Hello dear readers and my absolutely wonderful reviewers
Thank you for yet another wait for a new installment. I have much happening behind the scenes for all my stories (and a few new ones besides!) that I hope to bring to you with more frequent updates in future.
This is my first update since the anniversary of Jonathan Crombie's passing back on April 15th. Eight years… it's not quite believable. Thank you to everyone who shares love and admiration for him - I know I am among so many kindred spirits here x
I am also very sad to acknowledge the very recent passing of another Sullivan luminary, Patricia Hamilton, our feisty and fabulous Rachel Lynde. She brought sass, sparkle and humanity to the role of Rachel and was always such a joy to watch – and so funny. Thank you, Patricia.
Finally my thanks to Alinyaalethia, who has been such a wonderful supporter of this story,for her treasured Toronto intel x
With love
MrsVonTrapp x
Chapter Nineteen
Thought and feeling and soul and sense
September 4th 2017
Anne posed sullenly for the camera, dressed in all her uniformed glory, brimmed hat tucked under her arm as a soldier might doff his cap in company.
"Darling, please. Can't I even have a photo of your first day of senior year to look back on without grimacing at your expression?" Tessa sighed, exasperated.
"What is there to smile about?"
"It's an achievement, to get to this point."
"Attendance is not an achievement."
"No, but leading your year again is. You have so much to look forward to. Your Drama class putting on that musical you love. Assistant editor of the yearbook. And debating captain. Though I wish we'd had a little less debate around here, lately."
"Mom, I don't want to fight any more than you do. Really I don't. But if you think I'm going to drop this, you'll be disappointed."
"I'm not asking you to drop it, Anne. You're entitled to know more about your dad. I'm just asking you to wait for the proper timing."
"In a clinical setting, I suppose, with – "
"For God's sake, Anne!"
"All right! Sorry!"
Anne smiled, reluctantly. Tessa snapped her photos, obligatorily. They shared a kiss on the cheek at the front door, exhaustedly.
"Your dad would have made a stirring speech today, I think. I'm sorry I'm not up to the task, darling."
"Once more unto the breach * and all that?" Anne wavered.
"Yes, that sounds about right…" Tessa struggled, eyes watering.
"Mom, it's only the final year of school. I'm not leaving the country!"
"Yes, you're right. I know…"
"And really, you look more depressed than I do at the moment!"
"Anne! What a thing to say! I am not depressed!"
"Well, sad, then! Mopey and sad. You obviously miss Rob. I don't know why you've hardly sent him any messages."
"Anne, don't turn this around onto me! And get off to school, young lady!"
That was met with the eyeroll it perhaps deserved, and Anne departed, pausing at the end of the path to point her chin and square her slight shoulders in the expression of outward confidence she had called on even when a little girl.
"Love you, honey!" Tessa shouted belatedly from the doorway.
"Love you, Mom," her daughter's clear, musical voice, with that slight sardonic lilt, drifted back towards her on the air.
Seal it in a box… he thought, desperately. Shove it away out of sight. **
David Blythe had become very used to compartmentalizing his life. His studies, his mother's illness and death, his friends, his girlfriends, his father, and now Anne. Especially Anne.
Anne didn't want her life as a series of little boxes you decided when to take down off the shelf. She continually pushed at the locked cupboard of his mind in which he kept them. She saw - and felt – echoes and interconnections, the past reaching out to grab you in the here and now, to claw at your consciousness, to eat away at your equilibrium.
He couldn't live like that.
He didn't know what to believe regarding the photos from Avonlea, the images staring back at him so hauntingly and reproachfully. He didn't want to look at them again. The prickle of unease down his spine… the faces so alien and yet so uncomfortably familiar… There were doppelgangers in every family; identical looks that cropped up through the generations. And definitely inherited traits. He knew his biology, could rattle off any number of genetic studies. The red hair in his family, and in Anne's… the hazel eyes from his own father and shared by the man he had known as Great Grandpa Sam… How many other young guys in their family had dark curly hair? How many other pale, freckled, otherworldly-looking girls walked about in the nineteenth century?
Anne apparently had seen another photo. And something about all these letters at Aunt Dellie's. What if he let her see these photos… wouldn't he then be tacitly acknowledging something? Would she see it as some sort of encouragement for the strange and disturbing beliefs that swirled around her at the House of Dreams, which she herself later dismissed as an emotional, overwrought fiction?
