No River Too Wide (30 page)

“You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I don’t know why I asked such a personal question.”

“I want to, only I can’t pinpoint it. I let go of the worst anger a little at a time, I guess. I found another woman and I married her, but the relationship was doomed, because underneath it I was still in love with Charlotte. I didn’t realize it. Judy did. That’s hard to understand, isn’t it?”

“Harder for her, I bet.”

He smiled. “She’s happily married now. We’re friends of a sort.”

“That’s good.”

“You married for love, didn’t you?”

“It doesn’t always work out.”

“Do you remember when you realized it wouldn’t?”

Turnabout was fair play. She had asked a personal question; Ethan had the same right.

“I know the exact moment.” She grabbed another handful of beans and snapped them with more strength than the job required.

He didn’t push for details, as if he realized she wouldn’t—couldn’t—talk about whatever had pushed her over the edge. “I would guess that’s when you began to make plans to get away for good.”

“No. It was when I tried to get away and couldn’t that I knew I had married a monster, not a man.”

“Jan, I—”

She took a deep breath. “It’s okay. I’m sorry I told you more than you wanted to hear.”

“That’s not true. I would be happy to hear every bit of it when you’re ready. There’s nobody here today who wouldn’t do anything they could to make this nightmare recede for you.”

“Is it ever going to?” She was looking straight at him now. He was still a handsome man, lean and trim, dark hair more than half-gray, warm golden-brown eyes like Taylor’s.

“The fact that you can talk about it, even a little, tells me it will. But I hope...”

“What?”

“That you’ll find somebody you can really share it with. Somebody who can help you through it.”

“Your daughter’s helping.”

“I’m glad.”

“I’m not ready to talk to anybody like a professional, if that’s what you mean.”

“Sometimes it helps.”

“I know.”

He smiled encouragement. “I believe you’re going to be okay, Jan. I think you’ve already made amazing progress. It says a lot about the person you were before all this began and the person you continued to be throughout it. However you do it, you have my admiration.”

“I wasn’t sure I could have any kind of conversation...”

“With a man?”

She nodded.

“I bet you really didn’t think we’d have this particular one, did you?”

They wouldn’t have, except that he had managed, with just a few words, to make her see they had something in common. Ethan had a gift.

“Did Charlotte...?” She paused, trying to figure out how to phrase what she wanted to ask. She shrugged. “Did she ever tell you how lucky she was to have had you in her life?”

His eyes softened. “More than once.”

“I’m so glad.”

* * *

Analiese Wagner was so different from any minister Harmony had ever known that sometimes she couldn’t quite believe Analiese was real. She was, though. Real, not perfect, but warm and funny and accepting of human frailties. She understood that as a child Harmony had been disheartened, even frightened by, her Sunday-morning experiences and that the family’s minister had once told Jan it was her job to be such a good wife that Rex no longer wanted to beat her.

Harmony still didn’t attend services at the Church of the Covenant, even though Analiese was one of the goddesses. She thought it was likely she would never step foot in church again except for funerals and weddings, but she still liked being with Analiese. The other woman wasn’t really old enough to be her mother, but Harmony liked to imagine she had grown up with someone like her, someone confident and kind, but still tough when she had to be. She couldn’t imagine Analiese allowing anybody to lay a hand on her. She might forgive that man for his transgressions, but she wouldn’t give him a chance to try again.

Not like Jan.

“So it’s just you and me,” Analiese told Harmony as they started down the path to Zettie and Bill Johnston’s apple orchard next to the Goddess House. They had been assured the apples that hadn’t been picked would welcome their intervention.

Harmony was glad to be outdoors. Lottie was napping upstairs with one of Rilla’s boys, and Rilla had promised to listen out for both of them. Nate? Nate was enjoying the companionship of Lucas and Georgia, who were building more shelves in the root cellar, so they could store all the food they had harvested.

Nate had offered to come with her to the orchard, but why would a cabinet maker pick apples when his skills were more useful elsewhere? And did either of them mind the separation?

