“You go take a nap,” said Madge. “There’ll be plenty of time to talk later.”
“Excuse me,” Sharon said, and walked through the house to the room at the front, with its unmade bed, the cuckoo clock on the wall to the left of the bureau. It had stopped with the bird popped out of the house, at ten minutes to five.
For a woman so young, Madge moved around like a grazing cow. She heaved herself out of chairs, eased down with a whooshing sigh, propped herself on her arms at the sink or the table, and yet these effortful movements seemed to increase her contentment. She oozed creature comfort. She smelled like a pail of warm milk or sheets dampened for ironing. Unable to stoop, and no room left to her lap, she let Sharon attend to Blanche.
Babies intimidated Sharon, especially this one. She could not rid herself of the impression that her limbs suspended from her head, like a spider’s. Scary or comical faces, loud or strange noises, balloons, dancing lights, or even the water sprinkler (placed on her head so that it sprayed all around her), did not disturb her solemn composure. How like Sharon that was! Sphinx-like, little Blanche would fasten her eyes on Sharon and follow each move, like a bird on a perch. Sharon could feel the child’s gaze on the back of her head. The largeness of the head and the thinness of her neck caused her head to lob and roll, as if it might twist off. She had an amazing pallor, disturbing to Madge, but promising a cool, marble-like complexion. Nevertheless, Sharon found it hard to burp the child or change her diapers.
Would her baby sister encourage Blanche to talk? Ned thought so, but Madge didn’t. When she was ready to talk she would. The unflinching steadiness of her gaze was not like that of a child at all. How did one know, Sharon asked herself, if such a thing was exceptional or retarded? Babies her own age Blanche sat aloof from and stared at. Did she like music? She pounded with her little fists on plates, pans, and the shelf of her highchair. Da-da-da! she sang. But a performer more than a listener. Cora had found and repaired an old rag doll of Madge’s cut from a pattern in a Ceresota flour sack, but Blanche had showed little interest in it. That spoke to Sharon. Did this child look about her and find all of them strange? A creature destined, perhaps, to be a stilt-legged beanpole, like Cora, among these contentedly grazing heifers, excelling at the spelldown, the falldown, and the Music Memory Contest. Few boys would press against her at the turn of the stairs. In her highchair at the table, on a level with Sharon, she might avert her gaze in such a manner that she spied on Sharon through a tangle of lashes while grace was being said.
“Say it again,” Madge said. “I don’t think everybody heard it.” Fayrene’s voice was little more than a whisper.
“Bless this food to our use, and us to thy service.”
“I never tire of hearing that,” said Madge. “It’s why I eat so much.”
On their way to the farm they went through Battle Creek to visit with Mrs. Eichelberger, their former teacher. She had been the one to insist that Sharon continue her music. Had she continued? she asked. Yes, Sharon had continued. Mrs. Eichelberger proved to be more at her ease with Fayrene, whose job had been to collect and clean the erasers. Did Avery Dickel know she was such a good speller? Not much of a speller himself, he hadn’t noticed. Fayrene was hardly talkative, but if asked questions about her plans to set up housekeeping, she would answer. One of the rewards of teaching, Mrs. Eichelberger said, was to see the coming of the new generation, with girls like Fayrene to excel at spelling, and boys like Avery to pelt them with snowballs. How much like their parents they often proved to be! If they settled on a farm, their children would go to school in Battle Creek. Mrs. Eichelberger looked from Avery to Fayrene, then back to Avery, slack-jawed as he listened, Mrs. Eichelberger pleased at the prospect of children who would prove to be the image of their parents. Her expression did not change when she turned to Sharon and asked if she expected to remain in Chicago, or come back and settle down.
Madge walked beside Ned, with Blanche straddling her hip, peering solemnly back at Sharon. Fayrene had run on ahead to the car to make sure she got a seat without the side curtains. As she ran, Avery pelted her with green crab apples. When Madge stooped to pry a bit of gravel from her shoe, her immense backside was like a hamper of washing. Ned gave her a pat, as he would the rump of a horse.
The autumn day was beautiful, rows of shocked corn standing in tepees in the warm, diffused light, but Sharon did not feel her customary pleasure. What image did Madge have of Sharon if she saw Avery Dickel as a member of the family, related by marriage to all of them? Admittedly, Fayrene had to do what she could, and Avery Dickel might make a fine husband, but neither Madge nor Ned had exchanged with Sharon a knowing glance. Avery was no longer an Ozark hick and a hillbilly Dickel; he was Fayrene’s beau and that made him all right.
