Prodigal Summer: A Novel

by Barbara Kingsolver

  "That's okay, I don't care what they look like. I just put them in to keep nematodes away from the roots of the tomato plants."

  "Now, that is something. That is really something. Cole was starting to get real interested in all that the last couple years. How to poison things without using poison. He went up to U.K. to take a class on that."

  "That's how we met," Lusa said, looking down. "I was his teacher."

  "Oh!" cried Jewel, as if she'd been stung by a bee. Was she jealous? Lusa wondered. She didn't usually seem to be, not so much as the other sisters, even though she and Cole had been so close. Jewel alone had always seemed willing to share him. Lusa bent close to her beans to keep the sun out of her eyes as she neared the end of her row. She moved along on her knees, dragging a nearly full paper grocery bag along beside her.

  "Believe it or not," she said to Jewel, "I had both your kids up here for half the morning handpicking the bean beetles and squashing them. I told them I'd pay them a penny apiece if they kept track, and would you believe, they did a body count. They're going to go home rich today. You got any overdue bills you need paid, talk to Crys and Lowell." She glanced up. "Jewel? Jewel?"

  Lusa scanned above the whole row of tall tomato plants for Jewel's head, but it wasn't there. She stood up and walked along the end in a panic, looking down between the rows. There Jewel was on the ground, gripping her knees and rocking with her face tight with pain and a basket of tomatoes spilled out on the ground beside her. Lusa flew to her side and put both arms around her to steady her.

  "Oh, God," Lusa said, several times. "What should I do? I'm sorry, I'm not one of those people who're good in emergencies."

  Jewel opened her eyes. "It's no emergency. I just need to get to the house. I guess I overdid it. I've got pain pills in my purse."

  Leaving beans and tomatoes strewed on the ground and the rabbit fence wide open, the two small women struggled down the slope and across the yard to the house. Lusa practically carried Jewel up the steps. Upper-body strength had come to her unbidden in the last months: nearly every day she did something she used to have to ask Cole to do, and it startled her, always, to glance at her body in the mirror and see planes where soft curves used to be. Carrying a relative up the porch stairs, though, was a first.

  They paused in the front hallway, hearing the children's voices. Lowell and Crys were in the parlor with a stack of ancient board games Lusa had pulled out of a closet. Their favorites were Monopoly and the Ouija board, which they pronounced "Ow-jay."

  "Where are your pills?" Lusa asked.

  "Oh, shoot, my purse is in the car."

  "Let's get you onto the parlor couch, then. I'll run and get it."

  Jewel gave Lusa a pleading look. "Could we go upstairs? I hate for the kids to see me like this."

  "Of course." Lusa felt stupid for not thinking of that. Jewel gripped the banister with a tight, white hand, and Lusa carried most of her weight up these stairs, too. She guided Jewel into the bedroom, deciding not to care that the bed wasn't made and clothes were on the floor. "Here, you sit and I'll be right back."

  She flew down to the car and back, breathless, just taking a quick glance at the kids to see that they were occupied. They were arguing over Monopoly money, so they hadn't noticed anything. Keeping her voice as calm as she could, she asked them to go out and close the rabbit fence around the garden and then gather the eggs, which she knew Lowell loved to do, so long as his sister protected him from the rooster. Then she ran back upstairs, pausing in the upstairs bathroom to draw a glass of water from the tap. When she returned to the bedroom she found Jewel settled into the green brocade chair by the window, Lusa's reading chair. She was running her fingers over the vine pattern on the nubbly green fabric, as if reading something written there in Braille. Lusa handed her the glass of water and sat on the floor at her feet to work on the childproof ca.

  When she got it open at last, Jewel swallowed the pills and drank the whole glass of water, obediently, like a child. She set down the glass and went on rubbing the arms of the chair, thoughtfully. "We used to have two of these," she said. "A pair. Mommy's good parlor chairs, till they got old. Lois finally spilled something on one of them. Or, no, she cut her leg open with a pocketknife and got a big streak of blood from here to there. Lordy, she was in trouble."

  "For cutting her leg?"

