Unsheltered

by Barbara Kingsolver

  “What are you saying, her letters? You told me you only have correspondence that people sent to her. The letters that were in her possession when she died.”

  “I told you I’ve been trying to track her letters down, in every collection where I know they have to be. Asa Gray’s papers at Harvard, Darwin’s at the British Museum. The Smithsonian. These archivists keep emailing me back saying, ‘Mary who?’ She’s not a wife or mistress so she falls through the cracks. Probably they see a woman’s name on the letter and catalog it under ‘personal,’ not ‘colleague.’”

  Willa said nothing, recalling Iano had made the same assumption. Dixie was starting to make a high-pitched whine they’d learned not to ignore. Her bladder no longer lasted beyond the edge of the yard, if even that. Willa let her out the kitchen door.

  “So I kept telling them to go back through the personal files and try to find her. I finally got some cooperation from the National Agricultural Library. They sent copies of almost a hundred letters Mary wrote to Charles Valentine Riley.”

  “What?” Willa nearly dropped a plate. “When?”

  “They came Tuesday but I only got into them this morning, after I got rid of Madame Historical Board.”

  For three whole days Chris had been sitting on a lode of Mary Treat letters. He was territorial, Willa knew this, and tried to give him some grace. He’d been the master of his dusty little universe over there for a long, long time before Willa showed up. She framed a courteous request. “I would like very much to read those letters.”

  “That’s why I’ve been trying to call you.”

  “Oh.”

  “So, I wasn’t really looking for him but the schoolteacher neighbor keeps popping up. I think Mary had an important relationship with this guy.”

  “Really. You mean, relationship relationship? Because that husband of hers was a narcissistic cheating asshole. I keep hoping she had a boy toy tucked away somewhere.”

  Chris made a huff of disapproval. Through the window Willa watched Dixie pace through her routine: first she circled the big oak, then walked across to the beech and peed on its foot, then returned to the house. Always the same, as if some director had blocked this on her script.

  “Sorry, you think I’m being prurient.” She opened the door to let Dixie back in.

  “I think you’re letting your emotions influence your reading of history.”

  “My emotions are why we’re here. I have a passionate attachment to the money I might get for saving my house.”

  “That’s different. That’s motivation. For us to do accurate research.”

  Willa tried again for contrition. “Please tell me more about the schoolteacher. Can we spin him as a Vineland hero?”

  “More of an antihero, actually. He was in the middle of a major controversy and he might have gotten run out of town. Mary was definitely on his side.”

  “What kind of controversy?”

  “Over teaching evolution. He got in trouble with the principal and then the town fathers. He was reprimanded, they put on this big debate in Plum Hall to try to shut him down, and from there it gets ugly. This thing was in letters to the editor for years.”

  “Wow. You mean like the Scopes trial?” But this would have been many decades earlier, she realized. How tenacious, the minions of history, clinging to their flat earth.

  “Something like the Scopes trial, but more prurient. You’re going to love this part, Willa. This town had an infamous murder. Looks like your guy was involved.”

  “What?”

  “I told you it was good.”

  “Holy cow.”

  Good was not how it struck her at all. From her window Willa had a perfect view between the two big trees, across the yard to the cluttered emptiness where Mary Treat had lived and left no trace. In a house that had taken on absolute dimensions for Willa, where spiders lived in jars, birds built nests in the eaves, and everything was put to the page at a desk in a cozy parlor. Not here, but over there. Now nowhere at all. Willa felt despair, not just for her own lost prospects.

  And Chris was insisting she should shift her loyalties to the controversial bit player. His house had stood for a century and a half, and that was something. Apparently while the ground shifted perilously under his feet.

  “So my guy—our guy, I mean. The neighbor. Does he have a name?”

  “A name out of a novel. Thatcher Greenwood.”

