The Pooh Tutorials
It was surprising, how the old house still felt like home. As the great door was clicking shut behind her Eve set her bag down in the foyer and paused for a moment, reveling in a rush of sights and smells, giving herself over to the nostalgia of a sensory teleportation back to her youth, a teleportation so real that she actually heard her long departed father’s welcoming bellow, and watched on amazed as Happy Jack’s giant paws skidded crazily across the hardwoods in his stampede to greet her, his rush followed by the warm aromas of roast beef and cobbler which were stirred up from behind in the big dog’s wake. The hallucinations combined to conjure up a rare smile from this bitter, current-day version of Eve, as they reminded her of how pleasant true happiness can feel.
Isn’t it ironic? How it took Mother’s death to bring about some little bit of joy in her?
Evelyn Forrester goes mostly by Eve now, as she hates the antiquated sound of “Evelyn”. When she hears “Evelyn” she is reminded of the portraits in the foyer of her family home, of the many grandmothers and great-grandmothers sitting solemnly in their guilded picture frames at the sides of their equally solemn (and likely domineering) husbands, men without the good sense to feel the shame of their deeds, but who instead gaze arrogantly down from their elevated positions upon the papered and patterned walls of this house that had once been their home. Eve has just lost her mother, but you should not feel too badly for her, as the two have been long estranged. Don’t get it wrong, Eve is saddened by her mother’s passing (as she would be for anyone’s), but she is in no way left distraught by it. In fact, Eve can barely remember a time when she liked the ultra-conservative woman, much less when she felt love for her, although she actually had loved her, once upon a time.
And Mother’s feelings were painfully mutual, as she made her disappointment in Eve apparent whenever the opportunity arose, the old biddy.
With her mother’s passing Eve has unwillingly inherited the family home. Having avoided it for the past twenty years her initial plan was for a quick sale, the house being much too large for a single woman, although her mother somehow managed it in her later years, and the property includes too much acreage to economically maintain it without farming, which Eve has neither the skills nor desire to do. Besides, it is too far from her job in Savanah, although she could as easily work from home, she supposed, if it came right down to it. Only it would be lonely here, wouldn’t it? As if it wasn’t lonely in Savanah.
On the drive in it became apparent to Eve that the once secluded house now sits in a prime location. The sprawl of suburbia was slowly encroaching, nestling in around the property as one local farm after another has been parceled out to General Contractors who have happily developed them into more of those awful, modern day McMansions until the beautiful, pastoral settings of Eve’s youth have been completely swiped away, and never will be again. She is not sure how she should feel about that, as what has stolen the beauty from her childhood home has also significantly increased its monetary value.
But then Eve finds her thoughts interrupted by another bit of nostalgia… specifically the Westminster chimes of the doorbell which have begun echoing through the foyer, flashing her back to the day when she’d discovered Pooh McCann standing on the front porch with flowers in his hands, flowers he’d picked fresh, just for her. The memory of it brought another smile. Pooh! What an awful nickname for a boy, though he’d never seemed to think anything of it. And poor Pooh had carried such a crush on her back then! Eve had actually gone to the movies with him a couple of times, back in middle school. He’d been a sweet boy, if embarrassingly shorter than her. She had even let Pooh kiss her once, right out there on that very porch. Just a peck mind you, which Eve had not returned.
So it was eerily deja-vu-ish to open the door and find him standing there again, sans flowers, a bigger and better version of the same Pooh McCann, although this older (and larger) Pooh was wearing very nearly the same t-shirt and ball cap he’d worn way back when.
“Pooh?” As it always had when they were kids a snicker escaped Eve when she said his name, although there was really nothing funny about him anymore. Her Pooh was all grown up! He was easily a head taller than she was now, while time and a southern sun had removed any baby-ishness from his face. And below his now chiseled face taut muscles strained against his t-shirt and jeans. Eve’s inability to look away from him flushed her face and neck with a tell-tale signal that Pooh fortunately did not seem to notice. Good God, but her little Pooh was gorgeous!
”Hello Eve. They said you’d be coming in today, and I saw the car in the drive, so… But hey, I’m really sorry about Patricia. Really and truly I am.”
Eve was confused. Patricia? Patricia, her mother? Pooh was calling her mother Patricia? Since when? Before replying, as a woman will, Eve stalled for time by brushing the hair away from her face, giving her thoughts a chance to gather themselves. And what was he doing here now? Had he only come to offer condolences? Or was there something more to this visit?
“Yes, of course. Thank you.” He had come to her, so she would let him begin.
