Here on Earth

by Alice Hoffman

  “Stop it,” March whispers to the dog when it jumps up to greet her.

  “Sneaking in?”

  Susanna Justice has been standing in the hallway, watching as March gingerly removes her boots.

  “Good Lord,” March says, clutching at her chest. She’s wearing jeans and a pale blue sweater Judith Dale sent as a birthday gift years ago. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

  “Here’s the thing I’m upset about. Why is it that everyone in town knew about it before I did?”

  “Knew what? That I was having a heart attack?” March takes her coat off and hangs it in the closet. By now, every word she says feels like a lie.

  “That’s not what you’re having,” Susie says.

  So, March sees that Susie still has the annoying habit of judging others.

  “Whatever I’m doing is my business.”

  “Don’t you realize everyone is talking about you? Your love life is the main topic of conversation in town.”

  “And have you been defending me?” March says, with a bitter edge.

  “I defended you to your daughter. Sort of.”

  “Oh, shit.” March’s cheeks are now flushed bright pink. “I told her I was out with you.”

  “Do you think she’s an idiot?”

  “Do you think I am?” March says.

  “Actually, yes.”

  They both grin at that notion.

  “I think you’re insane,” Susie hastens to add.

  March’s grin widens, the big smile of someone who no longer cares about sanity.

  “I’m serious,” Susie says.

  “Overly so,” March agrees.

  March insists on making some tea; once they’re in the kitchen, she fills the kettle, sets it on the stove, then grabs a bag of chocolate chip cookies and brings them to the table.

  “You don’t know the things people say about Hollis, March.”

  “Please.” March bites off half a cookie. “They’ve always disliked him.”

  “I’m not talking about silly remarks about how he made his money.” It’s all so unsubstantiated Susie knows she shouldn’t say more. As a reporter she should kick herself for passing on unfounded suspicions, but this is her oldest friend. In good conscience, she can’t keep her mouth shut. “My mother thinks he may have had something to do with Belinda’s death.”

  March looks at Susie, wide-eyed. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Well, I’m not. She told me so at dinner.”

  “It’s ridiculous. Does she have any proof? Did the police ever suspect Belinda’s death was anything but normal?”

  “My mom saw bruises on her.”

  “Come on. And for all these years your mother never said anything? And what if she did see a bruise? For all we know, Belinda could have had a boyfriend on the side who beat her.”

  “So you think she might have been beaten?”

  “I think people hate Hollis—your mother included—just because he won’t put up with their bullshit. Can you understand why he’s so suspicious of everyone?”

  Susie bites into a cookie. Louise Justice doesn’t usually make false accusations, and Susie still feels something grating at her. “I’m worried,” she says.

  “You’re always worried.”

  “I still wish you would have told me,” Susie says.

  “Well, I would’ve.” March grins. “But I thought you’d disapprove.”

  “Who, me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  They both laugh. No one, after all, could disapprove more.

  “Stop worrying about me,” March says. “You don’t have to.”

  A friend is someone you tell the truth to, but Susie stops herself from doing that because the truth is, she’s not going to quit worrying.

  “I wish I could be happy for you,” Susie says later, after they’ve finished their tea, along with the entire bag of cookies.

  “Try to be,” March says, as she walks Susie to the door, then out to the porch.

  March throws her arms around her old friend, and they stand there for a while, even though the weather has taken a turn and is much colder than had been predicted. All along the stone fences, the bittersweet berries have become orange. People will soon be covering their beds with their heaviest quilts, their warmest blankets. Cats won’t be forced out for the night, and those people in town who take their dogs for a late walk will see their breath form into clouds. Susie Justice will have to clear the frost off her windshield with the palm of her hand before she gets into her truck. As she drives away, she’ll roll down her window. She’ll bite her tongue and say no more; she’ll simply wave to March, who’s out there on the porch, dressed only in her jeans and her sweater, with no coat and no gloves and no protection from the cold.

  15

  Richard Cooper arrived today, in spite of a storm that was rattling up and down the East Coast. Ken Helm picked him up at Logan, and later that evening, at the bar of the Lyon Cafe, Ken tells people he would have recognized Richard anywhere. Sure, Richard’s not a kid anymore, but he looks the same anyway. He’s tall and thin, the way all the Coopers were, and he’s just as distracted as ever, although he can certainly tell a good joke, Ken Helm will attest to that. Richard Cooper’s got thousands of bug jokes he’s picked up at entomology conferences. He’s got a Why did the beetle cross the road? series which cracks up his students completely, although right now he tends to favor tick jokes. What’s the difference between a tick and a lawyer? he asked Ken Helm as they were driving up on I-95. It’s one he heard at a conference in Spokane last winter. The tick drops off after it’s sucked your blood.

  Richard’s students appreciate him for more than his jokes. They respect him for all those aspects of his personality which most annoy March. He gets lost in what he does and can discuss a single topic, a variety of fungus-inhabiting Tenebrionidae, for instance, for hours. He’s too kindhearted, and doesn’t stand up for himself. As a graduate student, several discoveries he made in the field were claimed by his adviser, but Richard never cared about such things as who gets credit—it’s the discovery that matters to him. It’s doing the right thing. When he believes in something, he won’t back down. He’s tenacious as hell when he has to be, not unlike the trout-stream beetle, which will cling to anything, defying icy streams and swift currents in order to get where it is convinced it must go.

