by Sarah Willis
“Yes.”
“See you then. Good-bye, honey.”
“Good-bye.” I want to say thank you, but I don’t. I’m still too close to the moment when I hated him.
A few hours after Mr. Murphy leaves, Rusty and Brenda come over. They just open the door and walk in.
“We’re okay,” Brenda says. “We don’t have TB. Mom made them do the test where they draw our blood and take pictures of our chest. That’s what took so long. The lady that drew Helen’s blood missed and had to stick the needle in twice and she’s got this huge bruise now. Boy, is she pissed. But the X-ray tests were, were—shit, what’s the word?”
“Negative,” I say.
“Yeah, yeah, we don’t got nothing wrong with us,” Brenda says. “Did the vet come back? Is the cow sick?”
“Your dad’s gonna let me use your rifle,” Robert tells Rusty. “He’s going to take me hunting.”
“The vet didn’t come back,” I say. “So, is Helen still mad at us?”
“Oh, she’s mad,” Brenda says, picking up a comic book. “Wow! My mom won’t let us read these! Cool!” She sits right on the floor to read it.
“Your dad really said that, Rusty, about the gun. He really did. Do you think he means it?” Robert says.
“Sure he does. My dad doesn’t lie.”
“When can we go?”
“In the fall. You have to wait for hunting season. But I bet he’ll teach you to shoot at a target first.” Rusty picks up a comic. “Boy! Look at all that blood!” I know for a fact he’s looking at the girl’s boobs, which are covered with just an inch of torn shirt.
“Hoo boy, I can’t wait!” Robert says.
“Me neither,” Rusty says, but he’s not thinking about hunting.
Brenda and Rusty don’t say anything else. They’re too busy drooling over the comics. Robert and Megan join them. I’m suddenly disgusted with their fascination with blood and boobs. I go get an encyclopedia. M. I want to find some interesting facts to tell my mother tomorrow. There are no eggs to make cookies.
I open it up to the middle. Medicine. No. I skip forward. Michigan. No. I had to study Michigan last year. Molière. Okay. He wrote plays. He was the son of an upholsterer. Tartuffe was a satire on religious hypocrisy. She’ll like this. He died of tuberculosis. I close the encyclopedia and pick up Tomb of Terror.
That night after dinner at the Murphys’, Helen asks for a ride back to church. She wants to pray to God and ask Him how she can serve Him best after He saved her from tuberculosis. That’s exactly how she says it. Saved her. As if she had it and He cured her. I know if my mother were here she would love to debate this with Helen. I guess debate isn’t the right word.
It’s not that Helen believes in God that bothers me, it’s that she doesn’t believe in herself, that she was healthy, that she can exist between prayers.
And there is the thought that if God did save Helen, then He could be making my mother sick. And then what about me? Would He let me get hit by a truck? What do I have to do to get His attention so He can save me too?
After Mrs. Murphy and Helen leave, Rusty motions me to follow him and we go out behind the tree with the swing and make out for so long I forget about everything. My father, my mother, the cow, Helen, even God. I am just lips and skin and tingles and warmth. This is my heaven, I think. It’s not lust. It’s probably not even love. But this touching, hugging, kissing, nuzzling, being-wanted stuff is great. When Rusty’s father calls us to come in, it’s like waking up. I look around at the dusky sky, the stars beginning to appear, the twinkle of fireflies, our farmhouse across the road, and I think, Oh, I’m here.
And it’s like being hit, but at the moment it doesn’t hurt. I want more than anything to stay here. It’s an actual thought. I know what I’m thinking. I know what I want. Not to not move, but to stay here.
I want to graduate from high school here, sleep in Timothy’s bedroom until it becomes mine, swim in the pond next summer and the next until the fish know me as well as I know the paths through the woods and the names of all the birds. I want to live across the road from the people in the tar-paper house, play around with Brenda, question Helen, and kiss Rusty every night. I want this and nothing more.
