“Coming up in a couple of weeks. I can’t be sure of the exact date.”
“We’ll be ready,” Russ says, reaching for my hand, inviting me in. Quite a change from my usual relegation as the pastor’s wife. But then, at the moment, he isn’t a pastor.
The opportunity comes on the second Saturday in May, meaning Ronnie and Ariel will be left to their own devices for the entirety of the afternoon. Both react to the circumstances with minimal pouting, however, as Barney became pregnant immediately following her escape from her traveling basket, and a box of tiny kittens mewl in a corner of the washroom.
“Stay close to the house,” I admonish as I give myself a final inspection in the front hall mirror. Since arriving in Baltimore, I’ve gained at least ten pounds, the weight manifested in the softened planes of my face. My hair has recaptured the sheen of my youth and, having escaped the brutal weathering of the dust and wind, my skin glows in gratitude.
“But, Ma, there’s going to be a game at the park.”
My heart nudges at my protective reserve. Since arriving, the children have taken to the fresh air—no matter the cold of these early spring days—like a dying man for water. I’ve been sure to dress them in their best, clean clothes, and keep them scrubbed and fresh so nobody at school would think to call them “dirty Okies.” They both immediately made friends—Ronnie due to his ability to man third base, and Ariel due to her intriguing curls and fat, beautiful cat. Russ and I have made some fine acquaintances too, but I can only imagine the importance of the people we will meet this afternoon. My first instinct was to buy yet another new dress, but my Easter dress has not yet been seen in our nation’s capital, so I figure it will do.
“Well then,” I concede, “could you at least take her with you? Let her watch? I’ll tell her to behave, and if you both do, I’ll bring you back a prize from today.”
Ronnie takes a moment to weigh the possibilities and declares if Ariel isn’t perfect, he is going to take her prize and give it to the charity auction.
“Empty threats,” I say, ruffling my fingers through his hair. He is at least as tall as me these days, and will be taller by the end of summer when he starts high school. More and more he looks like his father, shoulders broadening along with his smile.
I repeat the instructions to Ariel, making her promise to be a good girl at the park, and no, she can’t take the kittens to the park because they are too little to be away from their mama, and Barney is too tired, but she can take a doll if she wants, though not a paper doll because it might blow away.
“Is it windy, Mama?” she asks, her eyes filled with fear for the first time since she got on the train in Boise City.
I glance out the window and gauge the motion in the newly budded trees.
“A bit.” I kiss the top of her head. “But nothing to be alarmed about. We’ve certainly seen worse.”
From outside, the honk of a car horn calls me to quicken my pace. Usually Greg takes the train, but today’s special occasion calls for a drive, and he and Russ are waiting, not quite patiently, for me to join them. I elicit one final promise from the children to behave, then go outside, nearly trotting down the walkway to the car.
It is ten o’clock in the morning, with Russ due to speak to the committee at one. Exactly when he will be finished, however, is anyone’s guess, so we’ve made no plans for the afternoon beyond finding someplace for a nice dinner. “On Uncle Sam’s dime,” Greg jokes.
The farther we get into Washington, the narrower the streets become, or so it seems with the congestion of so many automobiles threatening to pile on one another. The national grandeur of the city is lost until the moment the Capitol comes into view, with its white dome and green lawn, all seen as we drive past the glistening Potomac.
“I wanted you to get a good look at it,” Greg says, as both Russ and I press our faces against the window. “The parking garage doesn’t present nearly as fabulous a view. I’ll circle around, drop you off, and you can give your names to the security guard. I’ll meet you in the Rotunda. Or you can wait on the steps.”
“Steps,” Russ and I say simultaneously, sharing our children’s thirst for air. All I want to do is raise my face to the sky and thank God for his deliverance. Who would have imagined only a year ago, when I buried my friend who drowned on dry land and took in the living ghost of my father, that someday I would be here? Living in a home purchased with my inheritance. The wife of a man about to address our nation’s leaders. None of it, I am sure, would have happened if not for the keeping of my secrets.
This is your mercy, Lord, I pray before adding aloud, “Show your mercy on us today.”
We walk hand in hand up the endless, shallow steps.
“Are you nervous, darling?” I ask, unable to read his passive expression.
“I’ll be talking about how much I love my home. I can talk about that all day long.”
It gives me a pang to think that he doesn’t yet consider this place to be his home, but I know that will come in time. I like to think that we are each other’s home.
“Incredible, isn’t it?” he asks. We’ve arrived, at last, surrounded by powerful white stone, making both of us seem insignificant.
“It is,” I say, drawing myself closer to him. “Are you nervous now?”
“I have to believe God brought me here for a reason. This might be it.”
I smiled, tight-lipped, and nod. For Russ, I know, it will never be enough to consider that God may have brought us here solely for my sake. To rescue me from the temptations I was powerless to deny, or even to make a home in a place where our children can live without the constant threat of illness and death.
A gust of wind drives itself into my back, familiar in its strength, and I barely get my hand to my hat in time to save it from flying off my head. It carries with it a familiar scent that tickles at the back of my throat. Perhaps I will be forever haunted by the storms of Oklahoma, like the soldier who cannot bear the sound of a banging cupboard or a slamming door. If my husband is not willing to accept our displacement as nothing more than a means to save our family, I will do so on his behalf.
