by Jane Smiley
She said, “Fine.”
I said, “Your mom should be back in a little while.”
She said, “Okay.”
She said, “Is there any juice?”
“Why don’t you check?”
She got up and opened the refrigerator and took out the juice and the milk. She climbed up on the counter and got out two glasses, then poured a glass of each for herself. She brought them to the table. Time was getting shorter. She said, “It’s supposed to get really hot today, Aunt Ginny. Do you think you might take us swimming? We haven’t been for three days.”
“We’ll see.”
“Doreen Patrick called me yesterday to go, but Mommy said no.”
“Are you and Doreen friends now?”
“I don’t know. She has a boyfriend.”
“Who’s that?
“Joshua Benton. He’s going into ninth, but he drives already.”
“Only to school, right? Doesn’t he have one of those special licenses for kids going to school?”
“Yeah, but he looks older, and his mom lets him drive other times, like to take Doreen places. He took her to the A and W in Zebulon Center last Friday.”
She buttered another muffin. I saw that my fists were clenched. I put them in my lap. Pammy would have said that Pete was her favorite parent, in spite of his temper. She looked something like him, too, though her features weren’t as finely cut as his, and her hair was a different shade. I heard Linda’s feet hit the floor. She came out of her room in her nightgown. She said, “It’s nine o’clock. Where’s my mom?”
“She’ll be back in a little while. Want an apple muffin? I sprinkled cinnamon sugar on the tops.”
“Where’d she go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where’s Daddy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Daddy said he was going to take us to the sale barn today to look at some baby pigs.”
“You can come down to my place and look at all the baby pigs you want to see.”
“Not Yorkshires, Hampshires.”
“Oh.”
“I might have a 4-H project.”
“What about school?”
Pammy said, “We might not go back to school.”
“That would be good.” For a moment, I forgot that things around here wouldn’t be good for some time to come.
Linda said, “I don’t know. I was used to it. The teachers were pretty nice, and we made popcorn in the dorm at night.”
“I want to stay home.” Pammy spoke with authority. Linda looked at her and shrugged, then said, “Can I use your glass?”
“Get your own glass. You know Mommy said that was dirty to use other people’s glasses.”
“Daddy does it.”
“Well, it’s a bad habit.”
Time was getting shorter.
Linda got up to get her own glass. She said, “I want to have a pony for my 4-H project.”
“You know they won’t let you do that.”
“Lori Stanley had a pony. She taught it to pull a cart. She said—”
“Where would you put it?”
“Daddy said maybe we could build it a little stall. He said maybe. He didn’t say no.” She poured herself some of the juice and began to drink it in deep gulps. I said, “Slow down.”
Pammy said, “Maybe means ‘probably not’ with Daddy.”
“Not always.”
“Well, I know I can have a baby pig, and when it’s grown up, I could get three hundred dollars for it.”
I said, “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about things we’re going to get.”
“I’m going to name it Wilbur.”
“That’s a dumb name.”
“It’s from Charlotte’s Web.”
“I know that. But it sounds like some grandfather’s name or something.”
“I wish you girls would stop fighting!”
Their heads swiveled toward me, surprised. Linda bit into her muffin, then said, “This isn’t fighting, Aunt Ginny.”
Pammy stood up. “I’m going to watch ‘Let’s Make a Deal.’ ”
Linda said, “I’m going to go see if Daddy’s in the barn.”
I said, “His truck is gone, honey.”
“Oh.” Now she looked at me carefully. I did my best to look noncommittal. After a moment, she said, “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?”
“We’ll see. We’ll see, okay?” Time was getting shorter and shorter. Rose had been gone for two and a half hours. Linda’s inspection was frank, not the look of a child, but the look of someone experienced in receiving bad news. She went into the living room. A moment later, I heard them murmuring together, and when I peeked in as I was clearing the table, they were sitting close together on the couch, staring glumly at the TV. I did the dishes. A fugitive thought that they would have been better off as Ty’s daughters, as my daughters, than as Rose’s and Pete’s—wasn’t this accident clear proof of that?—shot through my mind, but I suppressed it as mean and unworthy.
