by Richard Ford
“Where’s Berner?” I was thinking she was gone.
“Ate and went to bed.” My mother pulled the window closed.
“Where’s Dad?” Something strenuous had passed through me. My mouth was pasty-weedy, my hair stuck to my scalp. My joints ached.
“He hasn’t gone anyplace.”
She moved back to the doorway. Amber light was in the hall. Water was trickling behind the walls, or outside. “It rained and rained,” she whispered. “Now it’s stopped. I made you a sandwich.”
“Thank you,” I said. She passed back out the door and disappeared.
At the dining room table, I ate the grilled cheese with a pickle and a leaf of lettuce and French dressing—things I liked. I was hungry and ate in a hurry and drank a glass of buttermilk. My father believed it was restorative. My clothes were wrinkled and damp. The house was cool and clean smelling, as if the wind had scoured it. We had scoured it days before. It was ten thirty at night, the wrong time to be eating supper at the table.
I heard my father’s boot heels on the front porch boards. His back passed by the window. Occasionally he coughed and cleared his throat. Several cars drove past—their slanted lights fell across the curtains, which were partly open. One stopped at the curb. A strong beam of light opened and flashed around the damp yard. You couldn’t see who was inside. From the dark porch, my father said, “Good evening, fellas. Welcome. We’re all here, supper’s on the table.” He laughed loudly. The light went out, and the car idled away without anyone speaking or getting out. My father laughed again and paced some more, whistling notes that didn’t make a tune.
My mother had gone back into their bedroom. From where I sat at the table I could see her. More of her clothes were in her suitcase. She was folding other clothes and laying them on top. She looked out through the door, and for some reason being seen startled me. “Come in here, Dell,” she said. “I want to talk to you.”
I came in my sock feet. I was heavy-bodied as if I’d eaten too much. I would’ve lain on her bed and gone to sleep in front of her.
“How was your sandwich?”
“Why’re you packing?”
She went on folding clothes. “I thought we’d go to Seattle on the train tomorrow.”
“When will we be back,” I asked.
“Whenever we’re ready to.”
“Is Berner going?”
“Yes. She is. I explained it to her already.”
“Is Dad?” I’d asked this before.
“No.” She went to the closet and rehung the empty hangers that had been on the bed.
“Why not?” I said.
“He has some business to tie up. He likes being here anyway.”
“What’re we going to do in Seattle?”
“Well,” my mother said in her business-like voice. “It’s a real city. You’ll meet your grandparents. They’re interested to know you and your sister.”
I stared hard at her the way Berner stared at me. She hadn’t said why we were going, and I knew I wasn’t supposed to ask.
“What about school?” My heart began speeding up. I didn’t want it to be that I wouldn’t be starting. That happened to boys you never saw again. My throat tightened. My eyes burned as if tears were already in them.
“Don’t worry about that.”
“I already have a lot of plans,” I said.
“I know about them. We all have plans.” She shook her head as if this was a silly conversation. She looked at me and blinked once behind her glasses. She looked tired. “You have to be flexible,” she said. “People who aren’t don’t go far in the world. I’m trying to be flexible.”
I thought I knew what that word meant, but it seemed to mean something else, too. Like “making sense.” I didn’t want to admit I wasn’t whatever flexible meant.
Wind rose outside the house and blew water out of the leaves, clattering on the roof. Inside was perfectly still.
My mother walked to the bedroom window, cupped her hands to the glass and peered out. The window pane reflected the room and her and me and the bed with her suitcase and clothes. She was very small in front of the window. Beyond her, I could see only shapes and shadows. The garage with the pale hollyhocks and zinnias growing beside it. The empty clothesline where she’d retrieved the clean clothes. An oak sapling my father had planted and tied to a stake. His car. “What do you know about Canada?” she said. “Hm?” This was a sound she made when she was wanting to be friendly.
Canada was beyond Niagara Falls in my father’s puzzle. I’d never looked it up in the encyclopedia. It was north of us. Hot tears were in my eyes. I breathed out as far as I could and held it. “Why?” My voice was constricted.
