Featured Fiction: K. C. Frederick
K. C. Frederick has written six novels, one of which, Inland, was the winner of the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award. His many short stories have been published in journals like Epoch, The Missouri Review, The Kenyon Review and Shenandoah and a number have received further recognition by being anthologized and cited in The Best American Short Stories. He’s been the recipient of an NEA grant and was a Fellow at Yaddo. After teaching English for over thirty years at U. Mass./Boston, he is now retired.
An Introduction by John Fulton:
K. C. Frederick’s masterful and subtle short story “Losing Lucia” does what too little of our fiction does these days: it tells the story of a friendship between women in later life. Recent novels and short fiction have certainly explored the bonds between girls and women, but these narratives often focus on coming of age or women making their way as adults together, seeking out love and professional success. While the reader will initially come to know Joan and Lucia through their husbands, both men do — in this case, fortunately — what men tend to do later in married life: they die. This leaves these widows to discover renewed independence and a rich friendship that may, in its way, rival their former married lives. This is a complex and layered story, which is also about loss and the threat of betrayal. Perhaps, most of all, Frederick is interested in the surprising and enduring resources of these women. “Losing Lucia” shows us both grief and affirmation, friendship and autonomy, intimacy and strength.
Losing Lucia
The first time Joan suspects that something might not be quite right with Lucia is when they’re hiking on one of the nearby trails. Their destination is Owl Town, the site of a settlement that was abandoned in the nineteenth century. All that remains today are a few cellar holes almost hidden in the regrown forest. Nobody is sure why the handful of settlers left Connecticut so abruptly. Most likely their imaginations were fired by the opening of new territories in the midwest where, it was reported, a plough could move through a mile of rich soil without finding a rock. “I know, I know,” Joan can hear Lucia say, “but that doesn’t mean there couldn’t have been other things.” She’s fascinated by stories of the Owl Town curse, which is why she’s usually enthusiastic about going there. This time, though, when they come to the Turtle, a large rock beside a stand of young white pines where the trail turns steeply upward, Lucia says, “I’m pooped.” She leans into the slope, her hands on her knees. “Let’s take a rain check.” Lucia, who always seems to have endless energy.
“No problem.” Joan is disappointed—you never know what you’ll find poking around among the ruins of the old settlement: shards of blue crockery, a rusty farm implement, even an Indian arrowhead—but the women stand there for a few moments, breathing the sharp, dry smell of pine needles, and then make their way back. It’s only later at home, looking out at the dark forest as she sips a cup of lemon zinger tea, that Joan finds herself remembering other times when Lucia uncharacteristically pulled back from one activity or another. And, come to think of it, didn’t her breathing seem more labored back there at the Turtle? The tea is soothing, it persuades Joan that she was overreacting when she felt a vague tremor of dread at their parting.
Lucia’s arrival here was a godsend for Joan. The cluster of people who summered together on Indian Mountain had been growing testy of late, their once healthy accord threatened by noisy squabbles over seemingly small matters, like whether or not to keep paying to repair the crumbling communal barn. What that quarrel revealed was that a significant number of Joan’s neighbors were more interested in rising real estate values here in Litchfield county than in hanging on to symbols of community. An association founded almost a century earlier on vaguely socialist ideals seemed not to be aging well, and it wasn’t always easy to know what things were taken for granted anymore. It was clear that some of the younger people thought Joan’s fervent defense of the barn was proof that she was out of step with the times. Things weren’t helped when her friend Cynthia moved to Oregon, and Bill and Martha Torkelson’s bitter divorce robbed Joan of two more people she’d counted on when Martha left to be nearer her children and Bill sold the place. Suddenly, not yet sixty, Joan felt old and isolated.
