The Quickening

by Michelle Hoover

  “Nice of you,” I said when she’d finished. She was a mother too, I reminded myself.

  “Yes,” Mary answered.

  “Nice this.” My potato steamed as I broke the skin, and Mary watched us as we ate, fork in hand. “Your middle son,” I tried again. “I heard he went west.”

  “My son?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, yes he did.” Mary lifted her chin. “And the other one. The oldest. You should see him. He’s in Chicago now. There are bread lines, you know. But Chicago …”

  “So far off.”

  “He says it’s the place to be.”

  I lifted a piece of potato, blew on it, and took a bite. Before the fire, it’d been a long time since I’d spoken to Mary. Longer than I’d realized. But the Morrows were different from us. I still had the scars from Jack’s knife and the way he’d shown up in our fields after the fire, as if he owned the place.

  “Kyle send that animal off yet?” Frank said. “Like I told him?” He kept his eyes on his plate, his mouth full.

  “Jack took care of it days ago. He’s quick with his gun.”

  Frank swallowed and sat back. “That wasn’t called for. That wasn’t called for at all.” Mary salted her potato as if she didn’t hear and Frank went back to his meal, working his jaw. We were quiet, scraping food from our plates. Mary set a pitcher of water on the table and we drank fast from our cups. It was too hot an afternoon for baking, but the potatoes settled us. It was the first time in days I’d had an appetite myself.

  “I don’t know what he told you,” Mary started. “Borden, he went to you first.”

  “That’s what ministers are for,” Frank told her.

  “He didn’t say much,” I added. Or I didn’t remember what he said, I thought. The twins, that’s what I had my mind on then. Borden seemed too nervous a man to do much of anything useful.

  “He almost died himself when he was that age. That’s what he said,” Frank explained. “He didn’t understand it. Why one and not the other. There had to be a way to make it right, he thought.”

  Mary held on to her water glass though it was empty, that twitch again at the corner of her eye. I thought of the twins when they were younger and how we’d raked leaves in the fall. We swept them into piles that Adaline and Donny couldn’t help themselves from jumping in. When at last we had one great pile together, we set it on fire. Frank stood watch, digging into the fire with his rake. At the sink inside, I washed potatoes and could see him out there, spare and long-limbed, the air about him wavering. I gave four potatoes each to the children, grinning. “Throw them on top of the leaves,” I said.

  Donny and Adaline ran with their arms full to the fire. But when they reached it, they held those potatoes tight. They must have thought it was burning up food to do such a thing. I stepped out into the yard and yelled, “Go on.” They threw the potatoes then with both hands, jumping with the effort, their arms high over their heads. The potatoes flew. I thought they’d miss the pile entirely, but they landed in the middle with a thump.

  “You’re leaving,” Mary announced. “You have to.” She had both her elbows on the table, pointing her fork. “It will be easy for you. We can buy the fields.”

  You can leave potatoes in a fire like that until the fire has died. Until there is a black circle in the grass and the potatoes sit inside like coals. Brush the ashes off and the potatoes will taste like the grass and soil they come from. Like the good smell of the fire you try to keep inside your clothes. But this you can eat. You can hold it in your mouth as if you are holding on to everything at once. When you swallow it, you belong to that place and that fire. My boy, you have it in you always.

  “Eddie,” Mary snapped. “It would be good of you at least to apologize for what you’ve done. You don’t know what they’re saying.”

  I rested my hands in my lap and thought about that, Mary speaking with her knife. I should have found a way to keep my son a little. But it was a relief, that fire. It took him straight away. There wouldn’t be any work to bury him. There wouldn’t be a mound in the yard marked by a stone. I felt an awful rush in my head. Mary was on her feet. That twitch. Whether we left or not, she’d already made her mind up about what she’d do next. I remembered that slap again. Cruel, what I’d said. But I doubted I was wrong.

  “Why’d you come, Mary?”

  “I wanted to tell you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I know what they’ll do and I can’t stop it. People think you’ve gone near crazy and they want to make sure nothing like this happens again.”

  Frank stood and the table jumped an inch across the floor. Pulling at Mary’s arm, he took her straight out of our house to where her car waited in the road. He sat her in it and shut the door behind her, catching the end of her skirt. When she opened the door again, her mouth was quivering, and she snatched at her hem. “Just you think about it,” she called out. “Before someone takes advantage.”

  Adaline slumped against her father’s chair and murmured as she dreamed. The buttons of Frank’s shirt had left their mark on her cheek. I swept a strand of hair from her forehead, desperate as she looked. Borden had come to give us some peace, I knew. But he was not a peaceful man. He’d sat next to me in our front room and wouldn’t look me in the eye. Why one and not the other, that’s what he’d said. But it wasn’t the kind of question a person asked. Not anyone with common sense. There are no good reasons for life or death. And no decent God could even begin to make a choice. Outside, Mary sat watching the house. I knew she was up to something, and now I believed Borden might be a part. Frank waited at the door outside, pinching his hat between his fingers until he was sure she was well sent off. At last she drove away.

