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Our Lady of the Prairie

Page 25

by Thisbe Nissen


  Across the lot from Subway a sign announced Hoagie Heaven Coming Soon—only in America does a half-rural mini-mall need two sub shops—but I saw Heaven and thought of The Haven, near our house in town, where the pizza’s good, there’s nice beer on tap, and the lighting is blessedly dim. I imagined tucking into a corner booth, drinking Pilsner Urquell, running my fingers over illegible names carved in the butcherblock. I’d risk seeing colleagues, students, but the prospect of that booth was so comforting, I got on the road toward River City. And no, I didn’t have to drive past our house to get to The Haven, but it was one possible route, and I took it. The lights were on, Michael in the living room watching TV. I pulled over with the notion that he might not’ve had dinner either. We’d spent countless evenings at The Haven; it might comfort him, too. I got out of the car and went to knock on my own front door.

  Michael was barefoot, in gym shorts, his eyes squinty. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “I had to get out of the house.” I felt absurd. “The heat . . . Ginny . . .” It didn’t explain what I was doing on his doorstep. What was I doing on his doorstep? “I thought of The Haven. Have you eaten? I was passing by—” But Michael cut in: “And thought you’d drop in to see if I wanted pizza?” I just stood there, and he seemed to deflate. Stepping back to allow my entry, he said, “I’ll go put on some clothes,” and left me marooned in the hall, afraid to step off the doormat. Part of me was ready to bolt, but I held my ground, studying the decor like I was a stranger. The Lasansky print: a dour woman, hair pulled in a tight bun. Framed silkscreen from a 1970s production of Hair. Wooden pegs hung with Michael’s lawn-mowing ball caps. A quilt sampler hung on a dowel, its cord over a nail I’d likely hammered in. Michael used a stud finder and drywall anchors so things lasted. I’m not as foresightful or painstaking.

  Michael came down in light pants and a shirt—he’s a handsome man. I forget that. Our walk to The Haven was so familiar; it’s often too hot in summer to think of eating until the sun goes down. We went silently amid the college town cacophony, droning crickets and chittering night birds, porch chatter, bursts of laughter, the clink of glasses, bottlecap ftttz, shouts—whoa-ho!—of frat boys tossing beanbags into cornholes. We went through the night streets of River City the way we always had. My old life seemed to lie just on the other side of a flimsy screen door.

  The Haven’s AC was blessedly cool; everything else—the amber lighting, wood benches and tables, small stage hung with a worn oriental rug—exuded warmth. The place wasn’t crowded but buoyantly full: the booths were all taken. Michael leaned into the bar to order us a pitcher while I looked for a table. Then I heard a voice I knew, calling, “Maakestads! Hello!”

  A half-empty pitcher sat on the table before Randall and Linda, and I had my usual pang of confusion at the nature of their addiction and recovery. When Michael approached with our own frothy pitcher, he motioned to me with a jerk of his chin toward the bar, but I didn’t know what he meant. Finally he mimed holding a cup and drinking. I apologized and went to fetch glasses, but then I realized Ginny might not’ve told Linda yet about being pregnant, and dashed back to make sure Michael didn’t spill news that Ginny didn’t want spilled. Conversation had stalled, and Michael looked ready to find a distant table, so I started to say goodbye, but then Randall was saying, “Hey, I was real sorry to hear about your mother. Real sorry.” Michael thanked him, sincerely but obligatorily, not encouraging further dialogue, but Randall’s not much for social cues. He asked about a memorial, a place to send flowers, and would there be a service? Did Michael have a lot to deal with, wills, testaments, whatnot? Michael shook his head, muttering half mutely. Linda sat hunched over her pizza, also shaking her head as if to say Such a shame, but I felt that she, too, was embarrassed by Randall, dreading a moment when he might climb on his chair and clink knife to beer stein to recite a eulogy for Bernadette Maakestad.

  Like Linda, Michael retreated into himself, hunching over the pitcher, swaying a bit, then jumping back as a little wave of beer washed over the lip and splashed to the floor at his feet. “Oh!” Michael said, but his surprise didn’t quite sound right. “God, better get this to a table before I drench us. Really good seeing you both.” He turned to go and I raised our two empty beer glasses to Linda and Randall, then followed my husband to a table out of sight.

