by Jane Smiley
"Well," said Mr. Cartier, looking at his watch and folding together his papers, "one thing at a time. The 'mismanagement or abuse' clause in the preincorporation agreement is pretty undefined. From what you tell me, they're certainly not going to be able to prove abuse, and probably not mismanagement, but you've got to farm like model farmers until the court date. That means working together yourselves, finding help, and getting the harvest in in good time."
He turned to Rose and me, smiling. "And you ladies, you wear dresses every day, and keep the lawn mowed and the porch swept."
Rose said, "Are you kidding?"
"In part. But appearances are everything with a clause like this. If I have to, I'll call some of your neighbors to attest to your skills, and their lawyer will call neighbors to attest to your mistakes. If you look good, they won't be able to touch you."
"This is ridiculous," said Rose.
"It's millions of dollars," said Mr. Cartier. "Millions of dollars is never ridiculous." He opened the glass door for us, saying, "The court date isn't set, but it will certainly be after the harvest is ii so use it to your advantage." And we were suddenly out of his world and in the hot asphalt parking lot of the Houston Avenue Professional Minimall. The office next door was occupied by United Parcel Service.
Ty opened the door on my side, then went around to his side and got in.
I was looking at Pete. He wore a nice shirt-a sharply cut moss-green cotton twill with a pale gray tie that he loosened while he and Rose walked to their silver truck. Rose walked half a step in front of him, not looking at him, though he was blond and tall, graceful and well worth looking at. He wasn't wearing a cap the way Ty was-he never did, in town-and he ran his hand through his hair. His hands were arresting, wide and veined, dark tan, with long lingers. As I stared at them, I could almost make myself see what they knew about melodies and harmonies and all the other musical mysteries. I dragged my gaze from his hands back to his face. Neither expertise nor confidence was visible there. He said, "It's after four. I want to stop somewhere for a drink."
Rose said, "Oh, for God's sake. The girls have been waiting for three hours."
"They'll be fine."
They got into the truck.
When I finally sat down in my seat, Ty said, "Need anything at the Supervalu?" I shook my head. He said, "Plenty hot after that air conditioning, huh?"
"Mmmhm."
"Must be ninety-live." He pulled onto the street. Rose and Pete had disappeared.
"What time is it?"
"Four-thirty or so.
"Already? It seems like I just made dinner."
"Well, it's a different world in that place, huh?"
"I thought that, too."
We passed the hospital and the enviable houses around it. I said, "Pete really isn't going to have much more say in the farm operation, is he?"
Ty said, "Doesn't look like it to me."
Even so, the afternoon at Mr. Cartier's had its effect.
I did what he said. I swept the porch, mowed the lawn, weeded the garden, canned tomatoes and pickled peppers and onions, mopped and swept and washed and dusted, and wore housedresses in the heat rather than shorts. I served up meals at six and eleven thirty and live on the dot as if Ty were a train coming into the station. I waited for Jess Clark to run down the road, but only as you would wait for a recurring dream to seize you again. I took down the curtains, the way I did every fall, though usually after harvest, and washed and bleached and ironed them.
I was so remarkably comfortable with the discipline of making a good appearance! It was like going back to school or church after a long absence. It had ritual and measure. Tasks proliferated. Once you made a good appearance your goal, you could confidently do things like nest all the spoons and forks in the newly washed and dried silverware tray and face then, in the same direction. You could spend an hour or two vacuuming the tops of the floor moldings in the house with an attachment you d never used before, then go back over what you'd done with a sponge dampened in ammonia, then again with furniture polish.
There was cleaning you could do in the bathroom with an old toothbrush that might have repelled you before. There were corners and angles and seams all over the house that could be gotten at. The outside of the house itself could be scrubbed from a ladder, with the hose and a brush. The outside second-story windows could be washed. The grass could be edged and trimmed and raked and rolled for the great open invisible eye of The Neighbors to judge and enjoy. Cars, and trucks, of course, could be washed every day. There could be no limit to your schedule.
Even though you had washed the supper dishes as you were cooking, you could jump up from the table when a serving dish got emptied, and wash it and dry it and put it away before finishing your beans.
You could follow your husband from the door to the sink, and sweep the dust from his boots into the dustpan and throw it away before he was finished washing his hands, and then you could take the towel he had dried them with and run it downstairs to the washing machine while he was sitting down to his food.
I was amazed at what I didn't have time for any more-reading, sewing, watching TV, talking to Rose, talking to Ty, strolling down the road, departing from the directives of my shopping list, taking the girls places. That Eye was always looking, day and night, even when there were no neighbors in sight. Even when no one who could possibly testify for or against me was within miles, I felt the familiar sensation of storing up virtue for a later date. The days passed.
Around the first of August, Pete got drunk and took a gun over to Harold Clark's place and threatened Harold, who was sitting on the porch and kept shouting, "Pete, you don't think I can see you but I can, so you just get away from here before Loren calls the sheriff!