“Oh.” She leaned her forehead against the window glass. “I have the habit of only seeing things the way they’re presented to me. I’d like you to turn out different. It’s a weakness of mine.” She tapped the pane lightly with her fingernail. It was as if she was signaling someone in the dark. She took off her glasses, breathed onto the lenses, and wiped them on her blouse sleeve. “Your sister’s different,” she said.
“She’s a lot smarter than I am.” I quickly rubbed my eyes and wiped my hand on my pants leg so as not to be noticed.
“She probably is. The poor thing.” My mother turned and smiled at me in her friendly way. “Why don’t you go back to bed now. We’re leaving in the morning. The train goes at ten thirty.” She put her finger over her mouth to signal me not to say anything. “You don’t have to take anything but your toothbrush. Leave everything here. Okay?”
“Can I bring my chess men?”
“Okay,” she said. “My dad plays chess. Or he used to. It’ll give you two something to disagree about. Now you go.”
I went out of their room. She went back to packing her suitcase. Everything else I’d have wanted to say or ask—about the police, about school and Berner running away, about why we were going—there wasn’t a chance for. It was what I said already: things were happening around me. My part was to find a way to be normal. Children know normal better than anyone.
Chapter 27
Later, my mother came in again and tucked a dry blanket under my feet where the mattress was damp. I kept my eyes closed but could smell mothballs from the blanket. My door closed quietly, and I heard her knock on Berner’s door. Berner said, “I have a stomach ache.” My mother said, “You’ll get used to that. I’ll bring you a hot water bottle.” Her door closed, and in a while my mother came back in her room and they talked some more. Berner’s bedsprings squeaked. “Of course, of course,” I heard my mother say. Then her footsteps went back to the kitchen where water began running.
The rain stopped altogether, and cool air again filtered through my room. I’d thought I might hear the fireworks at the fair and had re-raised the sash to hear them. But I only heard the furnace whistle at the smelter and a siren out in town. In the air was the strong scent of cows from the freight yards. I heard my father’s footsteps, then their two voices, speaking. They spoke briefly, in a clipped way, followed by silence, as if they had little to say. In a while my mother—I recognized her footsteps—went back to their bedroom and closed the door. My father went back out to the front porch and sat on the swing—the screen door squeaking open and closed.
I thought of Seattle then for a time. I’d only seen a few cities—none of them large. My picture of Seattle was of the sun inching up from below a dark ocean, buildings gradually growing in silhouette as light found them. Only I remembered then that the sun came from the east. Light would fall on the buildings from the other direction. I tried to imagine the space needle, what that would look like. A great needle high in the air. Then I must’ve gone to sleep. The last thing I remember was that I’d been wrong about the sun coming up, and that I’d never tell anyone about it.
In the night when I got up to use the toilet, I found my father alone at the card table with his Niagara Falls puzzle spread out like a meal in front of him. All the lights in the front of the ho
use were on. Niagara Falls was almost complete. Only a few pale pieces of jagged sky needed setting in. He was wearing the clothes he’d had on earlier—his white shirt, which was wrinkled, and jeans, and his boots that were scuffed on their toes. However, he’d shaved and smelled like he’d had a bath. He looked around at me and seemed happy to see me, though I intended to go straight back to bed.
He just started talking. “You know, when I was a boy. Your age . . .” He fingered a piece of puzzle and held it up for inspection, then tried it in the empty space in the sky, where it fitted down perfectly. His fingernails still had shoe polish under them. “. . . I was a pretty good athlete. Sports were crucial. Nobody had anything else to be happy about. You know what the Depression was, I’m sure.”
I’d already read about Roosevelt and Hoover and the Workers’ March and bread lines, in civics. I said, “Yes, sir.”
