He stayed where he was while she slipped under the covers, her back to him. He went into the bathroom and closed the door. She let out a deep breath, only now realizing that she had been holding it. She had never intended for any of this to end up here. Deciding today while standing at the edge of her weed-free garden that she would call Mr. Williams in the morning and tell him she could not take what Mrs. Griffith had left her. Why then had she just defied her husband over something she had already decided she could not do?
Rebellion sat like a rock inside her, hard to breathe around. With the exception of moving to Ohio, Becca had always yielded to Aaron during the times they disagreed, submission a character trait that had never come easily to her, but again, one that she felt she owed him. She had gone along for what she believed to be the greater good. Only now, it all felt muddled inside her head, and she was no longer sure what exactly that was.
Maybe she was simply being selfish. Refusing to consider the damage her actions might incur. But it felt like something else. It felt as if she’d been swimming underwater for half her life, holding her breath the entire time, and now she was about to surface. As if in being a woman who yielded to her husband’s opinions, she’d closed off all her own needs and desires for so long that she thought they’d actually gone away.
But sitting across the table from Matt Griffith yesterday, she’d discovered this wasn’t true. And ever since, she’d felt a steady throb of pressure against the wall of her chest, as if there were someone else inside her who finally wanted out.
It would be so much easier to give in. Let it go. But wasn’t that what she’d always done? Accepted the warnings laid out for her as absolute truth. Like the wild bears and boars on the mountain she’d once wanted to climb. Danger lurked everywhere in this world. And for most of her life, she’d obeyed the signs. Steered clear as advised.
Now, as in the past, she felt sure it would be the safe thing to do. Call Mr. Williams and tell him she could not accept the house. Restore the peace in her home.
Outside the open bedroom window, moonlight illuminated the ridge of Tinker’s Knob. She stared at its dark outline against the night sky. And she wondered then how many amazing views she’d missed from the safety of her spot here at the bottom.
∞
Then
IT WAS A RARE thing for Becca to have the house to herself. Emmy and her mother had gone into town. Jacob and her father were cutting hay in one of the back fields. Becca had worked in the garden for most of the morning, and then decided to use some of the baby carrots she’d pulled to make a cake.
The warm smell of baking now filled the kitchen. Becca had set the three round layers on the counter thirty minutes before to cool. She put a hand to the center of one now and decided it was ready for the cream cheese icing. She pulled the bowl from the refrigerator and a rubber spatula from a nearby drawer.
She began coating the first layer, glancing at the window where she could see Matt Griffith outside the barn working on a piece of haymaking equipment. She ran a finger across the tip of the spatula and tasted the sweet icing, wondering if he could feel her watching him, if he felt the same pull she felt, or whether it was all her imagination.
She started to turn away, but he straightened then and wiped a hand across his forehead. The day was typical hot June, the temperature expected to reach the low nineties by mid-afternoon. She’d thought about taking him some ice water earlier, going as far as filling a pitcher and glass with ice and then dumping it all down the sink when she’d lost her courage.
Matt looked around once as if to make sure no one was watching, then pulled his t-shirt over his head and tossed it on the ground. Becca stepped back, the spatula dripping icing onto the kitchen floor, guilt catching in her throat as if she’d summoned this action with her thoughts.
The clock on the nearby hutch ticked loudly in the otherwise quiet room while Becca stood, motionless, telling herself it was wrong to stare when he didn’t even know she was there. She closed her eyes, searched for resolve, the pull of him impossible to resist like the undertow at the center of the creek where she and Emmy swam on hot days like this.
She finished the cake with quick, sure strokes, standing back to study it with a critical eye. The center had fallen a little, but hopefully the taste would make up for it. She pulled a knife from the drawer and cut a thick wedge, placing it on a white saucer and then pouring a tall glass of milk from the pitcher in the fridge.
She walked out of the house and across the yard to the barn, her confidence thinning with each step. By the time Matt turned to look at her, she’d decided this was a really bad idea.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi,” she said, trying not to look at his bare chest.
“That for me?”
She nodded. “I thought you might be hungry.”
“Thanks,” he said, reaching down to pick up his shirt and then shrugging it on.
Becca looked away and then back again, her eyes following the line of muscles in his arms while something in her stomach dropped.
“Sorry about the shirt,” he said, running a hand through his dark-blonde hair.
“I’ve seen boys without their shirts before,” she said quickly.
“Kind of like the kissing thing, huh?”
She ignored that and said, “Do you normally offer apologies to girls for taking off your shirt?”
Matt grinned. “They don’t usually ask for one.”
“I’ll bet.”
He leaned back and looked at her. “And that’s supposed to mean-”
“I’m sure you’ve taken your shirt off for lots of girls.”
He laughed and shook his head.
She held the plate and glass out. “Here. I have to get back to the house.”
He took the cake and milk, tipped his head toward the shade of the nearby oak. “Stay while I take a break.”
