The Painted Table, page 22
The third box is the one made of wood they had found in the basement. Inside are newspaper clippings, turned brown, dating from the 1920s and ’30s. Beneath them, dating from the late 1800s and into the next century, is a pile of yellowed papers, most of them legal documents.
She finds several birth certificates, vaguely recognizing the names of her mother’s siblings. One is for Joann Mabel Kirkeborg, born March 4, 1913. There is a manifest from a cargo ship that lists her grandfather, Knute Kirkeborg, age eighteen, as a worker on board.
And here is her grandparents’ marriage license.
She opens an envelope that contains her grandmother’s certificate of death.
“Clara Isabella Kirkeborg . . . Cause of death . . . exhaustion from hysteria and acute mania. Place of death . . . State Hospital for the Insane, State of North Dakota, May 4, 1920.”
Saffee’s heart thumps. Hysteria? Acute mania? Hospital for the Insane? The words glare like neon lights. Her mother and her grandmother? Insane? What was that term she learned in psychology? Evolutionary lineage. For an instant, for only an instant, her chest tightens.
But God.
God has promised her—her life will be different. She must believe that this box contains a view into other people’s lives, not hers. At the same time, she is saddened to learn about her grandmother. Exhaustion would be expected after bearing, how many children? Nine? Maybe there were also miscarriages. Joanne had told her that her mother’s last baby, a girl, was given away. What happens to a mother who carries a baby within her body and then it is taken from her? What might she be driven to? In her grandmother’s case, it seems to have been mania.
Another question burns within Saffee. Had her mother ever looked into this box? Had she read the “Certificate of Death of Clara Isabella Kirkeborg”? She probably had. If so, maybe she concluded that mental illness was very likely her destiny also.
Saffee goes to the kitchen, pours a glass of iced tea, and sits for a while on the back step. Perhaps Saffee’s grandmother Clara was at wit’s end trying to love and care for all of her brood. She thinks about her mother’s decline into darkness and kinship with the table. By default, perhaps Joann was unloved, or at least felt so. What could give greater pain? Pain so deep it could never be covered over, least of all by paint.
Painting was Joann’s intentional action, as Jack calls it, against powers that beset her. But painting the table hadn’t spared her from mental illness. Has Jack been wrong?
Words of comfort from the past return. I will lead you and guide you with my eye upon you.
Saffee concludes that action in and of itself is not the answer. It must be the right action. Her mother’s painting was done in torment. It created ugliness—for the painter, and for the painted. Saffee’s work, in contrast, is to search for goodness and to restore beauty.
Her perspective renewed, she goes back to the bedroom, wondering what else is in the old wooden box. In a yellowed paper folder, she finds six fragile pages printed in Norwegian that look to have been torn from a magazine. A faded photograph of a weathered, somber-looking man and woman appears on the first page. The names beneath are Anders and Maria Kirkeborg. She recognizes them as the names burned into the underside of the Norway table, her grandfather Knute’s parents. Another generational jump backward, to what?
Saffee looks into the rugged face of the man who, in a sense, she already knows. A sensitive artist, the skilled craftsman who many years ago labored to make a table. She hopes that the wife beside him was a good woman, a woman of strength and wholeness. The pages appear to be biographical. If only she could read them.
Seated at the circulation desk, Saffee looks up to see a graduate student she recognizes in line. She rightly assumes that Leif Bergstrom is waiting to check out research materials on plant pathology, as he often does. She’s been hoping for days, ever since she opened the old wooden box of papers, that he would show up again. It’s Saturday morning, a time she usually doesn’t work, but today she agreed to substitute for a coworker and now is glad she did. The folder, with the article featuring her great-grandparents, is in a paper bag at her feet.
She has never spoken to this student, other than to answer his brief questions, but by his name, and more so his accent, she is fairly certain he is Norwegian.
“Mr. Bergstrom?” she says as he reaches the desk. “I was wondering, I mean, are you, I mean, do you ever . . .” She takes a deep breath and begins again. “I have something I need translated. You are Norwegian, aren’t you?”