The settlement on Indian Mountain had been started by a few New York doctors and their artist friends looking for a sylvan retreat where they could rough it in primitive shelters as they discussed the possibilities for a better world than the one to which they dutifully returned at the end of their vacations; but over the years a handful of people had chosen to live on the mountain year-round, like her neighbor Hal Bolden, a sculptor who had a bit of a reputation in the city, and not just for his work. Hal was a wiry, brash and stubborn man, a drinker who tended to get loud and often obnoxious when he’d been hitting the bottle. After some disagreement or other in the city, he had a Saul-on-the-road-to-Tarsus moment and set about with demonic energy converting his rustic cabin into a permanent residence whose quirky lines reflected his personality. Built into a slope, the house offered passersby only a low frown; inside, though, was a series of levels that harbored surprisingly liveable spaces, culminating in a spectacular vista of the Berkshire foothills. Hal was an accomplished handyman who hired out his talents, and he had no trouble finding enough jobs to keep him busy until one day when he insisted on trying to finish work on a client’s roof even though a storm was looming, and he fell to his death during a sudden downpour, which was definitely in character. There were stories that he’d been impaired by drinking, but nobody could say for sure; what everybody did know soon enough was that the house he’d built now belonged to Lucia, his third wife.
Hal was still with Sarah when he’d come up to live on the mountain permanently, but she couldn’t stand being cooped up with him as he hammered and sawed through the bitter winter, and soon he was single again, in his sixties, until one day Lucia showed up. Almost twenty years younger, of course. She was petite, she wore her dark hair in an unfashionable pixie cut, and she walked quickly with her fists clenched, as if she was determined not to miss out on something. At meetings of the residents’ association she championed the right causes, Joan was pleased to note, but she and Hal kept to themselves, and it was only after she’d been widowed and was living alone that Joan really got to know her.
Lucia had her idiosyncrasies. She occasionally liked to assume a comic voice, talking out of the side of the mouth like a gangster in an old movie. “The jig’s up,” she’d say, or “Pretty soon we’re gonna have to blow this joint.” Though she was a fine cook and was savvy about nutrition, there were times when she’d insist on going to what passed for a dive bar in the town of Runyon, declaring, “Right now I could just crush a cheeseburger and fries with onion rings on the side.”
She’d sometimes say outrageous things, like claiming to have seen a black bear walking on its hind legs in front of her house. “He looked like he was going to a party—there was a jig in his step.” When Joan protested, Lucia upped the ante. “Really, he even did a twirl. I was tempted to go out and join him.” Joan wondered how much her friend believed these stories. Since she was usually alone when she encountered these wonders, like the UFO she swore she’d seen on the way to Amenia, nobody could refute her. But she was a breath of fresh air here, and her stories didn’t hurt anyone. She was always full of life.
The two of them were so different, and of course Lucia was younger, but during the visits, when Joan arrived at the grieving widow’s house with baked goods and soups, a friendship developed that was surprisingly warm.
“It’s cancer,” Lucia says when she comes over not long after turning back at the Turtle. “It’s pretty bad.” She feels lighter, more fragile, when they hug. “I’m scared,” she says into Joan’s shoulder.
“That’s natural,” Joan tells her. “We’ll get through this.” She feels a calm descending on her, a confidence in what she’s said. She isn’t entirely dismissive of western medicine, but she’s aware of its limitations and believes wholeheartedly in the healing power of natural remedies. The fear she saw in her friend’s eyes has retreated somewhat, but Joan can see it lurking. “Let me make you some chamomile tea,” she says, and Lucia responds with a furtive smile. “It’s going to be all right,” Joan assures her. She can see that, despite the mild spring weather, Lucia is cold, so she brings her a blanket.
“Thanks,” Lucia says.
Lucia talked a lot about Hal in the days immediately after his death, while Joan listened patiently. “I mean, I’d always admired his work but when I actually met him, wow!” Joan nodded, though the Hal she remembered hardly inspired her admiration, a man who was full of himself, who enjoyed his reputation for being cantankerous. Still, she listened as Lucia described the time she knew she was going to go to bed with him. He’d been part of a symposium being held at an inn in the suburbs where no doubt he played the role of the craggy iconoclast. He and Lucia had been thrown together at the bar where Hal had regaled her with stories of his travels. “I could have listened all night,” Lucia said, and Joan smiled. “After that we went for a walk on the grounds. It was winter and there was a lot of snow. As we talked I got so hot I just threw myself into a snowbank to cool down.”
“You mean really, actually?”
“Yeah, actually.”
“And what was Hal’s reaction?”
“At first he laughed, then he joined me on the snowbank.”
“I guess he’d been drinking,” Joan ventured.