And what if there was the tiniest grain of truth to Tessa's fears? Would seeing the photos tip Anne over an invisible precipice again? Send her hurtling in some way over the edge, as apparently had happened to her father?
No. He couldn't do that to her. And God knows he couldn't do it to himself.
He could see Tessa's shutters coming down even before they had left the Island. He understood it now. The fierce protection of her daughter, but it was a self protection, too. He was like Tessa in the way Anne was like his dad. He was like Tessa the way he was most like his Ma.
He shoved the photos in with the rest of the past, out in the garage. As far as he was concerned, let the past stay buried. Let the dead BE, he had begged her. Well then, best lead by example.
Looking forward, not back. **
He would continue to help Anne see she had so much to look forward to. And he would concentrate on the future himself. It beckoned him, reaching out its fingers, ready to clasp his hand.
It was time to take it.
His father had come home early especially, was hovering in the kitchen like an anxious father outside the delivery room, as the clock ticked over and his MCAT results would now be known to him and the world.
"Right then, Dad!" he called.
Rob came into the lounge, twisting his signet ring as David pulled out his laptop and opened the AAMC *** site, leaning to squeeze his shoulder in support.
"No matter what happens I'm so proud of you, son."
"Thanks Dad," he gulped. "I know."
David put in his password, held his breath, and watched as the future came calling.
Text: David to Anne, 6.09pm:
Hey Miss Ford. Was thinking about your first day back today. You still owe me a photo. Anyway… thank you for understanding my radio silence the past few days. I am pleased and relieved to tell you I am in a MUCH better frame of mind now and would be really happy to chat with you if you have a moment.
Love, David x
Text: Anne to David, 6.11pm:
How about now, Mr Blythe?!
FaceTime, David to Anne, 6.12pm:
David: Anne! God, I can't tell you how good it is to see you!
Anne: Me too! It feels like forever!
David: I know!
Rob: Hello there, Anne! Lovely to see you.
Anne: Rob! Hello!
Tessa: Anne?
Anne: It's OK, Mom, I'm just talking to David. And Rob is here.
Tessa: Rob?!
Rob: Tessa! Hello! I'm here… just let me lean closer over Dave's shoulder.
Tessa: There you are! Hi Rob!
Rob: Hi, Tessa!
David: Didn't quite figure this would turn into a group chat!
Rob: Sorry, son.
Tessa: We should leave you to it…
David: Tessa, you are welcome to stay on for a moment. Anne, I have some news about the MCAT…
Anne: Oh God! Your results are through!
David: Yes! Amazingly, I got 520, which is in the 98th percentile. ***
Anne: David – that's extraordinary! Congratulations!
Tessa: Oh congratulations, David! What an outstanding result!
David: Thank you both! I'm pretty stoked!
Tessa: Rob, you must be so proud!
Rob: Literally bursting with it, Tessa!
David: Anne, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to ring off. I know my grandparents on both sides are waiting on a call.
Anne: David, of course! Congratulations again. I'm so proud of you!
Rob: Bye Tessa. Bye Anne. Please both of you take care.
Tessa: You too, Rob!
Anne: Bye David. Have an awesome celebration!
David: Thank you, Anne. Bye for now. Bye Tessa.
David rang off, his handsome, beaming face in her mind's eye for several hours thereafter.
"Well, how wonderful! He's just done brilliantly, darling!" Tessa was understandably awed.
"Yes… he has. He really has. I knew he was super-smart, but this…" Anne shook her head. "I think he must be some kind of genius."
Tessa chuckled fondly.
"What will he be wanting with me now, Mom?" Anne asked plaintively. "He'll be preparing for med school, and I'm still stuck in high school. Back on the Island and in the Glen those differences didn't seem to matter… but when he's there and I'm here… it matters."
Tessa came to sit beside her daughter on the lounge, risking putting her arms around her as she still felt comfortable doing even at the start of the summer, when her girl would still sit in her lap and seek reassurance… Tessa was sitting beside a young woman, now, and didn't quite know how to navigate the emotional space between them that had threatened, this past week, to become a yawning gulf.
"Darling, you have so many special gifts yourself… I don't want you to forget that. I don't want you to think the only reassurance you can give yourself is the one that David first gives you…"
"Mom, it's not like that…"
"Maybe not," she gave a sad smile. "Maybe that's my own past mistakes talking."
"Are you saying that happened… between you and Dad? That you felt you needed some sort of validation from him?"
