“Oh, Russ—” I lean against him, my arms encircling his, my head on his broad, welcoming shoulder, knowing exactly what he is going to say next.
“I went to my knees and prayed,” he confirms. “I asked God to forgive me for my heedlessness, and for not trusting him enough to provide for us in a way that didn’t tear us apart. And then, in my spirit, I heard him tell me to go home.”
“Go home,” I repeat, just to hear it in my own voice. “So what did you tell the hospital?”
“That I had a family, and that I couldn’t be at the hospital for all the days they required. I’m going back Monday morning—” he put his finger to my lips to quell my approaching protest—“to meet with several ministers from other churches, schedule some hours for volunteering time. The need is so great.”
“But our debt is paid, isn’t it? They don’t need you driving in from the next town.”
He pats my leg, reassuring. “We’ll see, but I hope not. I like to think I’m needed here, too.”
“You are.”
I pull his face close for a kiss, which he immediately deepens, pulling me across his lap like we are teenagers again. My mind reels, twisting upon itself as the relief of Russ’s return collides with the fear of discovery. An unexpected deliverance. Surely Jim must see the car parked in the alley, or in front of the store. He knows—he must know—Russ is here. To stay away. More ardent embraces push Jim to the edge of my mind, and my husband seems unaware of any distraction on my part. He stands, sweeping me up in his arms, and carries me halfway to the bedroom before I pull myself away.
“We can’t.”
He nudges my neck. “Of course we can. The kids are at school.”
“I don’t have clean sheets on the bed.”
“I don’t mind.”
I wriggle in his grasp. “I can’t leave the laundry like that, undone. The soap will dry in the fabric, and then it’s impossible. Besides, it’s a clear day. Who knows when we’ll have another one?”
He kisses the end of my nose and returns me to my feet. “I suppose I could help.”
“With laundry?”
“I suppose I could watch.”
“Trust me, that wouldn’t help. We have a little time before the kids are home. Why don’t you go over to see Mr. Brown? Tell him you’ll be here to preach on Sunday. You will, won’t you? Because I don’t think we can take another week of him.”
Russ glances at the clock. “I will.”
“And I’ll finish this and see what I can put together for a special lunch. They’ll be so surprised to see you.”
“I hope they react a little differently,” he says with a wink. “Be sure to make something that you’ll eat too.”
“I will.” I stand poised at the Maytag until Russ disappears, then immediately run downstairs to the bolted door, opening it inches, enough to see if Jim waits on the other side.
Nothing. Nobody. I open it farther, crane my head out, look in all directions, but see only our trusty sedan, coated tan with road dust, and an otherwise-empty alley. Heart racing, I run back upstairs, onto our balcony, leaning over to see as far as I can up and down the street. Russ’s distinctive gait is all I recognize, and I close the door.
Minutes later, the apartment fills with the sound of the washer, and I stand in such a place as to see both doors with nothing more than the slightest turn of my head. After running the sheets through the wringer after the rinse water, I dump them in the basket and head downstairs to hang them to dry. Our clothesline consists of a single pole with four arms reaching out at the top, each connected to the next with shorter and shorter lengths of clothesline running toward the center. Considering the limited space in the alley, it is a much more convenient design than a single, long length, but it makes for an extensive drying time. I’ve learned over all these months not to overload it on any given wash day, as an unexpected storm could blow in at any minute, ruining several loads’ wash. The rest of today’s laundry will be strung about the apartment.
I’ve draped the last of it over the line when I see him, standing at the entrance to the alley as if he’s been there all along. It is a cold, dry day, and my hands feel like they have thin sheets of ice ready to crack against my skin. I fold my arms, trapping them within the warmth of my sweater. Russ’s sweater, actually. Thick and loose, swallowing my body. Other than that, I don’t move.
Jim looks at our car, then at me. “He’s back?”
I hold myself tighter and nod.
A slow grin spreads across his face. “I’m going to miss you, Nola.”
Anything left will have to be said in these final minutes, and I hold a thousand questions on my tongue. Somehow I know if I watch him walk away, I’ll follow, if only to pour them into the wind, and their answers could only make this moment more painful. I pick up my empty laundry basket and, without another glance in his direction, pull my leaden feet up the three shallow steps to the loading dock and open the storeroom door, leaving it unbarred behind me.
The special lunch I wanted to prepare turns out to be eggs and pancakes, but Ronnie and Ariel are so excited to see their father, I could have prepared sawdust and sauerkraut and it would have made little difference. At the end of the hour, when Ronnie goes back for his afternoon classes, Ariel insists that Russ read her three stories for her nap time while I continue with the wash. I rinse the clothes from the tea-brown water in the bathtub and run them through the soapy agitations until the water drains clear, and by the time I’ve wrung out the last tiny blouse, my back aches with the labor and my hands feel raw. Russ brings the sheets in from the line and volunteers to make up our bed—an act that eases my mind, as I’ve been dreading walking into that room with him. I know there is nothing amiss that would arouse any suspicions on his part, but the thought of occupying the same space with him that I’ve occupied with Jim fills me with dread.