Leif Bergstrom looks a little surprised and says, “Yah. I am from Norvay.”
Saffee removes the folder from the bag and hands it to him across the desk. “Is it possible that you, or do you know someone, who could translate this for me? It’s six pages. I think it’s a biography of my great-grandparents, and I’d love to know more about them.”
The student looks at the article and politely tells her that he is way too busy to help. He’s preparing his dissertation for his PhD, he says, but perhaps his wife, Ingrid, would be interested. How much would she pay?
They agree on twenty-five dollars and he looks pleased. Leif Bergstrom leaves the library with the old folder tucked into his Scandinavian-looking knapsack. She had not had the presence of mind to get his phone number.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
NEWLY WED
Saffee returns home from the library in the early afternoon. She finds Jack studying baseball stats, his lanky body draped over the end of the love seat. She drops her purse, leans over, and pecks him on the forehead.
“Hi,” she says, tousling his thick brown curls.
“Hi, sweetie.” His eyes only momentarily leave the sports page.
She’s eager to tell him about perhaps finding a translator for the biography, but he looks preoccupied. “I’m starved,” she says. “Have you had lunch?” Three steps take her into their tiny kitchen, and from the clutter she knows the answer. Her hands go to her hips.
“You wouldn’t make a very good Indian,” she says under her breath.
“Mmm?”
“Jack, do you know you leave a trail anyone could follow?” Her head does an upward twitch.
“Yeah, it was an amazing graze,” he quips, without looking up.
Mess had never been tolerated in Saffee’s upbringing and was certainly no joking matter. Its appearance catches her off guard. “I bet I can tell you everything you’ve done while I was gone.”
Not inquiring if he wants to hear, she begins a litany. “For starters, you ate some of the leftover meatloaf.” She claps down the cap on the ketchup bottle, shrouds the remaining inches of meat with plastic wrap, and spirits them both into the refrigerator, shutting the door with enough vigor to rattle the jars inside.
“Aha! It was a meatloaf sandwich,” she says, shoving slices of bread back into their bag. Gathering momentum, Saffee addresses the saltshaker as she thrusts it into the cupboard. “Just in case the pepper misses you,” she says with animation.
Clunk. She throws a Pepsi can into the wastebasket. Hard. Soft drinks were only allowed for the most special of occasions in her home. She probably had only three or four in her entire childhood. And those certainly did not contain caffeine. Saffee darts a glance at oblivious Jack, who must be focused on something of great importance. Is he even listening?
“You sat here at the table,” she continues, a little louder, jerking one of the stainless steel chairs into place and snatching up a hand towel that dangles from its red plastic seat.
She picks up a postcard from the table. It’s from April, the first one in months.
Hey, you two Love Birds! I called Daddy and he told me you got married. Congratulations! So sorry I couldn’t be there. Hope you understand I’m pretty busy looking for my own Romeo—I sure dig these Italians!
Love and Kiss, Kiss!
April
Saffee’s eyes do a big-sister roll. She drops the card and continues her mission.
“Ah! A crossword puzzle while you ate,” she chortles, picking up the completed work, a ballpoint pen, and a smeary plate.
“I am impressed you do crosswords with a pen,” she huffs. “I’ll give you credit for that.” She carries the plate to the sink where a bar of soap has slid off the counter, leaving a sudsy path before plopping into a puddle of water.
“Jack washed his hands. Give him another point. Only three cupboard doors open?” Slam. Slam. Slam.
With this, Jack turns his head and gives her a long, quizzical look.
She waits, daring him to respond.
Finally, he says, matter-of-factly, “I live here,” and returns to his reading.
Saffee is muzzled. She pours herself a glass of milk, picks up a box of graham crackers, and goes out the back door. She sits on the top step to munch and mull. This isn’t the first time she’s been huffy about Jack’s disregard for keeping their small house tidy. Weren’t husbands, as well as wives, responsible to keep things neat?