I wake in the morning just before light. The bright, anxious sounds of birds announcing the new day come through the open window and I think they are calling to me. I go downstairs. No one else is up. I go outside. The air is so crisp it’s like washing my face with cold water; I am more completely awake right now than I can ever remember being. Last night I fell asleep quickly, into a place beyond sleep, deep and silent, the place I imagine caterpillars go to turn into butterflies. Now I feel as if I am a step beyond awake. Everything seems fragile and perfectly solid at the same time. I know this is a contradiction, but that’s okay. I feel I have accepted something, and I look at my hands, half expecting to see a new thing, a spectacular thing, resting in the palms of my hands. They are empty. They are mine to fill.
Anything is possible. Maybe everything.
I laugh, because there is too much inside me. A crow caws out a series of sharp warning cries, and from the corner of the garden a chipmunk bolts out and crosses the lawn. The sky is crimson in the east, a pale blue-gray above, with hazy strokes of purples and pink clouds that blend into each other like water paints. I look at the sky until my neck hurts, thinking of my father, how frustrating it must be to paint things that are real. I understand how he must disdain abstract painters, how he must feel superior, how he will never be satisfied.
I am going to see my mother. I want to hug her and I want to yell at her. Just like I can’t wait for my father to come home so I can kick him in the shins.
I walk across the road and go inside the house to get our good clothes off the basement line, then take them outside to dry in the morning sun.
A few minutes before ten, the Burns drive up and get out of their car. We are upstairs getting dressed. I look out the bedroom window at them as they stand around in their own front yard like visitors, too timid to knock on their own front door. They look awkward. Mrs. Burns adjusts something on Mr. Burns’ shirt, and pulls at the strap of his overalls. He says something and she shakes her head, then pats him on the shoulder.
I go to my sister’s bedroom and ask if she needs any help. She does. I fasten the fake pearl necklace she wants to wear. I don’t say a thing about it being too dressy for a sanitarium, nor do I mention the ratty alligator suitcase she has packed that lies on the bed.
Megan and I go to Robert’s room and ask him if he’s ready. He has on his good clothes too: a white shirt and beige pants. I’m wearing a red skirt, white blouse, and my patent-leather shoes.
We come down the steps together, shiny and polished, Megan carrying her suitcase. When we come outside, Mr. Murphy is talking to the Burns. They stop talking and look at us as if we just sprouted wings.
“Well, I’ll be, look at you all,” Mr. Burns says. “You going to a wedding or is this all for the doc?”
It’s only then I remember the veterinarian is coming this morning. He’s going to think us crazy, dressing up like this. But I’m glad he’ll see us at our best.
“My dad is coming,” I say. “We’re going to visit my mother.”
“That’s good,” Mrs. Burns says. “And you look very nice. You tell her we said hello. Tell her the garden looks lovely, she’d be proud.”
“I will.”
Now another car rumbles up the drive. Dr. Ostrum. He gets out of the car holding a large black flashlight. “Hello,” he says. He’s just as handsome as I remembered. Mr. Burns says hello back, but his voice is soft, almost weak, and it’s obvious he’s worried. It’s very quiet for a minute. Awkward. What breaks the silence is Rusty and Brenda running across the road.
“Is the cow sick?” Brenda yells. “Is he gonna kill her?”
“Did we miss anything?” Rusty asks.
“No, you’re right on time,” Dr. Ostrum says. “It’s okay I go check her ou
t now?” he asks Mr. Burns. Mr. Burns nods. Dr. Ostrum walks into the barn and we all follow, even Mr. Murphy.
I hear Mrs. Burns say, “Now, now,” to something Mr. Burns must have said. I’m nervous myself.
I’m glad when we find Edith’s still in the barn. We would have looked like fools walking through the pasture in our good shoes and clothes.
Mr. Burns helps the vet tie Edith to the post, then Dr. Ostrum stands to the side and behind the cow and lifts up her tail. He shines the spotlight at the cow’s butt and stares for a while. Then he says, “Would you hold this, please,” meaning the tail, to Mr. Burns. He looks at us kids. “I’m now going to palpate both injection sites. Can you see?”
We nod. Once again, I think of my mother. She would love it that we are watching a veterinarian palpate an injection site. She’d be humming and rubbing her hands together with the excitement of it all. She’d be asking questions like there was no tomorrow.