"Look at you and your fancy vocab," Tessa offered indulgently, squeezing Anne's shoulders. "It wasn't exactly like that, either… but I know the feeling of struggling to find your feet as your own person… and thinking you're behind and running to try to catch up…"
"It does kind of feel like that at the moment."
"Then, honey, give yourself the time and space to find yourself. You don't need to catch up to anyone. You're not running a race with David. And listen, he's already been seventeen. This is your turn now."
Anne digested this quietly, finally leaning her head on Tessa's shoulder.
"Do you wish you'd had the chance to find yourself before everything happened with Dad?" she asked, hesitatingly.
A soft sigh, and an answer a long time coming.
"Almost every day."
October 6th 2017
Dear Diary
You are certainly more journal than diary, or at least that is the object of this exercise. To journal my thoughts and diarize my feelings. Dr Ryan recommended you, though I was the one to decide on your leather cover and the heavy cartridge paper inside fairly beckoned me. A miserable exercise book really wouldn't have done the job. I feel like I should be dipping my nib in an inkwell, poised at a little wooden desk, ready to scribble away. Instead, I will be content to have the perfect pen. Maybe Other Anne kept this sort of journal for these sorts of thoughts. I certainly would feel more a connection to her than to the writings of Rilla of the Green Hat.
Oops, I really shouldn't be thinking that. Dr Ryan would be most displeased. I need to evidently divorce myself from these interchangeable thoughts, of myself and Other Anne being one and the same person. That came up early on, in Session Three. I feel that Mom at least bears some responsibility for this, for laying it all out for Dr Ryan to gobble up and digest, even before he first met me, because I certainly didn't leave any crumbs at all regarding what happened at the House of Dreams.
Perhaps I should backtrack. Who on earth is Dr Ryan?
Well, after the disaster that was Mom's first choice of therapist she was much more careful and far cleverer with a replacement. Dr Michael Ryan is young, hip and handsome. He looks like he is not too long out of grad school, but he has to be early thirties at least. He had to do an MD first and then a residency for five years before he became a psychiatrist - I checked. It's brutal.
Dr Ryan suggested I start a journal again. He's afraid I don't have many people to talk to and he'd rather one of those people wasn't David quite so often. He really shouldn't worry about that, as David has been flat out after the MCAT results with jumping through all the hoops the different unis have set up, just to get an interview which might just lead to a possible offer. He has to make sure all his referees are lined up and there are some other online tests too. So he will check in of an evening with a few tired questions for me before he crashes. He's started TWO jobs, too, mind you. The first is behind the counter at the local bakery, which means very early starts. The second is delivering pizzas which means late nights, and is ironically enough for the place he ordered from before the house party in Four Winds… before the lighthouse… before our first kiss. When the first thing on my mind was researching the family, not knowing I would be researching him… and myself.
That would contravene Dr Ryan's List of Recommendations, too. He's stockpiling them for some sort of report for my mom, and so far he's been sharing one of them every session. Her request was we FINALLY have a proper conversation about dad after I complete twelve sessions and we'd had a chance to review the situation. I am not sure what situation she is referring to – the situation where I am found to have mental health concerns, the situation where she doesn't want me to have too much contact with David incase it sparks mental health concerns, or the situation where I am obsessed with family history, especially regarding Gilbert and Anne Blythe, leading me down the path of mental health concerns. So from all that Dr Ryan has foretold I am to:
Take some low-grade medication to treat my latent anxiety and to focus on my wellbeing (he really should have words with the Mean Girls collective at school with regards to both)
That I limit communication with David for the next few months and attempt to extend my circle of friends here in Toronto and activities and interests
That I cease and desist all research into family history until a determination has been made about this after the Review.
The last decree was the most recent, and sorry – not – sorry I had already written Aunt Dellie a thank you note with a few probing questions, had done some poking around on the Avonlea Historical Society website, and had already contacted a lady at the Queen's College archives to see if she could come up with any information about a past Avery Scholarship recipient and a particular winner of the Gold Medal. So I can hardly be blamed for things I did before knowing about Dr Ryan's Royal Decrees.
But really, AS IF. I'm not going to stop researching past events and people that could help me understand myself and what's been happening. And I am absolutely not stopping contact with David. Mom can't stop me from going to his 21st next week any more than she can stop herself coming with me to see Rob again.