It wouldn’t be difficult to pick up after him—but would that be fair? She doesn’t like to think he regards her as his maid.
Her mother was employed as a maid when she and her father met, and again maid and caregiver during the war years in San Francisco. As in other things, she isn’t eager to follow suit. But throughout Saffee’s childhood there was little need for Joann to pick up after Nels. For all his lack of polish, he was as fastidious as she. Certainly no crumbs ever fell off his plate.
A magazine lying on a chair flickers in her memory. Young Saffee had carelessly left it there. “How can anyone sit in this chair if you don’t pick up after yourself?” her father had demanded, shaking his finger at her. The reprimand had stung and helped to foster a lasting conviction of how things “ought to be.”
But wait. Why would she want to perpetuate a mind-set now that had, in part, made childhood so unpleasant? The troubling thought plays over and over in her mind. She flinches as her own petty, disapproving words ring in her ears.
She thinks of Jack’s mother. From the first time Jack had taken Saffee home to meet his parents, she couldn’t help but notice how Harriet adored her less-than-orderly husband and attended to his needs without complaint. It seemed to give her joy to serve him. Of course, Saffee had heard no complaint from James either.
Roles and rules in Jack’s home were quite different from those in Saffee’s. So . . . Jack must presume . . . while Saffee presumes . . . oh dear. Her shoulders slump; she takes another cracker.
Okay, not so fast. The new bride juts out her chin. Jack lives here, but she does too. Why is she the one expected to change?
“Your mother ain’t happy unless she’s mad about somethin’.”
. . . Your life will be different . . .
Again, recollections bring a clarifying moment. Saffee considers that there are times in life when she will have to make things different, make things better. It will not just happen with a touch of some celestial wand. Change might involve struggle, might take time. Hadn’t she watched her mother take the trivial things of life way too seriously, leaving no energy to deal properly with matters that were truly important? What terrible thing had Jack done? Merely made a bit of a mess. While she—she had smattered an unredeemable half hour with rubbish much more difficult to clean up.
From her perch on the step, she has been staring into the backyard, not seeing it. Now the lawn mower, covered with grass clippings, comes into focus. While she was gone, Jack had cut the grass. That was nice. But he could have cleaned the grass off . . . Stop! It’s trivial.
Saffee hurries around the house to the garage and finds a broom. Returning to the backyard, she is arrested by its charm. Jack had not only mowed that morning but edged the perimeter. And she sees a mound of pruned, dead branches, tied and stacked against the house. The redbud trees proclaim a flurry of spring color—color that, in her bad mood, she hadn’t noticed. She admires the thriving, newly planted young chrysanthemums they had put in the ground together, even though she alone had done the prior ruin.
She leans on the broom beneath a brilliant blue sky, drinking in the heady scene. Their first yard. Even if it is rented, it is, for this time, their yard. Her whole life is filled with beautiful gifts—Jack being the best. How could she have been so easily seduced to criticize him?
She looks down at the broom.
“Did I tell you that she hit my legs with a broom handle?”
Saffee quickly brushes grass off the mower and pushes it around the house and into its place in the crowded garage. She’ll go in immediately to apologize.
Exiting the garage, she collides with Jack coming around the corner.
“Hey, hon, how about going to the baseball game tonight?” he says. “Bill’s got some extra tickets.” In one hand he holds the broom she had dropped in the backyard and in the other is her forgotten milk glass. The box of graham crackers is under one arm. She looks into his face and grins sheepishly.
“I’d absolutely love to,” she says, taking the broom. “Who’s playing?”
Maybe she will go to the concession stand. Maybe she will drink a Pepsi.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
TENDRIL TANGLE
Early on an August Saturday, Saffee slips out of bed, being careful not to disturb Jack. He had grappled with actuarial formulas until 2:00 a.m., and she had worked until nearly eleven under lamplight in the garage, enjoying the cool evening silence. When she saw a celebration of fireflies blinking in the velvet dark, she rushed inside and pulled Jack away from his books out into the diamond-studded night.
