In the spring there was a green sky and a tornado watch. “A tornado sounds like a train,” our teacher, Miss Radcliffe, told us. “But by the time you hear it, it’s too late for you.”
“Then how do you know it sounds like a train?” asked Stevie. When the tornado came it picked up a horse trailer and carried it seven miles, dumping it finally in Bryan’s Park just six blocks from where I lived.
In the fall the Imperial Theater was struck by lightning and set afire. I’d seen Ben-Hur there and Old Yeller. Stevie and I biked over. We were unlikely to get permission to go to a fire so we didn’t ask. This was my first fire in the rain. The insides of the theater were gutted, but the outside was untouched. The police wouldn’t let us get near enough to see anything.
In the fall Elm Heights held a Halloween carnival. I wore a red cape with a hood and carried a basket for treats. My brother bought me a cake I wanted with his very own money. There was a booth where you could win a goldfish by throwing a ring over its bowl, and I won at this, too. Barbara Kinser organized all her brothers and her sister to spend their money at this booth. By the end of the evening they’d won thirty-three goldfish, all of which boiled to death in the winter when their house caught fire.
In the spring the nursery school where my mother taught held a picnic at Converse Park. Converse was forty minutes out of town, heavily wooded and big. It contained the Tulip Tree Trace, a twenty-two-mile hike my father took me and my brother and the Kinser and Rabinowitz children on in the summer. We weren’t very old, but we all made it, even Julia Rabinowitz, Stevie’s little sister. I remember my mother sitting on the hood of the car, waiting for us, smiling and waving when she finally saw us all walking in.
My father didn’t come to the nursery school picnic. He was fly-fishing on the Wabash River. He was camping out. He was to be gone the whole weekend. Stevie came to the picnic so I’d have someone my own age to play with.
Stevie said if we walked down the trace, but not all the way down to the sycamores, if we took a turn off to the right and went downhill again, there was a cabin his father had shown him. We went looking for it. My father was a botanist at the university and had been teaching me the names of trees and wild plants. I walked and named things for Stevie.
It took us a while to find it and then it wasn’t really a cabin, just the remnant of a cabin. The front door was gone, if there had ever been a front door. Weeds grew up around the windows, blocking the light. Inside was ghastly, a webby, musty place with one dim little room, a jumble of bad-smelling clothing on the floor, plates and cups and silverware for four on the table. The plates were of tin, the clothes old-fashioned. There was a black dress with a bustle.
“They left in the middle of dinner,” Stevie told me. “Without packing or anything. They left everything.”
I thought there must have been something awful to make them leave like that, something that really frightened them, but Stevie said no. It was gold. A wagon train came by and told them there was gold in California, and they left without even eating their dinner. The food got cold and spoiled and bugs ate it and eventually it just dissolved away, leaving only the chicken bones on the tin plates.
“The historical society keeps the cabin up,” Stevie said, but it didn’t look kept up to me. My mother’s parents lived in California. My grandfather was a dentist and he put gold into people’s teeth. Stevie didn’t have any grandparents at all.
It started to rain. We had about twenty minutes back down the trace to the picnic. The rain was light at first, then so heavy it was hard to walk in it. Water streamed down the trace over our feet, up to our ankles.
The nursery school party was gathered by the picnic tables, which were sheltered and on a hill. I found my mother. She dried my face with a paper napkin, never really looking at me, looking instead down to the gravel parking lot where we’d left our cars. Water covered the lot, deep and deeper. While we watched, our cars began to move, only jostled at first, but then lifted. They floated away, fifty, sixty feet downhill and piled up on each other in a big metal dam.
The city sent a bus and some firemen to pick us up. They stretched a rope across the gravel lot and carried the children, including me and Stevie, across the water. The adults and my brother came next, holding on to the rope. My mother was worried about my father, out on the Wabash in his inflatable boat.
He didn’t come home that night, but he did manage to call. My mother spoke to him and told my brother and me to go to the Rabinowitzes and tell them we were having dinner with them. Mrs. Rabinowitz made me a peanut butter sandwich, because she knew I didn’t like fish. She talked to my mother on the phone and said my brother and I were to spend the night.
