'You're flying United to Portland?' he asked, as we threaded our way into the main lobby. 'This way.'
He dropped my case at the appropriate window and then gestured that he was going to the Delta slot.
My ticket was validated and I was told that I'd be boarding in ten minutes at Gate 5. As I turned away from the counter, Dan joined me. He had two ticket folders in his hand but I didn't think much about it then.
'You don't leave until 4?' I asked to ease the constraint between us.
He shook his head, peering past me towards the busy entrance and then up at the clock. 'Which gate?'
'Five.'
'I'll see you there,' and with a touch of his usual fun, 'and vouch that we didn't spend the blizzard making knitting needle bombs.'
'We were more practical than that!'
Our eyes caught and we laughed.
'Make love, not war!'
'Hallelujah…'
'Amen, brother.'
That was just the right note to take as we strolled towards the security check, our arms linked. We paused before the security arch, to let others through. I felt suddenly awkward, impatient, restless and I turned to Dan. My smile faded because he wasn't wearing one. He took my hand in both his, caressing it. He wasn't looking at me, but at my hand.
'Jenny…' His name for me came out in a rush. 'Jenny, don't drop any stitches!' He gave my hand a fierce pressure before he turned and walked quickly away, without a backward look. Me? I almost collided with the security arch, trying to get through it. I don't remember boarding the plane. I was sitting, looking dumbly out the window at the occasional snow flakes when my seatmate nudged me to put on my safety belt. I thanked the man and belted up, trying not to look out the window at snowbound Denver.
Above the clouds at something like 37,000 feet (I remember the captain announced the height), the sun was achingly brilliant after three days of storm greyness. Our flying time to Portland was two hours and some minutes.
To try and pin conscious thought on some occupation, I took out my diary, to bring it up to date.
I did so, reducing to spare entries of time, place and activity the most romantic interlude of my 47 years. 'Hike with DJL; very cold, hard to walk far or long. Quiet dinner with DJL' 'Swim/DJL: hair appointment, 12. Lunch DJL 1:30': just as if he had been any professional contact or business friend..
Chapter 07
Portland was green. After four years in Ireland, I had forgotten how brown grass becomes in winter in the northern half of the States. It is depressing: more depressing than the somewhat grey 'soft' winter days of Ireland for there the grass, being green, has a brilliance all its own, as if recalling the warmth of the sun in the grey weather. I'd prefer Ireland at its green dreariest, to the States in brown winter death.
The Portland airport was compact and new, alongside the Columbia River. The view of Mount Hood and the Three Sisters as we banked to land was spectacular enough to bring me out of my temporary mental funk. Organising myself and getting to the motel completed the process. The motel was mock Far Eastern Japanesy type, dark wood, monolithic style, and full. However, it was modern, convenient, comfortable and reassuringly anonymous. I had a drink with my dinner of Pacific crab which were much sharper in taste than East Coast shellfish. I sat and watched the river swirling in the change of tide - idling in body and mind. I took a couple of sleeping pills and conked out for a night of non-tossing and not much rest.
Taking myself firmly in hand again the next morning, I phoned Mr. Porter at Portland State University. He was delighted to hear that I had emerged from the blizzard- bound midwest. They had seriously wondered whether I'd make the engagement. I affected surprise that they could doubt my ability to overcome a minor obstacle. I was scheduled to do a lecture, two roundtable discussions on writing for young adults, and to address a group of city librarians on the changing styles in children's reading. The only thing that had really changed was the availability of what children prefer to read rather than what adults think they should be reading, to improve their little minds. I happened to write what they wanted to read: fantastical adventures with (to adults) incredible creatures with magical powers.
Often, as I addressed my sceptical adult audiences, I wondered if they had had any childhoods at all; they didn't seem to have enjoyed them. Probably not. If they'd been old enough to have lived through the depression, their child-hoods must have been bleak. Young enough to have lived through the second world war, they'd have another set of influences to drive them.
My editors had remarked that my ability to 'think' as a child, a contemporary child, was what made my books so popular. Perhaps. I gave full marks to my son, Timothy. After all, it had been Tim, telling me stories at his bedtime (his earliest tales stemming from a subconscious realisation that his father was dying) which had started me on my career. Critics and child psychologists might suggest different rationales but I was there. And I diverted my anguish over Raymond's lingering death into jotting down Timmy's delightful bedtime yarns. Ray had enjoyed them, too, because I got into the habit of taping them rather than lose some of Tim's quaint phrasing in the retelling.
Tim has always been a demonstrative and affectionate boy but, at five, his sensitivity had told him that mother needed more than kisses and hugs: she needed to be diverted and consoled. So he had told me bedtime yarns to supply that need.
Now my empathic, sympathetic, sensitive son wants to build bridges and space ships. I'm surprised who shouldn't be: Tim is never predictable.
Nor, because of Tim, was my life. There was so little money left after Raymond died that I went back to teaching to support us. I was not temperamentally suited to that profession even after getting a Masters in Education. So, I compromised with a job in the university library where I could work hours to suit Tim's school schedule. One of the researchers gave me the right advice: get an advanced degree in library sciences and write my own ticket with any of the major industries who desperately needed properly catalogued and managed libraries. I went one better: I got my doctorate in library sciences, borrowing enough money from both Ray's and my own parents to finance the studies. It was a grind, but when I finished, I really did write my own ticket - with an aerospace firm in Cambridge.
Then, after years of working every spare minute, I was restless with the lonely evening hours on my hands. That's when I rediscovered the tapes of Tim's terrible tales to mother mom. They had lost none of their charm and, to till in spare time, I typed them up. I showed them, more as a joke, to a friend. She asked permission to show them to her husband who was an editor in a textbook firm. The second publisher we submitted them to signed me to a contract and it was full steam ahead.
At that point in time, Timmy was in junior high school in a very rough neighbourhood. With no effort on his part at all, he was getting straight A's, bored stiff and, with the exception of one very studious narrow-minded boy, friendless. Tim'd been in too many fights and when he got his skull fractured in a science lab (I never did find out the details), I realised that either we'd have to move from this town or Tim would have to go to a private boarding school. My editor mentioned the tax exemption for authors in Ireland and when I'd learned a bit more about the quality of Irish schools and life, I decided the gamble would be worth it. I'd enough savings and with continued effort at the typewriter on my part, plus a tax exemption, we could swing it.