- Rene Descartes
Now
On the drive home, Abby struggled to gain a clear focus on what had happened today. It almost felt as if she had found out something she’d always suspected, that her parents’ marriage wasn’t altogether what it appeared to be. She’d never heard them argue, never heard her mother say a critical word against her father, but the playfulness, the joy she’d seen in the parents of some of her friends wasn’t there between them. From the outside, their marriage looked as if it had been touched up with one of those computerized airbrushes, made to look perfect when the original had plenty of flaws.
Her grandmother had Aunt Emmy’s supper tray waiting when they walked through the back door of the house and into the kitchen at just after five-thirty. “Becca, please take this up to your sister,” Martha said, her voice cool and disapproving. Once her mother had left the room, a little ribbon of resentment unfolded inside Abby. Sometimes, she hated the way Grandma talked to her mama.
She opened the refrigerator, pulling out the milk bottle and pouring herself a glass before taking a big sip.
“Supper will be ready soon, child,” Martha said. “Don’t spoil your appetite.”
“Yes, Grandma,” she said, opening the door to the hutch where the dishes were kept and picking up four plates. She set the table as she did every night, adding the silverware and napkins.
Martha placed a bowl of steaming green beans in the center, adjusting a wayward fork and speaking without looking at Abby. “I hope you won’t encourage your mother about this house.”
“Why?” she asked, for some reason unwilling to make this easy for her grandmother.
Martha met her gaze then, direct. “A wife should not go against her husband’s wishes,” she said in an even voice. “To do so puts the whole family in jeopardy.”
Abby knew how her grandmother saw the world. Anything that pulled her from the path of the familiar was simply unacceptable. Not that Abby had ever disapproved of this. She thought it was okay for her grandmother to choose her way. But shouldn’t it also work in the reverse? Shouldn’t it also be okay for others to choose theirs? “It’s just a house, Grandma,” she said.
Martha refolded a napkin, fitting it close to the edge of the plate. “Ah, but that’s where life gets complicated, Abby. Sometimes, things look harmless from the surface. When that’s not really the case at all.”
She untied her apron then, leaving it on the counter and walking outside, the screen door wheezing shut behind her. Abby watched her go with a funny feeling in her stomach, wondering why she’d sounded so sad.
In some ways, Abby thought being a child a far preferable thing to being a grown up. She’d once seen the world in clear squares of black and white, right and wrong, nice and mean. Lately, though, she’d begun to see that the lines were sometimes smudged, and it wasn’t always easy to know what fell on which side. For a child, why never entered the picture in sizing a person up. They either were or weren’t. So much simpler.
Today had brought two questions into a picture Abby had never wanted to examine too closely, questions she’d managed to push away whenever they popped to the surface. But this time, she couldn’t make them disappear. They blared through her head as if they’d been posed through a megaphone, refusing to be ignored.
26
First Cry
To give birth is a fearsome thing; there is no hating the child one has borne even when injured by it.
- Sophocles
Now
I remember the day she was born, the details of her birth forever forged in my mind.
It was the coldest kind of March day, the wind beating at the windows of the Ohio hospital where Becca had driven me at four in the morning, as if it had every intention of getting inside. I remember, too, the antiseptic smell that hung in the air and the cheerful voices of the nurses on the maternity floor, how they’d grown sober at the sight of me, figuring out I guess from the look on my face that I was not typical of the women who normally arrived lit up with happy anticipation.
Abby’s entrance into the world was no easy thing, the labor a stretch of hours that seemed to have no end. My body felt as if it were being wrenched in half, and maybe in more ways than just the physical, it was.
Nothing prepared me for the sound of her first cry, a weak little mewling at first, and then a full-fledged wail of protest. At the sound of it, I started to cry, too, an entire well of sorrow pouring up and out of me.
I couldn’t look at her face, the terror of seeing John in her tiny features more than I could summon the courage to do. I looked at Becca, instead, her eyes liquid pools of compassion, and I turned away, refusing to hold my baby, even as my breasts ached in response to her hungry cries.
Throughout my childhood, I had seen cows reject their babies many times, my heart throbbing for the helpless calf bleating in fear. I never understood how the mama could go through everything she went through to bring a life into the world and then simply turn away with no interest whatsoever in sustaining that life.
Many times, Daddy would bring another cow into an enclosed area and place the wobbly calf next to her, all of us holding our breath that she would accept it. Relieved beyond words when she did.
I guess this is what I felt that day watching Becca leave the delivery room with my newborn baby in her arms. Utter relief for the fact that she would take over from here. That my child would know love, rationalizing that it didn’t matter where that love came from as long as she had it.
What I didn’t let myself consider that day was the cost of this act of love on my sister’s part. Only much, much later would I understand the full reach of it.
27
Paw Paw Trees and Whippings
Helping one another,
is part of the religion of sisterhood.
~ Louisa May Alcott
Now
Becca read until Emmy’s eyes grew heavy, and her head relaxed against the pillow. She closed the book, but remained in the chair next to the bed, wishing they could talk as they had as girls, when they had been closer than close, confidantes.