“Well . . .” He carefully tried another piece of the puzzle, which didn’t fit. He shook his head. “I could’ve been very capable in sports—football and baseball, too. Just nobody ever taught me anything. You know? The coaches didn’t. You sank or you swam on your native ability. So . . .” He smiled like he was happy to be explaining this. “I sank.” He cleared his throat and swallowed. “That’s what led me to join the U.S. Army. Not directly. But eventually.” He picked up a smaller puzzle piece and delicately pressed it into the empty space and made a humming noise when it fit. There were only four more pieces not in place. He turned in his chair and inspected me. I had on my blue-and-white-striped pajama bottoms and was barefoot. “Why are you awake?” he said. “Do you have big bothers?”
“No, sir,” I said. Though I did. School. Leaving. Why he wasn’t going with us. Why the police were following us and driving by our house. I had plenty of bothers.
“Well, that’s great,” he said. “That’s the way it should be if you’re fifteen. Isn’t that what you are?” He relaxed back into the dining room chair.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
He used a puzzle piece to scratch in his ear. “Your mother’s holding herself out for something, I think. It’s possible she always has. A future life. I don’t blame her. But I’m not sorry I married her. We wouldn’t have you and your sister otherwise.” He looked at the puzzle piece as if it had something interesting attached to it. “She’s a little resentful toward me at the moment. She’ll figure it all out when you get to Seattle. She went to college—unlike myself.”
“Why didn’t you go?” I wanted to ask him why he wasn’t going with us, and why she’d resent him, but I asked this instead. I’d always wanted to know.
“The subject just never came up.” He looked unconcerned. “It was believed I was already smart enough. For my prospects. Which was probably right.”
“Are you coming with us to Seattle?” I knew he wasn’t, but I wanted to seem as if it was still possible he would.
“I’m happy here. I told you this afternoon. I’ll be here when you get back. This is your mother’s plan.”
“Are you going to go to work again?”
He smiled broadly and went back in his ear with the puzzle piece. “If they’ll have me. I’m just getting started. I do have a knack for it, I think.” He held the piece up, turning it back and forth for me to see. He’d done this trick many times for Berner and me when we were little. His eyes got round. His smile flickered at the corners as if he felt uncertain about something—which he didn’t. He suddenly popped the puzzle piece in his mouth, chewed it and swallowed down in a big dramatic gulp, after which he cleared his throat, coughed exaggeratedly. “Boy,” he said. “That was tasty. I like puzzles better than pennies and buttons.”
“It’s in your hand,” I said. I touched my ear, where such things also often turned up.
“I ate it,” he said. “Would you like one? I have three left.” He picked up one of the last pieces.
“It’s in your hand,” I said again.
He put both his hands on his knees and tapped them and nodded. I was waiting for him to produce the piece. “You go to bed, colonel,” he said. “You’ve got a busy day. We all do.” He reached and grabbed my bare shoulder and pulled me to him so I could feel his big body—very warm and citrusy smelling. He clapped my back three times, then held me out at arm’s length and looked serious. I was still waiting on the puzzle piece to reappear. Like a fool. “We’ll work on your physique when you come back,” he said. “You need some new muscles. When I see you again, that’s what we’ll do.”
“Where’s the piece of the puzzle?” I said.
He pointed to his belly with his finger. “Right down about there,” he said, and poked himself and looked down. “It’s not a trick every time. That’s the magician’s secret. Good night.”
“Good night,” I said. I went back to my room, closed the door, and went to sleep in my cold bed.
Chapter 28
Sun shone through the wet leaves into my room, a webbed rectangle of light on the floor and the foot of my bed. The Lutherans’ Sunday bell had waked me up. I’d been awake in the night, or else I’d dreamed a dream so vivid I thought I’d done the things I dreamed. A bat had been trapped against my window screen. I’d climbed out of bed and pushed the sash higher and tapped the screen with a pencil eraser, careful not to hurt it through the tiny squares. I saw its little grimaced human face, its gray silky skin, its pulsing wings. It stared at me as if I’d called it. I tapped the screen lightly. It looked from side to side. Then it vanished, free, the screen empty.
