“The fourth category would be for orphans of a different kind,” says Ms. Thadeous. “Those who have thrown off their parents completely. Abandoned them. As I did.”
“Ask for His forgiveness,” Anna says. “He will listen.”
“I’ve tried,” Ms. Thadeous says. “But the lines of communication into the void seem to be down at present.”
They hear Ruth’s voice in the hallway outside the door. Ms. Thadeous visibly braces herself. “I see that this is not your safe place,” Anna says.
“No,” says Ms. Thadeous. “Not here. Never here.”
44
DINNER IS SIMPLE. RUTH DEFROSTS some chicken breasts, pours a can of mushroom soup on top of them, heats up a can of green beans, puts a stack of presliced wheat bread, some margarine and salt and pepper on the table. It tastes surprisingly good.
“You’re too thin,” Ruth observes, looking at Anna. “You, too,” she says, inclining her head toward Lars.
He’s been noticeably quiet since they arrived. Taking Ruth’s measure. If he’s smart, rejecting the possibility of making inroads. In a minute he will do one of two things. Anna knows him. When he feels he has a chance with someone, he turns on his considerable charm. With people he has given up on, he becomes stern, sometimes offensively so.
After dinner, Ruth brings out a gallon of vanilla ice cream and without asking, spoons some into bowls. They all accept silently. She is a formidable woman.
Jim Fulson is looking shy and uncomfortable. Despite the heat in the house, he has his long-sleeved shirt buttoned over his wrists, hiding his scars. He’s combed his hair carefully, slicked it so that it appears even darker than usual. He looks large, uncouth, perched on a tiny chair, especially next to petite Ms. Thadeous and Ruth.
They are remarkably similar in the light. Fine-boned, with ruddy complexions. Ruth’s hair is pure white. She sits erect, the skin of her hands free of the liver spots you see on others of her age, which Anna estimates to be around sixty-five. The demeanor of someone with no regrets.
“You are lovers,” Ruth says. She is not asking a question. She has waited until they finish their ice cream, just as Jim Fulson started to relax. He stiffens up again.
“Of course,” says Ms. Thadeous mildly. “And not my first.”
Ruth nods, not apparently perturbed. A fact-finding mission.
“You are younger?”
“By four years.”
“Your education?”
“UCLA, BA in business administration.”
“Your occupation?”
“At the moment, unemployed.”
Seemingly satisfied, Ruth nods at Ms. Thadeous. A curt he’ll do. If he passed a test, it was a test with an odd rubric for success.
“You,” Ruth says abruptly, talking to Anna. “You have the hands of a healer.” And, when Anna looks down in bewilderment, she says, impatiently, “That’s just an expression. We say that about people in Christian Science who have a more direct line to Him than the rest of us. A deeper intuitive understanding of the relationship between the physical and the spiritual.” Then, without missing a beat. “You’ve been having headaches.”
The statement startles Anna. She doesn’t look at anyone else. “Yes,” Anna says. She’s been enduring one for two days now. The altitude, she told herself at first.
“That’s the price the gifted often pay,” Ruth says. “We will pray. Now.”
“Mom,” says Ms. Thadeous. “I will not allow this.”
“I will,” says Lars, abruptly, the first words he has spoken since dinner started. “Let us join hands.” He reaches his left hand out to Ms. Thadeous, his right hand to Anna. Ms. Thadeous slaps it away. She stands, pushes her chair back, and leaves the room. They hear the front door open and bang shut. Jim Fulson leaps up, grabs their coats from the hook behind the door, and follows her out.
“Let us proceed,” says Ruth, and so she, Lars, and Anna join hands and pray over the dirty dinner dishes. Anna shuts her eyes, but the only thing that comes to her mind is please.
“You’re hungry,” Lars says after a few moments. Anna opens her eyes to find Lars gazing at Ruth. “You desire things you are not getting.” He releases their hands and looks around the pristine kitchen, the walls painted a bright, unrelenting yellow without a calendar or other hangings to break up the color. Anna has read that if you put a baby in a yellow room it will scream uncontrollably. “You are alone,” says Lars. “You are lonely.”
