by Nancy Jensen
Three days—three glorious days—she and Lynn had the house to themselves. When Carl showed up, he’d already gotten a job selling furniture. He’d bathed and shaved, had bought some new clothes, and while he still couldn’t be called handsome, he looked nice enough to introduce as her husband. At first, she thought maybe it was going to be okay with them, because he seemed as happy as she was about being away from the farm, but soon he was ignoring Lynn like before and treating Rainey like she had the brains of a caterpillar, calling her stupid and mocking the idea that she could ever have been a bookkeeper when she had trouble balancing the checkbook, making a dunce cap for her out of a sheet of newspaper when she forgot to put a new bag in the sweeper after taking out the full one.
She was unhappy, but what was there to do but make the best of it? She couldn’t think past that thought then. He was her husband, simple as that, so she had to find a way to live with him. It wasn’t as if they spent all that much time together. Most nights, after he swallowed his supper, he’d leave again and stay out until past midnight. After a while, Rainey didn’t even wake up when he fell into bed beside her. In the morning, just before she headed out the door with Lynn, she’d nudge Carl and tell him the coffee was ready and that he had to be at work in an hour.
If the drugstore hadn’t flooded, they might have gone on like that for years without her knowing what Carl really was. A pipe had burst in the employees’ restroom, but no one had realized it until a customer waved a bottle of Vicks Formula 44 above his head and shouted that he was nearly ankle-deep in water. The manager shooed all the customers out and locked the door, and the employees waded through the stockroom, trying to find a shutoff valve. When at last the water was stopped, someone called a plumber, and the manager told them all to go home and not to come back to work until he called in a day or two.
Rainey’s first thought had been the money, how she and Carl couldn’t afford to lose any of her pay, so to save the couple of dollars that would have gone to the sitter for the afternoon’s work, she stopped on her way home to pick up the baby. Lynn was cranky, having been woken from her nap, and Rainey was so busy trying to settle her, she didn’t notice, when she parked in front of the house, that Carl’s El Dorado was three or four spaces further up.
She was hoping to get Lynn back to sleep, and she was glad, once she was home, that she could lie down with her daughter and maybe get a little nap herself. She set Lynn on the living room floor, handed her a teddy bear, tossed her purse onto the couch, kicked off her wet shoes, and went to turn down the covers.
And there was Carl, wearing nothing except the white shirt he’d put on that morning, feet on the floor, chest on the bed.
And the naked man curled over him, thrusting—all Rainey could think of in that first paralyzed instant was that he had blond hair, a beard, and she didn’t know him.
Behind her, Lynn called, “Mommy!” and Rainey swung round, ran back to the living room, scooped up her child, and didn’t look back.
What she had seen in the bedroom flashed in her head over and over like a slide stuck in a projector, and each time, she took in new details: Carl’s shorts—the ones flecked with the tiny brown shields—clinging to the edge of the mattress; one of the pair of pictures with the finches and the ferns knocked almost sideways on the wall behind the bed; the alarm clock on the nightstand facedown; an open jar of Vaseline tipped over on her pillow. She looked and looked, not understanding what she saw or what it meant any more than if her baby had transformed into a hissing cobra before her eyes: incomprehensible, horrible.
She had no recollection of getting Lynn into the car, or of picking up the exit for the expressway on the other end of town, or even of having decided where she was going. One minute she had stood frozen in the doorway of her bedroom in Siler and the next, four hours later, she was in the doorway of Sally’s apartment in Indianapolis, Lynn shivering in her arms, yowling, her red corduroy pants soaked through with urine.
“Rainey, your shoes,” Sally said while Rainey shook her head, saying, “I was afraid to stop,” as if that explained why she wore none and why her stockings were splotched with black, pilled and torn around the toes. She still had on her blue smock from the drugstore, the sleeves and shoulders streaked with makeup from where she had scrubbed away her tears as she drove.