Sensing her puzzled curiosity, Pooh explained himself. “We’ve been planting over here since your father passed. Patricia… err, Mrs. Forrester and I, we split the profits fifty-fifty, her land-my labor. The proceeds helped her to keep the place up, and I have to admit that the extra money has helped us out as well. I have no idea what your plans are, if you even plan to keep the farm, that is. But I thought I’d come on over when I saw the car out front? I hope you don’t mind. But if you do decide to keep working it, and I hope you will decide to, we’d love to continue helping, but if so we’ll need to get started soon. It‘s already pretty late in the season, you know?”
No, Eve did not know, and she did not like not knowing. At her own job she was used to being in command of every situation. Her every intention had been to sell, up until now that is. But this might offer a chance to get closer to Pooh, to get to know him again? Who knew… she might even rekindle his old flame?
“You said ‘we’?”
With Pooh’s attractiveness still stimulating her Eve readily stepped onto the porch to see where his tanned and muscular arm was pointing. In moving closer-up beside him she was introduced to the pleasant, musty scent of red-clay soil which emanated from him, and to the the sickly sweetness of motor oil, as well as a cottony perspiration smell that worked into her like magic, reminding her of the favorite, slobber-soiled fabric “Teddy” bear of her childhood, his aromas pulling Eve in and adding to her temporarily addled brain. But as her eyes followed to where his arm pointed her mood was slammed from its clear, blue skies like a shotgunned quail back to a harsh and unforgiving earth.
For over there in the eastern pasture chugged a blue and white tractor. Perched proudly on it‘s seat was a boy of thirteen or so. Another, even younger boy rode shotgun beside that one. Worse, a woman was balancing herself on the tractor’s hitch plate while clinging to the back of the seat. The woman was somewhat pretty, even if she was dressed roughly the same as Pooh was; cute in her own boots, jeans and ball cap, the cap swishing a soft-looking, blondish pony-tail behind it. If she’d felt like being mean right then Eve might have commented that the woman was a wee bit chunky, but she did not feel like it, like being mean, that is. Well, she did feel like it, but she couldn’t, could she? Pooh McCann was not just another soulless stranger who was forced to be nice to her no matter what kind of bitch she acted like just because he was on her payroll, was he?
Shit.
”I don’t know, Pooh. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with the place yet.”
As they always will do the old, happy memories turned to shit once liquor was poured. And then came the inevitable texts from work. Could the incompetent boobs not even leave her alone to grieve (as if that was what she was doing)? But of course that was what she was doing! That was what Eve always did. And when darkness finally descended she was alone again, only now she was all alone in this gigantic house.
Shit indeed.
Eve woke with a start, her head and her bearings off kilter, to find her old bedroom awash in a glittering, silvery gleam which the midnight moonlight usually reserved for wind-stirred wheat fields, or for heavily rolling waters (although the bedroom no longer resembled her childhood one, as all of her girlish “things” had long since been packed away). Even as Eve watched them the moonlight glitters swirled together at the foot of her bed, slowly taking on the unmistakable shape of a woman, a woman whom Eve at first disdainfully assumed to be her mother, although her straining eyes could not yet make out any distinguishable features through the paleness of it’s light.
But the glitters continued their swirling’s and gatherings, and in her fascination of them Eve forgot to be afraid. It soon became apparent that the glitters floating about were not from the moonlight at all, but were of the woman… or the apparition… or the dream, whichever one “she” was. And sadly, Eve’s drunk and drowsy state refused to let her care, so she simply waited and watched. What was there to fear anyways? If it was a woman, then she would only talk, as that is what women do. And if it was an apparition, then with any luck it would take her mournful soul away... far, far away. And if it was a dream, as Eve expected it would be, then she would simply wake, wouldn’t she?
Eve hoped it was not a dream, as the first two options seemed preferable.
Settled now into their feminine form the glitterings did not diminish, but continued their subtle attack upon the darkness, their numbers brightening the room as they gathered together like wasps to a hive. Thusly illuminated Eve could see that it was not her mother’s form at all, but neither could she deny a shared resemblance with the apparition, even though the matronly ghost looked to be considerably older than Eve’s thirty-six years. Still though, their physical commonalities shone through its glittering wrinkles, as Eve and this ghost shared similarly pert noses, thinly drawn lips, and even the same intelligent brows which arched over the same expressive eyes which judged Eve back from her mirror each morning. Eve found herself vainly comforted by these feminine likenesses, that comfort making her more curious about this midnight interloper than frightened by her. “Who was she, and why had she come,” Eve wondered? She wished she’d paid better attention when Mother had explained those old photographs to her, describing the lives of their family matriarchs. Had she paid more attention then Eve might recognize who this ghostly woman was, but as it stood she had no idea. Only that it must be some figure from her family’s long history.