Get away now. I see you for sure," always turning his head the wrong way. Then after he terrorized Harold, he drove his own silver truck into the quarry and drowned, and nobody knew whether it was an accident. According to his blood alcohol level, he shouldn't have been conscious enough to drive, much less to stay on the road.
T MUST HAVE BEEN about six. Ty had eaten his breakfast and headed for the hog pens. I had been upstairs making the beds, so I didn't see the sheriff's car go by, but when I went outside with the blankets to hang them on the line for the day, I saw Rose stumbling up the road. That was the oddest thing, how she didn't seem to know where she was going.
I was so struck by the strangeness of it that I didn't go out to meet her, but let her come.
I think that was the only time I saw her hesitate. She staggered up the road and when she got to about ten feet from me still standing in the road, she said, "Ginny, Pete's drowned himself in the quarry and the girls are still asleep, and I don't know what I'm going to tell them. Can you go down there?" It turned out the sheriff was going to come back and pick her up and take her up to the quarry. She didn't know if they'd pulled him out or not. Her face was bleached white and her eyes were like holes burnt in paper. I said, "There's coffee made, you"I'll drink some, but just go. Just go down there."
I dropped the blankets in a heap and ran toward her house. The one time I stopped and turned to look at her, I saw her standing where I had left her, her arms limp at her sides, her feet wide apart for balance. I ran on. That was the only time I ever saw her flinch.
She'd been making muffins. The milk and eggs and butter were in the bowl of the mixer. The flour was half measured into the sifter.
A green apple and a measuring cup lay on the floor where she'd dropped them or knocked them. I picked them up and finished making the muffins. There was no sound out of the girls, who were allowed to sleep until eight in the summer. Pete's work clothes, a couple of feed caps, and a fluorescent orange sweatshirt for hunting hung from hooks by the door. A mug that read "Pete's Joe" was filled with water in the sink. I couldn't help stare at these remainders.
I sat down at the table, and except for getting up to take the muffins out when the timer went off I continued to sit there. I let the girls
sleep in. Their rooms were off the kitchen. At eight-thirty, I heard Linda stir. She rustled around, then began talking to herself. At eightforty, Pammy got up and went to the bathroom, then went back in her room and closed the door. Time was getting shorter.
At that point, of course, I didn't know about Harold or the blood alcohol level. I didn't even know that Pete hadn't come home the night before, or that he'd done his drinking in Mason City and driven almost thirty-live miles after leaving the bar. I sat at the table. I thought about getting up and going into the living room and looking at the photo on the piano of the old Pete-the young Pete, that is -the lost funny handsome Pete who was the kind of boy mothers are especially fond of full of tricks and jokes and talents and energy, whose darker side hasn't shown itself. But I didn't.
Pammy came out of her room, entirely dressed with her shoes and socks on. She didn't seem surprised to see me. She sat in her place, took a muffin off the table, and began to butter it. I said, "How'd you sleep?"
She said, "Fine."
I said, "Your mom should be back in a little while."
She said, "Okay."
She said, "Is there any juice?"
"Why don't you check?"
She got up and opened the refrigerator and took out the juice and the milk. She climbed up on the counter and got out two glasses, then poured a glass of each for herself. She brought them to the table.
Time was getting shorter. She said, "It's supposed to get really hot today, Aunt Ginny. Do you think you might take us swimming?
We haven't been for three days."
"We'll see."
"Doreen Patrick called me yesterday to go, but Mommy said no."
"Are you and Doreen friends now?"
"I don't know. She has a boyfriend."
"Who's that?
"Joshua Benton. He's going into ninth, but he drives already."
"Only to school, right? Doesn't he have one of those special licenses for kids going to school?"
"Yeah, but he looks older, and his mom lets him drive other times, like to take Doreen places. He took her to the A and W in Zebulon Center last Friday."
She buttered another muffin. I saw that my lists were clenched. I put them in my lap. Pammy would have said that Pete was her favorite parent, in spite of his temper. She looked something like him, too, though her features weren't as finely cut as his, and her hair was a different shade. I heard Linda's feet hit the floor. She came out of her room in her nightgown. She said, "It's nine o'clock.
Where's my mom?"
"She'll be back in a little while. Want an apple muffin? I sprinkled cinnamon sugar on the tops."
"Where'd she go?"
"I don't know."
"Where's Daddy?"
"I don't know."
"Daddy said he was going to take us to the sale barn today to look at some baby pigs."
"You can come down to my place and look at all the baby pigs you want to see."
"Not Yorkshires, Hampshires."
"Oh."
"I might have a 4-H project."
"What about school?"
Pammy said, "We might not go back to school."
"That would be good." For a moment, I forgot that things around here wouldn't be good for some time to come.
Linda said, "I don't know. I was used to it. The teachers were pretty nice, and we made popcorn in the dorm at night."
