by Jane Smiley
However compromised and doomed I or others considered the arc of Pete's life, to his daughters, it certainly appeared as fresh and full of possibilities as their own lives did. I realized I had nothing to give Pammy and Linda on the occasion of their father's death, since I had learned nothing on the occasion of my mother's death. I went into their rooms and made their beds, which aroused Linda's suspicions even further-she stood in the doorway watching me, then turned and went back to the TV without a word.
By the time Rose returned, she was herself again, matter-of-fact, almost crisp. The girls were on her as soon as she came through the door. She put down her purse and poured a cup of the coffee I had warm on the stove. She sat at the table. She said, "Girls, I have some really bad news for you." They sat down, covering every square inch of her face with their stares. I went out the door, slamming it to drown their cries. Across the road, Jess Clark was pacing back and forth in front of the big picture window. He waved, but when I didn't respond, he didn't come out.
By dinnertime, the marvelous engine of appearances had started up.
George Drake, who owned the funeral home in Zebulon, drove by in his Cadillac. The girls walked down to my house, and Suzanne Patrick picked them up to take them swimming. Pammy wore her sunglasses every minute she was in the house. She asked if she could stay with me instead of going swimming, and I said that it would be easiest if she did everything her mother wanted for the next few days. Her eyes were red, but mostly she had that tormented look of someone striving to get through the next few minutes. They were picked up. Some women we knew from church brought hot dishes and salads. What they couldn't lit in Rose's refrigerator, they carried down and put in mine. They all said, "Oh, Ginny, it's such a shame," and "If there's anything at all I can do, don't hesitate to call." Two said, "How could he be so stupid like that?" and Marlene Stanley said, "You just hate to see all that talent go to waste that way."
A feature of this machine was a gate that allowed certain things to be known and spoken of but not others. That Pete had been drunk and was also a known drinker had to have admittance. That he had slapped Rose around and broken her arm once upon a time could be alluded to, but only in the context that he seemed to have changed, when so many of them don't. Rose's feelings were not probed. She assumed the role of grieving widow, and people seemed glad that she did. Loren came to the funeral, though he sat in the back and left early. Caroline sent a small wreath with the note, "From Caroline and Frank." Daddy did not come, and I realized that while I assumed he was still at Harold's, he might easily be in Des Moines.
I realized that I had accepted Pete's threatening Harold without thinking much about it, as if something in Pete had to give, but no one had in fact said what really happened, except Harold, and his story was confused.
A lot of people cried, if not at Pete's particular death, then at the idea of death or the sight of his daughters in their white dresses, looking bewildered and diminished. The gate proscribed the entry of other realities: our father, Ken LaSalle (though not Marv Carson, who came in his inquisitive way and said to me, "It's just you and Ty now, I guess. This is a big place for one guy to farm"), the common knowledge that Pete would have been a reckless and unorthodox farmer without Daddy and Ty, his threats against Harold Clark, which were widely held to be just drink talking. How else could you understand them? I didn't know. Appearances went well enough. It came to me that the eyes for receiving these appearances were Pammy's and Linda's.
Possibly, because they had nothing to compare this to, it looked good enough to them.
Ty gave the eulegy. He said that Pete was a hard worker and more fun sometimes than a farmer was supposed to be. He said that Pete liked to sing oil the job, and knew a lot of songs, and that anyone who had had the chance to hear Pete play any of the six instruments he knew was a lucky man. He said that Pete loved his wife and his daughters, and they loved him, and that he, Ty, felt lucky to have known Pete.
Henry Dodge said that the sort of accident that had claimed Pete could claim any one of us, and we should take it as a warning. He thanked God that no one else had been involved. He said, too, that Pete was a good man and loved his wife and children, and wouldn't have wanted to leave them like this. He asked, on behalf of Rose and Pammy and Linda, for the wisdom to understand this apparently meaningless death. He offered his own personal hope that this tragedy would show our family the way toward reconciling our differences.
Later, leaving the church, two or three of the older women did find something to be grateful for, and that was that Pete's own parents hadn't lived to see this.
It was exhausting. I was asleep by nine-thirty. Ty was gone somewhere. He was next to me, and sleeping heavily, by one-thirty, when the phone woke me.
Rose's voice said, "Can you come down? I need to talk to you."
I started talking before I remembered our new circumstances. I said, "Where's P-" Then I remembered. She said, "I'd be glad to come there.
I'm crazy to get out of this house, but Pammy keeps waking up and calling for me. Last night she woke up about every forty-live minutes.
I can't sleep anyway.
"Aren't you exhausted?" Even though I whispered, Ty, disturbed, rolled over. I slipped to the floor from the edge of the bed.
"Way beyond that. I think I could stay up for days at this point."