  I lay my head on the table, but I couldn’t rest. I felt terrible for Frank and your mother both. Frank stood in the doorway with a heavy head and didn’t look back. When smoke rose from the stove, I opened the lid with my bare hand. Mary had left two potatoes inside and they looked burnt through, their skins as black and tight as stones. Taking them out, I burnt my fingers to blistering. But when I cut into that bitter crust, the potatoes underneath were good and soft and white.

  She was our only one then, your mother, and she was always trying to fill the quiet. Snapping her fingers, banging cabinets, taking down the house all by herself. Or so I reminded her. But her eyes rarely settled on either of us any more. We left the door to our house open to let her out. Hours she spent in the fields and beyond the road, rolling marbles or dice, jumping hopscotch over squares she drew with a stick in the dust. She had long talks with imaginary friends, scolding them with a shake of her finger. In the corn she hid herself and found herself and sought herself out, staying there all day with her games. No one let the other children come near.

  But at night there was only the one attic room she’d slept in with her brother and the memory of him going to the outhouse at least twice a night, keeping her awake. After the fire, that attic must have felt full of his being gone.

  It wasn’t for weeks until Kyle came himself. He waited in our yard, staring at the house for any sign of the girl. He must have believed taking a step closer would do us another wrong. But from where I watched, I thought of inviting him in. I thought of taking hold of him and wringing out everything that had happened.

  “Addie,” he said when he saw her.

  She’d walked in from the field, but when she noticed him there, she stopped. I remembered how I’d found him in our house after Borden had left, with everyone else still in the yard. He lay on his back with a bloodied nose, my daughter with her knees against his stomach, holding him down. Her cheeks were streaked, a sound like a cat in her throat. As I pulled her back, Adaline kicked and spit, but as soon as I put her to bed, she quieted. When I came out again, Kyle still lay on our floor in the hall, his eyes shut. I lifted him up, but I didn’t have the heart to tend to him. Not the way I once did.

  Now in our yard, Adaline’s knuckles were red and broken from he
r beating on him. “Don’t,” he said as if fearing the same.

  “What do you want?”

  “To see you.”

  “Who says I want to be seen?”

  “Well, I guess not.” Kyle hid his hands in his pockets and seemed about to spit. The rose in Adaline’s cheeks came from her time in the fields, though it was stronger now. Her black hair fell loose in the daylight, her ankles bare. Her coral dress with its thin straps showed the lines of sun on her skin. I felt nervous for her, the woman she was becoming in the clothes of a girl. But before I could send Kyle home, Adaline kicked the dirt and left him in a cloud of dust.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey what?” Adaline kicked the dirt again.

  “Hey,” he shouted and seized her arm. She twisted his hand behind his back, and he bent to the ground, laughing. Adaline’s face was furious, glowing. They scuffled in the dirt until they were covered. Finally Kyle twisted himself right and pressed her arm against his chest. “Listen,” he said.

  But Adaline kicked the dirt again, harder this time.

  Kyle let go of her arm and fixed his hat on his head, trying to smile. “Ever wonder what it might be like to leave this place?”

  Adaline stared at him.

  “I’m thinking about it,” he said. “About leaving.”

  “So?”

  “That’s all you’ve got to say?”

  She lunged at him and slapped his face. He stumbled. The two squared off against each other again, my girl only half his size though fierce in the fury of all her eleven years. She snatched the hat off his head and ran inside the house, leaving Kyle looking close to naked in our yard. I asked her what went wrong.

  “Nothing,” she said, though her eyes brimmed. She dropped the hat at my feet. “I hate this place. I hate everything about it. It’s all just going away.”

  She ran up the stairs and slammed her door. Out the window, Kyle stood with his arms limp, hair stuck to his scalp. It was then I saw Mary, waiting as she did down the road a good distance. As if she had any right to watch us. Kyle turned toward home though he didn’t raise his head to his mother as he passed her. She seized his sleeve, but he wrenched away, leaving her to stare after him. When she turned at last to our house, her look was desperate. I feared what she might do after Kyle had come to our place and still wanted to be a part of it. After everything else, he’d done that. And I didn’t have to imagine how she felt.

  My boy, I suppose any mention of your parents might be hard to take. But before I lose my strength, I want to get this down whether it’s useful or not. There were both things between your parents after the fire, their easy way as children and Donny’s accident. It was Kyle’s horse, Kyle’s goading that had gotten my son on the animal. And it was Kyle who’d whipped at the horse to get it going. But Adaline was lonely after the loss of her brother, and your father didn’t leave this place. Not until Jack himself was gone. No matter what I imagined might happen between that boy and Adaline, I kept my peace. I didn’t want to lose another child.

  I study the nurse where she sits now in my chair, her lips moving. I can’t understand a thing she says. But that twitch of hers, it tells enough. “Who sent you?” I ask.

  “County services,” she says. I know her and it’s been for more than the last few months, what with her white hair pulled back, the way her foot sticks out when she crosses her legs.

  “Whose?”

  “The county.”

  I stay quiet. I can only think about asking her again.

  “Look,” she starts. “There must be an address on one of those letters.”

  “Why?”

  “It would be good for you,” she says. “To have your family here. People who know you. Who can take care of you. Don’t you want your daughter back? Your son-in-law?”

