As normal as it seems for them to be seated in a row with people filling the spaces around them, Mack is lightheaded for most of the service. A few weeks ago he couldn’t hold in his mind for the shortest second a picture like this one, and it still seems as though the simplest, most ordinary things have run away from him. During the opening hymn he’s aware of his body taking breaths and joining in, and he listens with some wonder to the sound coming out of his mouth.
In a moment that hangs there for his pleasure, he feels the weight of the hymnbook and the sensation of his daughter clearing her throat beside him. He breathes in the calming atmosphere of his wife. He watches Bernice Warner’s hands move over the piano keys and the shadows of small clouds travel across the sanctuary. There is still a deep tiredness in Mack’s soul, left over from days of fighting himself and searching for death, of tedious sessions with doctors and tiny paper cups of colorful pills, of dull hallways and echoing sounds of despair. But he sits down after the invocation and recognizes the creaks of everyone sitting at once on the eighty-year-old pews. The tears pool in his eyes, and he knows precisely what it feels like to come home.
It seems like months ago that he was last with his family on Sunday, although not that much time has passed. They went to church, just like today, and invited the pastor to eat with them. They came home, and Rita and Jodie put on dinner. They ate at one o’clock, as always. They sat around and passed the casseroles and salads and sliced roast beef. The weather carried the weight of August humidity, and while they were eating, a late summer thunderstorm rolled through, causing Rita to hurry to the window nearest the dining room table and pull it down against the wind.
Then they moved into the living room for banana cream pie. And while Mack was digging into the crust and whipped cream, the pastor, Reverend Alice Maynor, began to talk.
“Mack, several of us have been concerned about you lately. We can see that you’re not feeling well.”
Before Mack realized what was happening, his wife and mother were in tears, and the children sat motionless and wide-eyed, while the pastor’s voice became urgent, even though she spoke in low tones.
“It’s time to see a doctor.”
“You’ve not been yourself for a long time.”
“We’ve set up an appointment tomorrow morning.”
Suddenly the pie was melting on his tongue without flavor. Suddenly he was one person against a multitude. They kept assuring him that they weren’t angry. But it felt like anger just the same—the scheming they had done to gang up on him like this, the precision of their planning. The way they were in such agreement that they were nodding and finishing one another’s sentences. He’d been left out of all of it—they’d taken the chalk and made the mark just short of where he sat. He set down his dessert bowl and felt the blood rush at his temples and his mouth go dry. He couldn’t bring himself to agree with them at that moment—it would have been like transferring every last bit of power from himself to them. He was no longer safe in their midst. He remembers feeling exposed and hounded, shut out and smothered all at once.
But underneath those immediate reactions there flowed a deep, black fear that had swelled about him for days and weeks on end. A panic that never left, a jittery sense that kept him off balance. He’d taken all his guns out to the barn and cleaned them and loaded them and held them toward himself in ghostly practice runs. He’d watched himself deliberate and arrange and rehearse. Of course, he would never admit that here, in this room. It took him three days to confess to a doctor, and that under medication. The darkness had ridden so low in his soul that he couldn’t put words to it all at once, and when he did, he couldn’t connect to what the words really meant.
“Have you planned how you will do it?”
“Yes.”
“Have you made arrangements?”
“Most of them.”
As if they were discussing tractor repairs.
It was one of many tedious and devastating conversations between Mack and strangers, in rooms that were too clean and bare, where everything smelled like old medicine and laundered sheets. They wouldn’t leave him alone. Eventually there would be exchanges of words. And even that wasn’t enough. Words began to mean less and less, and emotions began to be the goal. Lord God, get me out of here, away from all my words. Please, please take away every thought I’ve ever had. Maybe if the thoughts get taken away, I can finally sleep in peace. Just to sleep on my own, no drugs. Just to sleep and wake up and be better. Lord God, I’m begging you. Take every bad thought out of my head.
