The Home Place: A Novel

by Carrie La Seur

  “Something happened this morning,” she says in a voice Jean-Marc won’t be able to hear. “I can’t believe I forgot. A white pickup came out of nowhere from behind and rear-ended us while Brittany and I were driving into town. I nearly lost control. Barely got a glimpse of the pickup, it was moving so fast. Do you think it could have been . . .” Alma’s question trails off as she realizes she’s not quite sure what she thinks it might have been.

  “To do with the lease?” Chance prompts. “You’re damn straight I do. All the more reason—”

  “What do you think, Jean-Marc?” Alma raises her voice to speak to him where he’s come to stand in the doorway. “The Murphys have Internet. Should we just go over now?”

  “Sure.” His answer is terse.

  Alma shouts Brittany in from the barn, then together with Jean-Marc they follow the Murphrod up the road and come into the house in the warmth of greetings from Mae, Jayne, and Ed. The old woodstove burns hot and the smell of bread baking fills the space.

  Chance catches Alma’s elbow as she starts to take off her coat. “I was just going to park the pickup in the machine shed to get it out of the wind. You might want to put your car in there too.”

  “Sure,” Alma agrees. Jean-Marc is already peeling off layers to sit down and accept the cup of hot cider that Jayne offers. “I’ll just go put the car away, Jean-Marc,” she calls across the room to him, but whether he doesn’t hear her or doesn’t feel like answering, she gets no reply.

  Chance and Alma slam the door and head back into the last light of a frigid day. Chance drives around to a newer-looking steel building, mostly hidden behind the older wooden house and barn. He shoves open a big, rolling door, pulls the pickup into its old spot, and gets out to wait for Alma to pull in behind him.

  It’s dark in the shed with only a few small windows, but warmer out of the wind. Dark outlines of impressive power tools and machinery line the walls. Chance leans against the pickup, arms crossed, in no hurry. His curly head is bare. Alma walks toward him. “I’m surprised you still have that old thing.”

  “She’s a great old pickup. You like the new paint job?”

  She nods and pats the shiny fender. “Beautiful.”

  “Just for chores these days, though,” Chance continues. “I’ll never get rid of her, not as long as I can keep her crawling along. Too many good memories.”

  Alma recalls a few of those good memories and blushes in the weak light. Chance sees where her mind has gone and ducks his own head to glance into the cab with a look that evokes the boyish shyness she remembers.

  “May I?” She gestures toward the door.

  Chance opens it, puts his hands on her waist, and lifts her up with a grunt. “I remember you right there,” he says, resting a boot on the running board and filling the doorway, very close to her but looking down instead at the way the brown steering wheel has changed colors from weather and the oils from his hands.

  “I remember being here. Those were good days.”

  “They were,” he affirms in a low voice as she runs her gloved finger around the large circle of the steering wheel. The windshield reflects their nervous faces floating in darkness, linked to nothing.

  “Come sit by me,” she says on impulse. She moves over to make room for him.

  Chance doesn’t argue. He steps in, sits down, shuts the door, and puts his arm around her in the pose they used to hold on long drives to games, to town. Alma leans into his warmth without thinking. It’s hard to remember that any time has passed. She reaches out to feel for the key over the visor. It falls into her hand. She slides in the key and clicks the ignition forward a notch, then pushes a button on the old cassette deck. Its heads whir to life and the sound of slow piano and Patsy Cline sighs into the cab. “Crazy.”

  In this darkness they could be parked down some abandoned country lane again, her hands in his hair, his lips on her neck. She lays her hand on his denim thigh, on the place where it used to rest while he drove. Chance. Good God. How can they be here again? How did she let this happen? She used to drive him crazy in this pickup, in the long months before they went all the way, and then after, in the distraught aftermath of the accident, crazy with each other’s skin. He hasn’t forgotten. His lips slowly settle on her hair, move to her jawline, and she cries out from a need indistinguishable from memory, a loud sound in the small cab, turning into his kiss as if she’d never turned away.