“As you well know, those are not the same,” Ruth says. She places her hands in her lap. She certainly has dignity, Anna thinks.
“For you they are.” Lars is his most certain, his sternest self. The Lars Anna saw toward the end at school, preaching in the cafeteria, attracting a growing number of followers. Anna begins gathering the plates together.
“Enough of this,” Anna says. “Let’s do the dishes and go to bed.”
Both Ruth and Lars ignore her. “Don’t overstep your boundaries in this house,” Ruth tells Lars. “I see that you may well have a large ministry in your future. But I won’t be a member of it.”
Lars lifts his hands then drops them to his side as if to say, so what? Anna is a little shocked by his rudeness, but Ruth appears unperturbed.
“You slept the whole way here,” Lars says to Anna. “You can’t still be tired.” Then, softer, only for her ears, “We need to talk.”
“I am, and we don’t,” Anna says and begins running water in the sink. They wash the dishes in silence, the three of them working efficiently together. When they are finished, Jim Fulson and Ms. Thadeous still haven’t returned. They didn’t take the car—the keys are on a hook next to the telephone.
Lars takes the blankets Ruth set out and makes a bed on the couch. “Jim gets the floor,” he says. Anna helps him, and is about to head to bed herself when Ruth exits the kitchen. She is rubbing lotion into her hands.
“It’s been a while since I’ve had company,” she says. “Forgive me if this evening was uncomfortable.” She begins rolling up her sleeves, massaging the lotion into her arms, revealing deep purple bruises and some long scratches. Anna thinks she even sees teeth marks. Ruth notices what Anna is looking at. “The children where I work,” she says. “I care for kids up and down the autism spectrum. They can hit. They bite. They scratch. Me more than anyone. But that’s when they are still in control. They are merely playing a part. When they are truly out of control, I can tell when they’ve crossed that line. Then they listen to me. They don’t have the language. But they understand bodies. Better than anyone. I believe in the power of touch. When they cross that line, I use that power. I’m the only one who can do it.”
She finishes her ministrations, sits down in an armchair next to the couch that Lars is now lying on, blankets pulled to his chin.
Anna hesitates, then positions herself tentatively on a straight-backed chair next to the front door. “Tell us about Ms. Thadeous when she was young,” she says, tentatively. She’s not sure how Ruth will take this request.
“You admire her.”
Anna is surprised, and even more so to find herself admitting, “Yes. Very much.”
“But you also envy her.” Another statement. This Anna doesn’t answer.
“He’s an attractive young man,” Ruth says. “But not an ambitious choice. It won’t last. She’s like me, too strong, wanting a challenge always.” Anna thinks back to how wrong she’d been about Ms. Thadeous, mistaking her boredom for not caring, for weakness. Her lack of interest as a lack of passion. She is suddenly worried for Jim Fulson. He is in over his head. He will eventually get hurt. But simultaneous with her concern a small voice whispers to her about possibilities.
Ruth starts talking again.
“The home I work in is up in the hills,” Ruth says. “It has a large picture window looking out onto the Great Salt Lake, across that huge expanse of nothin
gness. I could ask, as so many of our visitors do, What on earth would cause anyone to choose this godforsaken place to settle? Of all the bountiful lands, rich in resources, that make up America, who would choose this? And the answer is, of course, that no one chooses this. One accepts it. And when I look over at what God has created out there, however loathsome it might appear to the untaught eye, I am grateful. You look at me and probably don’t see a grateful woman. Yet I am. I stay close to home. I know what my limits are. I know what would happen to my soul if I wandered in the wilderness, as Clara has chosen to do.”
Anna thinks of Clara’s anonymous childhood bedroom and her equally nondescript house in San Jose, and she is quiet.
“You might not think of Clara and me as much alike in anything but looks,” she says. “But she has iron in her soul. She will not stay with this young man. She knows she would destroy him if she did.”
“She’ll destroy him if she leaves,” Anna says.
“Nonsense.”
“You can be hurt by absence as well as presence,” Anna says.