All of it started that Sunday afternoon, in the room where Mack sits now, in his place at the head of the table. His mother is at the other end, his wife and children in between. They pass baked chicken, sweet potatoes, applesauce, fried onions and peppers. The furnace kicks on, the windows are all shut tight. Jodie has put in a tape of religious instrumental music. The room is warm and full of good aromas. It cannot be the same room in which the hospital segment of his life began, and these cannot be the same people. Yet he knows that the hospital has saved his life; he still feels somewhat begrudging about that. He has no choice but to call it a good thing—even so, good can be beneficial in one sense and horrifying in another. He doesn’t feel any relief or safety when he remembers the hospital. He feels only that it is over, and that it is good to be back here, in his house.
Jodie
This morning, in church, for the first time in months, Jodie said a prayer. She sang it, really, but she’s certain that this counts as prayer. Haley Jones, who leads the music at Grace Methodist, ended the service with “Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us,” an old, old song, and Jodie sang without looking at the hymnal. By the third verse, when they got to the chorus, “Blessed Jesus, blessed Jesus, thou has loved us, love us still,” Jodie’s voice had kicked into a different gear. She was aware of her words and spirit merging, and she sang each phrase from a deep place, understanding that she was begging Jesus, just then, to not give up on her. It was a startling experience of maybe ten seconds, but its importance registers with her hours later.
She has never been a vocal person in the congregation. She’s more of a doer, someone who helps collect clothing and other items for the Community Closet, someone who can always be counted on to cook a huge pan of lasagna for a funeral dinner. Once in a great while she sings in the choir, usually when Haley calls her because she’s missing two of her three altos. Grace Methodist is a fifteen-minute drive because it is in Oskaloosa, not Beulah. Jodie’s family does not have the history in the Oskaloosa congregation that they do in the one closest to home. At Grace, no one remembers their struggles, the sale of the farm, or the death of Alex, because no one was witness to those events. After Alex died, and when weeks had passed and Jodie and Rita were desperate to go to church somewhere, they visited Grace Methodist and decided to call it home.
Jodie is still unwilling to say that the people of Beulah First Methodist failed her family. She looks back at the worst days and must admit to herself that people did care, they did say how sorry they were, did bring casseroles to the door. But those people are woven into the bad memories. And that is enough to make it impossible to be with them.
Mack’s eyes lit up this morning when he walked into the kitchen before church and saw her. She didn’t really dress up, but Sunday attire is always a notch or two up from everyday clothes. She bothers to put on some makeup for church, doubting that anyone else notices but knowing that she feels a little better for it. Well, Mack noticed. He truly looked at her. He hugged her and gave her a kiss and seemed so grateful.
She tried to be grateful too and returned the kiss, but something in her system seized up and stayed that way even while she kissed Mack. She doesn’t think he noticed the tension, but she worries about what it means that she feels this way around him. Now she’s in the bathroom, changing into her everyday clothes while Sunday dinner is simmering. She tries to pinpoint why she’s holding back from Mack, her lifelong love, the man she knew befor
e he was a man, when they were in school together and making love eyes in study hall.
She takes off her bra and replaces it with a jersey tank that serves as underwear beneath her flannel shirt. Although she has nursed two children, her breasts don’t look worn out yet. They sag some, but when Jodie complained about it once, Mack stretched out on the bed and smiled. “Aw, they just look lived-in and happy.” Having entered her forties, Jodie has at last become grateful for small boobs; she can go braless and get away with it. Her hair is growing out, its natural curl beginning to go flat. At least there’s not much gray visible yet, maybe because her hair is light brown to begin with. It still streaks a little in the summer.
She turns from the mirror and finishes dressing, aware that she thinks a lot about her looks these days, and not because of Mack. Over the past several weeks, another audience has entered her consciousness. This is embarrassing to admit, and she has stayed extra busy in order to distract herself. But she buttons her shirt and thinks of Terry Jenkins and how his smile lights up when he comes through the cafeteria line at school.