So that Orion could look on, from his wheelchair, the wedding was held in Cora’s front room, the shades half drawn against the road glare. The light bulb seemed to crown Avery’s head. Sharon stood with friends of Fayrene—Lura and Mabel—within the sound and smell of jars boiling on the range. Cora had tomatoes waiting to be canned as soon as the newlyweds departed. When Sharon had greeted Orion, his popped eyes open wide, Cora had said, “He can hear you, but he can’t talk back.” Hearing that, he had audibly whimpered. From his head she had removed his black hat, stroked back his hair, then returned it like a pot cover. A confusion of sorrow and pity numbed Sharon to what she was observing. The broad back of Madge blocked her view of Fayrene; the air smelled sourly of Caroline’s wet diaper. When they all turned to look for Sharon their perspiring faces beamed with relief. Something had been done that could not be undone, as long as life, as binding as death. Later Emerson would say, “With a name like that you’d better have girls, so they can change it.” Fayrene hugged and kissed him. Had she heard what he said?
“We often wondered who Fayrene would marry,” Cora said, with no indication of what sort of person she found him.
“Ma’am,” Avery replied, “with me right there next door, you can see for yourself!”
At the north edge of town Ned pulled off the road to tinker with the carburetor. Sharon sat as if drugged. Flies hovered over Madge as she fanned them away from the faces of the children. As a drowsing child, seated in the church pew, her ears ringing with the voice of Cora, Sharon sometimes confused who and where she was with the words and images of the hymn they were singing. Until she knew better, “Brighten the corner, where you are,” had been “Right in the corner, where you are,” which she found somewhat puzzling but appealing. How well that seemed to describe her state of mind. The heat drone of the insects, the stupor of the food, and the jostle of the car seemed to blur the distinction between herself and the swarming life around her. Voices, bird calls, a movement of the leaves, the first hint of coolness in the air, were not separately observed sensations but commingled parts of her own nature. Her soul (what else could it be?) experienced a sense of liberation in its loss of self. What she admired in Cora, yet disliked in Emerson and Avery Dickel, was that they were less persons than pieces of nature, closely related to cows and chickens, and Sharon Rose, for all her awareness, blew on the wind with the dust and pollen that made her sneeze.
Madge and Ned both insisted that Ned drive her to Columbus to catch the train. On the long ride down, Ned was more talkative than usual. Sharon gathered that it had been planned by Madge so she and Ned could be alone together. Above the crunch and rattle of the road gravel he told her how relieved they were to get Fayrene married, although it would work a hardship on Madge with a new baby coming. Ned did not say so, but with Fayrene married, that left only Sharon. Did she remember Arthur Willard? She did not. Well, he had been just one year ahead of her in school, which meant that he may have looked down on her at the time. He was now settled in Norfork, in his father’s law practice, where Ned often saw him on business matters. He always asked about Sharon Rose. In particular he always asked if she was yet married. Madge would tell Sharon, if she was asked, that Arthur was the pick of th
e local bachelors. He was on the short side, but so was Sharon. This trip was not the time to bring it up, but Arthur Willard had expressed the desire to meet her. The next time she made a visit they would do this. Arthur Willard had already discussed with Ned the sort of house he would build, once he met the right girl. There was nothing they could put in a house in Chicago that Ned couldn’t put in a house in Norfork, Lincoln, or any place Sharon might like better. The one thing that Madge wanted was to have Sharon close by somewhere. “Don’t she run nice!” he said, relieved to have it over, to have done what he could to settle her future.
He boarded the train with her, and she felt his assurance that she was leaving only in order to hurry back. The conductor was advised to keep an eye on her; the porter was paid in advance for her pillow. When the train began to move she felt an inexpressible relief. The clang of the last crossing bell rang down the curtain on ceaseless humiliations, inadmissible longings, the perpetual chores and smoldering furies, the rites and kinships with half-conscious people so friendly and decent it shamed her to dislike them.
