Interlude

Chapter XXXII

Bygones

(Six Degrees of Separation – Side B)

"Eighty years, an old lady now, sitting on the front porch
Watching the clouds roll by
They remind her of her lover, how he left her, and of times long ago,
When she used color carelessly, painted his portrait
A thousand times, or maybe just his smile,
Her and her canvas would follow him wherever he would go

'Cause they were painters and they were painting themselves
A lovely world."

Painters – Jewel Kilcher

I – Genesis

(The creation and the fall)

[November 13th, 1859]

The ceremony was short and attended only by a few relatives and a selected handful of very close friends. The newly-weds quickly understood the protocol of such a crucial social event and, as politely as possible, thanked them all for coming. Yet only one of them expressed their gratitude with a big, toothy smile. The other fifty percent of the couple chose to remain as impartial, as distant as her troubled spirit allowed her to be.

Amanda Taggart was no more. Amanda Farindon had taken her place and the transition was, as expected, painful and undesired.

Slowness enveloped her body as the simple layers of her white dress kissed the ground. As if suspended in time and space, still mourning her dying love, the girl approached the bed with eyes that showed no affection, no sympathy, not a single sign to let her brand new husband know that she actually cared for him.

They had only shared a few moments. Everything had happened so fast. Now they were married, and that golden ring attached to her finger was proclaiming her as private property – only it was the wrong owner the one staring right back at her from the bed.

The barber seemed nervous; little remained of his determination and his unfunded urgency. They were finally alone now; husband and wife entering their bedroom for the first time yet they both were feeling the peculiar remnants of misplaced emotions and mixed up realities: the woman could still feel the warm skin of her lover caressing every inch of her body – she knew that the man waiting for her to join him on the bed had nothing to do with that mystified love she had lost only hours ago. But the magic of those hands still persisted, somehow, as if the spirit of those fingers was now trapped deep inside her soul. The barber was staring intently at her but that look upon his face had little to do with lust: in a way, it was as if the man was afraid of that pale white skin of hers.

As if his unwanted touch could shatter her, contaminate her.

The man was no fool. He knew she wasn't in love with him, knew she didn't love him.

He beckoned the young lady to come over and join him on the bed – a part of him was still hoping that, with enough patience and time, Amanda could actually develop feelings for him so he treated her kindly, almost as if willing to show her what it felt like, for a precious little creature like her, to venture the world of adulthood.

The girl sighed, discontented, but closed her eyes and joined her husband nonetheless. If anything, it was better to get this over with as soon as possible. The barber laid her on her back as he took a minute to observe her entire geography with eyes full of tenderness: her legs were pressed hard and she was still covering her breasts with her arms but it was the look of resignation reigning all over her expression the one true thing that gave her away: she would not fight this, she knew, deep inside she had always known - most things could be bargained in a marriage… but the sacred fires of the wedding night could not.

The old man mumbled nearly inaudible words of reassurance in her ear: maybe he was trying to make her feel more comfortable around him or maybe he was simply trying to embed some courage inside his own ears. Yet Amanda paid no mind. She simply rested her head on the pillow as her eyes gradually lost focus. She didn't watch him undress. Had she watched him, she would have noticed his torpid movements and his clumsy rhythm slowly taking over his motility. The barber, Mr. William Farindon, her husband, could only offer her a body already punished by time and age, with wrinkles and creases; a weakened body, a sick body. The old man ghosted over Amanda's body using his elbows at the sides of her shoulders to maintain his fragile balance but the sight of such indifferent joviality was almost mesmerizing for him; that pale skin of hers, ungraced by the blushing commotion that only shyness can bring, was reminding him of his own lost youth. The man positioned himself on top of her in a rather careful fashion yet his decaying body felt light as a feather for her. Farindon caressed her temples then guided her chin up with his index finger and placed a soft kiss on her lips – such mistrust, such coldness in her eyes were indicating him that whatever he was planning to do with her that night, he would be doing it on his own – the girl would stay there, but she was determined to be nothing but a silent, necessary participant in the consummation of their marriage; like an involuntary witness, forced to remain in the scene against their own will.

Yet she didn't fight the man, for she knew the barber was not responsible for her predicament. Her own cowardice had anchored her to that man. If only fear and doubt hadn't paralyzed her, she would have left town with Erron the second he showed her those train tickets but her own timid nature had clipped her wings before she even got a chance to soar. Now it was much too late, that man on top of her was about to erase Erron's touch from her no longer dormant body. His unwanted caresses and his unfortunate ministrations were surely about to obliterate any traces of that shared love of theirs – the love they had and the love they made, only moments before the wedding, only moments before losing it all.