He’s the social studies teacher for the junior high, and his class schedule now has him in the last lunch shift. When Jodie stands behind the counter dipping up food, she is encased in an apron, plastic gloves, and a hairnet. So she was startled to look up the other day to see his brilliant green eyes watching her. She says hello to all the teachers, but she was compelled to say hello and then return his gaze. He was smiling.
“What do you recommend from today’s menu?”
She laughed a little. “The tater tots are nice and crispy.”
“Can’t go wrong with tater tots.” He took his tray, nodded, and was on his way. That was all that happened. But his look—and she realizes this just now, as she pulls on blue jeans—was the same look Mack used to give her. The same twinkle, just on the edge of laughter. The same acute interest. Yes, interest.
She is too young to be without sex, yet she has been without it for some time. The depression stole what passion Mack had left, and the meds that now keep depression at bay mute other feelings as well. At least that’s what Jodie assumes. Mack has said little about it, only referred to the several medicines he has to take and told her they have side effects. They have not ventured to talk about anything more specific. When Mack looks at her, as he did this morning, she knows that some light remains in his gaze, but it is shadowed by so many other things.
She finishes dressing and goes down to the kitchen. Kenzie and Rita are setting the table, and Mack is in the family room with Young Taylor, surfing between sporting events. This is a positive sign, given Young Taylor’s general absence from family activity. Jodie would give anything to see her son put away his black wardrobe and vegetate in front of a ball game for an afternoon.
As they move through an uneventful Sunday dinner, Jodie finds herself studying Mack and thinking of Terry. She tries to see in her husband the fire that used to be there for her. She attempts to interpret Mack’s every glance as meaning something, but he looks merely tired, and now he doesn’t meet her gaze at all. He’s still fighting battles that have little to do with her.
Terry Jenkins has become a presence, very much alive in her mind, whether she wants him there or not. She catches herself going through the day and imagining Terry as her silent audience. In her own house she is posturing for someone who really has no right to her life. And in fact, he probably has no real interest in her; it is her own desperation that manufactured the glint in his eye. She’s become so pathetic.
Kenzie
She has been watching Mom and Dad closely the past four days. They aren’t fighting at least. Dad’s staying busy, and that’s good. She saw them take a walk together down to the pond and back, and that’s especially good. Part of the time they were holding hands.
They all went to church Sunday. It was the Methodist church in Oskaloosa, the one Kenzie went to until a few months ago, when she started going to the Baptist church just outside of Beulah. The Methodists don’t teach from the Bible enough, and the Baptists have a youth group that actually does things. They have movie nights at the church and invite non-Christian friends; they pass out evangelical tracts at the county fair; they have their own Bible study and prayer time. This is what a person needs. But it has been so long since her whole family has gone to church that Kenzie is more than happy to return to the Methodist service for a Sunday or two.
She wants to talk with Dad about his soul, but it’s still too scary to talk with him alone. She doesn’t want to say anything that would make him feel sad or rejected or afraid. She still doesn’t know what exactly made him want to die. Satan would love to trick her into saying the very thing that might send her father back into despair. So she hasn’t said much of anything. She did mention, on his second day home, that she prays for him every day, in the morning and the evening, and if there’s anything special he wants her to pray about to let her know. He gave her a strange look at first, but then he smiled and said that he would. But that led to no more talk of any importance. In fact, Dad found something he needed to do then, and their conversation ended altogether.
Spiritual warfare is a very tricky thing. Most of the time Kenzie doesn’t feel that she’s up to it at all. She’s talked to Pastor Williamson about it—he’s a really good youth director, and he makes you feel as if you can ask him anything. He keeps encouraging her to pray and to spend time with her parents; the best thing she can do for them, he says, is to take care of her own spiritual life so that they won’t feel the need to worry about her. She does that, but there are big holes in her day when she’s not praying or meditating or spending time with family, when she’s doing homework or hanging out with a couple of friends from school. And at those times she feels that she should be close by Mom and Dad, just in case. She needs to be there to pray if they start to argue or if Dad begins staying off to himself too much, the way he did before they took him to the hospital. There are so many bad things that can happen at home, and they can happen quickly, and their lives could change, and so how can she just hang out with Bekka at the mall?
