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1. Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Momma used to sing to Maybeth, to all of them, all the time, when she was giving them baths or changing diapers or playing games with them. Maybeth thought of her voice as gold, shining like the sun. When she was a little older, she thought that the gold of Momma's voice might have dimmed: it was still beautiful, but tarnished. ("Gold doesn't tarnish," James objected when she told him. "Oh," Maybeth replied, but she thought it was what it sounded like, anyway.)
Maybeth remembered Momma singing as Maybeth followed her around in the kitchen. "Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme... Look, Maybeth," she said, breaking off the song, but speaking in her slow sweet voice that sounded like music even when she wasn't singing, "we'll put parsley, rosemary, and thyme on the roasting chicken."
"What about sage?" Maybeth wanted to know.
Momma smiled. "Not sage, even though the song says it. It doesn't seem quite right with the others. Here, I'll give you a little to taste."
Maybeth tasted and understood what Mama meant. And she carried the taste of the rosemary and the sage with her, as a memory of Momma before the gold had dimmed even more, before it dimmed enough to go silent. It was a memory of Momma that she kept while they traveled after leaving each other, and for all the years after.
"Rosemary, that's for remembrance," Dicey told her many years later -- it was something she was learning in high school. Dicey didn't think much of it, she made that clear by the way she said it. Maybeth liked it, though. She didn't understand most of the things Dicey told her about what she was learning. But she understood that, she understood the way that rosemary could be remembrance.
And that's what the song said, wasn't it? Remember me to one who goes there -- she was once a true love of mine. Momma had always looked sad, singing that part, and Maybeth was sometimes sad too, remembering Momma, but she didn't want to forget her either.
2. Without no seams nor needlework
Gram had tried to teach Maybeth to knit. Dicey and James weren't interested, and Sammy got the hang of it pretty quickly and then decided he'd rather play checkers in the evenings, but Maybeth had only gotten to the point where she could laboriously knit a row, more-or-less correctly, but very slowly. "That'll come in time, girl," Gram told her. "I wasn't as fast as me, either, when I was your age."
Maybeth wasn't so sure. Knitting wasn't like school, it didn't require her to have ideas or to be able to follow a complicated structure of thoughts, like James was so good at. But it also wasn't like baking, it wasn't something where she could organize it in her mind like she could recipes. "Did Momma knit?" she asked Gram, even though she knew Gram never wanted to talk about Momma. She didn't remember ever seeing Momma knit.
"Not much," Gram said briefly.
The next day Gram showed her how to crochet, and after a few false starts Maybeth found that crochet suited her much better. "I thought so," Gram snapped, and Maybeth smiled at her, knowing what Gram's frown really meant.
It wasn't like baking or music, both of which she loved more, but still -- "Could I make a sweater?" Maybeth asked.
She saw Gram about to say no, and saw Gram twist her face around that no and say, "It'd be thicker than a knit sweater, for sure. I've got a pattern for children somewhere, I expect, that would do for you or Sammy. Use thin yarn, if you try."
Maybeth browsed through Gram's yarn until she found a rich red heathered wool, thinner than the yarn Gram usually used for sweaters. "Can I use this?"
"That's old wool, girl," said Gram. "Might have moths in it. But if it doesn't --" She hesitated. "Go ahead. I forgot I had it, I wasn't going to use it."
The Sammy-sized red sweater Maybeth produced wasn't perfect, or even close, and it took her months of evenings, during which time Gram whipped through sweaters for all of them. But Sammy grinned at her and said, "Good-o!" when she presented it to him, and wore it until there were holes in it and it was too small for him. And that, Maybeth thought, smiling to herself, was the important thing.
3. Tell her to find me a parcel of land
Weeding the vegetable garden wasn't Maybeth's favorite task, but it wasn't her least favorite, either, and she was glad to do it while Sammy was at tennis camp. The smell of the green plants, and the feel of the dirt on her fingers, and the rhythm of the work, all together, was soothing, almost trance-like. She didn't know how long she had been working when she became aware that Dicey was with her, busy alongside her.