  "Well, no, see, for doing it in that chair. She was trying to make a soap carving of Marilyn Monroe! We weren't supposed to be in the parlor at all; it was just for company. That was a whole mess of trouble. Mommy about had a fit. She couldn't clean it for anything. She had to throw that chair out! Lord, I wonder where it ever ended up."

  "Probably in the barn, along with everything else in the free world. Do you know there's part of a piano in there?"

  "No," Jewel said quietly, her eyes fixed on the wallpaper over the bed. "She put it down by the road. That's the way you did back then, when we were kids. Somebody would always come along that was worse off than you and didn't mind putting a sheet over a stained chair, and they'd take it. It's somewhere now. Somebody's using it someplace." Her eyes focused and came down like a pair of blue butterflies to light on Lusa's face. "Isn't it funny how you never know how things are going to wind up? I get so mad, thinking about not having a chance to get old. Darn it. I want to see what Lois looks like with white hair."

  "I don't think any of us will live to see that. As long as Lady Clairol's still in business."

  Jewel let out a weak laugh, but Lusa felt bad for trying to cover this awful, important moment with a joke. She had suffered so much herself from people's platitudes and evasions of death, yet here with Jewel she had no idea what else to say. "You never know, Jewel, you still might outlive us all," was what came out.

  Jewel shook her head, keeping her eyes steady on Lusa. "I'm not going to see another summer. I'll be gone before you're done eating the canned goods in your pantry."

  "I'm sorry," Lusa whispered. She reached up to take both of Jewel's hands in hers and held on to them without speaking for several minutes. An occasional syllable of the children's shouts drifted in through the open window. The position eventually became awkward for Lusa and she had to let go, stroking her sister-in-law's fingers gently as she did. She looked back up at Jewel's face, which seemed empty now. The hat looked sad and undignified indoors, seeming to mock her seriousness, but Jewel had been adamant about not spending money on a wig. Lusa had wondered whether it signified optimism that her hair would grow back or realism, an acknowledgment that there wouldn't be much time. Now she knew.

  "Jewel, I want to ask you a question. Something I've been thinking about. You don't have to answer today; you can think it over as long as you need to. Or maybe you'll just say no, and that's fine, too. But I want to ask."

  "Ask me, then."

  Lusa's heart pounded. She had imagined asking this in a more casual setting, maybe while she and Jewel did something together in the kitchen. She hadn't realized before today that it was too late for casual. And this was not a casual thing.

  "What is it, then?" Jewel seemed troubled now by the pause.

  "I wondered if, when the time came, if the time came..." Lusa felt her face grow hot. "Forgive me if this is inappropriate to ask, but I wondered what you'd think about the idea of my adopting Crys and Lowell."

  "Taking care of them or adopting them?"

  "Adopting them."

  Jewel studied Lusa's face, surprisingly unshaken. She didn't seem angry, anyway, as Lusa had feared she might be.

  "We don't have to talk about this if you don't want to," Lusa said. "I can't imagine anything harder to think about."

  "Don't you think I think about it every minute of the day?" Jewel said in a flat voice that frightened Lusa.

  "I guess you do. I would. That's why I brought it up."

  "Well, it's not something you ought to feel obligated about," she answered finally. "I've got four sisters."

  Lusa looked at the floor, at her callused knees and
dirt-streaked thighs beneath the hem of her shorts, and then she took Jewel's hand back in hers without looking up. "You've got five sisters. I'm the only one without children." She glanced up then at Jewel, who was listening. "But that's not the reason. That wouldn't be a good reason. I love your kids, that's the reason. I love Crys and I love Lowell. I'm not sure I'd be the greatest mother, but I think I could learn on those two. Lowell's easy, he's a heart stealer, and Crys...Crys and I are two peas in a pod."

  "You'd have plenty of help, right down the hill," Jewel said equivocally.

  "Plenty of help," Lusa agreed, encouraged by Jewel's use of the conditional. She hadn't said no. "More help than you can shake a stick at. Although to be honest I don't think Lois and a stick should be allowed near those kids. At least till they're older."