Becca folded her arms and looked at the ground. “I should go.”
“Stay anyway.”
She looked up at him then, and there it was again, the undertow. She felt it swirl around her, a gentle yank of concession. “Just for a minute,” she said.
They sat down at the base of the tree, inches apart. Matt leaned his back against the trunk and tucked into the cake. He ate half of it before he spoke again. “Wow. That is good.”
Becca’s face went warm with the compliment. She looked down at her hands. “Thanks.”
“You like to cook?”
“Sometimes.”
“You’re good at it.”
“I like to use things from the garden.”
“Did you grow these carrots?”
She nodded.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
He considered this for a moment, and then, “Cool.”
She looked at him, trying not to smile. “You and your buddies like to garden on Friday nights?”
He laughed. “Not exactly. But it is cool. Being good at something.”
“Like you and baseball?”
“Yeah,” he said, shrugging, surprisingly modest.
“It’s really not the same. I haven’t noticed any cheering fans outside the kitchen when I’m cooking.”
“I’d cheer for this,” he said, finishing off the last bite of cake and then taking a swallow of milk, a rim of white lining his upper lip.
Becca smiled and reached out to wipe it away, stopping herself just short of touching him. “You have milk there,” she said, making an arc in the air near his mouth.
He wiped it away with the back of his hand. Becca’s gaze hooked with his, and she could not bring herself to look away.
“Thanks for the cake,” he said, his voice threaded with something that told her she should get up at that very moment and head back inside.
“You’re welcome,” she said, her own voice barely audible.
“About that kiss,” he said.
“What kiss?” Again, the words a whisper.
He leaned in
then, stopping a few inches from her face. “This kiss.”
A sound that might have originated as protest slipped past Becca’s lips only to yield to something altogether different. Matt’s hand slipped to the back of her neck, his mouth warm and insistent against hers. He tasted of the cake she’d made, and he smelled of an appealing combination of citrus and hard work.
It wasn’t as if she’d never been kissed before. She had. Once. In a clumsy, unimpressive encounter that really hadn’t left her in a hurry for a repeat experience despite her big talk with Matt on the sawdust run.
But this was different. Very, very different.
He pulled back, both hands now on each side of her face. They studied each other for several long moments before he said, “Okay if I do that again?”
Becca didn’t answer but kissed him this time. He leaned back against the tree and hooked an arm around her waist, bringing her with him, her chest pressing into his, heat rising up from their skin to meld with the humid June afternoon.
She understood then in a way she never had before what it meant to find the one against whom all others would forever be judged. The one for whom there would be no comparison.
The thought simultaneously lifted her up and left her hanging beneath the realization. She sat back then, one hand to her still tingling mouth. “We shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why?” Matt said, his voice warm, amused.
She looked down at her lap. “So what are you going to tell Wilks? Do Dunkard girls kiss like other girls?”
“Becca.”
The surprise in his voice made her look up; she wished she could take the words back. They sounded petty and mean. He hadn’t done anything to deserve them. But just then, a car pulled into the driveway. Her mother and Emmy were back.
Becca got to her feet and reached for the plate and glass Matt had left on the grass next to them. “I have to go,” she said.
“Becca, wait,” he said, standing.
She didn’t stop, but walked back to the house where her mother stood waiting. She pulled a bag of groceries from the trunk of the car and carried them inside, unable to meet the knowing look in her eyes.
21
A Boy's Life
Study the past if you would divine the future.
- Confucius
Now
The past was something best left alone.
Martha had never been able to see the wisdom in revisiting things that could not be redone. This had been Daniel’s philosophy as well. Once a decision was made, he’d believed in moving forward and not ever looking back.
But it seemed now that Martha could do little else. She had only to look at Becca’s face to see her daughter’s discontent. It was, she imagined, the way a house must look after an earthquake has rippled beneath its foundation, the top permanently askew from the bottom.
Worry cut at Martha with the sharpness of a paring knife, and she found herself questioning the reasoning behind the decisions they had made, decisions that were thought to be in the best interest of everyone involved.
It had been some time since she had driven out to see the Rutroughs. Almost two years, in fact, since her last visit. Her only explanation for doing so now the guilt that continued to funnel up from its buried place, the volume she’d managed to squelch for significant streaks of time renewed to a dull roar.
Over the years, she’d visited the Rutroughs maybe a dozen times. It had never been easy for her, and something she did out of a sense of obligation to maintain the connection, to check in on them, even after all this time.
She drove the dozen or so miles from her house to the Rutrough’s place at a pace slow enough to have four or five cars lined up behind her by the time she turned in at the end of their gravel road. A red Trans-Am blew the horn and roared off with a squealing of tires.
