The plan was this: we’d stay in Flagstaff for three days and then begin the final leg of our journey — east on Interstate 40, north on I-25, and then east again on I-80 to get us, one week later, back where we started: South Bend, Indiana, where our lives would once again settle into their customary off-season routines, and the summer, now behind us, would shimmer in the glow of warm recollection. (For the most part.)
It took Clint no time at all to back the trailer up Gabby and Gertrude’s concrete drive so that we could easily uncouple the car for use around town during our stay. The two sisters had stood with folded arms and expressions that anticipated disaster to the flowerbeds and shrubbery flanking the drive. But Clint, with expert aplomb, harmed not a single bloom or branch. We’d embraced each other a little tentatively in the yard upon arrival and noted how long it had been since we’d last seen one another, but postponed any extended catch-up conversation for later. Both of the women, now in their fifties, had cocked their salt-and-pepper heads at R.J. and Lisha and seemed, from their curious looks, set to ask questions that Clint’s insistence on getting the rig out of the street did not permit answering.
The car and rig now neatly situated, we were all ushered into the house, which resembled, as did many of the homes of Flagstaff in the sixties, a mountain villa: lots of wood and a steeply pitched roof to discourage accumulation in any appreciable amount of the hundred or so inches of snow the city received each winter. Gabby, as her name implied, was the far more talkative of the two sisters. She was also the energetic one — pouring iced tea and spooning sweetener and plumping throw pillows to make everyone comfortable.
It made me tired just to watch her.
“We didn’t know you had children,” said Gabby, finally sitting down in a chair. All the sitting furniture in the room was grouped around the large stone fireplace, which, this being summer, sat cold and tomblike. The placement of the television at the opposite end of the room made me wonder if the two sisters watched their favorite shows over their shoulders. Or maybe the furniture was grouped this way for the express purpose of allowing us to speak to one another comfortably (though “comfortable” conversation would be in short supply this evening).
There seemed to be a formality and a certain exactitude to the way the sisters lived. Gabby worked at the university, in the admissions office. Gertrude was owner and manager of her own gift shop. The town attracted a lot of tourists going to and coming from the Grand Canyon. I’m sure that Gertrude kept that shop immaculate — as cleanly ordered as the large living room in which I found myself sitting stiffly erect, wishing that this visit didn’t have to last three days. Wishing, as well, that I could just sweep up the kids and throw them in the car, which now sat unmoored from our currently stationary mobile home, so that we could go tramping around the huge Ponderosa forest that climbed the hills within view of the sisters’ panoramic living room picture windows. I would do this while Clint “caught up.” While he and his estranged half-siblings said everything that needed to be said between marginal family members. And then we could be relievedly on our way.
It would not be nearly that easy.
“The children,” Gabby repeated, pointing at R.J. and Lisha as if they were odd little souvenirs we’d picked up during our travels. “When did you adopt them?”
Clint shook his head. “We didn’t adopt them.”
Gabby bunched her lips together and gave my husband a hard, penetrating look. “If these are not your children, then just whose children are they?”
“They’re our children. But only for the summer,” Clint answered decisively, if not a little elliptically. “This tea is good. Are we eating here tonight or going out? Natalie doesn’t eat red meat, so I don’t ask her to cook it. I wouldn’t mind going out for a steak.”
“Whatever you’d like, Clint,” answered Gabby. “But I’m still confused. ‘Only for the summer.’ What do you mean by that?”
“Just what I said,” answered Clint. “I would have explained already what it is that Natalie and I do with the kids each summer, but we haven’t really made much of an effort to stay in touch, now have we?”
Gertrude, who had been sitting in silence, her brow furrowed, the teeth of her lower dental plate chewing her upper lip lightly but intently, now made a contribution to the conversation. “Am I the only person in this room to notice that these two children are…colored?”
“They don’t want us to use the word ‘colored’ anymore, Gertrude, darling,” said Gabby to her older sister. “They say ‘black,’ as in ‘black and beautiful.’” Gabby was looking right at Lisha now. “And you are, honey. You are both black and beautiful. But what else are you?”
“What my husband means to say,” I broke in, “is that we have not formally adopted these children, but they are ours in every other possible respect. I mean during the summer.”
“Natalie,” said Gabby, without making any attempt to soften her delivery, “you’re making no sense. Where did these two black children come from?”
Lisha traded a look with Clint and me that said she wanted to be the one to answer. “We come from South Bend, Indiana,” she said without hesitation. “My brother and I live in an orphanage there.”
“You mean when you’re not living with my brother and sister-in-law?” asked Gabby.
“That’s right,” I said. “So tell me about that big fluffy dog out in the backyard, Gabby. He looks like Tramp, doesn’t he, kids?”
R.J. and Lisha agreed that the English sheepdog in the backyard, who was pressing his furry nose against the window and wagging his tail, looked very much like Tramp from the TV sitcom My Three Sons. And they wanted to play with him.
“Can R.J. and Lisha go out and play with the dog?” I asked Gabby.
“Of course. He’s very friendly. But don’t leave the backyard.” Almost as an afterthought she added, “It’s getting dark.” As the children were going out, Gabby explained that Flagstaff gets very dark at night because outdoor lighting is kept very low to accommodate night-sky viewing from the city’s two nationally renowned observatories.
A moment later, Clint said, “Natalie and I tried to have children of our own for years. When we finally gave up, we made other arrangements.”
“Isn’t the normal course to formally adopt? Why not these children, for example?”
“Oh, Heavens, no!” exclaimed Gertrude.
Clint looked to me to answer. “There are reasons that we’ve chosen not to adopt.” I watched through the window as R.J. and Lisha fell instantly in love with the dog, whose name, we soon learned, was Dawser.
“What reasons?” persisted Gabby. “You’re being awfully mysterious. Why do you come into this house and act so mysterious?”
“I’m sorry,” was all that Clint said, his head bowed. I noted that his Keds-clad right foot was nervously pawing the deep shag carpet.
“Well, at any rate,” Gabby went on, “I don’t think it’s a healthy game to play with children — taking them three months out of the year and pretending to be their parents and then putting them right back into the orphanage to spend the rest of the year.” The topic had finally been put to bed with this pronouncement. “It’s too late to go out. I’ll start dinner. You said you’d be here by six-thirty and it’s already past eight.”
Gabby got up and left the room. “I’ll give her a hand in the kitchen,” I said to Clint, and followed. Later that night, Clint related to me the private exchange that then took place between him and Gertrude.