With the help of half a bottle of wine, Rainey finally choked out the scene to Sally, but it was Sally who had to explain its meaning, because Rainey couldn’t fathom how men could do such things. The next day, carrying a purse stuffed fat with tissues and wearing a borrowed dress, she’d found a job and, a couple of hours later, a divorce lawyer. She’d tried then to arrange it so Carl couldn’t get near Lynn, but because she couldn’t bring herself to tell the lawyer what had really happened, there wasn’t anything he could present as grounds to deny regular visitation.
That was another mistake, piled on a great wobbly stack of them, but at the time, it didn’t seem to matter. As bad as her three years with Carl had been, the solution appeared to roll right out before her, a kind of red carpet reward for having made it through. When she told Carl she wouldn’t be asking for any money, he told her he wouldn’t challenge the divorce. When she told him the Chevy wouldn’t hold up to driving Lynn down to Siler every two weeks, he told her he didn’t want to waste his weekends coming to Indianapolis. That first Christmas after she left, when she took Lynn back to Newman to see Mother and Daddy, Rainey had held her breath whenever the phone rang or a car passed the house, but she never heard or saw a sign of Carl. Plainly, he had made up his mind to forget all about Lynn, so Rainey made up her mind that Lynn would forget him too. Rainey never mentioned his name, never showed Lynn any pictures of Carl or told her any stories about him—and it worked. It wasn’t until Lynn started kindergarten that she even began to notice that other children had two parents, and when at last she asked where her daddy was, Rainey told her daughter that her father was a bad man who had never loved them or wanted them. “You won’t ever have to know him, sweetie,” Rainey said, certain Carl would never be anything more than her own private, sickening memory.
It had all worked better than she could have hoped, and even though she and Mother argued and fussed, even though her paycheck was always spent weeks before it was earned, Rainey told herself she was lucky—right up until five or six months ago, when Carl had called the house, saying he wanted to start having Lynn with him every other weekend. Things had changed, he told her. He’d gotten himself a good job with the county, working for the road department. In another year or two, he’d probably be a supervisor—or so he claimed. Since he didn’t know if he would marry again—Rainey snorted at this, but Carl ignored her—Lynn would probably be the only child he would ever have, and ever since his mother had died, his father had been asking about Lynn, saying how he wanted to know her. Rainey told him to go to hell and slammed the phone down—she couldn’t imagine how he’d found out they were in Newman again—and when he didn’t call back, she let herself believe the crisis was over, but a few days later, she got a letter from a lawyer, saying that if Rainey didn’t abide by the original visitation agreement, Carl would take her back to court. In the letter, there was even a day and a time set for when Carl expected to pick Lynn up for her first visit.
Right away, Daddy called somebody from church who gave him the name of a lawyer, Mr. Prather, and Rainey took an afternoon off work to go see him, but he told her there was nothing he could do. Even if they could manage to get Carl’s parental rights rescinded—“And there’s not much hope of that,” Mr. Prather said—it would take time. Months at the very least, possibly years. And so Rainey had made herself tell him about Carl and the other man—everything she had seen in the bedroom. When she began to cry, the lawyer came around his desk to sit beside her and offered her his handkerchief.
“I’m so awfully sorry,” he said, shaking his head in disgust. “A nice young woman like you, churchgoing family.” While Rainey wept out her fears, Mr. Prather agreed
that it would be a terrible thing indeed to let her child be exposed to that perversion. “But,” he said, “I can’t build a case on what you’ve told me—only one incident, so long ago. It would be your word against his.” It wasn’t enough, he said. She had to let Lynn go.
What agony it was, that first day Carl came for Lynn. Having neither seen him nor even heard of him for nearly five years, Lynn squalled in terror, begged not to be made to go, and tried to pull away from him as he led her to the car. For the next thirty hours, Rainey paced the house and smoked, praying to whoever might be listening that Carl would realize that Lynn hated him—that she would always hate him—and he would give up this farce of being a father. Lynn was still in hysterics when Carl brought her home, and Rainey believed her prayer had been answered. But two weeks later, Carl came again, and though Lynn fought him, she did so with less intensity. After a while, there were no tears at all, and not so long after that, Lynn began to smile, even laugh, as the time to go with her father approached. In the last couple of months, beginning days before Carl was due, Lynn would chatter excitedly about the places he had promised to take her, snapping “No!” at Grace when she asked if she might go too, and the moment Lynn saw his car pull in the drive, she’d be out the door, squealing, “Daddy!”