In the morning it was still raining. I went home before anyone else was up. My mother and father were in the living room. My mother was in her robe. She was crying. My father was drunk. “I love her more than I ever loved anyone,” my father said in a strangled, slurred voice. “Nobody will believe it because nobody wants to believe it. They prefer it ugly.”
“How can you say that?” my mother asked. She was holding his hand. “Tell me how you have the nerve to say that to me.”
“I just can’t help myself,” my father answered. He saw me and his voice rose. “Go back to the Rabinowitzes. Do as you’re told.”
By the time I got back, I was crying hard. Mrs. Rabinowitz heard me. She came down from the bedroom and held me in her lap. Mr. Bush, the milkman, came to the door. He had just been to my house. He spoke to Mrs. Rabinowitz in a whisper while he handed her their milk. “Cynthia Marciti drowned,” he told her.
“I know,” Mrs. Rabinowitz said.
“Her parents thought she was at a slumber party. She was out on the Wabash.”
“I know,” Mrs. Rabinowitz said. Cynthia Marciti baby-sat for me occasionally. She was a student of my father’s. My brother and I stayed with the Rabinowitzes for four more days.
On Friday, my mother came walking across the lawn, dressed in a black dress. “No one expects this of you,” Mr. Rabinowitz told her. “You don’t have to.”
“She was eighteen years old,” my mother said. “Do you think I could blame her for any of this?”
Stevie told me that my father paid for the gravestone. He said it was very big and had an angel on it. I didn’t see how this could be possible. My father didn’t believe in angels.
The Rabinowitzes drove my mother to the funeral. I hadn’t seen my father in four days. When I tried to talk to my brother about the angel he told me to shut up. “I wish everybody would just leave me alone,” he said, which was unnecessary because pretty much everybody was.
Stevie and I got out the Uncle Wiggily board. I couldn’t read my first card, because of the tears in my eyes. “Read it to me,” I said, handing it to Stevie.
“Uncle Wiggily says you are moving to California,” Stevie said. “Go ahead three spaces.”
I put the card in my pocket. At some point I must have used it as a bookmark, because seven years later I found it again, stuck in a book in my grandparents’ house, in the bedroom my mother had slept in as a child, which was now my room. There were no seasons in California. In seven years I had had to learn to remember things differently.
I had been eleven years old the last time I saw Stevie. Now I was eighteen, the same age as Cynthia Marciti.
The card had Uncle Wiggily’s picture on it, a rabbit gentleman farmer in a top hat, collar, and cuffs. “Uncle Wiggily says you will marry a man who is a lot like you are. You will have two children, a boy and a girl. You turn out very ordinary,” it said. “Go back three spaces.”
THE TRAVAILS
Inspired by John Kessel’s story “Gulliver at Home.”
I hope I may with Justice pronounce myself an Author perfectly blameless; against whom the Tribes of Answerers, Considerers, Observers, Reflectors, Detectors, Remarkers, will never be able to find Matter for exercising the
ir Talents.
—Lemuel Gulliver
September 28, 1699
Dear Lemuel,
When you think of us, think of us missing you. As Betty cleared the Table from Breakfast this morning, she burst into Tears. “There is Papa,” she said, pointing to a Crumb of Bread. And I perfectly comprehended her. I saw you in my Mind, your Speck of a Boat, no bigger than a Crumb on the whole of the Kitchen Table. God speed you back to us.
And then we sat no longer, because of all the daily Work to be done. Now it is Evening and I take Time to write. I hope you received my Letter of July 3rd. Our Betty is Ten Years today and, though only Months have passed since your Departure, I believe she is much altered and not the little Girl you left. I feel the Passage of Years more acutely in the Children’s Lives than in my own. With a ten year Daughter, I cannot be accounted young. Already she is more than half as old as I when you came courting. I imagine therefore that she is already half done with being mine. A melancholy Thought.
But the Days grow ever more beautiful, so I shall look outside rather than in. How do you endure a Day at Sea with no Trees about you? The Elm at our Window is all turned, its Leaves as golden as Egg Yolks. The Moon tonight is as big as a Tea Tray, but of course you have that too, wherever you are.