The vet prods around under the tail, then shines the flashlight farther down. He has to bend to get a good look. Edith is moving from foot to foot and she gives her tail a good swish. It comes out of Mr. Burns’ hand and swats the doctor on his shoulder.
“Just a minute more, my sweet,” he says, then he straightens up.
Dr. Ostrum looks at each of us before he says a word, his mouth all tight and bunched up. We know exactly what he will say, but when he does, I think I hear him wrong all the same. He actually repeats it, as if he knows. “Positive. I’m so sorry.”
“Damn it to hell,” Mr. Burns says. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Did my cow get her sick? Mrs. Anderson? Is that what you’re saying? My cow?”
“Are you going to kill Edith?” Megan says, in a loud, frightened voice, a voice so scared we all stop. She repeats it, quiet this time. “Are you going to kill Edith?”
“All right, now. Let’s just get her untied and let her out to the pasture, and then we’ll go out into the sun and talk this over.”
“Come on, kids,” Mr. Murphy says. “Let’s get out of the way.”
We go stand by the cars and wait.
Dr. Ostrum and the Burns come out of the barn and walk over to us. A car drives by; the driver, a woman, glances at us. We must be an odd assortment of people: the vet in his good jeans and Hollywood looks, the Burns in ordinary farmer clothes, Mr. Murphy in a white shirt stained with grease, Rusty and Brenda looking like they slept in their clothes, which they probably did, and Megan, Robert, and me looking like we’re going to church. I wonder what story that lady must have made up to explain us. I bet she would never have thought it all had to do with a cow that had tuberculosis.
“Now,” Dr. Ostrum says, placing a foot up on the front bumper of the Burns’ car, “your cow has a positive test result, that’s certain. I don’t know why. I don’t know how long she’s been sick, but my guess is, not long. Her breathing sounds fine and she looks healthy to me. But you never know. She has to be quarantined. Make sure she doesn’t get near any other cattle.”
“What’s quarantined mean?” Megan asks.
“She has to stay here. She can’t be transported anywhere except by special permit.” He looks at Mr. Burns. He’s trying to be kind, but Mr. Burns’ face is all red. “A Bureau of Animal Industry employee will come and complete the necessary forms. It will take a couple weeks, then someone will come and take the cow. You’ll be compensated.”
Mr. Burns brightens. “You’ll pay me for the cow?”
“Yes, sir, we will.”
“I see,” he says, nodding to himself. “Well, that helps.”
“And everyone here will need to be tested for TB. Anyone who came in contact with the cow.”
“We have,” Brenda says, offering her arm for his inspection.
“What will you do to the cow when you take her away?” my brother asks.
Dr. Ostrum doesn’t want to answer this. He looks at the ground for a minute, then at Mr. Burns, avoiding our eyes. “She’ll have to be destroyed.”
“We should have hid her,” Megan says to me.
“There’s still time,” I whisper. But we both know we won’t.
“I guess I’ll be going,” Dr. Ostrum says, running his fingers through his black hair. I wonder if he has to go read more cows’ vulvas, or if one a day is enough.
Mr. Burns shakes the vet’s hand, a big up-and-down handshake to show there are no hard feelings. “I am sorry,” Dr. Ostrum says. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news. It’s a rotten part of my job. But I was very glad to have met you all. I’ll call you about making an appointment to test the cattle. I imagine they’re fine, since they don’t come in contact with the milk cow.”
“Well, thanks, Doctor.” Mr. Burns lets go of the vet’s hand and folds his arms across his belly.
After Dr. Ostrum drives off we’re left in two groups. The kids and the adults. The Burns and Mr. Murphy are talking about something, and Rusty and Brenda are asking us if we’re going to tell our mother about the cow. I am trying to listen to the adults, because I think I hear Mr. Burns say something about the vet telling him maybe my mother gave the cow tuberculosis. I must have heard it backwards.
“So if you tell her,” Brenda says, “it might make her sad. Maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe you should all agree not to tell her. Like swear on a Bible or something, so it won’t slip out. I don’t think she should know, do you?” Brenda is tugging on my arm. She’s pretty strong for being so skinny.
