A Thousand Acres (1992 Pulitzer Prize)

by Jane Smiley

  That that young woman foresaw my life so clearly unnerved me, as if something intensely private had suddenly been exposed and discussed by people I barely knew. Simultaneously, I recognized and pitied her frustration and fear. That is another bequest from an earlydying parent, her image ever more childlike and powerless compared to your own advancing age.

  I hadn't actually made the parallel between Rose's situation and my mother's, no doubt because my main thoughts during Rose's treatment had been selfish ones-my life's companion, little Rose, always four to my six, the way she was when I first became really conscious of her (when I first became really conscious). But of course, when you thought about it, Rose was quite like my mother in many ways-her manner, her looks, even, in part, the name (Ann Rose Amundson-while I swam I formed my mother's maiden name with my lips). Virginia-that was a pretentious name for our family, taken from a book, as was Caroline.

  But even though I felt her presence, I also felt the habitual fruitlessness of thinking about her. Her images, partly memories of her, partly memories of photos I had seen of her, yielded no new answers to old mysteries. For a moment I toyed with a magic solution-that Rose, in herself in her reincarnation of our mother, would speak, or act out, the answers. All I had to do was be mindful of the relationship between them (mindful in secret, in a way no one else could be mindful), and gather up the answers, glean the apparently harvested field for overlooked bits. But no. There could be a quest -I might go around to people we knew, or who had known her, and ask them about her. I could, maybe, call her brother ii, Arizona or New Mexico, if he was still alive, if someone dimly remembered the town he used to live in. I could ask my father about her. I could become her biographer, be drawn into her life, and into excuses for her or blame of her, but that seemed like an impractical, laborious, and failing substitute for what I had missed in the last twenty-two years. I was, after all, my hither's daughter, and I automatically did believe in the unbroken surface of the unsaid. After seven laps, I hauled myself out of the water and sat in the hot wind. I noticed that Pammy had peeled away from Doreen Patrick's group and rejoined Linda. Her polka-dotted sunglasses were firmly in place.

  There was no reason to go home. The weather was relentless, and I didn't look forward to the hot night to come. Our house had a few shade trees close to it, but my father's house was stationed proudly up a little rise, four or live feet, but the only rise in the area, adjacent to an equally proud stand of ornamental evergreens that looked nice but did nothing for the heat. You could see his roof radiant tin, from a good ways off but if it warded off the heat, I wasn't aware of it.

  Even so, sitting around the pool felt like a kind of penance. Pammy said nothing about Doreen Patrick, nor about anyone else, but she raked the area ceaselessly with her gaze, stopping and staring for a few seconds, then starting again. Once or twice she picked up her book, but she couldn't stick with it. Linda finished her magazine and went to play by herself in the water. I couldn't read for the glare, so I sat for a while at the edge of the shallow end and dangled my feet.

  What Rose and I once did in our pond, simply float on our backs for what seemed like hours, soaking up the coolness of the water and living in the blue of the sky, was impossible here. There were too many hurtling bodies. There was nowhere to be privately, contemplatively immersed, one of summer's joys. The energy we had brought with us, the expectation of fun, seeped away, and left us even more listlessly reluctant to go home.

  It was nearly six when we got into the car. The pool was still crowded; Pike was deserted, air conditioners humming, blinds drawn.

  Occasional grills on patios ventilated eastward-pointing arrows of smoke. I felt shocked and dull. Supper, Daddy, Rose wondering when the children would be getting home, Ty's patience, all seemed exceptionally remote. The girls sat quietly, both in the backseat.

  Pammy's sunglasses had been put carefully in their case, and she was holding that in her hand. I knew that all children had certain precious belongings, odd things that represented happiness to them, but the way she cradled that case in her hand seemed poignant to me, emblematic of some sort of deprivation that she could feel but not define, or, maybe, admit to. I must have sighed, because Linda sat forward and said, "We had a good time, Aunt Ginny. Anyway, next time, I'm going to call someone and ask them to meet me there."

  WHEN WE G0T H0ME, Ty and Pete were installing a new room air conditioner in one of the north-facing windows of our living room.

  They were just setting it on the platform they had nailed out from the windowsill, lifting and grunting and telling each other what to do. I herded the girls into the kitchen, where I found Rose drying the last lettuce of the season for a salad. She said, "Jess's coming over at seven. I fed Daddy. He was bound and determined to eat smack on the dot at live, even though I told him he should come over here and eat with all of us."

  "It's your night to have him at your house."

  "Yes, and this is what I decided that our family was going to do.

  You know, it's pretty crazy to have to do the same thing every Friday, week after week, same food, same time. It would have been good for him-" She looked at me. I must have had some look on my face, because she said, "He's rigid like this because we've let him be."

  Then she said, "He's fed, okay?"

  I nodded.