Johnny is growing out of all his Clothes, and Betty and I are kept forever sewing. I never pass Mrs. Nardac in the Shops but that she informs me that the Islands where you are sailing are filled with Women who wear no Stitch of Clothing. If they cover their Bodies at all, she says, they do it with their Hair, which is longer and thicker and more lustrous than anything any Woman in London can do with Wigs. Mermaids then, I say, teazing. No, no, they are quite real, she assures me. She thinks you will not come Home this time and she wishes me to know she thinks this.
But I know otherwise! And such an Adventure we had when the Weather first chilled. Suddenly we were overrun with Ants. What you now picture, double. Ants poured into the House from every Crack in every Wall. Not just the Kitchen, they assaulted us in the Parlour and even the Bed Chambers. Oh, it was War and went on for three whole Days. I plotted and laid Traps. You would imagine we had every Advantage, from Size to Cunning, and yet we could not win through. In truth, they seemed uncannily clever at times. Johnny even made use of a Weapon I must leave you to imagine. His Face when I came upon him! “I washed away great Hordes of them,” he insisted, but I took him to Bed by his Ear and it has taken me many Days of scrubbing to see the Humour in it. And then, with no more Warning than we had at the Beginning, they vanished and we are at Peace again.
Mrs. Nardac thinks that Johnny should be sent away to School, but of course he is far too young still. I know I anticipate your Wishes in the Matter by keeping him at Home for now. When you return, you will find us all,
Your loving Family and,
Your Mary
Yuletide, 1701
Dearest, dearest,
I have received Word today from a dear Mrs. Biddle that you are recovered from the fast Grip of the Sea and safe aboard her Husband’s Ship. What joyous Tidings! What Joy to write a Letter I know you will receive! I ran all the way Home and shouted the News without pausing to every Soul I passed. Then Betty and I wore ourselves out with the Weeping and Relief. You are on your way Home to us and we are anxious to see you healthy and unchanged in your Regard. In truth, something in Mrs. Biddle’s Letter betrayed Concern regarding your State of Mind, although I remind myself that she has also written here, twice in one Letter, that you are well. Eat and rest now, my Darling. Take care of your Dear Self.
We are all healthy here. Carolers came to the Window last Night. They sang of good King Wenceslas and Bethlehem. Snow fell, but gently, on their Scarves and Caps, while their Voices rose into the Air. Tonight all is Snow-Silent and I cannot choose which it is I like best, the Silence or the Noise of the World. Greedily, I would have them both. The Whole of it is the only thing that will suit me tonight. Mrs. Biddle said that you have such Stories to tell us. And we, you!
Such a Merry Christmas God has given us!
Your Mary
August 8, 1702
Dear Lemuel,
I have been melancholy since you left. I so wanted you Home, and then nothing matched my Hopes. I am sorry for the Quarrels and sorry, too, that you made your Departure while we were still quarrelling.
You have made fine Provision for us and left me no Fear that we shall ever fall upon the Parish. The little Flock of Sheep you left has already increased its Number by Five. For this I am grateful. The new House is Tight and Warm, in spite of being so Large. Since you spent so little Time in it, it often feels entirely mine. I cannot picture you at the Table or in the Bed. I never see you, sleeping under a Book in the Parlour, as I did in our old, damp Cottage. And since you chose, much against my Wishes, to send Johnny to School—really, he is not nearly so grown as you think him—it is a quiet House with me sometimes in one End of it, and Betty far away in the other. I find myself missing even Mrs. Nardac.
But I do confess I often enjoy the Size of it. Not when I am dusting, perhaps! But I like a Room up the Stairs. As I write this, from my Desk I look down on the Fields and Lanes and Gardens as if I had the Eyes of the Trees. I look down on all the other tiny Nests of the tiny People. They love, they fight, they dispute, they cheat, they betray, but I am far above it and absolutely untouched. And then Betty comes, with a Scrape or a Slight to suffer over. A Letter arrives from Johnny, and between those Words the Headmaster has allowed him to send, I can read his Misery. I am part of the World again, with all its Hurts and Affections. And I cannot remember why I ever thought it best to be otherwise.