I think I have coped very well with our time apart. It will be six weeks next week. Though I really don't know how Anne and Gilbert coped with three years, and they were engaged by then as well. The letters I photographed at Aunt Dellie's are amazing, and so loving, when anyone can get a word in edgewise inbetween a rather eccentric cast of characters Anne insists on talking about. And David could read all about Gilbert at medical school. The details he gives are fascinating and funny. **** He won the Cooper Prize scholarship which paid for his tuition and it was an absolutely big deal and he was obviously brilliant. If David could only see the parallels between him and Gilbert perhaps he would understand the connection a little more.
Maybe that's asking too much, for now. And I haven't breathed a word about any of it since we left PEI. Mom is only starting to be a little normal again with me. For a while there she was in danger of changing the locks and getting me a tracking device.
But I still feel the beat of that distant drum. Sometimes when I move a certain way I get a sharp twinge that is not a stitch or something that can be explained away. I feel the twinge in my stomach right where I felt those not-so-phantom pains that could have only been contractions. And I still remember the crushing weight of losing Joy. I could go to their graves next week, their proper graves, when we're over for the party, but somehow it doesn't feel appropriate, and it will hardly fit with my new ruse to Deny Everything. There's a little of your 'X Files' back at you, David Blythe.
And would I really feel like I was walking on my own grave? That's too spooky to contemplate.
Instead, I will contemplate my mountains of homework, and the thought of a certain birthday celebration next week.
Signing off, over and out.
Interlude: Tessa Ford
Toronto
March 1997
T heir apartment, rechristened The Shoebox due to its less-than-generous dimensions, was the happy hub of many an off-campus party in the heady days of her theatre studies at York University. Toronto was a huge, exciting, sprawling metropolis after the quiet charms of Pembroke. Teresa still couldn't believe she was actually here, living a life full and vibrant and busy and cosmopolitan. That she had been urged by a stranger to set her sights on a far-off horizon; to dare to dream larger and more vividly, to find herself as Dorothy in a glorious, technicolor Oz.
Well, not everything was glorious. Drama was a study in the physical, emotional and cerebral, and she was often exhausted, and that was before she dragged herself to her part-time job as cashier at her local little Valu-Mart. It was always a struggle making the monthly rent, and a dollar didn't stretch quite as far in the big city, but she wouldn't have traded the experience for anything.
Towards the end of second term of her second year, her friend and roommate thrust a trade newspaper into her hands the moment she set foot in the door of said Shoebox one evening.
"Resa, you have got to check this out! It's an open call!" Mandy was almost jumping on the spot in excitement.
Teresa groaned softly, closing the door with her hip.
" Mands, they don't call them cattle calls for nothing. They're meat markets. They're awful. Look at that thing you dragged me to last year."
"Oh, that was just for a damn commercial, this is the real thing!"
Teresa cast her brown, bleary eyes over the half-page advert, stifling a yawn, still mentally going over the paper on Ibsen she had spent most of the previous night preparing. A photo of a well-known Toronto identity smiled back at her. She remembered that smile.
"The Life-book play is finally happening, Teresa! An open call for Jim, Margaret and the narrator, who doubles as Owen Ford. An open call! You know that hardly ever happens for something so major!"
"No… it doesn't…" she remarked reluctantly, dumping her bag and falling into the nearest threadbare armchair.
"And they're filming the whole audition process for some behind the scenes doco or something, which means added exposure if we get through a few culls," Mandy continued, perching on the arm of the chair and reading over Teresa's shoulder.
"Mmm…."
"And Prince Alex Ford himself is going to be there, naturally, since he wrote and is going to direct the thing! We might even meet him!" Mandy had her arms about Teresa's shoulders by this point, squeezing tightly. "Say you'll come out for it with me, Resa!"
"I don't know…" Teresa hedged. "I've heard he's a bit of a nightmare."
More like the hero of a fantasy dream sequence than nightmare, but all the same, Teresa didn't fancy the even slight possibility of meeting Alex Ford for real when he was such a charmed and charming memory she'd rather leave untarnished. Arriving in Toronto it hadn't taken long to join the dots regarding her mysterious visitor to the pioneer settlement that day; he and his family were almost omnipresent in the city, leading players on the theatrical, business and philanthropic scene, a first family of beautiful people keeping a beloved Canadian literary classic alive. Alex Ford, however cavalierly, had challenged her to explore outside her comfort zone, urging her onwards to something better. She supposed, indirectly, she owed her new life to him.
"He can come be a nightmare around me anytime…" Mandy grinned. "Come on, Teresa! You know you can't turn your back on this opportunity!"