  She went on. And I made hamburgers. They're in the refrigerator. The grill is going, so we can put them on anytime." The girls crowded against her and she pecked the tops of their heads.

  I said, "New air conditioner?"

  "Almost new. There was an ad in the paper. Ty drove over to Zebulon Center to pick it up. He said he saw you at the pool, but he couldn't get your attention."

  I must have looked doubtful, because she said, "Don't say anything about sinus passages or getting used to the heat, the way Daddy does.

  People shouldn't be so hot. It's bad for them and it's dangerous."

  Pammy started picking at the salad. Rose let her take one cherry tomato, then shooed her away. 'Go on outside and wash your hair under the outside spigot. With shampoo. I can smell the chlorine." Pammy shuffled away. She looked the way I felt, used u p but strengthened by the unaccustomed exercise, already aimed toward a good night's sleep.

  I said, "They were good. Mary Livingstone came over and made Linda-" when the phone rang. Rose opened the refrigerator and took out a plate of thick patties, and I picked up the receiver. It was Caroline.

  The Sunday that I'd sworn to call her had gone by without me calling her. For one thing, I hadn't been able to get over my reluctance about calling her at the office. And then the evenings had been swept up in the Monopoly games. And then I'd persuaded myself that she'd call when she felt like it. Out driving three times, I had vowed to call her as soon as I got home, but then my hand never went to the phone. All of these rationalizations smote me as soon as I heard her voice. But her "hello" sounded normal and even happy. I said, "Oh, hello, Caroline.

  I tried to call you." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rose stiffen.

  Caroline said, "Is Daddy okay?"

  "Well, sure. Rose just was over there giving him his supper. How are you?"

  "We're fine. Do you know where Daddy was yesterday?"

  "Well, no. I don't keep tabs-" "Well, I was in New York for two days, and when I got back this evening, there was a note on my desk saying, 'Your father came in looking for you at eleven."

  "Did you try to call him and ask him?"

  Now there was a long silence on the other end of the line. Rose, who had gone outside and put the burgers on the grill, came in with a slam of the screen door, and I raised my eyebrows. She mouthed, "What's going on?" and just then, Caroline said, "Yeah, I did. I tried to call him twice, and both times he wouldn't talk to me. Once he listened for a few minutes but didn't say anything, and the second time he hung up as soon as he heard my voice. Then he wouldn't answer the phone, even though I let it ring thirty times." She sounded embarrassed.

  I said, "That's
so silly. But are they sure it was Daddy?"

  "I assume so, but I can't ask anyone about it till Monday."

  "Just a minute." I put my hand over the mouthpiece and told Rose the story. She pursed her lips and shrugged, but went outside carrying the barbecue spatula without saying anything. Ty pushed open the door to the living room and exclaimed, "All done! Where's the beer?" To Caroline, I said, "What?"

  She said, "Did you and Rose sign the papers?"

  For a moment I was confused and I said, "What papers?"

  "The incorporation papers and the transfer papers.

  "Oh." I was struck by the coolness of her tone.

  She didn't say anything.

  I went on, "Well, sure we did. Of course we did. We didn't have any choice."

  There was another silence, then she said evenly, "I think you did."

  Jess Clark walked in the back door, slamming the screen, and Pammy called for a towel. I could hear Caroline waiting for me to say something, but a molasses feeling of fatigue rendered me unable to rise to the complexities of what it might be. Finally I said, "Caroline, it's a madhouse here. Let me call you later. Or call me and tell me what they say about Daddy's visit."

  She said, "Okay," very coolly.

  I said, "I mean it. Don't forget." But she was gone by that time.

  Jess went on into the living room, and the back door opened almost immediately. It was Rose, who sniffed, "What did she have to say?"

  "Are you and Caroline having a light?"

  "You'll have to ask her that."

  "Well, I'm asking you." Once in a while, I could pull some oldest sister rank.

  "I didn't think we were.

  "Until?"

  "Well, it's been two weeks since my three-month exam, and I haven't heard a word from her. She never called to ask how I was.

  In fact, I've thought her attitude from the beginning has been pretty casual."

  "She sent flowers and came to visit."

  "One time, when she was coming up for the weekend anyway.

  There were three or four women outside the family who were more attentive than that."

  "She's very busy."

  Rose pulled a long, skeptical face. "According to her."

  "She said Daddy came to her office yesterday." I thought this would distract her.

  "What for?"

  "She doesn't know. She was in New York."

  Rose mimicked me. "She was in New York."

  "Rose!"

  "Well, she's always somewhere, isn't she? She's the one who got away, isn't she?"

  "I thought we were glad about that. She's not interested in farming.

  Rose leaned against the counter and gazed at me. I let her. After a moment, her hand fluttered up toward the empty side of her chest, and she placed it back on the counter, then picked up the salad with both hands. Finally, she said, "When we are good girls and accept our circumstances, we're glad about it." She walked toward the dining-room door and pushed it partly open, then said, "When we are bad girls, it drives us crazy.