Still tensed underneath the barber's body, Amanda finally began to spread her legs for her husband to claim her as his own; his sex eager to explore hers, her sex still sore from the dream-like experience that had led to her awakening. The man made his way inside her, slowly, trying his best not to hurt her, yet he stopped abruptly and stared into her big, blue eyes.

Amanda looked back at him but far from meeting the tender eyes that had observed her all night, her confused pupils were contrasted by a coldness she had never seen before inside those eyes. The man, still inside of her but frozen in place, was staring at her intently; the first traces of an uncontainable fury beginning to show.

"You are not a virgin."

His body abandoned her body in a matter of seconds. Amanda couldn't talk, couldn't even breathe – she pressed her knees against her stomach as she watched Mr. Farindon tossing her dress disdainfully in her direction. As the man got dressed, his cheeks flushed and flustered with virulent red, he yelled at her to dress up again as well and the girl obeyed, as she put her dress back on, but before she had a chance to arrange each layer of her skirt the man grabbed her violently by one of her wrists and dragged her out of their house.

They walked in silence. His convoluted pace dragging her through the night – those empty streets were the only witnesses to such a decadent scene: the groom was furious and the bride was a mess of white and sweat, her unruly hair and her rebel make-up completed the image for those wild speculations to finally gain form. The short distance separating their house from the Taggarts' home felt like an unbearable punishment she wasn't sure she could endure.

Yet the worst was yet to come.

Nathaniel received the newly-weds with concerned eyes and disbelief: the man eyed his daughter suspiciously then indicated her to wait in the foyer. Both men ventured their bodies into the darkness of the house as Amanda, all by herself, sat on the floor as pools of white sank around her shivering legs. She heard it all, from the initial: "this isn't what you promised" to the final and infamous: "I married a whore." But Nathaniel seemed calm, much to her surprise, as she heard him say that he "would take care of it." After a few moments of ramblings and nonsense, the barber left the house – he didn't even look in her direction, he just walked on by as if that person curled up in fear and shame in the foyer was nothing a but a shadow.

"Amanda, come in," Nathaniel sentenced.

Her father didn't talk to her; according to the defiant look in those eyes, the time for words was already over. The first slap caught her by surprise and her warm tears cascaded down her cheeks out of frustration. The second slap caused a timid stream of crimson to fall from the left corner of her mouth. The third slap made her scream from the top of her lungs even if she knew no one was going to help her. She got on her knees and begged her father to stop but Nathaniel's belt was already swaying mid-air, the ferocious anger in his eyes was the last thing she saw before she closed her eyes.

By the time he was done with her, the first lights of dawn had already begun to grace the horizon. She had endured her torment and now it was time to go back to a husband that despised her. Her trembling and bruised legs guided her on her way back – her dress was dirty and ragged, her auburn hair was a mess. She braced herself with arms that were already stained with purple and red, the same vicious red that was already adorning her cheeks, nose, and mouth.

As she walked on by, nearly disfigured, the first poisonous voices of a new day brushed her ears: "Her father nearly killed her; she wasn't a virgin anymore when she married the barber, the man claims he never even touched a hair on her head before the wedding night…"

Town of cowards, she thought, they had heard her scream yet no one had dared to help her.

"It must have been that boy, that one, you know? From the saloon, the singer's son. Poor kid, so troubled…"

With eyes full of tears, Amanda's incandescent body was left with no other choice but to remember that tender love of hers – the only one she had truly loved. The one she had lost forever.

II – Exodus

(Crossing the Red Sea)

[February, 26th, 1860]

The seed of their love was growing inside of her, and with a husband that had never touched her after the truncated wedding night, Amanda knew she had to leave. She had tried to play her part in the sad charade that was her marriage, and even if she knew there wasn't a better way to quiet the rumors that were constantly revolving around the couple than for them to welcome a child into the family, she was certain she could never bring herself to force that child to partake in such a fragile web of lies.

Heavy thoughts crossed her mind as she rested her hands on her growing stomach: the barber was never going to love that baby and there was an even darker obstacle: Nathaniel. A part of her suspected the minute her father found out about her pregnancy, he was going to do anything in his power to interrupt it.

So she packed her bags and left town, determined to find the baby's father – the one she had loved and lost.