Emmy’s breathing grew even and steady, and Becca started talking about things she thought Emmy would like to know. “Abby’s in love, Emmy. I know she’s young, and part of me wants to tell her all the reasons why getting serious now will complicate her life. But another part of me knows that my disapproval will probably only push her away.”
She reached for Emmy’s hand, lacing her fingers with hers. “She’s such an amazing young woman. Smart and kind. She reminds me so much of you.”
A single tear slid from Emmy’s closed eyes. Becca felt as if her heart were caught in a vice, and she pressed her lips together to keep the sob rising in her throat from escaping.
Emmy squeezed Becca’s hand, and for a moment, Becca thought her sister might speak. But the moment passed. The silence stretched out between them, and Becca regretted her own neediness. “Everything is fine, Emmy. Abby is fine. It’s all going to be okay. I promise.”
Emmy closed her eyes again, but kept her hand clasped with Becca’s. Becca sat in the hard-back chair until her sister’s breathing altered and the steady rhythm of sleep took hold. Only then did Becca get up and quietly leave the room.
∞
Then
BECCA WAS TEN years old and Emmy eight the summer they went for a swim in the creek that ran through the middle of their farm. Their mama had gone into town for groceries, their daddy helping Dr. Thompson, the local vet, castrate calves since early that morning.
The day was typical July in Virginia, hot and muggy, the air so thick it was hard to breathe. It hadn’t rained in two weeks, and even the trees looked thirsty, their normally green leaves tinted with brown.
It had been Becca’s idea to slip off for a quick dunk in the cool water. That was usually the way it had gone with the two of them, Becca the instigator of anything questionable they might do. Emmy went along because she trusted her the way younger sisters trusted ol
der sisters, as if they had the secrets to the universe already figured out.
Under the heat of a July day, the creek was an inviting oasis, and there on the bank Becca immediately began shucking off her dress.
“What are you doing?” Emmy asked, unbuckling her shoe.
“I’m tired of swimming in my clothes,” she said.
“But we’re not supposed to swim without them,” she said.
“Who’s going to know?” Becca pulled off her camisole and underwear.
Emmy stared at her, gasping. “Well, we will. That’s who.”
“Don’t be silly. I don’t want to wear a wet dress back to the house. I won’t tell if you won’t.”
Naked, she scrambled up the bank to the rope their daddy had hung for them from the sturdy limb of an old paw paw tree.
“Becca Miller, have you lost your mind?”
Not once in her life had Becca ever done anything like this. What initiated it, she didn’t know, but it felt alarmingly good to be on the other side of the rules for once. She climbed the tree and grabbed for the rope, leaping out and holding on. The rope swung over the creek and then back. She yelped once in sheer happiness, ignoring Emmy’s shrieks from below. Midway over the creek, she let go, plunging into the cool water. She came up laughing.
Emmy stood glaring at her with her arms folded across her chest.
“Come on,” Becca said. “You’re not going to believe how good it feels!”
“Mama will kill us if she finds out.”
“How’s she going to find out? It’s so hot our hair will be dry before she gets back home.” Becca headed up the bank again, waving for Emmy to come on. “Chicken!”
Grinning now, Emmy began unbuttoning her dress, watching while Becca swung out over the creek again and took another plunge. This time, she followed her naked up the bank, and Becca let her go first, cheering when she released the rope and dropped into the water.
Emmy popped back to the surface with a look of amazement on her face. For the next hour, they hooted and hollered like two wild children, racing each other back to the shore to see who could get up the tree first.
When their daddy appeared on the other side of the creek, a look of crushing disappointment on his face, Emmy immediately began to cry.
“Put your clothes on right this minute,” he said in a voice Becca had never heard him use before.
They both slunk toward the pile of clothes on the bank, like Adam and Eve being banished from the garden. They tugged their dresses on as quickly as their wet skin would allow and then followed him back to the house, Emmy in front, Becca behind her. She stared at Emmy’s back, her little sister’s head hung in shame. She walked with her own chin in the air, still holding the position that they hadn’t done anything wrong.
The two of them followed their daddy to the barn where he pulled out the belt he had threatened to use before, but never had. Becca supposed that this time, he didn’t feel he had any choice.
“Daddy, can I take Emmy’s whipping?” she said, stepping forward. “It was my idea. She wanted to swim in her clothes.”
Her father looked at her, then shook his head. “Maybe you’ll think about that the next time you pull your sister into your decision to do wrong.”
Emmy went first, and as Becca stood there watching the red welts rise on her little sister’s legs, she felt sick with regret. The whipping she received afterwards was almost a relief. Years down the road, she would wish that the other mistakes she’d made could be so easily paid for.
28
Legends Get Dumped, Too
“Study the past if you would define the future.”
― Confucius
Now
There is truth to the old adage that some things never change, no matter how much time passes.
The Red Robin was one of them.
From the front entrance, Matt spotted Wilks Perdue across the room at one of the pool tables. Wilks held up a stick and waved him back. Matt weaved his way through the crowd, smoke hanging over the tables like low grey clouds.