"I want to stay home." Pammy spoke with authority. Linda looked at her and shrugged, then said, "Can I use your glass?"
"Get your own glass. You know Mommy said that was dirty to use other people's glasses."
"Daddy does it."
"Well, it's a bad habit."
Time was getting shorter.
Linda got up to get her own glass. She said, "I want to have a pony for my 4-H project."
"You know they won't let you do that."
"Lori Stanley had a pony. She taught it to pull a cart. She said-" "Where would you put it?"
"Daddy said maybe we could build it a little stall. He said maybe.
He didn't say no. She poured herself some of the juice and began to drink it in deep gulps. I said, "Slow down."
Pammy said, "Maybe means 'probably not' with Daddy."
"Not always."
"Well, I know I can have a baby pig, and when it's grown up, I could get three hundred dollars for it."
I said, "Maybe we shouldn't talk about things we're going to get.
"I'm going to name it Wilbur."
"That's a dumb name.
"It's from Charlotte's Web."
"I know that. But it sounds like some grandfather's name or something."
"I wish you girls would stop lighting!"
Their heads swiveled toward me, surprised. Linda bit into her muffin, then said, "This isn't lighting, Aunt Ginny."
Pammy stood up. "I'm going to watch 'Let's Make a Deal."
Linda said, "I'm going to go see if Daddy's in the barn."
I said, "His truck is gone, honey."
"Oh." Now she looked at me carefully. I did my best to look noncommittal. After a moment, she said, "There's something wrong, isn't there?"
"We'll see. We'll see, okay?" Time was getting shorter and shorter.
Rose had been gone for two and a half hours. Linda's inspection was frank, not the look of a child, but the look of someone experienced in receiving bad news. She went into the living room. A moment later, I heard them murmuring together, and when I peeked in as I was clearing the table, they were sitting close together on the couch, staring glumly at the TV. I did the dishes. A fugitive thought that they would have been better off as Ty's daughters, as my daughters, than as Rose's and Pete's-wasn't this accident clear proof of that?-shot through my mind, but I suppressed it as mean and unworthy.
Our mother died when we were at school. We were in the cafeteria for lunch. I was sitting with Marlene Stanley, who was Marlene Dahl then, and Rose's class, which came down later, was still in line. I saw Mrs. Ericson and Mary Livingstone in the doorway of the cafeteria, looking around. Mrs. Ericson had Caroline by the hand. I knew they were looking for me, but I put my head down and focused on my macaroni and cheese. Our teacher, Mrs. Penn, appeared suddenly in the kitchen doorway. She had that look on her face that adults get when you know they can barely cope with what has happened. It is a terrifyingly sympathetic look, and it is for you.
They spotted Rose first, then came over to get me. I said to Marlene, "I guess I'm going home now. I think my mom died."
The moments in the cafeteria were worse than things at home, where the bed in the living room was familiar, where we had been getting used to the death of our mother for weeks. When we came through the front door, the minister we had then squeezed my shoulder. My father had changed out of his work clothes, and was sitting on the couch.
Caroline went over and sat beside him. The minister told us what the funeral would be like. In the kitchen, the church ladies had begun to cook. You could hear the refrigerator door opening and closing. Our job, it appeared, was to sit quietly in the living room, without reading or playing games. That's what we did, even after the minister left. My father didn't even read the paper. He looked out the window, across the road at Cal Ericson's south field.
We sat there until supper, and then again until bedtime. In bed, we turned out the lights without even reading Caroline a story. When we got up in the morning, the bed was out of the living room, and the furniture was back where it had been before my mother's illness.
After breakfast, we went directly to the funeral home, where we sat as we had the previous day, my father, too. Cal Ericson and Harold and some other neighbors were doing his chores. There was a light dinner in a room of the funeral home, ham and scalloped potatoes and creamed onions and coffee. After the funeral, at the Lutheran Church, and the burial, at the cemetery outside of Zebulon, we went home and ate more food. Mrs. Ericson told me they would be selling their place to my father. I watched the parrot, then went home and to bed. Rose stole the flashligh
t out of the kitchen drawer and read Nancy Drew under the bedcovers. Caroline cried herself to sleep. I stayed awake later than I ever had before-until three-thirty a. m. or later. My father woke me at live-thirty to make his breakfast, as I had done since the beginning of my mother's illness. He had his work clothes oil. After he was finished, when he was putting on his boots, he said, "You girls go on to school today. No use sitting around the house." I was glad. I'd been afraid we'd have to sit quietly for days or weeks, trying to hold pictures of our mother in our minds.
I have often thought that the death of a parent is the one misfortune for which there is no compensation. Even when circumstances don't compound it. Even when others who love the child move quickly and smoothly to guard it and care for it. There is not any wisdom to be gained from the death of a parent. There are no memories of the parent that are not rendered painful by the death, no event surrounding the death that is redeemed by a single happy thought.