  This clarity, this single-mindedness of purpose, is the reason why Belinda inherited Guardian Farm and Richard was left with nothing. His father was trying to teach him a lesson about obedience, and before Mr. Cooper could reverse his rash decision to disinherit his son both he and Richard’s mother were killed at the turn onto Route 22. For all these years he’s been away, Richard has only come back for funerals. His parents. His sister. His sister’s only child. Now they have laid Judith Dale to rest in the same cemetery, and Richard plans to pay his respects at the grave site. But he doesn’t have long to do so. It’s late Friday afternoon when he arrives, and he has to present a lecture to his graduate seminar on Monday morning. He hasn’t asked his neighbors to feed the stray cat living in his garage or bring in his mail. He has his return ticket for the noon plane on Sunday, and he’s made reservations for March and Gwen as well. Just in case.

  If luck is on his side, they’ll all be out of here in less than forty-eight hours. Yes, it’s true, he believes in fate. He’s a scientist who happens to be convinced of the reality of destiny. His colleagues might mock this philosophy, but then let them explain why one sand beetle wanders into a spider’s web while another passes by, unharmed. Love, it now seems, is not what Richard thought it would be. It’s thicker and heavier and much more complicated than he would ever have imagined. He knows that his wife has been with another man, a man he happens to despise and holds responsible for his sister’s death—and yet here he is, chatting with Ken Helm, insisting that Ken take the forty bucks he’s offering for fetching him from the airport. Love has made him surprise himself. He would never have believed it
possible, but it’s turned out that he is a man who can walk up to a closed door on a murky November day, wearing his one good suit, and knock without hesitation, waiting while the rain comes down around him, even though he’s not wanted. He can do this and not think twice, just the way he can spend hours watching a wounded cedar beetle and weep over its rare beauty, as well as its agony.

  Richard is certain that other species fall in love—primates, of course, and canines—but he has wondered about his beetles. There are people who would surely get a chuckle out of the mere suggestion, but in Richard’s opinion it’s pure vanity to presume that love exists only on our terms. A red leaf may be the universe for the tortoise beetle or the ladybird. A single touch the ecstasy of a lifetime. And so, here he is, in love despite everything. It is he, stupider than any beetle, and far more obstinate, who has traveled three thousand miles, even though he fully expects to be turned away.

  Gwen answers the door, and as soon as she sees Richard she throws her arms around him.

  “Daddy,” she cries, although he doesn’t remember her calling him this before—it was Pop, he thinks, or Pa.

  Gwen pulls Richard into the hallway, where a little white terrier jumps on his legs.

  “Who is this?” Richard asks. He puts down his overnight case, then crouches to pet the dog.

  “It’s Sister.” Gwen cannot believe how glad she is to see her father. He seems so real. So him. “She belonged to Mrs. Dale.”

  “Well, Sister,” Richard says. The dog has politely sat down before him, and now tilts its head to listen when he speaks. “How do you do?”

  They do like hell, if the truth be known. All of a sudden, Gwen is the one in charge of everything, like it or not. Her mother once saw to all of the chores, but no longer. March can’t seem to deal with the trivial details of domestic life, they seem beyond her somehow, small but impossible tasks. If Gwen doesn’t do her own laundry, she has no clothes. If she doesn’t go food shopping or make the beds, no one else will. Once, while hurrying through the village on her way to meet her friend Chris, Gwen passed by some woman who had her collar turned up and a dreamy look on her face, and it wasn’t until Gwen and Chris had ordered french fries and Cokes at the Bluebird Coffee Shop that she realized the woman she’d walked past was her mother.

  Gwen is now responsible for herself in some deep, irrevocable way. There is no one to tell her what to do; for all intents and purposes, she’s on her own. And although this is exactly what she once thought she wanted, her situation now brings her to tears.

  “What’s wrong?” her father asks, but how can she tell him?

  “I’m fine,” Gwen insists. “I’m just glad to see you.”

  “You look wonderful,” Richard tells his daughter. Although seeing her so grown-up and so pretty without all that makeup makes him realize how much a person can change in a short period of time. Wasn’t it only weeks ago that he worried constantly? That he feared she would return home with some new part of her body pierced and some new drug in her backpack?

  Richard hangs his wet raincoat in the closet. His shoes are soaked, as are the cuffs of his slacks, but he will simply have to do. He can’t make himself any more presentable before seeing March.

  “Well?” he says when he turns back to Gwen.

  “Well, what?” Gwen asks.

  “Your mother. I’d like to talk to her.”

  I don’t believe you would, Gwen thinks. To her father, however, she suggests that her mother’s schedule is erratic.

  “Then let’s fix some coffee so it’s ready when she gets here,” Richard suggests.

