Beyond Deserving

by Sandra Scofield

  Geneva begins to move around, to get all the shots she wants. It seems more like a party with her in motion. She makes the musicians stop playing and pose, their bows on their instruments. They do as she bids. They are polite kids, and they are splitting fifteen dollars an hour.

  26

  Ursula didn’t meet the Fishers until right before she and Michael married. First, she and Michael and Fish were living in a rooming house near Portland State, and the Fishers lived way east, on the river. The young people went all the way to Troutdale to swim, many hot spring Sundays, but only Michael went the few extra miles to see his folks. Before Fish went off for basic training, he and his father took a three-day hiking trip in bad weather. Later, when Michael and Ursula started living together, Michael went out there about twice a month, but he never suggested that Ursula go, and she wouldn’t ask. When they decided to get married, he said, “I guess you’ll have to meet them.” She had not realized they were the reason he had come back from Peace Corps training, and not her. It was something Geneva said that set that straight; she said she had always been able to count on Michael to be there in a crisis. She said, “Don’t parents need their son as much as those Africans do?” When Ursula, who had been prepared to wait out the two years, asked Michael if his mother actually wrote him during training and asked him to come home, he said she had. She said she already had one son in a godforsaken place; the Peace Corps could find someone else.

  The first meeting between Ursula and the Fishers was stiff, and didn’t last long. From after the wedding until Carter was born, Ursula only saw them two more times, at their house, and not in the dumps she and Michael had rented. Once they had Carter, she felt more obligated to act like family. Her own father had come for a visit, and ended up making the down payment on a house for them, and her mother came with wonderful, practical gifts. Geneva Fisher gave Ursula boxes of detergent and a rattle for the baby. She said Carter was a funny first name. (Gulsvig wasn’t?!)

  Ursula was relieved when the Fishers moved to the southern part of the state, even when Michael spent weeks of his summer down there helping his dad build a house. She didn’t see them again until she moved, too, reluctantly, because of them. Fish and Katie had been moving around, and when they finally rented a ramshackle old house not far from Ursula and Michael, she was glad. Later they bought a house eight miles out of town, cheap because it was in disrepair, with a tangled, overgrown yard.

  The summer the children were five and eight, Ursula talked Michael into taking them to Disneyland. Disneyland was dumb, but it was something all the kids their kids knew had experienced. Maybe it was important to see it for yourself. Wasn’t it what every foreign dignitary wanted to see? And dying children? At first Michael thought she was kidding. When she insisted that she was serious, he gave in rather easily. He admitted that they had never gone anywhere together as a family, except camping at the beach a couple of times. Ursula said they ought to be making memories, the four of them. Everyone likes to be able to look back later. She was glad she had childhood trips to Washington, D.C., Montreal, and Barbados to recall (all before her parents split, all unmarred by discord of any kind). She could hardly believe this was coming out of her mouth; she kept waiting for Michael to interrupt her. When he did not, she was disappointed. She had hoped he would challenge her and that would cause them to talk about “what really matters.” They had passed a year in which it seemed they discussed only their own schedules, menus, problems with cars and the oil heater, the kids’ colds, and, always, the vagaries of Fish and Gully. Michael did not argue. He chewed on his moustache and said he guessed they could afford it. He didn’t act martyred. Certainly he loved his children, and he enjoyed time spent with them. In fact he spent far more time than most fathers, and more time, increasingly, than Ursula. He was a man who did what needed to be done, as long as he saw what it was or had it pointed out to him. Though Ursula thought he was critical of the children in ways she was not, the kids were actually easier and more agreeable with him than with her.

  The Disneyland trip went well enough, despite a mix of searing heat and several gusty rainstorms. The children whined by midafternoon, and they spent too much money, mostly on food, but it was fun to ride a boat through a fake game park, to see a thousand dolls decked out in ethnic costumes, to walk the clean streets and watch cartoon characters six feet tall waddle and prance, making the children giggle. As they were packing up the morning they left, Ursula said to Michael, by way of expressing her gratitude, “Once was enough, wasn’t it?” Michael gave her arm a squeeze and said, “Once was fine, Ursula.”