If ever there was a time to confess, it is now, while he has only my own words to condemn or forgive as he sees fit. Surely, though, Jim will stay away, if for no other reason than to protect himself from my husband’s wrath. He may have fought valiantly in the war, but he is no match in size or physicality for Russ. As before, each moment that passes makes my sin easier to live with and harder to tell. That night, when we are all in bed, and the wind howls around us, my body stretches the length of his within the crisp, clean sheets.
“Those nights,” he speaks into the darkness, “when I was gone? I’d lie there in that narrow bunk they had for me in that little room, and I’d try to imagine what you were doing, right at the moment.”
“Sleeping, most likely.” I don’t mention the exhaustion with which I fell into bed each night, born from the endless battle against the dirt, or the toll it took on a body being two parents for two children. That battle, God willing, will soon be over.
“Of course, sleeping. But what kind?”
I rise up on one elbow. “What kind?”
“Were you curled up, keeping warm? Or flat on your back, like this—” he demonstrates with one arm flung on the pillow above his head—“because you’re too tired to move? Or, just perfect—on your side, your body like a hillside.” This, as he traces my curves.
“I never knew I was a woman of such variety.”
“I don’t know that I did, either, until I tried to picture you, and then so much came to my head. I felt like I could remember every night we’ve ever spent together. From the very beginning.”
“That’s a lot of nights, Russ.”
He gathers me up and kisses the top of my head. “It’s not enough. And I want to have them all.”
There, in his arms, I vow to give him all he wants—all of my life—even if it means a certain silence between us.
CHAPTER 29
IT IS A SUCCESSFUL FINAL TRIP to Boise City, meeting with the local clergy and extricating himself from the daily work of a hospital chaplain.
“I don’t suppose I’ve ever thought of myself as a leader among leaders,” he says that night over
a late dinner. “But they seemed enthusiastic and supportive. I think it’s been left in good hands.”
“So no going back?” I ask, trying not to appear too eager.
“Not anytime soon. I have responsibilities here.”
Indeed, hunger and hopelessness have wormed their way into the health of the people in Featherling, and a moist, incessant cough becomes a sound as constant as the wind. During his time working out of town, the church has fallen out of the habit of gathering after a storm, given that they are so commonplace now, we’d be hard-pressed to ever be anywhere else.
“Besides,” he says from the pulpit, “we don’t want any of our elderly members out in the dust more than is necessary.”
From then on, a group of older boys—Ronnie among them—is given the task of going door to door after particularly heavy blasts to ensure that all is well within.
In a matter of days, our family restored, Russ becomes a presence in our home in a way he never has been before. He walks Ariel to school, allowing me time to clean up breakfast dishes and take the linens outside for a quick snap in the morning air before it fills with the dust of the day. Then, when he comes back home, we linger over a second or third cup of coffee. We resume our habit of reading from the Psalms together, and it is with a strong voice that I read the fifty-first.
“‘Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.’”
We clasp hands and bow our heads together, thanking God for the provision of this day. Always we have food to eat, and the roof stretches over our heads in perfect measure.
During our times of prayer, as Russ speaks aloud the gratitude of the family, I send up my own, silent petition, that nothing again will wedge itself between me and this husband whom I love. To think of how I once spent these same hours fills me with shame enough to hold me mute, even as Russ gently urges me, through a soft squeezing of my fingers, to speak aloud. Was it only three days spent in the throes of sin? Three mornings given over to meaningless depravity?
I like to think of myself as having been dead those three days. My soul relegated to the depths of my anger as my body acted of its own accord, resurrected by God’s perfect gift of intervention by sending Russ home. Every day, whenever I catch a glimpse of him—reading a book with Ariel or sorting through baseball cards with Ronnie—I never fail to ponder the disaster that might have befallen me had I not locked the door that morning. In this way, Jim continues to haunt me, and I pray for his memory to disappear, even as the man himself seems to have done.
For there hasn’t been another trace of him. So complete is his erasure that I wonder if he wasn’t a product of my imagination, a delusion brought on by grief and frustration and the madness of the ever-present dust. But then my husband turns to me, touches me, and my flesh immediately seizes up, wanting to push him away for its lack of worthiness. And my mind says to my skin, Be still, before leading myself to surrender.
Through all of this, one fear plagues me—that I might be left with very tangible evidence of my adultery. I picture a child with curly, dark hair that I can claim as my own, and some physical deformity that can only be attributed to my sin. A new calendar hangs in the kitchen, in accordance with the new year. That day in the last week of December, the late onset of my cycle, burns itself into my thoughts, and as we reach the waning of January, I double my supplications to the Lord. I pray like a woman in need of rescue, with the same fervency with which I once begged God to fill me with a healthy, beloved baby.
Please, I beg. Not for my sake, but for Russ. He doesn’t deserve such pain.
As an act of desperation, I eat. Bread and tapioca and macaroni and pork chops and doughnuts and baked chicken and green beans and bacon—smaller portions than what I prepare for Russ and Ronnie, but more than I usually consume, hoping to keep my belly so full of food there’ll be room for nothing else.
The morning when, while doing dishes, I feel the familiar onset of my time—no pain, no reason to think it anything other than my natural course—I stand at the sink and weep. In that moment, my storm ends. Calm assurance that I have survived with all that I treasure intact.