Our mother died when we were at school. We were in the cafeteria for lunch. I was sitting with Marlene Stanley, who was Marlene Dahl then, and Rose’s class, which came down later, was still in line. I saw Mrs. Ericson and Mary Livingstone in the doorway of the cafeteria, looking around. Mrs. Ericson had Caroline by the hand. I knew they were looking for me, but I put my head down and focused on my macaroni and cheese. Our teacher, Mrs. Penn, appeared suddenly in the kitchen doorway. She had that look on her face that adults get when you know they can barely cope with what has happened. It is a terrifyingly sympathetic look, and it is for you. They spotted Rose first, then came over to get me. I said to Marlene, “I guess I’m going home now. I think my mom died.”
The moments in the cafeteria were worse than things at home, where the bed in the living room was familiar, where we had been getting used to the death of our mother for weeks. When we came through the front door, the minister we had then squeezed my shoulder. My father had changed out of his work clothes, and was sitting on the couch. Caroline went over and sat beside him. The minister told us what the funeral would be like. In the kitchen, the church ladies had begun to cook. You could hear the refrigerator door opening and closing. Our job, it appeared, was to sit quietly in the living room, without reading or playing games. That’s what we did, even after the minister left. My father didn’t even read the paper. He looked out the window, across the road at Cal Ericson’s south field. We sat there until supper, and then again until bedtime. In bed, we turned out the lights without even reading Caroline a story. When we got up in the morning, the bed was out of the living room, and the furniture was back where it had been before my mother’s illness. After breakfast, we went directly to the funeral home, where we sat as we had the previous day, my father, too. Cal Ericson and Harold and some other neighbors were doing his chores. There was a light dinner in a room of the funeral home, ham and scalloped potatoes and creamed onions and coffee. After the funeral, at the Lutheran Church, and the burial, at the cemetery outside of Zebulon, we went home and ate more food. Mrs. Ericson told me they would be selling their place to my father. I watched the parrot, then went home and to bed. Rose stole the flashlight out of the kitchen drawer and read Nancy Drew under the bedcovers. Caroline cried herself to sleep. I stayed awake later than I ever had before—until three-thirty a.m. or later. My father woke me at five-thirty to make his breakfast, as I had done since the beginning of my mother’s illness. He had his work clothes on. After he was finished, when he was putting on his boots, he said, “You girls go on to school today. No use sitting around the house.” I was glad. I’d been afraid we’d have to sit quietly for days or weeks, trying to hold pictures of our mother in our minds.
I have often thought that the death of a parent is the one misfortune for which there is no compensation. Even when circumstances don’t compound it. Even when others who love the child move quickly and smoothly to guard it and care for it. There is not any wisdom to be gained from the death o
f a parent. There are no memories of the parent that are not rendered painful by the death, no event surrounding the death that is redeemed by a single happy thought. However compromised and doomed I or others considered the arc of Pete’s life, to his daughters, it certainly appeared as fresh and full of possibilities as their own lives did. I realized I had nothing to give Pammy and Linda on the occasion of their father’s death, since I had learned nothing on the occasion of my mother’s death. I went into their rooms and made their beds, which aroused Linda’s suspicions even further—she stood in the doorway watching me, then turned and went back to the TV without a word.
By the time Rose returned, she was herself again, matter-of-fact, almost crisp. The girls were on her as soon as she came through the door. She put down her purse and poured a cup of the coffee I had warm on the stove. She sat at the table. She said, “Girls, I have some really bad news for you.” They sat down, covering every square inch of her face with their stares. I went out the door, slamming it to drown their cries. Across the road, Jess Clark was pacing back and forth in front of the big picture window. He waved, but when I didn’t respond, he didn’t come out.