Martha pulled into the driveway and turned off the car. Lydia Rutrough stood outside watering a large Crepe Myrtle bush. She looked up, and in that second just before she caught herself, Martha saw the flare of upset on the other woman’s face, and then the deliberate effort to school her features into pleasantness. It wasn’t that Martha didn’t understand Lydia’s discomfort. She was only too aware that in her eyes, Martha would always be associated with the delivery of unimaginable news.
Lydia put down her watering can and walked over to the car, wiping her hands on the apron tied at her waist. “Hello, Martha. How are you?”
“Fine, Lydia,” Martha said, a waver in her voice. “And you?”
The two stopped short of a hug, clasping their hands and squeezing once. “Good,” she said, and then after an awkward moment, “Come in. I just took a pound cake out of the oven. Let’s have a slice.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Martha said, following her into the house. They entered through the front door, the foyer much like Martha’s own, the furniture plain and unimposing with its straight lines. The floors were made of wide pine planks, the dull honey-colored finish spotlessly clean.
Lydia led the way, and Martha followed, her gaze snagging on a collection of pictures hanging in the hallway just short of the kitchen. Unable to stop herself, she stood and stared at this progression of a son’s life, infant to toddler, young boy to young man. The pictures ended there, of course, and Martha wondered if Lydia’s suffering renewed itself all over again every time she walked past these photos.
She forced herself to walk into the kitchen where Lydia removed the lid from a cake box.
“Mark had to go into town, or else I’d call him to join us,” Lydia said, giving no indication that she had noticed Martha staring at the pictures.
“That’s all right,” Martha said. “And please don’t go to any trouble.”
“No trouble,” Lydia said, cutting the cake and placing it on plain white saucers, before pouring them both a glass of iced tea and bringing it all to the kitchen table.
They sat, awkward now as they both took a bite of the moist cake. “Um,” Martha said. “Delicious.”
“Thank you.”
Through the open window at one end of the kitchen came the sound of a tractor starting up, its engine sputtering once and then finding a steady rhythm. A light breeze brought with it the scent of grass, freshly mown.
Lydia looked up then and let her eyes meet Martha’s. “Is everything all right, Martha?”
There were any number of ways Martha could have answered, but somehow she didn’t have it in her today to say anything other than what she felt to be true. “Do you ever wish we’d acted differently, Lydia?”
Surprise flitted across Lydia’s face. Since the day of John’s funeral, they’d never once spoken of the decisions that had been made. It was as if by some silent pact, they’d agreed it was better left alone. Martha felt instantly guilty, as if she had violated some unspoken trust.
“I don’t let myself question it,” Lydia said.
“But do you regret it?”
Lydia rubbed a thumb across the rim of her saucer, considering her answer. “Do I wish I knew the absolute truth? Yes. Do I think it would make what we’ve had to accept any easier? No.”
Martha thought about those pictures in the front hall of this house. The chronicle of a boy’s life. She thought of her own son and all the time that had been lost, years and years during which he lived a life of which she was not a part. This had been deliberate on her behalf, an unwillingness to accept Jacob’s choices. She wondered what Lydia would give to be in her shoes.
Martha felt a sudden wave of shame, for the fact that she had come here today to somehow salve her own conscience and in the process, pulled the permanently flimsy covering from Lydia’s wounds.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to cause you any further grief, Lydia.”
“What is it that you want to know, Martha?” Lydia asked, sounding suddenly weary.
For a few moments, Martha was silent, unable to answer. When she finally did, she barely recognized her own voice. “If you could do it over again,”
she said, “would you choose differently?”
Lydia lifted her gaze to Martha’s, her eyes suddenly liquid with regret, as if a curtain had been pulled to reveal something previously well hidden. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I would. Would you?”
The conviction in the answer took Martha by surprise. She realized then that this was not what she’d expected to hear. And that maybe she had needed to reaffirm in her own mind the soundness of the logic behind all that had been done. Looking at Lydia’s face now, seeing her temporarily unveiled despair, she thought of the individual events that had been set into play by their actions. And how questioning something that was already said and done could do nothing but remove the covers from the deepest wells of pain.
It was this which gave her pause. And this that made her question whether all those years ago, she had acted for the good of those she loved or for reasons that could be deemed far less selfless.
22
Destinations
It behooves a father to be blameless if he expects his child to be.
- Homer
Now
As a child, it’s hard to understand our parents. I remember thinking when I was a little girl that my mama spent most of her day fussing at Becca, Jacob, and me about one thing or another. Then, I couldn’t understand why everything we did seemed to bother her. I even wondered at times why she ever wanted children if we were such a nuisance. If everything about us needed to be changed to a different standard.
When we were little, Becca was the one who challenged Mama and Daddy’s rules, refusing to take anything at face value. Jacob, too, but with more subtlety. If he stepped over the line, he usually got his foot back inside before anybody noticed. At least until he met Linda.
For the most part, I went along with what was expected. I was the good girl. Which makes it hard to understand how I could have done something I knew would shame my mama and daddy in the eyes of our community and church.
Crossing Tinker's Knob Page 10