They stood close, surrounded by the enchantment, until Jack said he must go back in.
“Aww,” she objected, “you know what they say, ‘All work and no play makes Jack . . .’”
“So, ‘they’ think I’m a dull boy?” He laughed.
“Never,” she said emphatically, planting a kiss on his lips.
Now, in robe and slippers, she pads into the dark garage and raises the door. The morning sun, as if eagerly waiting, floods inside.
She turns and admires the tabletop, finally free of its multicolored past. She glides a hand along the silky surface. Last night she sanded its fine grain until it yielded a delicate sheen. Its daylight debut is even better than she’d hoped. But there is much more to do. Today she’ll begin restoring the apron, that intimidating four-inch-deep carved piece that rims the perimeter.
At eight o’clock, Saffee drives the VW to the hardware store and outfits herself with two gallons of stronger, smellier remover, a wickedly stiff wire brush, and a blunt probe to remove loosened paint from deep crevices. And more gloves. And more sandpaper.
Back in the garage, Saffee clips her swinging ponytail to the top of her head and pours a quantity of the new remover into a work bucket. Wrinkling her nose, she drags a brush full of the amber liquid onto a small area of carved vines. The serpentine twists and turns have always suggested to her some struggle between good and evil. They probably represented something similar to her mother. Joann frequently had pointed out dualities, such as truth versus lies, beauty versus ugliness.
She imagines her great-grandfather Kirkeborg coaxing the wood to release the enigmatic motif with his chisel. She wonders if he, like her mother, had imagined a certain presence. Her talented ancestor would undoubtedly be terribly disappointed to know that his lovely work had been reduced to a trap for paint.
The remover bubbles. She tries the new brush, applying pressure to the stiff bristles to test them. She’s learned that many layers of paint can be scratched and grooved without jeopardizing the wood beneath. Progress is almost imperceptible and Saffee has abundant time to muse while she scrapes. Being unfamiliar with Norwegian lore, to her the design suggests something Shakespearean.
Whose reptilian head lurks in yonder braided vine?
Whose sin’ster eye leers my very soul?
She chuckles, just like her mother used to, entertained by her own strung-together words. Jack advised Saffee to be grateful for gifts from her mother. She’s not sure if composition is one of them. Did Joann write something about this vine? If so, it might be in one of those spiral notebooks. Saffee debates again whether or not she wants to read them.
She wonders if the vine has a botanical name. She’ll have to ask Leif Bergstrom, the Norwegian plant pathologist (pathologist, how fitting)—if she ever sees him again. He seems to have disappeared.
How many times as a young girl did Saffee see her mother apply wet paint over dry with the intensity of a combatant? Her mother’s every stroke seemed to increase her agitation. But conversely, as Saffee wages a new war, this one to loosen and remove those painted layers, she senses liberation. In fact, a triple liberation. She dares believe that the wood, and she herself, and her mother also . . . “Oh, God,” she whispers. “Please, Lord, set her free!”
She’s trying to establish a habit of calling her dad every Sunday afternoon. She’s learned that Joann seems to be coping acceptably well and showing interest in minor decorating of their new mobile home. He does not suggest that she and Jack visit. Neither does Saffee.
Coming from their street-side mailbox, Jack appears on the driveway. He steps into the garage, waving a postcard.
“A princess!” He sounds amused. “They made her a princess!”
“Who? What are you talking about?” She puts down the bristle brush and takes the card from him, trying not to stain it with her gloves.
It’s from April. Saffee recalls that the last they had heard she was in Italy. Wrote she couldn’t get an audience with the pope, so she settled for a Swiss guard or something like that.
Saffee reads aloud, “‘I’m on Samos—a tiny, picturesque Greek island. Gorgeous. The villagers have made me their princess because of my blond hair.’”
“Well, that sounds like April,” she says. “She was always pretending something.”
