Work Like Any Other

by Virginia Reeves

  I’d slept fitfully since my talk with her parents, questions keeping me awake, wispy things, crippled and dark.

  I let Jenny lead us into the meadow, the grass crumpled, the burned mulch a dark circle, and then the big house came into view, its glinting windows and bright siding.

  I stopped at the porch steps, Maggie’s nose in the pits of my knees.

  “Come on,” Jenny said, but I didn’t know that I was ready for another conversation about my former wife and her property.

  Finally, Jenny took my hand.

  My toes caught on every stair, and only Jenny’s grip kept me from stumbling. We climbed for hours, it seemed, though there were only six steps. The porch, too, had grown. Its planks stretched far away to the front door, a mile at least.

  “I can’t make it,” I told Jenny, but she pulled me forward. Maggie lay down on the brick walkway without being told. The heavy oak door was open, as it was every day of every summer I had lived here. Even the lightest hint of a breeze helped in fighting the heat. People were in the front sitting room, taking me in. My trousers were gritty, my hands calloused. My shirt hung loose, the cuffs ratty and threadbare. My nose and forehead were burned red by sun, and the beard I’d finally grown to cover the slack skin of my cheeks hung uneven off my chin. I still have that beard, though there are patches along my jaw that will never grow.

  Jenny brought me into the room where Moa and Wilson stood with the stranger I now recognized as my son. I was surprised again by his appearance—his height and thickness and clothes.

  “Hey, Pa.”

  Next to him stood a man closer to my age. His suit was dark blue, his tie gold. His hair was gray at the sides, but dark on top and greased back from his forehead.

  “Mr. Martin.” He lifted an enormous hand in my direction. “Good to meet you.” His voice was like Ed’s, something foreign to it. “My name’s Robert Hill. Gerald’s retained me to help with your situation.”

  “We’ll go through it all,” Gerald said.

  “I’m staying.” Jenny settled herself into a chair, and no one argued.

  Gerald reached for me, and I allowed myself to grip hold of him.

  Moa passed me a glass of iced tea, cold and slick in my hand. Wilson and Gerald took the chairs on either side of Jenny, leaving Moa and Robert Hill and me the sofa to share. We squeezed ourselves onto our own cushions. My glass poured its sweat into my hand.

  Sips were taken. The house creaked in the walls with the breeze outside.

  I wondered again how old my son was—eighteen? Nineteen? His birthday was in March. Maybe March 16? That didn’t sound right. Marie’s birthday was July 16. Mine is September 10. I would turn forty that coming fall. I feel like an old man.

  “I know Moa and Wilson have talked to you about their ownership of the land,” Gerald said, “and the state of your—” He looked to the Grices for help.

  “Your marriage,” Wilson said. “Yes, Moa and I told him about the divorce.”

  “We didn’t know what to do,” Gerald said, pleading in his voice. “I hope you understand—we just didn’t know how to fight Mother, or whether we should, or what to do when you were released. We needed time to figure it out, time to get to know you again, and I know I haven’t done that, but I’m going to try, and I trust Moa and Wilson and all they’ve told me about your time here.”

  “Gerald, honey,” Moa said, “you’ve nothing to apologize for. Just tell your father what we’re doing.”

  He sucked in a thick breath. “Mr. Hill is here to help you fight the divorce.”

  The lawyer must have sensed my astonishment. “Mr. Martin, we’re all quite certain that your marriage was dissolved without your consent.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that is against the law. Your former wife has divided her assets as she sees fit, but were you married—as the law would dictate—all of her assets would be as much yours as they are hers.”

  “But she’s already given you the land,” I said to Moa.

  She nodded, but Wilson spoke. “You don’t deserve to be cut out of it entirely.”