  From that moment, neither of them hesitates. He puts a hand on her shoulder to pull her into his kiss. She grabs his jacket and leans backward, letting his weight push her down on the broad seat. He cushions her head with his thick gloves, then reaches a warm hand up under her sweater to push aside her bra. Her mind is unable to form a single consonant of resistance. Her hands are pushing aside the rough jacket, pulling shirts and undershirts out of his jeans, yanking at his belt. The light is off, the sun has set, the moon is barely visible outside the cavernous machine shed, and the darkness is nearly complete. Their hands move with rehearsed certainty. She gasps at the cold as her pants come down, then Chance’s hand is on her. This much has changed: he’s a man now. His touch is assured. The same frantic energy she remembers from high school is here, though, the same sense of needing all of each other right away, of being unable to wait. Chance moves over her, gentle, then urgent, then beyond control. The feel of him with her this way again releases years of pain. Alma clutches him and sobs as he climaxes.

  “Alma—” His voice is soft, cautious in the silence that follows. “Did I hurt you?”

  She’ll have a bump on her head from the door panel. “No,” she whispers. “I hurt you. I’m sorry.” She feels for his face in the dark and kisses him.

  It is too cold to linger half dressed. They sit up and pull their clothes together blindly. Alma wants to say something but has no idea what that ought to be. Nothing with Chance or anything else is happening according to plan.

  Chance pulls her against his chest and rests his head on hers. “Al, listen—” he begins, clearing his throat. “I know you’re going back to Seattle. You know I can’t turn it on and off with you. Just tell me goodbye this time. You owe me a goodbye.”

  Alma can’t see Chance’s eyes and she’s glad he can’t see whatever is on her face. “One for old times’ sake?” she echoes his words from yesterday. “No, it’s not that. I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t believe we’re here again.”

  “Me neither.”

  “I guess—at the time I thought you’d forget about me pretty fast. We were so young, and I never heard from you in college.” Even in the darkness, Alma drops her head away from Chance. This is a lie. She remembers his letters. She told the student clerk in the tiny college post office some story about a stalker and persuaded her to return them to sender, unopened.

  Chance’s hand stops rubbing her arm. “Alma, you never gave me an address. I wrote a few letters to you addressed to the college, but they came back marked insufficient address. I’d run into Pete once in a while when he had leave. He said if you wanted to be in touch, you would be. He wouldn’t tell me anything.”

  That was Petey all right, trying to protect her when he had no idea what was going on. Alma’s eyes have adjusted to the faint light. She looks around the dark cab, remembering the tweedy pattern of the upholstery, the broken radio, the glove compartment that can be opened only with a flathead screwdriver. There’s a new crack along the top of the windshield that has begun to stretch out horizontally. It’s a fault line. The glass will have to be replaced. Even the trusty Murphrod is mortal.

  “I know. I’m sorry. It was such an awful time. Right after they died I was just clinging to you. I’m surprised you even wanted to be around me. I was this hideous, desperate person—” Alma ducks her head against Chance’s jacket, which smells like cows and dirt and home.

  “You weren’t.” His hand squeezes her arm.

  “And then the way I cut you off that summer—I thought you’d hate me.” More than that, she’d count
ed on it. He was supposed to get disgusted and give up, forget her.

  “I could never hate you.” That voice, so soft and sure, strikes at her.

  “Oh, never say never.” Alma’s whole body tightens around the secret she’s still keeping. “I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to leave if—well, you know what that summer was like.”

  “No, Al. I don’t know anything. We were together every spare minute, I was so— And then it was like a light went out, sometime in July. You wouldn’t let me anywhere near you. I thought I was going to lose my mind.” Chance reaches down to the floor, picks up a screwdriver, and hands it to Alma. “As long as we’re talking about that summer, you might as well know what I wanted to tell you.”

  Alma stares at him for a second before she remembers that the screwdriver is for opening the broken latch of the glove compartment. She wiggles it under the hardware until the drawer falls open and the little light comes on. She pulls out a pile of proofs of insurance, registration, a yellowing owner’s manual, two pairs of snub-nosed pliers, and a wire cutter, before she comes to a green velvet jeweler’s box buried at the bottom. She hesitates like Pandora at the moment of decision, then takes out the box and stuffs the papers and tools back in. “This? What is it?”