She has begun to write down her prayers; they feel more solid that way. She’s not so nervous when she’s busy documenting her relationship with God. She can look back and see what she’s prayed about, and she can see what God said to her or which specific Bible verses gave her wisdom or comfort. It is all right there, in her journal. She carries it everywhere, along with her Bible. Her small cloth backpack has become part of her body, as if she is storing her spiritual life where she can get to it easily.
Today is Monday, the second day Dad has gone to his job at Hendrikson’s. Two sort of normal days: Mom going to the school cafeteria earlier than the rest of them, to start her day; Dad dropping Kenzie and Young Taylor at school on his way to work. So there is now a several-hour block of time when everyone is busy. This too is a good thing.
And today she waves at Mitchell Jaylee. He is in his old green van, stopped at the corner, when she bikes up from his left, on her way to the church. He must be going into town for something. He recognizes her right away and smiles, lifts his forefinger from the top of the steering wheel in that country wave that is a sign of courtesy regardless of how well people know each other. Mitchell waits for Kenzie to turn the corner and stop at his window.
“Hey, you get a lot of exercise,” he says.
She laughs a little, not knowing what else to say.
“How are you?” He seems to really want to know.
“Fine. You?”
“No complaints. Just going to get the oil changed.” He allows the engine to idle a few more seconds, then eases off the brake and smiles at her. “You drive careful.” And before she can say anything, he crosses the road and heads for town.
Rita
With her son home, the borders of Rita’s life pull in and resume their old shape. She made several trips to see Mack while he was in the hospital. Even though he wasn’t away long, Rita’s schedule molded itself ar
ound the crisis. She’d sit in the room with Mack or walk the grounds with him, make as much conversation as either of them dared, and then come home before nightfall. Her night vision anymore is nearly worthless. Although the country roads are completely familiar, in the dark they play tricks on her. So she made only afternoon visits, sometimes with Jodie, sometimes alone, a couple of times with the pastor. She would have made those visits to the end of her life had they been necessary. (She can recall a period in Alex’s life when she considered the possibility of having to visit him in prison for the next twenty years.) But she’s mighty glad now that her day’s edges don’t extend much beyond Beulah’s city limits.
She knows that they wouldn’t have kept Mack hospitalized more than a few days except that Dr. Wenders, the doctor who treated him, knew that Rita’s husband and other son were dead. She still remembers how his eyes focused on the chart while he made the word Barnes silently with his mouth. Taylor died in an accident with the tractor, and Alex passed out drunk in below-zero weather. Dr. Wenders, who works at the clinic in town, knew their stories and Mack’s too. Taylor and Alex and Mack had all had farming and despair in common. So in a time when health insurance sends people home in a day or two, Wenders ordered tests and wrote down who-knows-what to justify Mack’s confinement.
Rita sees the fates of her three men as fairly unrelated, but she would lie under oath to save any member of her family. While Mack waited in a nearby examining room, Rita sat in the doctor’s office with Jodie and listed symptoms she wasn’t even sure her son had. Jodie, nearly mute with fear, didn’t blink; she’d found the loaded shotgun and recognized its significance. Since the kids had been older, they’d kept a hunting rifle loaded and in the storage space under the stairwell, for security. It had been long-standing family policy to keep all other firearms empty. When Jodie told her about the loaded shotgun, it occurred to Rita in a horrifying flash that a person really can’t miss with a shotgun; one shot would take off most of your head—none of this nonsense about surviving in a vegetative state thanks to a shaky hand.
Vinita Hampton Wright Page 4