  On the way home they stopped in a town on the coast north of Los Angeles. A festival was in progress. Streets had been blocked off with colored ropes and streamers, and people were moving about in a great mass, laughing and eating and jostling one another pleasantly. As soon as they moved away from one group of musicians, they heard another. There were jugglers and clowns. The Fishers stopped at a food stand under a bright purple and gold canopy, and ate saté on sticks. The kids were entranced and good-tempered, the sky was clear, and a nice breeze was coming in from the sea.

  They saw a group in Elizabethan costume dancing in the center of a main intersection. The ladies put their hands to their waists and then, lightly, put their hands on the men’s arms. They lifted their skirts to circle and kick up their feet, and they moved their heads so that their hair swirled like ribbons. The Fishers watched them for a quarter of an hour. The group stopped to rest. A violinist and flutist moved in to play for a while, and Michael said, “We had better get back on the road if we want to get home tomorrow.” When they looked around for the children, they did not see Juliette. Ursula was so suddenly and fiercely frightened she almost threw up, but Michael said, “Look, she’s over there with the dancers.”

  A woman with curly red hair was showing Juliette how to raise her foot daintily, toe pointed down, and give it a shake. Juliette caught on right away, her bottom lip tucked under her teeth in concentration. At five she was a charmer, with a cascade of wavy hair to the middle of the back, and a bold way of looking at people. Onlookers had gathered around, and were giving her encouraging hoots and spatters of applause, which she was relishing. When Michael stepped in and said they really did have to go, she said, “But Daddy, they’re going to dance now, and I must be here for it.” She was quite serious, not fussy at all, and Michael and Ursula only had to exchange a look to agree to wait for another set of dancing.

  In the car, Juliette was still excited, but sleepy, too, and Ursula was afraid the two states would mix badly, make her cranky, and she would incite Carter, who had fallen asleep as soon as he settled in the seat, but Juliette simply said, “I’m going to be a dancer when I grow up. I am too.” Then she lay down and slept, so quickly that Michael and Ursula burst into laughter, and embraced.

  The incident with the dancers thrilled Ursula, not only because it was surprising and pleasant, and not because she saw a quality in Juliette she had not yet recognized—the ability to make people love her because she was performing for them—but because she realized that a host of things were suggested, having to do with the future, and she thought, Now Michael will talk to me about them. What will become of the children? What will become of us? These were his children, their lives an extension of his own. And, on a smaller scale, they had had a good time, and it was worth remembering. They hadn’t bickered much, hadn’t frayed as a family under the stress of Disneyland. And she and Michael had been so close in that moment in the car, brought together by their pleasure in their children. She imagined herself saying to him, “Wasn’t that sweet of the redhaired dancer to show Juliette some steps?” She imagined them mock-fussing over what they had liked best at Disneyland, and the children crying out, “When can we go somewhere again?” (Maybe Washington, D.C.—the Smithsonian, the Lincoln Memorial?) She imagined Michael saying how proud he was of the kids. All of that would have been so much, more than enough; she could not imagine Michael talking abou
t himself.

  As it turned out, the weeks that followed were so jammed with tension and pain, and with hard work and the management of so many unpleasant details, the trip was never even mentioned between Ursula and Michael again. It would be almost a year before Ursula remembered to develop the pictures she had taken.

  When they reached home, they found Katie there. She jumped up as they came in the door and helped them unload. Ursula asked immediately if something was wrong. She assumed Fish was in trouble. It wasn’t quite sunset, maybe eight o’clock on a July evening, and Michael had been driving all day. Ursula thought Katie inconsiderate to be there like this, waiting with some sort of bad news that could probably wait. There never was much Michael could do about Fish anyway, though he had put up bail more than once for DUI and reckless driving charges, or gone to fetch him when some old truck broke down. Damn him, let him walk. Ursula remembered later that that was what she thought as soon as she saw Katie. It was a bend in the road in her thinking. Let him walk. They should have taken that as a precept long ago.

