Here on Earth

by Alice Hoffman

  “Kind of a dying family,” Gwen says.

  “You’re the last of them,” Jimmy Parrish says. “No more Coopers but you.”

  “Yikes,” Gwen says. “Does that make me unlucky?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Jimmy Parrish is kind enough to tell her. “And then, of course, there’s your mother’s side of the family.”

  They have reached the Bluebird Coffee Shop. Gwen holds the door open for Jimmy, who is completely thrilled to have found a live one who is not only listening to him but actually appears interested.

  “There’s your mother’s brother, Alan.”

  “I’ve heard about him.” Gwen remembers the Judge mentioning an Alan.

  “He just went to pot after his wife died.”

  “She died too?”

  They sit down at the counter and Jimmy takes a look at the specials board, even though the specials are always the same at the Bluebird: crab cakes with mustard sauce, BLT on rye, corn chowder.

  “I’ll have a cup of your chowder,” he informs their waitress, Alison Hartwig, whose mother will serve Gwen lunch tomorrow in the school cafeteria.

  “So what’s with Alan?” Gwen asks after she orders a vanilla Diet Coke.

  “He’s a wreck, plain and simple. No one ever sees him, and his boy, Hank, is being raised over at the Farm. I think I’ll have a coffee too,” Jimmy calls to Alison Hartwig. “Black.”

  Gwen rolls all this information around in her mind. Why has no one told her this before? This means that Hank is not simply some relative. He’s her first cousin; an embarrassing, odd fact. Is it a crime to fall in love with him? Will people look at them and whisper?

  “I hope you know more about racehorses than you do about your family,” Jimmy Parrish says as he spoons sugar into the coffee he’s been served.

  “I don’t,” Gwen says.

  She has a queasy feeling in her stomach. It sounds as if she and Hank come from the worst possible gene pool. She wishes they weren’t related, that they were perfect strangers who were old enough to make their own plans, without interference from anyone.

  “I’ve been riding that horse over at Guardian Farm. The one you were talking about. Tarot.”

  Jimmy Parrish has been served his chowder, but now he puts down his spoon. He looks at Gwen, hard, and shakes his head.

  “You’re lucky that horse isn’t in his prime, or you’d already be dead.”

  “I don’t think so,” Gwen says. She puts a dollar on the counter to pay for her Coke, then grabs all her books. “I’m the one in my family who’s going to live.”

  She walks home through the cold late-afternoon sunlight. When she gets to the dirt road, Hank is waiting for her, sitting on a stone fence.

  “You didn’t come to tea,” he says, when Gwen perches beside him. “I had to eat all the cookies your mother put out, to be polite. She’s nice.”

  “No, she’s not.” Gwen stacks her pile of books between them; her posture is stiff.

  “Okay.” Hank realizes he has to be careful here. She’s upset about something, and he has no idea what it might be. “I was only in the house for about half an hour. She seemed nice for that amount of time.”

  “We’re first cousins,” Gwen says. “Did you know that?”

  Hank leafs through the pages of one of the library books. There is a crow somewhere close by and it starts its insufferable calling.

  “Did you know?” Gwen asks.

  The grass in the fields is yellow now, and the squirrels are frantically collecting the last of the acorns. She can tell by looking at him: He knew. Gwen shakes her head. “You should have told me.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Hank tells her. “That’s why I didn’t say anything. The way we feel is what matters.”

  Gwen stares straight ahead, at the maples and the oaks, then reaches to put her hand in his. Maybe some people would disapprove, but Gwen doesn’t care. When Hank closes his hand around hers, that’s it. They’ve made their bargain; they’ve sealed their fate. What she ever did to deserve him, Gwen will never understand. Maybe she’s a better person than she thought she was; maybe there’s a reason why she would be lucky enough to find someone like Hank. They walk across the hill together, and they keep going, past the fences and the old trees, until they can see almost all of Guardian Farm, a sea of gold and green. Beyond the split-rail fence that lines the driveway, there is the piece of road that leads into Route 22.

  “The devil’s comer,” Gwen says.