Yesterday Betty found a Fledgling blown from its Nest. She has brought it inside and made the softest Box, but its Wing is damaged and I fear we can never release it. She is kept up constantly, even at night, with feeding. No one is more tender with Small Creatures than a Young Girl, and yet my Heart rebels against a Wild Thing kept forever in a Box.
We complete our Menagerie with Rats! Large as Dogs they sound as they pound over the Roof, but I have engaged a Man to deal with them. Money can buy Men for many but perhaps not all Purposes.
Mary
October 5, 1706
Dear Lemuel,
Where does this find you? This is a Letter I shall have to send in a Bottle with a Cork, by a strong Arm. It will wash ashore some months hence in Paradise and the Natives will read it, wondering if such a Place as green as England can really exist.
I fear my last Letter was uncharitable. I meant to be generous, but forgot. You know my Temper, little as you have seen it over the Years. I wished the Letter back as soon as I had sent it. Likely you did not receive it and are reading this in Wonder of what I might have written.
So I will only repeat that I was disappointed by your hasty Departure, but this time I was not surprized. We no longer seem to fit together, you and I. When you are Meditative, I wish to be Doing: when I am larkish, you choose that Moment to be sober. You are so credulous, I must learn again each time not to teaze. We are two Magnets, with an attractive but also a repulsive Power over one another. I fear the closer we stand, the more the Latter is evident.
“You married a Dreamer,” Mrs. Balnibarb said to me in the Lanes but yesterday, “and no Woman can live in the Clouds.” Yet I think I am one Woman who could, and wait only the Invitation. Time would teach us to mesh again, but Time is the one thing I never have from you.
Betty has a Beau in Mrs. Balnibarb’s middle boy, William. Are you pleased? He calls each Thursday and is as clean and polite as you could ask. He is a Farmer’s Son and I count his Prospects tolerable. Her Feelings are more difficult to discern. She colours if his Name is spoken but makes no effort in his Presence to delight him. She is still so young and I will counsel Delays if my Counsel is sought. I am sure this is as you would wish.
We shall at least want him a more sensible Man than his Father. Mr. B
alnibarb often walks the Lanes so lost in Thought, I have seen William forced to cuff him soundly on the Ear, lest he walk into a Tree! And he has now given up that Farming proved over the Centuries, in favour of new Methods of Planting and Irrigation designed by a Scientist in London and circulated in our little County by Pamphlet. This Pamphlet argues the Water will have more Vitality if it is Pumped uphill before being spread downhill. Its Author has surely never seen a Field in his Life. As a result, all the Farms but Balnibarb’s enjoyed a most bountiful Harvest.
Our own Walnut Tree was so loaded with Fruits this year, it was dangerous to walk beneath. Nuts, like missiles, rained down at the slightest Breeze. We sit in front of the Fire and have our Pleasure, picking out the Meats and dreaming away the Evenings.
I do request that you discourage Johnny from going to Sea. I fear your Stories have had the opposite Effect. This is most unfair to me.
Rats on the Roofs, again, but I know just the Man to engage for it.
Mary
February 7, 1708
Dear Lemuel,
A short Letter today, and sad, to inform you of the Death of your Father. Betty and I were able to wait on him in his final Days. I know it is Customary to assure the Bereaved that the Sufferings were slight and not of long Duration. I wish I could, in Honesty, tell you this. Betty wept and wished him back, but I do not. He had already outlived his Health and Happiness, and if ever Death came as a Release, it came so to him. He missed you deeply and spoke of you often.
The Night after his Death he came to me in a Dream. He told me with great Clarity of his Willingness to be shed of a World he had always seen as Wicked. I was greatly impressed by the Vividness of this Dream, but as I have spoken of it, I have learnt that such Dreams are common on the Night of a Death. Whimsical Mr. Lugg believes the Dead have the one Night to return and tell us what needs to be said. I wish I had known to expect him. What Questions you could ask the Dead with a little Forewarning!
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