  “There are a few options you can take,” Robert Hill said. “You could fight the divorce, which would be the longest route. It’d require witnesses from the prison hospital testifying to your mental state when your wife visited. You could also sue her for half of her current assets, which are significant—Gerald shared her will with all of us, and it’s clear she’s done well. She put her returns on this property toward investments her father had started, as well as other properties, like the one in Tuscaloosa, where Gerald currently resides. She has assets to distribute, quite certainly.”

  “And if I’m not interested in either of those options?”

  That damn iced tea felt dainty in my hands, a false thing that said we were the type of people who had time to sit around drinking iced tea through the afternoon. I set it on the table.

  Robert Hill reached down on his side of the sofa and returned with a sheaf of papers.

  “Take a look.”

  The words were jolting, sharp-ridged things. Last Will and Testament of Marie Dawson Martin. It was strange to see Marie’s full name attached to that other phrase. We’d never made a will.

  Custody of Dependents read, Preceding March 15, 1932, custody of Mrs. Martin’s son, Gerald Roscoe Martin [heretofore referred to as the Dependent], goes to Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Grice.

  March 15. How could I have forgotten the middle of the month? The ides of March?

  “Would the State have let you be his legal guardians?” I asked Moa and Wilson.

  “Marie’s lawyer was ready to fight the Jim Crow laws,” Moa said. “I thank God nearly every day that we didn’t have to go through that.”

  After Gerald’s care, I found a list of assets, long and staggering. The house and land weren’t there, as I knew they wouldn’t be, but there was an address in Mobile and one in Tuscaloosa. There were accounts I didn’t know, investment descriptions that didn’t make sense. Marie’s mother’s silver was listed, alongside several pianos and two cars, a fur coat worth a small fortune, and a set of china. Collection of books held its own line, its worth unknown. There was a diamond ring and Other Jewelry, two paintings by Eileen Agar. Who was Eileen Agar? Furniture was separated out by type—­dressers and wardrobes, dining tables, a sideboard, lounge chairs, sofas, chaises, beds. When had Marie gotten all of this?

  Beyond the assets, I found the Division of Assets.

  “I imagine that’s the part that’ll interest you most,” Robert Hill said.

  The smaller assets went first—the furniture and books and clothing—and they went mostly to charities. I was somewhat confused by the diamond ring that went to Gerald, but realized it was intended for his future bride. The rest of Marie’s jewelry went to Jenny.

  The house in Tuscaloosa was the first property to be designated, and Marie left it to Gerald, as well as the house in Mobile.

  “None of this is mine,” I said.

  “A part of it is,” Wilson said.

  “Is it?” Wilson’s arm is gone, I wanted to tell them, and his time was both shorter and longer than any I did. I stood up, unclear of my intentions.

  “It’s all right, Pa. You don’t have to do anything, if you don’t want. Mr. Hill has something else to tell you.”

  I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes, rubbing fiercely, willing the room gone, those damn roses on the walls, the damn people on the furniture.

  “It’s all right, Roscoe,” Moa said. “Sit down.”

  I sat, that prison part of me still moved by someone else’s requests.

  “All right, now,” Robert Hill said. “Those first two options I mentioned still stand—they’re independent of what I’m about to tell you, and as your counsel, I encourage you to pursue one of those paths. You’d have a strong case either way. What we have here”—he
tapped a new set of papers in his lap—“is something Mr. and Mrs. Grice recently put together with the support of Gerald. It’d be easiest just to let you read through it.”

  The first page described a small structure on a parcel of land, a quarter section, 160 acres, mostly agricultural, with a few acres of woods. The structure was wood construction on a pier-and-beam foundation with no modern amenities. The following pages added in legal talk of fences and taxes, easements and county lines. The words were familiar—Coosa County, Old Hissup Road bordering the north and Jacks Creek bordering the west. It was Marie’s land, but it didn’t make sense to me, this fraction of it. The farm was two sections—more than 1,200 acres—and it’d never been subdivided. “Land’s not for cutting up into tiny pieces,” Marie’s father had said. “You want yourself a bit, then you move into a township and buy yourself a street-side lot.”