The minutes ticked by as ghost and mortal examined one another, each curiously fascinated by the other. When the apparition finally spoke it was with a not unexpected directness, as their sort of woman has always felt untethered from any necessity for pleasantries, irregardless of their places on any historical timeline.
“What are you doing?” The apparition’s drawl was too pleasant to be off-putting, it’s southern lilt roundly bending the words, though not enough to actually fracture them. Eve framed the idea that this ghost’s voice was the very sound pancake syrup would undoubtedly make while sliding off of hot butter, supposing it could choose its own sound to make of course; the voice being that smooth, that warm, and that delectable. It was so warm in fact that Eve unconsciously set about mimicking it, and did not do a horrible job of it either, as the ability had always laid somewhere down there in her genetics awaiting it’s moment to emerge.
But it was too vague an inquiry, Eve thought. What exactly did the ghost woman mean? Did she mean “what am I doing this very moment?” Or, ”what am I doing in this house?“ Or was it, “what am I doing with my life?“ How was Eve to know which? She did not know, so she decided to answer from a position of strength.
“I am sleeping in my own bedroom, and minding my own business. The real question is who are you, and what are you doing here?” Eve was disappointed to hear the callous brusqueness in her own voice. She had never before cared that her tone was so grating until hearing this cleaner, undeniably better one.
”Is that what you are doing? Sleeping?“ There was a calculated pause before the glowing woman continued, “And alone, I might add.” The ghost’s un-kind words did not sting nearly so much as the sarcastic smile which followed them.
Good grief! Perhaps this ghost was Eve’s mother? It certainly used the same tone that her mother used. Eve’s nostril’s distended as if she smelled something bad. ”I am fine sleeping alone (“Bitch”, she did not need to add).”
”Are you? Are you really? One thing I know, having once been one, is that no woman living on God's green earth is fine sleeping alone.”
This was a fact. Eve must be more careful. This “ghost” woman was no fool. “My mother slept here alone. Did you visit her, too?”
“Your mother was never alone here. Your mother lived surrounded by those she loved. As for who I am, and why am I here? I am here because my name is Evelyn Rouseau. My husband built this house for me. This is my house.“
”That’s where you’d be wrong.“ Eve did not like this ghost, and was feeling ornery. “It is my house now.”
”Is it? We shall see about that.”
”There is nothing to see. The house is mine, now. It is the only reason I am here.”
”You are here because I called you here, child… before it is too late.” Eve detected frost in the ghost’s tone.
Because of it Eve’s reply was equally cold and quick, perhaps a little too quick, but Eve felt like this ghost woman was getting the better of her, and she didn’t like it, though she regretted her quick words immediately. “Did your husband really build it for you? Or did his slaves build it for you, on land you stole from the Creek natives?”
Even the woman’s smile was familiar to Eve’s, breaking as icily as her own. ”Ahhh. Ashamed of us, are you? That is to be expected, I suppose.”
”You suppose?” Dammit, Eve did it again, but the non-plussed apparition quickly cut her down.
“Those things are not your concern, Missy. I have already been judged, and by better than you.”
The retort was not as vague as Eve wished it to be. She knew exactly what the woman meant by, “I have been judged.” Eve understood it so well in fact that a chill raced down her spine at the realization of it. There is a God! Or, at least something or someone to judge one’s deeds? And that this ghost was here right now, rather than being somewhere better, meant that the woman had been found lacking, did it not? Though Eve did not particularly like this ghost she found no comfort in that knowledge, as the ghost woman had undoubtedly come here for a reason, and that reason was obviously Eve. How lacking must Eve herself be that the dead found her situation dire enough to come back to warn her?
Eve was not such a bad person, was she? Yes, she was tough, but she’d had to be. Eve had worked herself up the ranks in a manly-man’s business. She was strong, and independently wealthy, but Eve could be kind when she felt like it. Her monthly donation to St. Jude’s was quite generous, though it was an admittedly small part of her overall salary, just enough really that she could tell solicitor’s that she, “gave at the office” without any accompanying guilt. Still, it was something charitable, and was more than most gave. She was a decent enough person, wasn’t she? Eve swallowed hard before asking the question that would supply her with the answer she needed, although she prepared herself to parry with an angry response if she felt that the answer given was the incorrect one. “Have you come here to tell me that I am bad?”
“No, Dear. I have not “come here” at all. I am always here. I have always been here. I have only made myself discernible to you now because we are worried about you.”