  I went out and checked the burgers. They were plenty done, a little overdone, in fact, and I began lifting them off the grill. The wind and the high June sun were relentless. The two-foot corn plants fanning away from the other side of the yard looked bleached from the glare, and the ground between them was dusty, even though there had been enough rain this year. I was dumbfounded at the anger that had sprung up around me in the last ten minutes. It was all so easy to imagine: Daddy stalking into Hooker, Williams, Crockett in his boots and overalls and making a fuss, then Caroline being pierced with fear when she found out; Rose silently waiting for Caroline to perform a duty that everyone but she had forgotten about; Caroline incubating her wish that we not sign the transfer papers until it turned into a conviction. She was a lawyer, so it was easy to imagine her cross-examining me, and I fell into defending myself: He wanted us to do it, and why shouldn't we do it?

  You could have opened the door and come in, even after Daddy closed it (slammed it?).

  I didn't want the farm, but others did, and anyway it was Daddy's idea.

  And we can't watch him every minute, either. He's got a driver's license and two vehicles.

  There's bound to be some adjustment as his life changes.

  We should all stick together instead of getting suspicious of each other.

  "You going to bring those slabs of meat inside? People are beginning to wonder where you are."

  I jumped. It was Jess Clark, smiling from the open kitchen door.

  "I was gathering wool as well as hamburgers."

  "Well, come into the living room. You'll be amazed."

  "Cool?"

  "By contrast."

  He wrapped his hand around the back of my arm as I stepped through the door. I said, "Remember this day. This is the day when everything I was worried about came to pass.

  "Really?"

  I could tell by his face that he didn't know what I was talking about.

  I said, "It's too complicated to go into. Just remember that I knew it all ahead of time."

  "If you say so.

  I pushed through the door into the dim coolness of the dining room.

  Every laughing face turned toward me and I held out the plate of hamburgers. In the refreshing coolness, we ate with appetite and joked over our food in a way that was new for us. Pete was laughing and showing off the way Jess seemed to get him to do. Ty expanded into a bemused host, dishing up seconds for everyone and teasing Pammy and Linda, who ate everything they were given without complaint. Rose had three of everything-she was talking too much to notice what I was putting on her plate, and whatever she found there, she ate. No annoyed looks, no studied rejection of my concern.

  It was great cover, this mealtime sociability, and it lasted and lasted.

  We were still at the table, talking, at ten o'clock. I couldn't help watching Jess, who was sitting at the head. He looked handsome and animated, as if he were really having a good time, and glad of it. Of course, it was clear to me that he carried the good time with him.

  When the time came for him to leave, he would carry it away, back to the West Coast.

  On Sunday after church, when we gathered at Daddy's for our annual Father's Day dinner, the contrast was clear. Daddy was sitting at the head of the table, and he was not having a good time. The crown pork roast that Shorty Humboldt over at the locker had fashioned for me sat heavily on the white tablecloth, surrounded by ickles and roasted potatoes and a big bowl of peas from the garden.

  and Pammy were poking each other angrily under the table, and Pete was in the kitchen getting another beer-I could hear the refrigerator door open and close. Rose said, "You want me to carve it, Daddy? You just go down between the bones."

  "I know that."

  "I know you do."

  "Well, then, don't tell me what to do."

  "I wasn't-" But she caught my eye and shut up, as if I had cast her a glance of some kind. Ty said, "These potatoes look great."

  Linda said, "What're those little sticks on them?"

  I said, "That's rosemary. It's good. It's an herb."

  Ty said, "Ginny's been reading the paper again."

  Rose said, "Mommy put rosemary in potatoes. I remember because I paid attention to the name of it. It's good on meat, too."

  It was exhausting just to hold ourselves at the table, magnets with our northern poles pointing into the center of the circle. You felt a palpable sense of relief when you gave up and let yourself fall away from the table and wound up in the kitchen getting something, or in the bathroom running the water and splashing it on your face.

  The funny thing was that this discomfort was not new, but I recognized it newly. Normally I would have attributed it to the heat or the work of having a big dinner on the table by one o'clock or some argument between Pete and Daddy or Rose being in one of her moods. I would have accommodated its inevitability and been glad enough to get home and have Ty say, "Not too bad. Food was good. That's wha
t's important."

  Normally I would have reacted like any farmer-trying to look out for the pitfalls and drop-offs ahead of time, trying to be philosophical about them afterwards. We only did this sort of thing three times a year (at Easter we went to the church supper).

  But now I saw with fresh conviction that it was us, all of us, who were failing, and the hallmark of our failure was the way we ate with our heads down, hungrily, quickly, because there was nothing else to do at the table.

  Daddy spoke up. "Corn down in Story County was all ripped to shreds by that storm."