A Peculiar Grace (49 page)

On the other hand Hewitt had his two stones, the tractor wasn’t lost or damaged, he’d spent a pleasant damp afternoon in the woods and he’d given Bill Potwin something to talk about. On the whole a pretty good score. There wasn’t a farmer or logger up and down the
valley who at one time or another hadn’t gotten into a bad pinch and had to call for help. The worst would be some jokes about his antique tractor, calling Bill Potwin for help, or both.

He pulled both tractor and spreader into the big open-floored hayloft on the backside of the barn. He wanted the stones in the forge but that meant creeping down the bank and around to the big doors of the forge and it was too wet for that. At least today. He shut off the tractor, walked by the spreader and ran his hand over first one stone then the other. They were right. They were right for now. The truth would be revealed tomorrow when he had them both upright side by side on the floor of the smithy. He’d had enough adventure for this day.

A
LITTLE AFTER
dusk he was sitting on the front porch, listening to the rain on the roof, a pale yellow rectangle from the window lighting the other end of the porch, a citronella candle burning on the railing against the last of the mosquitoes. It was cool with the rain and he wore a flannel shirt open over his T-shirt, nursing a glass of wine. He wanted whisky. He was thinking about that, and why. If the old sealed bottle had been in the cabinet he knew it would still be sitting there; if the bottle he’d emptied down the sink was there instead he considered and decided it too would be untouched. So it was the wanting, not the whisky. Over the years he’d had plenty of times like this but like most everything else no event was an actual repetition of any other. Which was also a part of quitting it. His little return earlier in the summer he chalked up to the events, and perhaps a final desire to test himself. He didn’t rule out a further test in the future but then the future was something Hewitt had come to view as no more discernible than dreams.

Several hundred fireflies winked and danced in the lilac thicket. Rufus had followed him out and lay on the pew bench alongside Hewitt. They were comfortable together. But the cat reminded him of Jessica as did the daunting emptiness of the house behind him. How
many years he’d lived alone there and how short a time with another person under the roof to reveal the loneliness all over again. He toyed with the glass, turning it in his hand, and admitted that it wasn’t another person, it was Jessica who revealed the emptiness. Despite her moments she’d fitted in and around him about as well as anyone ever had. Perhaps it was the simple nature of their relations—the lack of demands upon the other, the deeply personal cohabitation whose peculiar closeness invited no greater commitment. Despite that final night and her flight. Despite that final note.

He was grateful for the book of poems she’d left behind. That first night, after his bath he’d opened the book in bed and read the first poem. Then read it again. And once more. He’d placed the book down, open on his chest and studied the ceiling cracks and faint stains of age and wondered if he was selfish, selfish as the man in the poem, the man living alone. And perhaps he was but it had taken an uncommon mind to formulate solitude to selfishness and then allow solitude to carry the day. He’d decided then to savor the book. A poem a night. To finish the day, to allow the day and night to crawl down and spread around him diffused by the words of a poem as deliberate and contemplative as a lover. Better than the drenched sleep of whisky anyway.

He stood and walked to the top step and stopped at the edge and peed down into the grass and the telephone rang inside, in full stream and he smiled again, reasonably sure who it was. Perhaps after all it was the right time to once again be alone.

Emily was speaking through the machine. “Oh, I was hoping you’d be around—”

“I am. I was just peeing off the porch. Sorry about calling last night at suppertime.”

“I thought it was kind of funny. And the kids didn’t blink. Not that they were listening. And they’re certainly not listening now. Jesus, Hewitt, it has been a day.”

“I was about to ask how you are.”

“Thank you. How’re you doing, Hewitt?”

“I didn’t mean it as a hint. You want to tell me about your day?”

“Umm. I guess that’s why I called. Is that all right?”

“Emily.”

“Hey, the ground’s still shaking under this girl’s feet. I’ve had all afternoon and evening alone and still can’t believe it. Nora went out to the farm and John’s wherever John is, doing whatever he needs to do and I’ve got no idea when I’ll see him again and frankly don’t blame him except maybe I wish I could trade places with him. Sort of. Not really. Oh you know what I mean. God, I’m a mess, aren’t I?”

Hewitt said, “Let me guess.”

“Oh you know. But not the way I’d planned although I’ve pretty much given up on planning anything Hewitt. Elsa came rolling in first thing this morning. I was ready to go to work, my second day back after I had to take a couple of days off and Nora and I were eating breakfast and John was still asleep when I heard the car come up the drive and knew who it was. Christ, she looked like shit, like she’d been up all night. She was dressed pretty normal, I mean for her, just jeans and a summer blouse not her usual—well, you haven’t seen her but she dresses like a goddamn gypsy or an old hippie, mostly like we all, I mean the girls, remember the chicks, the ladies, how we used to wear all that velvet and lace and Indian print flimsy skirts—”

“I always sorta liked that look.”

