What Will and Tom did not know is
that the girls were going to surprise them by staying at the cabin through the
winter.
 
They had fulfilled their
obligation of finishing school and had bargained with their parents for a year
off before starting their next endeavors.

The boys had a surprise for Emily
and Mary all of there own, they were not saving up for a car.
 
At a late night bonfire at the end of
August, under a full moon, the boys executed their plan.
 
They had borrowed two canoes for a
morning fishing trip.
 
After a full
fireside meal, they asked the girls if they wanted to go canoeing.
 
Each took a girl in their canoe and they
paddled out together onto the lake.
 
The lake was bright as daylight.
 
The girls suspected nothing when the boys made an excuse for each canoe
to go a separate way.
 
The boys had
done well to hold their ardor and let the evening do their talking.
 
In the middle of Willow Lake with
blankets wrapped around them and moonlight shining down, Will proposed to Emily
and Tom proposed to Mary.
 
To the
relief of the young men, both of the girls said yes.

Tom Anderson and Mary Allen were
married and moved into the cabin until a house could be built some years
later.
 
William Bellen and Emily
Allen were married and moved into his father’s family home.

Will and Emily loved the western
shore and every morning the couple would have their morning coffee in front of
the big bay window overlooking the lake, warmed by the fuchsia, tangerine, and
lilac hues that escorted the rays of the sun.

The next few years the two were
happy alone with each other, and with Will’s father.
 
The children were neither planned nor
unplanned.
 
They had wanted children
and let fate happen.
 
Michael,
Will’s protégé to carry on the Bellen craft, came first followed a bit later by
his sister Abby, every way was the shadow of her mother.
 
Where Michael shared his father’s cool
demeanor, Abby’s electricity filled the room like her mother.

As a girl Abby would wake each
morning and patter out of her room to find her father in his chair reading the
daily paper and her mother at the table with her watercolors and brushes, often
trying to capture the hues of the morning sky.
 
The sunrise was to Emily what Mont
Sainte-Victoire was to Cezanne.
 
Abby’s
mother would set everything aside to greet her daughter and pour her
juice.
 
Emily and Abby would then
discuss their day’s agendas, decipher a dream Abby had the night before, or go
over homework to be turned in that day.
 
At some point Michael would roll out of bed and sleepily join the
group.
 
Will intermittently chimed
in to report a news story he found interesting or outrageous, usually having to
do with the local community or politicians.
 
Will considered both ‘backwards’.
 
Then he would go to the stove and start
to prepare the morning feast of eggs, potatoes, bacon, and on weekend’s stacks
of pancakes.

Breakfast was the Bellen family’s
time together.
 
Young families lead
busy lives and the Bellen family was no different, rising early because they
would rarely convene again as a family until the following morning.

* * *
* *

The lakeside trees diminished as
the rocky shoreline crept up to the road around the last bend to South
Point.
 
There were three spots on
the lake where Willow Lake road ran next to the shore, in the village, Peters
beach, and at the rocks at South Point.
 
Now out of the shade of the trees the winter sunlight shown on Abby as
she drove her father’s truck.
 
To
her left nestled in the trees across the rocky shore lined cove Abby could see
the deck of the South Point Inn.
 
Perched on the hill above her, ever watching the lake as in her
childhood, Abby could see the Johansson house.
 
At the end of the bend, the blue pickup
turned right onto Johansson drive and then ventured away from the lake up and
around the hill.

From the lake the house appeared
brilliant white against the snow, up close the paint was chipped and faded in
many spots, revealing stripped patches of black and grey wood siding
beneath.
 
Having been untended for
years, unremembered stalks of tall grasses and clovers, brown and withered,
poked out through the snow around the base of the house and the yard.
 
By the side of the house, the doors of
the three-bay garage were open.
 
Two
bays were filled with lumber, large sheets of compressed wood, and stacked in
the back with what Abby thought might be drywall and hardwood flooring.
 
A large table saw stood in the third bay
surrounded by sawdust and wood chips.
 
When Abby stepped down from the pickup truck she could smell the fresh
cut of the sawdust mixed with the oil of the saw and leading from the bay into
the side door of the three-story house she could see the trail of wooden
dust.
 
Coming from somewhere inside the
large house Abby could hear saws and the rhythmic stomp of a hammer so she
headed toward the side door.

Yesterday Mitch excited Abby.
 
How could she not be attracted to
someone that spontaneously performed a song in her honor?
 
She certainly felt physically attracted
to him at the bar although that might have been the beer.
 
Abby feared today may be different.

When Abby stepped through the door
Mitch greeted her by yelling across the house.

“Hey there Abby!”

“Hey Mitch!”

“We’re up front.
 
Watch your step coming out of the
mudroom and across the kitchen, and head into the sitting room!”

Bright lights bounced off fresh
white paint in every room Abby walked through.
 
The sitting room was a large room facing
the lake with a large angled fireplace on the corner of the outer wall.
 
A chandelier cast out yellow light onto
the walnut floor and left a dim shadow in the fireplace.
 
Abby decided that the chandelier was
faux crystal because there was far too much to be real.
 
From the sitting room, Abby could see
Mitch’s reflection in the next room from a dimly mirrored set of shelves behind
a bar.
 
Mitch was standing in front
of the bar talking to one of the carpenters.
 
He looked stunning to her.
 
Abby’s heart beat noticeably
faster.
 
She felt a definite
attraction today.

From where Abby, stood she could
see the lake vista.
 
Newly seated
bay windows faced north and east.
 
Through the north window Abby could see the cerulean midday sky
blanketing the horizon.
 
The eastern
window overlooked the terrace and the glassed-in porch.

Abby gestured toward the outside terrace,
“Can I go out there?”

“Sure.
 
Just a second though, it might be better
if I come out with you.
 
It’s a bit
rickety in spots.”

Mitch finished his conversation
with the carpenter then joined Abby.

The two went out on the porch and
then out the door to the wooden deck terrace.

“It seems solid enough,” said Abby.

“For the most part.
 
I wouldn’t trust these old wooden steps
though.
 
Most of them are
rotten.
 
They’ll be replaced this
summer after the new gas lines are run for the pool.”