  I sank down, sighing. “Phew! That was close.”

  “What was close?” Michael set down the pitcher. I could see, then, that he was near tears.

  “Oh—I just—I don’t think . . . I don’t know if Ginny’s told them yet—about the baby.”

  Already over it, Michael said, “Oh.” I laid my hand on his arm, and he lowered his head, breathed deeply, then sat back up straight, eyes wide. A waitress approached, stopped short at the sight of our “moment,” but bopped on over anyhow. She was Chelsea, and she’d be taking care of us. “I see you’ve got drinks. C’I bring you a nibble while you decide? Jalapeño poppers? Fifty-cent wings?” So eager, this Chelsea, plucked brows raised in exaggerated friendliness. I do pine at times for a surly urban waitress, pen poised in profound annoyance.

  Michael pushed his menu away, ordered a large pesto-chicken, add artichokes, and Chelsea popped off to the kitchen. Michael poured our beer. He was close to the very frayed edge of his own respectability. Knocking on his door had been a stupid, selfish idea.

  Linda passed our table on her way to the restroom, and we all waved awkwardly. A minute later, I said, “I should pee too,” just to get away. As I entered the ladies’, Linda was exiting the one flimsy, shuttered stall, and another woman was going in. Uneasy, we laughed. I stood to wait in the cramped sink area while Linda washed her hands, hunched like an adult in the preschool bathroom. When she turned off the water, our eyes met in the mirror. “I know,” she said, smiling into our reflection.

  “Know what?” I said.

  “Silas called. Gin got on the phone, and she couldn’t hardly talk, but she told me.” Linda dried her hands on a brown paper towel as if the drying itself were a pleasure.

  “Told you what?” I wasn’t taking chances.

  For all her burly toughness, Linda can be charmingly prudish. “About the baby.”

  I exhaled audibly. “She’s not telling other people, not this early. Just you.”

  “I know.” Linda shifted. “I didn’t even tell Randall yet. I was going to tonight.”

  “Oh?” The intricacies of what Linda and Randall did and didn’t tell each other was unknown to me then, and if I thought anything of her hesitation to disclose Ginny’s pregnancy to him, I probably chalked it up to some kind of squeamishness.

  “I’ll try and visit soon,” Linda said, moving aside as the other woman exited the stall.

  “Ginny would love that,” I said, no idea if it was true, and Linda nodded, holding her towel like she couldn’t decide whether to toss it out or not. “Well, see you out there, then,” I added.

  “Yeah, see you.” Linda balled the towel in her fist and left the bathroom with it.

  On my return to the table, Michael nodded at me the way he would to a colleague arriving at a department meeting. “Sorry,” I said, sliding in. “I ran into Linda in the bathroom.”

  “Hope she’s all right.” It took me a second to understand it was just that old punch line: You ran into her? Ouch! It was something we did; it was silly, not even funny. I pantomimed a laugh and reached out to him, but the gesture felt rote, the only comfort of which I was capable: a hand on his arm. He let it stay.

  We sat silent until the pizza came. Michael reached to serve, but then didn’t. He stood, said, “I need to go,” and pushed in his chair, then paused as if to say more, but didn’t, just left.

  I flushed with shame, like I’d been dumped in public. Sipping my beer, I lifted my eyes slowly. No one gave a shit. Still, my heart beat fast. Staring at my coaster, I tried to rein in my thoughts. I looked at my watch as if I had someplace to be. Michael could’ve darted out to save theater seats, teach a c
lass, catch a train. I’d been left to get the to-go box, pay the bill, meet him there. I flagged Chelsea and gobbled a slice as she fetched our check and a box. Some grad students sat nearby and I walked over, pitcher in one hand, pizza in the other. “We’ve got a—” I gestured toward a mythical thing I had to get to, out there. “The pizza’ll travel, but not beer.”

  A guy in a Goodwill Hawaiian shirt cleared a spot beside him, saying, “By all means!”

  Driving through town, I ate two more slices, then went by the bus station where River City’s young, modest, and seasonal homeless population congregates after dark. I pulled over, rolled down the passenger window, and lifted the box. A group of Mohawked, tattooed kids sat against a brick wall, their dog rope-tied to a water meter nearby. I said, “You guys want some pizza?” and a combat-booted boy stood and loped across the sidewalk. He leaned in, took the box, said “Peace,” and turned back to his cohort. As he walked, he inched the box open. “Pesto-chicken!” He sounded pleased. A whiff of that pizza would’ve made Ginny hurl.