  *

  Here was a giant snowman made of twinkling white lights on a chicken wire frame, with garbage can lids for vest buttons and an orange traffic cone for a nose. Here were plywood sleighs with reindeer, and low-rider cars with reindeer, tricked out in Christmas lights. A provocative display under a COEXIST banner had all the Disney princesses dancing with the wrong mates: Snow White in the arms of Aladdin, the Little Mermaid with the Beast. A tableau of mannequins showed Ralphie’s friend from A Christmas Story licking the frozen flagpole. Nativity scenes abounded, some on the quirky side but mostly earnest. This neighborhood was still called Little Italy but now housed working-class families of many derivations, none of them eager to mess with the born-in-a-manger premise. And all on board with this over-the-top festival of Christmas decoration. Overhead, Willa noticed, even the leafless maples and oaks were looped with strings of lights, suggesting some municipal investment in the way of bucket trucks.

  They’d come here at Jorge’s suggestion on a weirdly balmy Christmas night. The week had been unseasonably warm, by no means normal according to longtime New Jerseyans, but any potential relief in Willa’s household was damped by melting snow on their leaky roof and the impossibility of feeling Christmas spirit while wearing sunglasses. They’d had their Christougena feast on the picnic table in the yard but finished too early, leaving the family restless for some holiday-themed entertainment that was baby friendly and free. Little Italy in Lights wasn’t an instant sell, even though Jorge insisted it was a very big deal in Vineland. He was meeting up with his boys over there as soon as it got dark because their ladies were adamant. Tig was agreeable, Zeke thought it sounded lame, Willa was on the fence, Nick and the baby were hostages to the collective will. Iano broke the tie as usual in favor of what-the-hell.

  And Jorge was right, all Vineland was there. The neighborhood’s streets were blocked off and given over to herds of people who roamed the dusk hailing friends and pushing strollers from house to house admiring the lit-up displays. It felt exotic to be out among hundreds of people, walking, after dark. Willa couldn’t shake the feeling of having stepped into some other country.

  Jorge caught up to a group of friends that included both his sisters: pretty, outgoing Sondra, the in-home care nurse, and shy Lara, who took care of other people’s children at her house, along with her own. Tig fist-bumped herself into the crowd, much happier there than with her own family, Willa noted with the habitual pang. A thousand times she’d asked her mother after this wildling was born, could a mother and child just have bad chemistry? She’d spent years putting careful love letters into Tig’s psychic mailbox when what the girl seemed to want in there was birdsong, or a bucket of frogs.

  “Heisborn,” Iano said. “What is that?”

  Willa studied the word made of giant plywood letters, stapled with lights, marching across the whole yard. “I have no idea. Heisborn. Is it that football trophy?”

  “No, moro. That’s Heisman.”

  The mystery word was planted in a garden of illuminated snowmen, elves, wise men, and shepherds, and a super-lifelike baby doll Jesus on his bed of real hay. Despite the troublesome presence of elves and snowmen in the holy blended family, a placard announced this yard had taken the prize for “Best Religious.” This Christmas-light-pallooza was a juried event. Already they’d seen “Best Humorous” and “Best Creative.”

  Iano moved on with Zeke, who was pushing Nick’s wheelchair. The elder ignored the festivities while father and son argued some obscure point about global trade. Willa paused to reposition Generation Four in the baby sling
. “What are we going to do with this mess?” she asked him, pulling her fingers through a head of curls beginning to run wild, as Tig’s had at that age. Willa tried to settle his weight comfortably in the sling, without success. Zeke had argued against the stroller, saying two fancy chariots would make a bit much of a parade, but he hadn’t offered to carry Dusty, who had officially outgrown this carrier.

  She ended up walking a little distance behind Tig and her friends, watching with a voyeur’s lonely heart. Jorge’s “boys” sported a lot of shaved heads and were wearing sleeveless T-shirts, which was pushing it, Willa felt; it wasn’t that warm. But the young male engine ran on high octane. Intricate tattoos encircled their beautifully muscled upper arms. Jorge had an inked armband of barbed wire that had always struck Willa as self-punitive, but half-obscured in darkness like this, all their markings resembled some secret ancient language. Cuneiform. The ladies wore tight jeans, gold bracelets, and impractical shoes. Willa felt a new soft spot for Jorge, who’d chosen her spiky little daughter despite the obvious group preference for wide bottoms and cascades of telenovela hair. If Jorge had paid some social price, he looked perfectly content now, walking with one arm pulling Tig close. They seemed to be settling the tiff that had kept Tig from sleeping over in recent days. Willa knew only the vague outlines: José Luis had skipped town and left Jorge holding the bag in some manner Tig thought was unfair. But Jorge refused to be mad at his brother. Willa had never seen a family like theirs, a big, loyal household of parentless siblings holding it all together.