There was that word again, “we”. Eve was probably not going to like the answer to this question any more than she had when she asked it earlier in the day, but she felt that she had to ask it anyways. “We?”
”Yes... we.” The ghost was apparently not ready yet to humor her with specifics.
”Well then, if you are not here to tell me that I am bad, then what is it you are so worried about?”
”I have already told you what, if you would only listen. We are worried that you are alone.”
Eve chose to try deception. ”I am not that alone. I have friends.”
”Do you?”
So, deception wasn’t going to work. Looking up at her, Eve was relieved to find the ghost’s expression sympathetic. She could not have explained why, but feeling the need for honesty, Eve opened up right at the start with her hardest, most pitiable truth; the one truth she had considered over and over again every night for the past twenty-some years. Yet hearing it spoken out loud only highlighted the ridiculousness of her excuse. “I cannot help that people don’t like me.” Thankfully this admission, right in front of her antagonist, was not followed by the welling-up of tears.
As with any good therapist the ghost did not respond to Eve’s confession immediately, but waited quietly instead, knowing that once the spigot was opened a woman could not turn it off until her pressure was relieved. “Women don’t like that I am strong, and men are intimidated by me.”
The ghost actually chuckled at that revelation. “Are they? Really? The same men who march off to war for you… those men are intimidated by you? By thin, frail, little ’ol you? Hmmm. The same men who kill snakes for you, and spiders? The same men who protect you from bad people, who extinguish fires, and who rescue you from floods? Those same men who would willingly offer you their seats in a lifeboat are intimidated by you? A mere woman? My, you are a special one, aren’t you?”
”But they must be intimidated. I am not terribly ugly. Why else would none of them want to get to know me better?
”The better question for you to ask yourself is, why would they want to?”
”Why wouldn’t they want to? I am pretty, I am educated, I am successful… I have a lot to offer.”
”There are lots of pretty girls my dear. And any decent man already has those other things.”
Eve felt the anger boiling up inside her. “I suppose you are implying that I should cower submissively before a man, like you did when you were alive. I don’t think so, Granny. Women are beyond that now.”
”I am implying nothing of the kind. Come with me, Dear. I want to show you something.”
Eve followed the floating figure down the stairs, and into the foyer where it stopped in front of the painted portrait of a stern looking patriarchal man with an equally unsmiling woman seated at his side, a woman who did not look terribly unlike Eve herself but for the graying hair pulled back in a bun, the lack of make-up, and a very modest, high collared, skin covering dress.
”That is you in the picture, isn’t it?”
”Yes, it is.” There followed a long moment of silence as woman and ghost studied the painting.
”You were pretty.”
”Long before this was painted, maybe. But bearing children ages a woman.”
”How old were you here?”
”Thirty-five.”
Eve’s age? But she looked twice as old! “Oh my God.” Eve didn’t mean to say it out loud, but when she did so the ice she felt in her heart for the ghost melted away. What that man in the picture must have put Evelyn Rousseau through that she appeared so… so worn looking at just thirty-five years of age? “And how old was he,” Eve silently wondered.
”Forty-two, I believe.” The ghost answered without even being asked the question.
Forty-two! Eve would have guessed sixty, or even seventy! “Please don’t take this wrong, Evelyn Rousseau, but the woman in this picture doesn’t have the look of someone who should be preaching about happiness.”
”Ah, that is because you cannot see the whole picture. We were living in serious times, back then. Life was hard, but if you could see down just a little bit lower you would see that Charles’ hand is resting comfortably upon my thigh, and you’d see mine lying atop his. Our hands stayed exactly that way for the full six hours that it took Henry Allen to finish this painting. We were happy. It was a happy day which we both relished. There were not many days when we were able to spend so much time together. Charles had to work so hard! And on top of that, to answer your earlier question, he did build this house, although it was not so large then, and has been added-on to over the years. Charles built it when we were still poor. He built it with his own hands. My father tried to warn me away from Charles, telling anyone who would listen that his future son-in-law was an uneducated nincompoop, but Charles showed him! He was quite competent, Charles was. There was almost nothing he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do for us.”
”For us? Who else, besides you?”
