The Key Ingredient (2 page)

And then the moment passes, unacknowledged, and we both go our separate ways. He walks away with his family, and I turn to Martin and point out the town's prettiest features—­the covered bridge, the venerable courthouse, the old-­fashioned shops. Still, the memories linger. I'm so sorry about what happened. So damned sorry. I'd give anything to wind the clock back and live that day over again.

It's a universal sentiment after a disaster—­regret. A fervent wish that you could have those moments back again, make a different choice, head in another direction.

The first time I saw Fletcher Wyndham up close was when he came up the mountain to see about a job during the sugar season. Our sugarbush is a big one, so each year we hire extra help—­usually local kids from Switchback High School. If you get work during the sugar season, you qualify for early release from school, because the season is short and intense, and practically everyone in town has extra jobs to do.

The year Fletcher came to the mountain, I was a senior in high school, and with the clueless self-­assurance only a teenager possesses, I'd applied to some of the best schools in the country and was waiting for one of them to welcome me with a fat scholarship. The last thing I was looking for at that moment in time was a reason to stay in Switchback.

Fletcher Wyndham was an intriguing mystery. It was rare for a new kid to show up out of the blue, and rarer still to enroll in a new school in January of senior year. The moment he appeared, we all knew he was different. He had long hair and wore skinny jeans, high-­top sneakers and a battered vintage jacket. He was so good-­looking that girls would stare and nudge each other, pointing him out to their friends.

In a small town, you can have all the secrets you want, but ­people will still speculate. For instance, Fletcher moved here with just his father, and neither of them ever talked about Fletcher's mother. Depending on which rumor mill you subscribed to, you could hear different stories: She was in Florida. In prison. In an insane asylum. I heard she was dead. I heard Fletcher's father had murdered her. I heard Fletcher himself murdered her.

The day he came up to our place at Rush Mountain, I felt a little thrill of excitement. Maybe this year, I thought, the sugar season would have some spice. My older brother, Kyle, hired him on the spot, of course. The sap was running like crazy, and he needed lots of workers. Tapping the trees and collecting the sap was only the beginning. The fresh sap, which is mostly super-­cold water, has to be brought to the sugarhouse and put into the reverse-­osmosis machine to remove a good portion of the water before it goes into the evaporator pans. It doesn't take a lot of training, just a strong back and a willingness to work outside in crappy weather.

Since our own family history is rooted in scandal, I didn't get why Mom was so worried about Fletcher Wyndham “drifting into town,” as she termed it. I also didn't get why knowing who your ­“people” are is such a big deal. For example, everyone in Switchback knows Degan Kerry's ­people; they've been around as long as the Rushes have, but they're all sketchy, and Degan, who was in my grade at school, was the worst of the lot.

It did no good at all for me to point out to my mother that the way to get to know a person was to hang out with him. Thanks to the town gossip mill, my mother was convinced that Fletcher Wyndham was an express ticket to perdition.

That only made me want to know him all the more. And then when he looked at me and grinned with a certain slant of his head, I started to want him in a more serious way. A maybe-­you'll-­be-­my-­first-­time way.

I had not yet experienced my first time. When I was in high school, I stayed busy competing for blue ribbons at cooking contests and swim meets, my two favorite subjects. I was never the popular prom-­queen kid in school. That role belonged to Celia Swank. She was that girl we all wanted to be, with dead-­straight blonde hair and perfect boobs, and a way of laughing that made everyone else want to join in. She'd glide through the hallways of Switchback High, confident in the knowledge that every girl wanted to be her friend, and every boy wanted to nail her. She was the first of my friends to have sex—­tenth grade—­or at least, she was the first to talk about it.

As for me, I was determined to wait, not for marriage because that was too far away, but for the right guy. Gran told me—­more than once, because I guess she wanted to make sure I heard—­that after you give yourself to somebody in that way, you can't get it back. So you'd better make sure you pick the right somebody.