I cupped my hand around the speaker. "Okay. Okay." I put the phone on the hook and rubbed my hands over my face. After the cancer diagnosis, she had stayed up for days. Three, to be exact. I felt for my sneakers under the bed.
EVERY WiNDOW iN Rose's house was lit. Every one in Jess's house was dark.
Rose threw open the door and said, "Want a drink? There's plenty left over."
I took a vodka and tonic, the same as Rose. She said, "Drink it to Pete. He would have done at least that for you."
It was rare to see Rose intoxicated, but reassuring in a way. The vodka made me sneeze. I sat down on the couch. The living room was immaculate, the real Rose. Apparently she had been drinking and cleaning. She saw me looking around and said, "You should see the kitchen cabinets. I wiped all the jars with soapy water and put down new shelf paper. Edged in black for widows. The funeral home has a concession. Shelf paper, drawer liners, inflatable sweater hangers, dusters made from raven's feathers, everything for the housewife-widow."
"I don't believe you.
"Oh, Ginny, you're so literal-minded."
"No, I'm not. I just don't have much of a sense of humor right now.
"You used to."
"When?"
She sipped her drink, looking at me, then said, "I can't remember."
I smiled.
She said, "Where's Ty?"
"Asleep."
"I'm sorry I woke you, but I knew you would be in bed, and I made up my mind to call you anyway.
"Do you think it's a good idea, drinking if you have to tend to her?"
"I told her I was going to."
"You did?"
"Well, sure. I didn't want her to be surprised or scared if I seemed weird to her, so I said I felt like getting a little drunk and she said that would be okay as long as I didn't take the car anywhere."
"How are they? I feel so bad for them."
"You've seen them. They're shell-shocked. I hate Pete for that."
This she spat out. Then she called out, "You heard me, Pete. You really fucked up this time."
I sat forward. "Shhh!"
"So what if they hear me! I want them to hear me! He did fuck up.
Not my life, but their lives. I want them to know I know it!"
"He's dead!"
"So I should feel sorry for him? The way he died, I'm sure he didn't know the difference."
"I wish you wouldn't "Get obstreperous?"
"Well, yeah."
"Shit." But she said this good-humoredly.
She took another sip of her drink and stood up. I looked at her.
She said, "Hey. Get up."
"What?"
"Get up. Stand up."
I stood up.
"Let's move the couch out from the wall. Here, help me." She was already pushing the coffee table out of the way. She pushed up the sleeves of her sweater. I said, "It's awfully late for this, anyway, this is a good place for it. It's the longest wall space. Otherwise it would have to go diag-" "I don't want to move it. I just want to push it away from the wall so I can get the vacuum cleaner hose back there."
"It's two o'clock in the morning!"
But there was no stopping her. We bent down and heaved the couch about a foot away from the wall. Rose got the Electrolux out of the hall closet and plugged it in. After she vacuumed behind the couch, we tilted it onto its back and she vacuumed dustballs off the underside.
We pushed it back. Over the grinding roar of the vacuum cleaner, she yelled, "Let's pull the stove out and I'll clean behind there."
We pulled the stove out. In fact, it was fairly clean behind there.
Rose made herself another drink. I poured a glass of orange juice.
She said, "Let's go out."
"Out where?"
"Just outside. We can look at the stars or something."
"What about Pammy?"
"I'll check her. If she's asleep, okay. If she's awake, I'll just tell her."
Two minutes later we were standing in the middle of the county road.
Rose was looking at the stars. I was looking at the left-hand window on the second floor of the big Sears Chelsea. Standing there brought that other time, the time when I told Jess Clark that I loved him, so vividly to mind that I felt my body go hot then cold with shame. I lifted my eyes to the stars. They were dim in the humidity, and they dimmed further while I watched them. I put my lingers to my eyelids.
Tears.
"Ginny, you don't know what it was like with Pete. He told me when I got back from the hospital that he preferred me to keep my nightgown on if he was in the room.
I gazed at her. She pushed her hair out of her face, which had a tipsy, unbuttoned look.
She said, "It's never been good. It was exciting once in a while, because Pete was so unpredictable, but-" She stopped, turned, and faced me. Her face was the color of the moon, and thin. Her eyes were in shadow. "All I wanted when I met Pete was someone exciting enough to erase Daddy. And I thought sure Pete would end up in Chicago, playing music, somewhere Daddy wouldn't even visit.
That was at the very beginning. But he wasn't making any money at it.
I mean, gigs were twenty-live bucks a night, or less. So then, we were going to move back here just until these friends of his got a record contract in L. A. and called us. That was supposed to take a summer, tops. One summer. But Pete had this light with them, and we lost touch, and they put me on at the grammar school, and then I thought that was the way to make some money. We had a new plan every month, but Pete always screwed them up, with his temper, or else by being overenthusiastic and needy and driving people away. When Pammy was born and then Linda right afterward, I just gave up. But it was never good! It wasn't ever even uneventful, the way it was with you and Ty!"