Harmony tried to find a comfortable way to carry the bushel basket she’d taken from the porch. She gave up and dropped it in the Radio Flyer wagon Analiese was hauling behind her. “I thought Edna and Samantha were going to help.”

“They decided to work on the apples Cristy already harvested earlier in the week so there will be room for ours in the kitchen.”

“Rilla’s doing that, too. We’ll have apple pies with dinner tonight.”

“The Johnstons have a cider press. Next week whoever comes up can help them make cider out of leftovers. Zettie said we can have half if we do.”

Harmony thought all this food preparation was a bit much. The canned and frozen food would be great for Cristy, who worked hard to make ends meet, but between the produce they’d managed to harvest this first summer from the Goddess House garden and the largesse of neighbors, there would be far too much for one young woman. Some of the surplus might be eaten by visitors and the other goddesses, but the real purpose of both the weekend and putting food by for the winter was to build their community. They didn’t have long stretches of time to spend together. They needed to catch up, to plan for the future, to decide if they were living up to Charlotte’s request that whenever possible they work together to reach out to women who needed them.

Women like her mother.

“I like your mother,” Analiese said, as if she were privy to Harmony’s thoughts. “You look so much like her, I would have known her anywhere.”

“I have my father’s coloring and hopefully nothing else.”

“It’s hard to see redeeming qualities sometimes, isn’t it?”

“Especially when they don’t exist.”

“I can’t argue. I’ve met people who buried whatever was good about them so deep inside that no one ever saw it again.”

“I think some people are just born bad and there’s nothing to bury.”

“Sociologists and theologians will argue that one into eternity, but I don’t think we really know the answer. And even if it’s true, how do we figure out who those people are, and who’s just lashing out because they’ve been so badly hurt?”

“Did you ask to partner with me for this job?”

Analiese laughed. “I am so transparent, aren’t I?”

“And quick. You got right to it, didn’t you?”

“I’m good.”

Analiese was a lovely woman, nearly black hair pinned on top of her head, the palest blue eyes, a well-proportioned figure she had to fight to maintain. She liked bright colors and exotic fashions, and today she was wearing a hip-length tunic she’d gotten on a trip to India over cropped leggings. The purple tunic was embroidered with spidery gold-and-silver thread, and Harmony didn’t know another person who could get away with wearing it to do something as mundane as picking apples.

“What if I tell you I don’t want to talk about my father?” Harmony cast her gaze on the path at her feet.

“Then we won’t.”

“I’m assuming you didn’t intend to give me an ‘honor your mother and father’ lecture, right?”

“Of course not.”

“I did try that already. Shouldn’t the Ten Commandments have codicils, you know, like wills do? Honor thy father and mother unless they are completely dishonorable, then get the heck away from them?”

“We could try that, but it gets sticky. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife unless she happens to be smarter and prettier than yours? Thou shalt not steal unless your baby needs milk?”

“If I had no other alternative I would steal to feed Lottie. I wouldn’t like it, but I would.”

“That’s why some people are only comfortable living by the letter of the law, while some are only comfortable reinterpreting it. But in this case the whole commandment about mothers and fathers is really extraordinary. ‘Honor thy father and mother that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God gives you.’ In an overwhelmingly patriarchal society, for once mothers didn’t get short shrift.”

Harmony was silent.

When she didn’t answer, Analiese said, “Honor doesn’t necessarily mean obey or even love. I think it means you do the best you can with what you’re given. After all, there’s also scripture that says ‘Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger.’”

“Did you bone up on appropriate Bible verses before our walk?”

“No, they pay me the big bucks to stay current.”

Harmony couldn’t help laughing, and Analiese smiled at her. “I think this has to be a hard time for you, right? Your father’s missing and might be stalking your mother or even you. Your mom’s living across town after you’ve been apart for years, and you’re probably ambivalent about her being so close.”

“I’m not. I wish she could be right in my apartment with me.”