  Suddenly one of the guys turned on Tig and picked her up by the waist, alarming Willa. But this was a game, they began tossing Tig around like a kid sister while the girls scolded and fluttered their painted nails. All of them laughing, Tig especially. In the end she landed on Jorge’s shoulders and there she stayed, riding high as they all kept walking.

  “That’s weird.”

  Zeke had caught up to Willa, just in time to disapprove of the spectacle of his sister. She waited to see if he would look at his son cuddled against her chest. He didn’t.

  “Your dad always used to carry Tig on his shoulders like that in crowds. So she could see more than just people’s belt buckles. Remember?”

  “I remember childhood, yes. I understood it was supposed to end.”

  “Of course.” People like Willa and Zeke never stopped being surprised when it didn’t. She remembered arguing with Iano in Tig’s middle school years, calling a halt to the piggybacks, insisting they not condescend because of her stature. Now Willa saw the severity of that judgment. Adult or not, in a crowd like this Tig would see nothing from the ground. Up on Jorge’s shoulders she looked ecstatic, the darling champion.

  “Did you leave Nick next to the recycling bins?” she asked.

  Zeke laughed. “He probably thinks recycling is a communist plot.”

  Willa smiled. He probably did.

  “Dad’s got him. They were having technical difficulties.”

  “Uh-oh. Do we need to go?”

  “No, I don’t think it was urgent. Only, like, three-alarm curse words, not five.”

  “‘My penis has flowers and bees around it’?”

  “Exactly.”

  A woman with a small child in hand turned to give Willa a look.

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to say that in English.”

  The mother moved away from them into a deep crowd that had gathered before a house with an aggressive glow. From this far back Willa could see no details, only glare. The crowd flowed around them. “You should go hang out with the cheerful young people. I’m sure Jorge’s cute sisters will let you into the reindeer games.”

  Zeke shrugged, not really wanting to be there, she could tell.

  “You doing okay, honey? It’s tough, the holiday scene. We haven’t had much time to talk. There are some decisions about Dusty I wanted to talk over with you.”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you. I brought the document from the court clerk. It’s called a voluntary child custody agreement. Pretty straightforward, we just have to fill it out and sign in front of a notary.”

  “Oh. That’s the route you want to go? I didn’t mean to pressure you.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Okay.” By decisions Willa meant vaccination schedule, starting solid foods. Her head swam a little. Custody. “You didn’t seem to think much of the state of our household yesterday, when you first got here.”

  He’d been shocked to find his gypsy family encamped in the living room. And upset to find clothes and books he’d left upstairs badly water damaged, in a room now uninhabitable. Willa was mortified that she’d overlooked that battleground within the greater arena of their disaster. She’d let him lose a chunk of his life recorded in A+ school papers, attendance certificates, and yearbook testimonials. Zeke had been tight lipped for a few hours but had come around, pointedly telling Willa it wasn’t her fault.

  Now he shrugged. “You guys will sort things out. It’s not like you’ll have to pass a home visit from the child welfare lady.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” Willa said, trying for levity, feeling overwhelmed.

  “At least you own a house. You know, with a family. You’re a home.”

  “Glad you think so.”

  “I’m saying I thought about this, Mom. I talked to a friend who handles this kind of stuff all the time in her practice. She said it’s just paperwork, one way or another, but this is a more robust document than medical power of attorney. It gives you flexibility.”

  Willa had to wonder whether their particular situation was quite so run-of-the-mill, but he’d obviously spoken with a lawyer. Who else would call a document robust? “We shouldn’t move too fast,” she said. “Any therapist would advise against making huge decisions when you’re recovering from a trauma.” Willa was in no condition herself for a decision of this order. But Zeke didn’t need her worries on top of his own.

  “It’s not a huge decision. It’s just formalizing what we’re already doing.”

  “You’ll always be his father. That’s permanent.”

  “Right. I mean, I want to do the right thing. When I get my act together, I will.”