Teresa frowned down at the advertisement. It was a tremendous opportunity, and she'd be a fool to be training as an actor and not at least go along. For the experience of it, if nothing else.
And she was more than a little curious as to whether the long-ago promise of the next Great Canadian stage production had really come to fruition. There had been whispers about the Life-book adaptation for months, and much speculative advance press already. Alex Ford had written a previous play when still at university that had been staged and reviewed as a modest success, but there was much riding on this particular venture, not least a sizeable amount of the Ford family fortune helping to bankroll the endeavour, giving Alex Ford almost complete creative control. If the play tanked, his reputation tanked with it, at the grand old age of just-turned twenty-five.
"Okay…" Teresa relented, swallowing her misgivings, to the delighted reaction of her friend.
Chapter Notes
The chapter title is from Robert Browning's poem Now.
*William Shakespeare Henry V (Act 5, Sc 1).
**Referencing Chapter 16 of this story.
***The American Association of Medical Colleges, of which Canadian medical colleges are members.
The MCAT (Medical College Admission Test) is required by 13 of the 17 medical schools in Canada and is divided into 4 sections. A perfect score on the MCAT is 528, which naturally entails a perfect score on the four sections worth 132 points each. The median score on the MCAT for 2020-2021 (the closest available information for my 2017 timeframe) was 517. Anything above this is considered, as Tessa notes, outstanding.
It is indeed a very outstanding score for David, but as he is channeling Gilbert, I feel it is justified!
Results for the MCAT are available on the AAMC website from 5pm Eastern Time, which was 6pm Atlantic Standard Time on PEI, thus some very specific time stamps in that section. Results are available 30 days after the MCAT is taken but I shortened this to around three weeks for David for narrative purposes.
My awe and admiration for any reader who has sat the MCAT. It looks unbelievably grueling!
****Oh that we HAD these details from LMM firsthand! Of course, our imaginations and several excellent writers on this site have attempted to make up the shortfall. This is my one big stumbling block regarding Anne of Windy Poplars, and cause of my not-so-occasional moaning.
And some correspondence…
DrinkThemIn: How beautiful it is that so many of us can bond over our local pioneer village LOL! We of course have several just in my state of Victoria alone, usually associated with the gold rush. Meanwhile Tessa is indeed between a rock and a hard place, as you well note, and is having difficulty balancing her worry for Anne's future with the memories of Alex's difficult past. Anne really, really needs someone to talk to indeed… and no one, in this particular instance, wants to listen. I think everyone is going to need a good party at Ingleside at this rate. I look forward to your thoughts on the festivities!
Kitty: Dear Kitty thank you so much for your kind words. I am delighted that you feel the story is 'haunting'… I do hope that comes across at times, and there is a wistfulness that I hope will permeate things going forward. It's often more difficult to do that with a modern story, so I take that feedback and clutch it tightly! Meanwhile thank you for that fantastic clip on IMDb! I hope this narrative continues to engage you x
Guest of April 10th (Ch 18): Thank you so much for that great feedback! Honestly, when you think about it the entire story is full of original characters, and I didn't appreciate how much of a gamble that was when I started this. I am so delighted you are enjoying this and the characters have read well for you x
Guest of April 11th (Ch 18): Thank you Guest! They really ARE mature-sounding texts at times, I know! I sometimes worry that I have made Anne and David much too mature and old before their time, but there will be some future happenings that might even things out a bit! Hope you enjoy the coming chapters!
Guest of April 18th (Ch 18): Dearest Guest, I can't tell you how happy and gratified I was to read that this story and perhaps others have helped you in any way. That is incredibly kind of you to say and so meaningful for me to know. You have just given me the most wonderful incentive to keep striving to give you all the best writing possible. Thank you so much for your thoughts and readership x
A: Dear A, thank you so very much for your response and it wasn't rambling at all! Infact you have really identified the crux of the future relationship between Tessa and Alex and the uneven power dynamics at play. Tessa coincidentally touches on this in her conversation with Anne in this chapter! It is a big part of Tessa's narrative going forward (or should I say back?!) And yes, Tessa absolutely and unwittingly has become his muse, and there is going to be a lot to unpack around tha in times to come. Alex will be a complicated guy, that is for sure. To compare Tessa to Leslie is really the highest praise for me, as I adore Leslie and think she is one of the most interesting, compelling and nuanced characters in the whole of canon. I do actually have a Leslie fic that I sincerely hope will see the light of day this year. Thank you so much for your comments x