  “It’s what I wanted to tell you before you left. Open it.”

  The diamond inside is tiny and beautiful. One hand flies to her mouth to catch her gasp.

  “Oh, Chance.”

  “I bought it with my rodeo winnings that summer. It ain’t much. After you took off I never knew what to do with it.” Chance opens the door. “We should be getting back,” he says.

  Alma puts the ring back in the glove compartment. “I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to cut you off like that.”

  “Why did you, Al?” Chance’s voice is still soft, but the weight of emotion in it is planetary. She hears the door click back into place. He wants an explanation for the last fifteen years. He deserves one. This is why she’s avoided this scene. She hoped never to have to give this explanation. Alma grasps his hand with both of hers, but it stays heavy and limp.

  “What can I ever say? I behaved atrociously. I was afraid if we were together, I wouldn’t be able to leave. I wanted to put everything about this place behind me. I tried not to think of you at all. Pete and Vicky thought I abandoned them. That’s what I wanted everyone to think. I didn’t want anybody coming for me. I was afraid if I came home I’d never leave again.” She turns away and leans over on her knees, feeling again the hollowness and guilt of those lonely years. “You wouldn’t have wanted to know me then, anyway.”

  Chance sits still. “I always wanted to know you, Al. That never changed. You planning to do that again?”

  Alma lifts her head to look at him. “Run away? No. I can’t now, not with Brittany.” She digs her toe into a place on the floor where the carpet has ripped away to reveal the steel chassis. This is a night for revelations, for old, bare truths. “But there’s something you need to know. When I left here that fall, there’s something I didn’t tell you. What happened in July.”

  She hears Chance shift to see her face better. The moon’s subtle silver glow has begun to illuminate the dark machinery around them.

  “You cut me off pretty hard and fast.” He lays one hand on the steering wheel, wrapping his fingers tightly.

  “I know.” Alma is beginning to feel the cold now. She pulls her arms around her middle and plunges into the torrent of words that must come out all at once or not at all. Montana is starting to feel like a mountain of ugly, abandoned words. To deal with the past, she will have to clamber over every miserable one of them. No wonder she’s avoided this.

  “The thing I couldn’t tell you was, I was pregnant. I know”—she hears the start of his protest—“I know we were very careful, but there was that time down by the creek, remember, when the condom broke?” She’d made him buy condoms in Billings, mortified at the thought of buying them herself and terrified that someone who knew them would see him doing it. She’d been such a child, and he’d been almost as nervous. She half smiles at the memory before she continues.

  “I had no idea what to do. Mom and Dad were gone. Pete and Vicky had enough to worry about. I thought if I told you—it seemed like it would ruin both our lives. You’d think we had to get married, and it was—I wasn’t ready. You were off to Bozeman. I thought if I could just get to college then everything would work out somehow. I’d be safe. It was stupid. I thought maybe I’d tell you once I was out there, and then, well, it just became impossible.”

  “What happened to the baby?” Chance’s voice sounds piped in from a thousand miles away. The cold is getting more intense around her kidneys. Alma wishes Chance would put his arm around her again, but he’s not moving.

  “I got an abortion in New Jersey, a week after I got to Bryn Mawr.” Chance’s rough inhalation is loud in the small cab. “It happened so fast. I knew I had to do it, and if I waited or told anyone, I was afraid something would happen to stop me. I didn’t want anything to show up on my college medical records, so I looked up a clinic across the river. I was in and back all in a day, only missed one class. Paid for it with my Albertsons money.” It’s a small, frightened, young girl’s voice describing all this, trying to explain, looking for the absolution and understanding she’s never been able to give herself.

  “All by yourself? You went alone?” Chance’s voice is unusually high. She would almost say distraught, but she can’t see much of his face, can’t be sure.

  Alma nods, bent very low. “I didn’t have any friends yet. Not like that.”

  “You never told anyone?” Chance has both hands on the wheel now, gripping it like the Murphrod’s brakes have just failed going down Beartooth Pass.