  "Not till they're older," Jewel echoed, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the big green chair. "Can you picture Crys at the senior cotillion?"

  "Believe it or not, I can," Lusa said gently. "But she might be wearing a tux. She's got the world by the tail; she just needs help figuring out what to do with it. It's going to take an open mind. When I look around this family, the best candidate I come up with is me."

  Jewel opened her eyes and looked down at Lusa with a new expression. "There's some papers I have to get their father to sign before I can really decide the next step. I've been thinking about all this since I first got sick. I had the papers drawn up already at the lawyer's."

  "For what, releasing them for adoption?"

  "Well, just releasing them to me. He doesn't even know I'm sick. There's no telling what he'd do. I don't think he'd really come scoop them up, but you never know with him. With Shel, that's the one thing you can count on, is that you never can tell. He might think he wanted them, for a week or two, and then he'd dump them out like kitties by the side of the road when he figured out a kid has to eat and shit."

  She closed her eyes again and winced. Lusa stroked the backs of her hands until whatever it was passed over. She wondered what this invisible beast was doing to Jewel on the inside, what parts of her it already owned. She thought of an old tale her zayda used to tell about the beast that ate the moon every month and then slowly spat it back out. A happier ending than this. She could feel the heat and ire of Jewel's monster right through her thin skin.

  "So I'll get those sent off to Shel," Jewel said after a minute. "Just to get that part squared away. I'll do that today. I've been putting it off."

  "Nobody could blame you," Lusa said, and then they sat still again while the clock out in the hallway chimed half past the hour. Lusa collected several questions in the silence, but she waited until Jewel opened her eyes again before asking them. It was impossible to be too eager about any of this. She tried to talk slowly.

  "Do you even know where Shel is? And will he sign the papers?"

  "Oh, yeah, I know where he's at. He moves around a lot, but the state's got a garnishee on his wages. See, I had to go to court for that, after he took off. Any employer that writes him a paycheck has to take out three hundred dollars a month and send it to me. That's how I keep track of him."

  "Gosh," Lusa said. She had never remotely pictured Jewel in court, standing up to her abandonment. She could imagine the gossip that must have generated. And there were people in this county who would shun Jewel to the end of her life on account of it.

  "That's exactly why he'd sign off his claim to the kids," Jewel said. "So he could quit paying. I think he'll sign in a heartbeat. But would you want him to?"

  Lusa studied Jewel's furrowed brow, trying to follow the quick turns this conversation had made. "Would I take the kids without the money, you mean?" She thought about it for less than ten seconds. "It's the safest thing. Legally, I think it would be best. Because I'd like to be able to put their names on the deed to this farm. So it would go to them, you know, after me." She felt a strange movement in the air as she said this, a lightness that grew around her. When she gathered the will to look up at Jewel again, she was surprised to see her sister-in-law's face shining with tears.

  "It just seems right to do that," Lusa explained, feeling self-conscious. "I'm thinking I'd add 'Widener' to their names, if that's all right with you. I'm taking it, too."

  "You don't have to. We all got over that." Jewel wiped her face with her hands. She was smiling.

  "No, I want to. I decided a while ago. As long as I live on this place, I'm going to be Miz Widener, so why fight it?" Lusa smiled, too. "I'm married to a piece of land named Widener."

  She got up and sat on the arm of the green chair so she could put her arm gently across Jewel's shoulders. They both sat looking out the window at the yard and the hayfield behind it, across which Lusa had received her husband's last will and testament. Today her eyes were drawn to the mulberry tree at the edge of the yard, loaded with the ripe purple fruits that Lowell had christened "long cherries" when he discovered and gorged himself on them, staining his teeth blue. At this moment in the summer the mulberry had become the yard's big attraction for every living thing for miles around, it seemed. It dawned on Lusa that this was the Tree of Life her ancestors had woven into their rugs and tapestries, persistently, through all their woes and losses: a bird tree. You might lose a particular tree you owned or loved, but the birds would always keep coming. She could spot their color on every branch: robins, towhees, cardinals, orchard orioles, even sunny little goldfinches. These last Lusa thought were seed eaters, so she didn't know quite what they were doing in there; enjoying the company, maybe, the same way people will go to a busy city park just to feel a part of something joyful and lively.

