Chapter 19: The Farm with a Tree and a Swing

The Hoakes' farm loomed well before the bus had stopped. It stood, isolated, between two big oak trees and, from where I was, I could even see an orchard behind the house, a shed, a barn, a children's swing and two rows of petunias and gladioli. They all looked modest but functioning, flowers included. Mr Hoakes was a talented carpenter, but ever since his mental breakdowns, which had resulted in him being committed several times, all the hard work had fallen on the shoulders of Mother Hoakes. At least I imagined that to be the case. I know this piece of information because everybody in town knows this piece of information and, to be honest, this was one of the few that actually interested me and I bothered to retain. I didn't know if I would bump into him during my visit or whether he was in hospital. Some say he's back to functioning ways, while others say he's a lost cause. To be fair, I kinda' wanted to meet him instead of Morata Hoakes. Last time I talked to her, she was having an entire conversation all on her own, almost completely oblivious to my presence.

I walked towards the front door and used the golden Victorian knocker only once. Mrs Hoakes must have been standing by the door, 'cause it only took a few seconds for her to open it. She seemed urgent yet efficient.

'Thank you for coming on such short notice. Please, come in.'

I followed her lead and we crossed a tiny dark hallway before she opened a door and showed me into the kitchen.

'I hope you don't mind if we sit in here. I have a one-year-old who's startled by the frailest of sounds. I saw you coming through the kitchen window and I tried to run to open the door before you could knock.' I felt admonished for something that wasn't my fault.

I didn't know she had another kid in the house. And especially not one so young. To me, she looked well into her forty-fiveish or thereabouts. 'Oh, I'm sorry.'

'That's alright. Nobody expects a younger kid in this house, anyway.' And again, she seemed stand-offish and bitter, but I guess she meant it like an explanation of sorts. 'Would you like some tea or coffee? Pofessor Sarpaulis? Is that how I should call you? I mean, I know you used to teach grad students in New York...' . Not true. And also I didn't feel like she actually cared about what I did for a living, either. Her remarks felt trivial and impersonal and I was already starting to feel lost in the thickness of her presence. Was that how she talked to everyone?

'Rick is fine. You can call me Rick. I didn't teach in New York. I worked in research.'

'Is there anything left to discover in Math?'

'Everything about our world and cosmos.' And I paused and slipped a noisy sigh. 'Are you alright? You look nervous.'

'That's why we're here, after all. You told me Melinda was solving advanced Math problems. Is that true?'

'Yeah.'

'How advanced? Maybe it's something an intelligent nine-year old can do, if they paid attention in class and did their homework.'

'Unless their homework is advanced Quantum Mechanics, Mrs Hoakes.'

'Call me Morata, if you like.'

'Is there any way she learned all this from her dad or yourself? Or maybe you keep Math books in the house?'

'Her dad works in the wood business in Sacramento. That's all he's done his entire life. He's intelligent but he's no Albert Einstein. We don't have a TV. No internet. I'm an anxious woman, Mr Sarpaulis, and noises and distractions bother me a lot. Melinda as well. She takes after me in this respect. In others, she's like her father.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, my husband has always been a loner and Melinda is the same. I have encouraged her to make friends but she loves building things on her own, instead of hanging around with children her age. You see that swing, over there?' And she pointed to a little orchard with miniature trees and the swing I'd seen earlier. 'She made that.'

'It's beautiful.' And indeed it was. The whole picture, in fact. The trees; the cornfields opening behind them. And the swing didn't look the work of a nine-year old. 'Did she make it recently?' And I was trying to lead the conversation towards our object.

'Oh, no. She made this when she was seven. Yeah. My husband likes to spend time outdoors and she follows him around, copying everything he does. If he picks up a log, she does the same.

'But you told me that it was only recently that she'd started acting differently.

'Yes'

'How recent?'

'Two, maybe three days.' There are sounds and shapes that soothe the mind and this was one of these occurrences. Synchronicity made it that as she said 'two or three' I looked down at kitchen table in front of me and there were three tiny crumbs of bread, perfectly aligned and slightly tilted towards me, in a vertical line of sorts. In Geometry, this is called co-linearity, when three points are situated on the same line. The feeling of comfort I was experiencing was also fueled by a breeze that had crept through the kitchen windows and also by the shuffling of cornstalks I could hear in the neighboring landscape. These moments are magical, when everything fits or is just right, yet they are so rare. The Universe halts for a second and the banality of a single moment in a country kitchen, which is otherwise pointless and lost, becomes the centerpiece of how everything functions and breathes at all levels in the fabric of space and time.