Ruth appears not to have heard Anna. “My children up on the hill. Conventional wisdom is to treat them softly, with compassion. Now I can summon as much compassion as the next person. I can play that game. But what these children need, what all children need, are boundaries, walls they can bounce off. It makes them feel safe.”
Safe.
Then, a noise. The front door opens. Jim Fulson and Ms. Thadeous appear, both red-faced with cold, their breath coming fast from exertion. The small room is now crowded.
No one says anything for a moment. Then, “Where did you go?” Ruth asks.
“We walked,” says Ms. Thadeous. She has something to say. Turning to Anna first, she begins abruptly. “You,” she says. “You and your death wish. And you,” she gestures toward Jim Fulson, but doesn’t finish her sentence. He does not meet her eyes. Whatever happened out in the cold night, it wasn’t a good thing for him.
“And you,” Ms. Thadeous says to Lars. “God knows what you’re up to, but at least it’s not dying. You’re after something else. That it appears to be something highly suspect is not my concern.”
“Why did you come, then?” Lars asks. “And why did you tell us you were leading us to a safe place?”
Ruth leans forward. Her face softens. “Did you really say that?” she asks Ms. Thadeous.
“I wanted to bring you to the safest place I know,” says Ms. Thadeous to Jim and Anna. She doesn’t include Lars. “I thought I could protect you.”
“Here?” asks Ruth.
“Don’t be ludicrous,” says Ms. Thadeous. “The cabin. I need the keys. We’ll be leaving in the morning.”
There’s a moment of silence before Ruth sighs.
“Suffering,” she says. “It certainly is a part of life.”
“That’s exactly right,” says Lars. “We accept the suffering. For with that we become closer to Him.”
“That’s not what I said,” Ruth says sharply.
Lars doesn’t respond.
“Mom,” says Ms. Thadeous. “We want the keys to the mountain cabin. No evasions.”
Ruth says nothing.
“You do still have it? You haven’t sold it?”
“Of course not. I rent it out as a holiday home. Or rather, an agency takes care of that for me. It’s the best investment your father ever made. Winters have been slow, what with the drought. No skiing. But we manage to keep it rented in summer.”
“It wasn’t an investment. He loved it. So did I. And we need it. Tell your agent it’s booked for the foreseeable future. Give me the keys.”
Ruth leaves, goes into the back of the house where her bedroom is located. After a moment she returns with a key ring. “Sharper than a serpent’s tooth,” she says as she hands it over to Ms. Thadeous.
“Don’t get me started,” says Ms. Thadeous, and leaves the room.
45
ANNA IS AWAKENED BY A hand on her mouth. She is instantly alert. Of course she should have anticipated this. Anna nods to Lars, who is kneeling by her bed. He carefully takes his hand away. Anna sits up, trying not to rustle the bedclothes, places her bare feet on the floor, stands without making a sound. Ms. Thadeous is asleep, her mouth open. She snores, lightly. Her clothes in a heap on the floor, her bare shoulders gleaming in the moonlight. If Anna were Jim Fulson, the sight would have undone her.
Lars already has his backpack and Anna’s two Safeway bags of clothes by the door.
Anna lifts the keys from the hook next to the phone, takes her bag and is almost out the door when she hears a noise behind her. Ruth, in a long white nightgown, but looking as perfectly groomed as when fully dressed, is standing in the hallway, her right eyebrow arched.
“It won’t do them any harm to be stranded for a while,” she says. “Bring down their pride.” She smiles. “No, it wouldn’t hurt a bit.”
She holds out a map. “You’ll need this, wherever you’re going,” she says. “I pray you are going toward Him, not away.”
“Toward, definitely,” says Lars.
“We hope,” says Anna.
46
PEOPLE TALK ABOUT THE MAGNIFICENCE of the American West. Anna can appreciate that. A magnificent emptiness. A blank landscape for fantasies or nightmares. But when they leave Salt Lake City and head east on Route 80, the sun just rising in the east, she also wonders what mote in her eye prevents her from seeing what so many others have rejoiced in. The dawn sky is overcast, but no snow is forecast. Lumpy, lifeless land.