“Hey, man,” Wilks said, clapping him on the back, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He’d cleaned up well. Gone were the grease-stained overalls, in their place a white button-down and Levi’s. His dark hair had been combed back with some kind of gel that made him look somewhere between hip and behind the times.
“Hey,” Matt said, nodding at a couple of younger guys standing nearby, curiosity clear on their faces.
Wilks introduced them, then dropped an arm around a passing waitress, ordering a fresh round of beer and a glass for Matt. He started to decline, then decided why not.
“You still play?” Wilks asked, crushing his cigarette in a nearby ashtray and passing him a stick.
“Probably not since the last time you and I were here,” he said.
The waitress came back with the beer and filled their glasses. Wilks handed her a twenty, telling her to keep the change. She smiled, thanked him, and headed back to the bar. He reached down as she passed and gave her backside a squeeze. She threw him a look over her shoulder. Wilks gave Matt a what’s-a-guy-to-do shrug and a wink that brought him back to those days in high school when he and Wilks both thought they’d been put on earth for the sole purpose of indulging their sexual needs. He’d felt every bit as deserving as Wilks in those days. He’d been so high on his own local fame that if a girl didn’t fall at his feet, he just raised the heat of his efforts until she did.
He took a swallow of his beer, watching while Wilks racked the balls and nodded for him to break. Matt aimed the cue ball at the center, sending the red and green zipping into parallel side pockets.
“Damn,” Wilks said, chalking the end of his cue. “You sure you haven’t been playing?”
“I’m sure,” he said.
They went at it a while, one shot better than the next. A crowd began to gather around. Someone ordered another pitcher of beer. Wilks took the first game. Matt conceded with a nod. They finished off their glasses and racked the balls again. He felt the old competitiveness between them take hold, telling himself he should stop this and go home, that if not, they would very likely end up in a pissing contest. But he didn’t want to go, unable to shake the feeling that something between them never got played out, that he needed to tie up loose ends.
The second game was Matt’s, the third belonged to Wilks. They were two-thirds of the way through the fourth when he said, “So what happened between you and Becca, anyway?”
“She dumped me,” he said, aiming at the solid purple and smacking it into a side pocket.
“That had to suck.”
“Actually, it did.”
“So legends get dumped, too?”
Matt looked around, spotting one of Wilks’s groupies smiling at him. He wondered if she were even old enough to be in the bar. She was blonde, lean and leggy, a combination of fresh-from-the-farm and been-there-done-that. “Dumb girl,” she said.
There had been a time in his life when he would have taken the opinion, unsolicited though it was, as confirmation of his own conclusion. Becca was the one who missed out. The one who took another road, got left behind. He’d gone on to bigger and better, and she’d stayed here with Aaron.
Now, he wasn’t anywhere close to sure who got left behind.
“See, man,” Wilks said, offering him a high five. “Even chicks who were in elementary school when you were the big star around here know who you are.”
Matt took his next shot. “Then I guess it was all worth it, huh?”
Wilks laughed, shrugging off his sarcasm. “Hell, yeah, it was worth it. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t go back if you could. Cheerleaders hanging all over you like you were box office gold.”
“The glory days,” Matt said, while the ladies who had gathered around for the show erupted in a chorus of giggles.
“You got that right,” Wilks said, angling an arm around the waist of the blonde as if to prove he still had it. She raised her face to his,
and Wilks claimed her with a kiss.
By ten-thirty, Matt had grown weary of the whole scene. They played a couple more rounds, ending up with an equal number of games on their scorecards. He put the pool stick back on its wall rack just short of midnight. “I’m done,” he said. The groupies had gone to the bathroom to freshen up, so he and Wilks were the only two at the table.
“You want some company tonight?” he said. “Sandy gave Mimi the cue. She’s yours if you want her.”
Matt heard the words, and yet it took a moment for them to register. Had he ever been such a jerk? But then he knew the answer, felt himself blanch beneath its truth. It occurred to him that maybe Becca had been a lot smarter than he’d given her credit for.
The women returned, freshly powdered and poofed. “All yours, Wilks,” he said, raising a hand and heading for the door.
“Hey, man,” he called out over the music, “you start getting tired of this, then you’re old. Just old.”
Matt pulled out of the parking lot a few minutes later, Wilks’s proposition still fresh. From Ferrum, he headed back down Route 40. On impulse, he took a shortcut he remembered taking with Jacob on sawdust runs to a mill in the Miller’s old dump truck. The road wound and turned for seven or eight miles. He stood on the brakes when a possum darted out in front of him, disappearing in the grass on the opposite side of the road. Matt didn’t let himself admit where he was going until he turned into the driveway at the top of the hill.
The house sat a quarter mile or so away, a two-story white farmhouse, L-shaped after an addition in the forties. He remembered this as if it were part of his own history, pieces of information about the place coming back to him now, Becca’s voice attached to each of them.
Her mother had grown up here, as had her mother before her. The two-hundred acre farm had once been over five hundred acres, but the family had been forced to sell off part of it during the Depression-era years.
Crossing Tinker's Knob Page 13