No, she never got to see the world – not with him, and not even by herself. She just wandered a smaller portion of that uncharted world; the one demarcated by the frontiers of her Texan state, the one already succumbing to the fiery arms of a war that was about to destroy everything in its wake. With little money and nowhere to go, days turned into weeks and weeks slowly turned into months. She starved during her days only to rummage her hunger through the leftovers of taverns and saloons during her nights. Her skin got grazed by rain and the restless songs of the wind while that warm weight inside her belly bloomed unceasingly: that baby was the only anchor she had now, in a world filled with blood and dangers. Countless strangers walked past her, yet none of them seemed to care for the pregnant woman walking down those ghostly, dusty streets, looking for a missing lover – a missing father – that no one seemed to know.

The cruel and desolated winter made way for spring to come and wash the towns in new hues and colors. Yet her dull eyes could not seem to find solace in the fleeting comfort of flowers and sunny afternoons. Her tired bones led her to Houston; rumor had it that the soldiers were posted in the city – even if the war still wasn't a legitimized reality, the confrontation was already livid all across the country but as much as she tried to summon his name across countless lists and offices, she never managed to find him.

Spring turned to summer, finally, and the heated atmosphere of imminent war and the complete state of uncertainty that always comes with it was beginning to take its toll on her. With not a single coin left, no food and no real leads as to where to go next, Amanda began to quietly give up on her quest. July found her undernourished and defeated – she felt her body going numb, the voices surrounding her becoming mere echoes buzzing in her ears. She reached out for help but people were busy, each individual was left to their own devices; each individual only minded their own business. A woman in her forties, running towards her, was the last thing she saw before she passed out.

She woke up in a comfortable bed, surrounded by the woman who had rescued her and four other women. They introduced themselves as missionaries who were working in the name of what would become, in time, the First Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Texas. She never told them her whole story, only a selection of carefully chosen fragments illustrated their knowledge about that stranger, yet they fed her and sheltered her all the same. She offered them a partially fake identity: Amanda Black, the only identity that felt natural for her now.

She stayed with the German ladies for the rest of her pregnancy but even if she had indeed found sanctuary with those missionaries, a peaceful conclusion for her misadventures was still elusive for the troubled girl. Missus Elisabeth Neumann, the woman who had found her in the streets of Houston quickly noticed that something was wrong with Amanda's pregnancy: her belly was still suspiciously small for a woman who was only a few weeks away from giving birth. With limited knowledge of medicine, the woman understood that Amanda's poor nutritional state could not have been so decisive: there was something more.

Neumann summoned the town doctor to check on the girl's advanced pregnancy and the elderly man quickly confirmed Elisabeth's suspicions: he had seen cases like Amanda's before - the umbilical cord was simply too short to feed the baby. Having to struggle their way for food and nutrients, many babies had given up yet the one growing inside Amanda was still fighting; the girl could feel it kicking and moving inside of her and the women could perceive small movements in her belly – but the doctor was positive: Amanda's malnutrition during most months of her pregnancy had worsened the baby's chances for survival.

The doctor returned twice a week for the rest of the pregnancy to check on the girl and her baby – his advice had finally paid off: absolute rest and a proper diet had indeed helped them.

On August 2nd, 1860, Amanda gave birth to her only child: a rosy-cheeked, auburn-haired and coffee-eyed baby girl: Harriet Elisabeth Black.

III – Leviticus

(On sacrifice and moral purity)

[November 9th, 1860]

As soon as she recovered from labor, she decided it was time to resume her search. Now more than ever, she needed to find Erron and let him know that he was a father; that they were a family now. Each day, early in the morning, she would leave the baby with the missionaries only to come back right before sunset, hopeless and worried about their future.

This new schedule was not enough for Amanda – as heartbreaking as the very notion was, truth was that Harriet was slowing her down; the mother couldn't get very far because she would have to return and feed her baby, spend time with her, explain to her – even if the baby could not understand a single word - why her father was not coming home with them… days became repetitive and pointless, making her feel as if every single day she was forced to start her search from the very beginning all over again.

The imminence of war began to blacken the towns and all those long lists of names that were yesterday's hope surreptitiously started to point out those ones who were never going to return home. Her quest shifted inadvertently; finding him now was also confirming that he was still out there, that he was still alive. But as months went by, information about the soldiers became vague and unprecise - too many names were added to those terrible lists each day and, subsequently, too many more names were added to those other lists, the lists still clinging to hope and expectations.

Even if he had never told her that he would join the conflict, it was clear for Amanda that exposing himself in the battlefront was the only option left for such a man like her beloved Erron Black – war provided an intrinsic thirst for all the violence he had miraculously managed to repress for as long as humanly possible. Life had taken everything away from him at such a tender age that now the punished son of injustice could only find his comfort inside the brutal embrace of war.

With November came the sad realization that it had been a complete year without seeing each other; the very first year in a concatenation of very lonely years still to come.