They worked companiably for a while in silence. A light wind came up, and Maybeth grinned, enjoying the way that it felt on her face and arms. Finally Dicey said abruptly, "Gram's giving you the farm in the will. She told me a while ago. It's not a secret, but private. But you ought to know it."
"Oh," said Maybeth. "But shouldn't she give it to all of us?" she wondered.
"I guess that would be fair. But fair isn't always the same as right. Can you imagine, what would James do with a quarter of a farm?" Maybeth giggled a little, thinking of James looking at them with mock horror. "You would do right by the farm, and by all of us, so it's the same as giving it to all of us, in the end," Dicey argued, as if she were debating with herself. "You would do right by the farm," Dicey repeated. "Because you love it."
Maybeth did love the farm. She thought of the farm as one of the boxes in her mind. There was a box for when they loved with Momma in Provincetown, a box for the time they had traveled to live with Gram, a box for living at the farm in Crisfield with Gram. Each box was a different color, a different texture. The box for Provincetown was soft and warm, with colors that once had been bright, but faded; red, like Momma's old favorite sweater, and gold, like Momma's voice. The box for living here, at the farm, was wood-colored, the kind of sand-colored wood that glowed in the light, like the wood bracelet that Dicey had brought back for her, when she and Gram had gone to see Momma for the last time, and it smelled like the sea.
"It's beautiful," Maybeth said softly.
"I know," Dicey said. She smiled at Maybeth. "And that's what I mean."
4. And bind it up with a sprig of heather
"But I don't have any ideas," Maybeth protested.
Dicey looked at her and sighed. It was awfully nice of Dicey, Maybeth thought, to spend her break helping her. Even though Jeff didn't really have breaks in grad school like he'd had in college, his lab still emptied out over spring break, and Dicey's boatbuilding course had taken a break at the same time, so he and Dicey had driven down from Boston for the week. They'd spent some of the time with Jeff's father and Brother Thomas, and now they were with Gram and Maybeth and Sammy for the rest of the week, though not with James, who was visiting the medical schools he'd been accepted to. "It doesn't have to be a good idea, Maybeth. It's just that your teacher wants you to pick something to write about, with a thesis statement."
Maybeth didn't really understand. Senior English was the last class she had to pass. She'd always passed English before; her papers came back with red marks and notes to check her spelling and notes to stay on topic, but she'd always at least been able to get a passing grade. "I wrote about summer being pretty, and summer is pretty -- but I don't think that works," Maybeth said humbly.
"No," said Dicey, "it's a little different -- Hold on, Maybeth, let me think about it a bit." She frowned.
"Tell her to reap it with a sickle of leather," Jeff sang softly in the other room.
Maybeth sat stolidly, waiting for Dicey to tell her what to do while the music twined around her. Instead Dicey said, moving the pencil aimlessly around on the table, "What are you thinking about, Maybeth?"
Maybeth said honestly, "The song. Do you think it's a sad song?"
Dicey's hand stopped abruptly and she stared at Maybeth. Maybeth blinked. What had she said? Dicey answered, still looking at Maybeth, "Well, do you?"
"I don't know," Maybeth said patiently, "that's why I'm asking you. Can you reap a field with a sickle of leather?" When she'd been a child, when Momma had first sung it to her, she'd thought that you could. But she hadn't known what a sickle was, or anything.
"Not unless there's some trick to it, I guess." Dicey pursed her lips consideringly. "So it's impossible for the true love, and so it's a sad song? You know, Maybeth, that's an idea."
Maybeth frowned, not understanding. "That's not an idea. That's a question."
"Yeah, but if you can come up with a question -- then we can talk about what the answers might be, right? And then you could write something about that."
"Oh!" said Maybeth.
Years later, Maybeth would remember that as the day that she had actually understood something she hadn't before. She'd known James was good at ideas, and she'd known that James liked to ask questions, but she hadn't realized until then that a question itself could be an idea, could be part of an idea: that it was possible for her to have ideas too.
It was a good thing to have learned, her last semester at school.