  What Katie did say was that Michael and Ursula had to go out to the Fishers right away, and that she would stay with the kids. Michael said, so calmly Ursula felt like shaking him, “So what’s happened, then?” (Later Ursula asked him, “Didn’t you think one of them died? Weren’t you worried?” Michael was baffled. “Why would I start worrying and asking questions, when she was standing there in front of me, about to tell me what I needed to know?”) In the space of half a minute, Ursula had already considered a dozen possibilities, none of them close to the actual circumstances, though all of them close enough in character. There was trouble. Katie gave the kids hugs and sent them up to dress for bed. When they were out of the room she told Michael that his parents’ house had burned down. She added quickly that nobody was hurt. The house was gone.

  As Michael and Ursula drove into River Cove, they passed an ambulance on its way into Medford. The ambulance, they would learn, was taking Gully away to the hospital for the night, and after that—though they wouldn’t know this for several days—to the state hospital, for months. He had been down by the river, drinking and fishing, and when he had returned to find the house engulfed in flames, he had gone berserk, even though the firemen tried to tell him nobody was inside. He seemed to have lost his sense of time—the year, his own age. He kept saying it was his fault, and what would happen to the kids? Where are the kids? he kept asking. Geneva had been at the library, and it was this scene—the house blackened, the flames dying down, the mess of the firefighting everywhere, and Gully babbling and wringing his hands as he stomped around—this she found when she returned. As soon as Gully saw her he began to scream hysterically. He thought Evelyn was inside the house. The men had to restrain him from scrabbling in the mess. The fire marshal told Geneva that these things happened to people in a crisis sometimes. “Not with most men, I bet,” Geneva said when she relayed the fireman’s words to Michael. The fire marshal shook Gully and made him sit down in a truck. He sent a neighbor to call for an ambulance. When it came, Gully fought and had to be restrained.

  Geneva went to stay with Michael and Ursula. Her sons cleaned up from the fire. Fish came through that time. He worked day after day until dark, until he was black with soot. Michael helped Geneva pick out a mobile home to put on the lot after the house was cleared, instead of rebuilding. They didn’t need much room. Geneva didn’t need the burden of a house to keep, and they would save some money. There was enough money left over from the insurance to put into CD’s, to draw interest for a small income. Geneva stabbed at bravery, saying for once she could choose what she wanted instead of taking what she got. She missed Gully terribly, and was afraid of what they were doing to him. Michael went up to see his father, but talked Geneva (it wasn’t difficult) into staying behind. Gully didn’t want her to see him or the hospital, once he could think about it. Geneva talked for weeks on end, manic. That was when Ursula learned some of the family history. She kept telling Geneva that things would be better now. Geneva said she had prayed for something to happen to make Gully—her voice ran out, she couldn’t say what she wanted, but only cry. Katie and Ursula helped her go through the burned photograph albums and boxes of artifacts from her whole married life, salvaging a very small portion of them. There was a fireproof box, which Ursula supposed held important papers, but which turned out to hold old greeting cards and mementoes. Geneva wept copiously when she saw it was saved. “I’d have chosen that above all else,” she said. Well, hadn’t she known that when she put it in a metal box? Ursula didn’t see the value of the items, but she didn’t look closely, or ask questions. She was glad something was salvaged for Geneva.

  Geneva told them Gully had once fallen asleep on the couch with a cigarette, and had set the couch on fire. It had scared him enough to stop smoking, but not enough to stop drinking. Another time he burned down a shed because he couldn’t get its door to hang right. She thought he remembered those things, at the fire. “He never said he was sorry, you know, either of those other times,” she said, “but he’s sorry now.”