  On the way home, I paused in the Subway lot: no email from Lucius. Back in Prairie, I lay awake a long time in my hot little room, trying to think of him; we’d been apart mere days and already I could barely see his face. I fell asleep. At four a.m. I heard Ginny vomiting. I must have fallen back to sleep, for I next woke in the late morning, Silas long gone to work, and Eula tending Ginny. She lay propped on pillows in bed, in tears, watching a pair of mourning doves in a hickory. I took a straight-backed chair—just sensing the motion of a rocker made her sick—and we became an eighteenth-century cliché: I, the relationless spinster, caring for the infirm in exchange for room, board, and a meager inheritance. If I pulled my hair into a taut bun and put on a dress of Orah’s—if Eula hadn’t quilted them all yet—I could’ve passed for Whistler’s mother.

  “How did I think I could make it through a pregnancy?” Ginny said.

  “You didn’t know, Gin,” I said. “Everyone doesn’t go through this having a baby—”

  She cut me off: “It’s not a baby. It’s a nonviable cell cluster.”

  “Gin, it’ll get better—”

  “What if it doesn’t? I can’t do this for nine months. I can’t. Right now I want to die.” Those are words she’d never before spoken to me, aloud and explicit. “I won’t,” she sobbed. “I wouldn’t. Not to Silas. Not ever.” Relief, but a twist of pain, too: she had someone to stay alive for, someone she wouldn’t punish as she’d punished us. “I keep thinking about Grandma Ma,” she said. “I saw her last at Jazz Fest. I tried to register her to vote, but you know how she was . . .”

  “Gin, don’t. Don’t do it to yourself.”

  “How can I not? She was so depressed, her arthritis, not able to do what kept her sane. And I badgered her.” The sewing box sat on the nightstand. “She was so depressed for so long.”

  “Bernadette?” I was confused, but Ginny wasn’t really talking about her grandmother.

  “I don’t know how I could have wanted this, but now I can’t undo it—or I could, but—”

  “Is that what you—? Are you thinking of abort—”

  “No! I don’t know!” She was breathing hard, quick, heavy breaths. “Sometimes it’s the only thing that makes sense, but we’d definitely never have kids, then. No adoption agency in the world . . . Me? Raise a child? With Silas I thought I could, but . . . if Bush’s reelected? Bring a kid into this? How’s it fair to inflict . . . How could I have anything but a miserable, suicidal child?”

  “Ginny, please . . .”

  “Ma, if you’d had a clue how I’d turn out, you’d’ve raced for Planned Parenthood.”

  “Ginny!” It wasn’t true. I’d never thought of aborting. I could have—Roe v. Wade was decided while I was in college—plenty of my friends did. It had honestly never dawned on me.

  “I want to miscarry,” she was saying. “I keep hoping it’ll expel itself. Then it wouldn’t be my fault.” She dissolved; the nausea descended. Soon she was retching red Popsicle spit, and I was thinking how if Bush got a second term and stocked the Supreme Court with Jesus-touting imperialists, they’d overturn Roe first chance they got, and choice would be history.

  It was into this warren of joy that Randall and Linda descended that afternoon, like Santa, except through the front door. But, like Santa indeed, they came bearing bundles. Christmas in July! And came in trumpeting, literally. Randall blew a toy horn, bellowing, “Halloo, Mama!” and swooping triumphantly inside, teeming Menards bags slung over his shoulder, feathered hair pulled off his face with a terry sweatband. He waved greetings to me and took the stairs. Behind him, Linda toted more bags, and gave a small head-bow I read as apology. I followed, anxious, but when Randall threw open the bedroom door, my violently sick daughter seemed to have been replaced by their shy, sleepy friend, so serene you’d think she’d just stuck a needle in her vein.

  “Little Mama!” Randall looked ready to pounce on the bed and bounce Ginny off. Linda reined him back. Ginny held still, fragile but persevering, as Randall and Linda unloaded their offerings, bestowing gifts until the quilt was piled with packaging detritus. Minutes later, the two were collecting themselves to go. Linda said, “We’re just on break.” Randall bellowed farewell, and as suddenly as they’d come—roar of engine, cloud of driveway dust—they were gone.