“Didn’t we all? But that was then, you know, Hewitt? Jesus, peeing off the porch. Every now and then I still squat in the grass if there’s too many people inside or if I just don’t care. It kills my kids. And the old jiggle doesn’t work as well as it used to.”

“Hey, Em?”

“Right here.”

“Are you stoned?”

“I’d kill for a joint right now and could probably find one if I trashed either of my kids’ rooms but no, Hewitt. I looked a long time at a bottle of wine but between you and me I’ve had a good
share of those alone at night bottles this summer and decided to call you instead. So it’s just where my brain is. Can you deal with that?”

“Let it roll, girl.”

“Thank you sir. So I went to the door and she wanted to talk and I almost took pity on her and said wait until another day but frankly I didn’t care and on top of that she’d driven over without even calling which was chickenshit of her so I stood there with my Mama Bear arms folded and told her damn right it was time to talk and then told her how it was going to be. She started to cry when I said the kids but then stopped. Hewitt I was blazing and told her what the fuck sister, there was nothing new she was going to tell me, it was the children, my children, Martin’s children, that needed to hear it from her. She got that kicked puppy look and I just leaned down and told her it was not my idea for her to fuck my husband and since he wasn’t around to do it then it was her job to tell them the truth. She tried the line about wishing she wasn’t alive and I reminded her she’d already screwed that up as well so fucking grow up and get her ass inside and wait until I got John up. It was one of the weirdest moments of my life, Hewitt. Right up there with, well, with about anything you could imagine. Because there I was tromping through the house feeling like at last something
real
was about to happen. Because this whole summer’s been a fucking haze. At the same time knowing I was about to change my kids’ lives forever and I hated that, hated that so bad I got angry all over again, not just at Elsa but at Marty too and so by the time I dragged John downstairs it felt like it was all laid out. That it was not only what had to happen but that it was happening the way it was supposed to. I can’t explain that.”

“Sure, you can. Things swirl in chaos but there’s always some form within it waiting to be revealed.”

“Hey, that was good. You old hippie. So we all sat around the kitchen table and I didn’t say a word. She looked at me like I was supposed to help her somehow but that wasn’t my job and the kids
already knew it was something big and bad about to roll over them. They’re teenagers for God’s sake and teenagers smell bad shit a mile away and they’d already been asking me what happened to her and why and I held up okay with that, telling them she was clearly very upset about something that must have been bothering her terribly to try to kill herself and in the meanwhile be grateful she hadn’t succeeded. Well, of course I gave them the talk about no matter how bad things seem, and sometimes life does seem pretty bad, suicide’s never a solution because it doesn’t ever change what was so bad to start with. You know, the standard mother’s prayer sort of talk. So they knew she was there for a big reason that somehow included them.”

“What did she say?”

“She glossed it at first, which didn’t surprise me. Then told them the night he died their father had been at her house and they’d been drinking and it never should have happened and John was slumped way down in his chair with his arms across his chest and said, ‘Just drinking? Or what?’ and she looked at him and he said, ‘You cunt, you fucking cunt,’ and Nora looked at me and Elsa started to cry again and John said, ‘What the fuck’re you saying?’ and suddenly Nora jumped up and threw a sugar bowl that missed and started to shriek and I almost moved to stop Nora, and then stopped myself because it had to happen and she was brilliant and ferocious. Jesus, Hewitt, it’s frightening when you see your child spill over and become an adult all at once, although that’s not fair, she’d spent the summer trying to figure out what it meant that her father was dead but this was the moment, you know, the blinders are gone, all the childhood stripped naked and the adult all the way out. And I was proud of her too. Proud and a little shocked because she was doing the numbers faster than her brother which made me wonder if I’d been worrying about what the wrong kid was up to, thinking she was one of those slow quiet burns but she had it pegged. The first thing out of her mouth was ‘How long? How long was this going on? This
fucking
,’ and she spat that out as the nasty thing it was and Elsa turned Ice Maiden saying
they couldn’t understand and she was looking at me like it was my fucking fault when John stood up and put his hands on the table and leaned across to her and said, ‘What? I don’t understand fucking someone you’re not supposed to? Dad was an asshole and you’re a slut but it’s not something I can understand, is that right?’ and walked around the table and stood looking down at her and told her he was sorry and she looked up blinking and said, ‘What?’ and he told her he was sorry she was still alive. Then he walked out of the house. Or tried to because I ran down the hall after him and caught hold of him and tried to tell him not that it was all right but something stupid like it takes a long time to forgive anybody and he turned and held me like the man that he is and told me he’d never forgive him for what he’d done and he was crying but he told me he loved me and then was gone.”

