* * *
—
They were suddenly a family of four in the little apartment below Al’s mother, and with the dirty diapers that now reliably occupied the toilet, needing either rinsing out or soaking, life began to center on the plumbing. Al would come in from the road and, too tired half the time to see what was in front of him, urinate on the diapers, then flush. So the pipes would clog and Emma would be furious and cross with Eve, claiming that Eve was blindly flushing them down, likely along with her sanitary pads. It didn’t matter that it only happened when Al was home, or that the plumber only ever pulled diapers from the sewer line; Emma insisted it was Eve—who’d grown up with nothing but an outhouse, “for Lord’s sake!”—who was now wreaking havoc on her house.
“Just as I might have predicted!” Emma would stress to Al in a whisper just loud enough for Eve to overhear.
Though Al liked the idea of dodging the blame, he hated to side with his mother, because as far as he could remember, she’d never sided with him. Hadn’t it been his mother who’d stood beside his older sister at the front door each morning, the two of them doubled over with laughter as he’d headed out to first grade, their pet goat butting and biting him as he ran as fast as he could through the front yard? By the time he’d got to the other side of the gate, he’d have dropped all his books and pencils and broken down in tears, late for school and too afraid to go back and gather up his things. Wasn’t that a hoot! That goat was as tall as he was, and Al was so panicked about having to go out through that yard he could hardly eat breakfast. And hadn’t it been his own mother who’d beaten him nearly to death—a beating he remembered well enough to cite decades later, when they all came together to put her ashes in the ground?
“Of course, I did set the neighbor’s barn on fire,” he’d admitted, and all the elderly aunts and grown cousins gathered at the burial plot had laughed. “Still,” he’d said. “I was just a kid.” And with that, he’d wandered away from the family circle, to have a cigarette and to stand alone, gazing across the open prairie as if measuring the curve of the far horizon.
So when it came to the plumbing, like with other things behind and ahead of him, Al simply wanted out of it. And not intending to take his mother’s side, yet certain he couldn’t have possibly done everything Eve was accusing him of, he excused himself, leaving it for the women to figure out on their own.
“Mother, it’s your own son who’s done it,” Eve said the day the pipes finally gave way, leaving muddy puddles in the far corners of the unfinished utility area.
As Al took up his suitcase and started for the door, Emma gasped and stamped her foot at Eve. “He wouldn’t!”
“Well, he did,” Eve said with all the simplicity and directness of her youth. “This time and last time and the time before that. I’m sorry to say so, but it’s just a fact, which you can clearly see, since it doesn’t ever happen when he’s not here. Not once.”
“Well, I never!” Emma hissed. “Never in my life—!”
And as Al’s car pulled onto Deadwood Street, headed out of town, aiming for the open highway, Emma turned her back on Eve and stomped up the inside stairs so forcefully that her heels made the wooden stairwell ring out like a church bell.
* * *
—
Their boy, Leon, was so good. He was content and happy to do anything. He’d work in the kitchen with Eve, rolling dough for sugar cookies, cutting out shapes, using his step-up to reach the counter, then dragging it across the floor to get into the sudsy water and help with the dishes. He’d push René back and forth in her stroller to stop her from fussing, and run to give her whatever she needed—a bottle, a toy, a bite of his cracker. He’d let her pinch his ears and pull his hair as he put his smiling face next to hers for a photo.
But from the beginning René was different. She was difficult. She was always wanting something, and she seemed to know just what she wanted, and when, and how, and how much, and what for. Whenever anyone tried to put her down, she’d scream so hard that, in order to get through the day, Eve would have to call in all the relatives to rock her. Aunts rocked her, grandmas rocked her, older cousins rocked her, neighbors rocked her, even her brother rocked her before they all gave up, exhausted, and handed her back to Eve, the only one left, the only one still willing.
“Someone had better hand her a scepter,” Eve would say wearily, rocking and rocking, as the range and volume of René’s demands annihilated the will of anyone who dared come near.
“That little darling is intelligent, curious, single-minded,” Emma would counter whenever she happened to be nearby, favoring René in spite of everything, seeming to purposely set her above the rest of them, above Leon. “I say. Just a shining light.”
“Well,” Eve would venture, wanting to recalibrate, to set things straight, “she’s certainly figured out how to scream bloody murder. I’ll grant you that.”
* * *
—
Then one day, when all the rocking and patting and cooing in creation was obviously not going to be enough, Eve finally decided that, all evidence to the contrary, René didn’t run the world. She was just going to put her in her crib, close the door, and go back to the storybook she’d been trying to read with Leon—the one about the big truck making the new road. So, while Leon waited patiently, Eve jiggled René off to the bedroom.
Even with the door closed, they had to cover their ears. Leon shut his eyes and snuggled into Eve’s lap because he was really very sweet-hearted and couldn’t stand to hear the wailing.
“M-maybe we should g-g-g-go g-get her,” he said, looking up at Eve.
“No. She’s okay.”
“She’s c-c-crying so much.”
“Yes. That’s all right.”