The Great Plains stretch for miles in all directions. The absence of fences, the fact that the landscape hasn’t yet been despoiled by man, should make this a sublime experience. Yet the dull frozen dirt does not inspire. Neither does the bleached-out sky. Occasionally they come upon evidence of human existence amidst the flat gray terrain: slanting wooden shacks that seem abandoned save for the curtains in the windows, and vehicles in the yards. They also pass bright yellow, green, and red commercial buildings at strategic crossroads: modular gas stations with convenience stores attached. Subways, 7-Elevens, other places that discourage loitering, designed for quick ins and outs. Take your stuff and be on your way. How do they staff these places? Anna wonders. The clerks are young, about Anna’s age. Where do they live? Go to school? Homes, schools, or other signs that people inhabit this landscape are nowhere to be seen.
“He designed this place to make you feel that improvement is necessary. Or at least possible,” says Lars. “That you must do something to help.” Anna just nods. She can’t imagine any way the landscape could be improved, made more hospitable. “If not for Fred Wilson’s operation, we could have gone in a different direction,” he says. “Into the city, to San Francisco, to LA, witnessed the crowds and the despair there. A different kind of misery. But here is where He placed us. It is for a reason, I’m sure. My ministry is here. The heartland.”
“The heartland? The emptyland,” Anna says, but stops there. She is surprised at what she was going to say next. She misses Sunnyvale. She likes being in a valley, the enclosure of mountains on all sides, knowing the infinite waters of the sea are within easy reach. Yet these people, few as they are, survive in this landlocked place, blown about by winds, exposed as ants on a cement path.
“We’ll help Fred Wilson in any way we can,” Lars says. “And after he achieves his goal—after he breeds a pure Red Heifer—I’m going to look for a church in this region. A church compatible with our beliefs. A place we can serve.”
Why you say “we,” white man? thinks Anna, but she doesn’t say anything.
They’re now in Wyoming. Lars is stretched out in the back seat, the map on the floor beside him. They stopped consulting it hours ago. A long line almost to the edge of the state, then a left turn and north for another hundred miles. Nothing to do for hours except keep her foot on the gas. Steering is hardly necessary; the ro
ad is so straight and true.
They pass Rock Springs. Where the West Begins. Without Lars, Anna could easily imagine herself as the only living thing within hundreds of miles. This is not a pleasant feeling. Anna had always pictured this part of the country to contain developments like Columbus: neighborhoods of small brick houses. Cement instead of grass. Leafy trees growing out of squares cut in the concrete. Chain-link fences. More pit bulls than Labradors. Anna clearly suffers from a failure of imagination, because she could never have conjured up this wilderness.
No music on the radio, nothing but static as she drives. Reminders of the transience of life abound. White wooden crosses appear every so often, marking the spots of fatal highway accidents. Anna counts more deaths than the living people she’s seen since Utah. Many of the memorials decorated with plastic flowers, roses and carnations. Some have stuffed animals next to them. At one intersection, a blossom of crosses, a whole busload must have perished. Anna stops and both she and Lars get out of the car to look at the names carved into the weathered wood. Some of the flowers are fresh. Yet the sign May they rest in peace is dated sixteen years earlier. “They would have been Ms. Thadeous’s age,” says Lars. They get back into the car and keep driving.
They approach a small town at 9 am. In California it would be considered the height of the morning rush hour, the coffeehouses full and expressways clogged, but Crawford, Wyoming, appears deserted. All the storefronts say closed. The only sign of life is on Second Street, at the senior center, where a middle-aged woman is loading trays into the back of a van. A gas station is kitty-corner to it. Anna pulls up, stops the car and tries the Regular unleaded pump. It works. The office is unlocked, with a cash box on the counter. Please only take exact change, we’ve come up a little short lately. Much appreciated! Lars and Anna look at each other. Is this possible? Apparently, yes. Anna pays for the gas, leaves a twenty-dollar bill as a tip in gratitude, and they keep moving.
Coming of Age at the End of Days Page 19