  Hank laughs. “Who told you that?”

  “Some guy in town.”

  There are several logging trucks going by on Route 22; when they honk their horns the sound echoes into the sky.

  “Are you saying there’s somebody else?” Hank teases since it is, at the moment, his biggest fear; the doubt Hollis placed there, for his own entertainment. “Some other guy?”

  “No.” Gwen grins to think he might be jealous of old Jimmy Parrish. “How about you? Is there somebody you’re dying to be with?”

  “You,” he tells her. Exactly what she wanted to hear. “Only you,” he says.

  12

  March sits on the braided rug in the living room looking at a photograph of her brother taken when he was sixteen. It was summer and Alan’s hair had been bleached almost white by the sun. He wears a polo shirt and jeans and white sneakers and he’s grinning right at the camera. He hadn’t yet failed at school, or marriage, or fatherhood. He was nothing more than a boy who didn’t know when to quit, or how to treat people; he was fun-loving, but selfish, with a regrettable nasty streak. March has driven out to the Marshes five times, and five times he has refused to answer the door. He’s gone, that’s what it is. Someone lives in that shack, all right, but the boy whose photograph March examines has vanished like a handful of dust.

  The clock on the mantel is ticking, the one March’s father bought in Boston, the single possession she can’t bring herself to pack away. She has gone through the boxes of photographs, all arranged in albums and dated with Judith Dale’s neat handwriting. March will be keeping only two photographs for herself, to place into frames. One is of her and Hollis, a hazy snapshot in which they look like ragamuffins, with torn shorts and dirty knees, all dark eyes and know-it-all grins. The other is of Judith Dale skating on Olive Tree Lake on a winter day. Judith’s head is tossed back, her skin is luminous; all around her the world is icy and white. Growing up, March never noticed that Judith Dale was beautiful, or that she was young, far younger in that photograph than March is right now.

  Today, March is taking a pot of asters to Judith’s grave. It is the perfect day for a solitary mission such as this—Hollis went to Boston on business; Gwen is safely at school. It’s only Richard who holds her back, even after she’s packed up the photograph albums. March spoke to him last night, finally, but he refused to understand.

  “I don’t think I’m clear on this,” he kept repeating. “You’re staying?”

  It was the school, she told him, so much better for Gwen: fewer drugs, fewer temptations. Just a change, a tryout. She’d forgotten how peaceful it was here, out in the country: she’d actually been inspired to work, so could he send on a box of her tools, and the packet of semiprecious stones in her night table drawer? Gwen was so happy, after all, she was doing so well; why, she’d even begun taking care of that old horse Belinda used to ride.

  “Tarot?” Richard had said. “She’s spending time at the Farm?”

  For those new to lying, it’s easy to get caught.

  “Not exactly,” March had answered.

  “Well, what exactly?”

  March guessed that Richard had the bedroom window open as he spoke to her, and that the scent of lemons was filling the room. She had taken special care of that tree in their garden, forsaking poppies and jade plants whenever there was a drought, using all her rationed water for that one tree.

  “Richard,” she had said, and for a very long time there was no response.

  “You’re not going to
do this to us, are you?” he had finally asked.

  She thinks about the sound of his voice, so far away, as she gets her gloves and coat from the closet, then takes the asters from the table in the front hall. When she goes to the door, the dog follows, blocking her way.

  “Move,” March tells it.

  The dog looks up at the closet where its leash is kept on a shelf, then makes a noise, somewhere between a yip and a bark.

  “Oh, all right,” March tells the thing. “But behave.”

  She grabs the leash, and allows Sister to run ahead to the Toyota.

  “Stay away from the flowers,” March says as the dog situates itself beside the asters. “Don’t eat them.”

  When March gets to the cemetery, there are no other cars in sight. She parks in a pile of wet, brown leaves, then clips on the dog’s leash and takes the flowers.

  “Don’t pull,” she tells Sister, who seems to know exactly where they’re going.

