Here on Earth

by Alice Hoffman

  In the past few years, Hank has made certain to stop by Fox Hill every few weeks and check on Mrs. Dale. Just ten days ago, he’d gone over and cleaned out her gutters, even though she insisted she could easily hire Ken Helm from the village to do the job. Afterward, she’d given Hank a piece of cranberry-orange pie at her kitchen table. No one could turn down one of Mrs. Dale’s desserts, and she often brought pies out to the old house in the Marshes, the one people said was built by the town founder, Aaron Jenkins. She carted bags of groceries out to the Marshes as well, and heavy woolen blankets and clean gloves and socks. She brought out matches and soap, and sweaters she found at the rummage sale held once a month at Town Hall.

  She saw to just about every item a person might need to exist in this world, at least when it came to physical matters. But she never trod on emotional territory, and wouldn’t think to give counsel unless directly asked. She never, for instance, suggested that Hank go out to the Marshes himself. She never said, “Go see your father.” She may have thought about it, she may have even been convinced that unless Hank went out to that ramshackle place, where the reeds were taller than a full-grown man, his life would forever be lacking, but she never said more than “Lemon or milk?” after she’d poured his tea, and she always hugged him close when it came time for him to leave.

  Hank didn’t even know Judith Dale had passed on until this afternoon. He had stopped at the hardware store on Main Street and was standing in the pet department, looking for mineral oil for Coop’s ailing pony, when he overheard someone in the next aisle discussing Judith Dale’s funeral. Immediately, Hank felt something behind his eyes go all hot, but he didn’t cry. He stood there in the pet department until he didn’t feel dizzy anymore; then he went to the register, paid, and left.

  Tonight. while he should have been taking care of the pony, he was thinking instead of the look on Judith Dale’s face when she told him that Coop had died. It was a winter night, cold and filled with ashy starlight. Hank was out feeding the dogs; as he walked back to the house he could hear his own footsteps on the frozen earth. Judith Dale was waiting for him, holding the screen door open, and a stream of yellow light swept across the ground. She put her hand on Hank’s shoulder, and to his great surprise he saw that she had to reach up to do so. “We’ve lost him,” Mrs. Dale said, and in that instant Hank realized he had never before seen real grief.

  This is the reason he’s forgotten his chores now, all these years later—an oversight not usually in his nature. He’s been too preoccupied with wondering what happens when you lose someone. His mother, for instance, who died when he was so young he doesn’t even remember her. His father, as well, whom he d prefer not to remember. Hollis and Belinda’s son, Coop, who died at the age of twelve, and never found out what happened at the end of Treasure Island, the book Mrs Dale had been reading to him in the last month of his life.

  Hollis is slipping a rope around the pony’s neck, doing Hank’s job himself, and although the pony is stubborn and rolls its eyes, it gets to its feet when the rope is tugged. Hollis spills out some salt into the palm of his hand, then blows it into the pony’s nostrils. The single character trait shared by father and son was their dislike of horses. Coop was allergic to animals and broke out in hives if he got close to anything with a tail. It was Belinda who insisted the boy needed a pony, and it’s Hank who’s set on keeping this pathetic creature in memory of the boy.

  “Sorry about falling asleep,” Hank says. “It won’t happen again.”

  “Give me one good reason, and I’ll get rid of this thing,” Hollis says of the pony.

  Hank nods. He knows Hollis means what he says. Hank keeps his mouth shut and his thoughts to himself, as he always has. He’s used to Hollis’s ways, just as Hollis is used to him, after all these years.

  “You heard about Mrs. Dale?” Hollis asks now.

  Hank nods again. You’ve got to tread carefully with Hollis. You’ve got to watch what you say.

  They’ve walked outside together, into a starry night that’s unusually clear and cold for this time of year. All that rain which fell earlier will freeze tonight, so that the ground will give them some trouble tomorrow when they go to bury Judith Dale. Mrs. Dale was a good woman, Hollis will grant her that. A busybody and a pain in the neck, but she never judged what she didn’t understand and that, Hollis knows, is rare. Unlike Alan and the boys in the village, she treated him fairly, but that doesn’t mean he has to moan and bellyache down at the funeral parlor. Ashes to ashes, that’s all there is. If you can’t change a fact of life, then be smart enough to walk away from it, that’s always been Hollis’s motto. Walk away fast.

  “If you want to go to the funeral, that’s your business,” Hollis tells his nephew.

  “Thanks,” Hank says. “I might.”

  If Hollis did go to the service it would be for one reason alone. March Murray. Instead, he’s going to wait for her to come to him. It will happen, he knows that much. He’s gotten everything else that was ever denied him, all that’s left now is March. He has never loved anyone else, and he never will. He thought he couldn’t live without her, and in a way he was right. It’s a half life he’s been living, one where you go through the motions without any of it mattering. He simply has to give it more time, that’s all. People who think you can’t will certain things into being with the power of your pride are fools, plain as that. She’s already back in town. It’s only a matter of time before she’s back with him, and for that, Hollis can wait a while longer.