  Alma shakes her head. “My therapist. And you.”

  “And that’s why you cut me off like that, because you were pregnant?” Chance’s tone is twisted, tight.

  Alma nods, eyes shut tight, shoulders hunched away from him over clenched hands. She’s dreaded his next words for fifteen years. She braces herself for the mortal wound of Chance’s judgment, the end of whatever light of young love he’s held her in.

  “Oh, Al. Oh my God.” Chance falls silent and Alma doesn’t dare speak. “He’d be fifteen this year. Or her.”

  “I know. I think about the birthdays too. I almost bought her a present once.” She can almost smell the cold rain on the paving stones at the Ardmore pedestrian mall, feel the perfumed warmth of the baby boutique, touch the shiny frog print raincoat that drew her in, just the right size for the little girl whose birthday it would have been. Stop it, she orders herself.

  Chance’s breathing is still audible, his head low. Alma tastes blood and realizes that she’s biting her cheek, hard. Her unbuttoned coat is letting in the cold and she turns her attention to buttoning up, straightening, giving Chance a few minutes to process.

  “It’ll take me a while to get my head around this. The way I feel about Mae—” Chance stretches his neck and shivers. “I’m gonna need some time. I remember even back then thinking about what our kids would be like. I remember thinking they’d be something special.” Chance’s voice lowers dangerously. “Listen to me. I’ll shut up before I make it any worse.”

  Alma has migrated far enough from him that she can press her cheek against the cold glass on the far side of the cab. “You can’t make it worse. Anything you could say I’ve already said to myself, believe me.” She’s no longer the girl he loved, and it was good to be her again, for a few minutes.

  “I don’t mean it like that. I just can’t pretend it’s no big thing, that’s all. You’ve had a long time to get used to it.” He meets her eyes and she shuts hers. “I’m glad I know what happened, even after all this time. At least I won’t have to wonder when you go away.”

  Now he opens the door and climbs down deliberately, measuring his steps as if the earth might be uncertain under him. He does not reach to help her out. She reluctantly climbs down to follow
him from the shed. They were children the last time they got out of this pickup together. Now he’s a grown man with a child, someone who lost his wife to the big city, and she’s presented him with a new, crushing loss he never knew he’d suffered. His posture is slumped, she notices as they step out into the moonlight—Chance who always stands so straight.

  When they return to the house, a newer Dodge is parked outside. A school parking permit is taped in the windshield and what looks like a religious medal on a chain hangs from the rearview mirror. Inside, Alma finds a blond woman chopping vegetables at the table. Jean-Marc is sautéing something wonderful smelling while Jayne slices bread and Ed replenishes the woodpile. Only Jayne seems to have noticed Chance and Alma’s long absence. She looks up with a watchful expression to read what’s written all over them. “Everything okay out there?” she inquires, a little more loudly than necessary.

  “Just showing Alma around,” Chance says, shrugging off his coat and taking Alma’s. He puts them on the same hanger and turns to scoop up Mae. He holds her smooth baby cheek against his and shuts his eyes. She starts to wriggle before he’s willing to put her down.

  “You haven’t met Chance’s girlfriend, Tiffany, yet, have you? She teaches second grade in Forsyth.” Jayne advances on Alma to get between her and Chance, leading Alma to Tiffany by the arm. Alma smells an ambush and wonders if Jayne decided to invite Tiffany before or after she knew Jean-Marc was coming. Probably before. “Tiffany, this is Alma Terrebonne. Her family has the place just up the road. Old friends.”

  Tiffany rises and walks over to shake Alma’s hand. Alma has been afraid they’ll know each other, but she has never seen the woman who stands in front of her, tossing back a head of ash-blond hair over a well-filled-out snowflake sweater. Interesting. If Chance is a breast man, that’s a new development. Alma sneaks a quick look at her own athletic proportions under a fitted cashmere sweater. Her bra strap is twisted where she pulled it up in the dark, but she doesn’t dare rearrange it now. Tiffany’s face is pretty and open. Alma looks in vain for something not to like, aside from the eighties mall-rat name.