”Why, the children, of course.” The ghostly figure slid itself over to the next set of picture frames on the wall. The men and women in the two paintings were equally as stern looking as the first, though obviously younger. “These are the two of our six who survived to adulthood. Charles Jr. had his father’s looks, but it was my side his personality took after. We were so proud when Charlie became a doctor, and a good one too, so good that he was made a surgeon during the war. Our Charlie was twenty-three when he caught dysentery and passed. Charlie tried, but he never made it back home to Abby. He passed aboard “The Memphis” right outside of Charleston Bay. His widowed-wife was seventeen, the child he never saw having recently celebrated her first birthday. Poor Abigail never recovered from the loss of him. She moved in here with us, of course. We did our best for her, but she was so distraught. The girl was suddenly husbandless with a baby to care for, and no income. There was war raging all around us at the time. New lists of the dead were arriving almost daily; her husband on one, a brother on the next list, and then another brother on another list. Here was a friend gone, and there an acquaintance. Abigail was so young and innocent, with a heart as big as any ocean. Every name she knew hit her so hard.“ Evelyn looked my way then. “How fortunate you are to have missed all of that, although I would not trade those memories of Charlie and Abby for anything, and will cling to them for all of eternity.
“But here I am,“ Evelyn followed her story sorrowfully. “Going on like an old fool when my time with you is nearly up.”
”No!“ Eve looked down at the row of as yet unexplained portraits. There were so many more pictures, so many more ancestors of whom she knew nothing. Her people. “Please don’t go, Evelyn. I need to know more.”
”It can be learned. There are records. The one thing I can tell you now is this. You are living your life in competition, as though men are your enemy. Men are not the enemy, Eve. With men comes all of this,” Evelyn gestured all around, but mostly down the long row of portraits. “From men comes companionship, love, security, family… life. Without them women are nothing, you are nothing, just as he is nothing without you, and therein lies your strength… that you are as necessary as he is. Be what you are, Dear. And allow him to be what he is. We are destined to suffer apart, but together... together man and woman are eternal.”
It was a bright Georgia sun through the window that woke Eve, that and the chugging of a distant tractor. Had she slept in? No, Eve never slept in! Curious, she donned her robe to check the noise. It was him on the tractor… Pooh! Descending the staircase toward the coffee pot she paused before the first in the long line of portraits on the wall, feeling strangely drawn to it, or rather to the man in it. There was a lot to do today, and many decisions to make. Eve wondered what the man in the portrait would do if he was her? He certainly looked competent enough to make a decision, though Eve suspected that whatever decisions he made would be with the woman sitting next to him in front of mind. In fact, on closer inspection, the man in the portrait looked somewhat like Darryl, that lead engineer at work. Darryl was competent too, he only lacked drive… or maybe it was not drive he lacked, but inspiration? In any event Darryl was undoubtedly bright. If Eve could only find a way to motivate him then the two of them might form a formidable team… possibly even a team outside of work?
Huh. That was a strange thought, when Eve had always worked best alone, but thinking on it, Darryl did have strengths in some of those areas she was trying to improve on. Perhaps they could help each other?
Pausing at the next picture, it was the woman this time that drew Eve’s attention; so young to be married, yet the artist had applied a happy sparkle to her eyes that for some reason made Eve blue. The woman, a girl really, looked too vivacious to be alone… but why would Eve even think that? The girl in the painting was not alone, was she? She had the man that she loved beside her, and a glow about her that not even the darkened oil paints could dampen, and the girl had a whole life left to live, besides. Yet this thought crept into Eve’s mind. ”Fate is fickle, is it not? Love while you are able!”
The coffee on, Eve hurried upstairs and dressed. With cups in either hand she headed out to the field.
The dying of the tractor’s chugging engine created a heavy silence which his smile thankfully broke.
“Good morning!” She held the extra cup up in invitation.
”Good morning to you!”
”I have decided to keep it! The house, that is! And I would like for you to keep working the fields, if you would? I have no idea what to do with them, or how to do it? But I can learn!”
”Of course you can. But it won’t be me working them. It’s really Charlie who worked for Patricia… err, for Mrs. Forrester.”
”Charlie?”
”Yea, my son.” Pooh’s smile was contagious.
Eve was surprised. ”The one on the tractor yesterday? But he’s so young!”
”Nah. You gotta start sometime! Charlie made nearly three thousand dollars working for Patricia just last summer. He’s working to pay his way through college someday, if that’s what he decides to do. Or for a head start on a business loan, whichever. Of course, I make him rent the tractor, and pay for the seed.” Pooh winked knowingly at her. “At least he thinks he is paying for it.”
”And that woman yesterday was your wife?”
”Bitsy?” He laughed. “Yea, she’s the best. And what a mother! Those are the luckiest kids ever!”
”Yes. Yes they are. And you are lucky, too.”
”You bet I am.”
Eve took his empty cup and turned back towards the house.
”Hey, Eve?”
She turned to face him.
”I’m glad you’re back.”
And she could tell that he was. It was such a little thing he said, to mean so much.