  Tonight, he’ll go to bed in the spare room off the kitchen, since he can’t stand to enter the bedroom where he slept when he was married. In the morning, while people in town are getting dressed for the funeral service, while March Murray is brushing her long dark hair, Hollis will fix himself black coffee, as always. He’ll begin the chores he does routinely—paying the bills, speaking with his lawyer, making certain rents are collected and debts are paid. At noon, when his neighbors have left the chapel to gather at the cemetery beyond the golf course, off Route 22, he’ll walk the boundaries of his property to make certain none of the fences are down and no one has trespassed. He’ll do this, as he does every single day, and he won’t stop until he’s completely exhausted, knowing full well that if he ever did stop, if he ever really looked around him, every single inch of this acreage he owns would serve to remind him of all that went wrong.

  4

  On the day of Judith Dale’s funeral, the sky is as gray as soapstone. Mothers in town fix their children oatmeal for breakfast and insist that wool mittens and socks be retrieved from dresser drawers. The doors of the library squeak when they’re pushed open, the way they always do when the weather begins to change. Over on the comer of Elm Street and Main, the bakery must have loaves of the cinnamon bread they’re so famous for in the oven, because the scent is everywhere; it’s as if someone had tossed dough over the whole town. This is the sort of day best spent in bed, but March and Gwen are dressed and ready to go at eight-thirty when Susanna Justice, March’s oldest friend, comes to fetch them in her red pickup truck, apologizing for the dog hair her Labrador retrievers have left on the seat, bemoaning the fact that March and Gwen will have to scrunch together in order to fit.

  “Listen, I don’t know what I’d do without you,” March says, and she tells the saga of the rental car, which has already been towed back to town. “You are a true friend. I’m grateful.”

  The surprising thing is, March means it, and she never thought herself capable of such sentiments when she and Susie were girls. They were thrown together because their fathers were partners, but they hated each other all the same. For two years solid they refused to speak even the simplest phrases to each other, not even “Pass the sweet potato pie” at Thanksgiving dinner. Now, of course, neither can remember exactly why they’d constructed their wall of silence.

  “It was because you were an idiot,” Susie says as she does her best to clear out the cab of her pickup. Aside from the dog hair, there are
files and stray bits of paper and dozens of maps.

  “Actually it was because you were a know-it-all,” March shoots back. “And you still are.”

  They both have to laugh at this. Susanna is a reporter for the local newspaper, The Bugle, and in fact, she does know everything that’s going on in town. She knows not only how much old Mr. Judson got for his land up at Olive Tree Lake, but also that he refused to sell to Hollis at an even better price, although he allowed Hollis to take him out to dinner in Boston and send him a crate of vintage Chablis. Not that she would ever mention this bit of business to March; nor the fact that half a dozen women in town are so crazy for Hollis they would walk out on their husbands or boyfriends and abandon their real lives if only they were asked.

  Why, Susanna Justice has acquired more information than most people would have room for in their heads. She knows what the school committee budget will be next year, and that the animal control guy, Bud Horace, is too much of a softy to pick up stray dogs. In all of this jumble, there are plenty of facts she could have done without knowing. Who died last night at St. Bridget’s Hospital, whose husband gets nasty when he has too much to drink at the Lyon Cafe, who was found in a parked car at the rest area on Route 22, with a gun between the seats and a suicide note taped to the glove compartment.

  “Honey, all you have to do is squeeze me and I give out worthless information,” Susie always says.

  She even knows when the sales take place at Laughton’s Lingerie Shop (every January and July, second Saturday of the month) and how much the jelly doughnuts cost at the Bluebird Coffee Shop (fifty cents). She’s always learning something new, and it has recently come to her attention that Ed Milton, the chief of police, kisses with his eyes closed and looks like an angel when he sleeps. Some information, however, she’s been aware of all her life; it’s old news. For example—that her old friend March Murray wouldn’t know good luck if it came up and slapped her in the face.

  “You think you’re so hot living out in Palo Alto. Well, for your information, Eileen Singleton is retiring on Tuesday after forty-three years of work at the library.”

  “Oh, gosh,” March says. “Stop the presses.” She winds her long hair into a knot, which is kept in place with a silver comb, one that she cast herself. She and Susie are wearing similar silver bracelets, among the first March ever dared to try. What started out as a hobby has become more and more rewarding, both financially and artistically.

  “That’s nothing,” Susie says, brushing at the dog hair stuck to the one dress she owns that’s sober enough to wear to a funeral. Susie has cropped blond hair and gray-blue eyes and black is definitely not her color, dog hair or no. “You want real news? Mr. and Mrs. Morrisey are pleased to announce the engagement of their daughter, Jane—remember that bitch?—to some guy they don’t think much of who’s got a job with the DPW in Gloucester and is really cute. I saw him at the engagement party and double wow. He probably will be a problem. Halfway through the party, he asked me for my phone number. Everyone has to invite me to everything, you know, if they want a mention in The Bugle.”

  “That’s because you’re a superior being,” March says.

  “As are you,” Susie says. “Hence our friendship.”

