THE CATHOLICS, as we learn, have purchased of Mr. John Ware the old Sanger homestead on which to erect a church.  After a large outlay they have concluded to abandon their enterprise on the Plains, though it must involve quite a loss.
—The Waterville Mail, Vol. XXV, No. 23 July 14, 1871
 

Chapter 43 

Their Enterprise On The Plains

 Teeming life and ghosts go hand-in-hand.  I am both.  I am at once the quick and the dead.  I have tasted both and they are equal.  Sometimes you can’t walk for the congestion from all the ghosts.  Those who have been there before you and go on to parallel universes.  Doing commerce, horse trading, making love, stealing, looking you right in the eye and fortune telling.  From the past.  Fortunes are messages from the past.  My fate is penciled in.  Eternity waits.  And it can go to hell for all I care.  She did not want to marry a farmer.  Why, I ask myself, did a St. Germain which, she was, and for which boulevards, fôrets, churches, cafés and more are named in France, did she resent marrying a man she considered a farmer?  Was it just because she wanted to leave all that behind her when she left Wallagrass in the St. John River Valley in Northern Maine back during those late Depression years?  Her mother had remarried, a man who did not believe in education for women.  They fought about mémère’s daughters who were in school and his grown girls who were not even contemplating education.  Mémère who had worked in the mills in Fall River when she was ten years old knew the value of an education for her daughters.  Mémère had a plan for maman.  That’s what maman told me.  She was supposed to be a school teacher and help take care of her maman in her later years as payment for the care she received as a girl.  Maman moved to Bangor when she had just turned seventeen to be a nanny and then to work at the Eastern Maine General Hospital.  Maman quit school in her sophomore year.  She was introduced to Ray in front of Notre Dame Church in Waterville while visiting her sister.  “I didn’t like him in the beginning,” she said.  “He was cocky and a wise guy.”  I think she was in denial.  I think he turned her on.  My brother caught her dancing on the table for dad one night.  He teased her through the years that she was dancing naked.  She was indignant in her denial—till later.  “I was in my bra and panties!” she laughed, admitting to her lustiness she lived with her husband.  The 40’s and 50’s notion of living the high sex life.  Dancing on the table.  Must be some kind of ancient ritual transformed to modernity.  Belly dancing without the veils.  Who could afford veils anyway?  Veils was for nuns, not for table dancers like maman.
 They would fight about property.  All of them.  Land.  Who owned the land.  Between husband and wife.  My husband who is my cousin, ninth or tenth, will give me a look and I ask him, “How old is that look?”  Our ancestors left France on the same boat 400 years ago.  Jean Côté, the patriarch, cannot be exactly traced to a specific town in France, but he is buried on the I’le Orléans in Québec.  Pépère Côté always threatened his wife, Annie, with homelessness.  She was a Giroux whose people lived not even ten miles from the town which Jean Côté is reputed to have emigrated from.  Maman married a farmer.  She did everything she said she wouldn’t do.  I figure the sex must have been good.  After the fights they had, I can imagine the make-up matched its intensity and ferocity.  Otherwise, why keep doing it?  Until they both got old and tired.  But love, love like theirs, is addictive.  Some people love in kindness and others love in violence.  Ferocity.  She wasn’t the kind of woman to understand a tame man.  In her secret self, she wanted to be man-handled and she got more than she bargained for.  And the times encouraged the he-man to be he-men.  Abusive relationships—the depravity of proving your manhood through brute strength and their women who insist they do—until it is too late for many.  She fell in love with him and that was her fate.  Her past telling her her future.  He was always in her life.  When she had moved to Water Street with her family as a little girl and he was a little boy, he knew her then.  One Christmas, as a joke, he put a red light in the socket over the door.  He always decorated the house outlined in lights, but that year he added an extra touch in the socket above the door.  She was innocent of the meaning of the joke.  My brother told on him.  She took the broom and broke the bulb in the socket.  Christmas reminds me of the red light districts.
 He had always been street wise.  She, a child of the light.  He, a son of darkness with a skin tone to match if he stayed in the sun.  She was a blond and he was dark-haired with very little gray and high cheek bones and the cunning of a fox. 
 They built the house together.  He installed an extra long tub.  Before they moved in, he carried buckets and buckets of water to fill the tub for her so she could soak.  Like a true lover, he sometimes was.
 Gardens and flowers and age old animosities.  Those were the things of their enterprise down the Plains.

Trip to Virginia

lLeft Bangor at 11:05 on Delta, Got to Logan at 12.  Saw all the Bruins goet ^^off 323 Delta [ran the barrier, screaming “Oh, my Bruins!  My Bruins!,  which being a 63 year-old woman she was allowed to crash the barrier, to hug them all and tell them what a fan she was...], same plane I took to Washington.  Had a half hour wait at Terminal, could see the capital Dome, and Washington monument ^^{from the terminal} and saw Arlington monument on the from the plane.  tTook the Piedmont from Washington to Roanoke Virginia, Rhea & Bill were there to meaet mee.  Before I got off the plane the little Stewardess said I looked very pretty and I told her it was my Birthday, and I was flying from Maine to be with my twin sister for my Birthday, and just before I got off the plane she announced on the loud speaker it was my Birthday, and everyone wished me a happy Birthday and sang to me.  I was so surprise they called my name and I told them all thank you and left Bangor ME. to be here.  everyone looked beautiful and kind to me.   had a lunch on the plane coffee, juice  Rita [twin sister's daughter] had supper ready for us and Birthday cake & all  Bill had bought us each a beautiful ^^Identical corsages of red roses and lace and ^^gave it to us in the car.  Went Shopping into Galax, Vir. yesterday Sun. Polaski Sunday, Mt Airy North Carolina ^^{went to dinner to sizzling steak house to eat} Redford vir. downton Hillsville, VA.  went to Long John Silver to eat.  Then went Shopping to Hill's Dept. Store. 

Toots, Rhea, and I went monday to christenburg VA. 

(Tuesday), Mt. airy had dinner out sizzlin steak house went to sky city 
Wed.  Went to Galax and shopped and stop at Mark's and Toots.
(Thursday) we went to Ground Hog Mountain (You can see 4 different states. (Virginia, N. Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky)
Then we went on to Mayberry Mill.  They use to make molasses also whiskey, Big grinding wheel.  they still grind corn meal also Blacksmith Shop & Tanning leather, shop and many other things Then we went to Quality mill to pick up Rhea's check in the afternoon.
Friday.  Stayed home and sewed on quilt
Sat.  stayed home and sewed on quilt Then at 3:00 went to the store and had spaghetti Feed with toots.
Sunday) stayed home.  In the afternoon we took a ride to Mt airy.
Monday stayed home and sewed on toots quilt
Then we went to toots for the evening
Tomorrow I'm going home.
Rhea & Bill are taking me to Roanoke

         With all my love
          Ray.

I LOVE
   YOU
   big