A car had been stopped in the alley, just past the garage, its motor running, its exhaust heavy in the air. A light snapped on inside. Two men were visible, wearing suits. The one riding was reading something to the one driving—holding a piece of white paper. They both leaned and looked at our house, through the clothesline posts. They couldn’t see me. There was no light behind me. One of the men, however, pointed a finger at me, then their light was extinguished. The motor revved. Tires splashed over the wet gravel. Then the dream ended.
* * *
I heard Berner’s voice down the hall. I lay staring at water stains in the ceiling—flaking rust outlines like states of the union. How long ago the Lutherans’ bell had rung, I didn’t know. A dog had howled a street behind ours. Possibly our trip to Seattle was postponed. If I stayed in my bed it might be forgotten. I didn’t want to go.
I heard our mother speaking in a clipped voice to Berner. Almost immediately my door opened and my mother was there, cross-looking and intent. “I let you sleep. But we have to go now.” She had the pink pillowcase with white scalloped edges off her bed. “Put what you’re taking in this.” She stepped in and dropped the pillowcase on my bed. “Don’t take much. We’ll buy what you need new where we’re going.” She stared at me. I was covered to my chin, sunlight dividing the floor and a section of the white wall. Our mother was again wearing the green wool suit skirt with the pink plaid, but now she had on a white blouse. She looked smaller and younger dressed this way. Her features were collected around her nose and glasses. “Your sister’s dressed,” she said. “Don’t make me have to tell you again.” She disappeared, my door left open as a warning.
I put on my clothes in a hurry. There didn’t seem time to take a bath. Into the pillowcase I put my balsa-wood box of chess men, my Chess Master magazines, my Chess Fundamentals, and my Bee Sense book I’d checked out of the library and meant to return. I put in two volumes of the World Book—the “B” and the “M,” which were thick ones and held more information. I put in a pair of socks, Jockey underpants, a T-shirt, and nothing else, since my father had said we’d be back. I went to the bathroom and cleaned my teeth, washed my face and under my arms (“the airman’s bath,” my father called it). I combed my hair and used the Wildroot my father let me share. I hadn’t seen him, only heard his voice. “These children need to eat,” he’d said. “They can eat on the train,” my mother answered him in a testy way.
Berner was sitting in the living room, waiting, wearing her loose gray
-and-blue polka-dot dress and her white tennis shoes and white socks. Her hair was pulled back in the bushy way she usually wore it. She wasn’t wearing lipstick. She was sitting on the davenport with her freckled knees pressed together and looked irritated and pale, as if she still had her stomach ache. Her green overnight case sat between her feet—a present my parents had given to her for our fifteenth birthday. It bore a stamped alligator-skin pattern, and she’d made no bones about hating it. It had been a prize at a raffle at the base. When I passed the hall door, heading to my room, she stared at me from behind her glasses with a dead-eyed expression. The Niagara Falls puzzle, all put together, still lay on the card table, lacking only the piece my father had eaten. It could never be finished and was useless.
Our father walked out of the kitchen then, dressed as he’d been in the middle of the night. He looked large and loose-limbed and in good spirits, though he hadn’t shaved and was gray faced. “You’re a grown-up girl now,” he said to Berner. “You still don’t look like you feel very well. You better stay at home with me.” She was obviously about to say something contrary, but my mother’s voice came out of the kitchen. “Just don’t. Don’t pester her. She feels fine.”
My father gazed around the living room as if a lot of people were in it and were listening to him. He saw me and smiled and winked. “She’s my daughter,” he said loudly. “I’m not pestering her. I’m talking to her. I’ll take care of your fish while you’re gone,” he said.
That was when the doorbell rang out through the house. My father looked at me. He was still smiling. He extended his two arms in a frustrated way I’d seen him do before to express amazement—palms up, as if rain was falling out of the ceiling. “Well, I just wonder who this’ll turn out to be,” he said and began walking across the living room to open the front door. “Maybe it’ll be those Mormons, and they’ll have the good news we’ve been waiting for. We’ll have to just go see, won’t we?”