5. Remember me to one who goes there
"There you are," Dicey said, sounding faintly exasperated. "I've been looking for you. Didn't you hear Sammy calling for you? Maybeth--" She stopped.
"I was getting ready," Maybeth said. "Dicey? Is there something the matter?"
"You look like Momma, is all," Dicey mumbled. She didn't have to say: before Momma got sick. Dicey straightened up and said, "And like Gram. Have you noticed, Gram is awfully pretty?"
Maybeth nodded. She had noticed. She liked thinking about Gram at different ages: as a girl like herself; as a young mother; as the Gram she was now. "I wish -- I wish Momma could see."
"Me too," Dicey said. She wasn't usually very demonstrative, but now she put out a hand and ruffled Maybeth's hair. "Me too, Maybeth."
Downstairs, Maybeth could hear James and Sammy singing together, with Jeff's guitar weaving through the notes. "Are you going to Scarborough Fair," they sang, James' thready tenor with Sammy's sturdy bass underlying it. She didn't ask why James and Sammy had chosen that song, though maybe she knew. And then there was another voice, a full brassy voice. "Mina! She's here?"
Dicey grinned. "She finished up her exams day before yesterday, and came in yesterday so she'd be sure to make it. And there's someone else, too, who just drove in, that's why I was looking for you."
As if Dicey's words had conjured up the sound, Maybeth heard another voice joining James and Jeff and Mina -- "Remember me to one who goes there" -- a rich full voice dominating the others, even Mina's, and this voice she knew immediately. "Mr. Lingerle!" she gasped, and ran downstairs, almost colliding headlong into him.
He stopped singing and engulfed her in an enormous hug. "Maybeth!" he exclaimed, holding her at arm's length and studying her. "How long has it been -- two years, I think?"
"You came!" she said, smiling and smiling, feeling as if her heart would burst with happiness. "Oh! --" she exclaimed as she turned to the round-faced, compact, cheerful-looking woman beside him, recognizing her from pictures -- "are you Mrs. Lingerle? You came too? Oh, how lovely it is to meet you!"
Mr. Lingerle laughed, and so did the woman beside him. She looked like she often laughed, and Maybeth warmed to her immediately. "I did coax Mary to leave Chicago for a week with me, after all. I told her, I wouldn't miss your graduation for the world," said Mr. Lingerle. "I know how hard you've worked for it."
If anyone knew, besides of course Dicey and Gram and James and Sammy, she knew it was Mr. Lingerle. Mrs. Lingerle nodded, sobering, and Maybeth remembered Mr. Lingerle had told them that she was also a teacher. "I'm so glad to be able to come for your graduation," Mrs. Lingerle said, and then she continued, smiling again, "and to meet you all, finally! Isaac's been telling me about all of you. James and Sammy, are you the ones that Isaac mentioned he'd picked up after you'd gotten in a fight?"
This led to a burst of reminiscing, after which Mina said, "Let's finish the song! I've missed singing with you Tillermans. Do we have time before we need to leave for the ceremony?"
"Let's have Mr. and Mrs. Lingerle sing it, this time, and we can all sing afterwards," Maybeth said, beaming at them and slipping to the piano. "I'll play."
Mr. Lingerle and Mrs. Lingerle nodded to each other, and they started. As Maybeth had thought, Mrs. Lingerle's contralto blended beautifully with Mr. Lingerle's baritone, and they sang together with an easy familiarity, the way Maybeth did with Sammy and James and Dicey, as if they sang together every day. Playing underneath them -- fitting herself to the lines of their singing as Mr. Lingerle had taught her to do -- was like dancing, was like feeling the wind blow a sailboat through the water.
Scarborough Fair was a sad song, Maybeth thought as she played. But it was sad in the way she liked best; in a way that meant that people went on, and lived life, and that sadness was part of life, just like happiness was. And it could be a happy song too, because sometimes things that you thought were impossible happened after all, like graduating from high school; because sometimes you did get to see people you loved again, and meet new friends as well.
She turned around for just a second, looking at the people she loved. Love was love, she thought, no matter when or how. And she caught Dicey's eye, and grinned at her, before turning back to the music.