“This seat free, miss?” The young man stood in the aisle, hovering above her. As tall, perhaps, but not so oafish as Avery. Clutched to his front he held a fiber laundry carton, tied up with a cord. He took her silence for assent, dropped his bundle in the seat. “I’ll be right back,” he said. At the back of his head, as he walked away, clipper nicks exposed snippets of his bone-white scalp. A moment later, his eyes glistening, he came toward her with a paper cup of water; it spilled on the seat as he passed it to her. Leaning to the window, he rubbed a clear spot on the glass with the heel of his hand, but the film of dirt was on the outside. “It’s up ahead,” he said. “We’re coming to it.”
“What is?” she asked.
“Colby,” he replied. “I’m from there.” Sharon would remember his reflection in the window, his eyes moving as he searched the darkness. “Look there!” he cried. She saw nothing but his reflection. “Boy, am I glad to see the last of that!” he said, happy in his freedom, in his expectations that whatever life held for him in the future, it would henceforth be his own life, it would not be the life of Battle Creek or Colby, it would not be the trauma of birth or burial, or mindless attachments to persons and places, to kinships, longings, crossing bells, the arc of streetlights, or the featureless faces on station platforms, all of which would recede into the past, into the darkness—wouldn’t it?
In August of 1933, assured that it would last until they got there, Ned Kibbee drove Madge, Cora, and the girls to the World’s Fair in Chicago. For a week or so Cora’s chickens would have to see to themselves. Emerson had no desire to go to a fair that he was told had neither cows, pigs, nor draft horses. Not that it mattered, since there wasn’t room for him in the car, and he wasn’t asked.
Cora sat in the rear, gripping one of the posts that held up the top. The side curtain with cracked isinglass windows cut down on the wind, but flapped like a shade. Words spoken by Madge, intended for Cora, blew away like bits of paper. The tongue Cora put to her lips, a lifelong habit, caused them to dry and crack. Fences and poles, furrow after furrow, field after field, farm after farm, flashed past. Her eyes watered. The unaccustomed jostling, the wind and racket in her ears, the loss of appetite and the increase of thirst, the smell of Blanche’s buttered popcorn and Caroline’s cream soda, proved to be a greater strain on Cora than her trip west with Emerson, which had taken twelve days. At thirteen, Blanche was taller than her mother, with a spinal curvature that needed correction. Her eyes were like lanterns, the skin of the lids stretched taut and translucent to conceal them. She was very much a problem in the public washrooms. Ned had to stop the car near a grove of trees where Madge or Cora could take a walk with her. Cora had ceased to be disturbed by Blanche’s silence once it had been proved that she could talk. She was quick to understand what Cora said, and did not pester her with foolish questions. All by herself Blanche had learned what Cora had never managed to teach her sister—where to look for eggs. It also pleased Cora to be told that it was from her the child had her flawless complexion. Other ways in which she knew they were alike she kept to herself.
Why would a woman who had lived her life with outdoor accommodations take exception to the indoors of a gas station toilet? Shame at what they might think discouraged her from going into the woods with Blanche. There was a difference in farm dirt, dirty as it was, and city filth. The farm dirt was her own. Seated on the stool in a rented room, Cora could do nothing whatsoever but sit there. All of her functions had stopped. With averted eyes she heard Madge say, “Mama, if you can’t do anything, you tell me.” So little her own flesh and blood knew her as to say that.
They found rooms in a boardinghouse near the fairgrounds, from where they could walk across railroad tracks to the entrance, but Cora spent all of the first morning alone, in bed. Her head throbbed with the noise below the window. In the evening, Madge washed what the girls had soiled at the fair, standing with her back to Cora, talking. Ned had to help her into the corset from which she bulged at the top and bottom. Cora had never seen so much of her exposed. Above the sound of running water she confessed to Cora that she had been advised not to have another baby. Cora had no choice but to hear it. Not to see it, she closed her eyes. Madge went on to say that Ned wanted a boy, as she did, but there was no guarantee that she would have one, what with nothing but girls in the Atkins family. Another girl she did not want. Look at the ones she had. Blanche had reached the seventh grade because the seats in the lower grades were too small for her. She would not do exercises, salute the flag, or arithmetic beyond fractions. Caroline was so bright she frightened people, and already, in the sixth grade, she was boy crazy. All Madge could say was thank God for poor little Rosalene. Sucking her thumb, which nothing would stop, had proved to be a blessing and kept her quiet. She did as she was told. If her complexion didn’t sunburn, she would make some farm boy a nice wife.