“Oh, we’d both been drinking,” Lucia said, “but that had nothing to do with it. Hal had a sweet side that not many people saw.” A sweet side? That was an interesting concept. “By the way,” Lucia’s voice was firmer, “I know there are people who think he’d been drinking when he fell off of Sawyer’s roof, but that’s not true. Not long after we got together I made him promise not to have any alcohol before five o’clock. After that he was on his own. Hal was honest, and I know he never broke that promise.” She worked as a paralegal in Runyon and was said to be very good at her job. That was the voice Joan was hearing now, authoritative and confident. “Well,” she said, “that must have been some scene in the snowbank.”
“What about you?” Lucia asked.
“Did I ever throw myself into a snowbank?”
Lucia smiled. “No, did you do crazy things when you first met Ben?”
Joan had long since trained herself to put up a screen when confronted by memories of her marriage. The single syllable of her late husband’s name had become a word in a language she didn’t understand, sound without meaning. “No,” she smiled. “Not that I remember.”
Lucia was looking away, her eyes glistening. Joan reminded herself that all this was no doubt part of the grieving process. Eventually Hal’s flame would dim.
Chemo has taken its toll on Lucia. Her wonderful complexion has turned grey and papery, she’s listless, she has little appetite for the soups Joan brings her. “Here, try a little,” Joan urges, but Lucia shivers when the spoon touches her lips. “Sorry,” she says, “it’s the chemo.” Then she laughs. “At least I’m not losing my hair.”
As spring gives way to summer, though, things seem to get better. “Hey, this soup is really tasty,” Lucia says. There’s more color to her face. She isn’t ready for a serious hike, but she has no problem walking to Joan’s house for a visit these days. Mostly, though, Joan visits her. There’s a wary hopefulness in Lucia’s eyes. “Look,” she says, pointing to the bird feeder, “look at those hummingbirds.” Tiny blurs of red, green, and yellow hover and dart before the wrought iron structure from which several feeders are suspended, frantically beating wings make a buzzing sound.
“It’s an omen,” Joan says. “They’ve come back all the way from the southern hemisphere. That’s reassuring, isn’t it?”
Lucia is smiling. “I remember when Hal made that feeding station. He was so driven to keep out the squirrels and chipmunks. He called them clever and determined adversaries. There was no way you could keep all of them out, he said. The best you could do was to make it as hard as hell for them.”
Joan doesn’t say anything. She feels the warm sun on her skin, she looks at the dazzle of color at the feeding station. “This is a good day,” she says, briefly touching Lucia’s arm.
“It is,” Lucia answers. On her desk are pictures of Hal’s work. “I’ve been thinking about something,” she says. “When I get better I’m going to see what I can do about putting together a book of photos of Hal’s work. I could get friends to write some commentary.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Joan says. Really, anything that encourages her and gets her thinking about the future is a good thing.
“I mean, he hadn’t done anything in years, and it would be so easy to be forgotten.”
Looking back at how she’s arrived at this point in her life, Joan knows she’s lucky to have got here. She’s aware of other less pleasant outcomes had she not taken control of her own story. After Ben died she was a zombie, first from the shock of it—energetic, supremely confident Ben, gone suddenly at the age of thirty-two when his car was T-boned by a teenager on drugs who raced through an early-morning red light as if it were the gate of heaven, which in a way it was for him as well as for Ben. That there was a third fatality complicated matters; that she was a student of Ben’s caused heads to shake. It was only later, at the memorial service, when so many attractive former students weepily confessed their admiration for their former teacher, that Joan began to sense the full extent of her late husband’s betrayal. She hadn’t been naive, but she’d guessed Ben’s straying was limited to a handful of opportunistic occasions. Before long she had to concede that those opportunities were far more plentiful, and that Ben had availed himself of them to the fullest. Nor was she comforted by acquaintances who seemed to enjoy too much their roles as comforters. In the end, the city itself became a reminder of the disaster her life with Ben had been, the quiet acceptances she’d fallen into.