  There’s a driving range which borders the cemetery, and March’s father used to joke that was the reason why they couldn’t keep gravediggers on the job. Man after man had gotten beaned on the head, and every one of those stray balls had been hit by Bill Justice, who continued to be a terrible golfer even though he went out to practice nearly every day, in an effort to improve his weekly game with Henry Murray. Now March wonders if the Judge only said he was going to the driving range; if, in fact, he spent those times with Judith Dale. She wonders too if her father knew—if he closed his eyes to what was going on in spite of his warm feelings for Louise. Amazing what people will tolerate. Richard, for instance, knows the way March feels about Hollis, and yet before he hung up the phone he’d said, Just come back. It will be all right. We’ll manage.

  They have reached Judith’s grave, and although the dog sits quietly, there’s a tremor in its leg.

  “Good girl,” March croons, but the dog is shivering now.

  Wet leaves have attached themselves to March’s boots and to Sister’s white coat. It’s extremely quiet here, not even a jet overhead.

  “Your favorites,” March tells Judith Dale as she places the pot of flowers at the foot of the grave site, which is still bare earth.

  March sits on the grass beside the grave, and the dog comes to lie beside her, so close March can feel it shivering through fabric and fur. They walk back to the car slowly, until Sister decides to chase a few scarlet leaves, the last ones that fall from a tall maple. They stop at the knoll from which March can see her father’s plain gray headstone, and nearby, the headstone marking the spot where Alan’s young wife was laid to rest. When they get to the car, Sister sits in the front seat. March navigates the narrow road, and then, as she’s about to turn onto a larger drive, something runs in front of the car. Between the falling leaves and the asphalt there is a flash of red. March steps on the brake, hard.

  Nothing but leaves and silence; March would have thought she’d imagined what passed before her, but Sister is scratching at the window, barking like mad. Then, from beneath a hedge of evergreens, the creature takes off again. It’s one of the last of the foxes, a great-great-grandson of one who survived the open hunting season all those years ago. It’s running as fast as it can, headed for the open fields west of the cemetery. Red lightning that doesn’t look back, it’s gone in the blink of an eye.

  March remains there, with her foot on the brake, and Sister’s barks echoing. As a little girl, March used to wait out on the front porch in the dark, hoping to see one of the foxes who were so numerous back then. She could never stay up late enough, so she came up with a plan. She’d catch one for her own and keep him in a box in the kitchen, in one of those crates they used to store potatoes and yams. She’d make certain he stayed warm under a flannel blanket, she’d feed him buttered toast and train him to dance to music, in a circle, on his toes. On some nights, she’d allow him to sleep beside her in her bed, his pointed nose on her pillow, and she’d sing him to sleep.

  “Don’t be silly,” Judith Dale told her one summer night, when March wasn’t more than seven or eight, and Mrs. Dale had discovered her out past her bedtime, poised on the porch with a fishing net, a hammer, and the vegetable crate. “You’ll never catch a fox that way.”

  Mrs. Dale brought March to the chestnut tree, where she drew a circle in the dirt with a stick. She took some sugar cubes from her pocket, the kind she favored for her coffee and tea. She let March crush the sugar cubes, then sprinkle them around the circle.

  “Spread it thin,” Judith told her, and March was especially pleased that Judith clapped her hands, approving her work when it was done.

  “Bullshit,” Alan had responded when March informed him that she’d trap a fox by the morning. And when indeed all the sugar was found to be gone, Alan laughed out loud. “Anything could have eaten that sugar, dummy. Raccoons, stray dogs, mice. There are any number of explanations, Marcheline, and none are as stupid as yours.”

  But later that day, Mrs. Dale took March inside the circle and pointed out the tracks of a fox’s lovely, sly paws. That’s when March decided that if she couldn’t keep a fox in the kitchen, she’d have one in the woods. For a very long time, she left out treats. Even after Hollis had come to live with them, she was sometimes found drawing a circle with a stick, setting out bits of sugar, or some cookies, or a fresh corn muffin she’d stolen from the pantry.

  “Is that for your boyfriend?” Hollis said to her once, when she was distributing slices of apple around the circle.