Though Leon was good and patient, though you could take him anywhere and he was never any trouble—he’d sit looking at a book or rolling a toy truck across the floor, turning from time to time to check on his mother—he had a stammer, and Emma was happy to make it clear that she didn’t like that. Whenever Al was in earshot, she’d seize the opportunity and say something about it directly, something like “He’s a strange one” or “Too bad. Such a shame the boy can’t seem to manage.”
“Just slow down for him,” Eve would plead with Al when they were alone. “Let him take his time. He can do it if you just listen to him.”
Sometimes Al would remember to try, but mostly he’d just put on a worried grimace or, worse, look to Eve with pleading eyes, as if he were the helpless child. “Why can’t he spit out the simplest things? C-c-c-car. What’s wrong with him?” he’d say, turning his back on the boy, which was plenty enough to make Eve burn.
And whenever Leon stuttered in front of Emma, she’d stop him sharply and bend to throw a pointed finger in his face, saying, “Now, stop that, Leon! Think! Think before you say something!”
And Leon would be quiet and not say a word.
All the while René continued on, getting into every drawer, never listening, always whining and complaining and screaming if she didn’t get her way, as Emma smiled and cooed and bent to touch her cheek or give her a bite of something sweet.
So Eve’s heart was breaking for her boy, who was so good and so gentle, now wholly abandoned by the grandmother he used to make puzzles and bake cakes with. But she knew better than to start something with her mother-in-law. There was already enough poisoned water in the house to fill up a dry well, and there was no way to explain something like simple kindness, anyway—not to someone who didn’t already understand it. She knew that much.
“She’s a teacher, for crying out loud,” Al would say whenever Eve brought it up to him. “I’m sure she knows the right way to fix it.”
“And I’m telling you, she’s making it worse!” Eve would fire back.
And suddenly Eve and Al were going at it every time he came home, with things like “Y
our mother—!” and “Why can’t you just—!” and “Are you really such an ignoramus—!” and “How can you possibly think—!” They were born fighters—descendants of people who’d held on for their lives against drought, infestation, disease, and freezing weather—and anyone who heard them agreed that they were likely just getting warmed up.
And like that, the fault lines were established: Emma preferred René; Al preferred René because Emma preferred her and he knew better than to go looking for trouble; and Eve preferred Leon and Jayne, who was born just after Eve and Al finally found a way to move out on their own, and who was also to be numbered among the tender-hearted.
4
Mousetrap
Due to the risky nature of the cattle business, Al wouldn’t even consider signing up with some banker for a mortgage, so Eve and Al lived in Emma’s basement until they’d saved enough for a little place Al found in Philip, ninety miles west of Fort Pierre. It was a Rainbow Division home, part of a postwar prairie housing project, a dumpy little cracker box with a lopsided, dilapidated school bus stuck in the barren, red muck of the front yard. Inside, all the drains were backed up and the hoarded, moldy accumulations of the previous owner were piled to the tops of the windows, but they could pay cash for it and have enough left to do the work that needed doing.
First, they’d have to tow the bus to the crusher. Then they could haul the stacks of old newspapers across the road and make a bonfire. Once the house was cleared out, they’d dig a trench around the foundation to get into the crawl space and fix the plumbing. Then Al would reshingle the roof. Eve could level out the yard, and Al could truck in rock. They’d lay the front with white granite gravel Al could get cheap from the quarry; then Eve could start her rose garden up along the front of the house while Al dug holes around the back perimeter to set six-foot fence posts in cement, to improve the view across the alley and offer some privacy from the neighbors. When they were done, they’d paint that house a cheery, open yellow, the color of the sun, and Eve would plant bright red geraniums in the window boxes, keeping them watered and clipped back, blooming against the odds.
So Eve and Al moved in and got to work. It was backbreaking, pleasant work. There wasn’t anything that didn’t need doing, and they worked night and day. Al was home for whole long weeks at a time, out in the blistering sun, happy to be building something he’d be able to call his own. He’d poke his head in the back door, covered in dirt and crud, and ask for a glass of water.
“Sure, honey.” Eve would hand it out to him, filled to the brim. “I’ll be right out, soon as I get things squared away in here.”
And she was good to her word. She’d finish inside, get the new baby, Jayne, down for a nap, then put on her gloves and be out hauling or clearing. They worked side by side, talking, laughing, reviewing the plans.
Though Philip, South Dakota, was home to the golden, arid flatness of the plains—to fields, buttes, ravines all coming to form a single line in the distance; to cold winters, hot summers, and just enough rain for the overdue sun shower to etch out gullies before leaving a rainbow arching overhead; to hard red clay and brown grass, yucca and cactus, rattlers, blue racers, and bull snakes; to thigh-high tumbleweeds blowing across the open fields, even blowing around downtown—little by little they built what could only be called an oasis. It was a lush, blooming slice of paradise, likely easily seen on a photograph from space, if such a thing had existed: a little dot of green.