By dinnertime, the marvelous engine of appearances had started up. George Drake, who owned the funeral home in Zebulon, drove by in his Cadillac. The girls walked down to my house, and Suzanne Patrick picked them up to take them swimming. Pammy wore her sunglasses every minute she was in the house. She asked if she could stay with me instead of going swimming, and I said that it would be easiest if she did everything her mother wanted for the next few days. Her eyes were red, but mostly she had that tormented look of someone striving to get through the next few minutes. They were picked up. Some women we knew from church brought hotdishes and salads. What they couldn’t fit in Rose’s refrigerator, they carried down and put in mine. They all said, “Oh, Ginny, it’s such a shame,” and “If there’s anything at all I can do, don’t hesitate to call.” Two said, “How could he be so stupid like that?” and Marlene Stanley said, “You just hate to see all that talent go to waste that way.”
A feature of this machine was a gate that allowed certain things to be known and spoken of, but not others. That Pete had been drunk and was also a known drinker had to have admittance. That he had slapped Rose around and broken her arm once upon a time could be alluded to, but only in the context that he seemed to have changed, when so many of them don’t. Rose’s feelings were not probed. She assumed the role of grieving widow, and people seemed glad that she did. Loren came to the funeral, though he sat in the back and left early. Caroline sent a small wreath with the note, “From Caroline and Frank.” Daddy did not come, and I realized that while I assumed he was still at Harold’s, he might easily be in Des Moines. I realized that I had accepted Pete’s threatening Harold without thinking much about it, as if something in Pete had to give, but no one had in fact said what really happened, except Harold, and his story was confused.
A lot of people cried, if not at Pete’s particular death, then at the idea of death or the sight of his daughters in their white dresses, looking bewildered and diminished. The gate proscribed the entry of other realities: our father, Ken LaSalle (though not Marv Carson, who came in his inquisitive way and said to me, “It’s just you and Ty now, I guess. This is a big place for one guy to farm”), the common knowledge that Pete would have been a reckless and unorthodox farmer without Daddy and Ty, his threats against Harold Clark, which were widely held to be just drink talking. How else could you understand them? I didn’t know. Appearances went well enough. It came to me that the eyes for receiving these appearances were Pammy’s and Linda’s. Possibly, because they had nothing to compare this to, it looked good enough to them.
Ty gave the eulegy. He said that Pete was a hard worker and more fun sometimes than a farmer was supposed to be. He said that Pete liked to sing on the job, and knew a lot of songs, and that anyone who had had the chance to hear Pete play any of the six instruments he knew was a lucky man. He said that Pete loved his wife and his daughters, and they loved him, and that he, Ty, felt lucky to have known Pete.
Henry Dodge said that the sort of accident that had claimed Pete could claim any one of us, and we should take it as a warning. He thanked God that no one else had been involved. He said, too, that Pete was a good man and loved his wife and children, and wouldn’t have wanted to leave them like this. He asked, on behalf of Rose and Pammy and Linda, for the wisdom to understand this apparently meaningless death. He offered his own personal hope that this tragedy would show our family the way toward reconciling our differences.
Later, leaving the church, two or three of the older women did find something to be grateful for, and that was that Pete’s own parents hadn’t lived to see this.
It was exhausting. I was asleep by nine-thirty. Ty was gone somewhere. He was next to me, and sleeping heavily, by one-thirty, when the phone woke me.
Rose’s voice said, “Can you come down? I need to talk to you.”
I started talking before I remembered our new circumstances. I said, “Where’s P—” Then I remembered. She said, “I’d be glad to come there. I’m crazy to get out of this house, but Pammy keeps waking up and calling for me. Last night she woke up about every forty-five minutes. I can’t sleep anyway.”
“Aren’t you exhausted?” Even though I whispered, Ty, disturbed, rolled over. I slipped to the floor from the edge of the bed.
“Way beyond that. I think I could stay up for days at this point.”