  When the truck pulled away, I went back to Ginny. She’d shrunk amid the wrappings and looked small and overwhelmed. “Ma, can you put it all somewhere? I can’t look at it.” She closed her eyes. “I just can’t.” So I gathered it all: child-sized Adirondack chair, set of gardening tools for tiny hands, blow-up kiddie pool, orange onesie stamped CARPENTERS DO IT WITH TOOLS. I’m sure they’d swiped it all from Menards, or took an “employee discount” that made it nearly free. Kinehora on all of it. Jews don’t buy gifts for unborn babies: too much can go wrong.

  I put everything away and returned to Ginny, pulled my spinster-aunt chair over to the bed, and we sat watching the sun descend to the summer fields. In a few minutes she closed her eyes, and when her breathing deepened I crept downstairs to pour a glass of wine. When I got back, golden light streamed in on the wedding quilt. Eula had finished it while I was in France, and this was my first look at the whole thing spread out. It’s all white, shades and gradations and textures, and in that bright sun I couldn’t tell what I was seeing. A bit of oat-colored burlap gave way to something filmy and sheer as a negligee. A band of thick white, like a boat’s sail, and an overlapping crescent of geometric-print cotton—maybe a hospital gown? Some shapes looked like flattened bonnets, until I glanced away and couldn’t see them when I looked back, saw only a white whale spouting a spray of chenille fringe. Upside down in one corner was a word, faded blue print on worn sackcloth. It took me a while to read H-A-T-C-H-A-B-I . . . An electronics company? A Japanese steakhouse? Then I worked it out: HATCHABI-l-i-t-y. A poultry feed sack. I sipped my wine, watched my daughter sleep, and for a little while nothing felt so bad.

  When Ginny woke again the sun had mostly set, though the sky still glowed. Fireflies popped out and we watched them against a dark that seemed to rise from the ground. I felt full of what I can only describe as a great goodwill. Maybe it was the wine. “They’re such good people, Linda and Randall,” I said, “such good friends to you.” Ginny didn’t respond, but I knew she agreed. I was thinking aloud on a warm, lovely evening. I felt good—so help me! Good and relaxed and gabby. “I wish I didn’t see them as siblings,” I said, “like Linda’s his tomboy kid sister he looks out for. Don’t you sometimes wish they’d fall in love and live happily ever after?”

  Such an earnest sense of hope, envisioning these two ungainly, awkward people finding joy—passion!—together, but Ginny’s expression made it clear I’d gotten something very wrong. You, said my daughter’s gaze, are a moron. What? Linda was gay? Or Randall? They were brother and sister? With great rebuke, Ginny said, “They’ve been together since they met.”

  “They have? They—what?�
� I could not hide my confusion.

  “Since they met, at NA. You’re not kidding? Jesus.” Her revulsion made me think it wasn’t the pregnancy making her sick, only me. “They don’t display it, parade it around, but . . . Jesus, you’re really that oblivious? Are you aware of anything outside yourself at all?”

  It was just the question I so often wanted to level at her. I said, “That’s not fair, Ginny.”

  “Life isn’t fair, Mom.” She spat it out, every word sarcastic, like she couldn’t talk to me, could only relay what she might have said if she’d deigned to converse with such an idiot.

  SILAS’S CREW REGULARLY worked past sunset, using all the daylight they had. When he got home, I left, drove until I got cell service, then pulled over. On the shoulder, between pavement and corn, hundreds of tiny birds were giving a synchronized air show, swooping up and diving down, all of them at once, lighting for a split second, then taking off again, looping the loop like they were caught in a vortex. It whipped them up and deposited them back, over and over again.

  I called Michael. We hadn’t parted on easy terms at The Haven, but I was trying not to dwell, not take things so personally. “Michael,” I began, “how would you characterize . . . how would you classify Linda and Randall’s relationship?”

  There was a pause before Michael said, “What?” He drew it out, as though I’d just spoken in pig Latin and expected he’d answer without inquiring: Pig Latin, Phillipa, really?

  It was nothing but wishful thinking that let me respond as I did, some notion that Michael was struck as dumb as I’d been by the news of Linda and Randall’s coupledom. “You knew?”

 

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