Prodigal Summer

by Barbara Kingsolver

  Hannie-Mavis hesitated on the walkway. “Oh, it’s late. I hate to pester you.”

  “It’s no trouble.” Lusa came down the steps to meet her sister-in-law and was surprised when the small woman nearly tumbled into her arms. Lusa held her for a minute, there on the steps under the porch light. “She’s really bad, isn’t she?”

  She was shocked to see, at closer range, that Hannie-Mavis was weeping. “They said it’s no good, the chemo’s not helping her. Everything she’s went through, vomiting and losing her hair, for nothing. She’s worse.”

  “How can that be?” Lusa asked numbly.

  “It’s all over her, honey. Her lungs and her spine. The doctor told me today.”

  “God,” Lusa whispered. “Does she know yet?”

  Hannie-Mavis shook her head. “I didn’t tell her. How could I? I started telling her the doc said no more chemo, and she thought that was good news. ‘Oh, Han,’ she says, ‘wait’ll I tell the kids. Let’s go get us a ice cream to celebrate!’ Mind you, this was between throwing up and throwing up, when she said that.” Hannie-Mavis took a deep, racked breath, then let out a long wail. Lusa just held on, feeling awkward, not yet sensing in her body the full weight of this new grief.

  “How will she leave her babies!” Hannie-Mavis cried.

  “Shhh, one of them’s asleep upstairs.” Lusa took her by the shoulders and steered her up the last step, across the porch, and in through the front door. In the bright hallway Hannie-Mavis seemed to pull into herself, appearing suddenly more contained and absurdly cheerful in her red-and-white-striped dress made of some silky material. She even had on snappy red high heels, Lusa noticed. The image of her two sisters-in-law dressing up this morning to go to the city, for this awful trip, was devastating. She watched Hannie-Mavis dab at her ruined eye makeup with a ball of tissue that appeared to have been in her hand for much too long.

  “Come on. Come in the kitchen and sit down.”

  Hannie-Mavis hesitated again but then moved slowly toward the kitchen door under her own power while Lusa ran upstairs for a box of tissues. When she came back down to the kitchen and put on the kettle, her sister-in-law had vanished. Lusa heard intermittent nose-blowing from the bathroom. By the time Hannie-Mavis emerged, hairdo and makeup fully repaired, the kettle had already boiled and Lusa was steeping the tea. Seeing her standing in the doorway brought Lusa a sudden, harsh memory of the funeral, of looking at all that blue mascara and saying something cold. She wished she could take it back, whatever it had been. She felt penitent for all the times she’d nearly called her Handy Makeup out loud. You had to be so careful with large families. Who knew how things would turn around, whom you’d need in the end, and what could cause you to see even eye shadow in a different light? At this moment Lusa had to admire the woman’s art and energy in the face of heartache. After Cole died, it’d probably been three weeks before she herself had even managed to put a comb to her hair.

  Hannie-Mavis sighed as she put her palms flat on the table and eased herself down like an old woman. “Well. How’d your day go?”

  “Fine.”

  She looked at Lusa. “What do you mean, ‘fine’?”

  Lusa shrugged. “I mean it went fine. We had fun.”

  “You don’t have to tell me a tall tale, honey. That child’s stinking as a polecat. I’d never say this to Jewel, but I took over driving her to the doctor’s mainly so I wouldn’t have to keep her kids.”

  Lusa got spoons, sugar, and teacups—just everyday mugs, not her china cups with moths painted on their rims—and opened her mouth to begin at the beginning, with the broken mirror on the front steps. But a sudden loyalty caught hold of her, imposing its own decision: they could keep some secrets, she and Crys. She sat down without speaking and poured out the tea. “She’s a tough nut to crack, yeah,” she said at last. “But I kind of like her. I was exactly that same kind of kid. Strong-willed.”

  “OK, then, honey. You get the Purple Heart.” Hannie-Mavis unsnapped her purse and rummaged inside. “Is it all right if I smoke in here?”

  Lusa jumped up and got an ashtray from the small drawer by the sink. Put there last by Cole, she realized, feeling a small, electric sting at the thought of his hands on this object. Each little stab like this seemed to move the larger pain further away from her center. She was beginning to understand how her marriage would someday be fully apparent to her memory’s eye and yet untouchable. Like a butterfly under glass.