  “That letter they sent,” I say. It’s all her talk about family, the way she keeps after me, and I can imagine the pages of that letter again. It came more than eleven years ago. Of that I’m certain. I burnt it as soon as I could.

  The nurse grips her hands in her lap and her heel jerks. “You don’t want to tell me, do you? Because that way, I could write too.”

  “That letter was the last thing.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Frank never got over it. And the ones who sent it, they pretended they were good people, the praying kind.”

  “You’re sleeping too much. Confusing things.”

  “She was trying to keep Kyle from leaving.”

  “You’re not listening.”

  “But that boy was always going to go. No matter what she did, it was a waste.” My eyes blur, a rush of heat in my cheeks. Then I can’t remember why I’ve said it or what it was, wasted or not. All of it must have been before Adaline left.

  “That’s a long time ago,” the nurse says, but her heel has stopped now. Both her feet are on the floor. I close my eyes and hear the scrape of her chair, a blanket pulled to my chin. Letters, I think. Before the nurse leaves, she takes the box again from under the bed and searches through. But she won’t find anything close to an address. I never did.

  XIV

  Mary

  (Summer 1936)

  I left for the church early enough in the morning so I could not change my mind. She set that fire, I planned to remind Borden. Burned that boy right along with everything else—and the rest of it, that I had found Enidina watching Kyle with his horse only days before, crouched behind our old winter fences, her prying certain to have made the horse jumpy. I had seen the accident myself, I would say—and Borden would hear it, hands in his lap—the way Enidina worked the animal up and insisted on holding the rope, though the horse never did know her, had become nervous with her very presence. It was no fault of the animal, gentle as it was, no fault of my son—Enidina herself had made the horse buck. The steeple appeared small and far in the countryside, and a buzzing sounded in my ears. I hurried my steps. Even if what I told him was not true, I thought, it seemed the kind of story that could set things right. Some might think it’s interesting how similar you and my son look, I would finish if he had any doubt. If I said a word, some might think a man of God had taken advantage.

  “The way to goodness,” Borden had said, but this before Kyle was born, when I sat crouching with those women in the basement of the church, weaving wreaths for the Christmas service, my hands bloody with the work. “Mary,” he had said. “You should have worn gloves.” The women scattered, leaving Borden alone to take his handkerchief from his pocket. “I thought you might play,” he said. “Since you’re here, I mean.” His voice was little more than a whisper, and I raised my head—but he did not take his eyes from that handkerchief, pressing my fingers between his.

  That chapel, I remember it as nearly glowing no matter what time of day, smelling of wax and warm wood, the plush red tongue of the carpet spilling down the center aisle. God himself watched over it, I was sure, the walls keeping out the wind and any sound from the world outside. When the roof escaped a lightning strike that burned the limb of a nearby tree, it was God’s doing, leaving only a patch of earth where the grass would not grow. God was there in the worst of storms, lifting the gutters from the rain like a woman lifting her skirts—and as I walked down the aisle to play the piano, Borden close at my back, I knew God was there too.

  “It’s not enough,” my mother used to say, and now I understood what she meant—a husband and two sons, a house of our own, and the farm we worked. My husband left every morning for the fields with his cheeks full of biscuits, a hat on his head, and the stove still warm at my back. With a wave of his hand he was gone, nothing for the daylight hours but weeds in my garden and canning in the kitchen, the bony shoulders of my sons for comfort.

  It was never enough—I felt sick thinking about it and stopped before we had reached the front of the church, Borden’s presence warm on the back of my neck. The pulpit stood beneath a heavy cross, the place restless and strange without its members
. In the worn suit he seemed to wear every hour of every day, Borden looked unsteady on his feet, a tuft of hair standing from his forehead. I wet my finger—God was there, I believed, and whatever I wanted in this church and on that farm I could have all at once, and the two could sustain each other, like the two sides of a coin, and I should never question it. I swept the hair back into place and Borden blinked. Why had I never noticed before, the way the fine hair on his temples faded to a white near his skin?

  I sat at the piano and the bench shifted as Borden sat next to me.

  “I take requests.”

  “Whatever you want,” he said. His knees hit the wood under the keyboard as he tried to fit his legs. “There was an elderly man here last week,” he went on. “Marvin Kindel. He had traveled to twelve states, and the churches were always the friendliest places. Better than barrooms, he said. In a church, there was always a man you could discuss the deepest matters with. But the whole time he talked, I couldn’t stop looking at his shoes. They were bright yellow, some kind of boots. He was probably in his eighties and barely came to my chin, though at one time he must have been a large man. He was the loneliest person I’ve ever met.”

  I looked at him, my fingers on the piano but not playing, my elbow resting against his arm. Twice now he had told me about strangers—as if he believed he would cease to exist if no one came to the church asking for him, as if asking was all he ever got. “How did it happen?” I said, pointing to his leg.

  “My father,” he said, shrugging. “It was his first try at building a church. I was twelve, helping him. A beam fell. My mother didn’t let him finish the church after that. She wouldn’t let him build another one either, not while she was living. When she died, my father came here. I was the reason he waited so long.”