“I think,” I say as Greg comes into view, “I’m not going to go in with you.”
His face registers surprise rather than disappointment. “Why not?”
“Russ.” I step closer to him, pulling us into an invisible space where we can ignore the hundreds of milling people. “Will I ever be enough for you?”
“What do you mean?” He touches his lips to mine, and nobody seems to notice. “You are my life.”
I know he will never ask me the same question; it isn’t his way to seek such confirmation.
Greg joins us and loops my arm through his. “Are we ready, kids?”
“I’m not sure, all of a sudden,” I say, “if it’s my place to go.”
“Of course it’s your place. You’re my wife.”
“They won’t care that she’s your wife,” Greg says, quietly coming to my defense. Then, to me, “You should go because you survived this too.”
And so I do.
How anyone ever learned to navigate the labyrinth of passages and stairways I’ll never know, but Greg proves the perfect guide, never condescending to speak directions, but keeping enough of a lead to allow us to follow both his conversation and his steps. He leads us to a room that might be smaller than I imagined, if I had the wherewithal to imagine anything at all. Two rows of long tables stretch across the front, elevated, and a row of tables face them with a bank of seats filling out the rest of the room. After giving a sheaf of papers to a young boy in a crisp blue suit, Greg instructs me to sit in the bank of chairs, three rows back, while he and Russ move toward the tables.
There are, perhaps, thirty people in the room at the time, with me the only woman, a fact that makes me all the more thankful that my dress is new, my hat in place, and my skin radiant. More than one appreciative glance comes my way, not the least from the men coming to sit at the tables at the front
of the room. These, I know, are elected officials. Powerful men who decide the fate of what is quickly becoming a desert back home. I uncross and cross my legs to see if their eyes follow, and to no surprise, they do.
Greg glances back, and I send him a withering, humor-filled glare. So much for my presence being powerful because I am a survivor who matters. Greg wants me there because I am a beautiful woman, in a place where such creatures are all the more valuable for their rarity.
All around me, chairs fill, and I realize Greg’s strategy in getting us into the room at the hour he did. My seat is front and center in the gallery, just as it used to be in church. Only now, my husband speaks with his back to me, while the others at their long stretch of pulpit look on. Sitting alongside Russ, one man after another speaks, extolling the need for replanting the wild grasses, rotating crops, allowing fields to lie fallow for years to come. Buying farmland and paying farmers not to work it. All of this in the name of healing the land and restoring the soil that will remain once the wind stops and the rains come.
When it is Russ’s turn to speak, I hear for the first time the distinctness of his accent. Though his diction is strong, his vocabulary elevated, he comes across as a humble man, wise despite his relative youth. His is a voice of hope, someone who speaks for the bedraggled men and women pictured in the newspaper reports about the drought, yet not one of them.
The committee members lean forward as he speaks, as do I, resting my elbow on my knee. Every time I move, I distract the decision makers from their duty, so I decide on a single pose, and hold it throughout Russ’s speech. When he finishes, he turns in his seat to introduce me as his wife, saying, “We brought our family here for the sake of our children, and we are so thankful for the opportunity to speak for all of those whose voices you cannot hear.”
As a test, I smile, and they smile back, and I gloat a bit in my seat.
One of the congressmen is about to ask a question, perhaps directed at me, if the direction of his gaze is any hint, when the young man in the blue suit bursts through the door and makes a dignified run to the front of the room, stopping at the congressman’s elbow. He leans in and whispers something that registers a look of pure disbelief on the face of every man in earshot, and the news travels down the length of the table like an oncoming cloud.
Because apparently, an oncoming cloud exactly describes what is barreling down on the city.
Amid the crowd, Greg, Russ, and I manage to find each other, and once again we follow my brother, though this time through lesser-used service hallways emptying out onto the more utilitarian side of the Capitol, where we stand among the throng, covering our mouths and shielding our eyes against the relentless, thick, grainy brown sky.
The storms have followed us home.
CHAPTER 32
MY LEGS TURN TO SAND, and it takes the strength of my husband and my brother to keep me on my feet.
“How . . . ?” But I cannot finish the rest of the sentence, because there are too many questions wrapped within it.
A state of near panic erupts around us, but we stand stalwart in the familiar scene. My new dress begins to collect dust within each seam; my skin absorbs the minuscule pelting of the grains of dirt. Russ hands me his handkerchief, which I immediately place over my nose and mouth, reacting out of habit. He and Greg cover their lower faces with the lapels of their jackets.
“This is unbelievable,” Greg says, unable to muffle the faint amusement in his statement.
“I believe God himself has spoken,” Russ says, his full eyebrows communicating a hidden smile.
Of the three, only I appear horrified at this display. But then, only I know its origin.
Greg tugs at my hand. “We need to wait inside until it blows over.”
I pull back. “No! We have to get home. The kids—”
“They’ve lived through this before,” Russ says, urging me in the direction of my brother. “They know what to do.”