Eve had always wanted a view from up high, and this little fairy-tale house on the corner, from which she could see to the ends of the earth in nearly three directions, finally seemed like a good beginning. Though she wasn’t actually on top of anyone, at least her mother-in-law wasn’t stomping over her head. At least here, there would be no one rising above her. It was just what she needed, like a brand-new start.
And after Al was back on the road, having kissed her farewell in their new living room with the picture window, taking off his cowboy hat and bending her backward like something out of the movies, she made friends with the neighbor ladies from down the street, whose husbands were also missing, driving truck or farming some distance away. They’d strike up a game of Wahoo and let the kids run wild for whole long afternoons while they smoked cigarettes and drank tea, holding the babies in their laps, throwing dice and moving marbles, their cries of victory and defeat echoing out the open windows and across the fields, making prairie dogs run for their holes.
* * *
—
On his first day of school at Scotty Philip Elementary, Leon stood by the front door fidgeting and fretting in the scratchy plaid pants and matching wool vest Eve had gone to the trouble of sewing for him.
He had his dad’s dark, wavy hair, and Eve had given him a permanent the night before to set off the curl.
“Look at you.” She brushed a random lock from his forehead.
“Too hot.” Leon pulled at his pants and tilted his head with a crestfallen look, like a puppy. He exhaled a river of discouragement. “I d-don’t want to g-g-go.”
And René, observing all the pomp at close range, without a stitch of clothing on herself, piped up about taking his place.
“You be quiet,” Eve told her. Then she buttoned Leon’s vest and adjusted his collar. “Don’t worry, Leon. You know where your class is. And I’ll be right here.”
Leon nodded uncertainly.
“Come on,” she said, nudging him out the door.
He ran down the steps, then turned with a mournful look, as if he might just run right back inside, but Eve waved him on.
“There’s Jimmy! Go on. See you at lunchtime!”
So Leon disappeared down into the gulch after Jimmy, while Eve and René, naked as the day she was born, waited on the front steps until they saw him waving from the far side of the deep ravine. He’d shed his vest and was dragging it in the dirt behind him, happier now, free.
“Why do I bother?” Eve asked.
But René was busy watching the line of neighbor kids trooping by in their new skirts, patterned knee-highs, polished patent-leather shoes, until a group of older boys with neatly tucked-in shirts and belted pants, laughing and kicking stones, stopped to point and whoop at her.
“Those kids are idiots and ignoramuses,” Eve said, turning René so that all the boys had to gawk at was her bare backside. “You have nothing to be ashamed of.” But when René turned back around, the boys were still bent together, snickering and cutting their eyes at her. “Run inside,” Eve said firmly, stepping between her and the boys, giving her a push. “Don’t pay any attention.”
* * *
—
Most days after lunch, with Leon at school and Jayne asleep in her bassinet, Eve would find time to give René reading lessons in the old rocker. But not long after Leon had got three stitches above his right eye from running through one of the girls’ jump-rope games—getting his feet tangled in the rope and landing on the playground blacktop on his forehead—there was another afternoon call from the nurse. Leon was in the hospital. He’d barreled, one arm extended, straight through the glass door that led from the playground to the gym. The glass had shattered. By the time Eve got to him, he had nearly twenty stitches, up and down his arm, from his wrist to his elbow.
“Seems like your son needs to watch where he’s going,” the principal said the next day, when Eve called for an explanation.
“How could a door possibly break on a kid’s arm?” Eve was trying not to raise her voice. “I mean, what kind of a place is that?”
“We’ve had that same door for twenty years,” the principal replied coolly. “Until now.”
When Al got home a few days later, Eve reported what had happened, and Al called Leon into the front room.
“Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” he scolded. “What’s the matter with you? You could hurt someone.”
“That’
s not the point,” Eve said, turning sharply on Al. “Nothing’s the matter with him. What’s the matter with you? That’s not the point at all!”
Leon held his bandaged arm, swiveling his head back and forth between them.
“He got hurt. Twice now on the playground. For crying out loud, Al.”
“Seems like you can’t hold the whole school responsible for some kid not paying attention to where he’s going.”
“Just go back to bed, Leon.”
“No. You can stay here and learn something.”
“Go on,” Eve said.
Leon turned and shuffled away.
“If you didn’t want my opinion, you shouldn’t have asked,” Al started.
“I wasn’t asking your opinion, for God sakes. I just thought you should know.”
“So I don’t have one thing to say about it. Is this my house or not? Do I have a say about what goes on around here or not? I’m telling you, he needs to pay attention to where he’s going and not go running into glass doors, then crying it’s someone else’s fault for putting up a door in the first place. That’s just asinine.”
“You know what’s asinine? You! That’s what’s asinine.”
“You said it right there, Eve,” Al said. “Good point. You win.”
Al turned around and left town again, but the phone calls with the school, filled with cross-talk about who was at fault and discussions of conditions for Leon’s return to Scotty Philip Elementary, continued. Leon was taller than the other first graders, so that was a problem, and he seemed nervous and distracted, he didn’t pay attention.
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