  “What’d y’all do?” Hannie-Mavis asked, clicking her lighter.

  “Well, first we mowed. Then we looked at old junk in the storeroom, and then we caught bugs for a couple of hours. I taught her how to identify insects, if you can believe it. Does she make good grades in school? She’s very sharp.”

  “She makes grades when she feels like it. Which is not very often.”

  “I’ll bet. So then we made a bonfire and weeded the garden in the dark, which was actually fun, and then we came in and ate eggah bi sabaneh at ten o’clock.”

  “Well, mercy. That sounds fancy.”

  “Not really. Just greens and hard-boiled eggs.”

  “You got that child to eat greens? Good God in Heaven.”

  “It was the purslane and pigweeds we pulled out of the bean patch. Weeds for dinner, she thought that was just dandy. She said, and I quote, ‘This here’d make Aint Lois shit her britches.’”

  Hannie-Mavis clucked her tongue. “Oh, boy. No love lost between those two.”

  “Listen, do you know what Lois did to make her so mad?”

  “Made her try on a dress, is what I heard.”

  Lusa rested her elbows on the table. “Yes, and while she was at it she took Crys’s favorite corduroys away from her and cut them up for rags.”

  “Oh, now, that’s bad.”

  “Crys had made some deal with Jesus about wearing those clothes till her mother got better. Poor kid.”

  “Oh, no. That is bad. Lois should not have done that.”

  “No, she shouldn’t. That kid needs all the love she can get right now, and that’s just hateful.”

  Hannie-Mavis smoked in silence for a minute. “It is. But it’s Lois all over for you. Lois is just mad at the world, and she takes it out on anybody.”

  “Why? She’s got a good husband, nice kids. Ten million knickknacks. What’s her complaint?”

  “Law, honey, I don’t know. She was always that way. Mad she wasn’t born prettier, I guess. Mad because she’s big-boned.”

  “But Mary Edna’s big-boned, too—even more so.”

  “Yes, but see, Mary Edna don’t know it. And Lord help the poor soul that ever tells her so.”

  Lusa hazarded a weak laugh, rubbing her eyes. She suddenly felt exhausted. These were serious revelations, though. Even without having known their parents, she could see the two different bloodlines: Hannie-Mavis, Jewel, and Emaline were sensitive and fine-featured; Mary Edna and Lois were confident, big-handed, long-jawed, hefty. Cole was all these genes come together perfectly at last, the family’s final measure. Cole Widener, adored by all, won by Lusa, stolen by death. No wonder this family was still quaking in the aftermath. It was a Greek tragedy.

  The two women sat looking at each other across the table, then dropped their eyes and sipped their tea. “I’m fine to keep Crys till tomorrow or the next day, even,” Lusa said. “Truly, it’s fine with me, if Jewel needs the rest. Tell Lois she can send Lowell up here, too. I think they’d be better off together.”

  “Those poor children,” Hannie-Mavis said.

  “They’ll be all right. Whatever happens, they’ll be OK. Big families are a blessing, I can see that.”

  Hannie-Mavis looked at her, surprised. “You think we’re all right?”

  “Who, your family? I think you’re a hard club to join, is all.”

  She laughed a little. “That’s what Joel said for years after we got married: ‘Going to a Widener get-together is like a gol-dang trip to China.’ Why is that? We don’t seem like anything spe
cial to me.”

  “Every family’s its own trip to China, I guess. For me it’s been extra hard because of everything. I know it must have been a shock when he took up with me so fast.”

  “Now, that’s so. He was hightailing it up to Lexington ever chance he got, and for a while there we didn’t even know why. Mary Edna was worried he was going to the racetracks. We all just about dropped our drawers when he sets right there in that chair one Sunday supper, I think Jewel and me were cooking for everybody, and he says, ‘Next Sunday you get to meet the smartest, prettiest woman ever to walk on top of this world, and for some reason she’s agreed to be my wife.’”

  “It was kind of a shock to me, too,” Lusa said quietly, willing her thoughts to go blank. “And then, now, this.” She glanced up at Hannie-Mavis. “Me inheriting the place. I do understand why the family resents me.”