She needed a radical change, she told herself, and her mind kept coming back to the place on Indian Mountain. Of course it was just a summer house, but a small inheritance from an aunt enabled her to have it winterized, room by room, over the course of a year. She’d always enjoyed being on the mountain more than Ben had. Possibly he’d chafed at being away from his admiring harem. After she got a job in the library in a nearby town, she set a pattern for herself. Routine and habit helped her, but there were times when upswellings of her bitter loneliness convinced her that moving here was a disaster. Getting through that first winter alone in that partially insulated house was hard, but gradually she discovered that she had the resolve to do it, she was stronger than she’d known herself to be. She got involved in local politics, joining a group that was fighting the pollution of the river and opposing a developer who, if he had his way, would turn the town of Runyon into his personal Disneyland. She discovered that there were other lonely people in this part of the world with whom she could make a temporary connection. Her affairs were brief, with no strings attached, but it pleased her that she was able to feel happiness again, as much as she needed. More importantly, she’d cultivated her own community up here; she had a world, and a place in that world. And to a large extent she’d made that world herself.
Things take a bad turn for Lucia later that summer. The ripple of energy she showed has quieted. There are shadows under her eyes. The chemo hasn’t cured her; western medicine is failing once again. “You need positive energy,” Joan tells her. “We’re going to get through this together.” Lucia smiles wanly, but Joan can once again see the fear in her friend’s eyes.
For a long time neither of them says anything. Determined to keep up her friend’s spirits, Joan reminds her of their trip to Nantucket. “Remember when we almost got swept away by the ocean?”
Lucia doesn’t respond immediately. “Oh, yeah,” she says at last, her mouth slowly curving into a smile, “that was something, wasn’t it?” They’d gone to the island on a whim of Lucia’s. “These trees are closing in on me,” she said. “I need to breathe sea air. Why don’t you come with me?” She spoke out of the side of her mouth. “Let’s blow this burg.” They stayed at a B&B, walking and biking around the island where the sharp smell of privet combined with the salty air of the Atlantic. On their walks they talked about their childhoods, Lucia’s in a gritty Pennsylvania town, Joan’s in Westchester. “My family was a wreck,” Lucia said. “My mother wanted me to be a nun, somebody who could pray for us, and believe me we needed prayers.” She was married at eighteen and divorced by the time she was twenty. “Rory,” she said. “Honest to God, I think I married him for his name.” She laughed. “I lost track of him ages ago.” In spite of their differences, they found surprising congruences like their girlhood passion for the Nancy Drew mysteries. Joan even confessed to her friend that what she’d really loved about her handsome, charismatic husband was his mind. “It was his sexiest quality.” The memory of her disappointment with Ben brought sadness, but she was glad to be able to talk about it.
The last day of their visit was grey and cloudy, but they went to the beach where Lucia wanted to explore a distant hump of land that was accessible now at low tide. “It could be an island,” she said, “with a tunnel leading to the bottom of the sea.” Whatever it was, Joan protested, it was far away, but Lucia’s enthusiasm was irresistible and the two of them trudged across the slick beach toward the grey blur on the horizon until the hiss of water behind them signalled that the tide had turned, and they suddenly realized they were in danger of being trapped out there, far from land. Though they were terrified, they laughed as they staggered through the rushing water that was shin high by the time they were safely ashore. “Jesus,” Joan said, “we could have been swept away.”
“Yeah,” Lucia said, “lost among the sharks and whales and creatures of the sea. What a rush, though. My heart’s pounding. Is yours?”
Joan couldn’t deny it. “It certainly is.”
Lucia isn’t getting better, that’s clear, but Joan continues to make the short walk to her place with her teas and soups. She brings candles too, trying to induce an atmosphere that might help her friend recover her strength. Or at least to make her more comfortable. Joan isn’t superstitious. She doesn’t expect her natural remedies to work miracles. At the very least, her ministrations have brought the two of them closer. Alone, a tearful Joan recognizes that her friend is going to die, but she’s determined that the journey will be as easy as she can make it. It will be their last adventure together.
One day, when she comes to Lucia’s door, though, she doesn’t answer Joan’s knock. Then Joan realizes that her friend’s car isn’t there either. Strange that she’s gone off for a drive by herself in her condition.
“I thought you didn’t like that priest,” Joan tells her when Lucia explains that she went to Mass in the nearby village. “Isn’t he the one that was so hawkish about the war?” Joan remembers the two of them standing vigil with a handful of others in the triangle near the general store. Not many people supported them in those early days.
“There’s a new priest,” Lucia says.
“Hm,” Joan says. She considers herself spiritual without being religious, and as far as she knows Lucia has never shown much zeal in the practice of her faith or complied with its rituals and regulations. Of course her sickness might well have been behind this regression.