Analiese didn’t respond. Harmony defended herself. “My mother’s the only reason I’m more or less sane. She tried so hard to make things good for all of us. She was the rock I clung to. When my father wasn’t home we had a normal life, and sometimes even when he was there, she managed to make it all feel normal.”

“But it wasn’t.” It wasn’t a question.

“That wasn’t her fault.”

“Then you never blamed her.”

“Of course not.”

“I think you’re more magnanimous than I would be. Or even than I was. My father weighed more than three hundred pounds when he died, and even though he was the one who kept demanding more and more food, I still blame my mother for stuffing him until his heart finally stopped.”

“That’s different. Your parents were on the same team, more or less. My mother was just trying to keep my father happy so he wouldn’t take out his anger on us.”

“That’s not the same team? The Keep-Daddy-Happy team? She put up with a lot, didn’t she, to make sure he got everything he wanted?”

They had arrived at the apple orchard, but they stopped at the edge. Analiese faced Harmony. “As a kid sometimes I felt I was right in the middle at home. I was overweight, too, but I slimmed down, one miserable ounce at a time. I couldn’t figure out why my father couldn’t at least try, or why my mother didn’t help. I tried to make him see he needed to diet, but I was the only one who ever did.”

“Nobody could make my father do anything.” Harmony didn’t want to think about this, but now she couldn’t help herself. “He could be nice, kind even, but if he thought we crossed him in any way, he went into these rages. I remember...” She did remember, unfortunately, and she wished she didn’t.

“Something you don’t feel like talking about,” Analiese said.

“I had a doll. My mother sewed clothes for her, a whole wardrobe. I called her Cissy, and she was like the sister I didn’t have. One day I did something to make him mad. I can’t even remember what, something silly, I’m sure. Too much noise, or not finishing all the vegetables on my plate, or fidgeting when he said grace. He always went on and on at the table pretending to pray, making notes about every little thing that had gone wrong, about the people who had treated him badly, about the things my brother and I had done that we shouldn’t have....”

She realized she was drifting. “Anyway, he was so angry that evening. He went to my room and got Cissy and threw her in our fireplace. He made me light the match to start the fire. I was crying so hard I burned my fingers.”

She looked up from the ground. “I was never allowed to have a pet, but I think that was my mother’s doing. She knew he might do the same thing to an animal if we ever got attached to one.”

Analiese looked more sad than ministerial. “I’m so sorry. I’m afraid I understand too well. I lived with a man who liked to get even, too. My husband.”

“You were married? I forgot.”

“I was young, he wasn’t. He died just as I was getting ready to leave him. But I would have, no matter what he said or did. Nothing would have kept me there.”

“My mother is different. She couldn’t leave. I wanted her to.”

“Why?”

“Why couldn’t she leave?” Harmony shrugged. “She was afraid? He stole all her confidence, and he told her he would kill her. She believed him.”

“Did
you
believe him?”

“I wanted her to go, anyway.” Harmony swallowed because her throat felt as if it was closing. “I wanted her to go no matter what he said. I tried to get her to come with me when I left for Asheville. When I got here I tried to get her to join me. I told her we would find a way to stay safe. But she refused and refused. And now she’s here, and I’m so glad she is, but I look at her and I think about all those wasted years and how miserable I was at home, and I wonder why she was so weak that she couldn’t do it!”

Analiese didn’t say anything.

Harmony didn’t, either, not for a long time. From the apple trees she heard the squawking of crows, but it was the only noise in the orchard.

“Okay, you win. I’m angry,” Harmony said at last.

“Why wouldn’t you be?”

“I love her. I know what she went through.”

“But you know what
you
went through, too.”

“All I’ve wanted for years and years was for Mom to get away.” Harmony felt the tears in her eyes, and she wiped them with the back of her hand, like a little girl.

“Now she has,” Analiese said, “but your father is still controlling things. And you can’t work through the hurt and the anger, because being with her is so dangerous right now. You’re just hanging out and waiting for him to do something, and trying to be mature while you do.”

“I guess I’m not very good at it.”

“I think you’re splendid, but I think you’re under fire, too.”

“So what do I do?”