Carl kept Lynn charmed with movie tickets and new toys and days at the fair—things Rainey could rarely afford. He was buying her baby, plain and simple, and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.
“Is she staying quiet?” Mother came in with the big mixing bowl, which she set on the floor by Lynn’s bed. “This water’s good and cool.” She wrung out the washcloth that had been soaking in the bottom of the bowl and handed it to Rainey.
Lightly, so as not to wake Lynn, Rainey wiped the shining sweat from the girl’s face. “Where’s Grace?” she asked, handing the washcloth back to her mother.
“With Hans. On the porch.” She passed the freshly wrung cloth back to Rainey. “Poor little thing was so tired, she dropped off first thing. They’re stretched out together in the lounge chair—but your daddy’s awake.” After another two or three passes of the washcloth, Mother drew in a long, whistling breath. More than any other, that sound pricked Rainey’s nerves to attention.
“Just tell me—once and for all,” her mother began.
“Oh, please, Mother. Not this. Not tonight.” She couldn’t bear another of her mother’s determined explorations—not now—testing every little opening that might trip Rainey into blurting out the name of Grace’s father.
“It’s not that,” her mother said. “I just want to know—I think you owe it to me and your daddy to tell us—if one of these days some other buzzard’s going to turn up wanting to take Grace from us.”
Rainey pressed the damp cloth to her own throat, then turned it to the cool side and held it at the back of her neck. “No, Mother,” she said. “No. Never.”
“How can you be sure? That’s what you said about the first one—he’d never come back.”
“It’s not the same, Mother. You just have to believe me.”
Almost from the moment Rainey had met Marshall, she had resolved not to tell her mother about him. She just couldn’t face all those hours on the telephone, with Mother wanting to know if she had learned anything at all, lecturing her on what a poor judge of men she was, reminding her that she was a divorced woman with a child and that she had to be careful not to give people anything to talk about and twist against her. So nobody knew about Marshall, not really. At four, Lynn had loved his attention, and though she had cried a little when Rainey explained that Marshall had to go away, her memories of him faded quickly. Sally, sworn to secrecy, knew about Marshall, of course, knew that he was Grace’s father, but the sweet recollection of their time together was Rainey’s alone.
“Rainey, we’re none of us strong enough to go through this again,” said Mother. “I’m asking you—what makes you sure?”
“Because he doesn’t know about her. I wasn’t with him long. He never knew I was pregnant.” Now that she’d said it, Rainey was relieved. Her mother would no doubt think her the worst of tramps, but what did it matter? She went on: “And I didn’t try to find him to tell him because I knew he wouldn’t answer to it if he did know”—this was a lie, but a lie that would surely put an end to her mother’s questions—“so he won’t ever come. Grace is mine. Ours,” she added to appease her mother, all the while thinking, But Marshall is mine. Only mine.
No other time in her life was so free of regret—three lovely months, if she counted from the Saturday night when she’d tripped over Marshall while he knelt in front of the row of mailboxes, trying to open a package with a nail clipper. She’d been carrying a paper grocery sack filled with garbage, looking side to side, watching her step as she came down the stairs from her apartment, never expecting someone might be on the floor right in front of her. She’d managed to catch herself when her shins banged into him, but the bag had catapulted from her arms, scattering coffee grounds, carrot ends, cereal boxes, and cigarette butts across the black-and-white linoleum on its way to the umbrella stand, where it burst on impact.