  At the end, I found a deed transferring ownership of the property.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It took a lot of convincing,” Moa replied, “and I’m still not altogether convinced. But Wilson believes you deserve a home, and you’ve done enough to convince me you deserve a chance at least.”

  “You’ve done good work here, Ross.”

  “It’s your home, Mr. Roscoe.” Jenny smiled. “Like I said.”

  Moa offered her seat to Gerald, who squeezed himself against me like a child. “Mother took us away from each other,” he whispered, warm and moist against my ear. I fought revulsion. He was my son, but he was too soft a man. I should’ve been able to welcome his need, to hear in his words my own misfortune and loss. But instead, I heard an educated man, fed and clothed and housed in ease and comfort, his only handicap self-imposed through the biting of his nails and cheeks—I heard this man lamenting his years of privilege, years without a father, but still years of ease. I knew it was unfair to compare our time. I know it still. When I see him, I remind myself that my punishment came from a choice I’d made, and that his was out of his control. I try to talk to him about his life over there in Tuscaloosa, full of dinners and fancy dress and occasional ladies, though he still hasn’t married.

  “It’s all right, Son,” I told him.

  Moa had gone to stand between Jenny’s and Wilson’s chairs. They were all so strong—the three of them—strong and whole enough to be able to offer a part of their lives to me. I didn’t want half of Marie’s assets. I didn’t want to fight the divorce. But I wanted to stay. I hadn’t before that moment, before seeing Moa and Wilson and Jenny across from me. I wanted to stay close to them. I wanted to stay because the deed was theirs to transfer.

  I wanted to stay because they believed I should.

  I was freshly bathed and sitting down to breakfast when the knock came on the door. I pictured Jenny out there, my regular visitor. Only a week had passed since the meeting with Robert Hill, and she’d come every day. At first I thought it was out of guilt, but I was growing to see that ours was a friendship. We are currently exchanging lessons—she’s interested in the workings of electricity, and I’m learning how to use the herbs she’s cultivating in the meadow.

  “Coming,” I said, pulling a thin undershirt over my head, maneuvering my right arm through the sleeve. I would spare her the sight of my stomach and shoulder.

  Jenny wasn’t at the door.

  Goddamn it, Marie.

  Her dress was blue, like the one her younger self had worn, but the Marie that stood before me wasn’t young. The evidence of her age was everywhere—the thinning and graying of her hair, the webs of lines at the corners of her eyes, the veins and spots on her hands. It could’ve been her mother there in front of me, that long-dead woman I’d never met.

  “You have a dog.” Her voice was unchanged.

  Wind was in the trees outside, shaking the branches. The leaves slipped together like whispers.

  “May I come in?”

  I stepped aside, regretting my shirt. Jenny didn’t deserve to see the ruin of my body, but Marie did.

  She took a seat at the table, and I closed the door.

  I sat down opposite her.

  Maggie followed behind, a rumble filling her throat. “Down.” She dropped to the ground, whining once.

  “I heard an eastern phoebe on my walk over.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “Roscoe.”

  The woman before me was a mess pieced together from fragments that sat ill and wormy in their current grouping. I couldn’t place her face, at once so familiar and yet completely unknown. She was the young woman I’d met in the village on the Coosa, and she was also the woman who’d sat next to me in my hospital bed asking me to sign away my past. She could have been a teacher coming home from her schoolhouse, and I could’ve been an electrician coming home from my dam. Her belly could’ve been rounding with its second pregnancy, Gerald a sweet toddler nannied by Nettie Williams. But she was also that broken woman, bleeding and pale, on her way to the hospital in Birmingham, where the parts of her that grew babies were removed, along with her compassion and her hope. She was mother to a son who fed on the milk of the woman three doors down. She was the daughter of a dead man who’d left her his land, a landowner who’d given her land away, the mother of a resentful son, a wife no longer married.

  The sun had changed its slant outside.

  “Roscoe.”

  “Why are you here, Marie?”