  "I'm going to have to talk to my sisters about it," Jewel said suddenly. "The other sisters," she amended.

  "Oh, sure. I know. Please don't feel any hurry or pressure or anything. God knows I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. If they don't think I'm in a position."

  "You're in a position."

  "Well, I don't know. I've never had any idea how I fit into this family picture."

  "You have an idea, honey. More than you think." Jewel pressed her lips together in thought, then spoke again. "They'll act hurt for a minute, because they have to. But as soon as we leave and close the door behind us, they will praise the Lord. We will all praise the Lord."

  {25}

  Predators

  For the rest of her own life and maybe the next one after, Deanna would remember this day. A cool snap had put a sudden premonition of fall into the air, a crisp quality she could feel with her skin and all the rest of her newly heightened senses: she could smell and taste the change, even hear it. The birds had gone quiet, their noisy summer celebration hushed all at once by the power of a cold front and the urge rising up in their breasts to be still, gather in, wait for the time soon to come when they would turn in the darkness on a map made of stars and join the vast assembly of migration. Deanna clung to her perch on the rock, feeling the same stirring in her breast, a sense of finished business and a longing to fly. She had climbed up onto a lichen-crusted boulder fifty feet above the spot where the trail ended at the overlook. From here she could look down on everything, the valley of her childhood and the mountains beyond it. If she stood and spread her arms, it seemed possible she would sail out beyond everything she'd yet known, into new territory.

  From the branches behind her she heard a sociable gathering of friends hailing each other with their winter call: chicka dee-dee-dee! The chickadees, her familiar anchors. Deanna would not fly away today; this thrill was only something left over from childhood, when a crisp turn in the weather meant apple time, time to hunt for paw-paws in Nannie's woodlot. At some point between yesterday and today the air had gone from soggy to brittle. The Virginia creeper on the cabin had begun to turn overnight; this morning she'd noticed a few bright-red leaves, just enough to make her pause and take note of history. This was the day, would always be the day, when she first knew. She would step somehow from the realm of ghosts that she'd inhabited all her
life to commit herself irrevocably to the living. On the trail up to this overlook today she had paid little mind to the sadness of lost things moving through the leaves at the edges of her vision, the shadowy little wolves and the bright-winged parakeets hopping wistfully through untouched cockleburs. These dispossessed creatures were beside her and always would be, but just for today she noticed instead a single bright-red berry among all the clusters of green ones covering the spicebushes. This sign seemed meaningful and wondrous, standing as a divide between one epoch of her life and the next. If the summer had to end somewhere, why couldn't it be in that one red spicebush berry beside the path?

  She slipped the small, borrowed mirror--his shaving mirror--from her back pocket and looked closely at her face. With the fingertips of her left hand she touched the slightly mottled, darker skin beneath her eyes. It was like a raccoon's mask, but subtler, spreading from the bridge of her nose out to her cheekbones. The rest of her face was the same as she remembered it, unmoved if not untouched. Her breasts were heavier; she could feel that change internally. She turned her face to the sun and slowly unbuttoned her shirt, placing his hands like ghost fingers where hers were now. His touch on her skin would be a mantle she could shed and put on again through the power of memory. Here on this rock in the sun she let him enter her like water: the memory of this morning, his eyes in hers, his movement like a tide pushing the sea against the sand of its only shore. Her body's joy was colored darker now from knowing that each conversation, every kiss, every comforting adventure of skin on skin might be the last one. Each image stood still beside its own shadow. Even the warmth of his body sleeping next to her afterward was a dark-brown heat she stroked with her fingers, memorizing it against the days when that space would be cold.

  Fifty feet below her was the overlook where she'd nearly ended her life in a fall two years ago, and then, in May, where she'd fallen again. Sweet, he'd said. Did you ever see a prettier sight than that right there? And she'd replied, Never. She was looking at mountains and valleys, all keeping their animal secrets. He was looking at sheep farms.