Crestfallen and dispirited, Amanda realized that she couldn't keep on living that life. She couldn't expose Harriet to grow up with an identity that wasn't even real; she couldn't allow passing her fears and her pointless hopes onto their daughter – she couldn't force their baby to endure an imminent war without the security that only a proper home could bring, and above all, she couldn't force Harriet to grow up amongst the missionaries - the girl needed a home, a proper home.

Harriet deserved a family. But Amanda couldn't just go back home to the life she had before back in Arroya, not with her. Amanda was positive her daughter needed a family, but Nathaniel and the barber were not the family she had in mind for her.

She stayed up all night, sitting by the window, watching her baby sleep in her arms. It took all of her strength and her determination, but when the yellowish lights of dawn began to shine and swirl their way through the curtains, Amanda was gone. She understood Erron was nothing but a distant memory, too elusive now to be recovered from the maze of her own emotions. That child she was forsaking was the living proof that their love had existed – that she had loved him, and that he had loved her in return. Yet there was no place in her miserable existence for Harriet. The seed of their love was meant to grow inside the nurturing arms of a real family, and the only things she had left to offer her own daughter were the putrid ashes of a broken group of people she could no longer call her own family.

When the missionaries woke up that day, they only found Harriet sleeping peacefully in her cradle and a little note left by Amanda: she wanted them to find a family for her baby – she thanked them for everything they had done for both, the mother and the daughter, and apologized for her cowardice. The same cowardice that had prevented her from running away with him. The same cowardice separating her from their only daughter; forever.

Amanda went back to Arroya only to find that her husband was dying and that her father was crippled. A salve to their pains, having to pay the utmost price for abandoning them; yesterday's princess quickly became the slave in their twisted kind of logic. Yet in the back of her mind, the question lingered: how could she ever bring herself to play such an undesirable role in their unexpected tragedies? How could she ever bring herself to help those men now, when they had caused her so much pain? She had been so naïve to think she could still retrieve the life she had before… yet the woman who came back home was not the same frightened girl that had run away in the first place: she was a mother now, even if those men never knew about Harriet's existence. She was a fighter, but her fight was not in Arroya. Not anymore.

During the first days of March 1861, Amanda packed her bags once more and abandoned those men again – this time, for good. She went back to Houston: she had a daughter and a lover to find. Yet time had already been a determining factor, moving the pieces of her incomplete puzzle even farther away from her: Erron was still missing, and Harriet had already been adopted.

IV – Numbers

(The wandering years)

In December 1860, Harriet Elisabeth Black was adopted by Mary and Paul Henderson, a middle-aged couple with no children. Farmers established in Laredo, the couple changed the girl's name to Margaret Henderson. Margaret got married, aged nineteen, to the oldest son of another farmer: Vincent Koch, aged twenty-three.

One year after their marriage, the twins Andrew and Joseph Koch were born on April, 7th, 1880. Yet only Andrew survived, little Joseph died during labor. Margaret Henderson died in 1932; she was seventy-two years old.

Andrew Koch worked his entire life on the farm he inherited from his parents. In 1915, aged thirty-five, he married Maria Alemonia, the younger daughter of a Spanish lawyer who had gotten very close to Andrew when creditors began to threaten him for the many debts regarding his farm. The marriage not only constituted a powerful bridge between the families, but it also served Andrew well in terms of quieting the rumors about his own sexuality; something he had tried to accomplish many times in the past, subjugated by an era that was constantly reminding him that he had no right to be the man he wanted to be.

Maria gave birth to Aurora Koch on June 21st, 1916. Andrew Koch committed suicide on September 20th, 1920, aged forty.

Aurora Koch and her mother, Maria Alemonia, sold the old farm and moved to San Antonio right after Andrew's death. Aurora became a nurse and in 1941 she married World War I veteran Julian Smith, her long-term boyfriend, who was nearly twenty years older than her. Aurora gave birth to two girls: Stella Smith, born on April 25th, 1943 and Martha Smith, born on February 16th, 1945.

Stella Smith and her mother died tragically in a car accident in 1958. Stella was only fifteen years of age.

Martha Smith worked as a teacher until she met Christopher Davies, a Welsh diplomat, during her first trip to Europe back in 1967; she was twenty-two years of age. They got married during that same year and in January 1968; Martha gave birth to the couple's only son: Julian Davies, named after Martha's recently deceased father.

The family moved to Camarillo, California, during the seventies. On November 23rd, 2021, Martha died in her sleep. She was seventy-six years old.