My mom warned me to stay away from Fletcher Wyndham. “He and his father showed up out of nowhere,” she said. “We don't know anything about him. Where's his mother? We don't know who his ­people are.”

When your name was Rush and you grew up in Switchback, it was pretty obvious who your ­“people” were. The first gallon of Sugar Rush Maple Syrup was produced in the 1800s by Elijah Rush, who claimed and named our mountain, high above the small village of Switchback.

There's a daguerreotype portrait of old Elijah over the fireplace mantel—­a somber man with a mustache and muttonchop whiskers, broad shoulders and a piercing stare. When I was little, I used to imagine what his voice sounded like and what books he liked to read. Did he have kitchen dance parties with his daughter, the way Dad used to do with me? Did he draw funny pictures like Mom did, to keep me amused? Did he play “Bill Grogan's Goat” on the old upright piano in the family room?

There's a family rumor about old Elijah that's most likely more than rumor. He was married for ten years, yet he and his wife never had a baby, not one. Then, all of a sudden, twin babies came along—­a boy and a girl. The rumor stems from the fact that the appearance of the kids coincided with Elijah's role in helping runaway slaves from the South.

Rush Mountain was a known “station” on the Underground Railroad, which wasn't a railroad at all, but an escape route. Lots of Vermonters, whether they were Quaker or not, were dedicated to freeing the slaves. Apparently, Elijah was dedicated to something more, because the babies were mixed race, judging by the only surviving photograph we have of them. Elijah's wife, Clarissa, must have been a good sport about it, because she raised those babies as her own. I do wonder, even now, about their biological mother. Did she surrender the babies and keep running to Canada? Did she ever get to see them again?

I think the woman's name was Jubetta Johnson. My grandpa pointed out a cryptic note in the fat family Bible we keep in a glass barrister case. On a certain page, in old-­fashioned spidery penmanship, someone wrote,
Jubetta Johnson, arrived from parts unknown, and thence departed, 1861
. And that's the year the twins were born.

The house on Rush Mountain still has its secret staircase, located behind a movable bookcase in my childhood bedroom. During the Underground Railroad years, it was used to access the root cellar, which in turn led to a tunnel that let out near a creek. According to the Switchback Historical Society, dozens of escaping slaves followed that creek into Canada . . . and freedom.

Having a secret staircase in the bedroom is enough to fire any kid's imagination. The bookcase pushed against the wall has a hidden hinge, and if you trip the latch and move it just so, it pulls back just enough to slip behind with a flashlight. I didn't mind the dank, fecund smell or even the spiders running for cover, because it was the perfect hiding place. As a girl, I had an imaginary friend named Glory—­an escaping slave in a homespun pinafore and high-­button boots. She and her parents ran away from a cruel master in the Deep South to find freedom in Canada, but Glory stayed with me for quite a while. She told me about the red clay soil and palmetto trees, the okra and hominy cakes and red peas in a dish called Hoppin' John, and black-­eyed peas topped with spicy chow chow. Like me, Glory was overly preoccupied with food, and we perused library books about regional cuisine together. There was a time—­right around my parents' divorce, I believe—­when Glory was as real to me as my other best friend, a dog named Rocket.

Glory left me a ­couple of years after my father left the family. She was like a beloved doll I didn't play with but didn't want to throw away. I got used to the house without Dad. Gran and I made more cooking videos, tended the garden, picked apples, made maple syrup.

As the production crew drives up the last stretch of the winding road, I tell Martin and Melissa about the family history. Elijah's son, Jacob Rush, took over the sugarbush, and every generation since that time has carried on the tradition of cultivating the maples and rendering the sap into syrup. The farmhouse has been modernized and expanded over the years, but it's still essentially the home Elijah built when he first came to Rush Mountain—­two stories, a chimney at either end, and a big carriage house and stables, which later became the garage and equipment barn.