  “I know, honey. You’re my son who does the right thing, and you always will be. For now I just want you to find some peace. Are you doing that?”

  “It’s been okay. I’m going out, seeing people. And we’re getting some really great contacts built, with the business.”

  “Sorry, but I don’t want to hear about the damn portfolios, I’m asking about your mental state. What are you doing to help yourself feel okay?”

  “What I do to feel okay is go to ground. That’s just me, Mom. The damn portfolios make me feel like a better person.”

  “What does that even mean, ‘going to ground’?”

  He thought about this. “I guess, hunker down on my home turf. Find a place where I feel like a success. Sometimes that might mean moving backwards a little. I’m just trying to get back to where I was before everything bad happened.”

  Before Helene. Which meant before Dusty. From some storms no shelter was possible. “Enough with the mom talk,” she said. “Go keep an eye on your sister. Make her introduce you to her pals. I’ll wait for Dad and Nick to catch up.”

  He hesitated a moment, then flashed the smile that had never failed to win people over to Team Zeke. He left her and the crowd absorbed him. She wondered if “going out and seeing people” meant he was starting a whole rebooted life in Boston. He’d never been six months without a girlfriend. Willa wanted that for him again, of course, but not yet, surely. She watched him threading through the crowd, tracking Jorge’s group with Tig as its visible masthead.

  The crowd thinned, finally allowing Willa a gander at the overly dazzling yard display made of thousands of lights twinkling from tall triangles meant to suggest evergreen trees. Not just a few, a forest. The effect was blinding. She spotted an award placard, “A.C.E.’s Favorite,” and that one she knew: At
lantic City Electric. She tried to take the joke without thinking too much of her own ACE bill, probably overdue. It surprised her that Tig could approve of all this gratuitous burning of electricity in a neighborhood that was far from affluent. Then again, Tig might be condemning it right now from her human soapbox. Willa watched Tig’s group among all the dark people-shapes backlit by Atlantic City electricity. Zeke had joined them and was visibly interacting. He’d inched back from hollow-eyed despondency to his customary level of social ease: one personality gene he had to have gotten from Iano. Or maybe it just came of having been born gorgeous, for both father and son. Beautiful people liked to claim looks didn’t matter, while throwing that currency around like novice bank robbers.

  Dusty whimpered and she rubbed his back, regretting the low and cynical spirits she was probably shedding like a virus on the people around her. Any normal woman might feel happy and blessed by a husband’s and son’s good looks. But happy and blessed had been in short supply that winter as Willa looked for something to pull her out of her funk. For a while it was Mary Treat, near enough to touch, she’d wrongly believed. After that blow had landed, Willa made herself look toward Christmas when the people she loved would be together. And the day had gone well enough. Greeks did Christmas with church and food, and what Iano’s generation lacked in godliness they made up for in the kitchen. The four of them had spent the whole day braising a leg of lamb, making papoutsakia and avgolemono soup and diples, all of them wearing aprons and talking over each other, remembering Christmas feasts in all the many kitchens of their family’s life. The sabbatical year in Cyprus when they famously ate an octopus. The grad school apartment where they’d washed dishes in the shower, which Tig and Zeke couldn’t possibly remember but swore they did. Whole lambs turned on the spit, the Christmases they’d gone back to Phoenix. Aunt Athena’s lemon cake. This remembering should have made Willa happy and it nearly did. And now those dishes were in the sink.

  Jorge’s group had moved away from the electric forest toward the dark center of an intersection, closer to Willa. She watched Tig dramatically hammering Zeke on the head with her fist, operating like a pile driver from her superior position. Zeke played along, sinking lower with each stroke, but then suddenly he leaped up, grabbed her from Jorge’s shoulders and held her in the air for several writhing, screaming seconds while their middle school years passed before Willa’s eyes. Zeke had come early into his growth, which accounted for his success with high school sports and girls and probably much of what followed. Tig alone refused to succumb to his charms. When he set her down on her feet she tore into their permanent argument, loudly enough for Willa to hear her shifting between languages, cabrón and pendejo threading fluidly with “mad cool for the one percent.” Willa decided to go look for Iano and Nick.