  Hannie-Mavis looked at her with a gaze Lusa recognized—that same lost, helpless, blue-lashed stare from the funeral. She’d said, I don’t know what we’ll do without him. We’re all just as lost as you are.

  “We don’t resent you,” she said.

  Lusa shook her head. “You resent that I inherited the farm. I know that. I know you even talked to a lawyer about it.”

  Hannie-Mavis gave her a worried glance.

  “Or somebody did,” Lusa dodged. “I don’t know who.”

  Hannie-Mavis smoked her cigarette and poked at the edges of her polished nails, which were as shiny and red as her shoes. “It was Mary Edna,” she replied finally. “I don’t think she meant you any harm. We just wanted to know what would happen, you know, after. Since he didn’t have any will.”

  “Look, I don’t blame you. I live every day in this beautiful old house you all grew up in, on the best of your family’s land, feeling like I stole it from you. But there are problems, too. This farm has debts. I sure didn’t plan on having my life turn out this way.”

  “Nobody planned what happened to Cole.” She smoked awhile, letting that sentence hang alone in the stratified blue haze above their heads. Then she asked suddenly, “You want to know what I really think?”

  “What?” Lusa said, a bit startled.

  “Daddy knew what he was doing. He did us girls all a favor by giving us pieces too little to live off of.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “It’s true! We’re better off. Think about it. Which one of us would rather be up here trying to keep body and soul together with this farm? We don’t want it, me and Joel—Lord, he’s just cars, cars, cars. That’s the only work that makes him happy. I’d hate us to be tied down to this place. And not Jewel, even if she was still married and not sick. She loves the house better than any of us, but Sheldon was no farmer, honey. And Mary Edna and Herb, see, they have his family’s dairy—they’re set up just fine, they couldn’t handle another farm. Emaline and Frank, I think they’re just as happy both working jobs instead of farming. I know they are.”

  “What about Lois and Big Rickie? They’re still farming.”

  “Big Rickie loves to farm, that’s true. But he’s got no more call to own this place than you do. He’s married in, just the same as you.”

  “Well, but Lois. They could be up here.”

  Hannie-Mavis blew air through her lips like a horse. “First of all, Lois couldn’t grow a tomato to save her life, nor do the canning, either. She hates to get dirty. I don’t think Lois gives a hoot about this place, really and truly. She might act like it. But if it was hers, I tell you what, she’d tear this house down and build her something brick with plastic ducks in the yard and a three-car garage.”

  Lusa could see that whole picture in a flash.

  “They don’t any of them want it, really,” Hannie-Mavis said earnestly. “Here’s what it is: They just don’t want anybody else to have it.”

  “Me, you mean.”

  “No, I don’t mean you, honey. But see, we all know what’s going to happen. First we thought you’d leave and the farm would come back to us. Now it looks like you’re staying. Well, that’s good. That’s fine, that you’re here. But see…”

  Hannie-Mavis reached for the box of tissue, dabbed the corners of her eyes carefully, and added another small white wad to the population that was growing on the table. Lusa could see that whatever she meant to say next was very difficult.

  “What?” she asked gently. She felt frightened.

  “Well, a few years down the line you’ll marry somebody around here. Then this farm will be his.”

  Lusa let air burst through her teeth. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “No, it is not. Nobody says you shouldn’t get married again. You will, and that’s fine. But see, it’ll pass on to his children. It won’t be our homeplace anymore. It won’t be the Widener place.”

  Lusa was stunned. She’d never dreamed this was the problem. “How can you think that?”

  “Think what?”

  “I don’t know, all of it. Who around here am I going to marry?”

  “Honey, honey, you’re not even thirty yet. We all loved Cole, but nobody thinks you’re going to carry a torch for him the rest of your life.”

  Lusa looked down into the bottom of her empty teacup, which was blank. No leaves, no future to read. “I have to think about this in the light of day,” she said. “I have no idea what to say. I just had no idea.”

  Hannie-Mavis tilted her head. “I didn’t aim to hurt your feelings.”

  “No, you didn’t. I thought the problem was me. I didn’t realize the problem was—what would you call it? Progeny. The family line.”