“So how did you feel going back there?” Joan asks.
Lucia nods. “It was good.”
“I brought some scented candles,” Joan says. On her way out she notices the rosary on the bedroom dresser.
When Joan sees a strange car at Lucia’s, she’s mildly curious. A repairman, maybe, or one of her co-workers come to see her? She happens to be walking in the road when someone leaves Lucia’s house, a thin man in his forties, dressed in black. She notices his gaunt face, the five o’clock shadow, before she sees the Roman collar. Getting into his car, the stranger looks up and sees Joan. His quick, chilly smile makes her think of a shark.
She doesn’t need to pry the next time she comes over. Lucia herself tells her that Father Corelli stopped by.
“Did he give you...” Joan gropes, “the sacrament?”
“No,” Lucia laughs, “he just dropped by for a visit. He gave me a blessing, though.” Color has risen briefly to her face. She looks stronger, but Joan is sure this is an illusory strength, a flush of excitement that isn’t likely to last.
“He did say he’d come by again, though. He told me he could bring the sacrament if I was too sick to come to church.” Joan feels a tightening in her chest. “I told him I was going to keep coming as long as I could.”
When she goes home, Joan thinks about this Father Corelli, this shark who came here to prey on a vulnerable creature. What does he know about Lucia? Has he stood vigil with her in a cold drizzle when the local yahoos in their flag-bedecked pick-up trucks came by, chanting “USA, USA,” taunting them, calling them names, looming threateningly? No, the man in black is a latecomer. How could he know about the time Lucia threw herself into a snowbank, or that day on Nantucket when she and Joan ran, terrified but laughing, from the incoming tide? Does he know that his sick parishioner loves reggae music, Talking Heads and Eva Cassidy, that when she’s really down she’ll pour herself a double shot of Maker’s Mark to sip slowly as she listens to Leonard Cohen?
The priest continues to come, sometimes accompanied by a large woman Lucia described as “an extraordinary minister,” mostly, though, alone. Fall comes to the mountain, bringing a sharp cold to the early nights. When Joan comes to visit she makes sure to put another log on the fire. She brings her soups and teas, her scented candles, and Lucia is always polite, always appreciative, but as they talk now she seems distracted. Her mind elsewhere, her eyes give no clue to her feelings. There’s no disguising the continued failure of her health, though. She’s often flushed, she feels chills, she’ll be overtaken by a fit of coughing, her skeleton seems to be looking out from her face. Joan tries to be the friend she needs, adjusting her blanket, reading inspirational texts, but Lucia slips further away. Only the thought of the priest’s imminent arrival rouses her now, the rosary close by. Joan knows enough to give way when Father Corelli comes. Once or twice she’s run into him on her way out and the two of them acknowledge each other with the curt nods and muffled greetings of rivals.
It will only be a matter of time before Lucia’s going to have to leave the house Hal Bolden built for the hospital in Danbury. “Can you believe it?” she says weakly. “Dying in Danbury? Geez, I gotta blow that burg.” Joan smiles in acknowledgment of her friend’s sense of humor, but she can’t laugh. Father Corelli, she knows, will show up at the hospital.
Joan lowers the axe and rests for a moment. The air is bracing, she feels a tickle on her neck from the breeze out of the west, the heavy smell of wet leaves spiced by the occasional whiff of cherry wood from the split logs. Her pulse settling, she savors the warm flow of her blood, remembering Thoreau’s observation about firewood warming you twice. The dry rustle of dying leaves sends a shiver through the forest, and Joan feels strong and capable. She feels twenty years younger. Still, there’s the sadness. The impressive pile of wood she’s already split testifies that she’s ready for the season ahead—when her tight little house at the edge of the woods will stand solitary and intact in a landscape buried in snow. When she looks down the hill, though, she can see that there’s no smoke coming from the silver chimney that juts from the roof of Lucia’s house, and she tightens her grip on the axe. She remembers a country song that her friend used to play on the jukebox of the bar in Runyon, “My heart ain’t done breakin’ yet.” Lucia never asked for her at the end—the priest was enough. Joan was angry at first, but she knows that was what her friend wanted. Joan gave her what she could, just as Lucia gave her so much. At least there’s that. Even with gloves her hands have begun to blister, and she looks forward to bathing them in warm water.