“Holy shit,” Hewitt breathed. “He’s a brave kid.”

“Well, that was today, Hewitt. There’s plenty of time for him to change his mind. I’m prepared for that. I’d be worried if he didn’t, to tell the truth.”

“So what happened then?”

“It was wild. I don’t even want to think what the neighbors heard. When I got back to the kitchen Nora had Elsa by the hair and was screaming at her, I mean shrieking. How everybody knew she’d fuck anything with pants and I just held on to the door with both hands and let her rip. Because if I stopped it then I’d be stopping Nora from what she had to do. Elsa was hunched over and crying and Nora was jerking her hair and saying about everything one woman can say to another but shrieking it, screaming it, and sobbing and I thought Well there you are Marty. That’s how you helped your children grow up. And all the sudden Nora quit, let go and backed up and bumped against the fridge and stood there huffing her tears and pounding her fists into her legs trying to make herself stop crying and then she did and looked at me and said, ‘Mom? I’m getting in the car and don’t even think about trying to stop me because I am all right to drive. I’m going to Gram and Gramp’s to tell them what a
skank
their daughter is and I
don’t give a shit what anybody thinks but they’re going to know the truth.’ And I thought You can’t let her drive like this she’s only got her permit and then I realized I didn’t really have a choice, Hewitt. I had to trust her and I had to let her finish what was started. So I told her the keys were in it and please have Mom call me later. Oh, Hewitt, she was grand. She stepped into her sandals and took her purse off the back of her chair and slung it just so over her shoulder, pushed her hair back and picked up her sunglasses from the table and put them on, all the time never so much as glancing at Elsa and then walked out of the room.”

They were both quiet a bit and then Hewitt finally spoke. “So, then what? You and Elsa alone.”

“I kicked her out. She was blubbering sorry left and right so without knowing I was going to I grabbed the front of her blouse and twisted it up in a knot and told her I didn’t care if she went home and OD’d again but if she had an ounce of courage she’d tough it out, if nothing else not to fuck my kids up even more. I couldn’t care less what she did with her life as long as she kept it away from mine. And that was that. I walked back into the house and shut the door. Although I did stand there waiting until I heard her drive away. Because I wanted to know for sure she was gone before I went upstairs and fell apart.”

After a bit Hewitt said, “Soooo … Have you heard from your kids?”

She said, “Well, I know where Nora is and like I said I just have to trust John right now. But there’s more. Dad pulled in at noon.”

“Uh-oh.”

“You know, it wasn’t so much what he had to say that hit me as the look on his face. We sat out on the porch and he had his cap on his knee, telling me Nora was okay and putting up the last of the peaches with her grandmother and he sat there fiddling with his fingers and looking off at his pickup like he wished more than anything he could drive off and get back out in the fields. So I reached over and covered one of his hands with mine, Oh Hewitt, those great big
mitts of a farmer’s hands, all nicked and scarred and spotted with age and I told him whatever you’ve got to tell me, it’s going to be easiest if you just go ahead, it can’t be worse than what I’ve already gone through and he looked at me and said, ‘Maybe, maybe not. But hard for me,’ and I knew then what he was going to say. So I patted his hand and sat back and crossed my legs and waited. And he squinted at me and told me if I’d been young and only married a few years and didn’t have children or just little ones perhaps they would’ve acted differently but he and Mom simply couldn’t tell me what they’d suspected. Because I was a grown-up, you see. But for a while they’d known there was something with Elsa and Martin, how anytime the whole family was together, holidays, birthdays, times at the cottage, it was clear there was something going on. He looked off and said some things are as old as the world and the one time he and Mother spoke directly about it Mother wanted to go talk to Elsa and he talked her out of it. And when he said that he looked back at me, as close to crying as I’ve ever seen him. He told me perhaps he was wrong, most likely he was wrong, that if he’d let her, or encouraged her because she wasn’t sure what to do either, then maybe things would’ve turned out different. He reminded me how when I was growing up us kids knew there was distance between himself and his own father. All because he and Granddad got into a terrible argument about something, and things were never the same and he’d vowed to never interfere with his own grown children. Then he squinched up his mouth the way he does and said but this was something different and he hoped I’d forgive him. I turned toward him and said there was nothing to forgive, that he’d done the right thing and wasn’t a bit responsible for how things turned out. And then, Hewitt, all the sudden I was bawling like a baby and he got down on his knees in front of me and held me, held me like I was a little girl and Daddy was all I needed. No one else ever could comfort me by holding me the way he can.”