  “No,” she said, and then she’d turned her back on him. You’re my boyfriend, is what she was thinking, and after all this time, she’s thinking it still.

  When the fox disappears, March turns onto Route 22 and heads for Guardian Farm, hoping that Hollis will be back from Boston. The autumn light is sharp, and March reaches for her sunglasses. She switches on the radio and sings along to a song she didn’t think she knew the words to. She has the sense that she’s driving backward in time; the sky is so much smaller here than it is out west, a bowl of heaven set above their pastures and their town. She eases into the turn off Route 22 carefully, since it’s a place where it’s difficult to see oncoming traffic. She drives along the fields the Coopers always planted, but which are now thick with little more than wild clematis and witch hazel. There’s only one tended patch, where Hank has been raising pumpkins, and that crop has done well. There are several rows of huge, fat pumpkins, still on their thick, ropy vines.

  March remembers coming here with Hollis and wishing the Farm belonged to them. The house looked so much grander and more elegant back then, and Annabeth Cooper’s perennial gardens were amazing, especially her rose garden, where the blooms were as big as cabbages. March used to study Richard and Belinda with real interest. How strange it was that a rich girl would wear torn sweaters and keep her hair bunched into a rubber band. How odd that Richard should cry when he discovered a worthless old crow someone had shot for sport. She found them so curious, like creatures from a distant planet; she couldn’t help but be interested, and she stayed interested long after Hollis grew tired of their spying game.

  It’s Hollis she spies now, out by his truck, back from Boston, where he’s met with one of his lawyers concerning an acquisition of more condos in Orlando. The dogs are milling around, and every once in a while he calls to them harshly, when one nips another, or when they all begin to bark, an off-key plaintive sound that carries over the hill. Still, Hollis is in a better mood than usual; he always gets this way when he buys something. For a brief time at least, he’s not concerned with getting more. There’s enough for everyone, Judith Dale always told him when he sat down at the dinner table, but anyone could tell he didn’t believe her.

  Hollis is wearing a gray suit made in Italy which cost more than any single item of clothing anyone in this town has ever owned. He’s learned that people are foolish enough to believe what they see, so he dressed rich for his trip into Boston. He’s up in the cab of the truck, in spite of his expensive suit, when
March drives in. The dogs start howling and begin to circle the Toyota. In the front seat, Sister hops up to look out the window; seeing those yapping red dogs, the terrier goes berserk. If March let Sister out of the car now, it would attack the entire pack, for all the good that would do.

  “Call off your hounds,” March says when she gets. out of the car.

  “Kick them,” Hollis suggests as he lifts a box out of the truck. He’s gotten a new computer in Boston so he can hook up directly to his bank. He can sit at the desk in the parlor, where old Mr. Cooper smoked his cigars, and manage his finances beside a window which overlooks one of the prettiest views of his property.

  March follows Hollis into the house. Just being this close to him makes her feel all jangly, as if someone has shaken her like a globe filled with snow. She can feel his energy snapping at her, charging her up, even when his attention is turned to this computer in a box.

  “I’ll be right back,” he tells her. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  March hasn’t been inside this house for a long time, and now that she is, she’s certainly not comfortable. If anything, she’s disoriented. This isn’t the way she remembers the Coopers’ kitchen, with its polished copper sinks and the long oak table that was always piled high with wonderful things to eat. The Coopers hired an Italian cook they called Antsy, so named because she couldn’t stay still for a minute, unless she was baking something delicious. There was a housekeeper as well, a woman from the village, the mother of one of the girls from school; Alison Hartwig was the girl’s name, a quiet blue-eyed girl who didn’t have much to say.

  The kitchen now has a spartan quality; that which isn’t a necessity isn’t here. Tiles that had to be ripped up when some pipes burst one terribly cold winter have never been replaced. The slate countertops are cloudy from years of thoughtless cleaning with Comet. The copper sinks have turned the color of moldy leaves. And yet the kitchen is clean. There are two coffee cups, rinsed and drying on a wooden rack; there’s not a crumb on any of the counters, not a dish left out on the table.