Julian Davies met Caroline May Roberts during their stay in the UCLA campus. The couple got married on March 1st, 1989; they were both only nineteen years of age back then, but Caroline was already expecting the couple's first son, Nathan Davies, born on July 26th, 1989.

On March 20th, 1991, the couple welcomed their second son, Peter Davies. Julian Davies and Caroline May Roberts got divorced eight years after Peter Davies was born.

V – Deuteronomy

(On God's acts)

Defeated, Amanda went back to Arroya in 1905. Aged sixty-two, that old lady with grey hair and deep blue eyes quickly found out that her family had become an urban legend for the entire city: the girl had run away, leaving her husband to die alone. Her tyrannical father, crippled and disabled, had met his creator when the smoky gun of a mysterious mercenary had come to her aid – the secret lovers had run away together and they had lived happily ever after, but only inside the town's indefatigable imaginary.

No one recognized her now; the shadow of that pristine, nearly immaculate girl was receding from her eyes.

Like Penelope, still waiting for an eternal Odysseus to come back home, the woman sat down every day on a lonely bench in the town square – there she examined the faces, the many anonymous lives going on around her own paused existence. Inside that infinity of foreign eyes, she still tried to find him; she still tried to picture her lover inside her mind, what aging had done to his features, the very effects of time encompassing them both inside her fantasies.

She didn't know that time had already stopped for him – she didn't know that the punishment for his eternal joviality had only just begun. Little to nothing remained of that boy she had loved so dearly, it was much too late for the tragic lovers to be reunited.

Erron Black never knew about his daughter, the fruit of his forbidden love for Amanda Taggart – yet he mourned an unborn child all the same; the seed of his loneliness and his indifference when the greatest love of his life had indeed made him a father. Generation after generation his bloodline was still turning him into different versions of himself, completely unbeknownst to him: Erron Black had been a father, a grandfather, a great grandfather…

Amanda Black's heart stopped on January 21st, 1938, aged 95. She was still sitting on that solitary bench, waiting for a stranger to become him. It would take thirty-seven more years for Black to visit Arroya, now Wickett, for the last time. He finally made it back home, only it was much too late.

Life had punished them both with longevity: her years had been filled with regret about everything she had done throughout her entire life – his decades had been polluted with the tragedy that encompasses the unknown; the man he had become, eternally detached from that other man: the one he should have been.

VI – Revelations

(The consummation of all things)

[December 18th, 2014]

Christmas was approaching them but there wouldn't be time for trees, lights or even mistletoe that year. Moving houses is always meant to be such a stressful endeavor – some psychologists even claim that, in fact, moving houses can be as stressful for the mind as the loss of a close friend or a relative.

Her boyfriend was trying hard to help her with each box, each piece of furniture resting inside that yellow truck still parked outside. He had been the one who had gotten this apartment for her in the first place, so… he wanted her near, more than that, he needed her near. He was head over hills for her - he had even told her that they were the same age when, in fact, he was two years younger than she was. The woman almost died when she found out the truth but still, by the time she finally learned the truth about his age, she was already in love with him.

She forgave him. He looked older than he really was, anyway.

They had met in the public library, one cup of coffee suddenly turned into a dinner and the dinner, subsequently, turned into a romance. He was from Camarillo, she was from Maryland.

She had said it was time to leave her parent's house; she wanted freedom – she wanted to be independent. He listened. So he sought out every possibility, every lease, spoke to every landlord in the city – she never noticed, during the move, that many of his own personal things had been carefully hidden amongst her many boxes. A shirt, a toothbrush, a couple of his favorite books…

He was twenty-five, she was twenty-seven.

As days went by, his intentions became crystal clear but she didn't mind in the slightest: she wanted him near; she needed him near. It took them some time – several weeks piled up upon their shoulders in the process, but in the end, everything was in its rightful place, everything but one thing.

"Have you seen my box?" she asked, preoccupied. "I can't seem to find it."

Exactly like Nathan's oldest ancestor, she had kept a box of memories. Souvenirs from their time together – movie tickets, restaurant napkins, love letters… they searched for her box for moths but they never managed to find it so they concluded, bitterly, that the truck had taken it away or, perhaps, that they hadn't seen it inside the many boxes they discarded after the move was done.

Nathan put his arms around Alexandra and whispered: "We can always get another box."

The doctor shook her head: she didn't want any other box – she wanted her box. Yet her boyfriend calmed her down then, as he tenderly began to massage her temples: he made her see that what they had could not be contained inside a box.

"There's no big enough box to keep our love imprisoned," Nathan said softly in her ear as the woman snaked her arms around his waist.