  Gully came back skinny, his shoulders curved toward the center of his body. His wispy hair had grown long enough to pull into a ponytail like his sons wore, and it was all almost white. He had a hard time remembering things. He could remember anecdotes he liked to tell about his boyhood, or about his children, but he couldn’t remember where he had set his coffee cup down two minutes ago. Names slipped away; he was embarrassed to see people he knew, and stopped going down to the cafe for coffee for a long time. He never went back to work. He drew disability, and then retirement. “Thank God I’m a union man,” he said. He had been building heavy equipment for road construction. He had once been very strong for his size. Now he said, “To think God had to do that to get my attention.” Ursula commented to Michael that the shock treatments had altered his personality, but Michael pooh-poohed that. Gully went to AA meetings nearly every night for months. Wednesday nights he went to River Cove Christian Fellowship prayer meetings with Geneva. The young people were vastly relieved that he didn’t talk about it much. He didn’t try to foist Jesus off on anybody.

  His mind eventually cleared, and he spent his days poking and puttering, fishing and visiting with his cronies up and down the river. He slacked off on AA, going Tuesday nights at the Episcopal church hall. He became a mild man, with a streak of stubborn anger against people responsible for large events: the CIA, United Fruit, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Pentagon. He called Geneva his good wife. He said he didn’t deserve half as much. But he and Geneva lived in separate zones of a small life and came together only for their old-couple rituals. Fish wouldn’t go near them. Geneva’s feet got bad. Gully developed angina. These matters gave them something to discuss over breakfast. Fish gave them something to worry about. Michael gave them a little comfort. Somehow, they went on.

  27

  Gully and Michael are standing near the road with their backs to the Grange Hall. Looking at them through the open doors, Ursula thinks how much alike they look in the slope of their shoulders and their wiriness. They even stand alike, with their hands in their pockets. They look like boys who might kick rocks all the way to the river.

  “Fish stands exactly like that, with his pants hiked up by his fists in his pockets.” Katie has appeared beside Ursula. “He would hate to hear me say so. He doesn’t want to be like Gully.”

  “Too bad,” says Ursula, “because he is, in lots of ways.”

  “He can’t stand his father’s weakness. His meekness.”

  “Maybe he can’t stand the thought of getting old.”

  “He says he’ll never get feeble like Gully. I don’t think he plans to get old. Surely he can scrape up a catastrophe to wipe himself out before that.” Katie’s voice is harsh.

  Ursula takes a step away from Katie, toward the men. She says, “That gives him a good excuse for being crazy.” Crazy isn’t the right word. Katie could probably come up with something more apt, but
she goes away without commenting anymore. It is never okay for anyone to criticize Fish, except Katie. Well, she has had the most of him. She would know what kind of crazy he is.

  Ursula calls her husband’s name softly. He turns and gives her a quizzical look, as though he cannot fathom why she would come to him right then. Gully hasn’t heard her. She hears him say, “Somebody must have got to him.” Ursula realizes he is talking about the podiatrist who disappeared. Some people suspected foul play, but could come up with no possible motive. The man’s Jeep was found on a forest service road not far from River Cove, but there were no signs of him, though they searched when he disappeared in February, and again in March after the weather cleared. Gully seems to have known him. He refers to him as “Dr. Jim.”

  “So many possibilities, Pop,” says Michael. Ursula would like to dare him to come up with one. Better, she would like for Michael to ask his father, What was Dr. Jim to you? Did something happen that you’re afraid of too? Do you know something? She has heard Michael talk for hours with Fish or Gully about the world at large, especially if it has to do with hunting, fishing, or what they see as atrocities against the environment, but none of the three of them ever discuss anything personal.

  “When should I bring out the cake?” Ursula asks. Her voice sounds strained to her. She is tired, and afraid guests will leave if she doesn’t serve the cake soon, even though Ruby has not arrived. She isn’t expecting Fish. Avoiding Katie is a convenient alibi. He hates sentimentality, crowds, or anything that places pressure on him to behave himself. It is such a hot day, he may have driven to the beach.