The heart of the home is the kitchen—­the family's central gathering place. Likewise, the bedrooms are numerous and large, probably because as a young man, Elijah expected to have a lot of kids. In the next generation, Jacob fulfilled that wish, taking a bride named Philomena, who had nine children. The shingled roof has gables facing in multiple directions for a view of the entire mountain—­the trout pond that freezes for skating in the winter, the orchards and gardens, and of course the maple groves that have sustained my family for generations.

As we park in the driveway of the farmhouse where I grew up, a thousand memories flow through me.

Home. Breath and memory.

Standing here in the place where I was born brings everything back, the good and the bad, the constant and lasting reminders of how fragile life can be, how easily shattered when we least expect it. The little things we take for granted are suddenly the biggest things in the universe—­remembering how beloved and precious the ­people in our lives are, so that when we do have to say goodbye to the joy and love, we do so knowing we did everything we could.

The air feels different on my skin. The smells—­they're different, too.

And that's when I know for sure that a part of me has never truly left. I realize something else: Home is a place after all. A place I recognize, a part of my blood and bone. Finally, after a long journey that took me away and brought me back, I've come at last to the place where I belong. The only trouble is, I'm going to have to leave again, heading back to the life that's waiting for me somewhere else.

There's a wrap-­around porch where Gran and I used to sit in the summertime, husking corn, shelling peas and beans, trimming vegetables or fruit. Some of my best dreams were born there, on that porch, with the sun slanting over us and the dogs flopped down at our feet, basking in the late-­afternoon warmth.

On the wall behind the porch swing is an old world map, fading and tattered. I hung it there so I could show Gran the places I wanted to go—­France and Thailand and Greece and the Cook Islands. I wanted to go everywhere in the world, not just to study art history or look at ancient ruins, but to find out how ­people live, particularly the foods they eat. It's been an obsession of mine all my life. Gran never yearned to travel. I suppose it was because she was absolutely content with her life as it unfolded day by day, following the rhythm of the seasons and staying close to the ­people she loved.

It was Gran who would talk me down after a fight with my mom. You'd think, with this idyllic family farm, we would never have a day of trouble. You'd think. But a sugarbush family is like any other, vulnerable to the vagaries of our dreams and aspirations, our rivalries and jealousies, our disappointments and frustrations.

Now my mom comes out to greet us and shoos us toward the porch. We make our way through a gauntlet of pelting pinpricks of half-­freezing rain. “Heavenly days,” she says, sounding breathless, “you made it!” She folds me into a brief, fierce hug. “I've missed you so much.”

“Same here, Mom.” Everything about the day feels a bit warmer after that hug. I step back and make the introductions.

“I promised Annie I wouldn't swoon over you,” Mom says to Martin, “but I might have to break that rule.”

“I'm okay with swooning,” Martin assures her, brushing aside the handshake and bringing her in for a hug. “Thank you for having us.”

“It's my pleasure,” she says. By now, everyone is inside, wet boots and coats lining the mudroom. “I've got plenty of coffee all ready to go.”

My mother is a painter. It's her lifelong passion. She works in a studio Dad built for her up over the garage. The room is filled with light, and she spends hours there, creating breathtaking landscapes with roiling skies and sweeping vistas. She also does intimate portraits and still lifes. When she paints, she disappears somewhere. You can be standing next to her, but she's deep in the world of her painting and scarcely notices what's right in front of her.

Perhaps one reason she and I used to get into arguments is that we have a lot in common. Like me, she wanted to travel the world, go to college, create a vibrant career around the things she loves to do.

Unlike me, my mother never pursued those old dreams of hers. Because something more important came up—­family.

It's amazing how quickly and thoroughly your priorities shift when there's an unplanned pregnancy and a hurry-­up marriage. You set everything aside to make room for the tiny new stranger coming into your life—­uninvited, but desperately wanted and devotedly loved.

My brother, Kyle, came along, and my folks settled at the farm. Mom set aside her dream. Dad kept dreaming, but he hunkered down and tried to make it work. Eight years later, I was born. Considering what happened to my parents' marriage, I was probably their last-­ditch effort to stay together. And they did, for a good while. Ten years. That's how old I was when Dad left.