  “Well,” she said, slapping her hands flat on the table. “I’m going to call it a night. This day’s done me enough damage already.”

  “I think it’s tomorrow already.”

  “Law, so much the worse. I’ve got to get home and feed the cats, ’cause I’m sure Joel forgot, and then get back over to Jewel’s.” She gathered up her balls of Kleenex and stuffed them in her purse. Lusa wondered if this was a country custom, to take your own secretions with you when you left. They stood facing each other for a second but held back from a hug.

  “Please tell Jewel I’d be happy to keep both kids for another day. And if she needs anything—I mean it. You can’t do all the nursing by yourself. You get some rest.”

  “I will, honey. And I’ll tell Lois to bring up Lowell, if he wants to come. Thank you, honey.”

  “Lusa,” Lusa said. “I’m your sister now, you’re stuck with me, so you could all start using my name.”

  Hannie-Mavis stopped and turned back in the hallway, touching the sleeve of her dress. She seemed hesitant to speak. “We’re scared of getting it wrong, is why we don’t say it. Is that a Lexington name?”

  Lusa laughed. “Polish. It’s short for Elizabeth.”

  “Oh, well, I thought so. That it was foreign.”

  “But it’s not hard to say,” Lusa insisted. “What kind of name is Hannie-Mavis?”

  Hannie-Mavis smiled and shook her head. “Just strange, honey. Just awful, awful strange. Daddy was original, and Mommy couldn’t spell. You get what you get.”

  In the morning Lusa was startled awake, once again, by the sound of car tires on the gravel drive. She sat up in bed, looked at the light in the window, and checked the clock. She’d slept late. Whoever it was out there was going to catch her in her nightgown at ten o’clock, a mortal sin in farm country.

  But she heard the car door slam and the tires slowly roll away down the hill again. She heard footsteps come toward the house at a clip, and footsteps in the next room as well, bare feet muffled by the hall rug and then slapping quickly down the steps. Lusa got up and walked quietly out into the hall but heard nothing more. Then voices, whispering. She looked down over the banister and her face went hot, then cold. There they were again, side by side, sitting very close together on the second step from the bottom. A small boy and a bigger girl with her arm around his shoulders to protect him from the world. He was not the little boy she’d
believed she would know anywhere, at any age, and the older one was not his sister Jewel.

  Not Jewel and Cole. Crys and Lowell.

  {19}

  Predators

  The sound of a shot startled Deanna awake. She froze, listening to the after-ring of that sound through the hollow and the forced, universal silence that spread out behind it. There was no mistaking it for anything but a gunshot. She sat forward and looked around groggily, trying to shake the wool out of her head. This was the third or fourth occasion she’d fallen asleep smack in the middle of the day, this time in the old overstuffed brocade chair on the porch, where she’d sat down to rest just for a minute.

  She rubbed absently at the viny pattern of the nubbly green upholstery, tracing with her fingers the long brown stain that ran across one of the arms onto the seat—she sometimes wondered how this chair had plunged from an elegant former life in someone’s parlor to humble service on this porch. And how had she gotten here today, catnapping in this chair? Deanna tried to reconstruct her afternoon. She remembered only plopping down in the chair and pulling the knots out of her bootlaces to appease her aching feet; that was the last thing. Before that, a morning-long battle with exhaustion. It had felt like walking through neck-deep pond water just to drag herself up here from the hemlock bridge where she and Eddie had been working earlier. Two big trees had fallen across the trail and had to be cleared. Eddie happily took up the ax and set to limbing and chopping while she wielded the chain saw, and yes, she’d been glad for the help. But she hated the way he showed her up, stripping off his shirt so the sweat ran down the planes of his neck and working cheerfully all morning without a break. She didn’t like being skunked. She hated feeling older than him and like a weakling, a girl. An old lady, if the truth be told. After the first hour her arms had ached and her knees had been set to buckle and the roar of the chain saw had drowned out her grumbling at the sweat and sawdust in the collar of her T-shirt. By noon her one and only wish was to go flop down in the middle of the cold creek branch, clothes and all. When the chain saw ran out of gas, she was deeply grateful.