  Gwen, who’s been listening in and who now struggles to climb into the cab of the pickup in her extremely short skirt, cannot believe how ridiculous her mother and Susanna Justice are when they get together. Susie comes out to California once or twice a year, and they’re just as stupid on the West Coast as they are right here. “You are both so mature,” she says disdainfully.

  Gwen’s tiny black dress isn’t the only reason Susanna Justice and March shut up and stare. Gwen is wearing gloopy black mascara and has moussed her hair so that it spikes up in the front, like a little bed of nails. Wait till she tells her friend Minnie: There I was, trapped like a rat, with the two of them giving me fashion attitude. I couldn’t get away, I was trapped, I tell you, trapped in a way no human being should ever be.

  “You’re letting her go like that?” Susie asks March.

  “Letting her?” People who haven’t had children have the oddest ideas.

  “Can we just go to the funeral and get this over with?” Gwen says in her froggy voice. Before coming outside, she sneaked a cigarette in the bathroom, then doused herself with some Jean Naté she found in the medicine cabinet which she thinks has gotten rid of the scent of smoke.

  “Oh, yeah, definitely,” Susie says, getting in behind the wheel. “Let’s not let Judith’s funeral take up too much of your precious time.”

  “Exactly,” Gwen says. She’s flipped down the visor in order to get a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She wishes for two things: bigger eyes and a thinner face. She can’t abide her own reflection, so how could anyone else? Maybe her mother and that stupid Susie aren’t so wrong when they judge her. Cutting her hair was certainly a mistake, she sees that now. Her look is so wrong it’s almost a joke. She’d like to be the human equivalent of an Afghan hound. Instead, what she sees is a beagle looking back at her.

  “Do you mind?” March says.

  Scrunched in next to Gwen, March has to struggle to push the visor back up so it won’t jab either of them in the eye as they ride along the bumpy back road. This day is going to be awful. It’s the sort of day you wouldn’t mind losing completely, even if it meant your life would be twenty-four hours shorter.

  “I can’t believe Judith is really dead,” March says. “She took care of everyone and never complained. I can’t think of a single selfish thing she ever did. Not ever. She was the greatest.”

  “She was something, all right,” Susie concurs.

  March might have called Susie on a statement like that, but the road has become so bumpy Susie is concentrating on navigating past the ruts. And anyway, Susie always took pride in being cryptic. What is that supposed to mean? March was always saying when they were younger and thrown together for the day, and Susie would always look at her as if March were crazy and any implications sprang from March’s own unreliable imagination.

  “This is where my rental car died,” March says as they approach the deepest of the ruts.

  “Then hold on,” Susie says, and for old time’s sake she floors the gas pedal for a real roller-coaster ride.

  “You guys are nuts,” Gwen shouts, but Susie and March, supposedly older and wiser, pay no attention to her. For a little while at least, as they shake and rattle over the bumps, they manage to forget today’s destination. They forget how long it’s been since they’ve walked down this road, arm in arm. They were fierce and fearless girls back then, in their jeans and boots and sweaters, and March, for one, was absolutely confident of what her future would bring: total happiness and true love, that’s what she wanted. Nothing more or less would do, just as no other place would ever be home: nowhere but the hill would ever be as comfortable or as beautiful or as real.

  Susanna Justice suddenly steps on the brakes, hard, so they’re all snapped back by the force of their seat belts.

  “Do you believe that goddamn thing?” Susie says, as a rabbit runs right in front of them.

  This landscape is definitely real, if nothing more. From the minute March woke this morning, in the old bed where she’d slept for thousands of nights, she knew coming back had been a mistake. She opened her eyes, and already she was thinking of Hollis. When she saw the lattice of frost on the inside of her windowpanes it was exactly as if she never had left. Her room was always the chilliest in the house. Often, she would find that the tumbler of water she’d left beside her bed had frozen solid. She remembers how she would hold the glass up and breathe on the ice until it melted into streams that spelled out Hollis’s name.

  The first thing she did today, after she pulled on her navy-blue dress and a black sweater, was go downstairs in her bare feet and try to phone Richard. From where she stood, by the telephone table, she could see Gwen, asleep on the couch in the little sewing room. She could see through the oval window, pa
st the garden and the trees. Her heart was racing, that was the silly thing. She had begun to make a bargain with herself, the kind that women who are in love with the wrong man always resort to: If Richard answered by the fifth ring, she would be all right. She would be perfectly safe, and safety, after all, was what she had opted for, even though she was back here looking out at the apple trees she used to climb. And then she’d realized how early it was in California, only a little past three a.m., and she’d hung up quickly, but she’d been all right without talking to him; she’d made tea in one of Judith’s pretty ceramic pots and in no time she was fine.

  Or so she had thought. Now that she’s face-to-face with the pastures of Guardian Farm her skin feels cold. She wishes she had brought along gloves and a heavy woolen scarf. At this moment, she’d prefer to be a million miles away.

  “Don’t worry,” Susie says. She’s noticed the distress on her friend’s face. “He won’t show up at the funeral. Take my word for it. He’s still refusing to do whatever it is he should.”

  March gives Susie a look which she hopes will silence her, but it’s too late.