Never before had Madge talked to Cora so openly. Being in a strange place had unsettled her, as it had all of them. Cora gazed at the windows, where the light glared, her emotions confused. She hoped to minimize what she heard by saying nothing herself, keeping her eyes averted. Madge hung the clothes she had washed and rinsed on the iron frame of the bed. Where had she learned that? It seemed to relieve her to speak in this manner to her mother, and shuffle around in her stocking feet and her corset. Cora did not understand it, but she sensed it to be a compliment.
Rosalene and Caroline came back from the fair with blistered heels. A coolie hat had sheltered all of Blanche but her insteps, which were sunburned. Ned had bought Rosalene a yo-yo and Blanche a live chameleon she wore like a pin on her blouse. Cora saw its colors alter when it was placed on the carpet. Later it was lost, then found, high in the fold of a curtain where nobody could reach it. All but Cora went with Ned to eat hot dogs, one of which they brought her, with a bottle of root beer. She had thirst, but no desire for food. During the night she woke thinking the chameleon was in her bed. The lights of beacons crisscrossed on the sky, and what she thought to be the moon proved to be a balloon descending. Late as it was she could hear music, and the sound of revelers. It dazzled her to think, as Ned had told her, that the fair covered more ground than Norfork, some of it on an island of rocks built into the lake. Lights came and went, but at no time did the room grow dark. Above the half-lowered window of the bathroom she watched the sky light up before sunrise, the street below her littered with papers that fluttered about like chickens. If asked at that time she would have said that she had seen everything.
Yet it left her unprepared for the bedlam of the fair itself. Weary and dazzled, she sat with Rosalene on a bench near where music was playing. The players were on a stage, the sun glinting on their instruments. It differed from anything she had heard in the way it soothed and calmed her.
In one of the vast exhibitions, so tired she was dazed, Cora sat with the girls for a photograph. Over them arched an arbor, with painted flowers and
birds. The thought of a true human likeness is miraculous, but the picture itself is even stranger. The scene is dark, but there she sits, like a stuffed owl. Perhaps she had no idea what she looked like. A tight line seals her pleated lips. Caroline squealed with laughter when she saw it, but Blanche pressed her hands to her cheeks as if to widen her eyes, her lower lip held fast by her teeth. The pin at Cora’s throat reflects the light, wisps of hair appear to be lines in her face. As the ears have grown larger, the head appears to be shrinking. Unquestionably it is Cora, but it is also an image that defies grasping. Madge puts it away to look at it later. Cora will never see it again. What she saw was so bizarre it left no afterimage. However briefly she had seen this “likeness” it changed the substance of her nature. She was no longer the person she had been, but something more or less.
Later that day they watched the fireworks until the air had cooled and Madge could put her shoes back on. Ned said that Cora was asleep before her head hit the pillow, but she was awakened by claps of thunder and flashes of lightning. The curtains puffed like sails until Madge closed the windows. In the morning Caroline found Blanche’s chameleon under the covers at the foot of Cora’s bed, a piece of its tail broken off.
Cora and Madge had planned for weeks to meet with Sharon Rose on the last day of their visit. Ned would take the girls to the zoo in Lincoln Park, and Madge, Cora, and Sharon Rose would have lunch in the pavilion, where they could talk. At the very last moment, while Ned was parking the car, Cora was possessed by something. She could hear the shrill piercing voice of Sharon, and feel the rage in her body, like that of a trapped animal, when Cora had whacked her palm with the hairbrush. “That will teach you!” she had cried, but what had it taught her? When Ned appeared she flatly refused to go along with Madge. “Mama, you sick?” Madge asked her, and maybe she was. As if she couldn’t bear to do it alone, Madge took Rosalene along with her. Caroline and Blanche went along with their father, leaving Cora free to sit on a bench facing the animal cages. Ned bought the girls balloons they asked Cora to hold. Seated alone, in this throng of people, Cora was seized with a sadness so great her throat pained her. Madge didn’t like the way she looked when she came back to her, and they drove to the lakefront, where it was cooler. Ned parked where they could look at the water. So much of it, endless and calm, soothed Cora, the color deep as a bluing rinse, her gaze fastened on the smoke of a boat beyond the horizon. Madge said that Sharon Rose was fine, prettier than ever, and still doing her music.
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