  She cast her eyes around that meager room. She sighed, and the breath was ugly—deeply worried and aged, but familiar. Even when she was young, it held those same tones.

  “You’re thin.”

  “Prison will do that.”

  “It fits you.”

  She stared at me, and I made myself focus on her face—the light eyes with their new lines, the graying hair, the thinned lips and widened nostrils, the pronounced cheekbones. Though her body was wider, her face was gaunt and pale.

  “I didn’t expect you to be here.”

  Again, I didn’t offer her a response.

  “I didn’t expect you to get out so soon, and when you were released, I expected you would go someplace new. All this”—she motioned around the room—“surprised me. Gerald let me know you were here. He says you’re going to fight for your rightful share of the property, that you’ve already retained a lawyer. I suppose that’s my main reason for coming. I’ve given the land to Moa and Wilson. It’s theirs, Roscoe, and that’s as it should be. For all we’ve taken from them, it’s only right. It was the only way I could think to start repaying our debt. Wilson suffered all that hardship—his family suffered all that hardship—because of our mistakes.”

  “Our mistakes?”

  She dropped her gaze and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I have plenty to own, too. You think I’m not willing to admit that?”

  “I don’t know what you’re willing to do, Marie.”

  She nodded as though I’d asked her a question. Yes, her nod said, that’s right. “Did they tell you?”

  “About what?” I wanted her to admit her treachery, her dishonesty and manipulations. She could’ve said so many things.

  I’m sorry, Roscoe.

  I could nearly see the letter she could’ve written.

  Her eyes came to rest on the pallet by the stove. “Are you sleeping there?”

  “Sometimes.”

  I came round to her side of the table. “Take off my shirt.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Stand up and take off my shirt.”

  “Roscoe, I’m not comfortable with that. I— You must not know. It’s—”

  “Take off my shirt.”

  She took a deep breath, pulled herself free of the bench. Her hands were itchy at her sides, flighty and quick. They moved toward me, then away, and then back to the hem of my shirt. We were in that room together. Put your hands on my body, Marie.

 
She did, and her fingers were cold where they brushed my skin. I lifted my left arm, but my right wouldn’t rise, and she accommodated it, sliding my shirt free of that low limb.

  She stared at my body and brought a finger to the line on my stomach.

  Sun was outside the window, trees and sky. Maggie was there, her head on her paws. Marie’s touch was torture against my skin.

  She made her voice as small as possible when she said, “We are no longer married, Roscoe.”

  That’s right, Marie. We aren’t.

  Her hand lingered. “It’s easier for everyone.”

  “Easier?” Anger was upon me fearsome and hurried, and with it, the words I’d been willing myself to speak since first recognizing her face at the door. “Is it easier for Gerald? For Moa and Wilson and Jenny? Is it easier for all of them to take on the burden of me?”

  My voice brought Maggie up, and she stood behind my knees. I could so easily have torn a piece off the hem of Marie’s dress and held it down for Maggie to smell. Got it? I could have said. This is what we’re after.

  Why are you putting that dog on me? Marie would yell.

  Maggie here can smell the wrongs in a person.

  Or I could have told her she was simply a convict, a criminal, and that we—this dog and I—were in the habit of catching those types.

  I could see her climbing a tree, her blue dress snagging on its branches and bark, the hem torn to her knees and then her thighs, her skin seeping small scratches. Maggie would haul me up to the trunk, barking at my ex-wife, treed like any other escapee.

  Easy. Easier. There was no such thing.

  My hands found themselves on her shoulders, just the height my right arm would allow. The bones of her collar lurked there beneath the layers of fabric and skin. You were once so beautiful, Marie. I pushed her back against the wall, my elbows finding their way to her chest, my forearms on either side of her aged face, my hands in her graying hair. My shoulder fought me, but I forced it to listen.

  Tears seeped from her thick-lidded eyes. “Roscoe.”

  Her hand was still on my stomach, that long scar.