I cupped my hand around the speaker. “Okay. Okay.” I put the phone on the hook and rubbed my hands over my face. After the cancer diagnosis, she had stayed up for days. Three, to be exact. I felt for my sneakers under the bed.
38
EVERY WINDOW IN Rose’s house was lit. Every one in Jess’s house was dark.
Rose threw open the door and said, “Want a drink? There’s plenty left over.”
I took a vodka and tonic, the same as Rose. She said, “Drink it to Pete. He would have done at least that for you.”
It was rare to see Rose intoxicated, but reassuring in a way. The vodka made me sneeze. I sat down on the couch. The living room was immaculate, the real Rose. Apparently she had been drinking and cleaning. She saw me looking around and said, “You should see the kitchen cabinets. I wiped all the jars with soapy water and put down new shelf paper. Edged in black for widows. The funeral home has a concession. Shelf paper, drawer liners, inflatable sweater hangers, dusters made from raven’s feathers, everything for the house wife-widow.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Oh, Ginny, you’re so literal-minded.”
“No, I’m not. I just don’t have much of a sense of humor right now.”
“You used to.”
“When?”
She sipped her drink, looking at me, then said, “I can’t remember.”
I smiled.
She said, “Where’s Ty?”
“Asleep.”
“I’m sorry I woke you, but I knew you would be in bed, and I made up my mind to call you anyway.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea, drinking if you have to tend to her?”
“I told her I was going to.”
“You did?”
“Well, sure. I didn’t want her to be surprised or scared if I seemed weird to her, so I said I felt like getting a little drunk and she said that would be okay as long as I didn’t take the car anywhere.”
“How are they? I feel so bad for them.”
“You’ve seen them. They’re shell-shocked. I hate Pete for that.” This she spat out. Then she called out, “You heard me, Pete. You really fucked up this time.”
I sat forward. “Shhh!”
“So what if they hear me! I want them to hear me! He did fuck up. Not my life, but their lives. I want them to know I know it!”
“He’s dead!”
“So I should feel sorry for him? The way he died, I’m sure he didn’t know the difference.”
“I wish y
ou wouldn’t—”
“Get obstreperous?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Shit.” But she said this good-humoredly.
She took another sip of her drink and stood up. I looked at her. She said, “Hey. Get up.”
“What?”
“Get up. Stand up.”
I stood up.
“Let’s move the couch out from the wall. Here, help me.” She was already pushing the coffee table out of the way. She pushed up the sleeves of her sweater. I said, “It’s awfully late for this, anyway, this is a good place for it. It’s the longest wall space. Otherwise it would have to go diag—”
“I don’t want to move it. I just want to push it away from the wall so I can get the vacuum cleaner hose back there.”
“It’s two o’clock in the morning!”
But there was no stopping her. We bent down and heaved the couch about a foot away from the wall. Rose got the Electrolux out of the hall closet and plugged it in. After she vacuumed behind the couch, we tilted it onto its back and she vacuumed dustballs off the underside. We pushed it back. Over the grinding roar of the vacuum cleaner, she yelled, “Let’s pull the stove out and I’ll clean behind there.”
We pulled the stove out. In fact, it was fairly clean behind there.
Rose made herself another drink. I poured a glass of orange juice. She said, “Let’s go out.”
“Out where?”
“Just outside. We can look at the stars or something.”
“What about Pammy?”
“I’ll check her. If she’s asleep, okay. If she’s awake, I’ll just tell her.”
Two minutes later we were standing in the middle of the county road. Rose was looking at the stars. I was looking at the left-hand window on the second floor of the big Sears Chelsea. Standing there brought that other time, the time when I told Jess Clark that I loved him, so vividly to mind that I felt my body go hot then cold with shame. I lifted my eyes to the stars. They were dim in the humidity, and they dimmed further while I watched them. I put my fingers to my eyelids. Tears.
“Ginny, you don’t know what it was like with Pete. He told me when I got back from the hospital that he preferred me to keep my nightgown on if he was in the room.”