Silently, the young man—she’d never seen him before—had put down the nail clipper, pushed his package against the wall, and started sweeping coffee grounds with the edge of his hand onto an open National Geographic. Rainey watched, amazed at how much he was able to get up without a cloth. And she would never have thought, as he did, to take an empty cornflakes box and tap the grounds off the magazine into it. He had torn off the edge of another box and was starting to use it to sweep up the cigarette butts when Rainey finally said, “Oh, please. Don’t do that. I’ll get a broom and another bag,” and hurried up the stairs.
When she got back, he was standing waiting for her, and she was startled to see how short he was. Kneeling, he’d given the impression of height somehow, in spite of his narrow shoulders and small head—not at all the kind of man she had dreamed would rescue her.
He held out the remains of the bag, folded together like a wonton, into which he had gathered and compacted all the trash, and he placed this carefully inside the fresh bag Rainey held open. Taking the bag from her and nodding to the entry door, he said, “If you’ll open that…” and then he lifted the lid on one of the cans just outside and dropped the bag in.
“Thank you so much,” Rainey said. “Sorry about your magazine. Did I hurt you when I ran into you?”
“Fine, fine,” he said—in answer to what, she didn’t know. He seemed confused, looking back and forth between the package on the floor and his dirty hands, which he kept trying not to put in his pockets.
“Let me get that for you,” Rainey said.
“No, that’s fine,” he said. “I’ll get it later.”
How strange he seemed, skittery. She wondered if he was nervous about the box, which was a thought that made her suddenly nervous. “Well, then,” she said, turning back to the steps, reminding herself to walk slowly, casually, and then to bolt the apartment door the moment she closed it. “Really, thanks for your help,” she said, looking over her shoulder toward him but avoiding his eyes.
“It’s just—” he said. “It’s just—well, you see my hands are filthy and my keys are in my pocket, and…”
Rainey stared at him, breathing hard. Was he suggesting she reach into his pocket, fish out the keys? She thought of Lynn asleep and alone upstairs. Sally wouldn’t be back from her date for hours.
The man reddened a little. “I’m sorry. I’ve only just had these pants dry-cleaned and I need them Tuesday.” He held his hands out like a child might. “Could I come in just for a moment and wash my hands?”
“Sure,” Rainey said, though she was not at all sure, her voice cracking in proof. “We’re just to the right of the landing.” Inside the apartment, she pointed to the bathroom and he went in. She leaned against the door frame, watching him carefully, trying to pretend she wasn’t. “So what’s in the package?” She congratulated herself on how conversat
ional the question sounded.
“Potsherds.”
“Potsherds,” she repeated.
“Is this one okay?” he asked, pointing to a hand towel, and she nodded. “I’d left them—the potsherds—with my parents for safekeeping. I’m going for a teaching assistantship—for graduate school—and I need them for a presentation I have to give. At IU. They’re in Arizona,” he said. “My parents. That’s where I found the sherds—on some property they’d just bought near Flagstaff. I asked them to give me a year to dig before they started building. They’re good like that, my parents. My father just retired.”
Rainey hadn’t imagined he could talk so much—not that she really understood what he was talking about. “So you have an interview on Tuesday?”
“Yes. Tuesday.” He was relaxed and smiling now. “Would you like to see them? The sherds?”
“I would,” she said, forgetting all about her fear, now trying to conjure up a picture of what she was going to see. From the door of the apartment, she watched him retrieve his package, handing him a pair of scissors when he returned. “I thought maybe you were a Communist.” She laughed.
“No,” he said. “An archaeologist.”
Across her kitchen table, he spread the fragments of clay vessels—unimaginably old—some pieces so small, they might have been dust, others large enough to suggest the curve where a hand had once rested. He talked on and on, practicing his presentation, she supposed, and while he did, Rainey thought what an inadequate word clay was to embrace what lay before her—the reds, browns, grays, and ecrus. Each time she picked up a piece to hold it in the light, Marshall showed her how to see what she would never have noticed on her own—a faint residue of paint, or the eroded remainder of an etched design, now no more than a scratch, fine as a hair. Earth, she thought. Here was earth, in all its meanings.