I knew if I kept my mouth shut, all questions would be answered soon enough.
Rose looked across the road and said, "I'm so tempted just to walk over there and go in, but I know Pammy will wake up.
"Go where?"
She motioned at the big square facade of the Chelsea.
"What on earth for?"
She gave me a sideways glance.
My understanding, slower than my own reply, kept exact pace with hers, so that it felt like I was forming the words with my lips as she did.
"To get in bed with Jess." Then, "Oh, don't look at me in that shocked way. I don't want to deal with it." She turned and began walking down the road, south. I watched her go, then ran after her. She said, "Ask me a question. Any question."
"Why?"
"Because I want to tell you the truth."
"Then just tell me." I said it, but I knew I didn't want to hear it.
She said, "I realize that having lovers is not something that women around here do, though I suspect it goes on more than we think. I know you disapprove, but it's important to me that you understand.
He's the first one I trust."
"The first one?" I was only parroting her. I didn't really have the sense that I knew what I was saying, but she seemed satisfied that my responses were adequately conversational.
"Okay, yes." She rocked back on her heels. "I was promiscuous in college, and maybe a little in high school, too, but since Pete, there's only been one before Jess. I always thought one of them would have to supersede Daddy eventually. That was what I thought at the beginning. Later I thought if there were enough of them it would sort of put him in context, or diminish him somehow." She looked at me again. "You know what Pete always said? That I had what he called frenzied dislike of sex. Anyway, I didn't tell him about Daddy for a long time."
"Who was the one since Pete?" I expected her, frankly, to say Ty.
"It was Bob Stanley, but it was nothing. It lasted a summer.
Then she said, "This is love."
I said, "What does that mean?" I'm sure I sounded hostile, but she chose to take this as a real question. I was staring right at her.
The look on her face evolved from challenging to doubtful to speculative to careful.
She said, "Well, of course it's exciting. But I know that will go away. It's only been about three weeks that we've been sleeping together, and it's hard to lind the privacy, as you can" She paused, then went on. "He seems to have this sense about my body-" She eyed me, went gingerly on, "He just looks at it a lot, you know, touches it as if he appreciates it. He says, you know, that my shoulders are a nice shape, or that he likes my backbone. He sees me differently than other men have."
I remembered what he said about the fiancee, her eyes and teeth.
He'd admired my ankles. I remembered how I had carefully protected and revisited that compliment for reassurance that Jess had seen and valued the real me.
"I know that stops. I know all that physical appreciation of the other person stops, but it's nice. I mean, yes I know it stops, but I can't get enough of it as long as it lasts. But it's not really the important thing."
"When that stops, doesn't everything stop? I mean, isn't that what affairs are all about?"
"Well, this is going on. This is it."
I summoned a note of sympathy into my voice. We had walked a couple of hundred yards, so I turned back. I didn't think Pammy should be left entirely alone, but I also yearned to be in sight of Jess Clark's windows. "Rose," I said, low and easy-sounding, "Jess's a restless person. He's never settled down. This stuff with Harold isn't going to help him settle down, either. He's had plenty of women, too. I would bet on that. Unless he positively commits himself-" "But he has!
I've been much more standoffish than he has. He's always pushing me to just-" "Just what?" I sounded so idle.
"Well, that's what we can't decide. Where. What. The girls. I mean, I even felt some loyalty to Pete after all the years and all the shit.
Ginny, you're white as a sheet."
"Just keep walking. Did you tell Pete about Jess?"
"Yes."
"That last day?"
"Weeks ago. Well, a week ago."
"What did he say?"
"He said he was going to kill Daddy."
"What?"
"I kid you not. His response to the news that I was going to leave him for Jess Clark was that he was going to kill Daddy, and if Harold got in the way, he would kill him, too."
I pondered this.
"He emptied the water tank on Harold's fertilizer tank."
"Who told you that?"
"Pete did." Now this was shocking, something else I had not suspected at all.
I said, "Jesus. What in God's name was he thinking of?"
"He was thinking Daddy might be doing some farm work. He said he saw Daddy on Harold's tractor in the morning, then ran
into Loren and Harold at the cafe. He put two and two together and came up with his usual sum, which was three." Her laugh resounded in the night.
"I can't believe it."
"Well, shit, Ginny. He was incredibly focused on Daddy. He blamed him for everything that went wrong in our lives. He always said he was afraid he might kill Daddy in a rage, but I actually think he couldn't have-Daddy was too strong. But then Daddy got weaker, and when I told him about Jess he went out and drank every night, and every night he drove over to Harold's place and sat outside in the truck, staring at the windows of the house and drinking.