I plant my feet. “They were going to the park! What if it’s worse there? What if they can’t find their way—?” Panic steals the rest of my thought. How easy it would be to become disoriented even in the now-familiar streets. And Ariel has grown so independent, she might refuse to take Ronnie’s hand. Or he might not be able to find her at all. “Take me home!” My voice rises shrill above the wind, streaking through the crowd.
“Wait inside,” Greg says, now nearly shouting just to be heard. “I’ll get the car.”
I give Russ a push. “Go with him.”
“I’m not leaving you alone.”
“I’ll be right here. I’ll be fine. I’ve been through this before, remember?”
Convinced that I’m not going to change my mind, they leave, and I back myself up against the building. True, there would be shelter inside, but I can’t find anything within myself to be deserving of protection. How stupid could I be, thinking that a mere train ride halfway across the country would shield me from God’s wrath?
All around me, the din of the crowd mixes with the whistle of the wind, but certain phrases make their way out of the cloud of conversation. They curse the Okies who couldn’t leave their dirt at home. They claim blindness, and breathlessness, and a weakness to stand against the onslaught of the hazy brown fog. Part of me wants to mock them, because they have no idea what it means to face such a thing on a week’s empty stomach, or after months of feeling and tasting nothing but dry and dirt. The rest of me—the better part, maybe—has an illogical need to apologize. To explain that I know exactly why this is happening, and what I must do to bring it to an end. Because there is no more time, and nowhere to go where I will be out of the reach of God’s judgment. They have suffered for a matter of minutes what I have endured for years. I’ve tried to run away, to hide within the walls of an ordinary house, to do penance by meeting the needs of my family—a home for my children, companionship for my brother, and for Russ, my heart. My love, abundant and consuming, hoping to erase any lingering bits of unfaithfulness. Now, God has scooped up all of those bits, and he’s flung them across the vastness of the country, more powerful than his own clear sky, farther reaching than any man’s train.
I hear my name above the clamor and see Greg’s car pulled to the side, Russ calling to me. Handkerchief in place, I wedge my way through the crowd and to the car, where Russ and Greg are changing places.
“I’ll do better as navigator,” Greg says as I slip into the backseat. “I’ll do the seeing; Russ can do the driving. You do the praying.”
I dive into the backseat, ready to fulfill my duty, though I do so silently. I hardly think at all to pray for our safe passage home, as I trust the abilities of the two men in front of me. Instead, I beg for the safety of my children, that they won’t become victims of my negligence as a mother.
While Greg’s decision to hand the wheel over to Russ was a logical one, driving the nearly deserted roads that spool between a dozen little towns is a far cry from maneuvering alongside a hundred other automobiles, each wanting to occupy your space, and willing to dislodge you to get it.
“Easy, easy,” Greg says, determining the amount of space between each car. “Once we’re out of the city, things should clear up.”
They don’t, and the trip that accounted for little more than an hour’s travel in one direction lasts more than four going the other way. By the time we come into view of Arcadia, I am ready to jump out of the car and start walking the streets, calling for my children on the wind.
But the streets are deserted, looking more and more like home every day.
“We’ve seen worse,” Russ keeps repeating—to reassure himself, I suppose. And he is right. We’ve been in dust storms that built a wall of blindness between the eyes and the end of the nose. This is more like dirty, driven snow. Thick and stinging, but adequately transparent. I keep my eyes peeled for any sign of Ariel and Ronnie, up until the time Russ stops the car in front of the now-familiar door.
All the windows are dark.
I s
tumble out of the car and run up the walkway, screaming, “Ariel! Ronnie!” I pound on the door and grab the knob, finding it turns easily, but when I try to push it open, it won’t budge.
More pounding, more calling, more pushing, and suddenly it is yanked away from me, and I fall through, tripping over the damp, rolled towel that has been placed along the bottom.
“Just like you taught us,” Ronnie says, and without giving a thought to the fact that I am filthy with dirt and his clothes and person are as clean as they were when I left this morning, I grab him into my arms, telling him over and over that he is a good, good boy.
“Where’s your sister?” Surely if he is here, she will be too.
Ronnie hooks a thumb toward the back of the house. “Watching over the kittens. She doesn’t want them to be scared.” His young brow wrinkles with concern. “Where’s Papa?”
I join him, looking to Greg for an answer.
“In the car. Waiting, he said, to know if he had to go back out to search.”
“I’ll tell him,” I say, beating Ronnie to the offer.
Once at the car, instead of knocking on the window and beckoning him into the house, I open the door and slide inside. Russ turns to me with a worried expression. “They’re gone?”
“They’re fine.” I should touch him, not knowing how many other opportunities I will have to do so, but I keep my hands in my lap. “They’re inside.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
I don’t have to hold him back to keep him still. An instinct that comes with so many years of shared loss bids him to stay in his seat and look at me. He always seemed to know even before my body made its final decision to rid itself of a child. He said a final farewell the breath before my father’s last. The fact that he has no perception of my adultery comes from the fact that, until this moment, it posed no threat to our marriage, because I would have lied to deny its existence. But I could not lie about my lost babies, and I could not deny the death of my father, and now my marriage dangles over the same precipice.
On Shifting Sand Page 34