I yank my arm away from Brenda and go over to where the adults are still talking in low tones. “Did you say my mother gave Edith tuberculosis?”
They look at each other, then back at me. Mrs. Burns is the one who answers. “He said it was possible, Tamara. Cows can get tuberculosis from humans. But it doesn’t matter, not really. No one’s blaming anyone. We’ll be paid for the cow.”
But it does matter, to me. This way it makes my mother seem dirty. Unclean. Infectious. “She didn’t get your cow sick,” I say, but I don’t repeat it, because I’m not so sure.
“It doesn’t matter,” Mrs. Burns tries to assure me. But it’s not her mother we’re talking about.
“I better be off,” Mr. Murphy announces, then walks off, going back toward the car he was working on earlier. I can almost see his whole body relax when he gets across the road. He is a man comfortable only in his own boundaries. I’m glad Rusty isn’t like him.
“We’re going to go too,” Mr. Burns says.
Mrs. Burns gives Robert, Megan, and me each a quick hug. “Give your mother our love,” she says, and they drive off.
We are ready when my father comes. My sister has been ready for a month. She clutches the little alligator-skin suitcase that she brought to the hospital when we got our tests, when she believed she would be sick and could stay with our mother. This time I don’t tell her there is no reason to bring it. I like it that she is so stubborn.
My father is so surprised to see us dressed nicely and waiting on the lawn that he gets out of the car and just stands there. We stay where we are for a moment, enjoying his surprise. He rubs at an eye with the heel of his palm and his lips tighten. He looks away. Not at anything, but just away from us. We are too hard to look at, standing here, dressed and waiting to be a family.
It’s Megan who moves first. She walks toward my father, carrying her suitcase, her patent-leather shoes leaving flattened grass in her wake. “Hi, Daddy. Let’s go.”
“Can’t I go to the bathroom first?”
“If you have to,” Megan says. “But make it quick.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He touches her head and gives her a kiss, right on her hair, and I think that must feel nice.
“You’re really ready,” he says to all of us. He grabs Robert by the back of the neck and gives it a squeeze. He looks over Robert’s head at me. “Hi, Tamara.”
“Hi,” I say.
He goes inside the house for a minute, then returns. “Let’s go.”
My father is in a jovial mood
, which makes driving with him all the more dangerous. He turns to look at me as he talks, and, sometimes over his shoulder, at Megan and Robert. He drives in the middle of the road most of the time, unless a car comes at us, then we feel the loose gravel clang against the underside of the car as he weaves onto the berm. My teeth are clenched tight and I hold the handle on the inside of the door. My feet are pressed flat to the curved floor of the car. He is talking nonstop, so I don’t have to unclench my teeth to answer him.
“It was so exciting,” he says. “Unbelievable, really. Who would have imagined? A critic from Newsweek was there. He seemed to really like my work. He stood in front of Through the Woods for ten minutes, just stood there, without a word. Then he shook my hand.” Through the Woods is a painting of the area where the pine trees meet the birch. In the branches of the birch are perched several little girls. One girl has flown into the pines, like an advance guard. There is something frightening about this picture, as if you want to call her back. My father’s pictures have never been frightening. They have been pictures you want to walk into, peaceful, quiet, gentle. But now his pictures have turned darker, the colors toned down, grays filling in places that used to be blues. They feel more real than his landscapes ever did.
I know, from his letter, why he paints like this. Knowing it feels like a secret we share, even though he doesn’t know I know. I feel like I belong in the front seat, next to my father, because I know this secret. It’s a funny feeling, to like my father. To appreciate him. It’s a bit scary. I feel like we might drive into a tree. I watch the road closely.
“I sold four pictures. I’m commissioned for two more and I got a promise for another show. I can quit painting couch pictures. God, what a relief.”
We turn onto a highway, and now there are more cars. He grips the wheel tighter and drives on the right-hand side, as cars pass us on the left. It’s fifty miles to the sanitarium, if we make it.
“I’m fifty-eight. I’ve existed in obscurity for so long now I never dared to hope. You don’t know what this means to me.”