At my feet, Barney laces herself around my ankles, purring against my thick wool socks, and with joy-fueled generosity I pour her a dish of milk and stroke her tricolored coat. A thousand times, at least, I’ve rehearsed my confession to Russ, and it always starts with: Do you remember the day we brought Barney home? I’d never tell him about the other moments that made up the rising tide under his own roof. Had I not orchestrated a definitive moment in time to be alone with Jim, I might have kept myself free from the worst of my father’s disdain. Now, the nearly full-grown cat is all that remains of my father’s farm, and someday I hope to be able to look at her and not feel another man’s kiss.
We continue to get weekly letters from Greg, and save them to read after Sunday’s dinner, no matter what day they are received. The exception to this comes in February, when we receive not one but three pale-pink envelopes, addressed to Ariel, Ronnie, and me separately. These, of course, are valentines, and they add a festive air to our Wednesday supper of ham steak and canned yams. Russ presented me with a box of chocolates earlier in the day, and I share them around for dessert upon distributing the cards. Ariel’s depicts a sweet, pink-cheeked girl clutching a pure-white, fluffy cat, and a verse that says something about wishing much love and fuzzy feelings on Valentine’s Day. Ronnie’s is slightly bawdy—an adolescent boy kissing a girl whose skirt has blown up to show her bloomers and an inscription that says, If you only get one chance, make it count! More important, in the eyes of the children at least, three crisp dollar bills have been tucked inside each card: To buy whatever you want. Love, Uncle Greg.
I haven’t told Greg about Russ’s reaction to the Christmas money, which remains, untouched, in my top bureau drawer. I glance nervously at my husband to see if he feels the same discomfort at this gesture, but he only smiles and suggests we spend Saturday afternoon looking through the Sears and Roebuck to see if anything captures their fancy.
The third envelope is addressed to me, which is unusual because Greg always sends his letters to Mr. and Mrs. Russ Merrill, but I figure it might seem strange, one man sending a Valentine’s card to another man, no matter the circumstances. I open it carefully, pull out the card, and let out a sigh at the idyllic image on the front—a quaint white house, green lawn, picket fence, and rosebush growing by the front door. On the outside of the card is written, A home isn’t a home until it is filled with love. Inside is a crisp twenty-dollar bill and something else—a photograph, color-tinted and eerily similar to the house depicted on the card, only larger, two-storied, with Greg smiling on the porch.
Immediately, the image clouds as my eyes fill with tears, and I hear Russ ask, “Nola? Are you all right?” As I am about to hand the picture over, I see my brother’s familiar handwriting on the back of the photograph.
Dear Russ and Nola,
Received a check for the sale of Pa’s farm. This is our inheritance.
Your home as well as mine, whenever you’re ready to get out of the dust.
Love, G
I hand the photograph over to Russ, saying nothing, and close the card around the twenty-dollar bill, deciding to keep that to myself until I know how Russ will react to the photograph.
“Where is this?” he asks, passing the picture over to Ariel’s delighted scrutiny.
“Washington?” I guessed. “Or near there, wherever he lives. A far cry from that little one-room apartment he’s always complaining about.”
“Is it for us?” Ariel bounces in her seat, too excited to be stingy when Ronnie insists on seeing the photograph for himself.
“It’s not for us,” Russ says, his lips thin.
“But, Daddy, he says—”
“We live in Oklahoma,” Ronnie says, the sentence choked with resignation.
“But lots of people go away.”
I place a quieting hand on Ariel’s curls. “He’s just showing us his house. And since we’re family, he wants us to know that we’re welcome there anytime.”
“To visit,” Russ adds.
“Yes,” I say. “But if we ever decided we wanted something new, we needn’t worry about not having anyplace to go.”
Ariel takes the picture back and studies it so intently, I fear her eyes will cross. “Does the dust blow there, too?” She seems to direct her question to the smiling uncle in the photo.
“No, sweetie,” I answer for him. “It doesn’t.”
“Then I really, really wish we could go.”
Normally she would be chastised for pouting, but I can’t bring myself to detract any more from her joy. My heart reaches out in agreement as I take the photograph and tuck it back inside the card. “We’ll have to find a special page for this in the album.”
I allow the children two more pieces of chocolate before sending them off to bed with promises of another piece with their lunch the next day. Russ and I stay up, sitting in the darkness, listening to love songs on the radio. At the first notes of my favorite, “Body and Soul,” he stands, reaches out his hand, and pulls me to my feet and into his arms. We dance in small, aimless steps as he hums the tune into my ear while my mind fills with the lyrics.
My heart is sad and lonely,
For you I sigh, for you, dear, only.
Why haven’t you seen it?
I’m all for you, body and soul.
“Russ?” I murmur against his shirt.
“Hm?”
We are in a moment of such pure contentment that I hate the idea of spoiling it in any way, but if he is so lulled . . .
“I know Greg didn’t mean any offense.”
He kisses the hand he clasps. “I know.”
“But would you ever consider such a thing?”
He hushes me with a kiss and sings softly above my head:
On Shifting Sand Page 31