  The rain outside has become sleet, which hits against the window as though stones were being tossed from above. Coffee on a night like this isn’t a bad idea. Richard has to duck to pass through the doorway into the kitchen. He’d forgotten how different the scale of these old New England houses can be; how wide the pine floorboards, how low the ceilings, how tilted the rooms from years of settling.

  “Coffeepot?” Richard asks.

  He used to cook when he first came calling on March. He and Alan’s wife, Julie, had a great time of it, she as his amicable assistant, he willing to try any new recipe. Once they fixed pasta with a maple syrup topping; another time they tried something called bootheel pie, made out of turnips and celery and onions.

  “Filters?” he asks.

  Gwen sits on a stool, her legs pulled up. She has spent this afternoon with Hank, walking Tarot all the way into the village and then back again. When Hank kissed her, the horse tried his best to come between them.

  “Forget it, buddy boy,” Hank teased. “She’s mine.”

  Just for that, Gwen kissed the old racehorse on his soft nose. His breath was surprisingly sweet, like new hay.

  Hank had let out a groan. “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “Would you ever lie to me?” Gwen had asked then.

  “What are the circumstances? Is it that I know you’re kissing a horse who has terrible breath? Or is it that I know there’s going to be a nuclear war and we have only twelve hours to live, and I have to decide whether to ruin the last twelve hours of your life with fear, or let you enjoy the little time you have left?”

  “Nuclear war.”

  Gwen had climbed onto the stone wall, then had pulled herself onto Tarot’s back, where she stretched out, as though the horse were an extremely tall and comfortable couch.

  “I’d tell you.” Hank had grabbed the lead and they’d begun a slow walk back to the Farm. He didn’t even have to consider; that’s what impressed Gwen most. “What about you?” Hank had asked. “Would you tell the truth?”

  Tarot had stumbled then, and Gwen had been forced to hang on to his mane: then she’d jumped off, so that Hank could lift Tarot’s rear left leg and see to the problem. There was a tiny, sharp rock wedged into the frog of the horse’s hoof, which Hank removed with a penknife. Gwen never did get to answer. Just as well, since she hadn’t known what to say at the time. But now, in this kitchen, watching her father crouch down to search the cabinets under the counters for coffee filters, it has all become quite clear. It’s not the lie that’s the problem: it’s the distance the lie forges between you.

  “Daddy, don’t bother with the coffee.” This is what Gwen has to say, even when she sees the look on her father’s face. “She won’t be back until late. She never is.” Gwen swallows; but it doesn’t help. Words such as these always hurt when you say them. “She’s with him every night. She may not come home at all.”

  Richard blinks, as if by doing so he could bring into focus a vision other than the one Gwen is offering.

  “I’m sorry,” Gwen says. She feels as though everything is her fault. She’s only fifteen, why does she have to feel so damned responsible? She can’t even tell her father about Hank, for fear he’ll disapprove. When her father leaves the room, to make a fire in the fireplace, Gwen decides to finish the coffee he started, and she brings him a cup, with a little milk and a little more sugar, the way he likes it.

  Richard gratefully accepts the coffee, and for one delightful instant he has the sense of being fortunate. She is a good girl, he sees that. Gwen pulls up a stool for herself beside the easy chair where he’s settled. She’s a good person.

  Sister sits by the window and barks, and Richard finds himself wondering if Gwen is wrong about March, if perhaps that’s her at the door now. The visitor, however, is only a rabbit, one who brazenly sits on the porch in order to escape the bad weather.

  “We never had rabbits around here when I was growing up,” Richard tells his daughter. “There were too many foxes for that. If you walked through the woods at night, you’d see them. Especially at dusk. At first you’d think you were imagining footsteps.”

  Sister has forsaken the door and come to join them, stretching out on the braided rug.

  “Everything would be gray, even the horizon. And then you’d see it, all at once.”

  “A fox.” Gwen smiles.

  Richard nods. �
�Once in a while, in the winter, after a snow, you’d come upon a dozen or more of them, and then you’d know something was happening that no human could understand, or even recognize. They call it a foxes’ circle, a meeting held as if there were a board of directors of the woods. I think about the foxes’ circle when I do fieldwork. There’s world upon world out there, with different rules.”

  “I wonder why they all disappeared.”

  “They found a single rabid specimen one season and that was the end of foxes on this hill.”

  It was the year when Hollis left town. Richard recalls that each time he came to call on March, he’d hear gunfire in the woods. He was grateful to Hollis back then; in leaving, Hollis had given Richard an opportunity he’d never guessed he would have. Funny the things you remember. Richard definitely remembers that March would smile whenever she opened the door and saw him. He knows he didn’t imagine that.

  “When I was really little,” he says now, “maybe five or so, my sister found an orphaned fox. She kept the kit in her bedroom, secretly of course, because my mother would have had an outright conniption and made us all submit to a series of rabies shots if she ever caught sight of the thing. My sister kept an opossum one year, and then there was a crow with a broken wing that I found—she took care of that crow for months. My mother went crazy when she discovered wild animals had been in the house, but my sister was surprisingly strong-willed.”